IT Leaders

00:00:02:23 - 00:00:21:08
Unknown
So we all started in it for the love of the game. For some of us it was the Commodore 64 or something else that got you sparked your interest in it. So I guess, and you should love what you're doing. You do it all day long. That's what you spend most of your time. So I get it by a show of hands.

00:00:21:08 - 00:00:42:08
Unknown
How many people started their path in it because they love the game and because they wanted to reach the top. All right. Now keep your hands up. And for anybody who is not 100% sure anymore, if you want to reach the top, lower your hand.

00:00:42:10 - 00:01:09:01
Unknown
I lowered my hand because I figured that the game has changed and I've changed. And ultimately, that led me to the conclusion that being a CIO was not the right path for me anymore. So I might guilt. And I was the CIO of an international manufacturing company for over 13 years, and I resigned and got paid no money for about a year.

00:01:09:03 - 00:01:35:05
Unknown
And now I can say that I'm about to celebrate the two year anniversary of my company, Five Rivers Automation. And I'm here to talk to you about my journey on answering that question. Do I want to be a CIO? And hopefully that helps you in your career path. So my career home was IBM of the late 1990s Chicago E-Business centers, where I started.

00:01:35:07 - 00:02:07:20
Unknown
I was the best enterprise Java developer, and we were doing pervasive computing. And things have changed since then. You know, the rise of cloud mobile AI. But you know, what else has changed is the users. The business users are more technically savvy. And your fellow executives and leaders in non-it functions, they're more technically savvy and they're now no longer just giving you a task and expecting it to be some back closet operation.

00:02:07:22 - 00:02:23:12
Unknown
They're also getting involved with, you know, the decision making process and the scary or maybe the optimistic way of looking at the cool thing is, is that they actually have decision making capabilities. Now to.

00:02:23:14 - 00:02:47:10
Unknown
So when I look at my career, I talk with somebody. And I was introduced to this framework for leadership styles. It's from the book The First 90 days. And this is star's framework. And I looked at myself and I said I was a startup and turnaround guy when I started my role as CIO, and when I ended, I was still a startup turnaround guy.

00:02:47:12 - 00:03:11:20
Unknown
But my company changed. They needed startup turnaround and I got them to where they wanted and they became sustaining success. And that friction started to build. And that's when I realized that that wasn't a home for me anymore. So you may have changed your situation, may have changed. In order for you to find out what's the right home for you.

00:03:11:21 - 00:03:30:09
Unknown
You also have to find out who you are. The one thing I will say is you can't go back to your old home that doesn't exist anymore. I always say home is a time and a place. You have a nostalgia and say you want to go back home, but that doesn't exist anymore. So you gotta look forward.

00:03:30:11 - 00:03:56:01
Unknown
So who are you? How do you answer that question? You know, you can look at things like the stars framework for leadership styles. You can take assessments. Talk to your family and friends. That's really important. Talk to groups like this. These are your colleagues. Build those relationships. Have honest discussions. For me, I'm lucky enough to have somebody really honest that lives at home with me.

00:03:56:01 - 00:04:16:18
Unknown
My wife and she would tell me that you're not happy. She could sense it. You're not happy? Actually, she usually wouldn't say it that nice. She would be like, get your shit together is more like what she would say. But she was right. And what she helped me uncover was that I was going through a career midlife crisis.

00:04:16:20 - 00:04:40:20
Unknown
And when somebody first tells you that, you get very defensive. You're like, not no, no, not B. But I will say, don't look at that as a negative. Look at that as a positive. Embrace it. All of you should have a career midlife crisis. That's a good thing. When I started at my my CIO role, the analogy I like to look at is like, when you go to some side road, you see a broken down house on the side of the road, looks condemned.

00:04:40:22 - 00:05:00:05
Unknown
You're like, someone should just put a bulldozer to that thing. That's what I inherited and I loved it. There was probably a fire in the back room that's put up first, and I got to work. And what do you do when you need to fix something? You start from the inside. You build a solid foundation. Then you start maybe moving some walls around remotely.

00:05:00:07 - 00:05:17:19
Unknown
Then you get to remodeling the kitchen. Some bathrooms. Also in the inside of the house looks really nice. Then you move to the outside because you know what? Let's change the facade. That's, you know, put a pool in the backyard, put some landscaping, and then what happens? People start showing up. They never want to come to your house.

00:05:17:21 - 00:05:39:15
Unknown
When I look broken down. But now, when you have a nice looking house, they want to come over. So you start having people over your house, and then they look around and they're like, what? Why do you put shutters up? You know, you could save money if you put drapes and that was that was kind of where I realized that I was that that wasn't my home anymore.

00:05:39:17 - 00:05:59:09
Unknown
The landlord was telling me what I needed to do, and that's okay. I was introduced to a book that was called Necessary Endings. In our society, we look at endings, usually as a negative thing. It's bad ending. Bad. Oh, that's no good. But this book put a different spin on it. Endings don't have to be bad. They actually can be.

00:05:59:09 - 00:06:21:02
Unknown
Really. They can be good for you. And if you embrace that mentality, the endings aren't necessarily bad. You can actually sit down and reflect. That's why I did. So I started reflecting. I realized that the end should come. But you know, what I needed to do is my next step. And so I went to a comfort. I went, I went back to like my childhood, early adulthood.

00:06:21:04 - 00:06:42:01
Unknown
And I started thinking about the things that brought me joy. And I found out that Peacock actually has the full WWE library. So I spend I would spend a lot of nights by the fire pit and a lot of nights also by my TV. Watching old WWE matches. And I was reminded of one of my childhood heroes was Bret Hitman Hart.

00:06:42:03 - 00:07:02:09
Unknown
And for you guys who didn't follow wrestling as closely as I did, and I think I could probably win 80s 90s wrestling trivia. So for me, wants to go. Bret Hart was Canadian, so right there, you know, he was a good guy. By the way, I'm Canadian. So. And when he started his career, his dad, was a famous wrestler, like a trainer.

00:07:02:15 - 00:07:23:21
Unknown
And he came from a famous wrestling family. And he focused on the technical skills. He was a technician. He was really good at, you know, the moves. And he took pride in not hurting his opponent. So, you know, as a child, I believed it was 100% real. And now we call it sports entertainment. But there still is that, that, physical aspect of not hurting your opponent.

00:07:23:21 - 00:07:48:06
Unknown
He took a lot of pride in knowing the moves and and what happened was, is that he actually came across another wrestler, early in his career that said, hey, Bret, you know, you being just a technical ress like a good technician and identify to that because I was the best Java programmer. But he said, Roddy, Roddy Piper, another famous wrestler, told him, if you want to make it in this business, you got to learn how to talk.

00:07:48:06 - 00:08:07:04
Unknown
The guy on the microphone, you got to be a hawk. So I wasn't too bad at talking. But you know, back in my career, I like I took that kind of as a thing that I wanted to work on and learned talk. And so Bret became champion and he had a great career. And then wrestling sort of change.

00:08:07:08 - 00:08:30:02
Unknown
You know, there was a steroid, thing that happened where all the big, you know, Giants like Hulk Hogan and the muscled up people, they kind of phased out and it became more of their focus on people like Bret, who looked a little bit more normal. And the other thing that happened was it used to be clearly good guy versus purely bad guy, and they started changing that kind of whole thing.

00:08:30:03 - 00:08:51:10
Unknown
And so the other thing that would do a lot is, fun fact is, a lot of these wrestlers have podcasts now. So I listen to Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Undertaker have podcasts, and you hear them reflecting about their stories, and they talked about at the time when Stone Cold Steve Austin, who was another famous wrestler, was coming up, and Bret realized that he could it be just a pure good guy.

00:08:51:10 - 00:09:10:18
Unknown
And there was a shade of gray. But he learned to change with the game, and that's what I really embraced when I was listening to these stories. It sounds crazy. You listen to wrestlers and they actually have really good advice for leadership. Just actually listen to what they're doing. And he knew that he to make himself bigger, he had to help Stone cold become bigger to.

00:09:10:20 - 00:09:32:11
Unknown
And so I listen to these stories and, you know, I kind of identify with those things about my career. And but the other part that when you start listening to these podcasts with these wrestlers and stuff, you start hearing the personal side that you never used to see on the screen. And Bret was part of, they call it a stable in wrestling, like a group of wrestlers make a group at the called the Heart Foundation.

00:09:32:13 - 00:09:59:05
Unknown
And the tragedy for him was, there was five of those people in that stable, and he's the only one that's still living. His younger brother, Owen, had a tragedy in the ring, passed away. And the other members also had, different things that came up. And what why that hit me was during Covid, that two year period, I could identify with that because I lost.

00:09:59:07 - 00:10:22:05
Unknown
I lost people in my life. You know, I lost my father in law, who was really close to I lost two of my childhood neighbors that I grew up with and lifelong friends. They're my age group. They passed away, my best friend's younger sister. So she's younger than me. She passed away. And then the one that really hit was kind of like, you know, with Brad Pitt.

00:10:22:05 - 00:10:45:11
Unknown
His younger brother Owen passed away. I had somebody that reported to me who's a really good friend, one of my best friends, he got diagnosed with cancer. And, within a few months, he passed away. You all during a two year time period. And so I'm here talking to one of my friends, and he said, bro, time is our currency.

00:10:45:13 - 00:11:01:18
Unknown
And I want that to sink in with everybody. You know, as you guys have progressed through your career. I was in the same boat when I started. I had no money. I need money was the focus. And I'd come to a point in life where I realize you have things and you really try to sort out what needs and wants really are.

00:11:01:20 - 00:11:25:23
Unknown
And when he put it in that perspective, it really focuses your mind on figure out who you are and where do you want to go? Because time is our currency. So I got my passion back when I was an enterprise Java developer. I used to say this and now with IT automation, I say this, I say I'm the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be.

00:11:26:01 - 00:11:48:02
Unknown
And that's what you need to do. You need to find that passion again through this, through this process of realizing who you are making changes. Heart. People naturally want to resist change and you think, well, I'll just hold on for a few more years and maybe I can retire or whatever it is. It's a little bit small, but I'll give you a lesson.

00:11:48:02 - 00:12:11:10
Unknown
Another childhood. I say comfort, but maybe it's more of a childhood discomfort. The Toronto Maple Leafs, my hometown team. There was a famous playoff series in 2013 against the Boston Bruins, and they were up, they were down 3 to 1 in the series. It's a best of seven series. And they managed to find their game and pushed it to a game seven.

00:12:11:12 - 00:12:28:06
Unknown
Here's me, super fans of the Leafs. But they're going to do it. They found their game. They're good. You see it. And then in that game seven they were at they scored early in the third period. They were actually up 4 to 1 in a hockey game, which is should be signed sealed. That's it. They they're going to win.

00:12:28:08 - 00:12:51:06
Unknown
And then they did something that nobody should do. They changed their game. They started dumping the pop falling back and playing defense. And I'm not going to go into too much more detail because it'll I'll have nightmares tonight. But it still haunts me. And they ended up losing the game in overtime, 4 to 3. So don't change your game.

00:12:51:08 - 00:13:12:07
Unknown
Bad outcomes will happen. So we're gonna go through this little exercise in a second here. So look around. If you're sitting beside somebody you know I'm going to ask you to pick somebody you don't know for this exercise. So just start thinking and start thinking about this question as I talk about. So what is your career frustration and what stops you from removing it?

00:13:12:09 - 00:13:28:18
Unknown
Okay. So just think about maybe like a paragraph or two to explain this in a second. So while you're thinking, I will let you know that I had a CIO friend that would need me for coffee while I was going through this process of trying to figure out what did I want to do? Who do I you know, who am I?

00:13:28:19 - 00:13:51:06
Unknown
And we'd have a series of coffees and he would say, you know, you you see the word unleash and full potential a lot. I said, really, I think you don't you don't hear yourself sometimes when you speak, and it requires somebody else listening to you to tell you back. What are the themes when you talk? And it actually is eye opening when that happens.

00:13:51:08 - 00:14:13:09
Unknown
And I had another CIO friend that is a strong, a journalist, which I try to remember to do, and I sometimes do a good job and sometimes I don't. But I will strongly recommend journaling, even if it's just for a little bit, and then go back and read your journals and look at the themes that arise. It's eye opening as well.

00:14:13:11 - 00:14:39:01
Unknown
So I'm going to ask here is if you guys pair off and spend maybe less each person spent and I'll help two times through this, but well, the first person to the other one will tell answer this question I want the listener I want you to do is focus in on 2 or 3 words that stood out to you as they're talking, either a theme or a strong word or something.

00:14:39:03 - 00:15:01:16
Unknown
What? Time's up. I want that person to repeat back to that person. These are the words that stood out to me. And then we're going to we're going to go around the other way. Okay. So that makes sense. So let's go a little bit noisy in here. But hopefully everybody can manage. So if you don't mind pairing off and then once we're ready I'll do a little timer to.

00:15:01:18 - 00:15:23:12
Unknown
About I. Or time time time time. All right. Just a 2 or 3 words. Just a 2 or 3 words. I can't do my rate flare otherwise. So. Right. So.

00:15:23:14 - 00:15:45:10
Unknown
Anybody still talking is don't get put in the sharpshooter. All right. So I would strongly encourage you guys to continue these conversations. They're powerful. But I want you to think about when that person told you the 2 or 3 words that stood out to them. Were there any surprises? Was there anything that kind of shocked you a little bit?

00:15:45:12 - 00:16:11:03
Unknown
The other question I would ask yourself is, with the younger you when you started that career and you had that passion, would that person let those things be the things that stood in their way? Okay. Time out frustrations. You know, when you're at the airport and you're late for a flight and you're on the escalator or you're standing behind somebody, you want to kind of get moving and you can't get there fast enough.

00:16:11:05 - 00:16:36:01
Unknown
I was introduced to another book by, Reid Hoffman, and it's called The Startup of You, and they talk about how probably when most of us started our careers, it was the concept of a career escalator. There was this promise between employee, employer, and if you work hard, you rise the escalator. And at the end for a lot of us would be the role of CEO.

00:16:36:03 - 00:16:56:14
Unknown
I'll tell you that. Escalators broken. It's gone. Even if you try to get on to another job, you're just getting into another lane on the escalator. You're not going to end up where you want to go. You got to invest in yourself. Your skills, your network, and you have to view it as building your own path and then the spur of the startup of you.

00:16:56:14 - 00:17:20:03
Unknown
The concept there really is you have to look at yourself as an entrepreneur and the business as you. You are the business and have that mentality. When you take a look at your career going forward and it's open. My biggest piece of advice on that is do not compare yourself to somebody else. That only works when you're on the escalator.

00:17:20:03 - 00:17:39:10
Unknown
You're trying to push an unknown to push this guy behind me, because I need to get one rung up on the escalator. When you view it as your path is your path, there is no place for having a competition with somebody else.

00:17:39:12 - 00:18:05:03
Unknown
So I'm going to say the other thing that, you know, I'm guilty of, I this is my strengthsfinder I have no, I'm not shy. Here it is. This is me. And when I bring this up for is, we all have a tendency to not really look at the tools in the data. That's given to us. What most people do is they'll jump to that right hand side and they'll look at their top five or their top ten.

00:18:05:05 - 00:18:28:19
Unknown
They read the words. They think they understand what those words mean. I'm an achiever. I'm at this. And then what I did is I went to the bottom, the list, and I was like, what do you mean? You up 30 for an empathy? I said, what? But the key I'm bringing up here is pay for pay for the full assessment and then go read what you paid for it.

00:18:28:21 - 00:18:49:18
Unknown
If you look at it, these words all have a definition. And I brought up in my top ten was individualization and my 34 was empathy. If I were to read the two of them, I'm like, yeah, it doesn't mean that I don't know that people are individuals or I work with them. I took this in the context of work to and I was like, this absolutely true.

00:18:49:18 - 00:19:14:18
Unknown
Like, yeah, this is accurate. The other thing that you have to come to grips with is all 34 will not be in your top ten. Okay. And so I say this because in order to know who you are, you have to know who you are not. Okay.

00:19:14:20 - 00:19:40:19
Unknown
So with that in mind, you know, in terms of growing and investing in yourself, when you had that big landscape in front of you, as you're charting your course, you got to invest in yourself. And so there's there's an ROI on what you want to what what you want to invest your time on for learning. You can go from knowing nothing about a subject to a little something, from a little something to knowing a lot.

00:19:40:21 - 00:20:03:04
Unknown
And then you can go from knowing a lot to being world class. Strengths finders premise is invest in your strengths. So that would be on the side of take something you're pretty good at, lean into it, go be world class. And then the other one that I that is a high ROI is just learning something. You just had a level of understanding what is it?

00:20:03:04 - 00:20:23:14
Unknown
Just at the basic level, it opens up perspectives for you. It may open up career paths for you, but going from knowing something to knowing a little bit not that high of an ROI. I'm not saying don't learn or do it, but I'm saying from a career standpoint, invest on learning something new or becoming world class. And this is what I did.

00:20:23:16 - 00:20:41:13
Unknown
I was a I on, I still had the best job, a programmer, but now I know something about Java or sorry, Python. And I'm world class in technology called RPA and leading into AI agents I want to be known as and I am world class of that.

00:20:41:15 - 00:21:13:06
Unknown
So everybody has gone through the exercise of also defining who they are by their core values. People who have not, in their heads, kind of gone through that exercise. I will say that I've been in networking events where they attempt to do it in one hour, and I'm saying, BZ, that doesn't work. So this is mine. I went through a painful process of going through defining what my core values were over months, agonizing months, and of quickly ask freedom was that which freedom mean to you?

00:21:13:08 - 00:21:41:08
Unknown
Do what your life to do what you like. Optionality. What's freedom to you? No barriers? No. No restrictions. Yeah. So where I bring that up is, is that there can be commonality between what your definition and your definition of freedom is. But I'm sure if you dug deeper what that no barriers really means can mean something different.

00:21:41:10 - 00:22:00:19
Unknown
And so that's where I did. I challenge you guys to take your core values. And this is, this is I had a word document with five pages and I put my definition just like a dictionary. This is what it means to me why I chose it. And I have other you know, that was the dictionary. Like, you know, other words that are similar.

00:22:00:21 - 00:22:20:03
Unknown
You considered like and I did that and it's powerful because I will tell you who doesn't want to buy a fancier car or a fancier, get fancier house just because, you know, I got promotion in this where I go back to this and I say no. If I do that, I put myself in a position where I can't have that freedom anymore.

00:22:20:05 - 00:22:33:03
Unknown
Right now, I can get my kids on and off the bus pretty much every day, and that means something to me. And that's my litmus test for as I move forward.

00:22:33:04 - 00:23:12:07
Unknown
So I will say that. You know, you're all I all challenge you to have your midlife crisis. If you've had it, do it again. Do it every year. And if you have it, it's not a bad thing. Embrace it. And take your original goal you no longer use. For me, X means being CIO. So if it's you know, you know, I look like, you know, take take, you know licking my case x CIO and it's do I still want to be x and answer that question.

00:23:12:09 - 00:23:30:21
Unknown
And look to your I look to my childhood heroes for inspiration or to be fictional. I actually debate about putting Iron Man up here or or Mario now have Mario. So Mario Lemieux, great hockey player for for those of you you don't know. Well, the reason I put him up here was when I was following his career.

00:23:30:23 - 00:23:52:18
Unknown
He grew up in Quebec, Canada. French was his primary language. Got drafted at 18, went to live in Pittsburgh. Didn't know English, was not very strong for him. Had the language barrier. Had Hodgkin's disease, a cancer that he overcame in his career, had debilitating back injuries and he played through them. Couldn't even tie his old skates.

00:23:52:20 - 00:24:20:00
Unknown
And to top that all off, finally, he's one of the best players signs this awesome contract. Top paid player in the league and the Pittsburgh Penguins claimed bankruptcy. I can't pay you. Sorry, Mario, and I'm going to pretend I know what went through his head. I wish one day I could meet him just to validate this. But you you will see opportunities when you have the right mindset.

00:24:20:01 - 00:24:26:12
Unknown
And today he is the owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

00:24:26:14 - 00:25:00:18
Unknown
So my challenge to you is do the work. It's going to be hard, but you can all be all time rates in your own worlds. If you put that work at. I know who I am. I learned that through a long process. I found my purpose. And if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, if you need somebody to have those coffee sessions with just a listen or go further into what you know my journey was, or listen to your journey, I'm all for it just to help people out.

00:25:00:20 - 00:25:20:21
Unknown
And but my one rule for is if you connect with me on LinkedIn, you can't just send a connect request. You have to send me a note for why I should connect with hey, I saw you. This resonated with me. I want to hear the stories. Start the conversation. There and then. Maybe in the future we can have another session about my my mission of humanize work.

00:25:20:23 - 00:25:23:02
Unknown
So thank you. I.