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130. Is Your Management Fostering High-Level Performance? with Daniel Millbank · You've Been Heard

• 0:00
  Speaker A: I think they teach the opposite of how to have strong self esteem. I think they teach. I don't think they teach at all about what values are, what roles are in your life. I think they teach you you can have whatever value you want and that's okay. I want to make a metaphor to like the IT staff, right? There's a, there's a point where you, you don't have enough. And then there's like, I think I have enough, but it's not enough. And then you have too many staff. And like at that point maybe you're doing okay, I don't know. But with the kids, with the kids, two kids is. You're still doing everything. So kind of like your IT staff, like, if you don't, if you're not at a big enough company and you're like a staff of like two people, then you might do too much stuff, if that makes sense. You might.
• 1:04
  Speaker B: No. And you might hold hands to the point. Yeah. And that's true. And if you're a leader or you're expected to be a leader, if your team is too lean and you have to jump in and be on the ground and do the nitty gritty work, who is peeking up above the trees?
• 1:32
  Speaker A: Where's the time for leadership at that.
• 1:33
  Speaker B: Point, the big picture, and be able to. Yeah, yeah. There is no time, you know, if you're.
• 1:38
  Speaker A: Yeah. So it's kind of like kids with kids. When you have two kids, you're making beds, you're still, you're doing dishes, you're doing all this stuff. You're failing to teach them to do this. Okay, so then you get up to a staff, like you get a medium sized staff and you got like four people, right? And now you're like, wow, now I really need to lead and I've never led before and what am I doing? People are complaining and they're asking for this and that and I'm overwhelmed and I'm like, flooded with stuff. This is four kids. Four kids was the hardest. Four kids is the hardest number. And then your wife's like, you know, we need to have some more staff. Let's bump it up one. Let's bump it up one. But you don't get one.
• 2:16
  Speaker B: They're like, hey, just one more.
• 2:17
  Speaker A: You got two head count. You got a double head counts. And then you get twins. And then you end up with six kids. And you're like, oh, my Lord. And then eventually you end up with eight kids like me. And at that point you realize you'll never Survive like you will sink this ship very quickly. If you don't learn to delegate and teach and train people. You will quickly sink this ship. So now I just lay back and I don't do dishes, I don't change diapers. I don't do any of that stuff anymore because I've taught all the other kids to do that. I actually have six year olds that change diapers. That's gotta be wild to some people. People are gonna think I'm oppressing people. They're gonna think I'm opp. Know. I got, I have kids doing laundry, I've got kids cooking dinner. Hey, what's for dinner?
• 3:00
  Speaker B: You know, that is the. But that's the, that's the goal of leadership. You know, once you get to the point where you can delegate. It's amazing how many people in managerial positions that fail to delegate and they try to do everything themselves. The but eight kids. Wow.
• 3:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, I was a guy that's like. I was like a hippie in college too. I was never gonna get married. I was never gonna, I would never gonna get like a, you know, like a real job and work for the man. I was gonna like, you know, think of, I was thinking of living in a trailer on the beach and surfing for the rest of my life. And then my brother in law, you know, he said to me, we were having this conversation, I was telling him that, he's like, oh, so you're, you're going to amount to nothing and give back nothing to the world? I was like, oh, that's a good point, you know, because I was thinking like, you know, like, oh, the rat waste, concrete jungle, like all this stuff, you know, like, you know, I'm not getting into all that. He's like, oh, so you're pretty much gonna amount to nothing? I was like, oh, good point. And then that was the end of that. It's amazing how some people can say one thing to you and that one thing sticks. It might come at any, at a time, that's completely random, but have you ever had someone say something to you and you never forgot it? You can picture in your head where you were, what you were doing, and they said something to you that was so like life altering, yet it seemed simple to them and it changed the entire course of your life. I'm feeling very deep today. Have you ever had someone say that, say something to you? Can you think of something like that?
• 4:49
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's. I'm trying to think of. I feel like I've had hundreds of those moments because you know, every. I want to be the dumbest guy in the room when I walk in. It's. And I've been around some really, really smart people and you know, I always have my little notebook with me and the take down notes when I hear, hear something. But what I also have is I have the shortest memory in, in the world.
• 5:24
  Speaker A: So here we go.
• 5:26
  Speaker B: People know I'm always honest. You know, I'm always honest and I can't lie because I cannot, I can't, I cannot remember what I said. So. But I know what you're saying.
• 5:38
  Speaker A: Memory is an interesting thing. I'm fascinated.
• 5:41
  Speaker B: Light bulb moments.
• 5:42
  Speaker A: I'm fascinated with memory. Okay, so anyways, we should probably do a proper introduction here. Everyone out there listening. You're listening to Dissecting popular IT Nerds. I'm very excited to have Daniel Milbank on the show and for numerous reasons other than this article that I read of yours which you know, about digital transformation and all these, you know, words that we throw around in the industry. And so we're going to, I have a, I think we can take that to the next level. I have an idea of a question that I want to ask you how we can take that to the next level. But before we do that, you know, it leader, protege extraordinaire at Express Global Systems. You guys are a, like a logistics, transportation, delivery, so to speak, or I don't want to butcher this. So you tell me.
• 6:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, we are. We're, yeah, we're, we're a national logistics company that's, we are specializing in flooring or floor covering.
• 6:50
  Speaker A: That's great.
• 6:51
  Speaker B: So we got around 30, probably around 35 locations across the United States. And what we do really well is, is, is the work that the rest of the logistics companies just hate to do. And that is handling rolled goods, man. You can't, you can't take a forklift and pick up a huge roll of carpet. So we just specialized in that and said, okay, everybody hates to do it and let's get really good at that. And we did. And now we're, we're the largest actor in that space in the United States.
• 7:29
  Speaker A: You have said so many amazing things so far, you don't even know it. You don't even know it. Which is like, there's so much to that. Just do what everyone else hates to do and you'll be successful. You know, if you're willing to do what other people are unwilling to do, you'll be successful. I mean, to a degree. I mean, I don't, I Don't mean like, you know, like shady, like you know, bad things. I mean, you know, be willing to do things that other people are unwilling to do, like step outside your comfort zone, for example. By the way, you did say something about your memory. I'm gonna challenge you on that one. Because I'm fascinated with memory and I've been horrible. I mean I've always told myself that I've been terrible at memory. But when I made a big change in my life, I, you know, I'm a big fan of Zig Ziglar. And he says quit your stinking thinking, you know, and don't, you know, don't self kind of like, you know, defeat yourself. You know, the self defeatist mentality. And I've always told myself I've had a poor memory as well. But now I have been fascinated with audio books and audible and I've probably got like 20 books on memory in there. And it's amazing the things that you can like the tools that you can use, memory palaces, various different things to, to memorize things. I think George Bush had something like 50,000 names memorized. He wouldn't forget a name. And part of that is just the technique that people use to remember names. Like some crazy visualization like an Al. Like anytime I meet Al, I just imagine a huge Allen wrench sticking out of his head flying up into the sky. And I can never forget that. I'll always remember Alice. As many owls have I had Joe, if his name's Joe. I imagine Joe Blow with a big massive like bubble gum, you know, bubble coming out of his nose. I know it sounds crazy but you know, anyways, memory. I'm fascinated with memory. And anyways that's kind of like a little side note but to the flooring thing. So back to the flooring. Doing what everyone hates to do and you guys do it really, really, really well. And you were part of this article on how to use digital transformation basically to take your company to the next level. And that's really near and dear and kind of the heart of this show in general, which is how do we get it directors to kind of step out of their comfort zone and challenge the old ways of. It is a cost center. It is always just a line item on the budget, it doesn't really make the company money, etc. Etc. You know, all those things.
• 10:20
  Speaker B: Yes. So maybe that's, that's the reason I, I was pulled in to, to XGS in the first place. You know, Express Global Systems, we call it XGS and X Men.
• 10:32
  Speaker A: So what do we do for.
• 10:35
  Speaker B: Well, you know, I worked at, at a private school, a nonprofit for, for 18 years. So I knew how to squeeze every little cent out of a dollar. And I've had, I had some really good mentors and when I ran into frustrations, I went to them and eventually they took me under their wing and said, hey, you might be a good fit for what we're looking for. And that's how I got into Express Global Systems. And they had, they had just started this huge investment in technology. You know, to logistics is kind of known for being behind on the technological side of not leveraging technology as well as a lot of other industries. It was basically starting, starting from scratch. The server was literally a little pavilion, HP Pavilion desktop sitting on the floor. And you know, now we call it the little desktop that could. Because it was, it was running the whole company at that time.
• 11:50
  Speaker A: And did you save it?
• 11:52
  Speaker B: We've changed around. Oh, we have it, absolutely. That's a memorabilia.
• 11:57
  Speaker A: Should be like in a glass case.
• 12:00
  Speaker B: It should be, it should be literally. But you know, now two years later, we're, we're in a tier three data center. We, we still manage a lot of our servers on prem or at the data, at the off site data center, but not going to the cloud just yet. And that, that's a discussion in itself.
• 12:25
  Speaker A: But can you explain, can you explain to me what some of the, what were some of the, what were some of the biggest problems and what were some of the, I guess, new efficiencies or measurable results? Right? Because I always. People love to talk in, I don't know, we call it, we could call it it philosophy or whatever. We want to talk IT ideas. But I am huge. I'm a numbers guy. I think everything is in the numbers. I think anytime you need to sell something to executive management, anytime you need to, the numbers speak, right? Like people lie, right? Like numbers don't ever lie. You know what I mean?
• 13:12
  Speaker B: 100%.
• 13:13
  Speaker A: What were kind of, can you paint a picture for me? Like what were some of the problems before and how did, I don't know, network speed or whatever. It was something change and make a difference. And before, was it like, kind of like if it was it, if it's not broke, don't fix it mentality? What was it?
• 13:36
  Speaker B: No, it's, it's. I want to say it was a mix between a place that had just had been mismanaged. So it was very easy to show value starting out. It's the previous IT leadership. It was it was obvious that they had done everything that they could to their ability. And you know, I can only commend those guys for, for, for what they, they, they definitely did their best and there's definitely the intentions were good but there was, you know, going back to delegating like we talked about, there was traces of people trying to do everything themselves and the team was very small at that time and just, it just wasn't sustainable. So when I came in the first thing was, you know, let's look at the budget and let's see what, what the, what was spent on it the previous year, the last three years so that I can see where the money went. Because my, my first anticipation was okay, there's some bleeding going on here and let's cut the bleeding. That's, that's low hanging fruit in terms of value right there. And we probably just would like easy effort. Saved a good half million dollars in the first year of cutting things out or you know, Ms. Msps that were hired in to do the work but felt like they were taking advantage of the company. So I had some hard conversations with some MSPs. And so that was the first year was a lot of cleanup and a lot of listening. So you know, and that's kind of was a difficult role to manage both of those sides because the listening, you know, you want to step back, you want to see how are things ran around here. I don't want to go in here and just disrupt everything, but at the same time I see this bleeding everywhere that it had to be taken care of. And so very early I took my guys into a room and we basically talked through it and said, hey, this is where the money is going. This is where I see where the money's going. And they have been shielded from a lot of that the rest of the team. So how are they shielding?
• 16:32
  Speaker A: How were they shielded? Because I almost pull my hair out on a daily basis sometimes. Sometimes I speak with someone and you see something that's just so stupid. It's like, like you said and I want to say stupid like low hanging fruit. Like such an obvious, obvious like waste of money. But yeah, but people don't change it. I don't understand. So how were people shielded? How did they, you know what I mean? Like how did they not know?
• 17:02
  Speaker B: And well I, they might have known but they were, they felt like they were in a helpless position because they didn't get to make any decisions.
• 17:16
  Speaker A: So it was organizational, it was basically organizational structure. You had to restructure your organization so that people felt empowered.
• 17:27
  Speaker B: You know, what do you call it? Distributive leadership, where you've got to have your team has to be able to make some decisions, but if you have someone on the top that micromanages everything, the rest of the team is going to lose, lose ownership in the work that they're doing. And it creates this dependency that it becomes like a sickness.
• 17:58
  Speaker A: I think you should write an article for the blog for the dissecting popular IT nerds blog, and I think it should be called Is your MSP taking advantage of you?
• 18:08
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I'll get a lot of hates.
• 18:14
  Speaker A: That's why we gotta write it. That's why we have to write it. That's a whole nother show. I just wanted to throw that out there because that, it's one of the reasons why I decided in my career to go a different route than the majority of the people. So for years in the corporate world, I supported MSPs. And I love MSP and I loved it, I loved it more than I kind of was in this like direct selling route. And I didn't like direct sales because you're always selling one product, right? And you and I both know that you, you can't fit a square peg into a round hole. And it's just not a fit for everybody. And I don't, I somewhat have a conscious conscience and I just don't want to, you know, I mean, I want to, I want to provide the best possible solution. I'm a solutions guy, right? I'm not a one product guy. I like a solution. And no, I don't.
• 19:07
  Speaker B: And don't get me wrong, you know that there, there's a, there's definitely a place for MSPs.
• 19:12
  Speaker A: No, absolutely. You might want to outsource your help desk. You might want to outsource, I don't know, 2000 mobile devices and you don't want to manage that cardboard box of all the broken devices that are coming into your office. I work with them all day, every day. So I get it. But there's also the, I got comfortable getting paid every month MSP that kind of sat back, that kind of sat back and didn't do their job of providing customer care and thought, you know, well, we're just gonna keep getting paid on this, that type of thing. So there's gotta be a certain level of accountability in holding your vendors accountable. And an MSP is a vendor. It can't just be like, hey, we're doing. And then they say like, well, we're doing all that for you. We're like no, we still need to hold you accountable as well. So low hanging fruit, finding money, finding the stupid things that people are paying money on that you don't need to. I can probably think of a thousand ideas but a thousand op you know things that I've seen. But what. What was one of the nut. What was the number one thing you saw that was like low like or the top three things that were just you know bleeding money?
• 20:28
  Speaker B: No just inefficiencies on I would say before or you know other than not a proper process in terms of selecting the right solutions for the, for the business. Too much top down decisions where the people on the ground were not part of making decisions. And the when, when you start pushing on your way of doing things to your employees and you know company wide when you bring in technology and say hey this is how we're going to do it now. But they didn't have a say so in in selecting these new technologies the resistance that that builds and how that drags out deployments or is it it becomes probably the most costly of any mistakes that that a company can can do if they do not take the time to thoroughly partner with everyone in the business. And that goes down to you know for us that's the dock worker, the guy who drives the forklifts, our truck drivers. If they're not part of the decision making for tools that they will be using, don't be surprised when you push these tools out and nothing happens and you don't see the value of them. The whole point of you know I had to tell my guys of deploying a new solution is 30%. The other 70% is adoption and we are responsible for that part too. A real IT department has to take that adoption part into account and that's the part that makes you the partner with the business and not this IT in the silo where sure we can spit out as much solutions as possible. Here you go. You know, good luck with this. But that the adoption part is and being able to manage that resistance by being proactive instead of have to deal with all that after the fact. The that's where I think there's a lot of savings just by making the right decisions.
• 23:19
  Speaker A: That's where they learn your name. That's when they know the people in the IT department. That's when they actually know your name because of adoption, because you've communicated with them, because you've rolled out an application that actually supports their job that you asked their opinion that you then showed them how to use it, that you stood over their shoulder, maybe hand held them a little bit or I don't, you know, gave them a tablet that works on the trucks or I don't know, whatever it is.
• 23:49
  Speaker B: Well, being able to, you know, first, my first 30 days I just took my little notebook and I went around to every department and talked to people. And you could see when I started asking questions about, you know, tell me that one thing that you think it can help with. Tell me what's your biggest pain point? Like what is it that frustrates you the most? What stops you from doing your work efficiently? And you know, they're giving me all these great ideas. I get to hear the story of the bisque as what's, what works well, what doesn't work well. And I'm writing all of this down and it is probably the most rewarding experience ever to now going back and talking with the same people to go like you actually listened to us that first couple of weeks when you came in and you know, our trust in you was very, very low and you made us all these promises and here we are today where we, we see the, the fruit of all that effort.
• 25:06
  Speaker A: And that's like politician.
• 25:08
  Speaker B: It's truly amazing experience. You know, going from hey, I don't, we don't know where the truck is or we lost the 53 foot trailer to today where I can pull up any one of our trucks on a Google map and literally see it drive down the road on a map. And so I know where every truck is at any given time. Given just a tool like that to your customer service department to be able to answer the very basic questions of you know, in logistics and that is where is my stuff and when am I going to get it?
• 25:55
  Speaker A: How about delays?
• 25:56
  Speaker B: That's really how simple. If I could, if I can answer those two questions or help answer those two questions as it. But you don't type questions if listen in on the company do are we giving them the tools that they need to do that? And you know, you can't employ people and then on the first day of the on the job tie their hands behind their back and tell them to drive a forklift. You know, it's, it's having the right tools for the job and being able to keep your promises. If you don't. It's, it's just so, so important. And I think there, there was a, there was a lot of distrust in it where there's a lot of things had been said but Very little had been done. And I was. I was just. What's. I'm trying to figure out the English word. I have four languages going around in my head still, even though been in the United States for a while. But it's.
• 27:38
  Speaker A: And you said you had a problem.
• 27:40
  Speaker B: Make sure that.
• 27:41
  Speaker A: And you said you had a problem memory and you speak four languages.
• 27:45
  Speaker B: Well, languages. Is. That's it. That. It's like a habit, you know, it's. It's something. It becomes a reflex.
• 27:53
  Speaker A: Tell me, tell me how I'm dying to learn a second language. I have been wanting to speak another language forever. It's so daunting to me. Are you saying you just gotta start speaking? That's it.
• 28:07
  Speaker B: You have to immerse yourself in it. You will never be able to learn a language efficiently. I don't think so. At least staying here in the United States. I'm out.
• 28:23
  Speaker A: I'm out.
• 28:24
  Speaker B: It's like reading a pamphlet and saying that you've been to Spain. You know, those are two very different things. You can read all the books you want about Spain, but you go to Spain for a month, anything in those books, you know, you will learn a hundred times faster. So I've had the fortune to live in multiple countries before I came to the United States. And just getting the, you know, the feel for different cultures, different type of people. I think that has helped me a lot in just how I interact with people and just try to listen. People just want to be listened to.
• 29:06
  Speaker A: You know, that's when I was in Egypt last time. I know very little Arabic. And when I was in Egypt last time, and the fact that you just said, people love to listen. One of my very close friends that I was visiting left me alone with his uncle. And I was just nodding my head like, yes, saying, nam. Like, yes, Nam. And he was speaking for like a half an hour. I had no clue anything that he was saying, but he just loved that I was sitting there saying, yes, yes, and nodding my head. No clue. But I might have learned a few things. I might have picked up a couple things I want to ask you. One of the more difficult questions, and that is the question is, how do you. How do you hire. How do you hire for digital transformation? So everyone wants to talk about digital transformation. We're doing this for digital transformation. We're doing this. I don't know if I've ever had. I've ever seen an article or someone ask, how do you hire for digital transformation? And I think you might have the answer.
• 30:25
  Speaker B: That that's A really good question. And yeah, you're right. I, I have never, I never been asked that before.
• 30:33
  Speaker A: I try to, you know, I'm trying to blow people's minds here, even though I'm just a bearded dude that sits in his little office, you know, doing.
• 30:39
  Speaker B: It, you're doing it slowly but surely, definitely accomplishing that. But I want to say you need to be looking for very specific parts or not parts, but a specific type of person that aligns with what it is that you're trying to accomplish. And you know, do they have, do they agree with your, your vision, the values that you have? Is the work there? And some questions that I ask when I interview people is I want to know what they want. Are they clear on what they want? Do they have goals? Do they have the mindset of being able to either be given a goal or a directive or have their own and be following that in a methodical way. That is that experience there. It's very surprising to me how many people don't set goals for themselves. And when they come into a workplace where when you look at digital transformation effort, the, you have to have that defined.
• 32:30
  Speaker A: Is that pretty easy to teach though? Is that because to be fair, no.
• 32:35
  Speaker B: It is not easy to teach really.
• 32:37
  Speaker A: Because to be fair, our schooling system leaves that out entirely. They do not teach. I think they teach the opposite of how to have strong self esteem. I think they teach. I don't think they teach at all about what values are, what roles are in your life. I think they teach you, you can have whatever value you want and that's okay. I think they teach, you know, I don't think they teach high character. I don't think they teach how to have goals and work towards a goal. I never once did I have a goal setting class all through college until I got a job at a Cisco startup. And then they're like, okay, this is what a. No Starbucks. Actually, Starbucks did.
• 33:27
  Speaker B: And I can tell you right away about the school system. That is something I have a lot of experience with.
• 33:35
  Speaker A: Okay, well, you taught at a private school, so there you go. So what are we doing?
• 33:39
  Speaker B: Well, yeah, I was, I was managing the IT over there, but at the same time, you know, I had to teach the teachers and sometimes that's much harder than teaching the kids. But what you see in schools, first.
• 33:56
  Speaker A: Of all, they have almost a thankless job anyways. As much as we thank teachers and put this out, it's true. Yeah, it's like, you know, I mean, really like. Anyways, go ahead.
• 34:07
  Speaker B: The. And and this is, this is not. I didn't come up with this or, you know, this. This is an observation from other folks that, that I've listened to. But it makes perfect sense on how school teaches that. You, you don't learn collabor collaborative work. You don't learn to. To work in a group to accomplish something you, you're told to. You. You're assigned a project and you're supposed to do it yourself. You're not supposed to ask someone else. You get in trouble if you, if you come up to the teacher and you and Billy come up and say, hey, Billy and I put our heads together and we accomplished this task together. That.
• 34:57
  Speaker A: What about the famous group projects? What about the famous group projects in college that were like, one guy does nothing, another guy does a majority of the work.
• 35:07
  Speaker B: There's always that one guy, you know, that's. That doesn't contribute because he wasn't passionate about it.
• 35:14
  Speaker A: He wasn't passionate about it. He didn't have the goals of the vision.
• 35:18
  Speaker B: And that's what I want to come back to about the hiring. But to finish, you know, the collaborative part is not encouraged in school. And when you get to the workplace, if you don't come up and say, hey, I did. I'm finished with the IT strategy. All right. Did you ask people for, for input? You know, is there. Who did you partner with to make sure that, that this is all. You know, that everything on there is validated, that this is. Oh, nobody. I did it all myself. If I had that type of approach, I would get fired. But at school, that is encouraged.
• 36:06
  Speaker A: So I guess my point. Back to the hiring, though. So we stick on the subject. So we stick on this subject here. Sorry. Because I, it's my fault. I derailed this by making blatant. By making blanket. By making blanket comments about schooling.
• 36:25
  Speaker B: The. No, but sticking to the hiring is, you know, one of the, One of the main things that I ask is, you know, of course, where do you want to be in two, three years? Those are very basic questions that you should be ready for. And because there's. There's an exercise that, that I love to do with folks and that is, let's. Let me see your resume and let's recreate your resume of how you want it to look like three to five years from now. If, If I know that as a leader for my employees, when I. It makes it so easy for me to actually select projects. You know, going back to that one guy who was not motivated to help because he was not Interested. But if. If I know what the interests are for everybody on my team, I know who to select. I. When I make decisions, I can look at my team and I can use that to make sure that I get the most ROI from everyone on my team, because giving them projects of things that they love to do.
• 37:41
  Speaker A: So curveball.
• 37:43
  Speaker B: Mm.
• 37:44
  Speaker A: How do you. And that's in a very. That's. That's a very American centric term. Curveball. Curveball. No one throws curveballs outside of America, by the way. I don't think cricket. I don't think you throw. I don't think you throw a curveball in cricket anyway. So. Yeah. How do you know the con artists? Right. Because I've done just. I'm an interviewing. I feel like I'm a very good interviewer. I've interviewed a ton of people and I think when you ask someone, where do you want to be? I think a lot of people are gonna say, I want to have your job. I want to have. I want to be here. I want to be IT director. I want to be CIO someday, whatever. I want to maybe go branch into, you know, security aspect, because I'm really into that. I think you can tell who's passionate, especially in the IT world. I think you would know whether someone's like really kind of, you know, giving you a load of crap. But at the same time, how do you again, grasp this aspect of digital transformation? And how do you. Because I can't fault someone for not having goal setting skills, but I think I could tell them, I want your 30, 60, 90 day goals. You don't know how that works. Here's a smart goal, here's how that I can give them, like the basics of that. Right?
• 39:17
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 39:18
  Speaker A: And here's the vision and here's.
• 39:19
  Speaker B: That's true. But I think there is the it part of it is, is that when I focus the least on the actual technical aspect of IT and looking at more of the person that I'm hiring, that goes back to what you said, you know, can you teach them? I can always teach them the technical part, but the mindset of a person of what you know or do, they clock in and then clock out. And after, after 4 or 5 o'clock, they go home and do gardening and don't sit in front of their computer or don't think about, hey, I was frustrated today about X, Y and Z. When I get in in the morning, I'm gonna have an answer for those things. So I won't be able to go. To go to sleep versus. Nah, you know, I'll go and do my gardening. Then I wake up and then I'm frustrated the next day. And then I'm gonna take that out on the rest employees. It's, it's a whole just mindset of how you approach problems. You know, it be persistent. I tell everybody, you can have my job. You just need to be able to outwork me and, and you know, try. Try to out hustle me. And you deserve my job. If that's the case, and that's, you know, I'm not the smartest guy, but I will, I will outwork you any, any day of the week.
• 40:47
  Speaker A: So you want, you want a company guy? You want a company guy? I want you. Look, man, I won't sleep. I don't want you sleeping at night. I want this to keep you up at night. I want you to be miserable until this is solved. Free time. Work life balance. Work life balance. No, no, I got you. I got you.
• 41:08
  Speaker B: Work life balance. First of all, work life balance is, you know, it's kind of a myth.
• 41:12
  Speaker A: But you're speaking to somebody. You're speaking to somebody that was told his entire work career up until now. Phil, you gotta. You're too hard on yourself. You know, take it easy. Right? Because I don't. I tell people all the time, I'm always working and I'm always not working. Right. Because once the job's done, the job's done. Right. And if I want to do something, I do it. But if there's a problem, I don't sleep. I can't.
• 41:40
  Speaker B: It's.
• 41:41
  Speaker A: It's like a disease, right? It just takes over. And I'll work three, four months, like non stop, and then it'll be done. And I'll be like, okay, now what? So that's.
• 41:54
  Speaker B: You kind of. You describe being me into everything that you just said. That is exactly how. How I am. And it's not always the best approach. No.
• 42:08
  Speaker A: But you have to, like, agree with that.
• 42:09
  Speaker B: And I.
• 42:10
  Speaker A: If you like it, it's okay. Yeah. If you love it, it's okay.
• 42:14
  Speaker B: Yeah. It's not. It's not worth.
• 42:15
  Speaker A: If I hate it. Goodbye.
• 42:16
  Speaker B: I'm looking for people that love. Yeah, you got it. You got to love what you do. If you don't, you know, I don't have a ball and chain around your foot. The door is right there. If you don't love what you do, let's find something else for you to do. And I am very open about that with my employees. It's. You Know, we have a mission here, we got something that we need to accomplish. And that's kind of, you know, that's something that I talked with my boss about the other day, is I'm not gonna go somewhere else. You know, the job market right now is crazy. It's. People are offering heaven and earth for people to come and work for them. But when you have a mindset of, I have a mission, I have something I need to accomplish here, it's irrelevant to me or what offers are out there because I need to finish this before I move on, that is way too important to me than going and chasing the dollar somewhere else. Then I, then I have nothing to show for. And when you don't have that, you know, what's the meat? What's the whole meaning of it?
• 43:36
  Speaker A: So let's fish out some new, let's fish out some new behavioral interviewing questions that we can use to uncover whether someone could help us in our digital transformation. And it's almost like we have to get into their mind of how they make decisions or how they think about something or how they approach something. This is what I found in my interviewing in the past. So I would think of. I know for it. I don't know. Can you think? I would be, I would, me personally, I would be asking someone, tell me about a time that you saw a problem and how did you address it? Like, how did you approach that problem? How did you solve that problem? You tell me the story. I want to hear your story from start to finish. Kind of like you told me about. Well, first I looked for the low hanging fruit. Then I went around, I talked to everybody. I had a clipboard, I had this. I have a very clear picture of how you're going to deal with a problem. And that makes me feel good because I know you're going to talk to my people. It's not like, well, you know, I look, I opened the logs and I saw that, you know, this was going on, so I called, you know, oh.
• 44:43
  Speaker B: Boy, you know, I got a story about that. But yeah, before, before that, it's to add to your, to that question is when you were approached with a problem that you knew absolutely nothing about. Like it, what was your, what was your approach to solve it? You know, that either you, you can say, hey, well, you know, that's not my expertise. I gotta leave that to someone else. Is that, that is something I have, I have never said that to a supervisor, a someone in the leadership team. If, if they asked me something, I'm gonna find A way. And the second part of that is, you know, what I want to hear from a person is who do they reach out to? Who do they delegate work to? Then you need to find, you know, who's the subject matter expert of what it is, of the ingredients that I need to get to a solution.
• 45:56
  Speaker A: And this is where we take start. Just so you know, this is where we take a commercial break in say I called Phil cause he knows I called Phil cause he knows everyone. That was my. Oh, good answer, good answer. You're hired. You're hired. No joking. I'm joking, but go ahead. So where. I'm not joking, but I'm joking. Yeah. What did you do? Who did you call? Who did you reach out to? Okay, so anything else?
• 46:31
  Speaker B: It's if they are, if, if they are a, an IT guy with some kind of experience that you know, or they order, the closet IT guy that you have to slide the pizza on under for because you've been listening to the show. Zero social skills and no friends. Yeah, it's. I have it actually, you know, it's. To be honest with you, I have not. But that is a, you know, that's a very typical type of person and you can recognize those away, you know, all the programmers out there. You know exactly what I'm talking about. But then for a digital transformation, that's not the type of person you want, right? You, you need someone that can empathize with users, that can put themselves in, in the shoes of users. The being able to understand problems that are outside of the scope of it. Because that, that's where the, that's where the sauce is, right? That the sauce is not. How do I protect against the ransomware attack? How do I back up my, my servers? That, that is minimum requirements today, right? It's. We need to take this to, to a new level of IT needs to be part of the business. And it goes back to what you said. You know, are we an expense department or are we a value department? Because expenses happen all over the business. But if we treat ourselves as a utility company just keeping the lights on, versus we are going to help you create and have this business do business in a completely new way. If that is just internally to how we serve our customers or do we open up brand new avenues of revenue that the company just didn't think about before because they don't have that thinking of that intersect between business and it. And you know, does the person that you're, you're, you're interviewing, do they have that kind of mindset. You know, do they read? It's, it's amazing how many people don't read. Do they, do they listen to podcasts? You know, it's how, how's, how's time management? How do. And you know, sometimes you go down to the basics of do they use a calendar? You'd be surprised how many people don't use a calendar.
• 49:21
  Speaker A: You're looking for a top 5%.
• 49:23
  Speaker B: The whole week has gone by. Yeah.
• 49:26
  Speaker A: You're looking for the five percenters.
• 49:27
  Speaker B: It's hard.
• 49:28
  Speaker A: You're looking for the five percenters.
• 49:29
  Speaker B: That's hard.
• 49:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, I guess I should have asked.
• 49:32
  Speaker B: You need A players.
• 49:34
  Speaker A: I should have asked how do we make the A players? I should have asked how do we make the A players? That's what I should have asked. Right. It's kind of like a, like these zero day attacks, log 4J stuff. What do you deal with that? You know, like, how do you prepare for the unprepared? How do you, you know, there's a lot of this stuff. Okay, so we can't get all the A players because A, we don't have enough money to pay for all A players. We got a bunch of B and C players. So how do we make this C in B players, A players. Right. Well, that's where you come in. That's your job. You need to lead, you need to be inspirational. You need to teach. Right? Because I think goal setting can be taught. I think, I think people can be impassioned. I think we can. People call me. I found out the other day that I have a nickname that a lot of my friends were calling me. Didn't know about this. It's called pot fill over the top. They think that everything I do is way over the top and, you know, going above and beyond. But that's because I like to inspire people and people are way more capable than they know. And I think we can take those ANC players and make it. I don't know if we're gonna solve that today, but maybe we'll leave with that. How have you, how do you as a leader transform people and encourage them to be more than they are?
• 51:00
  Speaker B: Trust and respect, right? It's. You need to trust and respect your, your people and, and instill this servant leadership mentality that is, is very uncommon, at least in my experience with, you know, your, your part of the whole equation is to, you know, to help put the business into a new state. You help, you help the other users on how to, how to think in a different way about Problems that, where technology can be used as a tool to benefit and, and just to help.
• 51:58
  Speaker A: To help along the way. Because a lot of times it seems.
• 52:00
  Speaker B: Just, yeah, just help, but just sit like you said before, sip and observe.
• 52:05
  Speaker A: But to help the other people even listening. I guess what I'm saying is like how we do that, it's not a. First of all there is a book called the Servant Leader which people can read, but to provide actual help for other people out there listening because a lot of times it's not obvious how to do these things and we want to simplify this cloudy idea of complicated stuff called leadership which the engineering minded software people to put them in a box and pigeonhole them might not necessarily have the answer for, but ask questions, why did you do that? What could we have done better? How? You know, I want to challenge people's thoughts, right? Challenge people's ideas. As a leader, that's our job to let them, you know, to challenge them, ask them why they did this.
• 53:01
  Speaker B: Understand what it. How your, how do your people work when you give them a task? Is, is there a resistance there? You know, just like with, with users, the same thing goes for your own, your own team members. Is the resistance that you're experiencing with your people if, if you're not getting the result that, that you want and you feel like that they're not taking on the, the projects in with as much passion as you would want. Is it a intellectual thing? Maybe they don't get it right? Or it's an intellectual thing? Is it an emotional thing? Is it a personal thing? If I can categorize the relationship I have with a person about a specific task and understand it makes me understand it in a whole different way and how to approach it. And that as a leader, being able to manage those three types of resistance or relationships is just helps you get your people on board. You know, is it, is it support and empathy that you, that you need to provide? Or is it information and clarity?
• 54:35
  Speaker A: Yeah. Or is it helping them come to terms with or is it helping them come to terms with some toxic attitude they may have? A lot of times this is tough too. A lot of times we're afraid to have the tough conversations and help people, help people realize how maybe a response of theirs was potentially arrogant or toxic or not the right response and helping them come to terms with, hey, if you can't come to terms with yourself and the fact that that was toxic and wrong, I will help you uncover your better understanding of such situation to the point where you understand that that can't happen again and you need to fix said problem. Those are things that we have to do as leadership to make sure the ship doesn't go down in a burning inferno. And a lot of times because we're humans, right? Everyone's humans and we have good days and bad days and we say things without thinking sometimes. And our close friends and good leaders are the ones that tell us the things we don't want to hear so that we can become better people.
• 55:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. And it's support your. Support your people. Right. It's you are that as, as a leader, you are the buffer between all these crazy ideas that the sea levels have and that they wanted the next day. And then your folks, if you can't manage that part properly, you lose respect of your guys really, really quick. If you can't have those discussions with your leadership team of hey, some things just take longer than then immediate. And the best analogy that I've used with the leadership team and just it's a good little tip for everybody that's listening is, you know, baking a cake. You can have the best ingredients ever and you can have directions. Exactly on okay, how do we mix all these together? And you, you put it in the oven and that cake takes 45 minutes to bake at 350 degrees. Let's say you can't move up and change the temperature to 500 degrees and take that cake out after 15 minutes and expect the same result.
• 57:22
  Speaker A: Nope.
• 57:23
  Speaker B: And that is, you know, and it.
• 57:26
  Speaker A: Doesn'T matter how hungry. It doesn't matter how hungry the crowd is. Doesn't matter how hungry degree they are.
• 57:32
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 57:33
  Speaker A: And you can only feed so many people. And you can only feed so many people with some.
• 57:38
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's true. Exactly. But. But that some things just take a little bit longer. And that is even. That's so much more true. When it comes to the adoption part that I talked about. If, if IT leaders spent more time and focused more on the adoption part of the deployment, the technical part is you can easily get help from the vendor with that part, but you are responsible for the adoption part. That's where the vendor can try to help. But you know your people the best. The vendor will never know your people that you support on a daily basis as well as you do. So that's where IT leaders can definitely shine. And I see that ball being dropped way too often to folks that are frustrated.
• 58:33
  Speaker A: So true. So true. Because they expect a vendor to know your company. No way. Never going to Happen. Although the better the vendor a partner, the better a partner a vendor is and the more involved they are in the adoption process, the better. Right? We don't want just a hey, here you go, but and drop it off at the doorstep and see you later. Like, no, we want a partner vendor that when your help desk calls their help desk, that the two people are on the same page and you're not calling like morons or people that don't care that pass it through tier 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ABC. Yes, that's important. But the fact that you're taking, acknowledging, taking credit, taking responsibility. Responsibility. The ability to respond correctly. Response ability. The ability to respond. That's a Stephen Covey thing. I ripped it off. So sorry. 7. Habits of highly effective people. Responsibility. I use it for my kids. I use it for my kids all the time. You have the ability to respond in a different way. You don't have to hit your brother. You can respond in a different way. You have that ability to take on the adoption aspect.
• 59:58
  Speaker B: So adoption and vendors need to, you know, they, they say it, but they very seldom show it. And that is moving from being a transactional type of relationship between you and a vendor versus actually creating that true value partnership is. It goes back to that, the interviewing part. You know, managing your vendors and selecting your vendors that really truly partner with you and help you through a journey and are there when you actually need them. I've been disappointed in so many, so many ways. And the vendors that I have created that type of partnership relationship with is, you know, they're almost, they're part of your team and you need to treat them well. Just.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker A: A lot of it comes down to different.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker B: Hold on to Goodman.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's no secret I've been working in telecom and Internet forever. And you have to. The way that people get compensated, the way that people do business, the model of business in general says a lot about whether someone's going to be there in the future or be there when you pick up the phone and call, you know, CSPs. For example, I have a big issue with how a lot of CSPs do business, with how a lot of master agencies do business. And that's because the average sales rep, and this is across the board for most vendors. The average sales reps lifespan is about, I think eight months. It's actually really, really low. You would think it would be higher than that. But the average contract term for Most vendors is 36 months. Some are 12, some are 24. The average is 36. Some are 60, which is crazy.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker B: 60.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker A: Think of what happens in 5 years. Think of what happens in 5 Years. Anyone that signs a 60 month contract, you're insane. So if the average sales rep is eight months, then you should not be buying direct, period. You should be using a consultant's kind of a bad word. Maybe agent's a bad word. You should be using a advisor, technology advisor, partner, however you want to say that that doesn't care what vendor you choose. They care about the solution. They care about the solution to your problem and being there and getting paid in a way that doesn't affect you, doesn't affect the vendor, I guess, so to speak. But gets paid in a way that's a residual component so that they're always there for you. So it's not a get paid once transactional like you said, transactional agreement where they get paid and they're like see ya, I don't need you anymore because I've got to go make another transaction, right?
• 1:03:20
  Speaker B: No, when, when a, when a VAR can act on that, you know, like the value added resellers is kind of what kind of what you're describing. When they do their job correctly and they can take on that advisory role of. It's not the first time they're selling a particular product to you. They probably sold that product to 10 other people. If they have good relationships with their other customers, they've had discussions about frustrations or how those solutions have really worked for them. So they have all the knowledge and they need to be able to articulate that to you and help build that value proposition. So when you move up and you need to sell it to your leadership team, half of the work is already done because you have a good relationship with a. Like you said, a true advisor like me.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker A: I do. One of my jobs this year has been Microsoft Teams migrations, believe it or not. Go figure. And there's probably a hundred different ways you can do that. And I would say 99 of those ways are the wrong way to do it. And it's just a matter of people just don't know, right? Most IT directors think Microsoft Enterprise level agreement, whatever it is, and that's just not the right. You just don't call Microsoft if you want to roll out adoption, if you want to have a good adoption of Microsoft Teams, you don't go direct in Microsoft and you don't use an msp. And that's kind of why I was beating on the MSPS earlier a little bit. And you don't do. There's just certain ways you don't do it. And as an IT director, there's no real way that you could know that. And it just so happens to be that it's one of my jobs that I've been doing a lot this year and it's a job that an IT director does once they do it once. You don't do it every day, so you're not expected to be the expert on it. And I do do it every day, all day. So I can tell you no, you don't pay a stupid $12 licensing fee for every single user. You're going to get ripped off. And that's low hanging fruit. And that's where you know anyways, that's just an example and I we have been talking for an hour and seven minutes. That means it's a really good conversation. The I want to thank you so much for being on the show and and it's been very, very valuable and I would love to have you back. I would love to have you write an article too. A very fire and brimstone article on is your MSP taking advantage of you or not or whatever you want to do that, but I welcome anything you're going to give me.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker B: I like that one. I like the higher for digital transformation. I'm really going to be thinking about that one more because there's some value there.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, we gotta one up it. You know what I mean? We gotta take all these things that people throw around all the time, like migrating to the cloud. Well, how do we take it to the next level? Right? Okay, now that you've gone to the cloud, what is it? Digital transformation. Okay, well how do we find people to help us transform digitally? So anyways, thank you so much for being on the show. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. If you like this or any other episode, make sure you rate it and share it with one of your friends. And remember, when it comes to it, you always need to be dissecting, analyzing and improving.