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464- We Really Are Innovation Technology w/Jennifer Terrill · You've Been Heard

0:00
Speaker A: One of the things about it is that we often get labeled as no. Mr. No. I feel like it is unfairly labeled and it's a big myth. We really are innovation technology. Quite often it leadership doesn't get in the room and that is the issue. Sometimes you just have to be super creative. Like they don't think you're going to help solve the problem. But maybe what you can do is you can say I'd really like to learn more about the business. Can I sit in on this meeting? That's your opportunity to get a seat at the table and you got to go for it.
0:48
Speaker B: Welcome everyone back to youo've Been Heard. We have Jennifer Terrell on the show today. And Jennifer, I'll let you introduce yourself. Why don't you just tell me a little bit about yourself, current job title, where you're at and maybe how you got into it. Because you're one of the, you're one of the 5 percenters because there's only so many women that are actually have a C level IT role. That's just a fact. So how do you get to where you are?
1:16
Speaker A: Sure. So my career has been a little bit of a jungle gym which has been fun for me many different verticals. But I started with a degree in computer science. My dad was in aerospace and he said one thing I don't want you to do is get into aerospace, it's dying. So I headed to computer science and started my career as a programmer in a financial services company, what we love to call Fintech today and spent about 10 years in that company and did everything from programming to troubleshooting to managing customer service implementations, you name it, and really enjoyed that position. Eventually that company was purchased by fiserv which is a very large financial services company and they had about 130 different businesses. And then from there I jumped to Internet banking. That's when Netscape first came out and joined that company for a while and then Intuit purchased it and then I went to a different company. I jumped all the way over to retail and little bit of E Comm. That was because I had jumped into sort of that Internet banking hosted environment doing some project management, really fell in love with retail and then took on a position being the CIO over at True Religion Brand Jeans and that was one of my favorite brands and, and did that for many years and then that got purchased and taken private and then from there I jumped over to back into fintech working for a company that was a super ISO and then that got purchased by a company called pay. So I did a lot in the payment space. Again, kind of related to retail. And then from there went completely off the reservation to Cemetery Mortuary, which was interesting, and did that right before COVID was a company that was completely paper and then had to take them digital, of course. So did that and then came over to Sperber Landscape Company, which is where I am now. I am their cio, report directly to the CEO and have been here for a little over a year and absolutely love it. The people are wonderful. It's a great, great company.
3:34
Speaker B: It's no small landscaping gig either. I'm looking at some of the work that you guys do right now, and it's beautiful. And it's not, it's definitely not your home garden.
3:44
Speaker A: No, we do, we do large scale construction and landscape and it's, you know, commercial is interesting because you're doing, you know, hotels and large HOAs, just very large scale projects. We have about 3,500 employees, 17 different operating companies and with 49 different branches were east coast to west coast, including Hawaii.
4:10
Speaker B: I'm starting to ask this question because I think it's fun to ask. And one of the things that I'm finding that really separates a lot of the top, I guess, technology leaders from the rest is that they're not just operations leaders. They're able to actually communicate and drive the business forward and really be more of a business collaborative partner. If I was to ask you what, if I was, I have to give you a talk to a group of your colleagues, what would be the one promise that you could make to them that they would walk away with after hearing you speak? Like, what would be your one, I guess, superpower or talent or one thing that you could teach them that you would say, hey, look, pay attention because after today, listening to this podcast, you're going to be able to walk away knowing this thing that I think is really one of the most important skill sets or that, that you can learn as a, as a technology leader in the space to separate yourself from the rest and really bring something special to the table.
5:14
Speaker A: You know, I would think it for me, and I think what's made me very successful is embedding myself in the business operationally. My superpower is solving problems. And to do that, you have to listen and you have to understand the business and you've got to want to understand the business. And by doing that, you have to collaborate. And, you know, part of that is the listening and understanding how they run the business. And, and you know, how they make money. What are the important parts of the business? And especially in our business, it's not just how we make money. It's safety, it's people. So, you know, all parts of the business matter. Human resources and how human resources interacts with the rest of the business, how finance interacts with the rest of the business, how to read a P and L, those are all really important aspects. And that would be the one thing I would say to, to, you know, somebody who wants to be an IT leader, a cio, a cto, is that that is really important to being successful.
6:25
Speaker B: What do you think of your just in the world that you work and your colleagues, what do you think most CTOs or CIOs get wrong?
6:33
Speaker A: That it's about technology. It's really not. Technology is secondary. I think that if you make it too complicated, it's not going to work. One of my favorite sayings is don't make me think. And that's not about dumbing something down.
6:51
Speaker B: Yeah.
6:52
Speaker A: It's about making it so that the way that they do work is the way that the technology works. So the technology has to work for
7:00
Speaker B: them without them having to think about it or be really confused or frustrated or any of those things.
7:06
Speaker A: And in particular, as it relates to SaaS software, the UI. Right. If it takes 10 clicks, it's too much. That's not how somebody works. And especially in our business, if you think about the people out in the field who are doing the work, who they are and how they do the work, the environment that they're in, it has got to be super, super simple and it's got to work with them.
7:31
Speaker B: So the one thing that if we look at the statistics across the board, I'm looking at a bunch right now. The one thing that most CEOs and CFOs trust, their trust their IT leaders to do is run the operations and kind of protect the company from, I guess, getting hacked. Like the majority of the executive management trust that you can do that job, but there's a much smaller percentage that trust IT executives with communicating business impact or being able to communicate the business impact of their, of their technology. Which means, and then, and then there's another statistic on top of that that says that most IT leaders overrate themselves in that category. So there's, there's, there's IT leaders that say, like, yeah, I'm a great business leader. And then their business leaders are saying, now you're stick to operations, you do good there. And I'm not really going to Put, you know what I mean? Why is that?
8:44
Speaker A: Because a lot of them are not good storytellers. The other day I was talking to somebody about the use of Gen AI, and I say one of the things that I think it's really good at is helping you create the story. If you know your audience, you know where they have gaps, you know what language they use, you know your CEO's personality, your CFO's personality well enough, you can create good enough prompts in Gen AI to help you create the story, to help you get the benchmarks, but to put the benchmarks in perspective for your organization, for your story that you want to tell. And I think that's really important. You've got to be a good storyteller in order for them to understand. And, you know, that's helped, you know, that's helped create the storyboards, it's helped create the PowerPoint presentations that you need, or, you know, the pictures, the visuals. You know, most adults are visual learners, so that's really important. And I think a lot of CIOs think CTOs, think they're good storytellers, and they're really not. And that's an area that I encourage people to get better at.
10:01
Speaker B: And there's a lot of hype. I think there's a lot of hype. Would you agree there's some hype around AI right now?
10:06
Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
10:07
Speaker B: And there's people asking for it all the time. And I think just showing up to a meeting with an AI demonstration of some insane video game or something that you just made the day before with AI might get you remembered, even if it's not something that you even use in the business. It's almost like, how do you get. I guess this is the question. How do you get people to talk about you or think about you when you're not in the room? So you don't just disappear and you go back to the guy that's hiding in the server room, which doesn't even
10:39
Speaker A: exist anymore, because you give them something that's useful for them.
10:43
Speaker B: Right?
10:43
Speaker A: It's not about you, it's about them. So, you know, delivering something to them that's meaningful, that they can use every day, that makes their life easier. You know, for example, if you have a population in the field that is speaks Ilocano or Creole or Spanish, giving them something that allows them to speak in their language and then turn it back to something that's your language is really what they're looking for. Make it easy for them, not easy for you.
11:16
Speaker B: Can you give me an example.
11:18
Speaker A: Sure. Let's say I'm walking around in the field and one of the things I have to do for my customers is I have to take before and after pictures.
11:28
Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.
11:29
Speaker A: Okay. And all I've got is my iPhone with me, so I want to be able to take the before pictures, speak a few words in my language, take the after photos, and then just hit a button when I'm done. And that goes back to the main office. It goes into the SaaS application that it belongs to in the language that it needs to be, and it's in a professional presentation that goes back to the customer and to my manager. So everybody's happy. And when I go to do the invoice, everything's. Everything's tied together.
12:03
Speaker B: Yeah.
12:03
Speaker A: And that's all I have to do is take the two pictures or the four pictures or however many pictures and push a button.
12:09
Speaker B: It'd be cool if you got all of the recording of the customer and what they hate about their current situation, what they would love and what they would love to see in their dream new landscape and what their vision would be in the future. And then that also automatically somehow gets into the system as well, along with their.
12:25
Speaker A: Absolutely. As long as they agree to be recorded.
12:28
Speaker B: Yeah. Yes, of course. Well, are we in a two party state or a single party state? Yeah, no, but yeah, of course it's the customer. So. And that would be. I mean, that would be an example, at least on. On your team side of the person that's taking the before and after pictures of. It's just easy and it gets done without having to think about it. Yeah.
12:48
Speaker A: That don't make me think.
12:49
Speaker B: I would say that that's something that makes people see the value of it. What. To get there, to get to that point in realizing that point. Did you make any mistakes along the way or what was that ride like to get there?
13:07
Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think, I'll be honest. One of the mistakes I feel like I've made now is I've given lots of people access to some tools at an enterprise level. Right. So nothing leaves my environment. But people are developing little things. Right. So now I've got a lot of disparate little things out there that I'm now going to have to wrangle those and herd those cats back in. So whatever I build is going to have to be really, really good.
13:36
Speaker B: Oh, man.
13:37
Speaker A: To get them all back on the reservation.
13:40
Speaker B: So, Jennifer, I just built my own CRM. It's awesome. I shared it with everybody.
13:44
Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah.
13:46
Speaker B: And an app, too. Can we. Can we launch it?
13:48
Speaker A: But, you know, you don't want to kill innovation, right? So one of the things about it is that we often get labeled as no, you know. Mr. No.
13:57
Speaker B: Yeah, the Department of. No, the Department. It's a common theme. I think it should be. It should be title two of the book.
14:03
Speaker A: It is one of the. And I feel like it is unfairly labeled, and it's a big myth. We really are innovation technology. And, you know, I have been fortunate enough in my career many times to have a seat at the table and report directly to the CEO to be able to say, we are innovation technology. We do digital transformation. You know, not every gig has been that way, but enough of them where I feel I have the confidence to walk into a room and to be present with that attitude and the materials and the confidence and the roadmap to do that. And if there's one thing I could wish for, all CIOs and CTOs is to have that at least once in your career, because it's a beautiful thing, and you really can help the organization grow and deliver on those outcomes. When you have that backing from your
15:03
Speaker B: CEO, what is it that you just love talking about? You're in a room with your colleagues. What could you just go back and forth on all day long? And I'm just giving you the opportunity right now. We can talk about whatever the heck you want. This show can go in any direction you want. What would it be?
15:17
Speaker A: It would be about solving problems. I like listening to people explain how they do something, and my brain just fires off with six different ways to solve that problem. And I kind of have this Goldilocks thing where I go, okay, I can give you the cheap and cheerful solution. I can give you the middle of the road, or I can give you the Ferrari solution. And depending on where, the seriousness of this, the impact of this, the money we have to spend, you pick where we go. And I love to free people up so that they have time to think, you know, push your chair back, really think, relate to other people. So much of what we do out in the field for our account managers and our business developers is about relationships and really create, right? So we're also in a very creative business when we design and we think about, you know, what kind of ancillary service we can do. How do we make an environment better? How do we make things better for our people? That's kind of where I come in. So I think that is, I'm trying to take those Restrictions off and not be. No, I'm trying to say, okay, we can do it this way, this way or this way. So sort of guiding that and funneling people to solutions is really what I love to do. It gets me excited, gets me out of bed every day.
16:50
Speaker B: Yeah. If we just had problems all the time, which is an endless problem, which we do. We usually do, what do you think is the biggest? I guess, what are some of the problems that we don't get brought to the table to solve? And I think that might. That actually might be the key that it might.
17:10
Speaker A: It's the conversations you're not in. Right. So. So the big thing.
17:16
Speaker B: Here's an example. Let's just have a couple examples. Like sales are down. We need to find more. We just need more hotels that need landscaping, whatever it is. I mean, how do we sell more landscaping gigs? Like, do you go to the table and you say, hey, look, guys, if I could deliver just like so many jobs to you, would you be able to handle it? I mean, what's the problem?
17:37
Speaker A: Yeah, so that's it. Are you in that conversation? And a lot of times, you know, leadership at the next level down, and sometimes your same leadership, your same level, they're not thinking that it. They're thinking, you know, information technology, they're not thinking innovation technology. And again, that has to do with people getting to know you. Right. So when you sit in a conversation and you listen enough, and then you can say, well, have you thought about, would it be helpful, too? Those are areas like, well, what does slow you down? So the questions that you ask that are prodding because you're trying to help them solve a problem, if you're in that room, you can help. Quite often it leadership doesn't get in the room. And that is the issue. Sometimes you just have to be super creative. Like, okay, they don't think you're going to help solve the problem, but maybe what you can do is you can say, you know, I'd really like to learn more about the business. Can I sit in on this meeting? That's your opportunity to get a seat at the table, and you got to go for it. Because otherwise, you know, if you're. If you're not going to say, I'm going to learn the business, they're going to say, and they're not thinking along those lines. They won't ever think about inviting you to that meeting.
19:00
Speaker B: I'm going to share something with you. That, to me, was an aha moment for me the other day because Greg, Greg Liddal our French expat, is our producer. But because we talk so much about moving the business forward, I have challenged him to can you think from a business standpoint like we ask all of our IT leaders to do every day to get in the room. And he came up with something the other day that blew my mind. He came to the meeting with, believe it or not, that he built over the weekend, a full scale mid market IT video game application that he built with AI. And it just really made me think, if anyone did this in any company, everyone just be back in their rocking chairs laughing. This is awesome. This is the best thing in the world. And basically the video game was you're 90 days into your role at your company, you show up on Tuesday, it's like, whatever, Tuesday, crazy Tuesday. And there's 28 it fires to put out. How you survive this day and how you score it depends on whether you get on the show or not, right? And the point is, you really do have to wear so many multiple hats. Where's the time to do the part that would really benefit the business? Because there's not a single part of the business that doesn't run on technology, which is the whole point of this thing, this little quiz. And then when you, you get through the quiz, it like rates you and it's like, okay, like you got through the test, you know what I mean? But what I do know is that I'm talking about it a week later and I want to see the next version. And I've really been thinking about it and to me that's a real fun application process. I don't know what you think, would you want to see if you made it through Tuesday with 12 fires to put out or whatever? I mean, as an IT person, you
20:51
Speaker A: know, especially that's kind of fun.
20:54
Speaker B: But the other thing is we took, basically what we did is we took the single source of truth. We took it from all the 450 episodes. So it was based on actual real life events that happened from all of the podcasts. So anywho, my point is if we can do more things like that to really surprise and delight, I think you'll have more people thinking about you outside the boardroom.
21:16
Speaker A: That's right. And that's the whole part of listening and embedding yourself in the business, learning about what their day to day operations and their life is like. And it's not like you just do it once, right? So you know, you do a day in the life. Like when I first showed up, I went to several different business units. But it's been a year now. It's time to go back. I created an Innovation Council when I got here, had several meetings. It's time to have another one. It really is important to listen to the business and embed yourself with them, feel their pain.
21:50
Speaker B: How'd that Innovation Council go? Like. Like, how'd you set that up? What came out of it?
21:57
Speaker A: What came out of it is that when I first got here, we have six different versions of PDF programs, and I'm like, oh, God, I've got data everywhere. I don't want to do this. It doesn't make any sense. Not only is it not economical, but we've got our data spread all over the place. I put a bunch of people together and I said, look, what are the most important things that we need out of a PDF program? Tell me what they are. So here's our. Here's our scorecard. Here's what you guys like about the five or six different things.
22:28
Speaker B: I got to know what it was. I got to know what. Like, how would we need so many different PDF programs? I'm just like, I'm dying to know. Why?
22:34
Speaker A: Because you got. You've got 17 different distinct business units that were brought on board at different times. Right. We grew through acquisition, and everybody's got their favorites. And anybody who's got a credit card card, you know, and an iOS device or an iPad can buy whatever they want to buy.
22:52
Speaker B: Yeah.
22:52
Speaker A: So, you know, economies of scale, we're gonna. We're gonna ground it down to the. The one that we. That's got all the criteria, but that's gonna give us the best price, and that's the one we're gonna use across the organization. But they pick, not me. So that we advise.
23:09
Speaker B: They decide.
23:10
Speaker A: That's right. Right. So. So forming groups like that in this Innovation Council for certain targeted, you know, problems has really been helpful because they. They get to lead now, some groups,
23:23
Speaker B: and there's no one to blame but themselves. They can't blame you.
23:25
Speaker A: That's right.
23:25
Speaker B: Hey, guys, you chose. I mean, I just brought you together.
23:28
Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. Now, some groups weren't as successful because they just got too busy. That's okay. That's. I step in and I kind of help, and I say, hey, let me help you with this, you know, and they appreciate the help. Like, oh, we just didn't realize how much work this was. Okay. So now there's some appreciation for the level of work that we do need to do. That's okay, too.
23:46
Speaker B: Yeah. Some people have had like, a board too, like an innovation board. That's a famous Walt Disney thing. You had like the wall of, like, ideas, that type of thing. Yeah, we've had people even put up like, little like. Like it. Like they've moved their help desk to like, a cafe. Like, it's like in the center of like, the work of job stuff. Like, wild stuff. Some people come with some really wild ideas. The. You, you mentioned office hours.
24:14
Speaker A: You know, you're in a center area and you've got office hours for a while. Yeah.
24:19
Speaker B: You mentioned wanting to, I guess, kind of pull the reins in a little bit on. On the AI thing. How. How is your. Or how are you using AI? How are you guys using AI right now? How are they using it? I guess, and, you know, present tense. And what's working, what's not? Is there anything really, really working, or is it kind of just like, experimental phase?
24:44
Speaker A: I think we're more in the experimental phase. Right. Because, you know, prompt engineering and learning how to prompt takes some time. It's hit and miss. I would love to say that we had the resources to go out and teach all of our business units that we just. We're just not resourced that way right now. We are going to create a prompt library that will help our organization. So, for example, you know, we'll create a brain file or a set of skills that will be like, what is gross margin? So anybody who goes into, you know, our particular chat area and workspace and says, give me, gives. Give me the gross margin, they're going to use the same formula. Right. So, so that will be good. But then we'll create some prompt library stuff that will help them sort of ideate and learn as they go. So if you've got a good set of prompts, people will learn from them. We'll create a set of templates and dashboards so that they have a starting place that those kinds of things that will be helpful. We're writing a couple of apps, these agentic agents that are going to do some of these things for them that I've talked about. So that's going to be helpful. And I think as soon as we get those published, they're going to quickly abandon some of their other stuff because they're going to see how much better these are. And then if that doesn't work, you know, it'll come from the top down. You can't use this anymore. You need to use this because those numbers are going to be correct, because the output is going to be More professional because it's going to work faster. Those will be the advantages. And if there's enough advantages, then it's going to be an easy move. It just has to be that way. And I know that's the challenge, but, you know, that's what we're going to do to.
26:27
Speaker B: Yeah. To find the solution that delivers a higher level of advantages over the rest. The prompt engineering and just like the training around AI alone is a huge. Is a huge gap. We need like. Are you familiar with know before?
26:47
Speaker A: Yes, we do have know before.
26:49
Speaker B: We need like a know before for AI, you know.
26:51
Speaker A: Yeah, we do.
26:51
Speaker B: That's like a weekly thing. And that might actually be if you actually had something that was just like pick your, your AI secret power of the week, you know, like, what do you. Do you guys use. Do you guys use Claude or what do you guys. What do you.
27:02
Speaker A: We use. We use Claude, we use Chat, GPT and we use Copilot. And you know, look, it's expensive. And so we have a plan that says if you're this kind of user, this is what you get.
27:13
Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. That's another thing that we've been ideating along in the. The last AI roundtable, which is how to host your own. How to host your own so you don't have to pay like insane tokenization. But CLAUDE can be. I think there'd be some really exciting things that you could show people from if you're allowing them to use like Claude desktop and things like that to really make people's lives easier, faster, better.
27:38
Speaker A: Yes. I mean, think about the common things you have to reconcile. Right. You know, you have an ERP system and it's got a module baked into it that you've got to pay for every year that reconciles your purchase orders with your invoices, Right?
27:52
Speaker B: Yep.
27:52
Speaker A: Do you need to have that anymore?
27:55
Speaker B: Not really, no. And it made my taxes this year, so. Oh, my gosh.
28:00
Speaker A: Yep.
28:01
Speaker B: I was just trying to, like the
28:02
Speaker A: staff stuff is, is, you know, that you're paying for today you're not going to need to pay for, but you're going to now shift that cost over to tokenization. Right. So tokenomics is going to be really super important to sort of keep an eye on and manage. But you're going to be shifting costs a little bit from SaaS subscriptions over to token.
28:25
Speaker B: Yes. And that's actually the thing that worries me the most is because when you do have some agents working, you do have something eventually working really, really well. If we don't know what we're doing and how to manage that and have fail safes around the tokenization piece. It could be a crippling thing for many companies.
28:44
Speaker A: That's right. And there's a lot of CEOs out there that are just so excited about that. They've just handed over a blank check or a credit card. But we're not going to do that. For me, that's the whole reason to write some agents that are public for the organization to write those brain files and have a semantic layer or have role and permission layers. The other thing is you just don't want anybody in your organization calling a set of APIs. I mean, do they have permission for that data? No. But you're going to put them in an MCP and just let everybody loose. No. So there's a lot of things that you have to really think about, which is why we're kind of doing the crawl, walk, run. But again, I will tell you, the one mistake I made is like, oh, here, you can have a ChatGPT license. Now it's an enterprise license, but still it doesn't have an MCP. Nobody's using the APIs. But people are doing a little bit of these rogue things that I'm going to have to just rein back in a little bit.
29:47
Speaker B: Yeah. And if you don't give it to them when I guess the 8020 rule of humans is they'll do it anyways.
29:54
Speaker A: That's right.
29:54
Speaker B: And the question is.
29:55
Speaker A: And I get to see what they're doing. So that's a good thing too.
29:58
Speaker B: Yeah. So how do we stop Shadow AI? That's a good question.
30:03
Speaker A: I think it's original sin,
30:08
Speaker B: you know,
30:09
Speaker A: you just have to learn to try and get your arms around. It's like Jeff Goldblum, you know, in, in Jurassic park, he drops the water and it just goes everywhere.
30:17
Speaker B: Yeah. I love, I love the it memes of Jurassic Park. It's like, you know, we spared no expense on this. Park hired one IT guy.
30:25
Speaker A: Yeah. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
30:30
Speaker B: You, you love solving problems and challenges. I think that's kind of like the. What do you say about curiosity? Because if I was to ask everyone, if I was to ask one of the main traits of most IT people, most of them say curiosity is definitely the top five.
30:45
Speaker A: Yeah, it is.
30:46
Speaker B: Okay.
30:48
Speaker A: And lack of curiosity is a deal breaker for me.
30:51
Speaker B: Okay. So what's your big thing when you go to build a team? Like, what are you looking for in a really good team player?
30:58
Speaker A: People who like to self learn the curiosity People who, when they have a problem, they come with some potential solutions. You know, maybe they have the. The Goldilocks already lined up for me, which is great. And. And good listeners, too. You know, I want to see that somebody is actively listening in a conversation when they're going to solve a problem or they're trying to help somebody if they just follow a formula. That's okay, because sometimes, you know, if it's a Windows machine or a Apple or an iOS device, that. That. That's the. You know, let me try the formula first. But then you got to have some curiosity, because it doesn't always follow the same. The same set of rules.
31:40
Speaker B: Well, framework. You know, frameworks are good. Even for. Even for people that have a hard time talking with people.
31:47
Speaker A: Sure. Especially when it comes to, you know, a cybersecurity incident. Right. You. You really should follow a framework, because otherwise you can go down a rabbit hole and it takes you twice as long to figure out what's really wrong.
32:02
Speaker B: Even. Even simple, everyday things, like if, you know, it's kind of like, connect, discover, respond. How do I connect? How is your day going? You know, what's next?
32:12
Speaker A: Yes.
32:13
Speaker B: Why are you so upset right now? Why is it not working? Oh, okay. The going back in time again. The. The one thing that, you know today that you wish you knew when you
32:25
Speaker A: started out how to be a little more gentle when stepping on toes. I think the one thing about me that I. When I kind of, like, realized I was not. I didn't think the way everybody else did is my first. My first job. I spent 10 years at the same company, and I learned all different parts of the company. I wasn't afraid to look at a different part of the organization and learn it. And I was in technical support, and I was watching more and more of our customers reach out to me directly because they were getting frustrated with customer support. And so I started to observe kind of what customer support was doing. And I said, you know, I think if we structured customer support this way, and this was pillow talk with my poor husband. And so he said, well, you want to write something up and, you know, share it with the CEO. And I was like, oh, that's a great idea. So I did. And I didn't think about anybody else, but just, like, I had this idea and I took it to him and gave it to him, and, you know, you would have think he had the Sears Christmas catalog, because he ran up and down the hallways telling everybody how great this paper was that I wrote about how to restructure Customer service, and then he gave me the job. Well, the person who had the job was not quite happy with me, so
33:48
Speaker B: I think, ah, screw them.
33:51
Speaker A: Right. Anyway, so, you know, that was. That's kind of one of those things where I think I wish I had learned something, like, I'd had a mentor.
33:59
Speaker B: Are you saying they were still there? Are you saying that person got demoted and had to work underneath you?
34:04
Speaker A: Yeah.
34:05
Speaker B: Well, that's kind of tough. Like, thanks, boss.
34:08
Speaker A: Yeah, that was. That was kind of tough.
34:11
Speaker B: So. But that happens. No, but that happens. So you were doing the right. You were doing the right thing for the company. Okay.
34:17
Speaker A: So.
34:17
Speaker B: But you had to take over. But are you actually saying you. In hindsight, you wouldn't have done that?
34:22
Speaker A: No, I would say that if I had known I would have done that. I would have pedaled it a little softer, is what I've done. I would have maybe sought counsel, a mentor, to say, here's what I'm thinking. This is what I want to do. And maybe that person or that mentor would have said, okay, maybe here's a different way to approach it.
34:46
Speaker B: Did you want the job?
34:49
Speaker A: Yeah.
34:50
Speaker B: Okay. Okay.
34:51
Speaker A: I was excited about it.
34:53
Speaker B: Okay.
34:54
Speaker A: So when it was offered to me, I was like, absolutely, yeah.
34:58
Speaker B: That just happens. Those are those tough moments in your life where it just happens. And now you're stuck in a hard place, and now you're the leader. And when you're not the leader, you always see all the things that could be done better. And then when you are the leader, you're like, oh, man, now I understand why it's so tough being the leader.
35:15
Speaker A: Yeah.
35:17
Speaker B: Okay. So super awesome. So it would have been a softer approach, I guess, is what you've. What you've learned in the past is that maybe.
35:26
Speaker A: Yeah, I think more patience. One of my other favorite phrases is, you know, try to give people a soft place to land.
35:33
Speaker B: Okay, I like that.
35:36
Speaker A: Whether it's a really a personal relationship, you know, your marriage, your children, friends, business, you know, I have eight kids.
35:44
Speaker B: I have eight kids, and I. And I wish that I've always given them a softer place to land. Sometimes it's been a crash landing. Sometimes it's 10. Sometimes it's been, you know, a little bit of a rougher landing than. Than I wanted just due to, like, life going on for, you know, for. For years. And what do you mean by that? How do we. How do we give people a softer place to land? Maybe we just need, like, a. What's, like, one of the toughest conversations that you've had where you actually did it successfully and you gave him a soft landing and it still sucked. Yeah, because it's always going to suck. The landing is always going to kind of suck. Maybe it is, but it doesn't need.
36:19
Speaker A: Especially if you, you know, the person isn't being kind to you, you know, you're right. And they're just. They're being brutal to you. You really just want to give it to them.
36:30
Speaker B: That's real compassion.
36:32
Speaker A: Yeah.
36:32
Speaker B: You.
36:33
Speaker A: You. You just, you know, you. You gotta find it in you to just kind of go, what's the outcome? Right. Where do you really just want this to be and move on? And. And that's really. It's easier to do when it's somebody personal. When it's somebody you don't know and it's somebody you're not with face to face, that's harder to do. But I just. When I remember that phrase, it makes it easier to do. That's all.
37:02
Speaker B: Do. Two more questions. This one's a little bit harder. When. How do you handle things when your team's made the wrong call?
37:11
Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
37:12
Speaker B: Can you think of a time where you guys are just like, we just brutally screwed up and what'd you do?
37:18
Speaker A: You know, depending on the seriousness of it, if it wasn't super serious, it's something like, okay, all right, we kind of missed on that. Let's fix this. And then we'll debrief later. Let's focus on the solution, focus on the mea culpa, and then we'll debrief later about how we could have done this better. I think I always try to stick with, if it's really bad, I step in front of it and I make a change afterwards. So it could be a change in process. It could be a change of who's in charge of solving problems going forward or giving direction going forward, because we can't afford to make that mistake twice. And, you know, I think you acknowledge the disappointment if it was a direct sort of, I'm going to do what I want to do anyways, then there's consequences. But, you know, I'll be honest with you, 99% of the time, the teams that I have had, it's never been a direct, you know, denial or a direct, I'm going to do what I want to do. It's never been that. It's always been a.
38:30
Speaker B: Usually you don't give someone. Yeah, usually you'll give someone a level. Well, hopefully we've learned enough over time that we give people the level of Responsibility, that's enough for them to grow and fail forward without, you know, not, not be on their level of. That they can't, that they can't do. And if they do fail, it's not, you know, you're not putting, you know, shame on you if you put them in a position where they, you know, it's, they just, you know, blew up the company.
38:56
Speaker A: It could be, it could be a maturity of judgment, you know, judgment call. And so you have to, you have to say, okay, I've got to shift what judgment calls you can make. I got to shift what responsibilities you can make. And you do that until that either matures or, you know, they just get a different set of responsibilities and that's the way, that's the way that role goes.
39:19
Speaker B: Yeah. You've been, you've had a wonderful career so far, so congratulations.
39:22
Speaker A: Thank you.
39:23
Speaker B: You've seen a lot of things coming into a new role. What's kind of your, you know, for other people that might be, it might be the first time in a, in a C level role, maybe they've moved up from whatever and now they're director of IT for the first time. What is your top three five things on a game plan or roadmap going into a new organization? First 90 days.
39:45
Speaker A: The first thing is an assessment. I need to look at an application assessment, I need to look at an IT infrastructure assessment. I need to look at a cybersecurity assessment and vendor data privacy, that type of an assessment. And I do that across the board. And then I go out and I do that day in the life. I need to go out to the business, see the operations, what people are doing in those areas because it correlates to those assessments that I'm doing. And then I come back with a roadmap. So I look for the gaps, I look for things that I'm concerned about. And then I present that back and say, okay, I know you guys got big plans, but here are the things that I think need to be fixed right away and what it's going to cost and why. And then I give them the three options for, for those things because depending on their budget, you know, they may not be able to spend that, but, but I have to at least articulate the risk. Right? And that's another good use of that Gen AI is that once I've built out that IT environment and I put it into Gen AI and I say, okay, given where we are in our budget, given their current budget that I might put into Gen AI and given benchmarks I'm going to tell them everything. What's the right headcount? Here's how many tickets they get or they don't have a ticketing system and why we would need to have one.
41:11
Speaker B: Right.
41:11
Speaker A: You know, you can walk into a company that's doing everything, trying to manage, you know, all of the help desk through email, which is just absolutely insane. And so, so those are all.
41:22
Speaker B: It might be able to be done with AI right now though. You might not need a help desk anymore if you've got.
41:25
Speaker A: That's right, you might.
41:26
Speaker B: It is possible.
41:28
Speaker A: It is possible.
41:29
Speaker B: As crazy as that must be. I challenge anyone out there to do that.
41:33
Speaker A: Yeah, well, no, I mean people are building their own CRMs. I just, you know, I'm just sort of like, yeah, well, what's your semantic layer for that CRM?
41:41
Speaker B: It's difficult. It's difficult when you go large scale. I think for point solutions it makes sense. So, okay, so, so, so like stage one is kind of like general inventory. Um, slash late and then it's like inventory of people. And you know, what's your job? What do you do? You know, what's your single biggest frustration, problem or concern? So it's kind of like inventory people.
42:00
Speaker A: Then it's, then it's, then it's the roadmap. And that roadmap also includes opportunities for solving problems. So as I'm going out into the field and listening and doing the day in the life, I'm now building automation. I'm building a list of what can be automated, you know, what agents could be built, what software is legacy that needs improvement, where can there be some consolidation? I'm looking to save money, so I'm looking for opportunities to change up some licensing and contracts, look for different products.
42:37
Speaker B: Low hanging fruit type stuff.
42:39
Speaker A: Yeah, that kind of a thing. And then it's like, what could be the game changer right now that I've got some of the basic blocking and tackling done, is there a big aha, game changer in there?
42:55
Speaker B: Awesome. Super fun, super fun talking with you and Jennifer Terrell. You've been hurt. You have been hurt and I appreciate you so much for being on the show. Any final words of wisdom?
43:08
Speaker A: No, I just, I think that, you know, there was some other questions about, you know, anything that other CIOs you think super differently about. And I, I have to say that I've been very fortunate to, to be in CIO CTO communities where we all really do a good job sharing and collaborating and I feel like we're all Very much like minded. We have different opinions here and there, but we're all kind of on that same page. You know, we all really feel like we are innovation technology and we could do so much for our organizations if we could get that seat at the table and be heard. So thank you for doing this.
43:48
Speaker B: Yeah, no, I mean, I'm open to, and I'm opening, I'm open to whatever. If there's anything else that we need to cover that we haven't covered, that you are deeply passionate about, that we need to. That I, We. You need to answer that question. You tell me. You asked the question and let's answer it like, so what have I not asked? How about this question? What have I not asked you that you're, you'd be dying for me to ask you. Phil, you didn't ask me this. I was really hoping you'd ask me this question. What is it? Because that, because that's what we want.
44:17
Speaker A: No, I think you asked some good questions. And when we were talking about the Gen AI stuff and really stuff earlier in my career, those are the things and the big challenge in IT leadership is the lack of collaboration to us. And that's really what I want to see more of out there in the field for, for us and out there in the organizations for us. You know, don't be afraid to ask us questions. You know, people think it is just, you know, the nerdy crazy words. It's like, look, there's just as many acronyms in accounting as there is in it and you know, it's got to be. You need to be fearless if you really want innovation in your organization. The executives you work with and your peers need to, you know, need to ask and, and just be fearless.
45:13
Speaker B: It's almost like we need to pretend that we're not in it. Oh, it. No, I'm not in it. I'm insane.
45:17
Speaker A: Innovation. I'm innovating. I'm in innovation.
45:19
Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we need to change. Like we changed it. No, no, no, no. I'm in opportunity development. I am not in it. You must have got me a mistake. Someone else.
45:29
Speaker A: I tell people I'm the IT Girl.
45:32
Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But no, for real, I think it's. Again, back to. If I go back to some of those statistics, it's only 9%. It's only 9% of IT leaders, I think, which that are accurate in their portrayal of their skill set. So that means 91% of IT leaders vastly overestimate themselves in the business ability category. And it might be just because I have arrived. I have a C in front of my name, so I clearly should be here. But the truth is, many IT leaders have not gone through. They've gone through the trenches of the late nights, the firefights, the. The patches, the upgrades, the ransomware attacks, all the things that no one else could fix. So there's like, oh, my God, please help me. I can't fix it, Right? Yeah, but they haven't gone through the trenches of. Dude, you've had to cold call 2000 businesses to get that one landscaping job. Do you actually think that an IT leader has the ability to do that? I don't think so.
46:36
Speaker A: Nope.
46:36
Speaker B: But if you did, you'd be damn valuable. Yeah, you really would. So maybe that's the missing skill set. I don't know what the gap is. What do you think the big gap is? I think that might be one of them.
46:48
Speaker A: I think the gap is often the business acumen. Yes.
46:52
Speaker B: So what do we need to do? What do we need to teach? A lot of people say, I gotta go get my mba. Okay, that definitely helps. It definitely helps.
47:00
Speaker A: It can help. But. But the gardener that's out there working or the crew leader, they don't have an mba.
47:08
Speaker B: Get in the trenches, man. Like, go, like.
47:10
Speaker A: Like, it's a day in the life. Go do it.
47:12
Speaker B: Yeah.
47:13
Speaker A: You know, it really is. Go see what that's like to be that person. The boot boots on the ground. Go be that person in accounting who's got a. You know, who's your head sales guy?
47:23
Speaker B: Like, who's your head of sales? I got to know what your head sales guys. Like, how many sales guys do you guys have out there selling landscaping?
47:28
Speaker A: Well, business development, which is. Right. They really go get new business development.
47:31
Speaker B: Business development, yes.
47:32
Speaker A: 30 people, but account managers, you know, 100, 200, something like that. You know, we've got a lot of branches, a lot of people, so we
47:41
Speaker B: just need to find the craziest top. A business development guy in your company. And what I would love to do. We should do a show sometime where we have. We have this dynamic alive on the show. Because it's. It's. It's not. I mean, it's really not about it versus the business. It's really. It's like a mix of both. It's really like, you know, shame on us for not fixing the problem. We need to fix that problem. That's the goal of the show.
48:05
Speaker A: Yeah.
48:06
Speaker B: So, again, thank you so much for being on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. I don't know if we've changed the world, but I'm hoping that we've actually moved it forward a little bit.
48:16
Speaker A: I hope so, too.