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335- Key Skills You Need to Have to Move Up in IT With Gavin Megnauth · You've Been Heard

• 0:02
  Speaker A: Welcome, everyone. Back to dissecting popular IT nerds today. I'm very excited. I have Gavin, Meg north on the show. And before you even say a word, I want to. I want everyone to be surprised when they hear you because I've. I almost tagged you on a post to that, and maybe that's too much, you know, and then we're going to talk about that a little bit. But you have a refined nature to you. That, that is, that is unique to people of the. Of the North. I guess of. I guess we could call that more proper speaking. And the post that was on LinkedIn the other day was talking about how we need to, like, accept people that are from foreign countries that have accents. And I was like, what are you talking about? Absolutely. Like, of course. And they're talking about how, you know, it can sometimes be difficult on one's career if they have certain accents. But I was thinking sometimes it can be a benefit. So welcome to the show.
• 0:58
  Speaker B: Well, thank you, Phil, for that introduction. And yes, I think it's fair to say that in the U.S. i felt that my accent has been somewhat of a secret weapon rather than a hindrance.
• 1:11
  Speaker A: It is, for some reason, people from the uk, we could. Let's throw in Australia mates if you, you know, mate. And we got to throw in South Africa. If you have some kind of refined English accent, you are almost automatically treated with a higher level of respect and trust. Why that is, I don't know. Does it make any sense? Probably not. But you guys say things like, could you take out the rubbish, please? And we say things like, hey, hey.
• 1:49
  Speaker C: Can you go get the trash guy.
• 1:50
  Speaker A: And take out the trash? You sound more refined. And in the business world, we know that we have to be polished. There is a thing called dress for success. It's changed over the years. I don't think you need to. I think now if you show up with the suit and tie, in the business world, you're almost like a noob. Like, hey, guy, like, you could just tell, like, you're, you have to show up with a book. He has to show up with a suit and tie because he's the noob. But as you get more successful, you can kind of like lose the tie and you can have more the open suit jacket. And you can be like, I can't make it today because know, I've got to go meet with. We got to go play those like 18 holes, you know, whatever it is. But yes, I think that you are awarded more opportunities if you have a refined English accent and Here you are on the podcast.
• 2:37
  Speaker B: I can evidence that because there is a consulting company I know they're based out of la, and they deliberately hire British men in their twenties and bring them over to do their sales because invariably their customers are HR directors and chief people officers in large companies, who more often than not are women, let's say, in their 40s to late 50s. And they have. They have proven through the, you know, analytics of their phone calls that these British men will get an extra 45 seconds on the phone to try and sell their wares than indigenous Americans or both men and women. So it's been a strategy for them to sort of penetrate that market because these. These HR women apparently just want to stay on the phone and listen to the accent more. So there you go.
• 3:30
  Speaker A: Wait. So, wow, this is a niche market and. And which allows us to transition into data analytics or some kind of, like, some kind of technology. I'm the opposite. I have the opposite effect on women. The. I was. Because I was at the. Because I'm too loud. I'm like a loud talker, if you haven't guessed yet. I was at the. The embassy the other day because I'm trying to figure out how to take a container ship of goods and send it overseas to the Mediterranean to a second house. Because I've fallen in love with the Mediterranean all of a sudden, in the diet and the health and all this stuff, right? So that's a little bit about me. But I came into the embassy, I'm like, hey, I'm trying to get this thing. And, you know, like, sir, sir, could you, sir, lower your voice? Wow. They're like. And she's like, giving me, like, the hands, like the sandwich, like, you know, could you lower your voice? And I'm like. And that's. I don't know what we're talking about here. We're talking about language, but culture. I love learning about other people's cultures. And I've found that. And to your point at the beginning, I think there's something about French accents as well. There's probably. We should have Greg on. We should have had him on right now. Um, maybe I can ping him and he'll jump on. We're. We're going to do that because. Because we have our sidekick or Hussein who's running the boards. Please message Greg right now and tell him to jump on this. To tell him to jump on this podcast. We're just going to wing it today. This is great. Because he has a French accent. We got to see. We got to compare. We have someone vote this. We need an HR director somewhere to vote this stuff. It's the truth. The English accent thing give us a little bit about what you do and so you're, that you're, that you're a CIO at MedPro staffing. So it makes sense when we're talking about HR staffing and why they have you. I mean it has nothing to do with your actual technology abilities. It's you. What got you in the door was the English accent. And then they figured, well, this guy knows how to like, you know, I don't know, upgrade us from Windows XP or something. Give me a little bit, give me, give me the short story. What's the vibe like over there? What's, what's the IT vibe? I'm sure you're stuck in a cost center and that's why you got the job and we need to get you out of the cost center and you know, talk to me.
• 5:39
  Speaker B: Okay, so. Well, MedPro, first and foremost we're a very successful staffing agency in healthcare in America. Every year, 90,000 nurses net leave the healthcare profession within America and we're not training enough nurses through our university system. And so immigration is going to be key to deal with that shortfall. Otherwise your and my grandparents won't get the care that they'll deserve and need. So there's surprisingly a lot of technology that is used to manage the, what is a two year journey to get these into America. And also on the domestic front, we, you know, we help nurses travel, nurses find, find work. And I think we're seeing you're right about the call centerpiece to a degree. But I feel that in staffing generally we're moving much more towards that Amazonization or consumerization of recruitment processes. You know, less about the recruiter experience and more about people using technology to find their next job. The disruption of that AI is bringing. There are so many AI related tools that help with that journey.
• 7:00
  Speaker A: You just reminded me, you reminded me of what I forgot earlier, which was again me being a loud talker in an environment which was, it was actually the Moroccan embassy and Arab culture, they're more, I mean they're nor they're North African Berber kind of like culture, you know what I mean? But like, I kind of like say like Arab culture in, in general will kind of like flows through kind of northern Africa. Right. And the culture is very much a not American culture. It's not like a very like you know, when you greet someone in that type of culture, it should always be like, hey, how are you doing? How's the family? How's the day? You don't just go right, write to them like, hey, where's, where's the bathroom? Or where's the escalator? Or how I'm trying to find somewhere. They kind of like expect you to be like, excuse me, how are you doing? How's the morning? Good morning. Could you, do you mind if, could you help me out? I trying to find the elevator. You don't just walk in and you're like, you know, I'm trying to do this. Like, sure, could you quiet down? Whereas like, you know, but if you go into a parking lot in one of those countries or you're driving, you will think that this is the rudest culture in the world because the driving habits are absolutely insane, depending on the country. So I find that very interesting. And what's fascinating to me is when you mentioned AI, because I do work, I do happen to work with that a lot. I'd like to know what kind of key words you got to discover. Will this person make it in America? Will they be able to handle culture shock? That to me is mind blowing.
• 8:36
  Speaker B: Okay, that's a great question. So let me back up a little bit. You know, this is a really big challenge. There are a lot of people around the world who have this fantasy of their American dream coming to America.
• 8:48
  Speaker A: Oh, I know.
• 8:48
  Speaker B: And working here, you know, well, but it's a long, hard journey there. There's lots of friction in their personal life, depending on where they're from, that, that, that may stop them from getting there. And you know, they've got, they're moving their entire lives from what are generally developing nation. And so they've got to be able to show grit, resilience, fortitude to go on that two year journey and pack up their suitcase and come to America. And you talked about culture shock. I think the key with the technology that we're looking to deploy is to really reduce on both sides between the hospital system and the nurse, that culture shock. So using technology to skill them up, besides having a new job in a multi story complex American hospital, navigating American life presents its own sharp learning curve. So anything that we can use technology for while they're waiting for their immigration paperwork to land to reduce that culture shock, will optimize the likelihood of them not getting homesick and feeling assimilated into their community and thriving in America.
• 10:05
  Speaker C: Attention all of my IT leaders who.
• 10:07
  Speaker A: Don'T know a lot about telecom.
• 10:09
  Speaker C: Many of you are still managing a pile of junk and you've inherited a telecom silo. I call it a telecom time bomb. Many of us are ignoring it because the enormity of tasks surrounding a phone system replacement is overwhelming and there's a constant barrage of direct sales reps trying to get you into a new UCAS system today, and the whole process ends up being filled with an unforeseen comedy of errors. However, for those of you tackling such a task, you must answer number one, Are you going to go Microsoft Teams? Are you going to do something else? If it is teams and there's only three ways to do it and the worst way is by just clicking the button and paying that expensive voice enabling teams button in your CSP's portal or.
• 10:41
  Speaker A: Asking them to do it for you.
• 10:43
  Speaker C: Okay, so you're not a hundred percent sold on teams yet because your company has a unique group of end users. Good for you for caring Then you may be wondering and you need to answer all these questions. Which platforms and interfaces have easy to self manage portals, GUIs so that you can make moves, ads and changes on the fly? Which platforms are the most upgradable and have functioning APIs? Who will truly interoperate operate with your systems? Who's going to give you free equipment and headsets of course, and be the most cost effective? Who's going to support your team the best with fast technical support in minutes not days? And who's going to meet your compliance requirements now and in the future with flexible user licensing? How about network preparation, ensuring quality of service and properly layering voice applications? How do you confidently ensure a smooth cutover and avoid going in with your fingers crossed? How do you negotiate all the legal ramifications FCC regulated SLAs that affect your terms and conditions, things like elasticity clauses and out of contracts if they fail to deliver? How do you know what your end users are thinking and how to deal with explaining technical to people a thousand times that don't know how to do a transfer? And even if you have all this down, what do you do if you have limited time to research, evaluate and confidently plan a network communications upgrade that will surely impress your key stakeholders with return on investment? CapEx, OpEx, all of this stuff evaluated and where do you get started in an ocean of vendors which provider mix is going to best fit your company's culture versus just asking your peers who they use or shopping voip.com or googling who's the best? And then you've got all kinds of.
• 11:52
  Speaker A: People showing up in your inbox.
• 11:54
  Speaker C: This is why this is the classic put off project where no one wants to take on the planning from start to finish. Everything from auditing bills to surveying staff, researching providers, sifting through information, meeting with vendors, requesting proposals, ensuring all the effective transition without outages and managing all of the negative Nancy naysayers who are surely going to complain about the new phone system. Let me and my special team of telecom nerds give you all of the rollout maps, RFP grids and hold you by the hand for free and even pit providers against them and give you all of the data information on what the lowest pricing has ever been with benchmark level pricing. Everything from seeing how far you can throw those old phone systems to every detail you need surrounding Microsoft Teams, integrations or all of the best UCAAS providers with custom and in and out of the box APIs. Also, some of you are dealing with who's the best fit contact center software providers for your unique group of end users and agents and staff. How can you leverage AI software to drastically increase agent efficiency? And let's not forget about workforce management tools to ensure proper staffing, all while avoiding annoying meetings and sales reps telling you it's the end of the month president day specials. All you need to do is email telecom popular it.net and we will give you all of the information, everything you need and hold you by the hand for free. And if you like the information, great.
• 12:57
  Speaker A: Do whatever you want with it and if not you can tell us to go pound sand. Yeah, I was being kind of like not serious earlier when I talked about the the you know they say sarcasm is a behavioral derailer. At least I knew it was on page like 56 of the employee manual at Starbucks like 20 years ago when I worked there. Use it uses sarcasm as a form of communication behavioral derailer. You know like that was like you got right judged on that. When I said call center I was definitely not being serious because and now this right here is why you guys are successful. This is a massive differentiator. This is an absolute example of not AI shiny object tool that one of the 50,000 LinkedIn guys are trying to sell you and show up in your inbox on a daily basis. This is a legit case study of how we can use AI to make not only a difference in the company and separate us from the competition and put us in the top tier, but actually help our end users and support our employees or future employees. And that might be one of the best examples I've ever heard and the reason why it Touches home for me personally is because first of all, I grew up in an upper white middle class family full of doctors. Okay? My dad's urologist, he's an MD. My grandfather's ophthalmologist, MD. My mother was the. Ran the head office. My grandfather was a pediatrician. My sister's an rn, her husband's an anesthesiologist. It goes deep in my family. And I really do understand the hospital pecking order. And as much as you would think a hospital should be a politically correct organization, it's very much not. So it is very much a. And it's also a melting pot at the same time. But you see every half the people in the hospital see everyone naked. They see every type of person that comes in the door. They see, you know, they see the drug addict, the drunk, they see the lady that like gave birth in the taxicab on the way there. What? It's endless, right? They know the firemen, all the. It's just, it's a crazy, crazy environment. And you're bringing other people that are going through culture shock into that. And the whole thing that you just described is. And the reason why I say it hits home is so now you know a little bit about kind of like this, you know, white upper class doctor, family kid, right? Well, my daughter, who is married now, married a guy from Yemen, okay? And talk about grit. Like, the kid grew up at seven years old, found a bag outside in a refrigerator that was filled with grenades and started playing with him and brought him home and was like, hey, mom, look what I found. And she almost freaked out. If he had pulled a pin, you know, he wouldn't have been here. Now he's married to my daughter and I have a lot of fun talking with him about. We, we were actually talking about it in our morning meeting this morning. He was in my morning meeting. He's actually an engineer for abb. He's a mechanical engineer, like, brilliant guy that, you know, went to Georgetown, Georgia Tech and you know, anyways got his MBA and all that stuff. But I have. We were talking about culture shock and how you just kind of have to have that grit, everything that you just said and you have to be willing to be embarrassed and go through all these things and all this laund list of stuff like how to go to the DMV and how to pay taxes and all these crazy things. It's actually very, very overwhelming. And he always tells the story of like how he was at Subway one time ordering a sub and he didn't know the word for pickles? He just knew, like, cucumbers. And he said, I'll have some of that, Some of that. Put that on the sandwich. Put that on and give me some of those. And the guy was like, what's those? Like the guy behind the guy was like, you tell me, what are those? And he's like, yeah, you just give me some of that. No, he's like, no, no, no. What are those? He was like. The guy was like, giving him a hard time, you know, like, I want to hear the word. And he's like, anyways, that's how we learned the word for pickles. But it was like, you know, an embarrassing situation for him. So, I'm sorry. Sidebar. It just. This rings. The fact that you can bridge AI and your business as a technology leader and actually touch my heart with that is pretty mind blowing.
• 17:02
  Speaker B: Well, you know, it's really critical. I think a point you were making earlier is that if this relationship doesn't work out often, the first time a hospital knows that a. An employee is unhappy is when they find out they're on the plane going back home. Okay? And the repercussions of that are huge because, you know, if it's a nurse, let's say, from the Philippines, they're going to tell 11 people, I had a horrible time. America's terrible. I hated my job. And it's going to put off others from coming equally. You know, it's not a great look for the hospital to lose someone because of possible cultural insensitivity, you know, the inability to manage a range of diverse individuals and, like you said, assimilate them into, you know, that pecking order as you referred to it, you know, that local culture of the American hospital system.
• 17:57
  Speaker A: So, yeah, racist doctors. I'm sorry, but you do. You've got prejudiced people in a hospital. I know that. You do.
• 18:08
  Speaker B: It happens. I mean, hospitals, let's say, are a reflection of our wider society, aren't they? And this is something where, you know, we need to work. We play that role in making sure that the staff that we place are likely to succeed and thrive and be good role models for the next generation of potential immigrant nurse.
• 18:31
  Speaker A: It's a great. It's a. It's really, really awesome. And I think we could go. We could talk on that subject for a long time. But in light of this kind of subject and everything, being that you do have a fine, refined English accent and that may have helped you, it does indicate that you at one point did not live in America and I would love to know a little bit about maybe some of your struggles and grit and determination and what was some of the biggest things. Give me, give me some sign of, I don't know, overcoming story. Tell us, enlighten us.
• 19:09
  Speaker B: Wow, there's a lot I could talk to you here. This is becoming a therapy session. I was very fortunate to land a job at British Airways when I was about 18 years old. Now British Airways is our national flag carrier. It was the 30th biggest company in the whole of the UK when I joined. But the IT department was, was massive in those days for a bricks and mortar company. There were three and a half thousand people and the reason they offered me a job was that there was such a shortage of university graduates leaving the system and there was just that demand for programmers then that they risked taking on 10 kids out of school. We still had to do the university entrance exam. 5,000 kids applied and only 10 got the job. And they raise the entrance exam. But when I joined the workplace, you know, I was given, because we were seen as kids, we were given, you know, maintenance of PL1 and COBOL. You know, we were given the crap jobs looking after systems that are 25 years old.
• 20:12
  Speaker A: Right.
• 20:12
  Speaker B: And what was really evident to me was the advent of clients.
• 20:17
  Speaker A: Can we pause there for one second?
• 20:19
  Speaker B: Of course, yes.
• 20:20
  Speaker A: Because people love old stories. We got to have those.
• 20:22
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 20:24
  Speaker A: Why was it such a crappy job?
• 20:26
  Speaker B: Well, you know, the, basically because we were seen as not having that three year university degree.
• 20:33
  Speaker A: I get that. But I want to know what was bad about it, what was miserable about it?
• 20:38
  Speaker B: What was miserable is that you, you were looking at a system that might have been made 20 years ago that had documentation that was on pen and paper in the handwriting of William Shakespeare. You know, it was like archaic technology and you had to. And it was stuff that wasn't mission critical. Even though this was an airline, it was actually for the cargo department. I worked and, you know, it was just, I come out of school, I was using PCs, I was programming in C when I was doing my what we call A levels in England. And I'm here now, you know, learning a language that was fundamentally obsolete. You know, Cobol and PL1 were these big IBM mainframe languages. I'm on a green, green screen, I'm like, wait, I've gone back in time. That's. And it was, it was like one of these, oh, here's a system that, you know, we've really needed to maintain and do some work on for the last five years. But we've never gotten around to it. So here, here kids, you pick this up. And it was obviously a way of testing our metal. It was the first time British Airways had actually risked taking on 18 year olds out of school to fix systems and start programming. So it's understandable that this is where we started our career.
• 21:52
  Speaker A: But it's cool though, it's kind of funny. The reason why I had you tell that story is because there's someone out there right now that's like, I'm still.
• 21:59
  Speaker B: Doing that, I'm still doing that. I'm sure, I'm sure. But grit and return determination. I was in this massive hierarchy, three and a half thousand people, and I was the lowest of the low, right? The CIO was at the top and I had 13 layers of management to be able to speak to this guy. So grit and determination. This is actually a really interesting Phil, because I think this has been a cornerstone of my career progression. I really felt that I saw the future as a young person. I could see PCs were coming, PC based languages, we're moving more to user interfaces that were sexier than old DOS screens. But it was hard to get airtime, it was hard to get a voice. And so I swore that day if ever I was going to make it to the top, I was always going to have ready access to young, bright things around me because I felt that the people that I was looking up to in their 40s and 50s, they were like past it, it was fast moving. They were caught in what they knew and the success of old days. And I felt that it was becoming much more pervasive in the business, you know, much more about what's going on on the desktop, different languages, different tools that the, the advent of the PC. Like I said, that's the era I unfortunately come from. And, and so I.
• 23:18
  Speaker A: No apologies. No apologies ever. Never apologize.
• 23:23
  Speaker B: So I had to start really crafting my influencing skills. Now what I will say to you is this English accent has no leverage in England. Right? I just sound like everybody else. Okay, So I. Let me ask you this though.
• 23:37
  Speaker A: Does my accent have any leverage or do they look down upon me?
• 23:40
  Speaker B: I don't think they look down upon it.
• 23:42
  Speaker A: That's a yes. That's a yes.
• 23:44
  Speaker B: No, no, no, no, no, no. The thing is, American culture is so pervasive, it's all over our t. Okay. That it probably doesn't have the cachet, you know, that maybe my accent does when I'm, you know, in some rinky dink Midwest town when they've never met, you know, an English person in real life ever. So, you know, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, here comes exactly that place. Yeah, I mean, I've honestly gone to on like road trips with friends in the past and people have got out their phones and started recording my voice and taking photos. You know, you get that kind of celebrity status in certain places, you know, so. Yeah, but look, I definitely started to recognize I had to hone my influencing skills to convey the points I wanted to make, to get leadership both internally within IT and in the customer area, to start getting experimental, to start shifting their mindset about the power of technology and what technology could do ultimately for the, for the business and for the bottom. And so I think that's been a key skill I focused on.
• 24:59
  Speaker A: That's something we need to teach then. So we got to take a teaching moment. Top three or five points that you can tell someone right now to do like, I don't know, like a cheat sheet, so to speak, on how to influence executive management. Use the numbers. I don't know, whatever. What is it?
• 25:17
  Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. I think the IT has historically over the years been seen as this, I don't know, this nerd center, an ivory tower. You know, back in our day, you know, it's, it's. These are the guys who, you know, fix PCs, upgrade switches. And I think that a thematic piece within, you know, IT journals over the years has been. It has never deserved a seat on the board. It's always reported into finance. You know, historically, you know, these IT leaders don't speak the language of business. They're in board meetings when they have been there and they're talking about upgrading from, you know, Windows XP to Windows, you know, this. And the eyes of the, our leaders glaze over. Right. So I think it's really being able to speak in the language of business. What is it that really like to a cfo, you know, speaking in dollars and cents, the roi, the reduction in cost base reducing unit economics. And to the end users, the what's in IT for them. So I'm a big proponent of getting, you know, everyone in the IT team to shadow and do the job of their end users twice a year. That builds understanding. It builds empathy. It shows that we're listening. It kills that divide. You know, you often wonder whether our users look at an IT person coming a helpless and it's like, yeah, they're stereotyped as a nerd. He's the IT guy who's going to fix my PC, right? So, so it's, we are as integral now, if not more so in driving the future of the business than ever before. It is disrupting the world. AI is disrupting the world. So in the past too much has been put on the shoulders of IT to not being understand, not understanding the business enough. I think the pendulum has now swung. There is not enough focus on business leaders really embracing and prioritizing their understanding of what technology can be doing to change business models. Because it is.
• 27:18
  Speaker A: I'm going to translate this into three bullet points. I'm going to try one. Google Top 5 accounting terms for business leaders. I'll just give them to you. How about this? I'll just give them to you. Capex, opex, ebitda, Gross Margin, Flow through profit. I loved what you just said. Reducing unit economics. I don't know how we measure that, but I like that one. What? That put that one on the list. That one's great. Yeah. Roi. Speak in terms of roi. What are we gonna say? General ledger. But throw in general ledger. Let's throw that one in there too. Speak like that. Yeah, I love that. Connect, discover, respond with your end users and speak with them in a way of what's in it for them? Wifm, the old famous wiffle.
• 28:09
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 28:10
  Speaker A: As far as the CEO, what can we do? What kind of bullet points can we get for the CEO? Ask him what, who is our top competition and what are we doing to compete with them? Or something around those lines are like what do we need to do to beat. What's the score? What's the score? CEO, we don't know what the score is. And I think it directors or managers, leaders, CTO, CIOs, they should know what the score is. If we're not on the field of play with the CEO and we don't know what the score is, how can we get, how can we get in the game? How can we get to the executive roundtable if we're not keeping score? If we don't know what the score of the game is? And he tells you, look, this is where we're at in the quarter. This is what we need to do. We need to hire this many more people and we need to bring them in from overseas and we need to lower our guys getting back on the plane and flying back to whatever country. How do we do that? You know, and then I don't know, how do we apply it to, you know, let me see, let me talk. How can we apply technology to that? Oh, the sentiment. I don't even know. Yeah. Anywho.
• 29:13
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's really establishing what are their biggest problems and finding a way of where technology can address those. That's how you become relevant. Right. As a cio, I don't think I.
• 29:24
  Speaker A: Never figured out how you got off of COBOL and put a weird green screen and programming and stuff and got to the top. But you just mentioned that we need to know and say all this stuff. But what happened? What happened?
• 29:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, you know, this is a great story. I basically was very ambitious and I used tricks. My reference points were, I think it was Colin Powell's autobiography of how he used to hang out with the secretaries of the big generals to start getting intel of what was going on, but also being seen with the right people that people thought he was more important than he really was. Right. When he was hanging around the Pentagon. Right.
• 30:07
  Speaker A: I like.
• 30:08
  Speaker B: So, so there was an element of I don't have the, you know, I'm a small cog in this, this machine. How do I get the air time with the people that matter? How do I get my views across? And you know, I'm going to be really honest. My job at British Airways, I was a junior programmer and then when it came to getting my business cards made, I just created my own title. I said a senior IT strategist. So I'd start going to conferences and when, you know, when you fill in forms of what's your title, I would just basically have titles that were lofty. And so when I was walking around these conference centers, all these suppliers.
• 30:47
  Speaker A: Act as if. Act as if.
• 30:48
  Speaker B: Absolutely. Acts as.
• 30:49
  Speaker A: Act as if the.
• 30:51
  Speaker B: So I think my really big break was I was 23, 24 years old. British Airways were going to be the launch customer for the Boeing 777. Right. We were the first ever customer for the triple seven back in like the early mid-90s. And we had Accenture, IBM and a bunch of people who were trying to. This is pre Internet as we know it, trying to set up a way of when the planes were flying test flights across the US sending that data of engine stress, engine performance, how the wings were performing back to the UK as quickly as possible for the engineers and ultimately the caa, which is our version of the FA to review. Is this plane going to be safe for flying? And they were not, they were not doing a good job of it. You know, you all, you might remember we had a Honeywell massive mid range computer sat in the middle in the belly of the airplane and they would plug it in when it landed into a coax cable and one of these old printers you know, these old printers that had perforated dot matrix with the green lines going through it.
• 31:59
  Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. My English teacher, if we brought that, if you brought your paper in with those things still on the side, he'd pull out a knife and like start slicing up your paper. You'd get so angry about it.
• 32:08
  Speaker B: Mr. Really? Wow.
• 32:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You thought you were lazy, you know, anyways, keep going.
• 32:13
  Speaker B: So, so basically, you know, no one was figuring out how do we get this data back quickly? And, and I, I had been in British Airways had invested in me in networking. So if IBM had this thing called SNA Systems Network Architecture, there was a protocol called LU 6.2. Man, this is getting geeky. I promised I wouldn't go this way, but effectively I thought this, this could be a way of sending this data back really quickly via a modem. 33.6 bits kilobits back then, but way faster than printing it out on dot matrix prints. And this thing would be 800 to 1,000 pages long. And then it would have to be couriered over to the uk so we'd lose three days for every, every test flight before that data got back. So this was a way of, how do we get data back now? The young people listening to this will be like, wtf? What? You know, why aren't you just sending it as an email attachment or FTPing it? Well, this stuff didn't exist back then. You know, Internet didn't exist. It was modems dial up, 33.6 or 8 bits kilobits per second. So anyway, long and short of it, it was the head of engineering, his job was on the line. We were not going to get this plane approved on time because the data wasn't getting back. And United Airlines were likely to eat our lunch and beat us to be the launch customer for the Boeing 777.
• 33:39
  Speaker A: It did not happen to the British. Does not absolutely.
• 33:42
  Speaker B: The British, indeed. Well, so I basically seeing consultant after consultant come in failure. I waited one night till about 7 o'clock and I went into this head of engineering's office and I said to him, I went, say his name. I said, hey, buddy, you know, I think I can fix this. Give me a chance. And he looked at me because I was still very junior and I basically said, look, what have you got to lose right now? You spent a ton of money with IBM, you spent a ton of money with Accenture. Give me a shot, fly me out to Seattle and if I get it, if I, if I screw it up, you fire me Oh, I love it.
• 34:23
  Speaker A: I've told people to do that all the time. I love it. Just go work for free. Go work for free. And basically say, hey, if I do this, hire me, you know, or do an mbo. Management by business objective. How about this? You give me a raise if I perform.
• 34:37
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 34:37
  Speaker A: If I don't perform, don't give me a raise. I love it.
• 34:40
  Speaker B: I love that. I love that. And that's really. That's really ballsy, isn't it? It's putting your whole reputation on the line. Right. So the long and short of it. Oh, and another. Another thing is the way in which this data had to be sent back is it had to be, you know, encrypted and secure because of, you know, the risk, et cetera. So you were hacking that stuff back then? Oh, yeah. Well, it was fine. FAA and CAA were, you know, they had this fear of security. So look, the long and short of it is I rallied resources. I went to, I think it was. They were called Security Dynamics, a company out of Boston. And I said, hey, I. Problem, you know, I didn't have all the answers. I felt I could piece it together. But basically, you know, got on the phone, started calling a few people. And the long and short of it is, yes, we. We got the plane approved. My technology worked. United still beat us to the post, and they were by eight weeks and they were the first company. But the long and short of it is I solved it. And it was, it was a moment where in British Airways, people thought I had gumption. I, you know, I had a swagger about me after that.
• 35:49
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 35:50
  Speaker B: And. And then at 25 years old, we started buying and franchising 11 airlines. We were basically acquiring lots of airlines. And I got given the job of going into these airlines and integrating their technology into British Airways as TIC. And I would deal with people, CEOs, CFOs, who would say to me, hey, Sunny, I've been in the aviation business longer than you've been alive. Why should I listen to you?
• 36:18
  Speaker A: Because there's new guys all the time that fly rings around. People like you. You, buddy.
• 36:23
  Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't have the confidence.
• 36:24
  Speaker A: Of course you're not going to say that about you. Come in, everyone. Come. My point is, is like, how many times have we seen a. Older. And I don't mean older age wise. I mean, like people that have been on a team for a long time, they've gotten used to the. It's. It's a mindset thing. It's a mindset thing they've gotten used to. Well, it's always been this way and it's always been broken. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
• 36:49
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 36:49
  Speaker A: And there's no way that you're going to be able to climb the thing. And everybody, everyone before you tried that, tried to do it, failed and blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And then a new guy comes in and he's able to fix something or, or, or climb the, or just blow everyone out of the water within like a month or two, maybe three months. And everyone's just like, at first they're all naysaying them and they're all kicking them in the teeth and they're all yeah, you know, this, that. And then three months later they're like, oh, wow, wow, you, wow, you're good. You know, it's like so I don't know what that is.
• 37:21
  Speaker B: I love that point.
• 37:23
  Speaker A: Well, it's just, it happens.
• 37:24
  Speaker B: No, that's, it's, it's, it's absolutely key. So.
• 37:26
  Speaker A: And I'm not saying the person comes in with an arrogant, I'm not saying the person comes in all arrogant and blah blah. No, they come in just positive and alive and they don't let a negative self talk come in and they, they quit their stinking thinking and they don't let other people, they're not affected by the negative water cooler talk. Whatever we want to call that.
• 37:48
  Speaker B: Yeah. I see it now as the challenge. It's what gives me job interest, you know. So Gartner would say one of the biggest inhibitors of innovation in a company is tenure of the C suite. You know, we talk about cognitive inertia. When CEOs have been there for five, if they've lasted five, six years, it means they've done something right. Right. They've done something to make the company successful, to improve that E bit, to grow the company. But you know, it's one of those who move my cheese moments. If you keep on doing everything that got you successful in those last five and don't try anything new, if you get in that rut, then eventually there is that risk that company will decline. Right. And so this is the challenge for CIOs coming in to really sell the art of the possible. What's new, show them their blind spots. And this is why I feel highly tuned influencing skills are right up there now for a CIO above being good at technology, you know, the technology, it's so of there's abundance of tech companies, third parties. You don't have to do it all in house. Get tech people working for you. But I think the out and out skill of a CIO in 2024 is being an amazing influencer around that C suite table.
• 39:03
  Speaker A: I have two more questions.
• 39:04
  Speaker B: Storyteller.
• 39:05
  Speaker A: I have two more questions. One is a give back question. One is a challenge to you that I don't think you will take on this challenge. And because it's. You've been in the air. You've been in the. I'm only doing this because you've been in the air. What do we call that? Airplane industry?
• 39:19
  Speaker B: Aviation.
• 39:19
  Speaker A: Aviation. Thank you.
• 39:20
  Speaker B: Aviation.
• 39:22
  Speaker A: So I have a challenge for you. I want you to fix something. This would be like. This would be like your creme de la creme. This would be like you did something that no one has ever done. This would be like you have. This is. This would be like you have surpassed the speed of light. You have figured out how to circumvent the speed of light with the Internet, which is impossible. We all know that's impossible. I want you to fix the software and problems surrounding four digit flight numbers.
• 39:48
  Speaker B: Wait, what? What is the problem about four digit flight numbers?
• 39:52
  Speaker A: They can't go to five.
• 39:54
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 39:55
  Speaker A: The software. Something about the software system. And I've heard people talk about this before, there's a reason why. There's some crazy reason as to why you cannot go beyond four digit flight numbers. I can't remember who talked about it. I just figured you might know something about the system. And like, if we went to five digits, it was like, it's like a Y2K problem. It's like a Y2K.
• 40:14
  Speaker B: You're absolutely right. That is the best analogy. So a lot of the underlying common architecture for how aviation runs that was created by a place, something called iata. It was back in the days of mainframes where field lengths were limited. Right. So it is very akin to a Y2K issue. But, you know, I asked you, Phil, why do you want five digits? Because it's like more numbers to remember when you're looking up your flight. You know, you've got the airline code, which is two, two. Two digits, two characters. And then you've got four should be enough. We don't have that many planes flying that you need no air. No airline has 10,000 planes flying at any one time.
• 40:54
  Speaker A: The. I just, I can't even remember what it was back in the day. But with someone saying that, that was like a problem and something to do with like, I don't know, software and like billing issue. Who knows?
• 41:05
  Speaker B: And like it feels like a solution. Looking for a problem. I don't see the problem, but I.
• 41:09
  Speaker A: Can still visualize, I can still visualize a dot matrix pick printer right now. The last time I was at the airport. And they're still using something for manifests.
• 41:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're reliable, they're low cost. These, remember them all the Okie 320s. Yeah.
• 41:24
  Speaker A: So one guy's got the, got the corner on the market on just replacing those ribbons, the ink ribbons. Someone's, you know, there's probably like only a couple companies out there making dot matrix prints. So anyways, I don't know if that was an issue. I kind of thought it was going to be an issue. So there's Phil's, Phil's Flop of the day. The final question that's actually, that's actually meaningful which is you had to fight your way up and really separate yourself from the herd, so to speak.
• 41:52
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 41:53
  Speaker A: And, and make something happen. And I really like the advice that you give, which is, which is not, it's not old advice but people don't take it, which is surround yourselves with the right people and you know, however you do that and be seen at the top, what do you do to develop the people underneath you? What do you. So now that you've been through that yourself, what are you doing? What do you do with your team? How do you manage your team? What's just some advice to other IT leaders out there that you know your team, how do you manage your team, grow your team, involve them and all these things.
• 42:28
  Speaker B: Great. So you know, if you go back to my story of being that 18, 19 year old and not having a voice, I think that a way in which I try and enable psychological safety. So I want everyone to be able to offer their opinion and not feel that it's, it's terminal if they say something that is wrong. I want the ideas. The ideas can come from anywhere, literally anywhere. So techniques, you know, when you've got a big team and a hierarchical structure. I was, you know, a big fan of every other Friday I would take just five people randomly, wherever they might be. They didn't even have to work on the same team. You know there could be one guy on the help desk. One guy is a programmer, one guy is a network engineer and we'd all go to go out for lunch. Friday was a dress down day in the office. So every, you know, I'm not wearing a fancy suit, we're all in jeans and whatever. I would get, go to a local pub this Is a very British culture thing. Book a table that was round and we'd all have lunch together and it was a leveler. The purpose of a round table is that there's no one at the head. Everyone has an equal place around a circular table and we talk about, you know, who, what, what have people got planned for the weekend. I would try and offer some self deprecating story about something going wrong in my personal life, you know, come across as being human. When you're running teams of 2, 300 people and you're in a, you know, a multi billion dollar company, they see you as a C suite as you know, it's it. They, you know, you can be revered. And I just, you know, I'm as human as anybody else. Right. And I wanted people to see that, to feel comfortable. But then I would ask them questions like if they had a magic wand, you know, what could we do to make their job more enjoyable? What's stopping them from being successful? You know, really asking those, those telling questions to really make them feel heard, understood and that they're not a worker. Be there to write 100 lines of code every day. I want their opinions, what they are a contributing factor to the success of the business. So it's swinging their pendulum from being, you know, an executor of code to being their own thought leader in terms of how technology can make the business better, you know, without being as overt. The truth is, especially in the modern era, if someone's just doing the job of being a network engineer or a coder and they're not adding any intrinsic value above and beyond that, then this is the stuff that can get outsourced to India. Right. It's. They've got to be adding value to their customers above and beyond the commodity piece of their IT job.
• 45:10
  Speaker A: Where in India they also take their people out to lunch as well. It's just that, you know, we can.
• 45:17
  Speaker B: Sure they do, but I think it. Yeah, no, I get it.
• 45:21
  Speaker A: It could be outsourced to AI probably very soon. And hey, write me this much code mode in whatever that.
• 45:27
  Speaker B: That is the real threat. Yeah.
• 45:29
  Speaker A: To, to bring this all full circle back to English culture. I do have a lot of friends that are from the UK and I remember I was, I was out to a lunch with a very prestigious UK colleague of mine and another American came up that he knew and he introduced me and we immediately started like talking and going back and forth and hey, what about this? And oh yeah. And you know like. And then the guy left and nice to Meet you, whatever. And his comment was, wow, you Americans are very open. So when you said self deprecating, I offer some self deprecating fact about myself. I wonder how self deprecating it really is coming from a UK culture. But it has been in absolute pleasure having you on the show. Oh, and to end with the one other point on that last thing that you just said, it's very important because there's teams out there right now. And I had a deep and, and I do see all of you as close colleagues and I hope that you stay in, in contact because I had a, I had a deep conversation just offline with someone that was on the podcast, I don't know, maybe six months ago. And we were talking last night just as colleagues, you know, back and forth. And I made a comment to him, I said, you know, I said, I just want to kind of like get an idea of like the vibe of your team because how, how your IT team vibes with you and in general is vibe. I was like, I kind of get the idea that like when you, because he's taken over a new team, you know, I said, I kind of get the idea that maybe the IT guy that was in there before was like just giving out orders and they were just like drones or something. I was like, I was like, your IT team's a little bit quiet. I was like, is that because they're just quiet or is that just because they've never been given the opportunity to grow? And he's like, yeah, that's it. He's like, they're not used to me, you know, asking their opinion. They're not used to me telling them, you're gonna run this project, I'm giving it to you. Like, you know, they're, they were used to kind of the old school. I've got the keys to the Castle IT leader and you guys will just take orders and do what I do.
• 47:38
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 47:39
  Speaker A: And that's just not the way of the future or running just a good company in one that's, you know, going to be an impact on the business. So thank you for sharing that. It's been absolutely outstanding having you on dissecting popular IT nerds. If you've got one final piece of advice or offer or anything that you wanted to send out to the listeners out there, what would that be?
• 48:01
  Speaker B: I think, you know, it comes back to, back at British Airways, we had posters up there saying, the world favors the brave. And I think that if you really believe in yourself and as an IT professional that you could go all the way. Be brave. There, there's, there should be. There should be no punishment for making mistakes. It's only if you. You regret the things that you didn't do, not the things that you did do. So, so, so be brave and hone those influencing skills.
• 48:33
  Speaker A: Gavin, thank you so much for being on dissected popularity nerds. And if anyone wants to reach out to you. Yeah, we're going to have. We'll have Gavin's link, his LinkedIn link, so that you can reach out and connect with him. I'm sure you're open to advice or mentoring or anything like that. If you have questions, talking someone off a cliff so that they, you know, if you're crying yourself to sleep at night, he's gonna, you know, Gavin's, he's, he's empathetic here. He's not, he's not sympathetic. He's not. He's gonna say, you know, pull yourself together and be brave. Speak with an English accent. Thank you so much.