IT Leaders

00:00:00:04 - 00:00:27:09
Adam Prior
When, When I was asked to speak at this event, I was trying to think of the things that have happened over the last three and a half years since I became group leader, and the biggest impact that happened on my team was how we have changed as a group. so one thing I want to disclaimer, I want this to come across a process more of a story rather than a this is how you should do things.

00:00:27:09 - 00:00:48:08
Adam Prior
I think there's a lot of variables to building a good team. like to start, how many people here are under separate mode at this point? The teams are separate modes. okay, that's about half the group. Probably. What about, hybrid working three twos or two threes? Okay, that's going too good. How many people are 100% on site?

00:00:48:10 - 00:01:09:10
Adam Prior
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Okay. So we are hundred percent onsite at this point. So that's one thing that's going to change as as we we talk about some of the things that I've made, about this team. So again more of a story a little bit about me. I've been in it for about 20 years now.

00:01:09:11 - 00:01:30:15
Adam Prior
Started off at a distribution company. Randomly fell into it. I didn't plan on getting into it. What's funny is, my friends in high school, it was called nerds because we always did land parties, always had a bar space together because I didn't have my own. Or the one I had sort of couldn't play video games. And, out of that small group of friends, I'm the only one that end up it.

00:01:30:19 - 00:01:55:10
Adam Prior
So, I was working for this distribution company, going to school for business. And just because I was working on the warehouse, doing shipping and receiving, they saw as an opportunity that maybe this person would like to be at night, and I didn't, I, I loved it, so I changed my major, state of business. But, was planning on actually going into computer science, and, my academic advisor actually advised me to enjoy the business side to stay on that.

00:01:55:10 - 00:02:15:14
Adam Prior
So, graduate management of information systems. As soon as I graduated, I started working for a managed service provider, where I worked for about two years as a network engineer and then became a service manager there. Want to relocate? Ending. At which point, I've been able to to come down here work for for Subaru company most of the way there.

00:02:15:16 - 00:02:34:00
Adam Prior
And I worked for for five years as an engineer level. I think we were we were called specialists at the time. And then my former group leader, retired, and I have a group leader now for about three years. LinkedIn's on there. Always happy to, to connect with people. So I thought I'd put a few things up here.

00:02:34:00 - 00:03:03:05
Adam Prior
That certainly doesn't define my career, but they are memorable experiences throughout my career. And, back in 2013, I got to work with the homicide department up in South Bend. One of our system managers was locking up for the night and her ex-husband waiting outside for her. So, staff responsible for everything. It included the security system. And, so was a number of, pressure ransomware event 2019.

00:03:03:07 - 00:03:26:20
Adam Prior
To this day, if you Google, Subaru and ransomware, you will find information on this. And then it wasn't us, even though that's what the media said. all the stories come kind of come on now. It was a supplier of. We walked in and basically rebuilt their entire environment. Didn't have to get production up and going. But what that event taught me was how big of an impact Subaru has on a local company in Latvia.

00:03:26:22 - 00:03:47:08
Adam Prior
we had to call all of our vendors, all of our suppliers say if you got two trucks on the road pulling over, we can't take any more stuff because we're not producing cars. We only have so much space for materials. So that's, that it's not happened. So and then the good old VDI deployments for Covid, this is my favorite story back there.

00:03:47:09 - 00:04:06:21
Adam Prior
Every single time I'm with, thumbs up. There's a hammer with me, brings us up. But, I had three days to deploy a VDI environment to support 500 people working remotely, and, did it three days. At the time, this particular product was in its infancy. Had it played on PowerShell, told our VP to, hey, we can we can test this.

00:04:06:23 - 00:04:33:19
Adam Prior
He followed up with an all associate email, told everybody we're ready to go. So, everything went well. And all worked out. But, it was a great moment for sure. A little bit about Subaru of Indiana. the facility started, production construction in 1987. Production started in 1989. The original facility was two point 3,000,000ft². We have since grown to four point 7,000,000ft², and we now employed about 7000 employees.

00:04:33:21 - 00:05:01:07
Adam Prior
We are Lafayette's largest private employer. That's the private is the only, company. Bigger is pretty self. The number one question I always get asked what's, how many cars can we produce in a day? Answers 1400 if there's no impact to supply chain or, disruptions. So we currently build if you buy any new car, any new Outback legacy prostrate percent here in the United States, it'll come from our facility here yourself out here in, Lafayette.

00:05:01:09 - 00:05:32:04
Adam Prior
The one thing I always recommend if this kind of stuff intrigues you. You like manufacturing? Like, see big things in action. we offer free public tours. we do during the week. 1 or 2 times a week. You know, secret dot, little button schedule. It makes it 100% free in this kind of way. Land is split up, into four different high level groups enterprise systems groups, Production Systems group, Technical service group, and Software Development group.

00:05:32:06 - 00:05:55:16
Adam Prior
And my team is specifically a little systems team down there and technical services. Our responsibilities have significantly grown over the last three and a half years. so I like to say, if you're good at what you do, the answer is you end up getting what works. And, that certainly feels like what we have done over this last 33.5 years.

00:05:55:18 - 00:06:15:08
Adam Prior
Everything on the left side is what we did from the beginning, what we had supported for five previous years. I became group leader. we hired a couple people, but over the last, three, three and a half years, we've added all the stuff on the right. I always explain our team as the team that is responsible for all data center technology.

00:06:15:12 - 00:06:36:00
Adam Prior
we have two on prem data centers. We work with a particular co-location on what to do, and then, we have to, cloud providers now. So that has around and then cybersecurity mediations, even though we're not cyber, we do all remediations 900 servers. When when I started at SCA, we had about 500 servers. So that's almost double the size at this point.

00:06:36:00 - 00:07:05:10
Adam Prior
A lot more focus on, containerization, ITSM work with the largest ITSM, platform and, that there's a whole story behind how we end up with that. but, that that is a big focus at this point. Now, I highlighted that because you can't have a conversation or presentation. I'm talking about AI. but I will say if your company is not looking at AI is completely changing the way that people are interacting.

00:07:05:10 - 00:07:19:18
Adam Prior
Everybody, everybody from customers to developers to your own employees. and so we're a bunch of talks, right now about how we can leverage AI to the, to the best, for the company.

00:07:19:20 - 00:07:46:19
Adam Prior
Before, becoming group leader. So when I got hired on five years, I worked with the current team. There was virtually no communication. we never met as a team. We met as a team. It was 100% due to a very high risk project going on, software refresh, hardware refresh, that kind of stuff. But if I had to guess, we maybe met as a team once every 5:45 months.

00:07:46:19 - 00:08:06:09
Adam Prior
Maybe we were not allowed to schedule meetings. The one time in my entire career I've been yelled at is because I schedule, and I did get approval with a vendor, so he always said it's a waste of time. Cross team collaboration non-existent. We were always reactive to change. Something would happen and then we would figure out how to fix it.

00:08:06:09 - 00:08:26:15
Adam Prior
We were not proactive in any way lacking vendor partner relationships. I've got a whole slide on this later, but, we never did assessments for project planning. We were never allowed to go to events. If my previous group leader was my manager now, I wouldn't be here today. I would not be at this moment because I'd actually have to be a PTO.

00:08:26:17 - 00:08:44:14
Adam Prior
And then we were this entire dynamic created segmentation within the team. But as individuals as well, we I think a lot of people and a lot of companies have the issue of silos between teams. We had individuals.

00:08:44:16 - 00:09:17:07
Adam Prior
Like when I became group leader, I've seen this and I've known about this for a long time. I think somebody else actually had an IQ leaders event. Showed this slide before, but you can't come in and make massive changes immediately, right, right, right out the gate. And I always thought of what's the best way to implement these small changes, but over time they become a massive change and not only as a leader have I thought about this, but also if you work for a company that's not used to change, which I, I attribute that to us being manufacturing companies.

00:09:17:09 - 00:09:40:11
Adam Prior
a lot of our departments and groups are not used to a lot of change, but if you introduce a bunch of small changes, rather than waiting until something has to happen, you actually can get better adoption and more people on board with changes. This is the very first thing I wrote down because I hated it. if you deployed something in our environment, you were seen as a subject matter expert.

00:09:40:13 - 00:10:04:14
Adam Prior
So what that meant was you were always the person that supported it. Even after hours, we were on call 24 seven. I can't tell you how many indications I had work from the beach or from my park, or from hotel room. I've worked on the tailgate of my truck at the dentist's office. I've done it all and I don't know how many to in the morning calls I've gotten for, for one thing or another, had any issues because I really did the majority of the projects for those five years.

00:10:04:16 - 00:10:26:15
Adam Prior
Also, when I got hired on, I was the systems administrator for the production vehicles, the OT side and if anything goes down that side is critical. It's an after hours call to get it going again. But the support model was support. What happened? Issue the caller earlier I think. There we go. Oh Adam does the production of vehicles on that side of network call him.

00:10:26:17 - 00:10:48:11
Adam Prior
And then they call me fix the issue. No, no I like doing that. I hated it and it just added time to to getting a resolution done. So the first thing I did was deploy a calendar that's available to all the information systems, and there's just a scheduled rotation in that calendar. It's got the person's cell phone number, home phone number.

00:10:48:11 - 00:11:05:00
Adam Prior
If that's still a thing, that one person has a problem. We're still, but if anybody needs anything from information systems, it's counter filled, all of them. So we played out the process. I certainly don't want to feel the call in the middle. And I just say, hey, call the person that's on call. So that was quite the counter.

00:11:05:02 - 00:11:30:04
Adam Prior
Okay. Now what this also means is that instead of somebody being a subject matter expert, we all have our things that we're better at and we are, kind of leaders for the team at it is expected. Everybody has a foundation. So skills, everybody understands our infrastructure. Everybody can, you know, knows our services and, check accounts and both of our we we have multiple domains.

00:11:30:06 - 00:11:41:11
Adam Prior
but there's that foundational set of skills that we do a lot of cross-cutting. Now on to make sure that people are, are sent to us to support our systems.

00:11:41:13 - 00:11:58:04
Adam Prior
This is our team, we do daily stand ups. This is one of the first things I implemented is there's a lot of things that can come out of just having a conversation of what's going on that day, what kind of changes are being done, are there any kind of high risk, projects that are going on and any, any, any changes?

00:11:58:04 - 00:12:22:09
Adam Prior
But we've also discovered that on multiple occasions, somebody has submitted the same ticket to the times, and we had two people working on the same issue simultaneously. So having daily stand ups, just really quick, really brief, there is no, no, super strict model. I just number one as we do it at 845 in the morning. I see my watch at night, 9:00 we're wrapping up.

00:12:22:09 - 00:12:40:22
Adam Prior
But the point is just be really quick race. that's going to take a long time. That's a big reason why standing up is important. You are sitting down and you have a tendency to just kind of sit back and relax, and that's not the point. The other thing is, it's very easy. When you're sitting in break gear, you can start clicking that mouse and checking teams, messages, outlook and stuff.

00:12:40:22 - 00:13:09:09
Adam Prior
So, I purposely make sure that we stand up. The board, implemented that about the same time. It's the whiteboard behind me. It's got all of our priority, tasks and projects and things that we're working on. It's got ETAs on it. Who's working on it? but it's a good visual representation of when we walk in the office and we see that, standing right in front of us, right next to our desks, and we look at it all the time.

00:13:09:11 - 00:13:35:14
Adam Prior
One on one. So I have changed how I do one on one so many times over the last three years. As a company, we're only required to sit with our correct 100. even back when I was an engineer, I knew this wasn't possible. I didn't feel like I was there wasn't a a good communication between myself and my supervisors because of that.

00:13:35:15 - 00:14:00:05
Adam Prior
I can also tell you that I've had multiple reviews and I've never actually sat down like you're supposed to. So it's very easy to be like, oh, here's your review. Let me know if you got questions. And, that was certainly happening. I'll go into more about the whole as needed or open door policy. It's one of those that's on a chalkboard for for me anyway, because, I think that that is a very reactive approach to, to employees.

00:14:00:07 - 00:14:16:15
Adam Prior
the one on ones initially I had it very structured to talk about people's tasks ahead. Okay. What are you working on? What's the this was this project that and what I've learned over the years is that that doesn't work. not to say that we don't talk about testing projects because we do, but it's not just about that.

00:14:16:15 - 00:14:40:21
Adam Prior
It is actually about building relationship with that play. Back to the time. Either you can't build a great relationship with somebody, you can meet them once a year. So I've changed that now to 30 minutes once a week. it's also officially on the calendar. It's not like, I wait until I have a day where I've got some free time and I start emailing people or messaging people and say, hey, I've got some time this afternoon.

00:14:40:21 - 00:15:01:03
Adam Prior
You want to meet? I have it in the calendar because it's official. There's some designated time to sit with me, and I can have that conversation. The first thing I thought about when I thought about building this model was, that sounds like a lot of time. I got seven people that are 14. so that's that's a lot of time.

00:15:01:05 - 00:15:25:11
Adam Prior
But if you look at it over the course of a year, that's dedicating three days to an employee, which really, in that scheme of things is not was a time. also, this is being proactive. I don't know how many things where an issue would get brought up, and there's one on ones before it becomes a problem, because if somebody is calling you or saying, hey, we need to have a one on one today because we have an issue, it's already a problem.

00:15:25:13 - 00:15:39:05
Adam Prior
and the point is to be proactive about those and a lot about the communication things that I've done over the last two years, is really about just being proactive about situations.

00:15:39:07 - 00:15:59:14
Adam Prior
Weekly teams, things. This is something that we always did at the managed service provider that I worked at. So it was really weird to walk into a team that we didn't have any kind of team sync. So as soon as I became group leader, this is another thing that I implemented. This, format has changed throughout the years, but the first thing that we always discuss is who's on the call?

00:15:59:16 - 00:16:21:09
Adam Prior
we found that somebody on call the following week, and they, I don't wanna say accidentally, but they scheduled PTO or have something scheduled, and, they're not built to support, a Thursday or something. So we make sure that we have proper coverage that that reflects in the schedule so that if somebody does have PTO or somebody has a personal thing, they can handle that without having to worry about the help it's calling over.

00:16:21:11 - 00:16:42:09
Adam Prior
Have to open up your laptop and working tailgater track attendance. And as we go over our all of our broken sla's, accomplishments completed, I've actually changed that. That used to be all of the work that we had worked on, and it was somebody in an IT leaders event that so that their senior management didn't really care so much about what we worked on, it's more about what things.

00:16:42:11 - 00:16:59:06
Adam Prior
So I since changed that to accomplishments and it's shortened up a little bit. But that still can end up being a lot of time. And I and any team meetings, any one on ones I always ended with, does anybody need something from me? I want make sure that, if somebody is waiting on me that I get it addressed.

00:16:59:06 - 00:17:24:16
Adam Prior
If it's something that's like, oh yeah, when you say that to me last week, I totally dropped the ball on it. I always make that priority. because I've got I have that roof technical from trying to take across training used to be in our weekly since I had like 15, 20 minutes carved out for that was clearly not enough time because if we had something to discuss, we quickly ran over half of meeting, just with technical training.

00:17:24:18 - 00:17:47:13
Adam Prior
But this is an opportunity, as we talk about this foundational set of skills, supporting hypervisors and knowing our environment and the different applications and platforms that we that we manage and support, this is the time to cross-train the individuals and then the rest of the team. I let the directors also control the topic and the flow of the meeting.

00:17:47:14 - 00:18:07:07
Adam Prior
usually every week we have something to discuss. Things change very often. Not only are we deploying new stuff all the time, but we're doing upgrades. And so you should do an upgrade. There's there's new commands that you can run or you have to change your automation jobs. And, all of that gets discussed in these technical, power sessions, as we call.

00:18:07:09 - 00:18:31:09
Adam Prior
This is by far the most difficult, meeting that I have had to deploy because this is for the entire department, but I'm pushing it as a group leader of the systems team. So there's eight other groups around 9 or 7 other groups, really, but I'm not their supervisor, so we have a whole change control process now that I would say is loosely followed.

00:18:31:09 - 00:18:59:13
Adam Prior
My team follows it because I make sure that they understand they have to follow it. there's been no change ever made to any production system without a change control ticket submitted, and then you have a whole conversation around what what constitutes a normal change for standard. And I always say normal changes don't require approvals. So if it's something that you would like to have kind of some coverage where if something breaks, you can at the end of day like, hey, I don't approve this change to be done at one in the afternoon, I broke something and I can kind of cover form.

00:18:59:14 - 00:19:23:06
Adam Prior
So, that's that's kind of how we dictate that. Also the notification sometimes there's changes where it's like, if you head for the change advisory board to get the notification, then you want to put the standard, standard request all like two best practices. We do weekly meetings. I say that required, but some people think that they're kind of optional.

00:19:23:11 - 00:19:47:07
Adam Prior
So we're kind of in that phase right now. and we focus on we can changes and high risk changes, things that could potentially take a system down. That way if a website goes down, it's like, oh, yeah, I think we're doing some kind of maintenance, even though it wasn't expected to cause an issue. at least them knowing that this changes going on, they, they know the scope potentially of it, but.

00:19:47:09 - 00:20:11:10
Adam Prior
Vendor partner relationships are completely nonexistent. We never met with, let's just say an expedient. We never met with them. I didn't know who our account reps were. I didn't know who our sales engineers or architects, which is completely different, you know, and I found that good relationship with your partners is absolutely crucial because there's a lot of tools that are offered for free.

00:20:11:12 - 00:20:31:21
Adam Prior
I'm a sucker for assessments. I am really a, partner's best friend because I'm always willing to do assessments because I always think about that quote right there. Do the best, do the best you can until you know better than when you know better, do better. You can't fix something that you don't know is going. So you might think you're doing a perfect job, but these assessments will find these gaps and issues.

00:20:31:21 - 00:20:46:14
Adam Prior
And then you just got to determine, all right. This is a high priority thing that we have to fix or put it on the priority list. Or you just say it's an accepted right. So if it's something that you know about, it's just like we can't get to that. It's an accepted risk. And that.

00:20:46:16 - 00:21:07:16
Adam Prior
I'm very proud of this term I made this. If anybody hasn't seen this, I'm going to go copyright this risk. So I wanted a visual representation of where I wanted our team to focus on their time. because what I found is people go down in the weeds of some project or something, and their time is just getting sucked absorb.

00:21:07:16 - 00:21:29:06
Adam Prior
And we weren't able to, meet our daily demands for what we need. So. That's where we always want to focus. And there's two areas of the grass that spend a lot of time. And if they're not very challenging, but they take up a lot of time. Those I always say are automation tasks. Those are typically the things that you can try to automate.

00:21:29:08 - 00:21:54:18
Adam Prior
You shouldn't be adding people's anymore. We shouldn't be, doing all these basic tasks that we can use PowerShell or Python to automate. Then you got the other. So extremely challenging. And a lot of time those are your high end projects, projects that either staff augmentation would help or professional services. one of one of my favorite ones is twister and that's dusty from twister.

00:21:54:19 - 00:22:02:03
Adam Prior
We've talked about the second on the tornado. That's the section over time.

00:22:02:05 - 00:22:27:13
Adam Prior
And that's it. That's one on ones. I've changed it multiple times, starting out as needed. But I went to quarterly and then I really used one on ones as a form of discipline. And I kind of found out that's not really the way about it. it really is, again, to, work with employee and, and improve that relationship.

00:22:27:15 - 00:22:45:04
Adam Prior
So I also took an employee off the on call schedule because of an incident that happened. this person didn't answer their phone when an incident happened. Then they knew about the incident. They knew that it was ongoing, and then they didn't answer the phone again. So I was like, well, this, this person needs to be taken off the on call schedule.

00:22:45:06 - 00:23:09:07
Adam Prior
Horrible decision. Because then instead of holding the person accountable, we basically changed his, his, job description by saying, no, you don't need to get a call. You're going to get this call. It turned out like everybody else. It was so just made work for for the other team or the rest of the team. And we have since know put them back on the schedule and kind of hold them accountable.

00:23:09:09 - 00:23:29:12
Adam Prior
kind of what I talked about with that initial chart, with the things that we initially of left and then what we're working on now, we've taken on a lot of additional work. And if you don't prepare for that appropriately, you have a difficult time is you're being reactive to situations because of all the additional work that has been created.

00:23:29:14 - 00:23:46:15
Adam Prior
if you have a difficult time keeping up with the newer stuff and the newer changes and being proactive, and the first thing that always suffers and in our case is always documentation and training, that's a high focus. I think everything needs to be documented. I think training is really important. So people are getting out and doing things.

00:23:46:18 - 00:24:01:12
Adam Prior
And I've actually I'm to my place after this for a little training tabletop exercise. It's really important. and I want to make sure that I try to encourage that.

00:24:01:14 - 00:24:28:20
Adam Prior
What's next? Something that I had suggested before I became group leader was to have a clearly defined you have a lot of we have a lot of people on maybe like our desktop team that is they're usually new, younger, looking to do better. they end up working on the team for a year or two, and the good ones end up leaving because they haven't another opportunity to go somewhere else and do something else.

00:24:28:22 - 00:24:49:08
Adam Prior
I've always wanted to kind of set some expectations where, hey, I'm in cybersecurity. These are the kind of certifications we're looking for. This is the kind of know you can expect to be on this team for the next two years, because we want at least two years of experience it. And in that time, if you know that somebody is trying to go down that path with their career, you can kind of have them focus.

00:24:49:10 - 00:25:10:22
Adam Prior
on those kinds of tasks. And you have tons of desktop recommendations, like if somebody want to be in cybersecurity, you could see an entire person busy every day is just trying to get more senior management by. And I think, that's my biggest issue with seeing the change advisory stuff and the change control, even though I have approval from from our upper management to do all this.

00:25:10:23 - 00:25:37:00
Adam Prior
again, all of these requests are coming from me, not them. So, I need to focus more on that. Working on additional resources. Talked about that. Enforce the process. It is extremely easy for things to slip back to where it's the same person working on the same stuff, because they're really good at it. So just for the sake of time and efficiency, just the same person can work on the same stuff all the time.

00:25:37:02 - 00:25:51:21
Adam Prior
and I have to constantly kind of beyond that. It's like, oh, well, who worked on that? Oh, the same person that we have before. We need to make sure that we cross-train more that, that happens all the time, push for more certifications. Same thing. I think change is important. I would love to see. And I've mentioned this and I don't think it's going anywhere.

00:25:51:21 - 00:26:20:05
Adam Prior
Subaru. But I know certain companies that it's you want to reach your maximum, potential for your merit increase. You have to be certified. You have to either renew certifications and, and there's there's financial benefit to some people get bonuses if they pass a certification. I'd like to see that. So I think it promotes, promotes actual training and making sure that it's being fully absorbed that we can assign we we have a company that we do that knows self-paced training.

00:26:20:06 - 00:26:39:13
Adam Prior
People can watch videos all day long, but who knows that day it's audit. I think that's really what the certification kind of shows and the major cultural differences between teams. I've had a handful of different tasks and projects and, it's been request to kind of pull back on, not because we need to do it, but because other teams are acting up and I can't progress until another team.

00:26:39:13 - 00:27:09:03
Adam Prior
Great. so balancing us progressing while at the same time not making other teams mad is is a, it's a balancing act. Somewhere in final thoughts. this test. Test, who who has a distance just to carry out public. So this isn't new to everybody. what that helped me do is it made me understand how I kind of act based on my personality.

00:27:09:03 - 00:27:38:06
Adam Prior
And one thing that I am is, I'm very direct when it comes to messages that sometimes I can come across as a little, abrasive, or a little angry when I'm not. It's just, I'm just trying to focus on the problem. So, that's just one thing that I'm firmly checking myself on. I always think about this train people in a way that they can go anywhere and do anything but treat them in the way that they won't want to.

00:27:38:07 - 00:28:00:03
Adam Prior
I've always felt that because we don't push for certifications, because we don't really push for that self-improvement. it's a way of kind of pigeonholing a person into a career, into a path. And, and I certainly didn't like the feeling then, because if you treat somebody appropriately, they won't want to lead them in the first place.

00:28:00:05 - 00:28:16:10
Adam Prior
Ultimately, shows do what's best for the associate. I've had multiple conversations. I right now I've got an intern. He was a high school intern. I actually did a, high school internship program where he worked for half a day, I think 2 or 3 days a week on our team. I got to write him, and everything was fun.

00:28:16:12 - 00:28:37:05
Adam Prior
But, there was a time where he told me what he was making, and he said he had a friend doing an internship at target, making, almost 60% work. And I'm like, all right, well, just think about the long term plan here. You there's a there's a long, long term goal here. And you're going to be meeting your goals for, for your career.

00:28:37:07 - 00:28:56:17
Adam Prior
But there came a point where this intern started getting really good at what he was doing was certainly more valuable. And I told them, I said, if this doesn't work out, I want you to kind of see what's out there so I know you can do a lot better, financially than doesn't. You know what? We were all yes, this conversation with HR didn't go right.

00:28:56:19 - 00:29:19:05
Adam Prior
Turn in five minutes. I doubled the salary because it's not. It's everything. they didn't know that he had become a college intern at that time. We have two full programs, so it was a it worked out, but, I was ready and prepared to, even though I didn't want to lose this person to, fully support him once someone else open door policy or as needed doesn't work.

00:29:19:05 - 00:29:41:21
Adam Prior
Because if a director's coming to you for an issue, it's already a problem. so we kind of kind of talked about that, but, yeah, again, I hear that now. I hear so many people talk about that only for the door policy. That sounds great, but it really doesn't. As or any quick shameless plug. as you're in the group.

00:29:41:21 - 00:30:13:11
Adam Prior
We started it, the first meeting we had a couple months ago. Absolutely. Standing room. It was a great turnout. our next one is Thursday, June 6th. All about power platform. and everything coming out. The power platform. So, we've also got a panel. I've got two people we'd like to fit four slots. So if anybody is knowledgeable power platform, teams or you, have there and, and, you know, panel, I thought I did everything was having a great supervisor is a blessing.

00:30:13:13 - 00:30:36:20
Adam Prior
My career, I've had some good supervisors, but I've never had what you call a mentor. I've never, had somebody that has pushed me to do better. It's always been kind of self-motivated, but, there have been a lot of easier folks, having somebody there kind of guiding me, showing me, we have the opportunity to impact people's lives personally.

00:30:36:22 - 00:30:50:10
Adam Prior
And then, of course, professionally. And, I think about that all the time. And that goes back to making sure that you're doing the right thing for your people. and everything else just falls in line.

00:30:50:12 - 00:31:12:15
Adam Prior
The first thing I wanted to ask, is there anything from a communication standpoint that I didn't cover that somebody else is doing that you find very beneficial for your team? I get it, it's just changing up the scenery on a one on one. I did a lot of walking. Yep. Walking. It seems to be a way to open people up yesterday.

00:31:12:18 - 00:31:32:11
Adam Prior
More engineer oriented, introverted type people that you're not necessarily maintaining eye contact 100% do that as well. didn't cover it, but, we do have a conference room that's kind of there, but, sometimes we'll meet up in the lobby. I was out at for a conference a couple of weeks ago in Vegas with somebody who did it walking the streets of Vegas, probably 100.

00:31:32:17 - 00:31:54:16
Adam Prior
So, Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Audio sparkling and then everything. Like a good question. Yeah. So I. Mean, you talked a lot about relationships, and I could see and I can tell from the way that you were talking about it, it really does mean a lot to you. But I also caught some attention that exists between yourself and some viewers.

00:31:54:16 - 00:32:15:14
Adam Prior
Whereas you talked about the cultural changes, talked about the, the cat meetings and things like that. What kind of steps are you, seeking out? What are you probing at to get your upper leadership to talk to their peers, to have that work back down and you see where I'm going? Yeah. I'm having conversations with them.

00:32:15:16 - 00:32:33:19
Adam Prior
what I'd like to do moving forward. And that's part of of what I want to do moving forward, is making sure that if if we want to enforce, we have meetings. I want that information out. I would like for them to send it up to those other group leaders and the people in the cab. And what are you doing as an individual, though, with your peers at that level?

00:32:33:21 - 00:32:56:15
Adam Prior
Thank you. yeah. Yeah, yeah. Same thing. And we talk and, and, but it's amazing still how many things we'll meet. But then like within an hour or two after the meeting, they'll say, oh, we're making this change. It's always better. And, because a whole website's going down for like half a day or sometimes, I don't know, I was in a conversation, but,

00:32:56:17 - 00:33:17:19
Adam Prior
But. Yeah, and there's good communication there. But at the end of the day, me asking somebody that that's that's a group leader of another team, it's really up to them if they want. I can't force somebody to, to do it where I think it came from, our senior management for their managers to help support that. I think that's the difficult thing right now that I have to balance and.

00:33:17:23 - 00:33:45:02
Adam Prior
But but. Sure. Are you modeling that back? Sorry, I don't think that actually. so security is a Japanese company? Yes. How much of that red tape do you think is cultural, and how much do you think is the relationship? I purposely left that out, but that's 100%. I think the thing to So we are Japanese based company, we have parent company, but they have no oversight.

00:33:45:04 - 00:34:08:01
Adam Prior
unless we kind of do our own thing. they do audit us and audit certain processes, but we are kind of allowed to do our own thing as we see fit. So, what's kind of funny is what I've noticed is it seems like Japan is actually, like, a little bit behind us. I think what they're doing is we, like us, go forward and finding out what works and then using that to kind of use for their models.

00:34:08:01 - 00:34:28:00
Adam Prior
So that's what it seems like. but it certainly does play. Boucher do you use agile methods at all? I'm, I'm a big fan of agile. just because there's so many projects that we start and it's like, okay, well, this is the plan. But then again, project that plan completely. So I'm always, I'm always expecting a change within a project.

00:34:28:00 - 00:34:37:05
Adam Prior
So so I do, I can't speak for other teams and what they do for their projects. I think they're a little more rigid, but. But that's interesting. Thank you.