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390- Don't Be a Tech Nerd w/John Doherty · You've Been Heard

• 0:09
  Speaker A: We're live. Everybody talk with John Doherty, cio, Columbia Forest Products. Welcome to you've been heard the. You actually have a really cool company that you work from. So talk to me, man. How did you get started in this technology thing like everyone else? You went to school for cio, leadership and technology?
• 0:28
  Speaker B: Nope. Funny is I went to school for marketing, so I'm a marketing major and I always had a tech skill. I guess I played with technology computers growing up and when I had to choose electives in college, I said, well that's silly. I'm not going to take an art or music class. What else could I do? So I did take some IT classes. I chose like database management and some classes in computer science. And I was set to be a. I thought, oh, I'll be a tech sales guy. And then when I graduated I said, oh, it pays more than entry level sales. Let me just try that. So I did that and my plan was always to pivot back. And I've been in it for 20 years.
• 1:06
  Speaker A: Progress down the road. It's kind of ironic because I don't think there's many IT guys out there that would be like, I was dying to get into sales and didn't work out for me, so I ended up in it. I, I think it gives you a good, it gives you a different perspective, I think because there's often this kind of dynamic in the technology leadership to CEO CFO world where there's a difficulty in translating complex technology terms into business. And if you've got a sales and marketing background, how do you think that helps you in speaking to the C suite?
• 1:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think it gives you an advantage to understand what is your audience looking for. Like what you think about solution selling. Right. If you're selling solutions to someone, you need to know what problem you're solving versus just pushing the product or pedaling the product. And I think that it gave me that early on of why is this good for whoever I'm asking for money from or resources from or even translating what your team works on day to day and to. Why does it matter to the business? Because a lot of what it does is just. It's like the duck you're paddling quickly underwater, but nobody sees it. But that's important. Keeping the lights on. It's all the plumbing, electricity of, of the business. And I think it's been a unique way to kind of explain what we do and how it translates into value.
• 2:29
  Speaker A: What's your general conversations with the, with the C suite explaining technology and what.
• 2:33
  Speaker B: You guys are doing, we probably focus more on projects. What's upcoming, what challenges can we help them solve versus kind of what we do every day? So the blocking and tackling is kind of the table stakes. Like they assume we're doing that well, protecting the company, doing tickets. It's more about how are we connecting to our strategic plan. So for example, one of our initiatives right now is customer engagement. And so we're working on a CRM project and kind of linking that to how can we empower our sales teams to more easily track engagements with customers and ultimately measure and improve upon kind of what's not measured today.
• 3:11
  Speaker A: Just curious, what are you guys measuring today?
• 3:16
  Speaker B: It's probably more like sales performance. So how are we performing in different segments, different customer, our customers up or down for the year, what are they buying? How's the mix changing versus what's the industry doing? But I saw in the past, my prior company, we did a big CRM project and we had a new sales leader come in. He was from Ingersoll Random. And one of the things that he kind of said in his observations was we're count managing. We're, we're going back to the same customers over and over and we're meeting with them and taking them to dinner and lunch and golf, but we're not talking to prospects. And so we put the CRM in and we shifted focus to growth.
• 3:50
  Speaker A: New business.
• 3:51
  Speaker B: New business.
• 3:52
  Speaker A: And they started logos.
• 3:53
  Speaker B: Yeah. And they use the tool to basically say, okay, how much time are we spending on potential new clients versus just servicing what we already had. It was an interesting shift of using technology to empower that. He ended up becoming our president before he moved on to another company.
• 4:06
  Speaker A: When I got into technology, it was at a Cisco startup. We tracked literally everything. I, I was entry level sales. So I did like, I literally did the probably the opposite of what you did, except I, I, I fell into it. I wasn't trying to do it. I just wanted to get away from Starbucks. As a creative writing major and a Cisco startup called me because my resume was on Monster. We tracked everything, like how many doors you hit a day, how many dials you made, how many, like what, what is actually a qualified prospect. Right. We had like five star opportunities. Like, what's a qualified prospect? Well, do they have a need? Are all the we, we tracked literally everything, opportunities created. And I just remember this one sales manager always saying, like, don't chase, replace. And you're like, don't just keep chasing the same thing over and over again. Like replace something with something new. And when you track every metric possible and you look at ratios, you can easily see who your haymakers are and really kind of move the needle. That seems like, it seems like a basic. So any new VP of sales coming in just that would notice, like we're not tracking anything or we're not creating new opportunities. Could move the needle massively, I would think, in any company. What did revenue look like after you guys started doing that? Most IoT leaders don't need more technology, they need less noise. Over the years, infrastructure quietly gets complicated. Multiple locations, multiple Internet providers, different contracts, separate bills and reactive support. Nobody plans it that way. It just happens. What we do is vendor neutral advisory. That means we don't sell platforms or force change. We start with low friction areas. Internet telecom, Microsoft licensing. Places where complexity builds quietly and can usually be cleaned up without disruption or capex. Sometimes we find savings, sometimes we find nothing. Either way, the outcome is the same. More, more clarity, less distraction and it that's boring in the best way possible. If you want a second set of eyes from people who sit on the buying side of enterprise infrastructure every day, just go to you've been herd.com and answer the questions to simplify, streamline and save.
• 6:29
  Speaker B: Well, I can tell you our backlog went from 60 million to over a hundred million in backlogged orders for production. So we grew the backlog dramatically and then we created the next problem, which is at that company, we need more capacity. So they ended up building the new factory and focusing more on scops, planning of sales and operations. But yeah, it's, it's kind of interesting. Like once you kind of put the, put a process in place and focus on the, on the numbers, it just, it can take off. Now I don't know if that really applies to our industry necessarily. Like we're pretty tied to kind of building and construction, so.
• 7:01
  Speaker A: Well, who do you sell wood to?
• 7:03
  Speaker B: Yeah, cabinet pickers, cabinet manufacturing companies distribute. That's all the cabinet makers. Cabinets go into homes.
• 7:09
  Speaker A: So who's not buying wood from you that should be. And why are they not? And it's like, I mean, I love this, I love that we're having this conversation with the cto. Cio. I gotta make sure I get it right because is there a difference between CTO and cio? We've had this conversation, this philosophical conversation before and I think if you say cto, then you could end up with an operations guy, but could also end up with a cio. So what fires you you up about your. Well, first let's go back to, like you said, like keeping the lights on, maintaining the help desk, the tickets, all this type of stuff. I wanted to ask you what's a healthy balance? And is there one? And do we even measure that? Do we measure the time we spend keeping the lights on and how much time is spent strategic planning and being able to as a, doing what a CIO should do, which is be very, very well connected with the business and translating it in the language of business, but actually shoring up the business and helping it grow, being a business force multiplier, not just a cost center, but what's a healthy balance of, yeah, we got all these tickets coming in, things are breaking, we're fixing it, all that and like 90% of our time is spent just like kind of staying above water. Like, what is the balance? Like what? And how do we, how do we deal with that?
• 8:27
  Speaker B: I don't know the right answer to that, but I feel like it's never in balance. I think it's always pulled to the opposite end of the spectrum or we're constantly battling too many fires or inwardly focused. My team, like, we need a CRM for ourselves. So how often are we out there engaging with the business and hearing their needs versus just sitting around looking at a risk register and saying, well, this is the next project we need to fire up. The people kind of looked at me with like I had three heads. But we are standing up a mill Ambassador program in 2026 and the idea of it is some one manager in it. We're going to start small, but you'll assign a mill or a factory to an IT manager and they'll be basically a dedicated business partner through the year. So join staff meetings of that mill, hear about their challenges, what projects are upcoming, and then connect them back into the IT department to say, hey guys, did you know that they're doing X, Y, Z and you might want to plug into that? Or that they're struggling with this situation that we know we have a solution to.
• 9:23
  Speaker A: Or they're using the app this way and it was meant to be used this way.
• 9:27
  Speaker B: Or they have some other app that they're using because they're not using the app that was intended to be used.
• 9:33
  Speaker A: On a 5G network that we don't manage. I'm sorry, how deep can we go?
• 9:38
  Speaker B: It's like the same thing with my key IT vendors, right? Like, I was just getting into IT with Microsoft the other day about I don't feel like we spend enough time together and I'm like, It's not my job to spend time with you. It's your job to be pursuing me and figuring out what I'm working on and how you can connect in with me.
• 9:53
  Speaker A: And so are you saying Microsoft Direct?
• 9:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, Microsoft Direct.
• 9:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's why they're, I think that that's why they're moving their making the EA strategic changes that they are making because they know that a customer account managers at Microsoft, whatever we want to call them, sales engineers, solution engineers at Microsoft. Unless you're like high up and really getting paid a lot and you get your quarter of a million to 500,000 stock options every year that are vest or coming towards vest every year at 25% most likely that role. And you tell me how often you're. What do we want to call them? Customer account manager. The average lifespan that we've seen is three to eight months rotation. So how often has that person changed for you at Microsoft?
• 10:44
  Speaker B: Well, I've only been in this role for 13 months but I've had two teams so they changed once already.
• 10:50
  Speaker A: Okay, so eight times two is 16. I did, I made it through first grade. So I mean, yeah, it's like that's why they're moving it towards allowing their MSPs and CSPs to renew, sell, take advantage of the EA program because they know that someone that owns a business and is more niche is going to take care of the customer better and they're still going to get what they want, which is a global domination and selling of licenses.
• 11:24
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's definitely a different model. Right. I grew up in the app side of it, so I worked with Oracle a lot. SAP. Those companies didn't have this partner LED methodology where hey, you want to buy our software better go talk to a partner. I'm talking more maybe in the applications space. Right. So for like Dynamics, I did a Dynamics project in my last company. It's like Microsoft is very hands off in that regard of oh yeah, go ahead, work with our partners now we have a fast track program to make sure you don't shoot yourself in the foot and you can't go live without evidencing some things, which is admirable. But I feel like in the past Oracle, for example, was way more engaged in your implementation or involved with it.
• 12:01
  Speaker A: That I see all they do. It's all they do though. Microsoft does so much more. I think that that's the issue or I mean it's a striking difference at least between yeah, SAP, Oracle, Dynamics. Like are these arguably the top three Right. So you could go to SAP and Oracle and probably get a similar experience and go to Microsoft and it's. No, we're not going to. You're not going to get that. ERPs are. I was talking about this earlier with my team. That's very, very. You either have a job or you don't. At the end of the implementation.
• 12:34
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 12:35
  Speaker A: Which has been famously said on the show many times. So I don't think we answered the question though. What is the right balance? Is it 50% of it is maintaining and keeping things running? Is it 40%? Is it none? We outsource it all. What's the best model?
• 12:50
  Speaker B: I'd go 60, 40. I think if you could get it down to 60% of your time is keeping the lights on, doing maintenance and upgrades and maintaining and you've got 40% of your department's time to focus on value in the business. I. That'd be a pretty good balance in my mind. I guess it also depends how big your team is. Right. You could staff up and you could have a set of people doing a hundred percent behind the scenes work and a set of people just completely outward facing.
• 13:16
  Speaker A: What about learning and development? How do you keep your team like ahead of the curve or how do you yourself take time to. I don't know, in the vastness of AI hype, scale and security breaches, what should we be doing? Like, is there any best practices to staying abre? I would hope that your doctor is staying ahead of the doctor stuff. We would hope that our IT guys are staying ahead of it as well. What's the what. What do you guys do for learning and development? Staying ahead of the curve.
• 13:45
  Speaker B: We do a pretty good job here. So everyone's encouraged to do one or two different conferences or educational opportunities per year. Either go like our PMO manager went to a PMI Institute event in Phoenix for a week. Just popped into a Gartner event in Philly a few weeks ago. Focused around AI. I was like, I need to go hear what other leaders are talking about and struggling with or you know, what's upcoming.
• 14:08
  Speaker A: I'm curious about that AMA event and the Gartner event because I have my stereotypes. How much of that event was actual real IT leaders speaking about AI use cases and how much of it was kind of like a hype marketing thing? Just curious.
• 14:21
  Speaker B: It could be mostly real in my mind. I mean it was like real real. Speak of what have we done or where do we struggle? I think that was the more interesting part. It was more transparent on where They've struggled, okay, either struggled with getting buy in from the business to put guardrails around it, or struggling to to partner with the business to enable it because it's kind of a run train. So I thought in that regard it was pretty good. It's not like Gartner symposium, it's Gartner. It used to be Avant, it's Gartner Communities. C suite community. So it really is just people talking about their experiences.
• 14:51
  Speaker A: Okay, great. So AI guardrails or actually getting the C suite to buy into. What was the second one again? To partner with the technology.
• 15:02
  Speaker B: How do you bring like security into it? Was maybe focused a bit on security. There's a bunch of CSOs talking about it, but like we can't stop people from exploring with AI, nor do we want to. Right. We support innovation in our roles, but how do you bring controls around it? So we're innovating in a secure way. We're not giving away data, we're not putting ourselves at risk down the road. When something goes from proof of concept to full scale and it was like interesting to hear different people's kind of perspectives on what was the number one.
• 15:29
  Speaker A: Idea that came out of it.
• 15:30
  Speaker B: I think it was just more like you gotta already have a strong relationship with the business. If you don't have that, you're doomed. Right. It was like you can't show up and no one's ever heard of you. Phil. And say, okay, I'm Phil and I'm here from security and I want to know what you're doing with your proof of concept concept to make it more secure. They're like, yeah, you're here from corporate and you're here to help.
• 15:45
  Speaker A: Okay, moving on to questions. What do most CIOs get wrong that you think is obvious?
• 15:52
  Speaker B: I think focusing too much on the tech side of it, like building the perfect tech stack or rationalizing applications to have fewer brand names. Not listening exactly to what the business needs you to focus on and just focusing on kind of your playbook.
• 16:08
  Speaker A: So when you say the tech stack and brand names, are you talking just like, hey, we just need to unify or simplify? Is that what you're saying?
• 16:16
  Speaker B: Yeah, we're like, we're going all cloud. Well like why does the business want you to go all cloud? Do you have needs to be elastic? Do you have some strategy to get off of on prem data centers? Are you focused on your carbon footprint where something like a Microsoft is fully offset? Like what's the reason you're doing what you're doing. Because I think ultimately at some point when the costs get out of control or the effort gets too high, people will challenge it and say, well, we didn't ask, we didn't necessarily ask for you to go all cloud. We didn't know it was going to cost us this much more money. So I've seen that just like we're going to rationalize all of our systems down to this ERP package. Well, why? Because it'll be easier to maintain. Okay, but is it going to support your business better?
• 16:57
  Speaker A: So that is clearly a disconnect between it and the. In the C level leadership, how do we, I guess how do we connect, Discover, respond? Or like what would be some of your. Like if you had a playbook for creating real business outcomes, what steps would be involved?
• 17:13
  Speaker B: Think steerco. So some type of cross functional steering committee where the business sits with it with an equal voice to say what are we going to work on? How are we going to prioritize where we're going to spend our money? PMO or revenue.
• 17:27
  Speaker A: Okay, yep, go ahead.
• 17:29
  Speaker B: Decide what to work on and where to invest. A project management office to do portfolio management. So you can look at those things coming in and say what are the ne, what's the next priority? And making sure that you're executing those.
• 17:40
  Speaker A: Well and in alignment with the step one, which was the steering committee. So the PMO is in alignment with the steering committee. I get it. Okay.
• 17:50
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 17:50
  Speaker A: And I think it doesn't come, it doesn't come. PMO first and then steering committee. It's got to come.
• 17:54
  Speaker B: Steering committee, first hearing committee, first of what's coming in PMO to say, hey, this is what it's going to take to implement or execute. And I think in PMO you got to have a real benefits realization component, which is what we're working on here. So you did the project, you went live. Did you get the value that you were supposed to get? Yes or no. And if not, don't just walk away from the project and say oh, we put in the app. You got to make sure that you're getting the return of why you turned on the app.
• 18:18
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 18:19
  Speaker B: Or did said project steering committee, Project.
• 18:22
  Speaker A: Management outcomes, Reality check. What do we want to call reality check? The first two sound real technical and like real agile type stuff, you know what I mean? But like, like number three is like, okay, like are we just checking the box? In other words, are we just checking the box? Like project done. It was kind of like mission accomplished, but not really in other Words. What about all the add ons? What about the. Like a lot of times people I remember in the past like, oh, we finished the ERP project, but all the bolt ons aren't done. It's not delivering when it needs to be. It's not fully implemented. This type of thing, it almost sounds like it's two different things because the reality check and the did we deliver? It almost sounds like it's two different things. I don't know, you tell me. Because the reality check could be like, hey, we need this done in six months. And you're thinking in your head, I don't know if we can do it. Well, how do you deal with unrealistic expectations? Say yes and do it.
• 19:16
  Speaker B: No, definitely not. I was just talking to someone about this the other day, right? I'm more of the style of even for my own team, like tell me what you need to be successful and when you can be successful and then I'll hold you to that. Versus giving someone unreal realistic expectations and then saying, okay, well you missed it, but I'm happy because you got it done in four months, but I would have given you six. I think you just gotta. That's not even push back, it's just explain what are the risks or likelihood of failing if you focus on kind of that type of approach. If we need it done in three months, well, what are you trying to get done? You just want the thing turned on or do you actually want to get the value from it? It's like change management, right? I've been exploring change management with Prosci in my last company in here. And it's like they focus on business outcomes, not project milestones, especially for erp. Like you can put the ERP live, but if no one knows how to use it, what's the point? Are your customers going to be better served? Are you going to make more money? No, you're going to go backwards. You're going to have new software, but you're going to go backwards in performance. So I think it's again just going back to the value. What are you trying to achieve? Why is the timeline so important?
• 20:17
  Speaker A: And then I always like the trying to overcome the. Okay, so. Well, first of all, why do you need it so fast as well? It might be just speed to market and speed does matter in the business world. I do believe speed matters a lot, but quality does as well. So it is always an opportunity. And this is just something that I don't think this is. After 380 shows, we never came up with this like solution. It's just kind of been coming up as of lately. Maybe do the different things that we're asking of it leaders but when they're given what seems like an unrealistic timeline, thinking about, well, if we were the Michael Phelps of it, like what, like what would it take? Like what if we could do it right and it's an opportunity when it is asked to do ridiculous things. So it happens all the time in order for us to kind of like bridge this gap because it really shouldn't be an us versus them type of mentality, which is what we're trying to fix here on you've been heard, it's an opportunity to be heard by the C suite and say we can do this, but it's going to require four extra headcount and this much more money. Would you like to do that or would you prefer to take a little bit longer?
• 21:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's. I was just in a session the other day and PwC was talking and we're talking about assumption based planning. So assuming you can achieve the goal and you have two choices, you have steering actions or curving actions I think they called them, which are things you can do to make the assumption come true. So that would be like adding the forehead count, hiring a third party to do the work for you to make it go faster and then you have corrective actions which are when the assumption doesn't come true, what actions can you take to still succeed? Which is, hey, we can delay the project, create a longer timeline. Because I was. When I built my PMO here, my number one thing was I don't want it to be pmo. No, it should be yes, but yes, we can do that. But we're going to need these things to change. Either a reshuffle of priorities, additional monies to bring in third party support, you name it. There should always be a way forward, even if it doesn't look like there is one. Yes, please, your point, Right. You can go fast. I ran an ERP project when I was at Weska and I had probably a hundred people and we built an entire front end on top of this ERP platform and it was like impossible. And we went live in six months. It was never heard of. Our CIO at the time was like this should be in Harvard Business case as Mission Impossible. That came true then. If you would have told me at the beginning like it was going to happen, I would have probably not believed you, even though I was kind of leading it. But the reality was it was like we had so much horsepower. I've never seen that much manpower. Like the amount of people developing and working on the project. You couldn't move so far in five days, which was just an efficient machine. We had onshore, we had offshore. It was like we were working around the clock. Even when we went live, we would do 10, 11 o' clock calls at night for issued resolution and you'd wake up the next day and things were fixed. And the business was like, this is phenomenal. Like we've never seen such turnaround.
• 23:22
  Speaker A: What was the key to that? Was it. What was the leadership kind of, that turned the key there? Because it sounds like that would take some serious prioritization and organization. Yeah, like what was, what was the tool? Was it like a whiteboard of problems? Was it a Slack group? Was it. What was the. What was it?
• 23:42
  Speaker B: We were using JIRA for software development, so it was Agile Software development. But it was also that this was the number one priority for the entire IT department. And so it got, when I needed something from the EDI team or the legacy ERP team or the BI team or the infrastructure team, it always bumped to the top. So that was a big unlock as far as moving because you never had to wait.
• 24:07
  Speaker A: How did you choose who was head of what part in communication and all that?
• 24:12
  Speaker B: I mean of different parts of the project or.
• 24:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, I'm just, I'm just trying, you know, I'm just thinking of a, of a large project like this and getting it done in six months and all the things that can go wrong.
• 24:22
  Speaker B: Yeah. So we had a, like weekly, I forget what we called the meetings, but every IT manager would come to the meeting because every IT manager ultimately had some type of sub project of the program.
• 24:32
  Speaker A: Right.
• 24:33
  Speaker B: They give status reports, ask say what they needed.
• 24:36
  Speaker A: Right.
• 24:37
  Speaker B: We would provide answers or support where needed.
• 24:41
  Speaker A: Did we tweak two week sprints or anything like that? Or I'm just like, I'm just.
• 24:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, we were doing two week development sprints. We were doing kind of six week project plans on a page to show people where we were headed. We took an interesting approach to ERP that I've never seen, which was like agile. Like we went into test cycles not having the solution fully baked, which I've never done before or again, but so we enter into like a conference room pilot knowing only 30% of the solution worked. But by Friday we'll be at 50% and by next week we'll be at 70. And by the end of the CRP we should be where we needed to be. And so we would kind of structure our test cases and what we were doing based on what was ready, which was unique. Typically it's more waterfall in those types of projects where, okay, everyone says they're green and ready to go, boom, we enter the test event and then you spend three weeks testing. And so I think that helps the shape.
• 25:28
  Speaker A: So building as you go. Kind of like a build as you go, which makes sense because it's. Then you've got real live feedback from, I guess, people using it.
• 25:38
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 25:38
  Speaker A: What's the biggest challenge in IT right now? Like if you could fix one big challenge. I'm just saying, kind of maybe across the industry or if you could fix one big challenge in IT leadership tomorrow, what would it be?
• 25:48
  Speaker B: I think staying abreast with emerging technology. I think your comment earlier on training, like there's so much changing out there with AI is kind of the buzz right now. Data platforms were the buzz a few years ago. Cloud was one before that. It's how do you stay current with what's going on while you're trying to keep up with everything going on in your team and what your business needs from you? I think that that's difficult.
• 26:10
  Speaker A: I think it's like sandboxing, I think helps a lot. I just know us playing with AI made it a reality. Like what we thought AI was and could do was not the reality until we played with it and applied it to different aspects of the business. And we're like, okay, well why don't we. Clearly it's not going to do this. It's not going to write articles because they sound lame and it's just cheesy and you can spot those type of things a mile away. But where else can we use it from a process standpoint? And then I just think the AI coding is, I think, where it's going to go. I think so many dev guys are going to be just. I was talking with Greg, my AI mastermind this morning that produces the show and puts all of our systems together and is kind of like our systems integrator guy. And he was just saying like the new people coding with AI think differently than the actual dev people. And he's like, I know, because a lot of my friends are like hardcore old school dev guys and I see them using AI, trying to force it to think the way they think and it's pigeonholing them and holding them back a little bit. Whereas I, you know, use it this way and have it connected. I mean, just like all it's like how he works with GitHub and coding and everything. It's just. It's different than the way a developer grew up. And what been able to produce is, I mean like real live working CRMs and apps and like in a weekend, things that would. You'd pay someone half a million dollars over six months to build. That's my thought on AI.
• 28:01
  Speaker B: But yeah. And I think even for me, I don't write code, but I do budgets and PowerPoints and I tell stories. And the way you used to do it is you'd open up a PowerPoint and you'd start racking your brain, okay, let me put together what the story I'm trying to tell. Let me build it out. Now you just go to Copilot and say, based on everything I've been doing around this subject area, highlight themes and different things. So it's almost giving you these blocks. It's like Legos and then putting it together and it's so much faster. And I feel like that could translate into code too. Where in the past it's like it needs to be written in this perfect flow in this perfect structured way. And it's like. Or you throw it at AI and it gives you some chunks of code and then you stitch it together and you're done way faster.
• 28:40
  Speaker A: Find the glitches and problems. I think it takes the right mindset. Back to your three or four steps. Whatever we're going to map out here first, right? Which is like steering committee first. Like, what are we trying to accomplish? What's the challenge? What's the problem we're trying to solve? Right. Then AI is very good at helping you put together like, and decipher and put together different steps. By the way, the RFP writers in the world. Gone.
• 29:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, just gone.
• 29:08
  Speaker A: Like the hundreds of government workers that just sat to write RFPs. It's like unbelievable. What, what I can do an RFP with weighting scales and like into a spreadsheet. Like, that's, that's amazing. But if you don't have the methodology, if you don't know the methodology, if you don't know, like you're not coming from that world, then you can't drive it. You have to have a good driver. So what's your prediction 18 months from now that everyone in it is going to be talking about that people ignore Today?
• 29:37
  Speaker B: I think AI might be one, so I think there'll be components of it that we don't do anymore or automated through AI.
• 29:45
  Speaker A: What's one that like people might not be thinking about like what action of it are people not? It's going to just be like, yeah, guys, you need to learn something. Because this area of IT is going to be going.
• 29:55
  Speaker B: I think infrastructure will be fully automated through AI. I mean, infrastructure deployments, resizing of machines. I mean, we're probably almost already there with infrastructure as code. But if you can get AI on top of that to predict where you need to go, I feel like that's going to become basically cloud infrastructure. That is. Right. It's going to become AI managed. I think we already had in the security tooling. Right. AI can do incident response and automatically isolate things and do different things. So I think that'll be an evolution coming of resizing a machine, spinning up machines. You could just have an agent and you say, hey, I'm going to need test box and I need it for this long. This is what I need it to do. And it'll just.
• 30:31
  Speaker A: Wow. You could take it a step further. Yeah, it could just be like really optimized for each individual end user, like desktop design for like individual end users, like fully optimized for that person.
• 30:42
  Speaker B: Or just think about the link between your infrastructure monitoring solution and actually your infrastructure. Right. You're running out of disk space. Or this machine is having some latency issue. Like it could just automatically respond and just tell you what it did. Yeah.
• 30:55
  Speaker A: Or even give you like an approval, like a red light, like, oh, approve or not approve.
• 30:59
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's probably a place it'll go, I suppose. I bet there's more. Maybe we're not focusing on IT or the industries, not the manufacturers, because there's probably more money in the business side.
• 31:10
  Speaker A: That's actually really great prediction. That's a great prediction. I love it. Is there something that you would say most IT leaders strongly disagree with? Let me give you an example of what most IT leaders agree with. I would say that most IT leaders agree that. You have to be curious. What would you say most IT leaders actually strongly disagree with and have some kind of like, common stereotype of what they disagree with?
• 31:39
  Speaker B: I would say that IT is not part of the business. I think every IT leader I've ever met has had the same comment of, like, why is it that we say there's the business and then there's it? Are we not. Is it not part of the business? I. I'd probably tell you 9 out of 10 IT leaders would probably say we disagree with the fact that we're called IT and lumped into some separate function versus a component of the business. And I think the further you go, you can't run a business nowadays without it. So it's kind of interesting. It's how it's titled that way. But at the end of the day, if it stops working, your business is probably shut down.
• 32:13
  Speaker A: Hollywood and TV always ruins these things for everybody. They don't help out like the IT crowd and stuff like that. Like never.
• 32:21
  Speaker B: I always get told like, you're not a normal IT person. I'm like, what does that mean? I'm a business person that leads it.
• 32:27
  Speaker A: We must break the mold. It's like every salesperson's like a, like a, like a sleaze bag, like sales slick liar or something like that. No, they're not a solution provider. They're not trying to help you find the solution to a problem and actually be a solution provider. No, it's. We have these like stereotypes that run throughout, like the industry. The CEO is a typically a high stressed individual that speaks in sports metaphors or it's a high powered woman that watches CNN before she goes to work in the morning. There's all these stereotypes across the industry. So, okay, so if it's not part of the business, what other. Are there any other entities that are not part of the business? I'm just curious, are there any other departments that are like, not part of the business?
• 33:12
  Speaker B: I think sometimes you hear it about finance or hr. It's really those three back office functions that sometimes get lumped into that. You asked me, I'm like, well, you can't run your business without high performing organization. And HR is the way that you ensure that or drive that. You also can't run a successful business without finance. It's more than just counting coins at the end of the month. Right. It's financial planning, just forecasting.
• 33:37
  Speaker A: It's weird that it has to like. Yeah, can sometimes get. I've had guys on the show before, they're both the CIO and head of HR. Ironically.
• 33:45
  Speaker B: Yeah. I think the IT leader, 84 Lumber, has HR under his hat.
• 33:50
  Speaker A: So that's actually a best practice. It's. That's kind of damaging. Damaging how? Because it has such a massive effect on the bottom line on efficiency or growing the business. I mean that. I think it's obvious, right?
• 34:00
  Speaker B: Yeah. I would say in some regards it knows more holistically of how the business runs than any other function. When I, when I was at Wesco, there was one female leader there that we worked with quite a bit and we had a separate finance system and a separate ERP system. And she was like, well, what's the benefit of having these things run on the same system? Like, why would I want that? And like, I was shocked.
• 34:21
  Speaker A: I was like, what?
• 34:22
  Speaker B: And you said, as there's a big gap between when you're trying to troubleshoot a financial issue or research something, getting back to the operational side of why it was, why it happened. And I'm like, you're going to link the whole thing together and you can drill. Your accountants or your cost accountants could drill all the way down to the transactions and quicker find out what went wrong or what's driving what you see in the financial reporting side. I'm like, it was so obvious to me. I'm like, well, what? And I said, well, I don't forget what question I asked. But it came out that she hadn't been to an operational location in a long time, Like a very long time, Years.
• 34:54
  Speaker A: So her response to your enlightenment was.
• 34:58
  Speaker B: Like, oh, I didn't think of it that way. I didn't have that perception or perspective of how that would benefit the organization. And I was like, blown away. And I've just. You learn that right as you go. Not everyone understands how their function impacts other functions. So you think about like, you put sales orders in. Well, how does that impact operations? Well, they have to do supply chain planning, they have to get all the materials. They gotta figure out how much machine time they have, when can the order get out. There's a lot of complexities that happen after you book the order. And I've seen that on all various ERP projects I've been on. Cause you usually put all the teams in one room and you start solutioning, People always come back and say, wow, I didn't know is that complicated. And you're like, yeah, wow. Or even like, how does payables work? Well, payables, they don't pay the invoice unless the material's been received, unless the PO price matches the AP price. And all these different things that not everyone's fully aware of the connections between different functions, purchasing and finance.
• 35:52
  Speaker A: And so how do we translate that? I guess. So the question is, what's the most important idea you wish every IT executive would understand about modern it? You already answered it. But how do we put that into, hey, you need to know this.
• 36:06
  Speaker B: Yeah. How does it deliver the business? I guess is what I would say. If you don't understand how your systems are delivering or ex. Helping the business execute, then you're missing the point of why you're there.
• 36:21
  Speaker A: Because that example is beautiful. It's like why do we need all these systems unified? I mean, they're all working and they can't see the. It's like you don't know what you don't know. You can't see what you can't see. Right. And you're like, well, for example, I would be able to provide you insight into this. So I'm pretty sure every great business leader loves reporting and loves to see trends and would love to know more trends and where they can fill the gaps or increase arrows pointing upwards in a positive manner.
• 36:53
  Speaker B: Yeah. I think at the pace of the world changing, you need processes and systems that can scale and keep you consistent. That's kind of where I think the strength of the modern IT call whatever you want modern. They talk about modern finance or modern whatever, but to me you need the systems that put the guardrails on the process. Where historically what I've seen is you have people that are experts in the process, but nowadays people don't stay in jobs for 20 years. So you can't have the hero mentality of, well, this person's just the expert. And how we do all of our material scheduling. It's like, wouldn't you rather just click a button and the system tells you what to buy, when to buy and when it needs to be here. And that way when you have a turnover or something happens, it just goes. I flew back a few weeks ago on an airplane with this guy that works for Eaton and he's in charge of their data center division or something. I was like, you must be booking. And he's like, yeah, we've like tripled in size in eight months. That type of growth is only possible through, I think, scalable processes and scalable systems.
• 37:51
  Speaker A: Scalability. Massive. Absolutely. I mean, you nailed it. How? Because a lot of people will say like, no, it's job is just to deliver the kind of like how we do it to the business.
• 38:03
  Speaker B: Right.
• 38:03
  Speaker A: Like the business is in charge of like the leadership and the strategy and all that. And it needs to be well connected with the business and need to understand all that because it's the best people to know how to deliver to the business. But you just mentioned scalability and you have a. I mean you're like, I was going to be in marketing and sales and. But that's, But I'm in it. How can. Is there like a thought process? Is there like you said, a steering committee at the beginning? Is there something prior to steering committee, like a discovery process or a research process that would help understand better how to scale faster Safer, richer.
• 38:45
  Speaker B: I don't know if it's necessarily scale, but my prior company, we used to talk about being going from order takers to order makers.
• 38:51
  Speaker A: Right, right.
• 38:53
  Speaker B: It's like, how do you get to the point where the initial problem has been identified and people are sitting around a conference room? Not IT people, business people, talking about how we're going to solve this problem? That's where you need to get invited to. Because if you get invited to that by time it gets to the steer, coat, whatever they're asking for, you've already influenced the solution. So it's going to be a good idea, it's going to be the right solution that fits in with whatever technology strategy you have or whatever your capabilities of delivering are versus someone shows up and says, we need to implement SAP to solve this problem. And you're like, well, what's your problem? What problem are you trying to solve? Oh, we have that capability in our current tool set, so we could implement this module and solve your problem. I think that's kind of where you need to get to, is you got to get all the way to where the problems are happening and get invited to the discussion. And I say get invited, not me, get. The IT department needs to be invited.
• 39:43
  Speaker A: To that and it needs, it needs to get heard. They need to be heard.
• 39:47
  Speaker B: And it needs to be a regular thing of like when you have a performance issue with an individual, who do you call? You don't, you don't call your boss, usually call hr. And so I think that's where, when you have a problem, it needs to become natural. Where it's like, hey, we need it in the room. We're talking about this because they'll have a good perspective to add to how we might be able to solve this with a tool we already have or something they've seen at another location or at another business they've worked in. I think that's the trick.
• 40:12
  Speaker A: So what's the message we need to deliver then to the world? What's that message that we need to deliver to the world that they need to hear? Is it a common quote or saying like, what is that? What is it?
• 40:26
  Speaker B: What is it? I mean, what makes a good business partner? I think that's true of any, any kind of function. It's someone that helps solve, understands your problems and can solve your problems. Like you need to be building your IT teams and leadership to be good business partners. They speak the language, they can understand your problem and they can connect you with a solution or recommend something that's It.
• 40:47
  Speaker A: Say that again. It can do what, what and what?
• 40:51
  Speaker B: I think it can be better business partners by understanding your customers needs. Yep. Helping them find solutions or recommending solutions that you've already seen or you know about.
• 41:03
  Speaker A: Let's try this right now. We're gonna try this right now. I'm just gonna let you know our biggest problem. I don't know what our biggest problem is. It's not our biggest problem. We wanna scale to two podcasts a day. Like that's our main goal. Like that's the scaling thing. Okay, fine. We got this others. We got this other problem which is helping IT leaders get heard. And we want C levels to hear this podcast. We want IT leaders to be heard. So we've been on LinkedIn forever. What is the. And we rack our brains like daily. Is it headcount? Is it a automation engine? It is a social media like app. What is it? Is it partners? Is it real life people sharing the show? Is it all of the old guests that have been on the show sharing their show? What is the best way to attack and solve the problem of the podcast being heard across all social media platforms when we have only been on LinkedIn? What's the best way? Because there's so many ways. There's like, well, we could do YouTube shorts and we could tag them, right. And then we could share them with this. Or my solution was why don't we just asks, why don't we just ask everyone that's been on the show to share the show?
• 42:24
  Speaker B: I think that's, I think the other.
• 42:27
  Speaker A: One is real believers. Like real believers, real people.
• 42:30
  Speaker B: That's a push. So if you can get a pull people desire for your show, I think that's it. Right? So I, I did a talk a few years ago at a CIO conference about building your brand. And the best time to build your brand is not when you need it. And by the way, if you're only networking, networking with CEO or CIOs and you're a CIO, well, who's your next boss? It's not CIO, it's either a CFO or a CEO. So you need to get into their head. So I think an interesting way to do it would be to get some CEOs and CFOs on here that have it under them and say, hey, give us your perspective on what makes a good it or what do they need to do to be heard? Because then all of a sudden your audience is like, well no, I want to be heard. And now I'm Hearing from my boss's type of role of what. What they want to see emulated in a cio, to be a successful leader, to be heard. To me, you do that, and then people are tuning in because they want to learn something that they don't already know.
• 43:24
  Speaker A: Agreed.
• 43:25
  Speaker B: So I think that's a good way to do it.
• 43:27
  Speaker A: 100%. 100%. But if it's just in a vacuum and it's not out there on social media, being spread everywhere.
• 43:35
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 43:35
  Speaker A: What else do we do other than just ask people to share the show and throw it up on LinkedIn? And hope is not a strategy, so I'm just throwing that out there for anyone listening right now. If you have this amazing idea as a technology leader and you want to be like, phil, do this, and I'll do it for you, I'm totally willing to let you do that. John Dougherty, you've been heard. It's been. It's been a pleasure. Any final thoughts, or. If there was one message that you wanted to deliver out to the world into the C suite, what would that be?
• 44:09
  Speaker B: Well, first, thanks for having me. I think maybe for my IT peers out there is don't be a tech nerd. Find how to be a business person. Meet your peers where they're at, speak their language, and, you know, you're going to make it a lot easier, and you're going to break the stereotype on it that we're just a bunch of techies.
• 44:23
  Speaker A: Love it. All right, that's it, man. Have a wonderful day.
• 44:27
  Speaker B: All right, man. See you.
• 44:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, talk to you soon.
• 44:29
  Speaker B: Bye, Ra.