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The purpose of the IT Leaders Council is to bring together IT Directors and Managers for leadership training, educational content from guest speakers, and peer discussions in a vendor-free, collaborative environment. IT Leaders Councils are currently offered in Indianapolis, IN and Columbus, OH, with more cities coming soon!
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;13;18
I'll start off by saying that Hannah and I are both Indiana Tech grads and pretty proud and pretty proud to be able to host this event here.
00;00;13;21 - 00;00;45;18
I know Hannah is very competitive, and I will just say that the current women's basketball is undefeated in conference play. So I don't think I would make the team, which is kind of interesting. So that's also a good thing. And and it takes a lot more risks than she lets on. If you have ever followed rule sourcing, you might have seen something on LinkedIn with their crazy little videos and things of that nature.
00;00;45;20 - 00;01;05;14
And I'll tell you, the nerd in me is that's probably a little bit outside my game. You know, I have a very low profile from a social media standpoint because I'm a technologist and I realize, you know, from a security perspective. And so I think that there's risks that be taken and you actually do take quite a bit of risk.
00;01;05;16 - 00;01;35;16
Well, I've Clifford Cloud, as Doug mentioned, I'm going to share with you five hard lessons in leadership and to get a good understanding of those five hard lessons of leadership. I'll tell you a little bit about my journey. When I spent a whole bunch of time on it, I went to school here at Indiana Tech. My first real job was working with General Motors, working with a small little Texas company called EADS Electronic Data Systems on the wings of Eagles and Ross Perot.
00;01;35;18 - 00;02;00;03
Presidential candidacy and the whole nine yards there. From there, I went to really my proving ground, which was Lincoln Financial Group, and loved my time there. But like Hannah, I was a little bit of a risk taker. So I moved in and out of opportunities at Lincoln quite heavily, which included I came to insurance and then eventually moving back to Lincoln Financial, which for me, eventually the work came.
00;02;00;05 - 00;02;22;03
I became from and core back to Lincoln, and that's where I stayed for a little while. Really, really proud of the work that I did at Lincoln, went up the corporate ladder and so on and so forth. You know, got directorship and that kind of stuff, but saw that the horizon had a lot of things out on it.
00;02;22;03 - 00;02;44;25
And it may not have included me at that point simply because there was a long list of individuals ahead of me that would, you know, have an opportunity before my time. But my ticket was punched. So I took an opportunity, a crazy opportunity to become chief information officer for the city of Fort Wayne. I had an opportunity to work with Graham Richard.
00;02;44;25 - 00;03;14;21
I was very, very proud of the work that we were able to do. We upgraded a lot of systems. When I started at the city. We had several tables like this with your common everyday PC sitting on top of it just right down the road. That was our server farm. We changed out that how we got, you know, industry quality stuff with the cage and the fans and the whole nine yards.
00;03;14;21 - 00;03;37;18
So we changed a whole bunch of stuff. We had a great I can't even remember the name of it anymore. We had a great email system that any attachment, you know, today you send an attachment. You can tell immediately, it's a PDF, it's a it's a dog, it's a cell or whatever it is. Everything came across as WPX and you had to rename it and it was a big time waste.
00;03;37;20 - 00;04;02;28
So we got off of that and got on to some industry tools and Microsoft and Outlook Exchange and that type of stuff. Exchange first. So I'm really, really proud of that. Things changed and I ended up going leaving the city and there's a little story behind that. I'll get to that in a second. I know leaving the city and starting a consulting company called See to IT Advisors.
00;04;02;28 - 00;04;25;07
Well, while starting that, I got a call from a friend who was familiar with my work that I had done in in other organizations and said, Hey, can you come hang out with me here at Ivy Tech? And so I went to Ivy Tech, spent about ten years at Ivy Smith. I have taught 15 years at Carney Credit excuse me, I think in ten years, almost year with Ivy.
00;04;25;09 - 00;04;54;06
So I been around the block a little bit and I would talked about it. Yes. So, you know, I'm kind of old, but the point of the matter is, is that I went to Ivy and did a whole bunch of different things, work not only from the local northeastern Indiana campus, but also across the state, because we ended up centralizing a lot of the work everywhere from here to South Bend and obviously helping out in the state.
00;04;54;09 - 00;05;18;23
While doing that, I still had an opportunity to work in my company. See to IT advisors never did let that go when I left. Ivy I continue to focus on that, working with information technology leaders and developing them with not only the CIO Forum but also with Public Technology Institute and also working in other municipalities. I've worked in CIO, also for Maryland National Capital Parks and Planning.
00;05;18;25 - 00;05;42;10
So it's just another municipalities on the East Coast and travel back and forth, all of that. So why do I tell you that? Well, one of the challenges that you have as you go through your career is where do you pick up the nuggets about how your leadership skills will develop and they'll use the saying is at least say in my family is that you know experience is the hardest teacher.
00;05;42;12 - 00;06;06;29
In fact, I hope I don't mess up the video on this one. That was the clean version because my father used to say it like this. A hard head makes it to me. A hard head makes a soft ass. And so if you can't get the mentality right, you're going to get the physical. Probably not. That wasn't like you with weapons or anything like that.
00;06;06;29 - 00;06;24;17
But the bottom line is, is that if you don't if you when you think about it experiences in fact the heart is teacher. Right. And so we share as adults, we share our experiences with our children and other young people coming up in the community because we do. I don't want you to have to go through that and don't do that right.
00;06;24;17 - 00;06;51;26
You know, don't do that. It'll mess you up, right? Don't don't go down that path. So taking these opportunities in leadership, hopefully, and I share with you, are going to help you in your career and help you help others. And that's best the best thing. So item number one, be ready to be humble. Now, I will honestly tell you and again, hard lessons, right?
00;06;51;27 - 00;07;10;28
Do not do fluffy lessons, by the way. You know, not to be a nice communicator, which is all important, don't get me wrong, but I'm talking the hard lessons. So be ready to be humble. Okay? You have to know that as a person is migrating up the command chain and things of that nature, you know, it's like you're starting to feel your britches right here.
00;07;10;28 - 00;07;32;17
Start to feel a little bit about yourself, right? And you're you're thinking that, you know, you're hot poop. I'm cleaning it up. Okay. Good thinking. You're really, really good stuff, right? But you have to be prepared to be humble because the further further you go up, the further further away from the real source of knowledge, the real work that you are.
00;07;32;19 - 00;07;55;19
And you know, you're starting to feel maybe a little high and mighty about yourself, but you need to keep yourself humble and bring yourself to where people can still interface with you. People can still talk with you, people can still be in the mode of listening to you. You will be surprised. And that was one of the lessons that I that I had.
00;07;55;22 - 00;08;22;22
So again, pretty transparent. 063 African-American male can be intimate dating at times and I had to learn various different lessons. It just kind of hey look, just humble yourself so that you can be accessible as a leader. You will be surprised how important that is. You won't hear the things that are going south if you are not accessible.
00;08;22;22 - 00;08;58;04
If a person is afraid to bring you the bad news, if you are always yelling and screaming at somebody, if you cannot position yourself to receive that information, that will stop the information flow. And that is a problem. As a leader. Number two is get help. You know, oftentimes we think as ourselves, as leaders, we like to think back to number one, right, to be humble, like I did all this on my own, my study, my education, my money, my this, my that.
00;08;58;04 - 00;09;19;18
Well, guess what? It's never any of that. It's never just you. You have people that around you that make things possible, clear the way, help you, whether you know it or not. All right. And I was very, very blessed then like rattled off a little bit in my career. I feel very, very happy that I had people around me that has helped me along the way.
00;09;19;20 - 00;09;38;29
Even when I didn't know that they were actually helping. I found out later on that they cleared a brush or opened a path. Did something work for me? That's why I'm pretty passionate about some of the maybe I. I know how to know a little bit more about this than I'm letting off here. But the bottom line is, is that no man or woman is an island.
00;09;39;00 - 00;10;05;15
We need each other to help get help and get things done. So opportunities such as this, you know, we're kind of talking about, you know, who's it leaders to get the necessary training, mentorship, networking, all of those things we ought to be doing on a regular basis, because those are so very important about keeping us plugged in to the to the environments that give us the help that we need.
00;10;05;18 - 00;10;31;02
And right along that same lines is obviously the training right? We still need to constantly train up our selves so that we don't get irrelevant. So to say. And my you and I say that the things you get trained on as you move up the ladder changes. It's not necessarily all the same things, which is things. Something I'm talking about here at the moment.
00;10;31;05 - 00;10;57;21
So things like I.T. Leaders, professional development, professional organizations, those types of things. Take it. One of the sad things about i.t individuals in my personal opinion these days is that we, you know, we have a lot of stuff out there. I'm going to forget some of the names, but pulse, linkedin, youtube, we have all of this stuff and so many of us don't take advantage of it.
00;10;57;23 - 00;11;19;25
I mean, we have opportunities to to develop our skills, but we, we simply just don't take advantage of it. I'm not 100% sure why. I know we're busy people, but I think that that's very important. I've often said, and I share this with others, nobody is more responsible. Nobody can be more responsible for your career than you. Right.
00;11;19;28 - 00;11;41;28
If you're waiting for your manager to pat you on the head and give you that opportunity, you're probably going to be waiting a little bit long. I mean, even Hannah herself said, hey, you know, I actually I think, you know what? This project management thing just quite isn't where I'm feeling now. Maybe fails. And you know, you got to plug in now.
00;11;41;28 - 00;12;01;19
A good manager, a good leader will be looking out for their staff. But again, nobody is more responsible for your for your learning and your development than you are. So make sure that you plug it in. You have a mentor. You have somebody that can help you with that. Number three, listen more. And this kind of goes back to that number one point.
00;12;01;19 - 00;12;25;08
Be ready to be humble. You know, there's the old saying, you know, I gave you two years and one month for a reason. Right. You know, one of the biggest challenges and I said I've circled back around to this is that there's one migration in committed community career and they move up enough, enough and we're hoping that in 90 leaders that's something that, you know constant career development is something that's in your in your window.
00;12;25;11 - 00;12;55;05
But as you do that, one of the things that we need to do is we need to listen to the people that we're getting more and more space between right. So the people that are closest to the work are the people that you need to hear about how things are really going. But one of the I worked on this really great project at Lincoln, a multimillion dollar project, and as a young project manager, you know, junior executive, young project manager.
00;12;55;05 - 00;13;16;21
And I'm I was gung ho on project management. I'm I'm a pump and I love project manager and I am moving this thing as hard as I possibly can because I got this date, right. So folks who know project management, I know those people wrote, you know, you got your scope, you got your budget and you got your time, right?
00;13;16;21 - 00;13;45;00
So you're working on those three, you know, constraints. And you know, by just looking good, we know what we need to do, Right? I'm just trying to I'm trying to keep the schedule and my sponsor. My sponsor. So, hey, how's that project go? you know, everything's going really good and so on and so forth. Yeah, that's not what I'm here.
00;13;45;03 - 00;14;12;28
What? Yeah, I think. I think the engine has left the station, but the rest of the train is still back there. That was an awakening for me, right? So basically, I had gone too far out and I wasn't getting the real deal. I wasn't getting the true sense of what's happening. And as I kind of mentioned, you know, you want to be able to stay close so you can hear what's really going on.
00;14;13;01 - 00;14;37;23
And then maybe I was a little longer or approachable. Maybe I was a little too aggressive about keeping this project scheduled, but nobody wanted to tell me any bad news. And there's another famous the big one is Ford. This is probably at least a decade and a half old. And I think Alan Mulally from Boeing came over to Ford and he sits all the engineer down and says, How is this project on everything?
00;14;37;29 - 00;15;12;06
And everybody said, it's gone just fine. All right. Anyway. And he waited and he waited. And then week after week, same thing. And finally, one, an engineer is broke and says, well, this is not going to happen. And he's like, finally, somebody is telling you the truth. What's happening is, is that as you continue as the leader, as you move up in your career and you'll hear about this, if you've ever done a course or masters or whatever level you have this power distance relationship that gets wider and wider as you go further and further up the ladder right?
00;15;12;08 - 00;15;49;06
It's why you don't normally see the guy that is or gal that is working at a lowest portion of the organization run into the boardroom to talk to the CEO about something. It just doesn't happen. All right. There's so many layers as a manager and manager and manager above that. In fact, again, another hard lesson of leadership is that I remember I as a casual conversation of that same project and talking to a senior leader about the status of that project without first informing one of my direct leaders about what was going on.
00;15;49;08 - 00;16;06;09
And to make it worse, the person was a military person. So he was like, You just broke protocol. I almost died on that one. That was one of those, you know, career terminating events, you know, a readjustment period. You almost have to write a new resume out. Right. So you want to you want to make sure to watch out for that.
00;16;06;12 - 00;16;24;16
So as you go up the line, you know that that whole power distance relationship gets further and further out. So you as a leader have to do things to make sure that you're hearing the real deal. Right. And there's all sorts of books about how you do that. And one of my favorites is I think it's Ken Blanchard.
00;16;24;18 - 00;16;55;26
And I remind him that name management by one of our women, a manager, right. Classic is another Maxwell. You know, this is not classic stuff, right? It's just like, hey, don't in other words, don't get too big for your britches. You know, always make sure that you're keeping hear to what's actually happening in your organization. Now, like any leader, things get complicated as you get further and further up the line.
00;16;55;26 - 00;17;24;16
I mean, you're no longer talking about whether or not you should get, you know, one quarter of juice or two courts is just not that simple. Right. The things that you're deciding on is going to have significant impacts potentially for not only for your organization, for its financials and how things work and operate, but also for the people, you know, whether or not they have another nice line in their resume to say I was on a successful project or not because none of us like to be on unsuccessful projects.
00;17;24;16 - 00;18;01;17
But it happens. So the bottom line is, is that now you are in and you're in this mode that you have all this other stuff coming in. So the other lesson number four is to create systems for yourself. Okay, You got more things coming and they're coming faster and harder and they're more significant than they once were. So everything from simple things like managing your time calendar to do lists and how you do stuff, you're going to need to make some adjustments in that.
00;18;01;19 - 00;18;36;21
Because if you don't, then you will start to miss on things and that will interrupt your own personal performance. One of the things that we oftentimes don't do, I'm not something here is trust our instinct, right? And sometimes when you got the hard pressed press, the press for your career and your career development, you'll take anything. Hey, do this over here.
00;18;36;23 - 00;19;19;06
Yeah, I'll do it. Do that over here. Yeah, I'll do it. And then you realize that you've actually taken on a bit too much. All right, So another part of that lesson of creating systems is that the system should be able to inform you data side of when to say no, because you have to. You have to come up with some degree of balance or opportunities in things that you can take on because you can't as much as you'd like to think that you can, you cannot do everything.
00;19;19;09 - 00;19;49;09
Number five, don't forget what got you there. Somebody shared this with me many, many years ago, decades ago. One of my mentors won't say how many, but for decades at least that. And he says, you know, everybody wants their own piece of the pie. And I've always remembered this little acronym, right? As you're moving through the organization, you have to perform.
00;19;49;10 - 00;20;13;05
That's what the piece is, right? Your individual performance is almost what gets you. Notice writing about your past, the resume stage. You're you're on the job, you're probably getting started. You're at a lower level now. You got a little bit past this part, but you know, your individual performance is very important. And then that I was your age, you know, do you do you look the part?
00;20;13;07 - 00;20;37;26
Right? Can can somebody take you to the next meeting? Can somebody just grab you out of out of the break room and say, hey, I need you to run to a meeting with me on something right now? Used to happen. I had a I had an employee at Lincoln and it's she hated she hated socks, right? She hated socks.
00;20;37;29 - 00;20;57;13
She would never wear socks. I mind you, this is not the nice cushy work from home environment that we have now. And, you know, 20, 20, something like that. I mean, like it was still a pretty formal environment. Right. And and not only did she hate socks, she hated shoes. Right. And so this is Lincoln Financial Group, right?
00;20;57;13 - 00;21;14;28
You know, this is this is this is the company that was downtown that was huge and the number one employer for a long period of time, you know, corporate office. And, you know, now in Philadelphia or wherever it is these days. And, you know, now you got lingfield and, you know, all that kind of stuff. So it's a big company here.
00;21;14;28 - 00;21;43;12
So, you know, back in the nineties and stuff like that, you know, nobody walked around without shoes. Okay, This is like pre casual Fridays and stuff like that. So we had a, we had an agreement because she was shocked. We had an agreement. Hey look, just keep something in the drawer, keep something in your desk drawer that you can, you know, if need be that we can call and that you can go.
00;21;43;14 - 00;21;58;08
Right. I'm just kind of the same way I'm a suit and tie kind of guy or jacket and tie, stuff like that. I feel real comfortable in my, you know, Superman cape and everything else like that. But I would tell they I you you never know when you have to pull because you're we're the one closest to the assignment.
00;21;58;08 - 00;22;20;10
Okay now how much is how much are we off right now. A leader would ask and you would know, right? I need you to explain that to the board or wherever, as you're kind of moving up your career. So just have to just be ready to do that. Whatever it takes. You have to look the parts of it you can get kind of get the part.
00;22;20;12 - 00;22;54;05
And then finally the other the last piece of the pie is the E, and we kind of already talked about this a little bit, which is the exposure, right? So individual performance, your your image that you carry and also your exposure and exposure is having that mentor, having that somebody that is going to open the door for you and say, Hey, yeah, this person is really good that, you know, they don't wear soft issues in the office, but they're still sharp as a whip and that they're they are quality enough that you can pull up to the signs that, hey, look, open your drawer.
00;22;54;12 - 00;23;12;18
A lot of shoes. Well, I'll just. You going with me up into the boardroom and we're going to talk about this product that you're working on. So you kind of need that. So now that we understand the whole performance and understand that whole framework of performance, you still need to understand that as you migrate up your your career.
00;23;12;18 - 00;23;37;03
And we already talked about the power distance. We're getting further and further away from your technical skills right? So it's also important to know that what got you there may not be necessarily what will keep you there. All right. And so I know you hear these stories oftentimes, and this is one thing that we do need to say no on some time.
00;23;37;05 - 00;24;01;23
Maybe you don't want to manage people and you don't want to be that high CIO, something that is perfectly fine, right? But we need to know that even in our career, what got us there may not keep us there. So before we got started today, we were joking. I was joking with Doug in front and I said, you know, hey, I grew up in a pretty competitive family, right?
00;24;01;25 - 00;24;38;03
So my sister younger than me, by two years, she's getting all the love from from dad, mom, because she spoke three languages, right? She spoke English as our first language. So Spanish and French. Me being the older sibling rivalry and competitive and stuff like that as well. That's nothing. I speak five languages. COBOL Basic. Yeah. All right. So the point of the matter in that story is, is that nobody's called me to do anything in COBOL here in Long Market, not RPG, not work.
00;24;38;03 - 00;25;00;20
Going to ask 400 or anything else like that. All of those things are in my career, my past career and even to this day. Right. And this is a problem that we have oftentimes, is that what got us there, whether it was some particular coding language or anything else of that nature was hot and good then, but it's not now.
00;25;00;22 - 00;25;32;06
And we failed to make the switch. We failed to move. We need to be able to make that switch so that we don't get stuck as everything else is moving past the moving aside from us. So we kind of talked about five different things, right? Get ready, be humble, make sure that you get help, make sure that you're listening, creating systems and don't forget what got you there.
00;25;32;06 - 00;26;05;14
May not keep you there or get you there, but this is Indiana. We like a bargain, so we're going to give you one more sixth one, bonus one, and I'll give it to you in a story. Right. And I apologize for anybody who has heard the story from me or anywhere else. So this new plant manager just been hired, got to this company and yo, plant managers, they're getting ready to turn things over today.
00;26;05;16 - 00;26;27;11
And he said, you know, I really like you, kid. You're going to do real well here and help you. I've left some instructions for you in three envelopes in the desk drawer. Right. Because you know when to open them. If you take a look at the first one, we'll open it up and figure out when to open up the rest.
00;26;27;14 - 00;26;56;09
Okay. So old timer walks out the door, you know, leaves the building. New plant in system is nice office overseeing the production for all the windows and the big table in the conference table on the side opens up the first envelope and is waiting for all of us after this. Okay. I don't know. All right, so we call this first plant meeting.
00;26;56;11 - 00;27;20;07
Everybody is gathered around Barbara. Well, he was an idiot. He didn't know how to run. E we're changing it, all right? People are shocked, but they follow along, they make the change, they flip it, cylinders. It took a little while to get going, but now the engine is humming. I mean, they're doing really, really good. And the plant is having a really great.
00;27;20;09 - 00;27;46;16
And because of all of that sales shoot up, this guy is a literal hero. He is doing really, really good. And so everything is chugging along and they're making these sales numbers and everybody's happy. But then, I don't know, it just starts to get a little squishy and starts to plateau out a little bit. Plant Manager takes that on for a little bit.
00;27;46;18 - 00;28;09;02
Say, you know what, I'm not liking where this is going. Maybe it's time to open up that next snowball. So he goes to his desk drawer all the way to the back. There's the envelope. He pulls out envelope number two, he opens it up. It's time he made a mistake. Flip it back like this. Can't be right. But that first snowball was really, really good.
00;28;09;05 - 00;28;29;10
All right, I'll give it a try. So he goes out to the floor, says, You know, we've had a great ride, but I've made some mistakes and we're going to put this organization back. And the people are shocked. I can't believe he's going to do this. I can't the same can't take it. So they flip it back and again, a little slow at first.
00;28;29;12 - 00;28;50;11
But the engine start, the one and it's getting really, really good. And they have another great cycle of good sales and everything else like that. And that, as you might expect, it goes really, really good for a period of time and then it starts to plateau out. But he's got one more envelope. He says those other two were so great, I'm going to go and pull the other envelope.
00;28;50;14 - 00;29;14;02
So he goes back to his big office with a nice view. He opens up his desk drawer, the last slopes all dusty. He got marks on it, but it hasn't been opened yet. He opens it up and he reads it and it says, Make three envelopes. The last bonus lesson is you have to know when to leave. That's another hard lesson in leadership.
00;29;14;04 - 00;29;20;26
Thank you.