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Okay, Paul, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me and our listeners.

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Really excited to learn from you.

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I think that you and I share the love for middle management and developing their growth.

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So I know that you have a lot of wisdom you can pass on, especially speaking a language
that I don't fully understand, which is the language of technology and bridging those

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gaps.

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So before I dive into picking your brain about

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technology, soft skills, and everything in between.

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Can you give us a little bit of insight into your journey, who you are, and what you focus
on currently?

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Sure, but I definitely agree that middle management is the worst job to have.

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We can double click on that.

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It is a difficult job to have because you have a lot of stakeholders that have different
demands.

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It's easy being an individual contributor because you're in many ways told what to do.

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And it's kind of easy to be executive because you have a team of people doing work.

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It's the middle managers who have to be responsible for output, but then responsible for
taking orders and delivering it.

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It's complex.

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I get that.

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So my journey is entirely technology.

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So from high school on, I've caught

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caught the technology bug, wanted to be a developer, wanted to be a technology guru, went
through university, got a degree in computer science, and started development, and found

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out within, let's say, 12 months that I was a relatively mediocre programmer.

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Look at this.

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Right.

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going to be the next 30 years being a developer.

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It wasn't me.

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But what I did enjoy is leadership.

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So I did enjoy empowering the team.

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I did enjoy inspiring and motivating.

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That was more interesting to me, still in technology setting, than actual hands-on
keyboard doing work.

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which is why from that point forward it's just been leadership roles.

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So from product management leadership roles to CTO leadership roles, I've been a CTO now
at small, medium, and large size organizations, both from an internal CTO, POV, or a

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software developer CTO, or a field CTO, or even Epithet now, kind of all of the above,
where I'm doing...

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75 % internal and 75 % external.

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There's a lot of 150 % worth of work there.

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So get to see all of those things.

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And now I've evolved from mediocre to programmer to decent leader to almost on the
educator side.

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So I spend as much time on the academic side as I do on the practical IT side, which is
just as fun.

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Yes, amazing.

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you know what?

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Kudos to you for figuring that out very early on.

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There are people I'm sure that are well into their careers who are not realizing that, you
know, whatever they're doing is just not their bag and they can find something that they

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will be better than mediocre at.

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so I'm happy to hear you found your lane pretty quickly.

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Right.

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I couldn't imagine 30 years of line by line code creation.

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Right, okay, so also a little bit of just enjoyment in that process too, right?

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And what was the, I mean, if you have a pivotal moment, but do you have the kind of TSN
turning point where you just said, to heck with this, this is not my thing?

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Was there a distinct moment that stands out to you or was it just kind of a culmination of
many things?

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Certainly over that 12 to 18 month period of time, know, receiving assignments, delivering
assignments, and not poor development in the grand scheme of things.

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It's not like I was, you know, producing bugs time in and time out.

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But I wondered aloud.

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is finishing projects, am I willing to invest another three hours today?

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Am I willing to roll up my sleeve this weekend and do a little bit more work?

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Do I want to read another book on syntax?

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And of course, the answers to that was, no, I don't think so.

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Do I enjoy technology?

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Sure, but much more holistically, comparatively.

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I like to see the full stack.

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want to see what the physical equipment looks like.

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I want to see the code, sure, but I also want to see the application.

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I want to create a better environment for the business users, not necessarily a better
environment for the next developer.

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Excellent.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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That makes total sense.

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And you know what?

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None of that sounds interesting to me either.

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So there's more alignment for us.

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Kudos to the people that can do it, but that's not for me either.

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So wonderful.

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Now you've moved into, I mean, many leadership roles.

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And as you mentioned, you've kind of dabbled in in almost every environment imaginable.

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So you've worn many hats.

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You've spoken many languages, let's say.

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One of the things I really wanna pick your brain about today is how you manage the
relationships with other stakeholders being a CTO means that you also have to get buy-in

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from CFO, CEO, COO.

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You really have to be collaborating with everybody and yes, they look to you as well for
your expertise, but I would imagine that you have to go through a lot of presentations and

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present your case in many different aspects of the day to day.

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What are some of the strategies that you use that ensure effective communication and also
alignment with your executive counterparts?

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So I am of two hats or two buckets of thoughts here.

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So bucket number one, I'm a firm believer in the first team principle.

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So as an individual contributor, a first level manager, your first team of the people
report to you.

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Your job is to divide and conquer a task into multiple places and getting that done.

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Your first team as a middle manager is.

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is many of your team leaders.

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You still have a divide and conquer approach.

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You take orders from the above, but you still have to deliver philosophically.

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As a sort of senior middle manager or an executive leader, your first team is now your
peers.

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So it's not about delivering for your team.

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You have to trust that your team can deliver on the actions you've asked them to deliver
on.

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Now it's much more about participating in the organization across departments.

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So I have to consider the CMO, the CRO, the CFO, as all peers to deliver on the outcomes
for the business, which is why all of us have a shared set of MBOs.

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We have a shared set of goals, which tends to be top line and bottom line financial and or
growth and or sort of success in that organization.

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So.

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My first bucket is first team, right?

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My first team are my peers and therefore that's who I spend 60 % of my time with as a
full-on.

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The other side of that is how I think of sort of transparency and empowerment.

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So because a good portion of my time and energy is both external to the company.

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and with my first team, I have to have good leaders and I have to have full trust in those
good leaders by providing them as much knowledge that I have so they can do their job and

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enough empowerment that I'm not micromanaging.

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So we're effectively going to agree every quarter on what we think the outcomes are going
to be and I leave you alone.

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My assumption is that it gets done.

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My assumption isn't that you need my daily input.

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And if you need my input, feel free.

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Like come on in.

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My door's open.

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I'm digitally available wherever I need to be.

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But you are very good at your job.

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I have faith that you'll deliver on it and we'll...

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Yes, okay, I love that.

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And I think that's such a healthy perspective shift, especially as you move, as you
continue to get promoted that your first team changes and you have different priorities.

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And I think that's something that a lot of, mean, especially in working with middle
managers, we see that that's where they get stuck is in that transition from IC to middle

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manager.

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And now that...

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that priority has totally shifted.

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The degree of trust that they now have to give and to assume that they have in others has
also shifted.

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So with that, and you mentioned empowering, which I think is great.

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Empowerment and trust are two very key words in the information you just shared there.

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And so talk to me a little bit about how you walk the line between empowerment and
micromanaging and perhaps

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Have you always been able to do that or was there a learning curve where it looked a
little bit micromanaging and then you needed to make the transition to empowerment,

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especially when you lead global teams.

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mean, it's a slippery slope for many people.

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I really don't think empowerment and transparency is natural.

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It certainly wasn't natural for me.

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That was a learned experience.

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Good news is I learned it from leaders to which I looked up to, either leaders that I
directly reported to or leaders to which I have witnessed, where they were more effective

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the more transparent and more empowerment that they provided.

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So as you know, you experiment, right?

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As a first line manager, as a middle manager, you will try a bunch of different things
until you find the ones that work.

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And the ones that ultimately work for me that I have used for many years now is 100 %
transparency, with the exception of embargoed information, like we're doing at inorganic

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transaction.

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We're buying a company.

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can't necessarily know all that.

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But if there's an organizational strategy that has detail, I'm going to provide you that
detail.

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We are going to come together on what we believe a set of annual and quarterly objectives
are.

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Once we agree, I kind of consider that a contract.

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We've agreed to this thing.

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And now you're completely empowered both with authority and with information to deliver on
it.

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Because, and maybe there's a little bit of uniqueness in my role, because 75 % of my job's
internal and 75 % of my job is external, that doesn't really leave a lot of time.

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So it's unique in many ways that I simply can't be micromanaging because there isn't that
many hours in the day.

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I can't follow up in detail, which means I have to have really good managers to which I
trust, leaders to which I trust.

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And they have proven that to be true.

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And they know that if they have stumbles and roadblocks and constraints, that's when we
have the conversation.

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And we have one-on-ones that are frequent, but are focused less about status and more
about next steps.

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So it's not about, tell me about the five projects you're working on and what the current
state is.

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It honestly doesn't matter, right?

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What only matters is how close are you to achieving the goal we agreed to?

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Yes, very good.

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Everything else can be an email or can be an update asynchronously, right?

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Yeah, even better.

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knowing.

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Of my entire team, that would be hundreds of lines of sound.

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I just don't need to know.

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Yes, yeah, I don't need to know what an empowering statement for a leader to say to and
honestly, I think one that is not uttered often.

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that is a huge lesson because I know that there's a number of leaders and again, it's that
the trust that is it doing well?

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Are we meeting our objectives?

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If not, it's my reputation on the line, right?

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So I think that growth and that evolution in the learning as you said.

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and understanding who you're communicating with and knowing that they feel empowered to
come to you and to bring you any issues.

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And I would assume that that also requires a healthy degree of building rapport with your
team member.

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Yeah, I also take that potentially to the extreme.

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Because I'm the CTO, everybody in technology reports to me, one would assume that I would
have privileged access.

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In other words, I have administrative access to our systems.

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I absolutely do not.

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In fact, I insist that I don't.

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Because there's no such thing as a CTO emergency.

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It's just not a thing.

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You're not going to wake me up at 3 AM, because that's what am I going to do?

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I can't do anything.

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I neither have the authority, nor the information, nor the access to do anything about it.

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the authority, the access to the right people who have the right content to which have the
right context, that matters to me, right?

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And also don't make me part of the decision matrix.

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So if we're onboarding people or we have to make purchasing decisions, will you have
authority within a certain dollar mark?

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And you go ahead and do that, right?

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It doesn't require me just to check the box.

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I don't need to just click the button.

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Because if my only added value to that is it just happened to come to me because I'm in
the triangle hierarchy, that's not a good use of anybody's time.

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No, no, exactly, exactly.

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I wish more organizations and more leaders took on that mindset.

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I don't need to have oversight.

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I can't do anything.

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And that, if you don't have that, it creates a reliance on you, right?

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It's like a trained behavior that people will then come to you to check the box.

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And if you don't give them the opportunity to, well then that's on them to problem solve,
to figure it out and to come to you at the absolute, you know, final moment if they do

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need something.

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Sometimes it comes with an expectation of perfection.

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So there are many CIOs and CDOs and CISOs and CTOs that say, I will live a perfect IT
environment.

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I will never have any outages.

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I will never have any bugs.

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That's just not realistic.

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That is not the real world.

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And therefore, if you believe it's not the real world and stumbles will occur, bugs will
happen, there might be an unscheduled outage, and you just have the processes and people

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and empowering place to handle it, that's a way better situation.

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It's a way less stressful experience.

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Yes, yes, exactly.

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You have to account for contingencies.

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I mean, as a past event planner, I learned that very quickly that if you don't have a
contingency plan for everything, you will most certainly not have a perfect event because

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you won't be prepared for, you know, the time that a water main breaks and the ceiling
leaks, all of those types of things.

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So yeah, knowing what your plan B and plan C is, and I think you said it perfectly, the
processes and the people in place, who knows how to...

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put out those so to speak fires, then you're set up for success no matter what comes down
the pike.

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In fairness, some of this come from my experience of being IT and OT.

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So 17 years in banking, IT, classic IT, right?

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5,000 were closed, 29 data centers.

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Outages make a difference to whether somebody can get to their bank account.

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And then 10 years of OT, where we're talking about nuclear power plants and bullet trains
and MRI machines.

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In the OT world, quality makes a much bigger difference.

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This plane has to land.

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This train has to stop.

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This MRI has to be

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So when you move from a high intense lives matter back to a services world where, let's be
honest, lives don't matter.

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You become way less edgy in terms of acceptability, of potential failure.

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It's okay to fail in a cloud services organization, data services organization, as
compared to landing a plane.

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Yes.

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Context matters.

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Context absolutely matters.

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Yes.

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00:16:36,522 --> 00:16:40,065
And the old adage, we're not saving lives here.

217
00:16:40,065 --> 00:16:42,106
In one instance, you absolutely are.

218
00:16:42,507 --> 00:16:43,408
Yeah.

219
00:16:43,728 --> 00:16:44,789
So fair enough.

220
00:16:44,789 --> 00:16:45,630
Fair enough.

221
00:16:45,630 --> 00:16:54,868
I mean, I just want to go back to what you said about, you know, you don't have simply the
capacity to micromanage, which makes sense.

222
00:16:54,868 --> 00:16:56,840
And again, makes it easier to...

223
00:16:57,144 --> 00:17:03,187
be able to trust by default if that wasn't already baked into your leadership style.

224
00:17:03,187 --> 00:17:11,512
For those that move into a larger or global organization, means that by proxy, you will
have to do that.

225
00:17:11,632 --> 00:17:20,607
But I know that you have experience in smaller organizations that are around 30 people,
which means that there is more touch points, or sorry, there are more touch points,

226
00:17:20,607 --> 00:17:26,280
there's more opportunity for people to come to you, and perhaps the organization's a bit
flatter.

227
00:17:27,310 --> 00:17:37,331
From your experience, the difference between leading a team with thousands of people
versus 30 people, how does that or how has that impacted your leadership style and the way

228
00:17:37,331 --> 00:17:39,263
you lead and communicate?

229
00:17:40,588 --> 00:17:41,769
So a couple boxes there.

230
00:17:41,769 --> 00:17:44,840
So in a big team, you have big budgets.

231
00:17:45,762 --> 00:17:55,528
You have an ability to try different things because the likelihood you can try and fail is
easier when you have more people to support that.

232
00:17:55,528 --> 00:18:00,741
There's more R &D in a larger organization in the grand scheme of things.

233
00:18:00,741 --> 00:18:04,354
In a small organization, you don't have that kind of

234
00:18:04,682 --> 00:18:07,743
monetary scale nor do you really have that people scale.

235
00:18:07,743 --> 00:18:10,334
So everybody's rolling up their sleeves.

236
00:18:10,334 --> 00:18:13,065
There's a little bit of Jack and Jill of all trades.

237
00:18:13,065 --> 00:18:19,288
There's a lot of figuring it out when we don't have the team or the budget to make that
happen.

238
00:18:19,908 --> 00:18:22,109
But the positive to that is a jilt.

239
00:18:22,109 --> 00:18:26,031
I can change on a dime, especially a services organization.

240
00:18:26,031 --> 00:18:33,974
I can introduce a new version of a service in the week versus a product organization
measuring in thousands of people that takes a year.

241
00:18:34,264 --> 00:18:34,626
Right.

242
00:18:34,626 --> 00:18:49,675
is a large adventure requiring not just R &D, but potentially invention, potentially
physical equipment creation or silicon to mainframe implementation.

243
00:18:49,675 --> 00:18:52,436
It's a large complex invention process.

244
00:18:53,697 --> 00:18:54,598
So there's that.

245
00:18:54,598 --> 00:18:58,750
You also have multiple levels within larger organizations versus smaller organizations.

246
00:18:58,750 --> 00:19:01,049
So succession is easier.

247
00:19:01,049 --> 00:19:01,678
Mm-hmm.

248
00:19:01,678 --> 00:19:10,918
lots of people and lots of people can try different roles, which means they can experience
a lot of different things where in a 30 person company you have less ability.

249
00:19:10,918 --> 00:19:15,938
I can't easily move people around to a different job because there's only so many jobs to
go around.

250
00:19:16,698 --> 00:19:21,838
But the biggest difference between the two is relationships you build.

251
00:19:21,918 --> 00:19:25,898
In a 30 person organization, I can build a relationship somewhat with everybody.

252
00:19:26,038 --> 00:19:31,910
In a thousands of person organization, you still only know about the same amount of people
you do in the 30 person.

253
00:19:32,728 --> 00:19:33,551
Yes.

254
00:19:33,598 --> 00:19:37,339
at that level, hundreds of people are being displaced every year.

255
00:19:37,339 --> 00:19:39,000
So there's hundreds of new people.

256
00:19:39,000 --> 00:19:40,900
There's hundreds of people leaving.

257
00:19:40,900 --> 00:19:42,661
You just don't have that ability.

258
00:19:42,661 --> 00:19:43,941
But you have a hierarchy.

259
00:19:43,941 --> 00:19:51,674
And you're going to likely spend time with the 30 to 50 people in your hierarchy, to which
they have to deliver on large, complex initiatives anyway.

260
00:19:51,674 --> 00:19:54,965
So kind of good news and bad news either way.

261
00:19:54,965 --> 00:19:59,652
I still use the same leadership philosophy either way.

262
00:19:59,662 --> 00:20:01,385
I think it's still helpful.

263
00:20:01,385 --> 00:20:04,368
think people react to that in the same way.

264
00:20:05,290 --> 00:20:09,184
So I still use styles consistently between the two.

265
00:20:09,218 --> 00:20:10,579
Yes, that makes sense.

266
00:20:10,579 --> 00:20:21,306
And then that allows you to show up as an authentic leader as well, because you've tried
on a style that suits you and you can, you can, as you mentioned, mold and be agile based

267
00:20:21,306 --> 00:20:22,877
on the person you're speaking with.

268
00:20:22,877 --> 00:20:27,860
But that doesn't change how you operate and the things you value either, which I think is
important.

269
00:20:28,012 --> 00:20:29,523
It doesn't work always in fairness.

270
00:20:29,523 --> 00:20:36,889
So I have definitely had leaders working for me that preferred a different style.

271
00:20:36,889 --> 00:20:49,228
They preferred a style that wasn't micromanaging but was more involved in the detail
maybe, or was more available to have conversations, or wanted more sort of pitching

272
00:20:49,228 --> 00:20:55,102
conversations versus just building an objective and delivering objective conversations.

273
00:20:56,110 --> 00:21:02,696
And over time, my style probably wasn't changed to support that because I had larger
teams.

274
00:21:02,737 --> 00:21:10,825
But I've had to displace people to support the style in the same way that I wouldn't be
able to in a smaller organization.

275
00:21:11,085 --> 00:21:12,307
So it's not perfect.

276
00:21:12,307 --> 00:21:15,049
I'm not saying my style is the style.

277
00:21:15,450 --> 00:21:17,432
And it has its pros and cons.

278
00:21:17,432 --> 00:21:19,954
And I have encountered the cons part of it.

279
00:21:19,956 --> 00:21:20,426
Yes.

280
00:21:20,426 --> 00:21:22,738
And you know what, that's life.

281
00:21:22,738 --> 00:21:32,786
And I think no matter what, there needs to be alignment and it could very well be your
leadership style, but it could be what that particular role involves or requires, right?

282
00:21:32,786 --> 00:21:38,770
That person might need to have more autonomy and perhaps they're not quite there yet.

283
00:21:38,770 --> 00:21:45,295
And therefore your leadership style was a reflection of what they might not have been
prepared for at that time.

284
00:21:45,455 --> 00:21:46,626
So there are...

285
00:21:47,234 --> 00:21:56,970
We're always trialing and erroring as humans, which is fun and exciting and stressful and
overwhelming all at the same time, but we'll focus on the positives here.

286
00:21:57,564 --> 00:22:10,754
So with that in mind, I think one of the things that I hear frequently in your industry is
on the technology side, everybody's overworked, they're overwhelmed.

287
00:22:10,754 --> 00:22:15,346
You know, they're stressed and they're running a million miles a minute, especially for
the smaller organization.

288
00:22:15,346 --> 00:22:19,407
So focusing on that kind of 30 people, 30 person ecosystem.

289
00:22:19,848 --> 00:22:26,631
As a leader, what are some of the tools that you use to really safeguard capacity for your
team members?

290
00:22:26,631 --> 00:22:37,315
think that's something that a lot of leaders ask questions about is like when the work
needs to get done, what can we do if we don't have the human capital or the people to be

291
00:22:37,315 --> 00:22:39,376
able to execute on things?

292
00:22:40,266 --> 00:22:49,303
It is true that especially in the technology industry, we ask more than what sometimes is
humanly possible from it.

293
00:22:49,303 --> 00:22:50,453
True statement.

294
00:22:50,754 --> 00:22:53,676
It's also true in fairness that those are ups and downs.

295
00:22:53,676 --> 00:22:55,157
There's hills and valleys to that.

296
00:22:55,157 --> 00:23:01,662
It's rarely constant, especially since the business is rarely constant.

297
00:23:02,703 --> 00:23:06,726
The business has cycles not unlike anything would have cycles.

298
00:23:07,022 --> 00:23:13,902
I have a pretty strict philosophy when it comes to, let's say, taking time off.

299
00:23:13,902 --> 00:23:19,422
So I have zero expectation that you respond to me after 5 p.m., zero.

300
00:23:19,422 --> 00:23:23,712
I might send you dozens of emails at 9 p.m.

301
00:23:23,712 --> 00:23:27,984
I have zero expectations that you respond to any of them until the next day.

302
00:23:28,284 --> 00:23:33,026
Sometimes it's just when I think of this thing, I'm going to send you this thing, or I'm
going to forget this thing.

303
00:23:33,026 --> 00:23:36,738
But it's honestly because of my habit, not because of your habit.

304
00:23:36,738 --> 00:23:38,779
So I have zero expectation.

305
00:23:38,779 --> 00:23:40,680
I'm very clear in that expectation.

306
00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:42,330
Don't wait.

307
00:23:42,331 --> 00:23:44,392
I don't want you to pick up your phone.

308
00:23:44,392 --> 00:23:46,653
In fact, I learned this because I travel a lot.

309
00:23:46,653 --> 00:23:48,473
I've traveled millions of miles.

310
00:23:48,644 --> 00:23:49,416
Yeah.

311
00:23:50,294 --> 00:23:56,740
at the OT side of Tachi, 400 miles, 400,000 miles, a lot.

312
00:23:59,224 --> 00:24:02,357
There were times where I was only home a weekend a month.

313
00:24:02,357 --> 00:24:03,989
So there was a lot of trouble.

314
00:24:03,989 --> 00:24:11,195
So because of that, we agreed as a family, home life, was when I'm away, I'm offline.

315
00:24:11,216 --> 00:24:13,578
When I'm home, I'm online.

316
00:24:13,656 --> 00:24:16,428
Phone's not on my person, laptop's not open.

317
00:24:16,428 --> 00:24:20,670
We certainly don't have a digital dinner.

318
00:24:20,670 --> 00:24:22,210
We're in-person dinner.

319
00:24:22,371 --> 00:24:26,733
You get 100 % of my attention because you have zero of my attention everywhere else.

320
00:24:26,733 --> 00:24:29,406
And therefore, that's the philosophy I take with the rest of the team.

321
00:24:29,406 --> 00:24:35,950
Because listen, if I can do this binary change, then you can do this binary change.

322
00:24:35,950 --> 00:24:36,890
And sometimes it's not easy.

323
00:24:36,890 --> 00:24:41,450
There are some people in technology who are perfectly fine putting in the 80 hours.

324
00:24:41,450 --> 00:24:45,990
Not that it's 100 % 80 hours, but they're working past the Lancer emails.

325
00:24:45,990 --> 00:24:47,690
They'll do things on the weekend.

326
00:24:47,790 --> 00:24:51,926
And I'll push back and say, I don't need you to do that.

327
00:24:51,926 --> 00:24:55,127
And when you're on vacation, don't bring your phone.

328
00:24:55,127 --> 00:24:58,968
And if you have four or five weeks, take four or five weeks.

329
00:24:58,968 --> 00:25:01,269
Nobody's patting you on the back for taking two.

330
00:25:01,269 --> 00:25:03,310
I'm not going to reward you for taking two.

331
00:25:03,310 --> 00:25:04,570
I want you to take five.

332
00:25:04,570 --> 00:25:09,311
If anything, I'll reward you for taking five.

333
00:25:09,311 --> 00:25:10,652
You need the downtime.

334
00:25:10,652 --> 00:25:11,602
You need the family.

335
00:25:11,602 --> 00:25:14,713
You need the binary interpretation of this world.

336
00:25:14,713 --> 00:25:16,034
These are good things.

337
00:25:16,034 --> 00:25:17,574
It'll make you happier.

338
00:25:17,730 --> 00:25:19,161
Yeah, it'll make you happier.

339
00:25:19,161 --> 00:25:26,864
And if you need help with prioritization when you get back, I wonder sometimes if that's
part of the hurdle, right?

340
00:25:26,864 --> 00:25:32,006
That everybody says, I need a vacation once I get back from my vacation because I have so
much work.

341
00:25:32,226 --> 00:25:33,927
Well, what is urgent?

342
00:25:33,927 --> 00:25:37,659
What's important and what can you either delegate?

343
00:25:37,659 --> 00:25:41,390
What's just sheer volume and updates?

344
00:25:41,511 --> 00:25:43,491
What do you actually need to focus on now?

345
00:25:43,778 --> 00:25:44,479
Right.

346
00:25:44,479 --> 00:25:48,578
Or do it at 80%.

347
00:25:48,623 --> 00:25:52,186
Sometimes it's internalized to the person, need to be 100 % good.

348
00:25:52,186 --> 00:25:53,477
It needs to be bug free.

349
00:25:53,477 --> 00:25:55,489
I need to do all the things on my checklist.

350
00:25:55,489 --> 00:26:00,573
All of these have to be true when my response to is, I'm good at I'm good at it.

351
00:26:01,835 --> 00:26:02,796
Get through the meat.

352
00:26:02,796 --> 00:26:05,238
Once we get through the meat, that's a checkmark to me.

353
00:26:05,316 --> 00:26:06,296
Right, right.

354
00:26:06,296 --> 00:26:07,016
And you know what?

355
00:26:07,016 --> 00:26:13,916
Half the time, I'd say more than half the time, the client is none the wiser because your
80 % is their 110.

356
00:26:14,836 --> 00:26:16,556
You're solving their problem.

357
00:26:16,556 --> 00:26:17,336
Yes.

358
00:26:17,776 --> 00:26:18,436
Oh gosh.

359
00:26:18,436 --> 00:26:18,676
Okay.

360
00:26:18,676 --> 00:26:21,516
So you have traveled all over the world.

361
00:26:22,296 --> 00:26:25,336
You obviously have seen a lot of things.

362
00:26:25,336 --> 00:26:29,556
You've been able to experience different cultures and different ways of doing things.

363
00:26:29,556 --> 00:26:31,712
And in that time,

364
00:26:31,712 --> 00:26:41,961
I hope that you were able to identify some of your personal hobbies and interests and
things like that, that I'm a firm believer whatever we learn outside of work also is a

365
00:26:41,961 --> 00:26:44,614
transferable skill to help us in the workplace.

366
00:26:44,614 --> 00:26:53,972
So can you share anything that's maybe a personal passion or interests that you've picked
up along the way that you translate into your work now?

367
00:26:54,700 --> 00:26:57,612
I have been to every Disney park in the world.

368
00:26:59,074 --> 00:27:02,877
I've also been to every Disney park in the world in a single year.

369
00:27:03,221 --> 00:27:04,148
wow.

370
00:27:08,249 --> 00:27:10,451
By far Shanghai, Disney.

371
00:27:10,451 --> 00:27:18,898
Mostly because it's the newest, But also because it always has an interesting angle on a
traditional ride.

372
00:27:18,938 --> 00:27:21,739
So Pirates of the Caribbean is a traditional boat ride.

373
00:27:21,739 --> 00:27:25,661
So you're in a boat, you're going through a pirate theme set of scenes.

374
00:27:25,661 --> 00:27:29,823
But they're able to take that and say, absolutely, I'll give you the traditional ride.

375
00:27:29,823 --> 00:27:33,705
But then I'm to give you IMAX screens at the same time.

376
00:27:33,705 --> 00:27:41,869
So you're deep into this battle between the good and bad pirate ships.

377
00:27:41,869 --> 00:27:44,670
They just go that extra mile, which is just so much history.

378
00:27:44,670 --> 00:27:49,212
The only thing you need to be comfortable with in the

379
00:27:49,212 --> 00:27:53,574
the Disney world is that there's very little English, right?

380
00:27:53,574 --> 00:27:59,176
So, you know, appreciate that none of the narration you'll be able to appreciate.

381
00:27:59,176 --> 00:28:05,559
The songs will be the same, but, you know, don't go into a show thinking you're going to
fully understand what's happening.

382
00:28:08,060 --> 00:28:08,960
Yeah.

383
00:28:09,781 --> 00:28:10,791
The rides are fine.

384
00:28:10,791 --> 00:28:12,062
The rides are fine.

385
00:28:12,994 --> 00:28:16,738
So why it's a passion for me, it's because I, so two things.

386
00:28:16,738 --> 00:28:17,919
I like the Disney hug, right?

387
00:28:17,919 --> 00:28:21,423
So I like that it's an immersive experience.

388
00:28:21,423 --> 00:28:29,550
I get to shed work for the day, I get to sort of live childlike dreams while I'm there.

389
00:28:30,151 --> 00:28:31,613
But mostly it's the detail, right?

390
00:28:31,613 --> 00:28:32,373
So.

391
00:28:32,930 --> 00:28:34,761
Being a technologist, the detail matters, right?

392
00:28:34,761 --> 00:28:39,683
This calculation needs to be right, or it's going to have a fundamental problem with the
organization, right?

393
00:28:39,683 --> 00:28:53,830
So when they put a billion dollars into the Star Wars or a billion and half into the
Pandora, and you see the details of the trees and the cement and the payments and the

394
00:28:53,830 --> 00:28:57,111
paint on the mountain, this is intriguing.

395
00:28:57,111 --> 00:29:03,354
Like, I've spent days at parks just looking at the detail, the detail within the lines.

396
00:29:03,366 --> 00:29:05,734
not just the rides themselves.

397
00:29:05,734 --> 00:29:06,776
It's amazing.

398
00:29:06,776 --> 00:29:08,068
Yeah, yeah.

399
00:29:08,068 --> 00:29:09,319
I love that.

400
00:29:10,201 --> 00:29:12,700
I mean, that's a lot of detail to take in.

401
00:29:12,700 --> 00:29:23,227
So your capacity for detail must be much higher than most, because I feel like even just
going and looking at the kind of superficial graphics and rides and design is

402
00:29:23,227 --> 00:29:24,518
overwhelming.

403
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:26,488
That's why you have to do it multiple times.

404
00:29:26,488 --> 00:29:27,576
See, that's the...

405
00:29:27,576 --> 00:29:28,317
That's true.

406
00:29:28,317 --> 00:29:28,908
That's true.

407
00:29:28,908 --> 00:29:33,042
Do you have some kind of special membership or do you get like, do you get rewarded for
that?

408
00:29:34,084 --> 00:29:34,855
Yeah.

409
00:29:34,855 --> 00:29:35,845
definitely travel a lot.

410
00:29:35,845 --> 00:29:41,458
So I have a high status in, let's say, Star Alliance, or Canada, and Marriott.

411
00:29:42,379 --> 00:29:48,692
They know my name when I walk into establishments, But Disney doesn't have a loyalty
program, right?

412
00:29:48,692 --> 00:29:54,694
So of the potentially hundreds of times that I've gone to a Disney program, still no
loyalty program.

413
00:29:54,694 --> 00:29:57,784
just the next guy coming in.

414
00:29:57,784 --> 00:30:00,600
Yeah, that's surprising they don't have a loyalty program.

415
00:30:00,600 --> 00:30:04,778
We'll make sure this gets in front of a Disney team member and we should pitch that.

416
00:30:05,561 --> 00:30:06,162
That's true.

417
00:30:06,162 --> 00:30:06,842
to.

418
00:30:06,842 --> 00:30:13,002
Even in the, we'll call them the low times, right, during COVID, they were still capacity.

419
00:30:13,002 --> 00:30:16,382
They were still, they're still 99 % occupancy.

420
00:30:16,382 --> 00:30:18,978
So they just don't need it.

421
00:30:18,978 --> 00:30:20,790
Yeah, yeah, very true.

422
00:30:20,790 --> 00:30:23,262
Well, talk about building a brand, eh?

423
00:30:23,262 --> 00:30:24,613
They've done it right.

424
00:30:24,613 --> 00:30:25,553
Yeah.

425
00:30:25,914 --> 00:30:26,855
Very cool.

426
00:30:26,855 --> 00:30:28,096
Very cool.

427
00:30:28,597 --> 00:30:37,164
Okay, Paul, I have one maybe heavy weighted question for you to cap off our conversation
here.

428
00:30:37,605 --> 00:30:46,018
And obviously you have the distinct pleasure of being able to help create and have, should
say.

429
00:30:46,018 --> 00:30:50,089
over the course of your career as well to develop technology leaders.

430
00:30:50,189 --> 00:31:01,922
And so you've seen different styles of leadership training, you've evolved your own
leadership styles and teachings, and you've moved more into the education side of teaching

431
00:31:01,922 --> 00:31:03,813
and coaching as well as you mentioned.

432
00:31:04,153 --> 00:31:14,666
So if you were to implement kind of one sweeping change across the way leadership is
rolled out or taught in the technology space specifically for technology leaders, what

433
00:31:14,666 --> 00:31:15,500
would it be?

434
00:31:15,500 --> 00:31:16,668
and obviously what.

435
00:31:16,942 --> 00:31:18,223
I'm going to give you two things.

436
00:31:18,223 --> 00:31:21,064
So thing number one is more of a pet peeve.

437
00:31:21,805 --> 00:31:31,370
So thing number one, the hardest thing you can do as a leader, technology leadership, but
I would argue all leadership, is add a headcount.

438
00:31:31,410 --> 00:31:32,611
Hardest thing you can do.

439
00:31:32,611 --> 00:31:39,114
The CFO has a very hard time adding an FTE because that's 10 years.

440
00:31:39,114 --> 00:31:41,946
It's a 10 years cost versus a software cost.

441
00:31:41,946 --> 00:31:43,576
So hardest thing you can do.

442
00:31:43,717 --> 00:31:44,897
That's a shame.

443
00:31:46,552 --> 00:31:48,364
But at least it's understandable.

444
00:31:48,364 --> 00:31:58,232
The second hardest thing to do is let an FTE go, which I'm kind of fine with in the grand
scheme of things, but sometimes it's very hard.

445
00:31:58,453 --> 00:32:07,060
When this person is better suited somewhere else, I'd rather make that decision quickly
than extend it for a long period of time.

446
00:32:07,741 --> 00:32:13,165
But even of those two things, the third thing is what I would refer to as the shame.

447
00:32:13,550 --> 00:32:21,415
So the shame is it's reasonably difficult to promote and increase compensation for an
existing employee.

448
00:32:22,136 --> 00:32:24,737
That should be the easiest thing to do.

449
00:32:25,398 --> 00:32:32,422
If you see an employee that deserves a promotion, that deserves a comp increase, that will
buy you five years.

450
00:32:32,856 --> 00:32:33,640
Right.

451
00:32:33,944 --> 00:32:43,024
versus having them look elsewhere and leaving and then you have to go through the burden
expense of finding a new promoting or finding a new into that role.

452
00:32:43,105 --> 00:32:48,109
It should be the easiest thing to do as a senior leader to promote and or.

453
00:32:49,336 --> 00:32:52,603
Yes, that makes perfect sense.

454
00:32:53,326 --> 00:32:54,907
So that's the first bucket.

455
00:32:56,851 --> 00:32:59,615
Bit of a pet.

456
00:32:59,615 --> 00:33:05,181
The second bit is about six session.

457
00:33:07,545 --> 00:33:11,229
There's an expectation of definitely technology leaders.

458
00:33:11,526 --> 00:33:15,590
CIO CTOs to have a different job over the last five years.

459
00:33:15,590 --> 00:33:21,435
So not only have they needed to lead IT, they've also need to participate in the
executive.

460
00:33:21,435 --> 00:33:30,702
They need to be participate in the digital transformation, participate in the business
decisions, participate in the &A, and they've had to do that by themselves.

461
00:33:31,203 --> 00:33:39,190
Which meant all of the direct reports had to take the mantle of IT and didn't get to
participate in all those interesting activities.

462
00:33:39,276 --> 00:33:50,094
which means the 30 month tenure of a CIO, CTO, CDO, CSO is now 48 months because now
there's a bigger gap between those two levels.

463
00:33:51,596 --> 00:33:59,402
And I think what's missing is there's no real middle manager, senior middle manager
training.

464
00:33:59,402 --> 00:34:02,105
There's no how do I be a director?

465
00:34:02,105 --> 00:34:03,866
How do I be a VP?

466
00:34:03,866 --> 00:34:05,507
It simply doesn't exist.

467
00:34:05,527 --> 00:34:07,349
I absolutely think it should exist.

468
00:34:07,349 --> 00:34:08,649
And I don't mean,

469
00:34:09,356 --> 00:34:10,948
thou shalt know accounting.

470
00:34:10,948 --> 00:34:15,324
I mean, what's the expectation of a VP in this organization?

471
00:34:15,324 --> 00:34:18,598
What's the expectation of a director in this organization?

472
00:34:18,598 --> 00:34:21,261
Who should be your first team, as an example?

473
00:34:21,261 --> 00:34:25,025
What kind of empowerment should you seek and demand?

474
00:34:25,398 --> 00:34:28,000
What is the expectation of communication?

475
00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:30,541
What's the expectation of rolling up your sleeves?

476
00:34:30,541 --> 00:34:33,944
What's the expectation of grabbing the bull by the horn?

477
00:34:33,944 --> 00:34:41,708
Like all of those, I don't want to call them soft skills because I honestly think they're
still hard skills, but nobody tells you that, right?

478
00:34:41,708 --> 00:34:47,078
And then we judge you without having told you what the expectations are.

479
00:34:47,952 --> 00:34:51,394
That is a problem that needs to be rectified.

480
00:34:51,940 --> 00:34:54,880
I wholeheartedly agree.

481
00:34:54,940 --> 00:34:56,240
And you know what?

482
00:34:56,240 --> 00:35:07,740
There's, think expectations are one of the most difficult things for people to understand
that if you've said it once, you haven't actually communicated it.

483
00:35:07,740 --> 00:35:09,140
Um, right?

484
00:35:09,140 --> 00:35:17,120
Like you can post it in an onboarding, you can post it in a roles and responsibilities,
but that's something that you need to, it's like developing a habit, right?

485
00:35:17,120 --> 00:35:21,084
We don't hear it once and all of a sudden it sticks and I.

486
00:35:21,144 --> 00:35:22,305
So that's really interesting.

487
00:35:22,305 --> 00:35:36,252
So succession planning, that how to gap in that senior middle management, and then the
ability to promote and to offer compensation when it is due.

488
00:35:36,593 --> 00:35:45,427
I think those are two really excellent changes that hopefully we will see come about in
the next five years, ideally.

489
00:35:45,427 --> 00:35:45,948
And you know what?

490
00:35:45,948 --> 00:35:50,460
At the venue, we're gonna get started on a specific industry, senior.

491
00:35:50,646 --> 00:35:54,034
senior middle management training after our call.

492
00:35:55,322 --> 00:35:59,034
Really, I try to do as much as I can when I do a promotion.

493
00:35:59,034 --> 00:36:03,526
So if I promote somebody to director or VP, we will sit down and not talk about the job.

494
00:36:03,526 --> 00:36:11,048
Not talk about the expectations of their new responsibility, but the expectations of their
level.

495
00:36:11,169 --> 00:36:21,153
So if I promote somebody from director to VP, we're going to sit down, we're going to say,
your communication to me and your peers now looks like X instead of Y.

496
00:36:21,153 --> 00:36:23,814
I now have an expectation that your

497
00:36:24,568 --> 00:36:31,956
predictively telling me something that you wouldn't have before, or to offer a solution to
which you wouldn't have offered before.

498
00:36:31,956 --> 00:36:39,473
And I'll give them examples so that they now see what the difference is between director
and VP, because it's not just compensation.

499
00:36:39,684 --> 00:36:41,024
Right, exactly.

500
00:36:41,024 --> 00:36:42,545
It certainly is not.

501
00:36:42,545 --> 00:36:52,579
I love that and I think that is something that is so, so important and that's a nugget
that should be shared far and wide is that those conversations need to happen and before

502
00:36:52,579 --> 00:37:04,494
they do, the leader who is explaining those expectations needs to be aware of what those
are, which is also, I would add, just to tack onto your sweeping changes.

503
00:37:04,695 --> 00:37:07,980
That needs to be very, very clear with.

504
00:37:07,980 --> 00:37:18,227
leadership, that's senior leadership, middle management, or even ICs that are explaining
something to a new hire, we need to make sure that those expectations are clear and

505
00:37:18,227 --> 00:37:20,528
understood so that we can communicate them.

506
00:37:20,629 --> 00:37:22,910
So that's brilliant.

507
00:37:22,910 --> 00:37:31,956
Paul, mean, there's been so much information that you've shared, so many nuggets that I
think will help not just leaders in the technology space, but

508
00:37:32,004 --> 00:37:45,204
Also, leaders universally, I think what you've shared applies to any middle manager or
senior middle manager who's looking to grow their career, grow themselves, and grow

509
00:37:45,204 --> 00:37:46,924
personally and professionally.

510
00:37:46,924 --> 00:37:51,304
So I just truly want to say thank you again for taking the time to join me.

511
00:37:51,304 --> 00:37:57,544
And I look forward to staying in touch and following along with your journey.

512
00:37:58,168 --> 00:38:04,254
With that, can you let our listeners know where they can find you and they can also follow
along with all the amazing work you're doing?

513
00:38:04,718 --> 00:38:06,920
Absolutely my LinkedIn profile.

514
00:38:07,341 --> 00:38:14,658
You're going to see all of my content, any interesting thoughts and perspectives, any
stagecraft.

515
00:38:14,658 --> 00:38:16,298
It's all there.

516
00:38:16,324 --> 00:38:17,684
Okay, fantastic.

517
00:38:17,684 --> 00:38:22,784
So we will share that on the information that we put out with your episode.

518
00:38:22,904 --> 00:38:25,176
But once again, thank you so, much.

519
00:38:25,176 --> 00:38:26,097
Thank you.

520
00:38:33,666 --> 00:38:34,781
Last part.

521
00:38:35,334 --> 00:38:36,236
Bye.