Aaron Bock: Welcome to the IT Matters podcast hosted by
Opkalla. We're an IT advisory firm that makes technology easy
for your business. Our vendor neutral technology advisors work
directly with your team to assess technology needs and
procure the best IT solutions for your organization. On this
podcast, expect high level expertise from our hosts, plus
experience driven perspective from the leading experts on
topics like AI, cybersecurity, industry focused IT solutions,
strategy and more. Now let's get into today's discussion on what
matters in IT.
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Welcome to the IT Matters podcast hosted by Opkalla. We
are an IT advisory firm that helps businesses navigate the
vast and complex IT marketplace. At Opkalla, we work alongside IT
teams to design, procure and implement and support it
solutions without an agenda or technology bias. But on this
podcast, you can expect a high level of expertise from our
host, plus interviews with leading experts and topics like
AI, cybersecurity, industry specific IT solutions and
strategy. Now let's get into today's discussion on what
matters in IT. Aaron, who do we have the pleasure of guessing on
the IT managed podcast today.
Aaron Bock: Yeah, it's good to see you, Keith. We've got Grant
Walsh, who is the leader of infrastructure and security at
Flow Control Group based here in Charlotte today. Grant, welcome
to the show.
Grant Walsh: Thank you, sir. I am pumped to be here.
Aaron Bock: Love the Opkalla orange that you've got on today.
Oh, there we go. We go way back with grant. So he's a he's a
fan, and we're a fan of him. So thanks for joining the show
where we're excited to to interview and learn from you
today. But I think Keith's got something for us to start off
with today, So Keith, I'll pass it to you.
Keith Hawkey: Yes, I have a little little trip, yeah, game
for the two of you today, if you're willing, Grant absolutely
you're willing to put your mind to the metal, two truths and a
lie. And it is based on the recent CES robots edition
consumer electronics 2025 that they had earlier this year. So
I've come up with there's three robots I'm going to introduce,
and two of them are actually at the event. One of them is
completely made up, okay, all right. Are we ready? Let's go.
Ready? All right. All right, team. Let's play a quick round
of two truths and a lie. CES robots edition, hey, here we go.
Option a Meet mirumi, a sloth inspired emotional support robot
that attaches to your bag and reacts bashfully when touched,
averts its gaze and even size when overwhelmed by attention
option B, say hello to toast. E, a bread scented AI robot that
delivers motivational quotes every morning while toasting
actual slices of bread. And option C then there is arrow cat
tower, an air purifier that doubles as a luxury cat tree. It
cleans the air and tracks your cat's weight and syncs your
phone to deliver daily feline wellness reports. I. So we have
marumi, the emotional sloth. We have toast e the motivational
toaster and arrow cat tower, the air purifier, feline health and
wellness expert.
Grant Walsh: They're all legit. They all actually could see any
one of those being an actual robot.
Aaron Bock: Yeah, I Grant, I don't know I, I'm thinking B.
The smell of bread just seems like a random smell that some AI
bot made up.
Grant Walsh: I could, I mean, I yeah, I mean, I think people
love cats a lot. A lot of viewers love cats. So I can see,
see for sure, being one and tracking your cats weights
important, I guess, and the emotional support sloth, we all
need emotional support, yeah, I mean, and that's, and that's
airline friendly, so I feel like you could take it when you
travel. So that would be, you know, benefit there the toasting
one. I just seemed as much as I say, No, I still say like, well,
it does multiple functions. It gets toast, and it smells like
bread, and it gives you motivational quote, The Adeline,
B is the lie.
Aaron Bock: I think B is the lie.
Keith Hawkey: And the answer is, b, that is the lie.
Congratulations. So you have both won the beta version of
marumi, the emotional support sloth. Let's go. So expect that
in your mail there actually is a toaster that, instead of
toasting bread, you slot your phone in there and it charges
yourself. So it's a little bit of a variation of that
Aaron Bock: I did see that it charges it in like, under a
minute, or something crazy. Yeah, that's awesome. Well,
thank you for indulging us with with that wonderful CES trivia
today. Grant, we're excited to have you on the show today, I
guess, for the audience out there who don't know you and
your background. How about start with your introduction of just
how you how you got into it, and your journey to where you're at
today as a leader in it. And then we'll kind of dig in from
Grant Walsh: Yeah, if we go way back, back into the 19th, 1900s
there.
the name golly, my it, don't say it career, but me for it, have
always been, I guess. Remember 1986 getting the Commodore 64
and typing out commands in a book and run running games that
way, and putting ball cards into a small, little database back
then. But I've always been kind of a tech guy when it comes to
it did that worked at Radio Shack from back in the day, for
a lot of folks who don't know radio check, but that was, that
was the place to be for technology. But overall, for,
you know, the actual IT career started back in 2003 in the
infrastructure operation side of things. Majority of my career
really has been in leadership. So I've had opportunity to grow
from, you know, a lead service engine, a service engineer or it
analyst, depending with how you call the roles up through, you
know, site managers, regional managers, senior managers and
some large organizations have the opportunity work for some
smaller companies where you get to do everything from E
commerce, social media, ERP, service desk, the whole nine
yards. So good exposure there. But now, you know, in the in a
director capacity, or head of infrastructure and security for
the company. Met now, but it's been about, I said, 22, 23 some
odd years in IT with like so the vast majority, in the in a
leadership capacity. And that's really been the most fun,
working with people, watching people grow, driving cultural
change. That is, that's, that's that's my bread and butter. Like
some, some people geek out on technology, and I, I used to,
but now it's like just, you know, helping people grow,
driving solutions to the business and just driving that
change wherever. You know you have to work. I don't think
anybody, and you know that I've worked with ever comes in, I
don't have to work. I'm just here for a good time. But you
know, trying to make it a good time is really what's been the
joy of my career so far.
Aaron Bock: And I guess on that, because if you think about you,
you just said you're not you used to geek out, maybe not as
much now. But like, if you compare the IT function in a
business to accounting, marketing, et cetera, it's all
changing because of technology, right? So technology is what's
driving it, and in technology, it's growing. It's changing
faster than ever. So like, what's, in your opinion, like,
is it harder? Is it what's the difference between leading,
like, an IT team and keeping good culture, versus, like,
maybe an accounting team or a finance team, etc? And the
organizations you've worked at,
Grant Walsh: I think today is different because the technology
is changing so fast that we're kind of at a tipping point in
terms of, there's a lot of good IT, engineers, services, people,
people that know technology for a while, but we're pivoting to,
and I think Cloud's been around, obviously, Cloud's been around
for a number of years, but we're kind of tipping into, do we
have. Enough expertise on the cloud side? Do we have enough
expertise on the AI side that you're trying to encourage to
help people grow into those new areas so they'll get passed by?
Because if you've just been server 2016 windows on on the an
IPv before type environment, and that's all you've ever done.
Cool, but those opportunities are lessening and lessening
because technology is changing so fast, so trying to have a
culture where you want people to grow, and then trying to, as a
leader, you know, kind of pour into that growth and want people
to grow, and then the folks that don't, and your company's
evolving and changing and becoming, you know, they're
adapting to this new technology, having those real, honest
conversations with folks that don't want to change that maybe
this isn't the place for you. So it's it's tough on the IT side,
just because that there is so much change happening so fast
that you have to keep your people up so they don't get
passed by.
Keith Hawkey: Those are great points, Grant. I mean, you guys
are moving very quickly, and I'm curious, how would you describe
the team culture and the IT department of Flow Control,
What? What? How do you like if you're in if you're interviewing
a prospect to join your team? What would you say about the
culture that you instill.
Grant Walsh: So the culture we try to drive, from a leadership
standpoint, is really a servant leadership culture, where we
pour into our team, we try to help our team grow. But one
thing that I've done, and I've had the opportunity to build the
whole team here at Flow Control, when I got here, was me, one
service desk person and two engineers, and now we're much
larger than that. We've built out the entire team, but I value
the input of all our engineers, all our services folks, all of
our managers, so much so that when we do interviews, it's not
me doing interviews. I want it to be a cultural fit so that
team is comfortable working with this new individual. Like, are
they going to come in and chip in where necessary? Are they
going to come in and wear a lot of hats? Like, I'm if I'm coming
in, I'm just a backup guy. That's not really what we're
looking for. You have to be to feel flexible to do servers.
Today could be a networking issue. Tomorrow, could be
working with a partner in the firewall. Whatever the case may
be, is be flexible and be concerned about your team. Now
my my goal from leadership standpoint, is to ensure that
culture is not burning you out. So we do do a, I think, a good
job in terms of trying to set that line of work life balance.
So it's the expectations. You're not coming in working seven days
a week. And I know some IT groups do. They work all the
time. They work nights, they work weekends. I've been there,
done that. That's tough, and sometimes you have to go to that
while you're building that change, because you're trying to
get everything where it is. But I think we're at with Flow
Control Group. I control group. Sure, you're gonna do patching,
you're gonna do some migrations at night, you're gonna do some
things here and there, but the norm is not to have that work
life balance so skewed that people get burned out and don't
want to come in the next day. So I want to make sure our team has
that, and that's the kind of culture we sell when they when
they come in, they're going to come in, we're going to have a
good time. We're going to, you know, I won't say we're family,
because that's kind of cliche. Because we're not family, we are
work buddies. We're gonna do our jobs, we're gonna go home, go a
separate ways. We can leave and come back the next day, refresh.
I don't want you to, I don't want to be your work buddy. I
don't want to, you know, I love you guys when you're here at
work, but when we leave, go home your family, go home to whatever
makes you happy. So tomorrow you're recharged and you're
ready to work. And then again, when something blows up, and it
does, you're an IT. Something will happen. Will blow up that
All right, everyone stops. How can I help? What can I do? How
can we rally around this problem, get it taken care of,
and get back to what we were working on before? So that's the
culture. We built a Flow Control Group, and we have a really,
really good team, and I think, not by any force. And Aaron's
been there and met our team, not by any force, not by anything
that's directed or demanded. We've ended up with a very
diverse team of individuals from different backgrounds, different
ethnicities, different gender, just everything by no force. We
just find the right people, and they are so good, and I have in
those different perspectives when they look at issues or
concerns or things. Hey, here what I think, or here's what
I've seen in the past, has helped us really push, you know,
push things forward and drive that kind of truck, that change
we're looking for just through natural, just, you know,
experience that they've had. So again, we haven't gone out and
tried to look for this stuff, and we just hire the right
people. We have our team again, interview everybody. We bring
the teams of people and say, Hey, so we're interviewing for
this role. Who wants to jump in and help out interview. And the
questions are great because you get questions from all over the
place, and you see how people react and and then we go back
and take their input, and I don't make the final call, like,
I'll if the team says this person is the rank the highest,
then we'll go with that person. And then, you know, I'll
interview them if I think they're great fit. I may ask
questions or not, but so far, I haven't said, Oh, the team picks
somebody. And I said, No, it's always gonna, everything's
worked out. So it's, it's a really good culture here of a
real team input and transparency and just be honest with each
other. That's been the big thing for us, too, to really build
that trust amongst the team. Is nobody's BS in anybody. It's all
and whatever I tell you is the truth. I'm not going to give you
blow smoke up your butt. This is, this is what's happening.
So,
Keith Hawkey: Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And you
mentioned something that this sticks out to me is that, no,
these, these are our colleagues. They're not our family. They're
fundamental, fundamentally different. And you, I think, I
think for a while, and even today, I mean, you'll go on
LinkedIn and you'll see companies advertising. We have
open slots in our family. Why don't you come join us? There
are different types of relationships that both can be
positive. I'm curious. You've been leading IT. TTS, IT teams
for a long time now. I'm always curious as to what is, what do
you think some of the wisdom, kind of the older wisdom that
may be may have been lost in your years of managing IT teams.
And then also, what are some of the new wisdom that you think
older IT managers might be able to take advantage of? That's
Grant Walsh: pretty tough. Okay, so older wisdom that's been
lost. I think there's as I touched on before, that, not an
IT or not. I mean, honestly, if you're an IT, you've picked the
wrong career for eight to five, that's just and I think that's
lack of transparency and honesty sometimes can bite us. And just
like, listen this role, yeah, during the time, you're gonna
come at eight, you're gonna go home at five, you're gonna take
your lunch, do your thing. But if you're an engineer, if you're
security, forget that nine to five stuff and stuff you know,
the attackers don't normally hit nine to five. So that's some of
that old wisdom, just being honest people, that this is not
that kind of job. And if you came out of college thinking
that the late nights you did study, and the late nights you
did writing reports, that still happens here. I mean, don't
write reports. You don't study. You'll have a teacher, you have
a test, but every day the test, and you're going to have some
late nights and things you have to stick around for. I think new
knowledge, new wisdom, is really that, I think early in my
career, it's, you know, there was the lack of, how do I grow?
Was always tough when, before I became a leader, like, how do I
grow into my next opportunity? How do I get to that next spot?
I think companies has in generic these trains are out there, but
nothing specific to the career path I wanted to have. So I
think in the newer wisdom, for folks coming out of college, how
do I keep growing? How do we get to that next role? And they want
it fast. They want to be there. I started here, and a year
later, I want something else. Okay, well, let's make sure we
put the training in place to get you there, but let's also make
sure we're doing number the role we have today that you're
assigned to do that do its best before we talk about that role,
let's make sure you excel here. Before I go talk about the next
role, do that. I think this is, this is kind of go back to old
wisdom. You know, you're doing your job and you're training for
Aaron Bock: Yeah, and I think you could take that. What you
the next role. Your training typically happens after hours,
and it's been a tough thing to sell you. You take your training
and see you make sure you can go to, I think Opkalla does a great
job with some lunch and learns. We've done a lot of stuff there,
send people to different Azure trainings and things like that.
That's been great. But if you're really serious about moving into
that next cloud role, security role, AI role, whatever it is,
it's going to take some of your time. We're going to invest, as
an organization, in you who may pay for it, pay for search,
things like that. But your time is your time. I can't give you
the time that you need to do your job then go off to the
training, because we still need you to do your role, but we're
willing to invest to help you, support you, talk about it,
create that path, but you got to give your time, and that's a
hard thing sometimes for folks to understand, like, well, I
need to, I need Tuesdays off every week for the next 12
weeks. Do this training. Well, that just takes me out, you
know, a number of hours I don't have a good support. And that's
not saying we don't support you, because we are financially, and
we are, you know, enthusiastically pushing you
along, but you need to invest your time. It's a partnership
here in terms of getting you there. And I think that's some
old wisdom that's hard to sell to some folks, because, well,
I'm doing this for you, like you're not really doing it for
me. You may get this role here, but if we think about long term
for you as the employee, and if I'm really, I care about you,
that next role may not be here, and that's okay if you grow out
of what we can offer you, and your next role somewhere else, I
will give you a recommendation, because I don't have that
opportunity for you here. So we're investing in you. Sure it
would help us short term, but long term is going to help you
in your career.
just said, that's, I think that was a very great nugget of
advice. You could apply that to almost any industry too, because
I know at Opkalla, I always tell people when they're interviewing
or when they're joining the first 18 months if you put in
the maximum amount of effort, which does mean after hours
sometimes. And so I can't, I can't sit here and say you will
be the most successful if you only work 40 hours. That's up to
you. I can't make you do anything at night, but if you
want to get the most ahead, you want to have a fast start, it's
going to take some self learning, some some work after
hours, some organizing after hours, whether that's a cert,
whether that's a course you want to take, whether it's just
understanding what you're doing. And I think anyone would say
that that like, the the longer you've been in it, yeah, you can
kind of hack the system, because you've been doing this forever,
and you can use experience you have. But if you're new and
you're trying to learn it, that's how you have to get it.
You just have to put in the work. And so Grant, I have a
follow up question to that. It's kind of two parts. So one, first
part is answering, from. Um, like, if you're if to our
audience members who do interview, and the second one
is, second part of the question is to people that are
interviewing. So you mentioned how you do interviews today,
where your team interviews, and then you'll do an interview. But
you also, we talked about how tech is, is changing very fast.
There's new tech, there's new concepts, there's new
industries, right? And so culture is important. How do you
like, how do you interview someone who is possibly, who has
skills in an IT segment that's maybe newer, that you're not as
familiar with, and you're trying to validate how well they could
be in that role, balancing, like, their knowledge with the
culture. Like, how do you weigh that? Like, what are you trying
to ask? Like, what are you trying to uncover in that
interview, from your perspective, to make sure that
one, they can do the role, and two, they keep the culture that
you have and are a good culture fit?
Grant Walsh: Yeah, I think that's, that's a good question.
I think it's one of the things where you can teach tech skills,
but I can't teach cultural fit, right? So I'm always going to
lean to cultural fit over tech skills. So if you can do it for
the most part, for what we know versus what we don't know, we
can, we can figure out the rest. I think there's also, without
saying, I'm not going to go in there blind, we've been able to
leverage partnerships with whether it be an Opkalla, or
some other, you know, partners we use that are industry experts
in these areas that we may like today. We're as we grow, we lean
heavily on partners for certain areas of expertise. If I want to
shift that internal or not even get rid of that partner, but
bring somebody in to help us internally, have some expertise
and have more insightful conversations with these
partners, because I lack the internal I can engage them or
have engaged them in the past to help us do some of the
interviews. Now we're in an interview with myself and this
other person who doesn't work here, but is an expert in that
field that we need to hire you for. So if that person is, yeah,
they are, hey, there's, you know, our partner told us
they're 75% of where they should be, but I think our team
interviews them and they're like, 100% cultural fit. We'll
go. Because if I can find somebody that fits us
culturally, that's more important right now than, you
know, finding that tech expertise. Hey, the perfect tech
expert, because a lot of times they're so focused on this one
area that they can't do anything else. And even if I bring you in
for AI or bring you in for cloud security, you're probably gonna
do other stuff. I mean, we're now imagine with, you know,
being in Charlotte, we have a lot of, you know, Fortune 500
companies that have very siloed folks who do very specific
things. I have a number of friends that do that, and that's
great for them, but in our org, where orgs I've been in, you're
gonna have to do a lot of different things, and that
cultural fit is more important for us, that you have the
flexibility and willingness to help out whenever that issue
comes up. And
Aaron Bock: so flip side, you just kind of hit on it, but to
that person that you that's on your team or is interviewing, or
they've been the server 16 person for a while, or they've
been the backup person for a while. How do you besides just
making sure that they fit and they do what they're supposed to
do, how do you convince them, slash, help them understand,
like, evolving in their current role and in their education is
important and and make sure that they're taking on new roles and
making sure they're taking on new certifications, etc, so that
they don't get left behind because the tech passes them by.
How do you coach that? Have you? Maybe there's an example of
someone that you talked to for, you know, with a for about a
year, and then all of a sudden it kind of hit them, and they
they started realizing they needed to do it. Share an
example.
Grant Walsh: Yeah, I think that's that happens. So we do,
you know, when I first started here, I didn't have the
management team I have, far as you know, kind of a tiered
option between infrastructure, operations, security, so a lot
of the folks reporting directly to me. And as we grew the team,
we built out a management team. But even in the one on ones I
had with all the engineers or the the operations folks that
they're those meetings really focused on. Not only okay, what
are the big issues you're dealing with each week, but what
are you doing week to week to help improve yourselves, make
yourself better. Where do you want to be so that that's
important to make sure on those weekly one on ones, or even now,
with my managers making yourself you're making sure you're ready
for that next opportunity, whatever presents, because you
really don't know when it's going to show up. I mean, sure I
can plan to grow this role, but lot of times there are
unexpected changes that may pop up a new opportunity. I think
we've had some folks along the way, and even here at Flow
Control Group that we've coached for a while, hey, you've got to
get ready for this. You know, we are seeing a shift to more of
the cloud. I talked about cloud a couple times today, but you
know, we're seeing more that shift off the on prem, to the
cloud. And we have a partner now, and we understand it to an
extent. But you know, Azure AWS is different than your legacy on
prem day. So we have a number of engineers. Somebody's got to
step up and want to take Azure. I can't force you to. I can't, I
can't push you into it, because you're not going to do it.
Because you're not going to do it. You're not going to want to
do it. I need somebody that wants to excel. And we had an
individual that, you know, is managing some legacy technology
that, hey, we're going to outsource this technology to a
partner that does it on the regular, whether it be a phone
system or firewalls or the case may be, that's going away. So
when that goes away, what are you going to do? Because that's
been. Your primary role for a long period of time, what are
you going to do? Because at that point, what are you adding to
the team? If that's all you're working on so and finally, it
was an aha moment. Oh, that's true. And think about that. So
now they're pivoting to taking the training, putting a process
together that day, in six months, we should be here 12
months. We should hear making sure that the manager and that
the manager and that person is working together, that their
progress is moving on. Hey, we are again, full support, paying
for search, paying for training, making sure that you're involved
with the projects that are with that partner today, so you
energy. Can get some exposure, so you can see how things are
done, you can ask questions. So again, just really investing in
that person to help them grow, and then just keeping that
pulse, making a point every week, on your one on ones, or
your bi weekly one on ones, where are you at? How are we
moving? Because you know, if you don't do it on a regular basis,
then it slips, and next thing you know, it's been a month, two
months gone, and that's for this individual. Hey, man, I've been
here two years. We talked about this a year and a half ago, and
you're finally getting the point. Imagine where you would
be if you started a year and a half ago, when we first told you
that this is somewhere you should go. So it's just again,
it's, we've had that happen. It's sometimes, I think people,
it's a thing too, where everybody's got busy lives
outside of work, and they have to want to invest that time as
an employee. And then sometimes you got to paint it, pick the
picture, form this solution that you're doing today is going
away, or you're all this work that you do is going away. What
are you going to do? And then sometimes it's like, Oh, crap,
yeah, I needed to get that. I need to get moving on that I
need to get moving on that so I don't get kind of left behind.
Keith Hawkey: That's such a unique aspect of of being in
technology, especially today, especially over the last 10
years, because you're right, like the job that you've trained
for and the job that you're doing. I mean that that
technology could be supplemented by a partner in six months or a
year, and now you no longer have to manage it. And then you have
to find either a new technology to manage, or you have to move
into leadership, or you have to find another usefulness of your
time, which is certainly unique to IT and unique to technology,
just by the nature of how the market is moving, and how there
are more and more companies that are able to offer automations
and they're able to offer services that can do the job
better than one individual at a particular company. How do you
like how many, how many people have you interviewed in your
life? How many candidates you think a lot of number on it.
Lot,
Grant Walsh: hundreds, across the career hundreds, yeah, at
least across all the companies I've been at. Yeah, 500 Okay,
okay. I will say the majority of my career is building teams like
it's coming in with either a you're assessing and rebuilding,
or you have nothing. And hey, you get to build from scratch.
And that's why, why I came to Flow Control. So you come there,
you think about that, all those different opportunities I've had
to build teams in every role, you're interviewing 10 people,
or whatever it is, it's a lot of people
Keith Hawkey: In the interview process. How do you convey this
message? Because this is just almost as if, hey, we're
interviewing you for this job. But how do you convey the
message that there may be a chance that you might not be
doing this in a year's time. And we also need to be thinking
about culturally. We need dynamic employees that that that
want to grow and develop and want to chase the challenge,
chase the next technology, chase those cloud opportunities. What
are some of the ways that you're able to kind of filter the
candidate pool. Convey this in an interview, I'm curious about
how that conversation goes.
Grant Walsh: We always listen for, you know, in most
candidates, I ask, you know, even when I'm in there, sure I
took this this role, what's my path to the VP role? What's my
path through the CISO role? What's my path here to where I
want to be? Like, I'm asking the VP of HR, I'm asking them who,
whoever my manager would be at the time, who were, you know,
the CFO that I interviewed with, what's the path there? So we're
listening for those kind of questions too from our
candidates. Like we say one of the biggest things I feel an
interviewing process like one of track of coach people on is
like, when it's time to ask questions, ask questions. Don't
say, I have nothing. You have nothing. You literally, you have
nothing. To ask us, because one of the questions should be
questions should be, hey, I know I'm higher being higher for this
role, and I want to learn this role, and I want to do it great,
but the next role, what do you guys do for that? Like, that's
not a question that I know you're not interested in
growing, and maybe you're just nervous, but then you're not
prepared. So it goes both ways. So we're looking for those types
of that feedback, because in our interviews that they're not.
It's not a stuffy area. You're not sitting across at a table
all by yourself with like five people there just firing
questions off. It is a conversational thing. We try to
joke. You'll see the culture in our team when the interview
happens. So we're looking for that. I mean, for me, I I
cannot. I say it. We want to grow people. And I say that in
an effort to try to get that back and forth. And it really
comes down to the candidate we're listing for certain key
things to say we're looking for them to, you know, where they
want to go. And I'll give an example too, on the security
side. Because, you know, security is a very niche or
specialized area. And just like you know, if you want to have
hired a Salesforce admin, or you hired cloud security, or just
security in general, try. To find the right people who have
the actual experience, not just book experience, but, like,
hands on. I've been in the trenches to fight, you know, the
attackers and people coming in. I've done this, and I've seen
this, not the ones that just go off and play with flipper zero
or, Hey, I've, you know, watched this podcast. Cool. But what are
you doing? And how are you growing? Because security is
evolving rapidly. You know, the attackers are getting better and
better. And better. The use of AI is getting better and better.
So what are you doing? So if we're not hearing that, if
you're not already investing your own time, and that you
haven't set up Cali at home and tried to hack this or hack that,
or you haven't done some basic stuff, then it's like they're
not interested in growing. You just want you got you went to
school, got your degree, now you want the money, but you're not
really want to grow. You feel like it's done and it's not
done. If you got an it, it's not done. Like, if there's just,
should be more of that in the in the interview. And we're trying
to listen for those keys and like, and we're not going to
come out and say, Tell us exactly what you're doing at
home. We're just listening like, hey, what do you what are things
you've kind of got into? What have you tried on your own? And,
oh, this is my first interview out of college. Okay, cool. What
have you done? And like, you get, there's so many free, free
opportunities to build your own virtual environments, set up
things on your own, try to hack things, set up Active Directory
in your own. You can do this on your own. That's what we're
looking for, because that means you're willing to take your
time, invest in yourself, and then we can come along there,
and we can kind of, you know, boost that too, by paying for
search, paying put you around the right people, get you in the
right in front of the right tools and solutions. I mean, all
the solutions we have today on the security side, offer
training. Now, you can become an expert on trainings, but if
you're again, if you're not doing that on your own, what am
I to think that you're actually going to change that? When you
join our organization, you're just going to do your job here
and then go home, and then tomorrow, come back in and start
over again. That's gonna be a slow progress forward a year
from now, you'd be like, when do I get to move up? But you
haven't done anything in the last year, other than do your
job, which is great, but you kind of do your job and then
figure out how you get that next step on your own. So you
Aaron Bock: should, you said you're you've throughout your
career, you've been fortunate enough to be able to build
teams. So interview a lot of candidates, bring them on. Stand
up teams. Take, let's take the IT leader that may be listening
to this, or who is struggling to create a great culture. So
either they realize that their culture is not as good as it
could be, or they're newer to an organization where the culture
may be lacking for whatever reason. What advice would you
give to someone that doesn't get to just go hire a whole team of
people on how to create a better culture in IT and create the,
you know, the motivation to go learn things on your own, and
the motivation to help out your teammates. How would you do it?
Or what advice would you give that person?
Grant Walsh: So I think when you're building a team, or you
have trying to cultural change is you don't want to be a an
office leader, so I'm staying in my office, and I'm just kind of
barking commands from the office that will kill culture in a
heartbeat. You have to be able to get out of your office, get
in the trenches with the folks, be there, side by side. And
you're trying to first building things out until you have the
expertise that you want or you're looking for, and you have
those leaders that you need, you've got to be out there to be
one of them. And when you mess up, you got to say, Oh, I messed
up. You know, we're all doing this together. Things happen
fast. You react fast. Sometimes you make mistakes because you
react fast. But being honest and transparent and people is a big
boost. I think, you know a lot, one of my roles we that I was in
in South Florida, we went through with a team was called
The Five Dysfunctions of the team, and that, you know that
that bottom base is trust, like having trust, you know they have
to have trust in you, that you're looking up for them, and
vice versa, that you know they've got your back, you know,
making sure that as a leader, I think one of the biggest things
the leader Holly is, is running that buffer, providing that
cover for your team, because the business is looking for somebody
when something goes wrong, to blame and point at. Let it be
the leader. Don't. Let don't ever give a name. Hey, this
person screwed up. No, no, no, no, you're the leader. You took
the money, you took the title. You're going to take the
beating. You know that's your job, to take the blame, and then
you talk it over the team. Hey guys, we messed up here. How can
we make sure it doesn't happen? And while you're not saying,
Hey, I covered for you, if you say that, then you've you've
blown it up too, but it's really we've messed up. How can we do
better? You know, what can we do to make sure it doesn't happen
in the future? Listen, provide that back and forth. The team
picks up on that. Individuals pick up on the fact that as a
leader, you're doing your job to run that cover and to run the
kind of shield, if you will, from the team. You know, that's
something I've always tried to do, is make sure I can run cover
for the team. Allow them to do what they need to do. These are
experts in what they do. Go do go do what you need to do, and
I'll run the cover for you. And just that, that'll build culture
really fast. Build that trust really fast. I think another
thing for leadership is allow people to talk. Hey man, I'm
having concerns with this or that. This tool we bought, or
this tool we're looking at, I don't agree. I don't think it's
right one. Sure. Why don't you think it's the right one? Or why
don't you think this is, is the right, not the right solution?
Let's talk about that. Let's have that open door and do so in
a respectful manner, and have that back and forth. And at the
end of day, if it's something that you know, as a leader you
have to make go with, be able to explain, hey, we chose to go
this route because of A, B and C. I know you had concerns, but
this is why we went that route. Sometimes, in those roles, they
don't. See all the details of the financials, or whatever the
case may be about solution, or whatever it may be that you have
to kind of explain that to them and be transparent about it. So
I think transparency and trust are huge in building that
culture and just again, getting out there. Don't be copy behind
a door in an office, and just barking commands is not a place
to be that'll kill culture really fast,
Aaron Bock: trust, transparency, speed. Those are our three core
values at Opkalla. I didn't tell that to Grant before this, but
he just named two of them. I think from my perspective, you
know, again, I see different issues than you all do, but
communication, like the communication to your team, and
I always say, like, I have a huge hole in the middle of my
chest from falling on swords for people, because sometimes we do
mess up, and sometimes we just have to own it, and then
internally figure out, like, what went wrong? How did it go
wrong? But like, we are all humans, and I think deep down,
everyone understands that. And so what people crave the most
from, whether it's their team, their partners, their you know,
spouses, whatever it is in life you want someone to that you
know has your back, and you can communicate with and then when
things go well, they can communicate. When things go
wrong, you also can communicate. So I would, I would second that,
and I would say that 95% of the issues that I deal with as a
leader is related to communication and not setting
expectations, and just not following through. And so, you
know, I think, like you said running, you called it running
cover, I would say falling on swords sometimes, like whatever
it is. But Grant, as we close out, I got one, one for one last
question. Then Keith will, will close this out. But we're in
2025, you know, you've, you've you've been doing this 20 years.
What trends in it excite you, or what trends in in IT leadership,
or leadership in general, like, what do you see coming for
leaders that will be leaders the next five years, or continue to
be leaders the next five years that you care about, you're
concerned about, like, any, any thoughts on that. I think
because,
Grant Walsh: you know, we talked about, keep talking about things
evolving so fast, I think you'll have a there's a lot of leaders
in this that been doing it for a while, but you're gonna have
leaders grow quickly that don't have the experience, and that of
there's things that you can't learn to book. And I think a lot
of things in terms of dealing with people, leadership is so
much about people. That's about technology. You can learn all
the technology stuff you want to and I think, you know, Keith
mentioned earlier, like people talking about, do they grow into
a leadership role, or do they go into another technology role?
There's a fine line of the people that need to go into
leadership that don't. There are a lot of good technology people
that should never go into leadership, because managing
people is vastly different than managing technology. Whether you
can be a great technology leader, know the technology No,
no systems and processes that are great, but that experience
of leading people, sure, you can go leadership courses, you can
go to different trainings on how to lead people, read books, do a
lot of, you know, quotes, all that fun stuff, but there's
stuff you just can't learn until you've led teams. And I think
that's something that you know, from a concerning standpoint, as
we grow fast, you're going to have all these leaders pop up,
so you have to turn into that. There's a lot of learning, and I
think we'll catch up, you know, over time here with that. But
there's a lot of new folks who jump into it because it is so
hot. From a cybersecurity standpoint, cloud standpoint,
there are a lot of folks coming out that want to move up fast,
and naturally, companies will see that progress and say you've
done really good in this role. Is throw you into leadership
role. There gonna be a lot of burn out there. It just happens,
you know, naturally it happened years ago. It'll happen again
here too, with the change in and cloud adoption and
cybersecurity. But, I mean, I think there's still a lot of
exciting, lot of exciting things when it comes to I didn't say AI
was cool, because you got to say AI at least three times in every
chat. But even on leadership side of me. I talked to Gemini,
we talked to Chat GPT, we talked to Copilot. I mean, that and
that, the advancement in the this, you know, the the way to
fill in the skills gap, if you don't have it, but you can ask
it and get an answer, and you have a way to validate That's
truth. I mean, you can grow over your technology skill set. Now,
I wouldn't lean on it 100% because if you ever get an
interview, you'll be called out for it. We're going to know
exactly if you know what you're talking about. But there's a lot
of exciting things going on on the AI side, but it's also a lot
of concerns there too. So there's, it's just a lot, I
think there, again, there's a lot of growth opportunity.
People who grab, grab onto AI, grab onto cyber security and run
with it, will get promoted into roles that just don't have the
experience yet with people. But you know, I didn't have the
experience of people when I first started, either. You just
got to learn it and figure it out. But it's a fun challenge to
have.
Keith Hawkey: Well, Grant out those very insightful we're
going to wrap up here. But before we do, we always like to
ask one question to everyone. I'm going to paint the scene
here. Let's say Grant you are in Davos, Switzerland, and you are
presenting in front of 1000 of the most powerful CIOs in the
world. If you were going to going to convey one message that
you think is missing at the top end of leadership and global CIO
ism, what would it be? One
Grant Walsh: message? This for the global CIO ism
Aaron Bock: Keith just made up a conference for CIOs in Davos.
Says this as if they need another conference. It
Grant Walsh: sounds cliche, but be, be a CIO of the people like
to understand your team. Be part of that team. I think that's,
you know, we had a VP here for a while. You know, he just left
for the CIO opportunity, but he was the VP of the people the
team. He talked to the team on the regular. He was here part of
the team. I tried again to do that on the regular. It's always
when you're a service desk person or you're a new engineer,
sometimes you feel weird about talking to a VIP or CIO. He
should be break those walls down. That's the biggest thing.
Because again, back to where we talked about, you know, the team
can't trust you because they can't see, because you're often,
it's never, never land, because you're the chief information
officer, then it's hard to follow. It's hard to get behind
that and follow, because you're just, you're that, you know the
distance figure. But that would, that would be the one thing be a
CIO or leader of the people that you're you're leading, making
sure you're transparent, honest people where you can obviously
there's some things, there's some discussions that can't be
had, but just being transparent, honest, and be part of the
people and play lots of golf.
Keith Hawkey: Play lots of golf, I think you're gonna get a
standing ovation for that. That latter part there at the
network, I want to wrap up here. Really appreciate you spending
some time with us this morning. Grant, it's always great to have
insights from Dynamic IT leaders. We consider you a very
impact heavy IT leader. So we really appreciate your time this
morning. We know you have a lot going on and in your traditional
role, and we appreciate everyone that is tuned in to the IT
Matters podcast for support assessing your technology needs,
book a call with one of our Technology Advisors at
opkalla.com. If you found this episode helpful, please share
the podcast with someone who would get value from it and
leave a review on Apple podcast or rate us on Spotify. Thank
you, and we'll catch you next time.
Aaron Bock: Thank you for listening, and we appreciate you
tuning into the IT Matters podcast for support assessing
your technology needs, book a call with one of our Technology
Advisors at opkalla.com. That's opkalla.com. If you found this
episode helpful, please share the podcast with someone who
would get value from it and leave us a review on Apple
podcasts or on Spotify. Thank you for listening and have a
great day.