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421- There Is No Zero-Fail Environment w/Drew Ludwick · You've Been Heard

• 0:09
  Speaker A: Well, welcome to another episode of you've Been Heard. Today we've got Bart Waris and Bart is a finalist for the 2025 Barbee Awards. Bart.
• 0:22
  Speaker B: So last year's award final.
• 0:24
  Speaker A: Okay. All right.
• 0:26
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 0:27
  Speaker A: So welcome to the podcast. We appreciate the experience that you're bringing to us and do me a favor and tell us a little about you.
• 0:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, been in it for probably longer than I want to admit, but at least before windows. So 30 I got so great too, man. Yeah, a couple great. I used to have really long hair. No, I just, yeah, just been just plugging away at it. Just trying to make a living and raising, raising kids who are all adults now and doing their thing. And so it's been an interesting trajectory and so living a little vicariously through them and being young and seeing the world. But been fortunate to be in the Denver area for all my career as well. So got to be home a great deal and pick and choose on the road and yeah, I just grew up in a family of blue collar that had a construction company, asphalt and oil fields and the last thing on my mind was ever touching a computer to it's a career. So I think we've seen a lot of things happen during those couple decades so.
• 1:31
  Speaker A: And of course did a little bit of the stocking ahead of the ahead of things. And you've been in multiple industries like myself. I've been primarily transportation or my 25 plus years but. But tell us a little about all of the different industries that you've touched.
• 1:47
  Speaker B: Oh yeah, it's. It was funny. First touch of a computer was actually the Cray supercomputer at Marathon Oil here in Colorado. Had a data center pivoted into healthcare. So worked in data centers in healthcare all the way up from the former mainframe VAX to Unix to Windows and nt and then got a chance to move into telecom and of course that was hot before the turn of the century. The US West Quest days of rapid ascension into the before the dot com bubble burst. So then ICG Communications and going from everything from the background up to the forefront, rolling out windows and going from VAX administration and late nights printing documents and changing power packs to front end of shoot dial up modem creations and then got an opportunity to move from there actually into kind of the finance group which was home warranty company, so one of the largest home warranty companies. So moved from telecom into that. Then got an offer to go into banking and I got to learn cybersecurity and banking industry. And then lo and behold they had that little bubble there that burst when undercapitalization happened. So the bank was seized and sold by the fdic. And so worked through that transition and said, yeah, I think I've had my fill of banking. Put my name back.
• 3:10
  Speaker A: What would that experience ruin you on that?
• 3:12
  Speaker B: Yeah, nothing like a few federal officials sitting there with M16s telling you to shut down every system the bank. That's always an interesting story. It's a heck of a day. That's a day that was a Friday. When you watch those changes and you watch how businesses impact and people are impacted, and then you help transition a bank to the big bank, that bottom. And so that was good experience. And then found myself interviewing at Oil and Gas. And what was entertaining was that the recruiter was first recruiter was like, yeah, Bart, you don't have any oil field experience. And I'm like, okay, I worked at Marathon crazy supercomputer for 30 years, but I also worked in an oil field. My father had a reclaiming organization. We would do heavy equipment. And so I've actually worked in oil fields. So I just chased on another recruiter and said, could you put my name across? And they did. And lo and behold, I got the interview. The CFO is know kind of around, especially in that town, know each other. And so going back to the telecom, they knew each other some. And so they could ask about me a little bit. And they said, yeah, he's all right. So next I'm in oil and gas, right? And then there's some interesting challenges that occur there, interesting learnings. And then moved over to another oil company for about six years upstream oil and gas, which is the exploration which I love. I get to go out in the field, sit in the truck, talk about what the teams are doing, how they're leveraging technology today, what we could be doing with it, just to improve how they go to work every day, right? Whether that means remote access to stuff. Also don't have to drive 40 miles out to an oil field and touch something to having visibility to the whole field at one time. And then oil kind of went on. It was a commodity. It went on a seaside, kind of went on a seafaring thing. And it went down to about 20 a barrel. And that oil company kind of went a little nuclear and let a lot of people go. My wife and I actually had an opportunity to take on what we call pre fostering and foster some kiddos. So I took a little break. Finally, after about all those years, we took a little break, took in Some kids during COVID loved it. And then at some point in time you go savings was kind of draining. I might want to get back to work. Fortunate to get in with Grable which is an interesting. It used to be a band line and moving and then for a year they're doing kind of helping ATR people move people across the globe. And so that was really great business, great leadership there and then got a chance going to mining and mining very much like oil and gas. So I moved into global gold mining which is fascinating business, fun, and then left there for a data center opportunity and then got to join Vantage, which is one super fast growing, high hyperscaling growth and then left there and joined Liberty, back to oil and gas again but under Power, new power division. So everything's an opportunity. Just paying the bills I guess is the biggest way to say it. But I love a great opportunity, I love a great story and I love somebody that's looking for a little bit of help in it. And all these folks kind of had raised their hand saying we need to change a little bit. Each one different stories but good stuff.
• 6:15
  Speaker A: So what, were there any commonalities amongst all of this besides the we need some help, we need to change things up. Which ways did you change things up? What was the fundamental or was it a different approach at everyone? Was it.
• 6:30
  Speaker B: I think it's still the same approach. You go in a little eyes wide open, a lot of interrogation of what is the business doing today, what could they be doing, what do they want to be doing? And those don't match up usually. And then you know what, what is the direction they're trying to head and where is kind of their sticky points, where, where have they not gone to? That's where the changes really occur. You know what, what's believed at the higher level is not necessarily in alignment with the folks that are doing it day in, day out. The friction points a little bit different. So I love having those coffee conversations and other conversations, but it is the same right at the end of the day you're measuring how well am I organized. So you quickly look at is there a tier one organization, tier two, tier three across all responsibility levels, whether that's desktop, server, network, infrastructure, applications. Just take a look at how are we approaching that, how fundamentally are we aligned as an organization, as a team? Because what you'll normally find is over time certain people bubble up to be in charge and other people just kind of follow along just to keep their jobs or just to be part of the team or just to Survive sometimes. And that's actually when you start talking about teams. That's pretty sad, right? You have a lot of skills that are just sitting on the sidelines and people have been put into these kind of sleeves of just operate within this vertical and that's it. And that's not why we became technology. We became technologists because we love the technology. Do we have fundamentally things that we're better at? Absolutely. But doesn't mean we don't understand what else occurs.
• 8:16
  Speaker C: Most IT leaders don't have an Internet problem. They have a management problem. Multiple locations, multiple providers, multiple bills, different contracts. We help IT leaders make Internet boring again by consolidating visibility, billing support and monitoring without changing providers or forcing upgrades. If nothing needs fixing, we'll tell you that's vendor neutral advisory. Just go to you've been heard.com and answer the seven questions to simplify, streamline and save.
• 8:43
  Speaker A: How do you discover those sideline capabilities? How do you dig those out of people?
• 8:50
  Speaker B: Well, I've been fortunate because of all the industries to touch a lot of stuff, right. And so in a lot of ways, I've done a lot of the jobs on my way up the organizational ladder. But it's just asking those questions. Some of it's just looking at the data. I'll look at the tickets and look at the trends on tickets. So I'm not a big ticket counter. Like, I'm not looking at necessarily numbers other than volume level. But yeah, you look at the biometrics, but you're also looking at where are they occurring, what organizations engaged. If the network engineers are engaged at the people's ability to access the WI fi, then we fundamentally have a flaw. We're engaging at too high a level. So a lot of that is who's engaging and why. And it seems to go back to the same people. And then it's starting to have a conversation with the leaders, supervisors and other leaders in the organization. Say, tell me about their skills. I'll get to know people, right? Where did you come from? What did you do before? A little bit. And then you look for people that still are trying to have the right attitude, best attitude. I mean, it's hard coming in every day. I kind of equate it to if your parking spot changed every day you came into the same office, you come in a little grumpy, right? Well, that's kind of it. Your role's been kind of aligned for you. Some people can get grumpy, so you visit with them outside of that, find out what makes them Tick and you'll find out predominantly the vast majority of people just want to come in and add some value. Right. And so it's a little harder, like advantage when you got 100 something people across the globe, maybe a little tougher to do. But if you have a team like the oil company, which was great, you're pumping 12 or 16 folks and some outsourced managed services partners is a lot easier, you can build a lot more.
• 10:29
  Speaker A: Real quick, I was going to ask how small was the smallest team and how large was the largest team that you had?
• 10:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, the Smallest was about 16. Largest was not including contractor 6 or 16. 16. Now we have a lot of partners that we leveraged for things, stock and stuff like that. You have to. Yeah. But in about every stop, the cybersecurity organization reported to me as well. So it wasn't just it and so everything but Vantage. And now here at Liberty does not. Did not report to me. Does not report to me. But everywhere else it ended up or started off reporting to me as well. So a lot of that is. And then I do a functional design on an org real quick. It's pretty straightforward. I mean, it's not something we in IT don't know. We know what a tier one, tier two, tier three support organization looks like. We look at an engineering side of that, of how we're moving things forward and then start to measure what differentiators does this team have compared to other teams I've had. Some of them might have a lot of capabilities on the development side or they might have a lot of horsepower on the infrastructure side. And then as you part of the interview process, but part of my interrogation of other leaders, which is me, is just sitting down, having coffee with them and asking them questions is learning how we got here, because that matters. Right. Where we think that is. I'm always afraid to say, what do you think of it? Right. Because you always get the. Well, Mary's great, but Bob's kind of a whatever. Right. That's not what I need up front. I've had that happen before. Well, Bart, now that you're on, here's a stack of folks that got work actions against them and trying to improve them. I'm like, thank you. And I usually shove it in the drawer and say, I'll figure it out. Because what you find out is some of the most frustrated people are actually the ones that with most talent. Right. And they're just trying to add some value. So the next is start to create opportunities for success. So we measured all that about three months in, and then you say, here's some windows. Let's see if people, how they react and how they lean into it. Some will get offended. Like, hey, it looks like we have some network bottlenecking here. As I look at the documentation around the network. Or, boy, it looks like we're just taking every request into the development organization. How are we funneling that and prioritizing requests instead of doing work for friends? Some people will get hurt by that and others will be like, whew, finally, okay, yeah, we want an organization. We want it to get to the next level. And people rise up. Right? And some people have already been burned enough. And sometimes it's healthy to have a change. It's okay to leave an organization and, and carry on. That's not what I try to do. I've been fortunate in my career not to have to enforce change. I think when you give people an opportunity, some of them are like, I like a lot slower organization. Or I like, you know, I like to do a lot more just random development. Oh, got it. Great. How can I help? Right, so, yeah, yeah, that. That's kind of how I look at organizations. Don't get me wrong, there's a little more secret to the sauce there, but you kind of gotta. Gotta be in it a little bit. And yeah, I'm fortunate to be working with kind of the leaders of a company, and they do have a very broad approach to what they think is successful in. That does not mean they're correct, but it does mean they have an opinion on it. Right, but you didn't start there. And then, Then we can talk about it. I've always said there's an intimacy that goes on with the language. We can talk about bits and bobs or networks and servers, and that's great. And you could probably be more technically correct than I could be, but the intimacy of a company's language and the intimacy of what you understand is different. I use the example, like, if I say the word dog, you're like, yeah, I know, a dog. But because you and I haven't talked, I have no idea what just popped in your head, but we know it's a dog. I mean, I hope it's a dog, but you might be this massive rottweiler, and I might be thinking of a dachshund. Those are two distinctly different capabilities. Right, for sure. But still at the top of the business line is a dog. Right? So it's trying to get below that level in a business as quickly as possible. So then when we talk. I'm talking your language more than you're having to talk of mine because I get more truth that way. All right.
• 14:51
  Speaker A: Did you run into any challenges as you went from industry to industry or back and forth between them and with exactly that kind of nomenclature going from the dachshund to the rottweiler?
• 15:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great question. Because in traditional telecom and healthcare there is no OT environment. Right. And so that was a surprise. And that was. I could see where the recruiter was like, you don't know oil and gas, but OT environment is just another level down, another network.
• 15:27
  Speaker A: So I would expect that healthcare had some ot. It may not be classified as the traditional ot, but all of the networked very specific types of machines that are producing information with all their own sensors or all their own systems. I would think that they kind of fall into the ot or at least you handle them like the ot.
• 15:50
  Speaker B: Yeah, you look at like a radiology department. Right. Or er. You definitely segmented that on a network distinctly. But we never called it ot. We just were very careful to create another gap. Right. Air gap into those organizations because of the protected nature. So there's. You had to get your mind around. And OT is basically what I was doing, but just a different nomenclature and a little different approach. But when they brought it up, you're like, okay, I know operations technology, but that gapping of it where a field like in mining in Turkey, that field is so remote anyways. But you also want that operational organization, like even an er, whether be able to stand alone if there's other challenges to the rest of the enterprise network or enterprise organization. So these sites can stand alone. Oil field site versus a mining site versus a data center can operate without access to the corporate network. So yeah, I think the transition was pretty quick, but it was still like, oh, so and for me it's fly out there, get in a truck, ride along. And having grown up working that blue collar and in the oil fields with boots on, it was easy to sit in a truck and ask people about it. I'd learned that in telecom when this was before comcast had purchased AT&T broadband. We were rolling out MDUs, which is the multiple dwelling units on the sides of apartments. And we're building a network to support multiple homes accessing right at AND T at that time. Now Comcast offerings, whether that's Internet, video or whatever it was, just did a ride along on a truck in downtown Chicago figuring out how does this tech do their job? Because we had to support their ability to show up at a house or apartment and actually have something show up where they could plug the customer into getting what they bought. Right. So there's a lot of takeaways. Just had to change mentally how you pictured it, right?
• 17:49
  Speaker A: Yeah. It makes me curious about the overall security view that you got by being in all of those different environments. Your thoughts and your experience around security has to be fairly broad also.
• 18:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, sometimes too broad. I gotta narrow it quickly for some oily assertions. Also. I think I take a little different approach. A lot of folks, especially in the security leadership wise in the security are very quick to point out all the risks, but they don't correlate them to the actual business definition of that risk. How leaders think about it. Because how banking thinks about risk is different than how mining is going to think about risk to a business. They all have the same again, same vernacular. But it's the layers underneath that help drive it. I'm also a big proponent of pushing that risk back to the business to define it better and better for us. Then it's always a challenge. That's a challenge because they just want you to go, just do it and tell me I'm okay. And it's like, I can't tell you you're okay. I can tell you my level of I think success on battling the risk. You need to tell me if you think that's the right level or not.
• 19:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because ultimately the ones holding the checkbook are going to help set those levels. And that's one of the things that we've got to be good at presenting is talking to them about, okay, here's the level of risk. We should be here, we're here and you're investing here. So.
• 19:24
  Speaker B: And there's not a lot of trust because of most times I've come in, it's been, well, I'm beating you over the head with, do you understand you're going to lose everything, right? And it's like, okay, we can take it out of one out of five. I can take it all the way up to five. And I've always said, you know, if you had bonus me if that there wouldn't be a breach in a year, I'd lock your company down so tight you never get business done. But I'd get my bonus, right? So somewhere in there is probably a good balancing point of you want to operate and you want to be secure. It's more art form because at the end of the day we're technologists, we solution and there are a lot of different Solutions. And I can tell you that new no 2 companies were exactly the same. I didn't bring the exact same solutions. Some of them I'm fortunate that I inherited some that were already good and we just took them to the next level. Other places I've come in and it was like, wow, you got six of the same thing. Okay, hold on here. Let's save a little money, let's do a little pivoting. So no two looked alike. But from a high level, if you were to draw the picture, it was behaving the same, it was acting the same, it was doing the same things. And a lot of it is just getting people in those positions to have visibility to it, access to it, and have influence over it. Because the nice thing is if you paint the picture appropriately, people will fill in the blanks. So if you, you kind of give the background of like a lake and a mountain and some trees and you're like, go color it. People are going to bring some amazing color to it. Right. And the funny thing is I'm not a super detail oriented individual. I, I care about the details. I care that they're fleshed out and people are giving me those. I let the team give me those details and populate them. We may pivot some of those to go, hey, probably a tree right in the middle of the lake is probably not a good idea here. Let's go ahead and erase that one and move it. Move it over here or maybe upgrade. I mean that, that's so cool. I hadn't thought of that. Right? That's, that's awesome. A little island. Let's build a little island there. So I think that's where the team concept really comes in. Because I think you had kind of pinged before some questions and one of the sayings I like is if you want to move fast, you move alone. Right. But if you want to be good, you want to move as a team. I would rather be good than fast. The first three months, I'm moving fast for my sanity. Right, right. But also for the opportunity to talk to the team so they understand what I'm seeing the business need is, and I can speak to it in a language that the business would understand and the IT organization would be able to absorb in and understand how people view it. It's okay to be honest to say I've gone into an organization where the end user experience is, is being told by everybody and their neighbor to me is atrocious. And what you find out is, yeah, you have some problems getting laptops out the door and maybe we're not logging in and as the end user first. So there's a wait. But all in all, it's actually pretty good. And so people are a little hurt, like we're doing a good job. I'm like, I'm just telling you what the noise is. Let's go ahead and bubble up that data because we never defended it. Right. We never gave that. So people understand data, they understand numbers. And so let's populate that. Let's get that out there, let's get the story out. And if it's not good, then great, we'll pivot. If it's good, then let's make it great.
• 22:44
  Speaker A: I was talking with somebody recently and they were talking about some of it's that having that hard truth, talking to people about those metrics because nobody has addressed them. So they haven't even heard that the audience feels that way, that they're doing the job the best that they know how. But they never got that feedback well.
• 23:05
  Speaker B: And they've never had a chance to take that feedback and get it. Not emotionally. Right. Because I mean, it's always you. And the bad news, the good news is nothing happened to that. Nobody's like that. Hey, nothing happened today, Bart. I mean that doesn't happen. Right. You don't get a pat on the back because compare it.
• 23:23
  Speaker A: Because business gotta focus on business. And they weren't thinking about the technology because everything worked great.
• 23:29
  Speaker B: Yeah. You don't come in and go, they empty my trash can. It just. You need to protect it. Right. It's the same thing for us. And we're a service group first and foremost. A lot of other things, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to stop just there. Right. But if we lead with service and then we do it non emotionally, which is around the information and the data and the ability to measure it. Yeah. And then you take it out of it. It's all Mike's fault that we're bad at the. No, it's not. Mike says doing the job, he's been told. And so I'm not going to cast that aspersion to him. I'm going to say, look, this is our target, this is our info. Let's go get there. And that gives Mike the opportunity to kind of go, oh, well, if that's the case, then I'm going to change this and I'm going to do that where before I wasn't allowed to, or maybe I didn't want to, but I don't Deal with the past. The past has occurred. Right.
• 24:15
  Speaker A: So speaking of the past, a little bit have in all of these different organizations that you've joined and helped change and enhance, what were some of the most radical shifts that you had to go through? Were there any of them that. That sit with you?
• 24:33
  Speaker B: Yeah, everyone has a little story. Cause I think when you really look at everything, there's some really big gaps because people get their kind of blinders on. But I was really proud of the work at Discovery that we did. And I got a chance to work really closely with a couple leaders, but mostly the CEO there. And they were. It's an oil company. They've folks have been doing this for a long time. A lot of us had gray hairs. Their skater group was a little aged, meaning they like to do it just their way. And it was hold a thumb up and figure out which way the wind was blowing. And we were starting to introduce other ways to get that information that we needed. And so the example was that I rode along with a pumper, and a pumper just has a big volume truck for fluids. And there's a lot of different fluids that come out of the ground, right? Natural gas, oil, water, chemicals, stuff like that. And so each of these tanks have fluids, and they would literally get out at each site along the routes that they had. And when you're dealing with hundreds of wells, there's a lot of these tanks. And they would climb up the stairs to the top of the tank and drop a string down, and it had a weight. And they find out how much fluid is, because is it worth taking a pretty empty tank and trying to put a little bit in or I go a little more full tank? They would do that every day, 24 by 7, touching everything. And going back and researching it, we could put a float in. And we were already. I was fortunate to take advantage of a field network that was already, although in kind of an infancy, was already there. They just weren't leveraging it to a capability because nobody had asked them to. And so I was able to partner with that field network and field leadership. And we put floats on all these. And we ran the SCADA system, getting all those readings for two months next to the people that were measuring it by a string. And we're able to show the leadership of that organization, like, I can be more efficient and you don't have to get people out of the truck, right. And oh, by the way, we're putting technology and looking at those trucks, and then now we can route them only to the tanks that need. Right. Some love ones that were getting close to full because they fill up faster, because other areas would fill up slow. And so you take a look. And this isn't done overnight. This is a year something worth of work. And it just changed the way people operate. And the other thing they were doing is they were writing down these volumes too. So they were tracking them. But they would go back to the office at the end of the day, get out of the truck, sit behind a desktop. And you got to remember there's over 40 of these trucks running around at one time and two desktops. So people are lining up at the end of the day typing in their information. And so just frustrating because if you got in too late, you. You're behind five or six people that could be. And again, these aren't the fastest hypers in the world. Not the ime, right.
• 27:20
  Speaker A: You guys just climbing the ladder and
• 27:23
  Speaker B: dropping the string and they're looking at their paper going, is that a five or a six? When I. Yeah, yeah. And so now spending another hour doing that instead of driving home. And so sometimes the office out of the field is the wrong direction from home. So all these things we take a look at. And I was proud to take a look at to go change the way they operate. And why am I proud? Because the solution wasn't hard, but it did. It did set us up for other things that because people came forward going, well, we could do better. We could put laptops in those trucks. I could do that for him. Like, oh, really? Let's try that. Why not? Let's go. Like people were coming and solutioning. It wasn't it? Only it was others that were getting excited going, wow, we could you get the answer. Like, I'm getting home at 6pm Now, Mark. Can you imagine that? I'm getting home at six.
• 28:09
  Speaker A: Yeah. When I used to get home at eight and the last two hours were spent or at least.
• 28:13
  Speaker B: Right. This is where it wins and you get to see it. And then because of that, then they're like, hey, Bart, why don't you manage this group for a while? Bring in a couple of new folks in this one. Let's get some new energy in there. And then I handed it back to operations after that time and energy. So it taught me to. To deal with a lot of other types of groups and change the way I lead as well. So it's things like that could go across a couple companies. But that's where the energy gets created, where technology is part of the solution, not the Solution given to them. Yeah. And so there's a different ownership that occurs and when that ownership occurs. And this is what the CEO I lead by, because he's like, I don't know how to tell if you're doing it. He's just being honest. And we actually grew up in a small town, Ohio, near each other. He was a little bit older, but he's like, look, how do I know you're doing a good job? I said, I think it's. I mean, I could give you all the data about help desk tickets and all that, so you could care a lot. Right. I said, but when all your leaders that report to you and I are sitting in a room and they're talking about projects that I'm working on, that's when, if I have to talk about the project that's begging. Yeah.
• 29:24
  Speaker A: But when the rest of your peers are talking about all of the projects,
• 29:28
  Speaker B: coo, cfo are talking about this, then I'm just part of the team.
• 29:31
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 29:32
  Speaker B: I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Right, Right. Yeah. So. And he's like, okay. Yeah. And so you get that little smile when CEO is talking about all these things we're redoing in the field network and all that. And he's like, okay, I got you. Yeah. The.
• 29:52
  Speaker A: As you've been automating things through the different industries, talk to me some about those experiences and about. Because it, it's kind of like what you're talking about with the floats. To me, I see that as some of that automation and it's definitely revolutionary to that organization because now instead of guessing and hitting 40 wells or 40 tanks across multiple locations, they're just going and doing the work that needs to be done.
• 30:20
  Speaker B: Yeah. When you talk about truck drivers turnover rate because they could go down the street because there's a hundred other upstream oil companies and get $5 more but had a 70% turnover rate. But we were also able to move down to 25 trucks from 40 after two years. So that's a two and a half million dollar operational savings, right? Yeah. Because. Yeah, huge. Yeah.
• 30:42
  Speaker A: And definitely something that. So how's the amount of people doing it and how upset was the business? How upset were the people?
• 30:51
  Speaker B: Well, they weren't because we just weren't replacing them. Every one we just were able to add, we were able to redefine it and we were losing them so fast at that time because oil was so high priced at that time. It was really high turnover rate. And then you're decommissioning trucks. And then the conversation started happening. Well, why are we even doing water hauling? Couldn't we source that? Well, we can now because we know how much fluids in there. So it's not by every. Because you could pay by the truck or you could pay by the hours or whatever. Now we could pay by the volume because not everybody fills their tank up 100%. Right. But now we could put. And again, this wasn't me thinking of this, but that group going, well, we could put meters on these things and we can engage and we can give them ways. Again, from a security standpoint, we can more securely tie this into. Hey, well it's our truck taking that fluid, not somebody else's truck backing up and hooking a hose up. Right. Stuff like that. But for a mass padre and a premium.
• 31:50
  Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead.
• 31:50
  Speaker B: On the automation, I was going to say the automation is again just like it. It's just a visibility to see what the organization is doing and where opportunities exist. Or you can call it machine learning on some things, you can call it the use of AI on other things. But what's funny, when you bring visibility up in opportunities and you can support it with data, again, it's unemotional, but it's also a little bit of like, yeah, there is a tree in the middle of that. Like I hadn't seen that before. Like, okay, let's move that tree. That's it's kind of in the way it's causing friction. Right. Or you know what, let's put an engine on that boat, whatever it might be. Like, okay, let's talk about that. What does that mean? What's the cost associated with that? Why are you doing this? And then I become a partner, which is a great place to be. Right. Because the worst one is to stand on the table in a room and go, you need to be on this system and you need to be on it tomorrow. They'll do it if somebody agrees to it because the cost makes sense but doesn't mean they like it. And most of the time it's just assumed it never. You never get full value out of it. Yep.
• 32:55
  Speaker A: No, the salesperson was really good at their job.
• 32:57
  Speaker B: They were really.
• 32:58
  Speaker A: And they convinced them. And then we just end up having to implement and then take ownership for how well it goes off.
• 33:07
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 33:08
  Speaker A: When we weren't in part of it. What did you earlier on in your career, what did you find as the way to become heard? Because obviously you've been heard. Obviously. Well, actually, and I've been playing with this inside of my mind, I've picked up on you definitely listen. And I think that that's a huge personal thing, at least for me and obviously for you, that you go in, you listen, and you're paying attention to the organization, the people, the business. But how did you transfer that listening into proof that you knew what you were talking about to the business? Especially earlier in your career, what did you do to become hurt?
• 33:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know if it's just one thing. When you work in a construction organization that your dad owns, right? And then your mom's run the book, at the end of the day, you got to come in and you see some things that you normally don't get to see. If you're just going in and you're supposed to dig a ditch or you're supposed to clear some land or, or whatever you do, then you go home. Well, I'd go home and then my mom would be like, hey, we're pulling all this in. Help me with all these details. And like you're seeing other things that are going on. So I just got accustomed to seeing what all was going on in the business. Didn't mean I knew anything about it, but, but you saw it like, oh, well, oh, we're, we're paying, we're renting this dozer, like, and that equates to. Should break it down. That's $55 an hour we're charging back to this company every time we use this dozer. And so you started to see how the whole project started to look. So I was always curious what else was going on. Even my first job was taking backup tapes and degaussing them and cleaning them. And the crazed supercomputer sitting over here, it looks really, really cool, especially for somebody that's never touched the computer. And so you just be like, hey, what's that do? And what are you doing? And also at that time, just. My wife and I were just getting married at the time. And. And so you're kind of like, I need a job, I need more pay, what. Whatever it might be. And, and at that sexy, an on air personality doing is this AM radio, but it was doing radio and plain vinyl and you're bored, so you're just learning about stuff. So I think that curiosity helped. But then I found out that curiosity opened up doors I didn't, didn't even know existed. I didn't have visibility upstream to a lot of stuff because usually I was working third shift or early first shift in the hospitals. I was 10pm to 6am because it paid a dollar more. But then when Windows came out, we were the first to put a VT emulator on a window screen. I don't want first, but first little company at Children's Hospital. And so we were rolling out desktops in, replacing their green screens with desktops. Now you can open up still a VT emulation window to the VAX system and, and, and see patient records and stuff. And now they had a desktop and the nurses could play solitaire. And then you people are like, you gotta lock that down. Take away the games. They're playing games all the time. And so you just go, okay, I'll do that. It took away the games. And then the nurse is like, but you don't understand. Our jobs are stressful. Why did you take away solitaire? And then you, you're going, well, I, I need to advocate for them. Right? Like, they just asked me to advocate for them. So I'm gonna go because I'm not afraid to talk to anybody, right? I mean, what do you do? Let me go. I'll go get another job. And so I learned to start advocating for these nurses. And don't get me wrong, you'd get mad at them for putting their password underneath the keyboard. But still you're, you're advocating. And what about if we had Minesweeper, too? And then the Internet starts to come up and you're teaching and all this was new. This was a frontier, kind of like AI that didn't exist before. Right. And then, yeah, a couple people poured into me and said, bart, you ask about what people do, you don't. Technology, why solution. They're not looking for the solution. They don't want you to tell them what to go do. They want to be engaged in that. At the end of the day, we are going to tell them what this we're going to do. Don't get me wrong, we wouldn't deliver it. But I had a few leaders that poured into me too. That. Because again, I went back and finished my degree years into it, because people were like, you can't manage teams if you don't have a degree. Fine, I'll get one. Yeah, that type of stuff. But I had other leaders that said, I do think this is an area that you're pretty good at. Because as a technologist, I was okay, right, Like, I could get it done. That's fine.
• 37:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 37:27
  Speaker B: The challenge for me was, well, I played two sports in college. I was forced to do that. And you went from being kind of the guy at the young age to all Of a sudden, you're just part of this team and you had to figure out if you wanted to keep playing. You figured out how to add value. Right. All right. And you also learn to come in there to get work done. A lot of people, this is a social setting for them. This is an extension of home or extension of family. And it is to that degree, but at the end of the day, it is work. Right? Right. I've been hired to add value as best I can every day. And I'm measuring myself against. If I was in charge of this company, I looked at Bard, is he adding value? And so I always feel compelled with that little voice on your shoulder that says, only way to add value is to keep looking for a place to add value. So I'm never satisfied even when we deliver that next one. So there's a little bit of that manicness that has to occur. You gotta be a little bit crazy.
• 38:19
  Speaker A: How do you remind yourself to celebrate the wins? In all honesty, I struggle with that a little bit because what you just said, like, resonated with me and that as soon as I've accomplished that goal, I'm looking for the next one. And in doing that, I have a tendency to blaze right by all of the wins, looking for the next win so that I can get to the
• 38:41
  Speaker B: next, pointing out my faults. That's very good. But we're supposed to be talking about the good stuff here. Mike, let's. I don't know that I do that well. I think the teams, when you give them space, there's others on the team that you kind of advocate. I just kind of. I advocate to them. I just kind of go, go for it. Right. And let me know where to show up. Let me know. Because even, like you talk about all these, but some of it's just awkward for me because it's the next game. In basketball, you're going to play 40 plus games. Right. In football, there's another game the next week. Like, you just gotta. You roll with it and you watch like a baseball player, the pitcher, like, there's the next throw that wasn't a strike as a ball. Like, I didn't pitch, but you just kind of sold us have that mindset of just onto the next, onto the next. So, yeah, I'd say that's probably one of my weaker points in leadership. To celebrate does not mean I don't appreciate people.
• 39:32
  Speaker A: To me, you found the solution, though, and it's one that I'm leaning into currently. You find the team member who does recognize that empower them and enable them to do that, to call out the wind, to recognize those things.
• 39:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, because everything's just another step up that mountain. Right.
• 39:51
  Speaker A: And actually you hit on where I was trying to lead with the automation question because. Because there's so much request today for the AI, the agentic. And really it's just another name for automation. And I think it's a revolution and it is changing the way that we can automate things and how many things we can automate and how quickly we could do it. Any feedback, any thoughts around this revolution and this change? Because I mean, you talked about bringing Internet in and a lot of the leadership around me has been talking about, hey, we equate this to what it was like when the Internet showed up.
• 40:32
  Speaker B: Well, I remember the modem pool used to be you had a big box on a wall that had 20 in
• 40:39
  Speaker A: different numbers, ATMs, Moto Pools, Craig Computer. I'm wondering how many of our listeners are going, what the hell are these guys talking about?
• 40:49
  Speaker B: You would call a number to get to the Internet, right? You'd tell, I know what the motor wall was. Yeah. So you had pointed numbers and you'd go down to. You found an open one and you'd keep calling that number. And people are like, this is stupid. And you're like, this is stupid. And so you then you put a box in front of that that went ahead and automatically found the next available, basically port. Right. But next available modem. Right. And that was. That was automation. That's amazing. Where I see AI is doing that, plus being able to interpret who's doing what, speed up that process, take a look at what they've done traditionally, get it started for them. It's kind of like the move from Netscape to Google, where before you had to know the. The Internet address and then next thing you know, you can type it, you could type White House and it would give you a list of which sites there were. So it is a next level. And I know that's going to be offensive to some people because there are great usages of that. But when you talk about automation, it's the ability to defriction something that has friction by nature. And so the friction might be good because it might be a checkpoint. Like we want an audit there, we want a measurement there. Now AI does that. We don't have to. We had to insert.
• 41:59
  Speaker A: Right.
• 41:59
  Speaker B: Mike or Mary into that process or the handover to another system that does that. You can really make that a lot less. So there's absolutely no Friction. But there's still ability to see the data and to see the movement. I think of the ability to manage things at scale now where you take a look at onboarding of a lot of people and Vantage had onboarded a lot of people at rapid and so somebody that was helping in HR to onboard all these people and making sure that you had the next email out in the next document and all this stuff that's done now you can watch all that occur and you have one person watching that at scale. Scale. And so replacing that to me, machine learning or that repetitive motion. Yeah. If you don't know the friction points, how are you going to solve for that friction point? All right, sounds like yeah, it's cool from a chat and help me do my thing. But it's, it's removing friction for me. Now you extend that into the business. You really need to understand the business and the business needs to interpret that for you and say, yeah, that is a friction point. And I do want that solved. And what does that mean when I solve that? I don't think we do that well enough. So people ask about is AI and it saying it's a tool that it has just like machine learning, like data transport, like APIs and all this other stuff that before you had a database and a database and talk and we've seen all that genesis of that. So it is a next iteration and next level. Don't get me wrong, people are taking it to a level that's unheard of before, which is awesome because it really created a great growth opportunity. I don't know. That's the only next thing you know, you're asking about what's really happening in the future. I think we're going to unthread some of this AI because we kind of went too far too wide. So I think the next one is going okay, what are the boundaries that we need to place? It's already happening in AI and later
• 43:55
  Speaker A: I was going to ask you to make that prediction. Do you think is going to happen in 18 months? What are we going to be talking about in 18 months that we're not talking about today?
• 44:02
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's the institutionalization of AI as a commodity. A lot of people are selling us on a lot of AI and you drop it in and it does its thing by itself. That's great. But as part of the what I'd call the enterprise level that's coming. And so I think there'll be some replacement of the current AI with as these companies fight to enterprise level, it It'll be that enterprising of it and then I think we'll get a lot more momentum on quantum computing. I think there's going to be some really neat usages as they stand up quantum computing. And you can lease some space on quantum computers. Is it a game changer forever business? No, but banking and healthcare and some other things that you need to process at speed. I hope we get to start testing that. We start to see valuable returns on that here in 18 months. Because trace like to lose momentum.
• 45:01
  Speaker A: Yeah, I would say that things have gone to me at the very least. It's the cacophony around AI is loud and the stuff around quantum has just kind of if I doubt that it's lost any momentum and actually I expect AI to help it gain momentum and it's been quiet. It's. Yeah, I haven't been hearing much through that. And maybe it's just because of the cacophony like I was saying of AI and everything's AI. AI. I find it ironic that you're talking about enterprising because internally we've been talking about enterprise levels of AI too versus the individual playing with it or using it to do things at the individual level. Now how do we operationalize that and turn that into a tool that's organization wide or department wide?
• 45:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, you look at AI and it comes in boxes right now. Right. It comes in a box for engineering, comes in a box for hr. It's coming in box for ticket management, coming in about. I mean there's lots of that and then people are using it to help speed up some other stuff. But when. I mean enterprising, it actually is doing something. When you take a look at a organization. We didn't talk about that. You look at the business value chain, you look at the business right from. From how do we. How does a business start whatever they do for a living, whether that's sales or whether that's take an order or whatever it is all the way through the life cycle to delivery. AI doesn't look at that whole chain. That's a great use of AI to go measure where there's opportunity and take some of the noise out. Insert. Right. That. That kind of grease the skids on it of how does stuff just flow. We had a thing called flow through methodology when I was at and T Broadband. Comcast took on that system. But you think about it when if you wanted to order Internet at your house or you want to order hit video or whatever it might be, you call in and you go Hey, I want to order this. And stuff starts happening in the background right to, here's your house, here's your data, here's this. All the way to a truck roll to your house. Stuff has occurred. The network's been turned up. We. We have access now we just need to put that end unit on your box and speak back into the network and then go, boo. You got. This is how you did telephone service in the old days, right? Yeah, I got dial. It's amazing. Like, we think running a cable to your house and you had dial. That's not how it works. That was. That's frictionless. So when the truck rolled and they put that device on, they turn that device up, the customer's ready. That's a win. That's frictionless. Like, the truck goes, hey, congratulations, here's your. Here's your modem. And we plugged it in and now you have Internet or the. Now you have phone. And then bye. That happened 23% of the time when I first came on board. And by the time we work with all the organizations, it was over 90% of the time that they had dial tone. Not that they didn't have other issues when they were there, but they didn't have to call back to call back to other groups. And then all these other groups were scrambling in the background going, oh, you know, Mike Kelly's house is not working. Where's he live? What's going on? What's the disconnect? Where did we. Yeah, so when for a company is everywhere from I got a new customer or a new perspective or whatever it might be to I delivered something and I can maybe not close the books, but I can call it revenue.
• 48:19
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 48:21
  Speaker B: What's that flow through look like? That's where AI I think is. Once we get to that level, then you can really see where those bottlenecks are and you can impute change to it rapidly. But that changes the way people look at business too. So the new, new AI LED technologist is looking at the business differently than. Than you and I as a. Oh, I'll just set a server up or I'll just make a change to the network. That's just going to happen because you're telling it, hey, Mike has a problem. It looks like he is not this. And then it will go and make those changes for us. That's the AI that would be in the future, right?
• 49:02
  Speaker A: Yeah. Interviewing somebody yesterday, and he was talking about how he's leveraging things to do exactly that. And of course, that was part. That wasn't shared, but it was the little side conversation. But what he was doing with it was pretty interesting really.
• 49:18
  Speaker B: The whole.
• 49:19
  Speaker A: That's right.
• 49:20
  Speaker B: We're going to leave with it soon.
• 49:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, really soon. You got anything you want to promote? Yeah, the orbeez you got what else?
• 49:30
  Speaker B: What going on about promotion? I was, it was a surprise because usually you operate in obscurity. You have small groups of friends. I was fortunate to even in oil and gas have coffee with some other great leaders where it's not a comp. And that's the nice thing about it is it's not a competition. You might be at a competitor in company, but it's not state secrets to go. Okay, what are the network challenges in OT that you're having? Oh, yeah, yeah. You know that that's okay to talk about. It gives us both. So anyway, that small groups of leaders that will get together. I've been fortunate to call folks that have poured and led me as friends and I've been fortunate to build up some friends that now lead that weren't in leadership originally. So the orbi was a surprise. And at the global scale, I mean vantage carried obviously a cachet is a lot of work, a lot of hours and a lot of travel. But it was great to see others and hear about the work they've done. And so just to be one of six finalists at a scale of that is humbling. You kind of feel like a kid let into the candy shop early a little bit. Like if they only know I'm filling my pockets. Right? Like, come on, man. So, like, thanks. Oh, you kind of like that imposter syndrome a little bit. But it was also, to my family's point, like, take it, take the win. Like, it's hard to celebrate those opportunities. It's always weird because, you know, like advantage. There's 100 people worldwide doing work, like great work, really working hard every day, showing up, getting stuff done and you're like, why am I, why am I sitting here? This is awkward. I just got to go point finger and go fix that, clean that up. But it is nice. Yeah.
• 51:13
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 51:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, it was a nice recognition. It's just, I'll just tell you, it's just awkward. But it's neat, right, to stand there. It's an excuse to get dressed up and see some people you only don't get to see. Well, I'm thankful for it. I'm thankful for that recognition and yeah, thank you, like for the questions that you ask and I get to share what the teams have done. At other places that I got to be part of and I got to influence. I get that. But the nice thing is, I think you said trying to listen. Well, trying to give people an opportunity just to be contrarian a little bit. Never take yourself as the leader of technology, but the one that's leading, how we're leveraging technology. Because I get to see a lot more than others get to see. And the better I get to show them that, the better our decisions are. And I look back at some of the places I've been, and there's people that have stepped into those leadership roles that are just phenomenal. Taking it to a level. I'm like, dang, I wish it was a lot of that.
• 52:11
  Speaker A: Know those feelings, know that experience. Ed. Yeah, it's great to get to know the peers and to grow that community and yes, to definitely just be one of the ones helping make it happen. And I loved what she said just a moment ago of how being the one to help lead, how we leverage technology, not lead and say, this is the technology.
• 52:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that. Because unfortunately, probably haven't made a mistake coming out the answer too early. You get embarrassed real fast. Right. You get humble.
• 52:47
  Speaker A: Yep, done that, too.
• 52:49
  Speaker B: Yeah. Can I go? What I meant to say was. Yeah, Nat Buoy is not the answer. You know, we probably should do this IP thing, right? So. Yeah, you bet. Yeah.
• 52:59
  Speaker A: Well, truly appreciate the time and the experience part. Thank you for sharing that with us and. And letting us know about your journey in your world.
• 53:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, I appreciate the invite. And again, surprising. Like, well, how do you hear about me? There's so many of us that are doing stuff like, where do you find that? Yeah, Mike, thank you.
• 53:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, no worries. Thank you, sir. And those of you that have been listening, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please make sure to drop us a and to let us know what you thought of the podcast, wherever you're harvesting it from. So thanks again. And everybody you've been heard.