389- Stop Solving Problems That Don't Exist w/Juliano Giannerini

Phil Howard: All right. Welcome, everyone back to. You've been heard today. We've got Giuliano. I'll let you introduce yourself. Why don't you give me your official title and what you do over at Baker Construction, and we'll go from there.

Juliano Giannerini: Absolutely. Phew. First of all, good to be here. So, I'm Giuliano, director of it operations and security at Baker. So basically, I oversee the IT services, the IT operations, our day to day and cybersecurity Functions within the IT organization.

Phil Howard: All right. you do have a few specialties as well. I mean, that's kind of the general overview. But first let's go back in time. Why don't you tell me how you got started in this whole, IT gig anyways, especially back. how you got from Brazil over here and I don't know, what was your first computer? What was it? What was it growing up that. How'd you end up here?

Juliano Giannerini: Yeah, that's a long story. And I'll try to make it as short as possible. So, my first computer was an AMD four hundred fifty that I kind of learned with some friends how to do an overclock and move up to five hundred megahertz. which is funny, right? These days, we're talking about five hundred megahertz. I started my career in it, let's say, accidentally, because I was hired to do, like AutoCAD drawings, as part of the engineering group of the Rio de Janeiro airport, the city that I come from. And like after one or two weeks, they they actually told me, you're going to do the network drawings rather than the engineering drawings. I say, well, I can do any drawings. And then they move me up to the IT team. and with the network guys. So I started like designing the drawings and putting things together, things that the people used to do manually and take like weeks. Of course, with AutoCAD we could do it like in a couple of hours if not minutes. And that was back in two thousand and two, two thousand and three. I mean, and then I kind of found a kind of a passion for what those guys were doing at the time. And I decided to, go to college to do computer science. And that's how everything started in two thousand and three two thousand and four. I was already part of the network team, And since then I've been within it and also with a variety of roles within it, And that's,

Phil Howard: It's I think it's the most common answer that I get from people, at least, that have been in it for a long time as I got in there by mistake, because it wasn't something that you kind of just went to school for. I don't even know if it really still is. I mean, you can go to school for computer science, but it's like a lot of theory and stuff like that. But there's not like, hey, can you go to school and we're going to teach you how to work the help desk and talk with end users and create, a customer experience and all those different type of things. It would be almost better to like, get an MBA or something like that.

Juliano Giannerini: I agree.

Phil Howard: But then how do you speak the language? How are you going to translate the language of technology into it. what part of your role, fires you up the most?

Juliano Giannerini: Well, certainly, you just touched on that when you said, translating it to the business, right? I think that the business folks, they, I think they have a way better idea of what it what the technology team does for the organization these days. but sometimes there are still an underestimation of how difficult things are or even easy sometimes. But, translating, the it needs as well in terms of keeping everything up and running with good performance, with the reliability that the business expects into business terms for laymen, it's not easy. I think that's the most challenging, situation that I come across quite often. finding analogies that will ring the bell for them. in terms of why we need this. Well, I need this because you have an expectation of ninety nine point nine percent of uptime for a certain system. So I gotta have some controls, redundancy, high availability. It's. ET cetera. But when we come with those terms, we gotta skip the technical like jargons and try to connect to, like, a construction industry. Right? So the most important thing in construction, like usually, is the foundation. Otherwise, if you don't focus on the foundation, everything can fall apart later on, So that's kind of how I try to articulate that. And that's certainly the most challenging thing I see day in and day out.

Phil Howard: So again after three hundred, I say again because it's been three hundred and eighty episodes. I don't even know what our number is right now. The the conversation has always been kind of the same. and that is maybe, I don't know, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, however, a couple decades ago, maybe less than a couple decades, everyone subconsciously knows, I hope they subconsciously know or where they want to admit it or not. At least all the IT directors have been on the show. There's one common theme, right? And that is that nothing gets done really in any company without it touching it. I believe someone made an argument that maybe like, the parking lot got paved and like, it had nothing to do with that, but someone's IT department. Someone's IT department had something to do with that because a Po still had to be cut, you know what I mean? Like it did touch that. So I would argue like no. And there's fiber running underneath that parking lot and electricity something. So there's no I disagree. So but that's the one thing we all know, right. Marketing can't do its job without sales cannot do its job without it. logistics. Shipping. Receiving. Right. Massively. big deal. It everything. Everything. Nothing gets done without it touching it. So people, whether they, want to admit that or not, is one thing. So it has a seat at the executive round table. It's there. Right. But. the reason why I'm asking this question now and I usually kind of save it for the end, but because you touched on it, how much nicer would it be to be heard? Also, not just have a seat, but actually be heard. And you talked about, translating that, a lot of technical people get up and they speak a lot of jargon and kind of goes in one ear and out the other, and then maybe they're not quite heard. And maybe that's the problem is that they sound too smart. So executive management thinks, well, they can do that. So just throw it can do it. And then it ends up getting flooded with multiple multiple projects. Plus they're already juggling thousands of other things. And then there's emergencies that come up and there's fires that you're putting out and patches and upgrades and all kinds of other things. And then there's oh, hey, by the way, can we do that with AI? My question to you is if there was one message that the world could hear, whether it be end users or this, the C-suite or whatever it is from technology, if there's one thing that you want to get across to them to be heard from the technology leadership, what would that be?

Juliano Giannerini: I think and I think you touched.

Phil Howard: On it by saying, I think you touched on it by saying, like, it's not that easy, you know what I mean? But I don't know if that's the message. I don't know if that's the message you want to say, but, you know, what is that message that's going to help everyone outside of it, understand it more and help it help them understand more?

Juliano Giannerini: Well, that's an interesting question. I say it's hard to articulate on a single message. the first thing I'd say is that I think we need to clarify to your executive management, upper management, that first of all, we are on their side, not the opposite.

Phil Howard: It's not an us versus them. Exactly.

Juliano Giannerini: It's not about, what it wants. It's about you. You have us here and we want to be your trusted advisor, your trusted technology business partner in a way that I need you to give me information. A good. Well. Informed information about the business. And so from a technology perspective, we are going to see how we can help. Like with revenue generation increased margins and lower the cost. Okay. I think the challenge that most of us face when I say most of us, I say most of the technology folks, is that we all came from a very technical background. Most of us, and I put myself on it. I used to work behind a black screen for several years.

Juliano Giannerini: So yeah.

Juliano Giannerini: Sometimes I think we do have, a hard time to articulate that message, So first of all, it's stopping the US versus them. second is we want to be we are your trusted business partner. And trust me. as you said, it's not that easy as, the AI and some other, like, sources make it look like, we have an entire ecosystem that we need to, first of all, keep up and running with decent performance. And we also need to keep up with technology advancements. We need to keep up with, which is fine and less requirements from the business demands, and still help the business. creating like a competitive advantage, differentiation from other players and stuff like that, so it's not an easy message,

Phil Howard: So where, your business partner, first of all, is the message where are where your business partner. We're not an afterthought. In other words, what you're saying is it is not the afterthought. I guess what happens, what goes wrong when it's not the business partner or not involved in that?

Juliano Giannerini: Well, I think when I tease.

Juliano Giannerini: Because I know you've.

Phil Howard: Seen some, you have to have had some stories from the past.

Juliano Giannerini: Oh yeah.

Phil Howard: Where that's happened, where it's been, yeah. Like we got thrown a new CRM and they said, hey, guys, here's the new CRM. Can you implement this? in thirty days?

Juliano Giannerini: Yeah.

Juliano Giannerini: I usually say, and I tell my team quite often what I'm going to say now, when it's not heard, when we don't have all the key stakeholders, I mean, on the table to kind of go through most of the time, what happens is the problem statement is not well defined. And when you don't refine the problem statement, you might resolve the wrong problem.

Juliano Giannerini: Sometimes I say love that.

Juliano Giannerini: Yeah. I mean, sometimes we hear I need a new CRM. Hey, okay, you might need a new CRM. But what if you tell me what's your problem statement.

Juliano Giannerini: First. Yeah. We have.

Phil Howard: No, I don't know. I'll just make it up. I'll role play with you. we've got no reporting, and this old, SQL system is kind of a mess, and, we have no way of tracking, activity and, it's just. Yeah, it's really clunky. And, the Salesforce guy came in and they showed us this, that, and we could have reporting and we can track all this and we can know what people are doing.

Juliano Giannerini: You know, a silly example I can give you feel and it's very silly and small, but it's just to illustrate what we are talking about. We went to a baker, has an annual conference with directors and above, where we review the annual operation plan. all our targets. Review previous plan, plan next year, review previous year results and plan next years ahead. Right. I had one, vice president or HR director of one particular business unit telling me, hey, listen, I need Spanish speakers at the service desk.

Phil Howard: Sounds like an AI case.

Juliano Giannerini: Yeah, definitely. Do I just.

Phil Howard: Throw AI at that?

Juliano Giannerini: And and I was thinking like, hey, first of all, I like to say the answer is always yes because it's the business. We are here to partner with them. Right. So I usually start with, yeah, of course. But tell me, why do you need Spanish speakers at the service desk? And I say, because we have our craft workers, eighty percent of them, they are Spanish speakers. They are not tech savvy. And we need them to be able we need someone at the service desk to answer the call and pick up in Spanish and help them with resetting passwords, getting to the payroll system, etc. and then I, quickly and just like simply said, hey, listen, yes, of course we can help. But listen, when people call about payroll questions, they don't even call the service desk. They call the HR the payroll team. And my team doesn't even have access. And I think they should not have to reset passwords on the payroll system. So that's up to the HR and the payroll manager director, whatever. So just telling you if I put more Spanish speakers at the service desk, it's not going to solve your problem.

Phil Howard: Comprendido.

Juliano Giannerini: Yeah, Completo. Yeah. And that's just simple.

Juliano Giannerini: And the guy was kind of looking at me and say, hey, I'm not saying I don't want to help. I do want and I can engage with the payroll team and we can talk through it. We can explore. I think we don't need more humans in there. Maybe it's just a matter of of having, like, a little bit of a agentic AI that can answer calls, that can reply text messages, that can reply emails, those repetitive tasks. They can definitely we can fix that. But let's first focus on the problem statement

Phil Howard: Okay. So, I don't know if that's the biggest challenge, but if there is one. If you could fix one big challenge across it leadership tomorrow. Like the thing that might keep you up at night the most, or the thing where you're just like, not this again, I don't know what's the biggest challenge if there's if you could solve one big challenge in IT leadership tomorrow, what would it be?

Juliano Giannerini: ID leadership, right? Just like, what? I was saying that it's hard to articulate the message. Yeah, I also take the heat on it. That's sometimes I think it leadership doesn't know how to articulate that message and translate it into business terms to laymen, So I think the challenge with it leadership is more about business acumen,

Juliano Giannerini: So okay.

Juliano Giannerini: Understanding the core business and how we can literally translate because we most of the cases, we are speaking a totally different language from the business. And that's, I think, where we find a hard time to sometimes, prove funding and investment and some of the initiatives that we will certainly help the business. We have a strong business case, but we just don't articulate the message. So developing that business acumen, I think it's one of the most important thing in the IT leadership.

Phil Howard: I think it's one of the most important things for business leaders as well.

Juliano Giannerini: Yeah.

Phil Howard: I think a lot of business leaders know the they know EBITDA, they know ROI, they know words and everything. But I think even just a lot of business leaders in general, at least eighty percent, the famous old eighty twenty rule are all over the place trying to fix different things and not focused. it's very easy to be It's very easy. The shiny object syndrome, just like it is in it. it's very easy to kind of get derailed from what your number one vision or goal or challenge is at the time. And I can't remember what Bezos was with Amazon back then, but it was just like, everything has to be like one click. it was just like, something simple like that, like a simple focus. Right? I think for us, for the podcast, it's like, how do we scale to two podcasts a day? And what does that have to do with, two podcasts a day? Like if we ask that question every time, like, what's the challenge? So I guess my question to you would be then is like, how clear or how well connected is it leadership, do you think, with the actual vision and challenges of the business? But the business, first of all, has to have good leadership as well. So if the business doesn't know what their number one challenge is, then how can we expect it to know what the number one challenge is? And if the business doesn't know what the number one challenge is, but you've got a really, really good business leader in it. Can it help uncover that? So, what's the biggest challenge to growth for, any company at any one time. And how can it help alleviate that, I guess, without being, pulled in a thousand different directions, trying to fix eight thousand different things without any focus?

Juliano Giannerini: Yeah.

Juliano Giannerini: I think, you hit the nail when you say that. The first of all, the business, has to define clear, concise, like and achievable objectives. then not only it but other leaders across the organization, they need to to kind of understand how, their respective functions in this case we are talking about technology team can help achieving those goals. Okay. And I think when we do our let's say see internal assessment on how can it help, for instance, with revenue growth or with margin or lowering the cost? Okay. So you're going to sit down with our internal IT leadership team refine review, everyone's perspective on how we can help achieving that particular goal objective. And by when Et-cetera how. And then we need to get back to the business or to the leaders and say, hey, here is how we see it fitting and helping on achieving these this this goal. Okay. But we need them to refine and help prioritizing. First of all, they need to review whether that, really, is in line with their vision, right? Otherwise it doesn't make any sense. And then okay, so in order to do this, we need you to have a major program or projects etc. and we need to prioritize. The first thing is understanding the limitation we have that we cannot do everything at once.

Juliano Giannerini: Right.

Juliano Giannerini: So we need to prioritize. And prioritizing means that the business upper management needs to be involved and they need to give direction and guidance, So then that's we are talking about alignment, right?

Juliano Giannerini: Right.

Juliano Giannerini: Once those two kind of stakeholders, technology leaders and the business are well aligned, I think they both shake hands saying yes. Okay. What you're saying like this is the goal. And the technology team understands that by doing this, you're going to help us with these goals.

Juliano Giannerini: Right?

Juliano Giannerini: Oh yeah, I agree one hundred percent. So let's go do it. Let's create a roadmap. Let's see how. Let's prioritize what comes first. What comes next. Okay.

Phil Howard: Do you think there's a lot of companies that just have rogue projects going on like sales calls. It is like we need this and it doesn't and it gets approved, but it doesn't even make it to the round table.

Juliano Giannerini: Well, I'm.

Juliano Giannerini: a hundred percent. And that's where.

Juliano Giannerini: We know.

Phil Howard: It happens.

Juliano Giannerini: But yeah.

Juliano Giannerini: And that's where I see in in a lot of cases, I can tell not only a baker, but at my previous, I mean, some of my previous assignments, sometimes there is a clear understanding from upper management on where they want to be. Okay. And they cascade that down to the different departments the technology, finance, HR, whatever, and I see that I have seen that my entire life, I should say. And then when it goes down to the lower levels, sometimes middle management is totally not aligned with that because they are asking for those rogue projects. I say, hey, this is not connected with the major goal of the organization, or one or two or three goals that we have set for this period. It's totally disconnected, and I think that disconnection, I don't know why and how it really happens. But basically when I was talking about business acumen, we were talking about the technology leadership. Right. But the technology leadership needs to cascade down that message to, our teams and help them understanding and developing that business acumen as well. So there's going to be a disconnection because our teams will not really understand why they're doing what they're doing or they don't understand our vision, which is connected to the business, to the company's vision. So with other departments, I think that happens a lot, this disconnection that leads to rogue projects or initiatives that are definitely not connected with the with the goals. And again, it's going to probably resolve the wrong problem.

Phil Howard: I mean, some of this is just business foundational business best practices that probably as the business grew, fell massively out of alignment. Things like, I know for us, like one of our one of our three core values that we're working really, really hard on, that I want us to work really hard on this year is just communication, because you can have multiple people all on different islands, kind of operating and doing things, and they're not in alignment with everyone kind of on the on the same vision. Right. So someone's doing one thing, another person's doing the other thing, and they're everyone's intentions are we want to assume everyone's intentions are good, right? but I can imagine in a larger company where you have top down, top down communication can fall apart. And when you have middle management and people showing up and I'm showing up and doing my job, when that vision and communication doesn't flow through all the way to the bottom. And I think that's very common in a lot of companies.

Juliano Giannerini: Yeah.

Juliano Giannerini: And the communication like organization, change management, I think It's key for that. Right. And I think communication within not only large organizations, I mean in most of the places are really communication is really one of the most challenging things we can see. because we can send a message. And how can we make sure that everyone is on the same page and understand the message? understanding, what exactly we want them to do, or take it from there. it's not easy. We see that every day.

Phil Howard: what do you think? most CIOs, CTOs, IT leaders in general, what do you think most people get wrong that you think is that's, like, obvious to you?

Juliano Giannerini: You mean from the business perspective?

Juliano Giannerini: Well, you just.

Phil Howard: Look at it and you're like, ah, it's so obvious. Why do we keep doing that or I don't I mean, it's just like, what do you think most CIOs or most IT leaders get wrong? I've got statistics. I mean, I've got like it's either like ninety four percent. I could tell you one thing, but I'm just curious if there's something that pops into your head. You looked at it like, why do we keep doing that? or here's another way to ask it. Another way to ask it is like, is there any universally accepted best practice that you think is actually damaging and stupid and we should throw out the window?

Juliano Giannerini: Well.

Juliano Giannerini: I think one of the things one of the most common things, I see, let's say, with my team most of the time is that they usually come with the tool with the technology.

Juliano Giannerini: Mhm.

Juliano Giannerini: and I go back and I say hey what is the problem you're trying to resolve. Because I'm a biggest advocate, I tell them all the time that the rules should come before the tools.

Juliano Giannerini: So I love.

Phil Howard: That I like that I haven't heard that one.

Juliano Giannerini: Yeah.

Phil Howard: That's good.

Juliano Giannerini: Again. Sometimes We should still focus on people and process, and the technology will eventually come to help and be part of that, and everyone wants to be heard. But you only be able to do that once you have the right message. Right? And I'm not saying that I'm that guy that always has the right message. I think it's still a challenge we all have to tackle. But, yeah, being heard is amazing.

Juliano Giannerini: But I think.

Phil Howard: It's being heard after you've listened really, really well.

Juliano Giannerini: You gotta listen out first. you gotta understand what how they work, how they are wired. it's very important to understand how people are wired. Acquired. So you can then articulate the message. you can communicate in a way that they understand what you're saying using the channel that they use. I can give you one example, which I particularly think I failed when I first came to Baker. So construction business, they use a lot of, text message,

Phil Howard: Of course.

Juliano Giannerini: Because people in the field, they just don't have a computer or an iPad all the time. So it's easier to communicate. And I did not really understand or even mapped that at the time And I insisted on reaching then on teams or emails until I found Teams is not really their biggest like strength or in terms of communication. And after some time I talked to the CTO and she said, oh, try text messages. That's all they do all day long. And they started to be very responsive.

Phil Howard: Isn't that amazing?

Juliano Giannerini: and that's a minor thing, that I just didn't really do my job. Well, first by understanding how they operate, and that's a very basic thing. And I stayed here a couple of months waiting for answers. And I was eager to prepare my strategy, my assessment, my plans. And I was waiting for information that they never came until I pick up the phone and I call and I text message, and I just came from a very different business with a very different culture. So that's the other point. Understanding the organization, culture, it is very important as well.

Phil Howard: It's the flip side too. So when I say you've been hurt, it doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't necessarily need to be. The IT leader's been hurt. It might need it might also mean that you've been hurt. Like as IT leaders we hear you. We listen to our end users. We listen to you. We hear you loud and clear.

Juliano Giannerini: Absolutely.

Phil Howard: It's universal. it's profound and it's yet so simple. It's so simple. If you've ever seen what about Bob?

Juliano Giannerini: And the other.

Juliano Giannerini: Thing is, like when we when we do say something, I think it's it got to be clear for them. When they ask what is what is in it for me, they clearly understand that if we're you're not able to kind of, present something that when they ask themselves what is in it for me and they clearly understand what is in there for them, what should it be, what should be their take, what should be the action and how they can support? Then we failed to communicate,

Phil Howard: So you're in a good industry because you're in an industry that's there's a lot of, you move a lot of dirt around. Let's just put it that way. Yeah. I'm assuming you've got some guys that wear steel toed boots and drive trucks and stuff like that.

Juliano Giannerini: Okay, one hundred percent.

Phil Howard: So I need a prediction from you. Eighteen months from now, what will everyone in it be talking about that people ignore today? Can you think of anything, whether it be eighteen months from now, thirty six months from now? I like a year and a half. But if you need to go three years, what do you imagine is going to change in the field of it.

Juliano Giannerini: I think in eighteen to thirty six months from now, we are going to have a way better understanding of the AI impact as a major, industrial revolution. But I think, we are at this very moment, I think we are on a big hype. Everyone talks about AI. I really challenge a lot of the Rois in terms of the AI initiatives, So for many leaders, it's still a buzzword, where they don't really see, because when you talk about productivity. Yes, there is a huge productivity gain, but translating those things into measurable ROI with hard dollars is really hard to.

Phil Howard: Okay, so what's the part about AI then that people are ignoring that they should be leveraging? So everyone's talking about like AI agents and generative AI. We're going to have bots replacing people and all this craziness, which I don't believe is going to happen. I believe that to me, I believe will not happen in eighteen months, but there are some aspects of AI that people might not be leveraging or something. Is there anything there that you think? Is there anything people are missing out on? It doesn't even need to be AI. It could be like, oh, we got this whole other thing going on in the IT industry that people are completely ignoring, but is there something that people are ignoring like a, I don't know, secret weapon or secret blind spot or, I know something bad. Is there anything that you can think of? I ran into one this morning.

Juliano Giannerini: Oh.

Juliano Giannerini: Well, I can't think of anything specifically like another technology that we might be missing,

Juliano Giannerini: Like I. Okay.

Phil Howard: I actually, I think the secret. This is just me. I think eighteen months from now to thirty six months from now, I think almost the entire development world is going to be destroyed. I think the I think the AI piece that is not hype is the actual coding aspect. I think we're going to go from just like, what do they call those coders like the the fake coders? vibe coders. I think we're going to go from vibe coding to like a whole nother level, because what I saw that my team was able to provide today blew my mind. I mean, built a whole. Almost like an entire tracker. like a whole good portion of a CRM in a weekend, like custom, like, I think a lot of software is going to become a why are we going to use Salesforce? I my prediction is that companies like Salesforce will be out of business.

Juliano Giannerini: You think so?

Juliano Giannerini: I do yeah, I think the.

Phil Howard: Coding is going to get I think the coding is going to get so good that someone's going to be like, why would I pay that much money? And why would I pay a custom dev guy to take forever to do this, when I can just code my own CRM specifically to my use case and host it myself? That's my prediction. That might be wild. That might be wild. But after I saw what my team is able to do and I don't have Millions of dollars, right? When I saw, I was blown away.

Juliano Giannerini: Yeah, I think the the development industry will certainly face a major disruption, because AI can certainly do more with less and twenty four by seven and, and precisely but I don't know.

Juliano Giannerini: It'll work out the.

Phil Howard: Bugs. They're going to work out the bugs. They're going to work out some of the glitches. They're going to work out some of the what do we call it when hallucinations. Some of this stuff's going to start to, like get a lot better. That's my that's my prediction. That's where AI is very useful to me.

Juliano Giannerini: Yeah.

Juliano Giannerini: However I don't really know. Like, maybe you're right, but I it sounds a little bit extreme to see.

Juliano Giannerini: I'm going to show you secretly.

Juliano Giannerini: Out of business.

Phil Howard: No, no, I that's extreme. Okay. But massive losses. Not needed as much. Or rather than paying a company to do custom dev work for you like that, those guys will be out of those guys will take the first big hit, or those guys will be the first people to learn how to use AI from a coding perspective to really speed up the process.

Juliano Giannerini: It's kind of funny because they help developing that. And historically you have, like, infrastructure guys. And when we had the dev ops, they all thought that they were going to be out of business because everything was is going to be automated. like the seamless provisioning.

Juliano Giannerini: Etc. was going to.

Phil Howard: Be some new stuff. I mean, we're going.

Juliano Giannerini: To need visionaries.

Juliano Giannerini: But now I feel like the developers are way more threatened than the the infrastructure guys.

Phil Howard: Yeah. Of course. Absolutely. Completely agree. The like the low level dev. Dev. Guys are gone. You have. You're gonna have to be the best. And then like, it's going to be weird because there's going to be a really big gap. There's going to be this huge gap of like, well, how do I even get to that level? Like, what's the point even?

Juliano Giannerini: Yeah, I don't know. But that also.

Juliano Giannerini: That also leads to a major, let's say, risk and challenge that I should say that I face these days is, now empowered by AI. Everyone thinks it's a technology IT guy. And I do have a lot of shadow AI, which used to be shadow it and moving slowly within the organization like some business users that they knew, or they had some background and they started developing things, products that I would just call MVP's never really real product until we take ownership because they don't think about scalability, about how to support that later on and how that product can survive without them. Right. So right.

Juliano Giannerini: Now I.

Phil Howard: Know exactly what you mean.

Juliano Giannerini: Yeah.

Juliano Giannerini: And now with shadow AI, the it's like exponential. The number of people they are getting into it and they are all building their custom products. And I think that's going to make our lives so difficult in the near future.

Phil Howard: It's exactly you're going to have to have really good visionaries and oversight. So for example, like our example was an app. It was an app to track people, track activity for recruiting people to be on the podcast. Simple thing. Right. Go to go from spreadsheet to active application with gamification. Hosted mobile version. Web version. It's awesome. Absolutely. Came out amazing, right? So then I'm talking with Greg this morning. He's like, well, I don't even think we need like our email like or I don't think we need this anymore. It's like no no no no no no. See that's the version. That's where you need oversight, where you need technology leader oversight. I was like, no, no, no. Because even if you could build your own, I think it was like a survey. It was like it was like survey and quizzes and email automation and all this type of stuff. Even if you could do that, it's going to get killed by, like your email deliverability rates, your like spam scores. All this stuff is going to get absolutely destroyed and you're going to have no score like that. In that use case, it would never work and you would need someone to be able to say that. But if you've got some dude in marketing that's like, yeah, I built this like crazy thing. And then all of a sudden you're like, well, why did our email delivery rates go down? Oh, and think about that. So you're going to have to have some people with some good oversight.

Juliano Giannerini: Which is challenging. not all organizations have the level of governance to do this oversight. And then people will start building those custom products that they cannot be supported later on, mainly if they turn their back on the organization and the challenges that the IT team is not scaled to take all of this in and make it like, reliable. I mean, with decent performance and then support it later to make sure that we do the lifecycle management of the product like any product has,

Juliano Giannerini: So yeah.

Juliano Giannerini: That's some of the challenges that I see. I have seen that right now. And it's going to just go skyrocket over the next eighteen to thirty six months in my point of view.

Phil Howard: understood completely okay, so last question, What's one lesson that every IT leader should know was there, like ever like just a big learning moment for you where you're like, oh, yeah. That, if I had known that back then, I wouldn't have done that or I would have done this more of. Right. like for me, it's like, well, if I had known that, I wouldn't have wasted two years in, biochemistry and then doing creative writing, I probably would have just jumped right to business management. but, what's one lesson every emerging IT leader should know?

Juliano Giannerini: I think the lesson is, we should not underestimate, how important it is to work and refine the problem statement. So we don't fix the wrong problem. I think that's something I learned and I did wrong a lot of times, over the these like twenty years that I've been working in the IT industry, just a small oversight where you think the problem and say, okay, let's go ahead with this. No, like just spend time. It is not spending. It's about investing time on understanding what is the pain point. Okay. Refine it, validate it, and then you start Solutioning.

Phil Howard: I think we could use some vibe coding and come up with a problem statement app.

Juliano Giannerini: that's right.

Phil Howard: So basically like this morning, we have a big problem with scheduling. It's really, really difficult because we have a lot of hosts that all have different schedules, and so we get to like a certain point where like, you know, someone's like, well, I'm available on this date, on that date, and I'm available at certain times, and Doug's available at some times, and Mike's available time, and Michael is available at all of these different times. We all work for different companies because they all have day jobs as well. Or, and it's like, okay, well, he has his calendar link, he has his calendar link. And zoom won't allow us to unify because they all got to be under one domain. And then, well, we could use Calendly and we could. It's like this crazy kind of weird. It seems like a simple problem to solve, but, that's exactly what we started with. Was like a long, hour long session this morning just recording the problem statements. And then we're going to break it down into steps and like different solutioning and that type of stuff. And I think when you do that versus just like, I don't know what, what vendors are available. Okay, we got this one. This one. Let's try this one. Okay. Let's try this one. And this is what you end up with is just, non unified communications.

Juliano Giannerini: And I feel like sometimes an AI is doing that a lot these days. Right. So AI is all about efficiency, productivity, automation right.

Juliano Giannerini: Yeah.

Juliano Giannerini: And guess what. When why I focus on the problem statement like AI and all the automation. When you automate a bad process you speed up the problem exponentially. we've now empowered by AI. It's the speed of light because we could stop that before. Like in previous years, when you automate a bad process, you would end up with, okay, just a small chunk of bad data. Now it's a big chunk of bad data.

Phil Howard: It's like, I need a product. I need a vendor that can do this, this and this and AI. I'll just tell you, Okay. Do this, this, this and this and try this. And all you've done is. Yeah. Your process was wrong. AI just amplified your wrong. Your wrongness.

Juliano Giannerini: Exactly, exactly.

Juliano Giannerini: It's going to agree with you.

Phil Howard: It's just going to answer you and agree with you. At least from.

Juliano Giannerini: The AI is going to be as good as, where they've been trained on. It's a pre-trained.

Phil Howard: yeah yeah yeah, yeah. Juliano, it has been a pleasure. You've been heard.

Juliano Giannerini: my pleasure. Phil, thanks for the invitation. it's been a pleasure being here with you today.