Latest / You've Been Heard / 457- Your IT Roadmap Needs a Top Five w/Teresa Duran

Transcript

457- Your IT Roadmap Needs a Top Five w/Teresa Duran · You've Been Heard

• 0:00
  Speaker A: If you're only focused on the back office, the fix its. There was an incident in investing. I feel like it's a losing battle because you'll never get a seat at the table or be a strategic enabler. I think there's always ways that you have to find ways to get in and help the organization grow. And I think a lot of that starts off with not just the CRM, but their data and insights initiatives. Hi, everyone. Teresa Duran. I'm currently the Chief Information officer for Treetop Inc. It's a CPG ingredients firm. You may have seen them in your apple juice, applesauce products. They're also ingredients in a lot of the top 25 brands in the grocery store. It is my fir. It's my fourth CIO role. All different industries and managing end to end it. So. So everything from software engineering to data and AI to cybersecurity. And I'm also. Yeah, and I'm also a board advisor to a couple of firms and a founding member to Agentic Engineering Institute. It's basically a company that's dedicated to helping in this next phase of maturity with AI.
• 1:17
  Speaker B: Super cool. And where are you? Are you in Washington?
• 1:21
  Speaker A: I am. Which I don't know if that's a good idea to say anymore. I feel like we're always in the news.
• 1:25
  Speaker B: I mean, is it like Washington, like the state. Not Washington like the state in D.C. i'm not really sounding Washington because that's not. How do we say, Sila Sela Washington, or. That's where it says the headquarters is for. There for tree talk.
• 1:39
  Speaker A: Yeah. So the headquarters is eastern Washington. They get quite a bit of sun out there. So it's on the other side of the mountains. And then I'm located. I'm considered a remote employee, so I'm located in Sammamish, Washington.
• 1:52
  Speaker B: Okay. I helped my sister move from Spokane, Washington to Burlington, Vermont, years ago. That was back when I was a sophomore in college. So that must have been like 97 or something like that.
• 2:05
  Speaker A: Nice.
• 2:06
  Speaker B: But I remember getting to Spokane, I'm like, this isn't rainy. This is desert.
• 2:11
  Speaker A: And yes, it gets really hot. And where I'm at, there's a ton of rain, but it's just. It's gorgeous this time of year. It's just really beautiful and green.
• 2:20
  Speaker B: Cool.
• 2:20
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:21
  Speaker B: So here, here's the thing we've done. We're nearing 500 episodes of this thing. We used to be. We used to be a vendor podcast for like a couple weeks. And then we realized nobody wants to listen to More vendors and have someone interview more vendors. So we quit. We decided why don't we, why don't we interview the people that no one can ever get to? You know that the gatekeepers, you know, you probably have a gatekeeper that forwards people to voicemail and stuff like that. Why don't we, why don't we get, why don't we speak to the people that are actually important? So we're going to do a little weekly podcast and we're going to interview all the people that I love working with, which were IT leaders. And we're like, well, who are these guys anyways? Well, they're kind of nerdy. They are, you know, they've, they've probably grew up in a time when there was not a position for technology. And well, they gotta be popular because most of these guys hide in the server room or girls, small percentage and they've gotta be popular. So let's dissect them. So we used to be dissecting popular IT nerds. And then, and then people were like well what are you guys doing? You're just dissecting popular IT nerds. Like no, no, no. We actually know a lot about technology, do all kinds of stuff. And what found out was that after 420 episodes and we're at 480 or something right now, we, we discovered this amazing thing and I think you will agree with this and I think everyone else knows it and that is nothing gets done in any company without technology touching it. Big aha moment.
• 3:43
  Speaker A: Yes, right.
• 3:44
  Speaker B: But here was the thing. This was the. We, we hired a great, great branding guy. He's the same guy that branded. No, before. If you know that company, the training, training company, the security training, email phishing, they're called Know Before. You know they make you click on. Oh yes, everybody knows they make you click on things. So I, so I brought in David, David Breyer to help us after we've been dissecting popular IT nerds forever. And what we discovered was that while it's great to have done all this work, to have been putting out fires, the, the, the late night patches, the ransomware attacks, some, some of you still have IBM as 400-400-S running things in the back room. People have all kinds of old IT silos and things everywhere. And what we realized is that when everything's running or when everything's on fire, it is invaluable. But when everything's running like a well oiled Tesla, you're a cost center. So how much nicer would it be to have a seat at the executive roundtable, but also be heard. So we came. So we have, we've, we've started the revolution of you've been heard. And I just want, I just want to kind of just open it up and give you a few minutes just to talk about that, you know, how things have changed over time and how you're using technology as a business force multiplier. You have this thing called geek and ease or, you know, and I'm assuming that there's something to do with, has something to do with translating hypervisors into something that can be digested into ROI and things that business leaders actually care about.
• 5:18
  Speaker A: Yes. So here's the thing. In each of my CIO roles, I was hired in to help these organizations go through their extreme makeover. So their largest transformational change in their history. And you may think why. I think a lot of organizations, as you know, they reach a point where they've gone through. They were trying to transform, they were trying to do many things, modernize. But I think what ended up happening was, is they had a really difficult time just because it's always about people change, bypassing technology, leaders. And I describe it to many as everybody's trying to get to the prompt era today, but they're still purchasing software and solutions like, like it's in the CD ROM era. And so what ends up happening is, is, you know, you, you have people who are looking for leaders who are going to help them kind of connect the dots across the enterprise, see the opportunity, and like you said, have a seat, table. So I had mentioned to, to Gabe when we had met this last time about just what I'm up to. And a lot of what I do is really help folks with their translation. So I, I feel like there's the geek knees, which is the geek talk, and you could be the most brilliant person in the room, but that's not going to get the results that you need or the organization needs because they need somebody to help translate super complicated, complex concepts into. How is this going to help you grow your company? How is this going to help you reduce risk? How is this going to help you drive efficiencies and the ability to translate kind of what that opportunity is, I think is the reason why they need us. And it's not just having a seat at the table, it's when you're there, what are you doing differently? So I'm actually in the process also writing a book about it just because it's such a, a fascinating time right now when you think of not just how many transformations fail, but AI initiatives today. Right.
• 7:16
  Speaker B: Do you think we do a bad job training it and technical folks at the beginning to be do we? Do we? It's kind of like when you go through grammar school, is it still called that anymore? I don't, I'm really. I was kind of old in grammar school. I used to, I used to walk four hour, four hours with a sack over my back to school. School. Did we. And I remember even all the way up past college, no one ever teaching goal setting, personal mission statement values. And what's the point of all this? The point of this is do we do a bad job teaching technical people from the beginning like, hey, by the way, you need to learn how to translate this into business? Or is it mostly like how many YouTube videos can I watch on. On how to become Cisco XYZ certification or whatever, CISO certification. And it's all super nerdy and it's like a bunch of like, you know, YouTube video, but there's never anyone really saying, hey, by the way, you're going to look like a real jerk and really arrogant when you're speaking to a high level CEO who makes a ton of money and is in his entire job is to make the company money. When you speak in a way that makes him feel dumb, but he knows he's not dumb, but it makes you look arrogant and he doesn't.
• 8:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, they look arrogant. And then here's the worst part. You just let the slick vendor who's going to sell some ridiculous demo because they knew how to talk and it's ridiculous, you know, it's not going to work in your environment. And, and I also, I think you're right. I think a lot of people spend a lot of time on just loving the tool talk. What tool do you use? What certs are you going after using a lot of acronyms? And I think the challenge is, is, you know, each time that I kind of led a new department, I like to get to know them and figure out what are you learning? Because I think part of it is not just are they going after the certification and are they learning to be as technical as they could be and keep growing their discipline. Some people stop learning too because they've been at the company for so long. They become comfortable and complacent. I can't begin to tell you how many people loved their on prem environments, including on prem email not that long ago where I was like, nope, we're moving to the cloud. You're not going to.
• 9:31
  Speaker B: It's still a thing. Migrating people off of exchange is still a thing.
• 9:35
  Speaker A: It's a thing. And here's the problem. Then who gets in the hot seat? It's not just your head of it. It's also the salesperson when you know your email's down. And I think part of the problem is, is I don't think it's just about translating up and out to VPs. It's translating to your own technology department. Are you creating that compelling vision? Are you also explaining to them what it's going to do for their career? Forget about the here and now, but where do they want to be in a few years? And it can't be. Well, I'm comfortable with on prem email because I, I know I can do this until I retire. And I think that's the challenge is getting them to not just learn translation, but learning and growing. And I think you're seeing that resistance with AI as well, where people were comfortable with old software development practices.
• 10:27
  Speaker B: Oh, nice. Do we want to go down that hole? Because I have a split group of friends that one group of friends that are like the software dev team that are like, I mean, they're just like, they might as well be like Cheech and Chong sitting in a room somewhere. Just like, really like, yo, man, forget this AI stuff. You're crazy, man. No one's going to do that. People are going to die. You can't do AI and healthcare. Like, there's that extreme and then there's the other extreme, which is like, yeah, they're. If they don't, if they don't grab on, they're. They're done. And I think it is a. I think. And I've fallen in between. I've see, I'm see sawing back and forth and it's like, where to begin in this conversation? So I'm not going to, I'm not going to go there. What I'm going to do is first say, is first let's finish this translation piece. Do you have some frameworks or very simple things if there was three steps for you to tell someone how to translate to the C suite, or be effective and really gain someone's ears and really be heard, so to speak, at the executive roundtable, or get your seat at the executive roundtable and be heard from day one, not be the last slide in the slide deck waiting for, you know, the end of the company presentation, like, hey, by the way, we have time for you to announce that you're zero trust certified. Now what. What's the key to be the first slide in the slide deck.
• 11:46
  Speaker A: This is a good question. So I think, gosh, I could talk for hours on this. So I think, number one, if you want to keep it simple, you need to also ask yourself the question, what's the history? Why didn't you have a seat at the table? What happened? What went wrong? And it's not always a technology issue, it's a leadership issue. And I also think that when you're asking for a specific, ask for a leader. Did you time it right? Did you ask the specific ask up front? Are you making sure that they're not feeling maybe cornered? Do you have to spend a little bit of time? Because they're not going to want you to read a debt to them or a memo. Maybe they're going to want you to just have a conversation, just listen and figure out where, where those drivers were about what, what matters most to the company and how do you fit your way in. But I also think that there's simple learnings along the way. So one of the things I did was I, I have a very tried and true, what I call my 90 day playbook. Like how do you walk into an organization and you kind of do the blitz and some of it is the managing up right? By explaining and articulating, here's maybe what a modern IT department looks like, here's how we should be engaged, here's how we should fix the governance process and the rules of engagement, of how you think about making architecture decisions or making huge purchasing decisions, but also how you approach vendor management, talent management, et cetera. But I also think it's, there's also the. Do you have a top five? I'm a big fan of that. I walk into so many organizations where they have a huge laundry list of projects that never were completed, five year roadmaps that just rolled into the next five. So what are you doing differently to help simplify? Everyone has too much software, right? They have, everyone has too many things on the list, their laundry list. But how do you zoom out and, and get to that top five? And I think a lot of that is what are you doing to build your leadership team? So one of the things I feel really, really strongly about is having the IT department run like a symphony, knowing that they're all needed. There's a lot of cross dependencies across each area. Are you playing to their strengths? Are you understanding where the priorities are? Are you balancing innovation and the cybersecurity risks? And how are you making sure that you're kind of enabling and advocating for what's best for the organization based off of what your team is going after. And it's interesting, I was just on a leadership call earlier today and I said nobody wants to be, you know, and it's probably not appropriate to say, but like that Leroy Jenkins guy where you just, you know, the World of Warcraft, where he just kind of runs in front and causes a bunch of havoc, what are you doing as a team to make sure that you're aligned with what that top five looks like and how you're building around delivery, but then also how you're helping influence that one voice of what, where the opportunity is for your department as well.
• 14:41
  Speaker B: Okay, 90 day. You're, you're, you're in the 90 days. What are kind of like those key first questions that you have to ask executive management or the C suite or whatever it is, whether it be all the different departments so that you can align your symphony.
• 14:59
  Speaker A: That's a really good question. So number one, you, you look to see if they have a compelling company strategy already in place and not just on a one slider where it says we're just doing these few things, but did it actually go down to that next level? Is there an operational plan or certain key initiatives that are the top for the company? Because I feel like where a lot of technology departments struggle is did you build your technology strategy and roadmap in that vision of what you want to do for the company? Is it based off where the company's headed? And did you, were you agile enough to adjust to where they're going? And if not, you have to take a step back and figure out why is that. So I think understanding what that company strategy is first and foremost. But I'm one of those people who likes to get in to the weeds a bit too. I do the offline conversations to figure out where are their opportunities and pain points, what's not being delivered that you need to help you run your session of your business? Right. I like to see demos and I like to see it from the different viewpoints. I like to see it not just from an end user or department's view, but also from our own team. I want to know how painful it is to manage. Do we have help desk tickets where there's 80% of the problems are zeroed around a couple of systems? Where's the organizational noise and friction when you think of supply chain issues, operational issues, did you take a step back to figure out if we could fix this with consolidating systems, modernizing systems what could we do differently? I actually like to look at the reports that they use, the type of decisions they want to make, because then I think it gives you kind of that blended view of do we have the right enterprise architecture, do we have the right talent? I think a lot of times what ends up happening is if you're new in role and going through a huge modernization effort, you're only going to have a finite budget. So do you have the right talent that you need or do you need to bring in external talent or skills, whether it's through vendors or a restructure as well? I think those are all kind of key elements I think that you think of in that 90 day plan. And then of course with the cyber stuff, I can go on and on, but it's really looking at everything from your insurance policies. I like to go in the weeds a bit about if there's any audit findings or recent breaches or events and trying to figure out like, hey, what's on the top risk register? What do we think we need to do to help protect our company and brand from. From cyber threats?
• 17:33
  Speaker B: I'm fascinated by a bunch of things that you said that I would love to dig in on, which is one which is like this roadmap that has been sitting around forever with like a bunch of projects on it that never got finished because that seems to be a common theme for a lot of people. Like we have 25 projects that, you know, there's no way we could ever do it until they'll be done in 2050 and by that time none of them even make any sense. Which is why you see that roadmap with all that crap on it. And the theme, the common theme is that, oh, it has been used as a hammer for like the last, you know, however many years. It's not actually being used. I guess bringing key stakeholders to the table first and finding out what the actual goal of the business is and then applying it to it versus kind of just bringing in all these different things. Is it primarily a fix it? Has it primarily been a fix IT department? And I don't want to say department because everyone hates the department of it. We're not this separate entity. We are all together the company. But is, is that. Where's the paradigm shift for the modern IT leader going to be? Is it going to be we're going to fix things and modernize and we're going to streamline and all of that, but what about scaling the business? What about having a business mindset and being able to Take really apply technology as a business for multiplier. And are have you, have you been the hero before in that department where you've actually seen things the company's not even using right now? Been able to, I don't know, I don't want to say grow a new avenue of business, but use a different actually applied technology to growing the business versus just being the optimizer.
• 19:06
  Speaker A: Absolutely. I think that's where you're really focusing more on. In real estate. I worked at John L. Scott, so that was one company. And then after that with Make a Wish as well on the growth area and then even at Cornea Gen, a biotech firm. So in each of the three roles there was a heavy emphasis of helping out with their CRM and marketing capabilities in addition to growing their supply chain. So I think if you're only focused on the back office, the fix it. There was an incident in investing. I feel like it's a losing battle because you'll never, you'll never get a seat at the table or be a strategic enabler. I think there's always ways that you have to find ways to get in and help the organization grow. And I think a lot of that starts off with not just the CRM but their data and insights initiatives. So when you think of what matters most to these executives, what are they trying to do to run the business and what information are they using to help them when they're looking at their growth? Everything from their go to market strategies. I think it's good to have those deep dives and questions and I think that's where you have those conversations with the VPs and the CEO is to ask not just about how things are going today because there's a reason why you're maybe not in the room, but I think the ability to start asking questions about where do they want to take the organization. Do they have, maybe they have a strategic play for growth where, like at Treetop for instance, where our plan is to do a lot more growth east. So how does that, how do they, how do they envision do that doing that? Do they have a go to market strategy? What are they doing with various partners? How are they looking at their potential pipeline and their opportunities from a probability perspective and how is that going to, you know, turn into revenue forecasting to help inform the supply chain aspects as well to make sure that you can grow as fast as you can? Well, but I do believe that having those deep dives and conversations matters. But I also think you have to back it up. Do you have the talent that can help build a lot of these things. Because even if you get really great vendors in play, all of us know somebody on the FTE side has to know how to drive and help translate because you can't just let vendors run loose because that's where we run into a lot of these issues I think in companies is we were too hands off. So what ends up happening is they end up relying on fragmented point solutions versus something that is really going to grow the enterprise.
• 21:35
  Speaker B: Give me an example.
• 21:36
  Speaker A: So I think a lot of organizations today, when you think of the shadow IT and what's going on, they'll work with an individual vendor, with an individual solution. And then what ends up happening is your data is not actually stored within your enterprise. So when you think of sophisticated insights, all of us know, when you think of revenue, revenue growth or maybe you're looking at marketing campaigns or your event strategy or B2B, what ends up happening is if you're looking at only leveraging a third party firm, which I've seen many times over. What happens is, is that data sometimes is housed outside of your company. So you can't actually do any sophisticated analytics. So you can talk about AI and you know, advanced analytics all you want, but what ends up happening is a lot of this information is just dispersed. So I think that's one of the things I always think about when you think of where a technology department can be more of that true strategic partner and enabler is what are you doing with all the information? Forget about all the, the tools that all of us love to talk about, like the platforms and the tools, but what are you doing with the data and helping the organization make incredible and more real time or predictions as far as the information that they, they, they can have at their fingertips.
• 22:53
  Speaker B: What would you say is the most typical or most important thing to have to never, never outsource?
• 22:59
  Speaker A: You know what, I actually believe that something should be outsourced. I'm a big fan.
• 23:03
  Speaker B: No, I do too. I believe a lot of things should. Like, I like, I think actually like it might be it, it might be like never outsource your advertising.
• 23:11
  Speaker A: Correct. Yeah.
• 23:12
  Speaker B: So we're, yeah, but outsource security and you might be like never do that. So I'm just kind of, I just want to hear what kind of.
• 23:19
  Speaker A: There, there's a, there's a mixed balance. And that's the thing. When I was in consulting between my four CIO roles, one of them was in consulting. A lot of it was with the big, big tech firms and a lot of the, A lot of the other firms. So for me, the outsourcing, that, that conversation. For me, it always depends on the industry, the size of your team, the budget constraints that you're under. But then also, where's the sweet spot where an outsourcing firm would do well? And when I think of outsourcing, it's also just vendor partnerships because we have incredible. I don't believe any IT department or any IT leader succeeds without strong vendors, period. Like, I always have, like a handful that are on my short list anytime I'm looking to do something.
• 24:04
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 24:05
  Speaker A: But I, but I do believe that internal talent needs to be in place. When you think of how do you make the symphony work when it comes to an accountability perspective, or what I call keeping the tree alive, because I think a lot of times you get a vendor to come in, they implement something, they lead, and then nobody knows how to do anything with the system. And all of us have those. We all have one of those in our, in our environment today, it's the
• 24:31
  Speaker B: same thing with employees, too. You might have key man risk. You might have that one, huh? You know, it's like, if he leaves, we're done.
• 24:39
  Speaker A: And that's what's happening, I think, with AI, Right. I think a lot of people are saying, well, I can find code, I can build something. It's like, okay, well, you just created something that is now something just as hard to support. Who's going to support it? Whether it's in Excel or something you've coded, somebody has to keep it alive. And so when you think of the total cost, it's okay, where's that Right. Mix. So when I think of maybe financial systems, sometimes the upgrades are, and the patches and the updates are pretty predictable enough where you can leverage a good firm to help keep that going. But I do believe when you think of something that's dynamic, constantly changing, you're going to need to have at least a mix where sometime internal talent needs to know what's going on too, so they can keep up with maybe that, that strategy or kind of keep one step ahead of, of where that, that possibility is going to go.
• 25:32
  Speaker B: Please come to the AI Roundtable on Wednesday.
• 25:34
  Speaker A: The.
• 25:35
  Speaker B: Well, here's the thing. I mean, a lot of people are going to implement AI and they're going to build something with AI and it may work and it may be great.
• 25:44
  Speaker A: Correct.
• 25:45
  Speaker B: And then one month later, the model
• 25:47
  Speaker A: changes, something happens, or the person leads. The person who built it leads.
• 25:51
  Speaker B: Terrified, Greg, of you leaving. We built like A serious model with like agents and whatever, Claude, whoever you want to call it, you know, just decided one day we're going to change how, you know, APIs work and how tokens are spent across the platform. And it was just like, okay, there goes the. I mean, we're small enough that we can be nimble and change something. Right? But what if you were like the Titanic or whatever? It would be like, you know, what if you were a big manufacturing company that really bet on this area of AI? And to me, that would be the. That's the argument for Point Solutions. I know here's little AI things at work, you know, like little ones. Like little point solution AI made a huge difference in the world.
• 26:32
  Speaker A: And isn't that where we just saw. There's something in the news about even Microsoft where they're trying to lower their employees leveraging cloud just because of the cost and plus they want to use their own internal, but it was just too expensive. So I think it's always about where's the value of where you spend your technology investments. Right. And then how are you optimizing to deliver the most value and impact to your, your company? And then when you think of Point Solutions, I'm thinking of, instead of buying seven disparate systems, could you have gotten away with three? Like, that's what I always think of is how are you driving for simplicity when you think of your enterprise roadmap? Like, I can't begin to tell you every company has, you know, five systems that could do the same thing if you just consolidated to one. So that's what I think of is like when I think of how are you best simplifying your architecture where you can to drive to maybe improved data outcomes as well.
• 27:30
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I see it all the time. I see people with a hundred locations getting a hundred bills. Why? I see people with, well, through mergers and acquisitions and we haven't gotten to it yet and we're in the middle of the ERP forklift. So I don't even want to think about that. Like, all right, I'll do it for you. Like, no, no, no, we can't. Like, you know, there's a lot of kind of that. I don't know, whatever that is. I've seen massive healthcare organization on the east coast from Florida to like Maine. Well, it might not be that far. It might be more like South Carolina to Maryland. Maybe higher 350 locations and 250 disparate phone systems. Still, I've seen, I've been in, I've been the IT director for 25 years. What do you do for email? What do you think he said?
• 28:22
  Speaker A: Everything.
• 28:24
  Speaker B: Lotus Notes.
• 28:25
  Speaker A: That's the email on prem.
• 28:27
  Speaker B: Wow. That was only like eight years ago. And that was like. If I say eight years ago, I mean, it really is still. It's like, it's still 2018.
• 28:35
  Speaker A: It's still bad. Yeah.
• 28:36
  Speaker B: Will someone look up Lotus Notes being used in 2018, please? You know, like, no, I think it's a matter of your job's very stressful. There's a lot of moving parts. We're trying IT back to the kind of. You've been heard kind of like theme here. And the IT roadmap that's, you know, kind of like this Indiana Jones thing that we've has dust on it that the rocks rolled across. And here's the IT roadmap. And you know, all these projects on it. There's a. There has to be. And I know as a business owner, but also a guy that's in technology, I know how many things I want and how many things I think we need and how. Right. But the right technology person is going to say. And it's not a technology question. And this is kind of maybe the heart of what you were talking about. It's really not a technology question. It's a solution or a challenge question. What are you trying to do with technology? Like, what are you trying to solve? Because did that just come across your desk to your point earlier? Because the sales rep from so and so, you know, took you out to the ball game and talked about how agentic blahbity blah will do this, this and this. How does that apply to your main challenge right now, which is to sell more Treetop or Apple Juice? Our Apple Juice sales are down by 1% and we need to raise those by 2%. Like, how is that going to help you do that? Because that could just be a Facebook ad. And now all of a sudden you're booming and, oh, we're going to use AI then to write the Facebook ads. That makes sense, right? Like it's like there's and not write the ads because we've got better copywriters. We're gonna use it to place the ads because it's gonna be more efficient, you know, something like that. This is my weird or imaginative mind that just came up with Treetop and Apple Juice and Facebook for some reason. But does that make any sense?
• 30:30
  Speaker A: What I said it does. And I think that's where it is. A strategic enabler is if we're in those Conversations talking less about the platform, the tools. And having a laund is can we directly tie back to what does the organization need the most? How is the CEO and board measuring performance Right for the company?
• 30:53
  Speaker B: They have to be business leaders.
• 30:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it always starts off with that. It's less of. But we need to upgrade the system. It's like, okay, let's start off with first, what is the company trying to do? What's right in front of us. And I think that's why it's, it's probably less popular still now. But I don't really believe in a lot of the five year roadmaps. I think a lot of organizations, things are changing just so dynamically that you have to think of what's best for the next three to six months. Like you know what's best.
• 31:20
  Speaker B: That's like an agile thing that should be an agile. Should be able to bang that one out. What's our 90 day plan with our two week sprint like.
• 31:28
  Speaker A: Exactly. And how are you tying that back? And then how are you also communicating marketing and selling the opportunity? If you see something that's not on the list that should be, are you spending enough time getting in front of it so it doesn't feel like you have to wait for a crisis to then do something about it?
• 31:47
  Speaker B: Please, no crises. Brings me to the next question, which is tell me about a moment in your career when there was a crisis and you were a hero and if you and your team had not been there, everything would have come to a crashing halt, the business would be on fire, everything is gone. Please, I would like to hear your war story, whatever that is. There has to be a moment in your career where if you weren't there, everyone would have cried more.
• 32:12
  Speaker A: Nice. Well, I won't, maybe I won't bring up like the cybersecurity incidents. I'll bring up something more heartwarming.
• 32:17
  Speaker B: No, we like fear and doom and gloom. I love, sometimes I ask like, oh, is this horrible, horrible, you know, ransomware attack that happened right after I came in, it wasn't my fault. And I'm like, well what did you do? Like we paid the ransom. And I mean that sometime is the answer, to be honest with you.
• 32:34
  Speaker A: Yeah, but then, but then it's like, okay, but what are you gonna do differently? Are you gonna mitigate the risk? And yeah. Cause you can't just make it go away. So I, I think one of my, it's, it's interesting. I think one of my big career wins, I think was when I was at a biotech firm. It was in the middle of COVID year and I joined right before then and we had an accelerated timeline to build a cost a custom HIPAA compliant solution. And I think one of the reasons why I think that one it has just an incredible story is you know you have a lot of impossible odds happening right before COVID it was you got to deliver custom software within a matter of months. They didn't know exactly if we were going to do Bill versus five for some of the architecture ended up being a blend. And what made it so complicated was I joined with the intent of the company going through an IPO process. So you know, you have to think everything's amazing. I'm super excited to be back in the biotech pharma space. I spent over 16 years in that industry. Love it. And at the time it was help the organization go through these necessary changes and controls and then we're going to grow. We had the incomplete acquisition. So just like what you'd mentioned, I'd walk into rooms. It's how come we can't talk to so and so. And they were. Some of the company was on the old Skype versus teams. It was just, it was, it was like some of the foundational stuff but then you could kind of predict what my future was like. Then a couple months later it was just everyone going home and working through Covid from home in the middle of a transformation. Huge, huge change. And it was during that time where the company was going through a lot of tough times. So if you could imagine during that time there was no elective surgeries or they were dramatically reduced.
• 34:21
  Speaker B: Right.
• 34:21
  Speaker A: So the organization was actually going through a tough time. They were going through furloughs while we were, you know, having to kind of burn the midnight oil by developing a bunch of different technology custom solutions as well. And then in the middle of it, we, we were also guiding the company to instead of going through an IPO process to help them go through a divestiture process. So we were helping them break up the companies. So if you can just imagine the challenge from a technology perspect when you think you're all rowing in one direction, going through growth, the exciting time, it was like no, the company was dealing with a lot of uncertainty, dealing with a lot of change. And then we were having to help the company go through a breakup in the middle of rolling out some, some really huge transformational software. And it, it was one of those things where we couldn't disrupt the supply chain. So if you can Imagine there were some states that were open, some notes we were also submitting, you know, sending off corneal eye tissue that had a 14 day window even to other countries. So it wasn't like we could just roll it out and have things just sit idle. And there were times that I was, was wondering, is this going to be too impossible to do? Like if you think about it, because you got to keep your team motivated, there's a lot of uncertainty. You had a lot of people out there everywhere else that were running around either quitting or frustrated with COVID But
• 35:48
  Speaker B: we collecting their checks.
• 35:49
  Speaker A: Oh yeah. But somehow we all. That wasn't off. It was, it was actually an amazing time. And I would say it wasn't just a we did it because we were amazing. I think it was the alignment also with the CEO at the time. So if you can imagine the wild swings in direction, you're going ipo? Nope. You're going to finish this acquisition, then you're going to break up the company into three different pieces. You're still going to build the custom software. There was some issues with some potential legal issues that we were facing around the same time as well. So there was a lot of moving parts. And I think it was the alignment with the CO at the time, in addition to the technology team and then all the different department VPs. It was interesting to see how fast everyone kind of embraced the change, the change in direction several times and we were able to accelerate. It would have been normally a three year roadmap. So when you think of separating data centers, separating applications, separating financial systems, still building custom software, we all had pulled it off within a year and it was just, it was an amazing time. I don't know if I'll ever repeat something like that ever again. I mean it was just a, a, a pretty amazing time.
• 37:07
  Speaker B: Well, I hope we don't have to repeat that.
• 37:09
  Speaker A: I'm getting too old for that.
• 37:11
  Speaker B: I think, you know, same thing on the, on the other side. How about when everything's running really smoothly and it becomes a cost center on the spreadsheet, how do you make sure that your work is still seen and valuable and that you're still getting heard? Not that it's never perfect and we're just sitting back with our feet up on the table, but there are times where it's like we've got everything in place. This is how it's running. But what do you do at that point? That's why I was never really a big I ne. I always liked startups. I always Liked fast growing companies. I always liked places where I could go and make a difference. And then I had friends that are. I have a friend that's the VP at Comcast. Right. And we started out together years ago and he's the VP at Comcast. And it's just like every day grinding out, whatever. And I just, I couldn't do that. So maybe it's that situation where you're at a company where it's well established, it is running somewhat smoothly, Might be a cost center or is more of a cost center on the spreadsheet. How do you make sure that your work's still being seen and heard and differentiating yourself?
• 38:12
  Speaker A: Gosh, that's an interesting question. Yeah. Cause I feel like there's two different types of CIOs, I think the ones that like to go through the extreme makeover and then the other ones that are kind of comfortable with the iterative changes. So I'm more on the former. I love to go through the huge wild changes that where you're going through renovating the home. I, I think my only.
• 38:33
  Speaker B: I think that's why I keep moving. My wife's like, can you not move anymore? I'm like, it's like, why do we keep fixing houses?
• 38:39
  Speaker A: It's. It's fun to build. It's fun to. It's fun. I love to help organizations see dramatic change and benefits of what they can get from technology. Not saying that the, that it's not that it's not bad to go through more iterative changes, but I don't know, for me, I always feel like you have to keep yourself on your toes if you're in that situation. Because if you think about it, with everything moving so fast with technology and the advancements of technology, I think the lifespan of companies, I was reading about it not long ago, but the lifespan of companies is shrinking faster than before. And I think it's from all the disruption, not just with AI because I think some is mixed with great opportunity and hype. But there's an explosion of new software companies. There's a ton of competition. You've got the headwinds with, whether it's the tariffs, the war, other macroeconomic conditions. So I feel like companies really need technology leaders to constantly think of, well, what's next, what's around the corner, how are they keeping up with their peers, how are they understanding maybe what there are for opportunities to help their organization? Are they looking at different ways for the company to think of something new that they should be like learning or exploring and not getting comfortable. Because I think if you think about it, even if you think your team is doing well and is comfortable, the company's not. The company can't sit still. The company might not do as well against competitors in the next five, 10 years. So how are you helping them embrace and adjust and see what's possible with technology? So I don't know if they can ever get comfortable more.
• 40:22
  Speaker B: Okay, what's your prediction then? 18 months from now? What's going to be different? What's going to be different in the future than now? I listen to crazy. I'm a huge Alex Hero fan and I was listening to his the other day and I was. I actually, I tend to agree with it. I'm very much a, a glass half full type of person. I'm not like an Elon Musk. Like AI is going to be like the death of us all. And like, you know, it's. I'm not that and I don't think there's anything we can do to stop it. But Hormozi said this, he said this crazy thing. I said AI is going to be so good, it's going to get so good at replacing people's jobs and it's going to create this kind of. I think it. I can see this being the pathway towards the utopia. I can see this being the pathway towards. It's like going to be all really like thought generating type of creative human type of work. There's going to be a lot of manual type of stuff that's just not done anymore. And it's going to create this massive influx of maybe there's no need for money anymore. Sounds crazy. Like that's like way. I mean that might be. To me that's way off and AI is like, might be the pathway towards that. But 18 months from now what's. What do you see being a big difference especially in the it I would
• 41:33
  Speaker A: still say save your money and invest. I. Okay, so I have a few of these. Cause I thought about this question a lot. I think number one, everyone's going to realize that they need a Gen Z and they can't just not hire entry level people who are going to be our future leaders. So that's number one. Like everybody's gonna have certain regrets thinking that was ridiculous. Like why, why weren't we hiring and investing there?
• 41:56
  Speaker B: I don't understand that problem though. So are people not doing that? Is that, am I just like clueless to this? I mean like I don't think.
• 42:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, there's.
• 42:02
  Speaker B: I will hire Anybody that is a bad mother.
• 42:07
  Speaker A: Yeah. I think what's happening is there's a lot of zero to five year struggles to get jobs. And I think if you think about. That's why I think a lot of them are getting, a lot of the CEOs are getting booed when they're going to graduations. Cause they're talk AI is a future and then there's no job. So I think there's a bit of a panic there. I do think that people, I have a, I have an opinion, a strong opinion about AI, that I'm the Goldilocks, where I don't think it's gonna, you're, you're gonna not be on, you're not gonna worry about money anymore. I also don't think it's gonna just, it's all doom and gloom. But I also believe that people are gonna look back and think why were we treating this moment like it's Y2K? So I, I'm sure you remember the Y2K days. Like you have the constraint date. There's a frenzy to get there. But why are people treating AI like that? Like you still have organizations with messy data foundations. They don't have the talent, they can't afford it. And everybody's running around saying you have to build with AI. But so all the vibe coding is showing. Yeah. You, you've been able to automate some things, but did you, were you able to do things in a cost effective way? Did you actually, were you able to generate an roi? Do I think people should stop learning it? No. But I don't believe it should be the, the mass panic that you see today that you're seeing with AI.
• 43:28
  Speaker B: I don't see any massive organizations placing their, or going all in on some vibe coding guys that have, you know that. Because the, it could be disastrous. Yeah, it's why it's like, what is it that the MIT report like the 95% of AI projects fail and why.
• 43:48
  Speaker A: Correct. It's huge. But I, I was going to say, I think too, when I think of in 18 months, I do think that some companies are going to give some of the SaaS companies a run for their money though. Because if you think about it, there's so much venture capital thrown into a lot of these different, different AI and SaaS products that, that are pretty amazing. Like I was just playing around with Odoo over the weekend and it was because of my senior director saying. And the senior dev was mentioning, hey, you should test out Odoo. We should think about this versus some of these other SaaS, products that just simply cost too much. And at first I thought, well, we know it can't replace an ERP yet, somebody's gotta keep the tree alive. But at the same time there's certain problems that I think it can solve at a cost in a cost effective way. So how many of, how many of those voodoos are out there right now where it feels like they're going to take care of maybe some of the things from an AI driven back end process, but then also they're taking away some of the friction with hosting so they're able to solve some of those problems and they're able to optimize costs. So how many of those are out there that we're not thinking about that could provide incredible benefits?
• 45:05
  Speaker B: So many.
• 45:06
  Speaker A: Exactly. So I think in 18 months you're going to see some rising competition. You're going to see some, some, some new amazing offerings that are going to give a run for the money of some of the products that I think we've all been used to, but are paying outrageous fees for it. I also think some of the companies like Amazon and others, when you think of the platform companies as well, I think people are starting to think about things and think not just multi cloud, but what could we do to optimize costs where we have less of reliance on some of these other platforms and solutions that we're looking at. So I do believe people are going to keep playing and figure out what's going to be best for them.
• 45:48
  Speaker B: We also have to me if I want to play Big Brother here because one of my original thoughts was salesforce is done,
• 45:57
  Speaker A: we're done.
• 45:58
  Speaker B: I was thinking we vibe coded our entire CRM exactly the way that we wanted it, like in a weekend. And then I was like, oh, wait a second, we went way too far. Claude just changed their tokens. Oh, they just changed this. No, it was like, but made me. So we used like some, just some kind of like bolt on different applications or point solutions if you want to call it, to get done what we wanted to get done that the CRM doesn't do natively. That was like, like completely imaginative. You know, from a podcast perspective it's like, okay, what do we do? How do we recruit people? We recruit IT leaders on LinkedIn. You know that, you know how this happened, right? Like we want to find this like perfect like IT leader that fits these criteria. This is how we're gonna like search them out. This is how we're gonna do it. And then we Also want, and I want to track that. Well, no, CRM is gonna track this weird activity type of thing like how we search Sales Navigator and how we do this and then how many, you know, pre podcast calls do we do where we filter through people to get them on the podcast and then how many. It's just like all this activity stuff and one thing that I found a lot of CRMs don't do well is track activity. Yes, Salesforce, you can have modules that will track phone calls, you can have them track activate stuff, but not in this weird visual kind of like whiteboard field that, that, that, that I wanted, I wanted like. No, I want to know how many invites do you send? How many DMS did you send on LinkedIn? How many, like what did you say on this one and what did you say on this one and how are you split testing this that you know, like all these different things and then my producer, who's our AI genius and just way ahead of like, I've just, it's, he's so far ahead, it's, it's laughable. I just, no one, I'm just like, I don't even know how to catch up. He's like, all right, I'll build it. And he like built it over the weekend and it was like, boom. The next like day I was like, here's pulse, you know, encapsulated in this application where by the way, it's mobile already too. And you know, you can just click here. All your different, here's all your different activity. This person was on the podcast. Here's where their show page is going to be, here's their link. You can click on it here, you can follow up all on the app. And I was like, salesforce is done.
• 48:16
  Speaker A: Incredible.
• 48:17
  Speaker B: Then I realized how complicated it is to like build a Salesforce. And then I started thinking in my head, well, Salesforce is going to be smarter than that. They're going to start paying these LLMs to like raise token prices or buy out the model or something. They're going to do something to control the marketplace because that's just how capitalism works.
• 48:31
  Speaker A: And I think they're going to figure out how to integrate more seamlessly if needed. Because here's the thing, I think what, at least for me, what made Salesforce successful because I, I've been involved in the company wide implementation over my last.
• 48:44
  Speaker B: I've been in so many for so long.
• 48:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, but, but I find where the benefit is, it's not necessarily just the CRM base. It's really looking at the whole Omni Channel, the campaign management, the effectiveness there in the event that, that you can build that on your own. That would be incredible. Like if you could truly build the, all the different connections with, with the various ways that you're looking at. Not just because, yeah, from us.
• 49:12
  Speaker B: It was also like, how do we. It was like we're primarily a LinkedIn podcast. How do we also. It was like, how do we collect everyone's social media handle? How do we post it out? How do we like reshare things? How do we. I mean it was just like it was so much that was half enterprise, half this. Like it's like an enterprise podcast. It's like we, we exist in this kind of weird quasi world that doesn't exist that's halfway between business to, and business consumer. And it's like there's what we need and what we're looking for. We kind of have to build and AI enables that. But it also creates a lot of new problems because it changes so fast. And I'm wondering, and I think that's probably going to be the biggest problem is how are organizations that must adapt to AI adapt to adapting AI.
• 49:59
  Speaker A: And that's it. That's the one thing I notice is just because you always have a sting, just because you can build something doesn't mean you should. Because a lot of that is how are you, how are you going to adapt to all the different changes? But then also. So how are you going to adapt with your personal changes and what's the easiest way to do that and most cost effective way? But yeah, salesforce. I have to admit I hearing that quite a bit lately.
• 50:21
  Speaker B: Well, do you remember when email died? Remember when email became like email died how long ago for? As a way of actually getting a hold of people, it died. It's like almost impossible, you know, I mean, it died. And before when email was alive, what we were throwing junk mail in the trash can. We were like, stop. Like take my name off the list. You know, people aren't ringing on the phone. Take my name off the list. No, like stop. And you're throwing junk mail in the trash. It's like, do people still pick up the phone anymore? Yeah, they do. Not as much as they try all these other marketing methods. But I eventually realized sometimes it's faster for me to send a CTO something in the mail. If they're really important, I want to have them on the show. It's easier for me to send them a physical piece of mail than it is to email. Them because it's going to go into barracuda or some, it's going to go into an email. It's just forget about it. What if you could go back and tell yourself one thing on day one of your IT career, Knowing what you know now, what would that be?
• 51:26
  Speaker A: I think one of the advice, some advice I would say is don't pick a company for a logo. Pick a company where you can make the most impact and where you're gonna learn. And then also I have like a nonlinear career so I got a degree in chemistry of all things. Started off as an analytical and an organic chemist, then moved to it. I think it's really important to make sure that you're really cautious of looking at tenure versus Am I learning something new? You're seeing so many people lose their job and it reminds me quite a bit back in my pharma days where I broke industry and went to some, went to completely different industries after that just because I didn't. I wanted to be more recession proof but also get uncomfortable and learn as much as I could. And I think that's, that's going to help. I think people kind of stay marketable and they're in the long run unless they have some amazing company that, that they think they can stay employed with for a really long time. Because I think it's really hard to do that these days just given a lot of the change and pressures with a lot of industries right now.
• 52:38
  Speaker B: Well, I used to ask, I used, I used to ask this question a lot I haven't asked in a long time, which is what's the end game for you and almost nobody. And I don't think anyone ever really ever had like a satisfactory answer for me which is like, I'm just going to keep doing this man, until I, I die. Because, and I think it might be because most IT people are like the number one value. If we were to ask what's the number one value of everyone across all the shows, they're all gonna number one value. Like without a doubt they're all gonna say curiosity. Yeah, we look for someone which is really. I, I don't think you would say that. Like if you were to ask the CEO what's the number one trait or quality in a CEO? No one's gonna say curiosity. Yeah, it, they always say curiosity, which is interesting.
• 53:18
  Speaker A: Which is for me I just love learning. I think if you love learning, like who?
• 53:22
  Speaker B: Well, I've never had a chemistry major. I don't think I've ever had, I mean, I'VE had biopharma people. I've had biopharma people. But like so many people get into it. It's like, I mean there probably is and I'm just not remembering because it's hundreds and there's other, I have, there's four other hosts to the show and. But usually everyone kind of came into it like by mistake. Is that true with you? Like, how'd you get in?
• 53:44
  Speaker A: Yes. So I worked at Pfizer and I. They needed one type of geek to talk to the other type of geek. So I, I worked in a lab, was helping out with databases and I actually enjoyed it. It's just, I just wasn't excited about it. I think every day you go in and it's a lot of the same stuff.
• 54:03
  Speaker B: Micropycutting.
• 54:05
  Speaker A: What's that?
• 54:06
  Speaker B: I was, look, I was a, I was a chemistry major for two years in college and then I dropped out.
• 54:11
  Speaker A: Oh.
• 54:11
  Speaker B: Because everyone in my family's a doctor and it's like, what are you going to major in? It's either like biology, chemistry, or you're going to do or engineering or something. I was just like, nah, it's like a dying breed in my. You can't just be a doctor just because everyone else was. It's too much work. You have to be die hard. And I was like, nah, just like inorganic chemistry was enough studying and valence electrons and stuff. I was just like, nah, this is exhausting. I don't have it. I'm like, I'm done. But I knew enough, I know enough to know that working in a lab or biopharma, it's. Is going to be. I can see that being monotonous.
• 54:46
  Speaker A: Not monotonous, but, but it can get pretty repetitive. And my original plan was, of all things, I went on a game show in my college years because I wanted to get a PhD because I was a broke college student and I thought, oh. Because I didn't win any money, I thought, well, I'm going to go get a job. And then I ended up as a analytical and an organic chemist. I loved working in pharma. I just got bored of the monotony and at the time the technology leader needed somebody who could translate geek to geek. So it was more of, hey, do you want to work in it? Help us as we're building out not just custom software, but just projects and somebody who knows how to talk to the other types of nerds in this company. So that's what started my career in technology.
• 55:34
  Speaker B: I'm looking at your career timeline right now we both worked at Starbucks. There's like one in four people worked at Starbucks at some point.
• 55:39
  Speaker A: That's funny. Were you at headquarters then or.
• 55:42
  Speaker B: No, no, no. I like, it was like, what's. I graduated from college and got married and I was like, I gotta get a job right away. And like, Starbucks was like, hey, we need store managers. We're gonna pay you a salary. So like, I was like a store manager then. I did asset and security protection. I did. I was like in then training and developing other managers and stuff, you know.
• 56:00
  Speaker A: Nice. That was my, that was. My break from pharma was like, they. I got relocated to Washington and, And
• 56:06
  Speaker B: I thought, okay, tech systems at some point. I've worked with them somewhere in the past. I cannot remember a while back. But I'm just.
• 56:13
  Speaker A: They're on my short list. I. I absolutely love them as partners. They're. They're amazing.
• 56:18
  Speaker B: I'm trying to remember what, how it went and what, what I was doing with them. At some point it'll probably, like, it'll probably come back to me at some point. But yeah, you've got, I mean, you've got a nice, A nice list going on here. The. So, so many people are like, one of the number one traits is curiosity. But what is the end goal? Like, what's the end goal for you? Like, sail off into this. Like, do you believe in retirement or anything like that? Because it's a fuss. I mean, it's a lie. Like, you know, like we're. That we're gonna like, live out these golden years when we're 70 or on. And I just, I've seen it from all my doctors in the family and they all, they're all living out there years remembering that the glory days were actually when they were a doctor working ridiculously long days.
• 57:00
  Speaker A: Long days. And so my husband said I couldn't. I can't plan to retire anytime soon because he says I'll drive him about sit home. I, I actually am. And I, I think other IT leaders are probably saying this as well. I'm actually really enjoying supporting boards right now. So I'm a board advisor to a couple of firms. One of them is in that it's Sullivan Cotter and they tailor a lot of services and assist SaaS product towards the healthcare industry. Okay. Which I absolutely love. I'm part of a committee with a bunch of physicians. And it's just, it's wonderful because your, your conversations are always about how are you helping improve healthcare outcomes.
• 57:38
  Speaker B: I've been asked to be on a Bunch of boards before. I'm kind of like, I don't have time for that, do I? I mean, I'm just like, how, what's, what's the, what's the time commitment?
• 57:46
  Speaker A: The time commitment, you know, the first couple of years for that for them was a lot heavier because you're, you're ramping up and onboarding. So if you're new, I assume you'd spend. But right now we meet four times a year minimum. But I always try to do extra. Like if they want to have any meetings offline, we do that as well. And then I'm also supporting a cybersecurity firm called Agency. Okay. And they provide not just GRC solutions, but they do a lot to help a lot of startups, rising startups that, that want to become, that want to go public and they need to make sure that they're getting a lot of their compliance into check. And they also provide cybersecurity services. So those conversations, I, I probably meet with them maybe about an hour a month. So it's not a huge commitment of time. But I just find joy because you're actually helping other companies as they're, they're working on anything from their go to market strategy to if there's areas of that they need to be thinking about from a partnership opportunity, maybe it's around scaling or talent management. So I'm actually having a lot of fun because it's not just about technology. It's just, it goes again, it goes back to how are these companies thinking about growth, differentiation, scaling. A lot of technology leaders can do those things too.
• 59:06
  Speaker B: It's more sophisticated conversations without the pressure of. Yeah, it's more collaborative, I guess, and
• 59:13
  Speaker A: doing things over and over and over again. Because I, I think that's what happened in the CIO role days where I had to take a break and to go and I felt like it was almost the definition of insanity where you're just doing things over and over again. And I wasn't surprised anymore. And I, I thought if I'm going to do this again, you know, I, I have to, I have to be part of helping an organization grow and do different things. I think with AI that helps, but I don't want to solve the same problems over and over again.
• 59:40
  Speaker B: Why does consulting always seem to be this like temporary gig? Why can't consulting be like this permanent? I've been doing it forever. But then I was like, well, I gotta start the podcast because I can't just only do consulting forever.
• 59:51
  Speaker A: Even though that's well I. I think, again, I think people find joy in, at least for me, it's. It's through a portfolio of work, right?
• 59:59
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 59:59
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because I think part of what I've been doing as well lately is where I'm part of the Inspire program. It's, you know, the national Inspire program where they have the. The cio CISO networks, and I'm actually part of it's pretty small group of people where they help mentor and coach aspiring CIOs and CISOs. I am enjoying that so much. I feel like it's a way to give back. I feel like everything we do should be around impact. And so. So for me, when I think of that portfolio of work, it's. I think those are the things that round out being a cup filler in your. In your career.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker B: If I was to ask you, what's the single biggest frustration, problem, or challenge that these CTO CIOs that you're mentoring have, what is it?
• 1:00:42
  Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. I would say, and I, I feel it too, where people think they can bypass you because a vendor or a business VP said something, they knew they had the better answer. So here's the deal. You would never ask a marketing VP to go talk to your board about the balance sheet. So why on earth would you have other leaders more credible than your technology leaders? When it talks, when you talk about maybe where the organization should go, I don't think enough.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker B: I can't believe it took us this long to get here. That's the key. Yes, that is. That is what this is all about. That is exactly what this heart of this show is about.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker A: Correct.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker B: I want to know what the answer to that is.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker A: Stop speaking geek and ease.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker B: No, for real.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker A: I think that's what it's.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker B: Get into sales. Quit.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker A: That's. That's the idea, though, is as technology leaders, we have to be selling. We have to be marketing. And when. If we spend all of our time talking about tools and platforms and AI and vibe coding, we're missing the whole point.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker B: And I think, what do we need to sell? What do we need to sell? Because here's the problem again. It's back to if I asked you, oh, what the. And we're going over this now. I don't care. This is it. Like when, when. When I got back to, like, curiosity being, like the number. It's not like aggressive achievements, you know, which might be what's behind the sales guy, or it's like, dude, there's. Or it's like scaling the company and like, These driven business values that might be the things that are driving the other people that are. But to answer your question, why would you choose this person over that person? There's a reason why they're able to fill a need, solve a problem that at least from a perception standpoint, from a sales or vendor standpoint, that your IT leader was not able to do or at least express or even come to even be able to ask those questions or ebill to to dig up. And I think it's coming full circle back to the AI thing as well because I we were having an AI did an AI podcast earlier and we are talking about how you have to build your group of stakeholders in the in the AI committee or AI steering committee, whatever you want to call it, inside our company. And we have to not be using AI as the hammer. Like we just buy this AI thing and then it becomes on the roadmap for 25 years or whatever it is and never gets used and builds up. But it's like we must be get our stakeholders together and find out what is the number one solution and challenges that we're trying to solve as a business. And I think that that's where sales do a much better job uncovering that pain point that maybe while the CTO or CIO is in the background keeping the blinky lights on and they're keeping
• 1:03:45
  Speaker A: to and they're doing too much of the geek talk where is Imagine if you instead of saying and explaining things how are you connecting with your leaders? Sometimes you have to create. Create tiny demos and explain the art of the possible and you almost have to. You. You have to put your mindset. That's why I think it is good if some leaders have been a consultant prior. I do think you learn things. You really do. I also think you learn if you're not in technology in your entire career like if you spend part of it, you know, actually in a business line or doing some type of rotational assignment. People need to see and and feel what it's like to be on the other side and what, what it's like to be, you know, in front of. In front of people, but in a different way. I also believe that you can't cookie cutter your approach depending on who you're talking to. Like you people you in storytelling is an overused buzzword lately. But I feel like a lot of times when people talk they talk in in trying to explain how they want somebody to hear something versus is how are you connecting with the audience so they'll understand and comprehend what you're saying and where the opportunity is. And are you finding different ways to show them? Because it doesn't always work. It doesn't always work. You show a PowerPoint or even if you decode all the crazy acronyms with. With all these different solutions. But are you giving them the right analogies, the right stories, or even the right demos to help bring to life what that opportunity is? And then. Then why aren't we in the room talking about selling and delivering quick wins? You know, maybe not like the sales team.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker B: Maybe we don't have the training. So back to your. Back to your thing, though. But, like, so again, what's the single biggest frustration, problem, or challenge that new CTOs and CIOs are bringing to you in your mentoring?
• 1:05:36
  Speaker A: That's. That's all it is. It's all around the personal branding, the selling, the marketing, having to speak in front of these large audiences. Yes, all of it. It's like a common theme and trend. I thought, oh, well. And then what. What a lot of people don't know is I'm naturally extremely introverted and shy. I don't like putting myself out there. Like, even do it on podcasts.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker B: I said I love it. But there. There's a whole group of some of the most successful salespeople in the world, all known to be severe introverts.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker B: Like science nerd introverts. Super good salespeople. And you know why?
• 1:06:15
  Speaker A: I.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker B: They're very good at the. Need more caffeine. What's wrong with me? Like, assessments. They're very good at discovery, so they're very good at asking questions and then asking another question and asking another question and shutting up and listening and taking notes and finding a solution to a problem.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker A: Correct.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker B: And that's. And. And if. If an IT person or IT leader is getting up in front of a group of people and they're just thinking, oh, my gosh, I gotta talk. I gotta give a presentation. I've gotta sound smart. I can't sound stupid. Like, then you're not selling, you're speaking. You're just regurgitating stuff. And people are gonna be like, dude, are we done? Whereas if you get up showing people
• 1:07:02
  Speaker A: how smart you are, and then sometimes you're offending them. I remember helping some of them with their really, really big PowerPoint. And then I gave them kind of thoughtful questions about it. It's like, you know, what type of. What actions do you want them to take away with what you're saying to them? So it's almost like you Almost have to go back and rehearse. What are you trying to make them decide on? How do you want to make them feel? Cause that. That'll tell you right away. Is your approach really focused on trying to influence sell and market? Right?
• 1:07:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's really asking. We need to just ask more. More, listen more. But that's like. So do you think then that a. A How to influence in friends and win people. Whatever the book is how to win friends and influence people. Sales and marketing for I T. Type of thing. Like, do you think that would be successful? We should do a course.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker A: I have no idea.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker B: I'm just gonna start doing a thing on each podcast from now on. We're gonna be like, okay, this section of the podcast is how to sell yourself to. Like, you're selling this to that or what do you do? Yeah, wrong.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker A: You know, I. I actually didn't even think I would even write a book, but I just started. I started to write while I was in consulting because I started to see all the different patterns. I thought this is not just during my CIO stints or mentoring different leaders. This was happening everywhere. It's always the same challenge.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker B: So it has been an absolute pleasure. We look forward to the book. Book plus, we have AI you can just. You can sit down and just dictate. It's easier to write a book now than it ever was.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker A: Like, you can sound in the same. There's no. There's no heart.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker B: Cannot use AI for anything human. Like, seriously, it's so I want to barf every time I get some new invite or some new email and it says, like, the great unlock we have, we're going to unlock this. And like, the word. I was like, this is not how people talk. Oh, that's why. But that's where, like, if you get a microphone and you record. That's why I have like a really, really good dictation app. And it says, do you want me to rewrite this with AI Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Use AI to write and to. I mean, to take your dictation, right, and maybe fix some, I don't know, punctuation or whatever, break it out into chapters and outlines and organize it and stuff like that. That.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker A: That's exactly right.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker B: Well, you can write. I mean, you can write a book faster. And then with Amazon, you can literally. I mean, you can. You don't need to pay the guy in on upwork anymore to format your book. AI Will do that and you can upload it to Amazon. And now you've got your book, and you can even print it out right then and there. It took me. I think it took me eight to nine months to do the book. I don't think it's good. I think I need to do a. I think I need to. I should have never allowed it to be published. I should. I'm going to do a 2.0. Or, you know, is speaking the language of business it. Which is exactly the subject we're talking about.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker A: Okay, that is so awesome. Now I need to read it. I have no idea. Ah.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker B: So you know when you do something and you're like. And you go back in the past and you're like, oh, my gosh, if I listen to the first podcast, I'm like, am I serious?
• 1:10:10
  Speaker A: And I look back and say, I think it's. I think it's so great because you're putting yourself out there. I have to admit, it's the only
• 1:10:15
  Speaker B: way to get better.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker A: I do. And I also feel like there's always something to share. There's always something we can learn from each other. Other.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker B: I mean, if you go back to, like, the first, like, go back to the first Mr. Beast, like, YouTube video. I don't even know. My kids watch Mr. Beast. I know, like, some of his things, like, very. But I think, like, his first videos, I was like, yeah, this was another thing that Alex Horosi mentioned the other day. I think it was, like, just him counting to a million or something. You know, it was like. You know, like, everyone starts out, like, these horrible things, and then you're like, like, I don't know. What was the first Joe Rogan podcast? It was just him and his buddies, like, they were, like, sitting around talking, and, like, look at him now. Super pleasure having you on the show, Teresa Duran. You've been heard.