392- Why Technical Skills Won't Get You Promoted w/Ken Widner

Phil Howard: All right. Well welcome everyone back to You've Been Heard. We got Ken Weidner on and we have a list of bullet points to talk about today. But I was having a lot of fun reading your squeaky wheel article or post here on LinkedIn. So, I think we should start with some true value and add that to the show before we get started, because I found it to be very profound. Yet we always hear like the squeaky wheel gets the grease And I actually give that as advice. But I think the foundation of the show is when IT leaders rise, so does everything else, and more people should be listening to it. It's not the separate department, right? It is the business. And I think IT leaders for the most part tend to be making decisions in a way that would be hasty. I would say the good leaders are less hasty, right? So this idea of the leadership paying attention to what's loudest, I think is relevant when it comes to AI and things that are going on in the space. As far as advice that you would give to the C-suite or leadership. But maybe you can speak for a few minutes on this concept of the squeaky wheel and how our society is plagued with it via social media, hype, sales, marketing, and how does that affect business and affect the IT world?

Ken Widner: Yeah. And so it's called availability bias, right. And the concept is that whatever's most memorable we tend to overvalue. And to your earlier point, it can be a really good tactic, right? I mean, if you speak loud enough and you make enough noise, right? Somebody's going to listen to you. And so if your goal is to get your voice heard and have somebody take action, the best thing you can do is just get in their face and like you say, text them a million times or whatever, right? That's.

Phil Howard: Marketing. I mean, that's marketing's job. That's marketing's job to be heard more than everybody else. Sometimes the person that's just up in your face all the time is the one that ends up, oh, yeah, I remember that guy, but I forgot the other guy. Yeah.

Ken Widner: Exactly. But, it can be dangerous in various different aspects of leadership. And, as we get close to the year end and I know some leaders are working on, like, their employee evals, right. You've worked with these team members for an entire year, and then in the last week, somebody issues a complaint about somebody or perhaps that team member was late to a meeting and that's what's most memorable. And so then as you're writing that employee eval, right, you kind of forget about all the other good things that that person did and you're stuck remembering that one bad thing or vice versa. Maybe they were an underperformer for the year, right? And then all of a sudden they knocked something out like a rock star in the last couple of weeks. And so then you overinflate the eval. But it sounds.

Phil Howard: Like it sounds like relationships also.

Ken Widner: Oh, yeah. It can apply to your marriage. You can apply with your kids. I mean, it's all over the place. But it can be really dangerous as leaders. And I gave a couple examples in that posting about the customer that writes an email, complaining about a product or a particular person within the industry or within your organization. And, it can make you think that, oh, this is a widespread problem, but maybe it's just one or two people that's actually experiencing that issue. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't take care of them. Like I said, you still need to grease That squeaky wheel. But it can definitely impact and impair our decisions in the moment where we end up taking action where we shouldn't. So it creeps in everywhere.

Phil Howard: I think it applies to the shiny object syndrome as well. And being disciplined enough to say no or sift and sort and stay on course for the challenges that we're trying to solve and the business problems that we have at the moment in order to scale and grow the business or whatever business or non-profit that we are in. Any tricks to the trade here to stay on course and stay focused and not fall victim to shiny object syndrome and not allow top down management to fall victim to such things. Example sales reps calling CEOs and explaining to them that their AI will solve and scale their business. And streamline everything for them and allow them to cut labor by twenty percent, just as an example.

Ken Widner: Yeah. I mean, over promise. Right. And then the CEO has that in their mind as they're coming and talking to you as the CIO or the leader of IT, right? That, hey, this company said that they can increase our profit by twenty percent if we just implement their AI solution. And that's ringing in their head. Right. And you also have this fear of missing out because in those engagements, vendor will often start citing other companies that they're working with other deals that are going on and how these other companies are profiting from this technology, and they can be missing out, right, if they're not making this investment. And you've got to really sift through the noise there because, yeah, it's true that other companies might be investing in AI, but when it comes to actually getting that hard revenue, that top line sales like AI is still really around efficiency gains and soft dollars, right? Not hard revenue. The people making hard revenue off of AI are the ones selling AI and selling AI services, right? But there's so much of it in the media right now. And every conference you go to, everyone's talking about AI, that I think that availability bias really comes to play here, where it's top of mind for everyone. And in every conversation that I'm in right now, when we talk about needing more resources for something, the conversation goes to, well, can't we just throw AI at it? You know, just AI and bring in some more contractors and then we can get it done? But I think it was Lee Iacocca, the former CEO of Chrysler, that said that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, right.

Phil Howard: And thank you.

Ken Widner: As a CIO, and as just IT leaders, we got to help our peers to make sure that we're keeping the eye on the ball. Right. And so what did we say our main objectives are for the year, and how do we stay aligned to those main objectives and not let the latest shiny object come along that is promising a twenty percent or fifty percent increase in revenue and take us off of our main game. Right. It's so easy to get distracted by AI. But I think as IT leaders, one of our main jobs is to help keep our peers focused on what the main goal is.

Phil Howard: I think we banged out three bullet points of the first of the details of this podcast so far, which is psychology and IT leadership. It is a strategic business driver and the Department of prioritization, keeping the main thing the main thing. Like, I love that. What kind of questions could we ask? So we don't want to just be like the arrogant IT guy that knows everything. When someone comes to us with their idea that they want or they think is awesome and they're all excited about even though they heard about it and or read about it in Time Magazine, if a magazine's even a real thing anymore. What kind of questions can we ask our C level executive team to redirect and keep them focused? For example, what does XYZ AI provider or how does XYZ AI provider, align with our current goals for the year or the next five years and the growth of the company?

Ken Widner: Yeah, and I think that is exactly where you start, right? Because usually at the beginning of the fiscal year, you're going to start off the year with three to five main objectives for the organization, right? And usually the C levels are agreed upon what those objectives are going to be. And then we filter those down to our leaders. And then all the way down to our engineers and support staff and so forth. And you keep going back to that. So whenever a peer of mine goes on a golf outing or whatever with a company and they start spouting, hey, you could really increase your top line sales if you just implemented this technology. I always go back to, well, how does that facilitate the top three objectives that we have? Right. Like that wasn't part of the top three objectives. And right now, we do our best. We're going through a major merger right now with True Value. We just purchased them out of bankruptcy last year. And I think that I'm fortunate enough that I work with great leaders and we can challenge each other around. Hey, are we doing the thing that we said we were going to do as far as prioritizing this merger? Right. And the things that are associated with that, like rightsizing our supply chain network and the way in which we manage our DCs. So is this shiny object over here that we're now talking about. How does that relate specifically to those goals of integrating True Value? And like I said, I'm fortunate enough to work with a group of leaders that will challenge each other around the table and say, you know what? That just doesn't fit into the plan. And maybe it's not a no. We were talking about, Department of Prioritization. I don't like being the Department of No. I like helping to determine what should be prioritized based on what the objectives are. And maybe it's not a no, it's just not right now. It could be something that makes perfect sense a year from now or even three months from now. Right. So we can keep it on the table to talk about it just might be. Not right now.

Phil Howard: It's like serendipity Or serendipitous that the two companies. It's like, Mr. C-suite, how do we integrate True Value right into Do It Best? It literally aligns perfectly with the IT department, because the IT department needs to start speaking in terms of bringing value, true value that's measurable through KPIs or actual value. And how do we do it best? And literally it's like it's perfect for you. And I'm sure you've spoken about this before. You have to have. Yeah.

Ken Widner: Oh yeah. You should be in marketing, right? I mean that it goes together so well.

Phil Howard: Kind of am. I mean, this is a podcast.

Ken Widner: You're right. You're really good at what you do. Phil. Yeah.

Phil Howard: That's what our goal is, for all of it. Leadership to be the squeaky wheel for the good reason to deliver true value and do it best. What is business transformation?

Ken Widner: Yeah, that's a good question. And, for us, I.

Phil Howard: Would like to transform. That's why. Because I just want to know, like, really what is it? Because I think we talk about it. We understand it as a concept. But what is it?

Ken Widner: Yeah. It's not just implementing software. Right. Or, a particular project. I mean, transformation is really, if you think about it from like a butterfly, right? A caterpillar going into a cocoon and then turning into a butterfly. Like that's what you want to do. You want. You're starting from one place, and you're hoping to become something else in the journey. And, one of the reasons why I came to Do It Best, I've been here for about a year now was that our CEO Dan Starr, and president of Do It Best, Nick Talarico, had made comments before that we really want to do our best to transition into a technology company. And I think it was John Chambers, from Cisco that said, like all companies are becoming tech companies now, and it's just a matter of whether or not they realize it. And we feel like we can be a leader in this space when it comes to supporting independent hardware stores and the way in which they do retail. Nobody else is looking at putting technology into their stores, so we're positioned to be able to do that. But we are, eighty year old, wholesale company and distribution company. Right. And so transformation for us means to make that move from focusing on wholesale to how do we focus on retail, how do we help our members in those independent store owners adopt technology that allows them to compete with companies like the Big Box, like the Home Depots, and the Lowes of the world, right? Because they don't have the resources and the ability to invest in developing that type of technology. So for us, that's what the transformation means. It means going from going from being an eighty year old wholesale distribution company to transforming into a company that uses technology to enable those independents to compete on a much larger scale and to have access to data in volumes. I mean, we got over nine thousand locations. So you think of all those point of sale systems that are out there, and all of the data that we can glean from that, to be able to know what products should be in what store, at what time of the year. Knowing the customer based on the demographics of where that store is located like that is a tremendous unlock for our members. And so that's what transformation means for us. I think that other companies, it would be the same kind of thing. It's not just updating your ERP system, right? It's not just replacing your warehouse management system. It's making a fundamental shift in the way in which you're going to do business, in a fundamental shift in the way in which you're going to interact with your customers.

Phil Howard: There's just it's like if you have clean data on your customers, we should know from the customer journey that this guy's most likely remodeling his bathroom. This guy is most likely getting ready to do this. Or this guy has bought broken toilet parts five times over the last this many years. He might need some help. Now. The why am I saying this. And I'm just saying this for the benefit of your. I don't know if this helps your C-suite. I just want to, like, say it because the fact that you want to be a technology company that fits in there. Yeah. And we want to bring and we're bringing true value into the fold, metaphorically, so to speak, because we want to bring true value to not only our customers and our end users. But if it wants to bring true value to the executive suite as well. It just fits so well. It's kind of like you've been heard. And here's what I noticed in America it's very, very difficult for me to find good help from Angie's List, Craig's List, even though we don't use Craigslist anymore, the Craigslist desks of the world, the Facebook marketplaces, things like this. And I could go find it at Home Depot if I stood outside and I kind of grabbed some numbers off of some pickup trucks. Okay, now. So I pretty much get frustrated and I have to fix something myself, or I just leave it until it's so bad that it has to be fixed and I either overpay it. Or I could go do it myself at the Home Depots of the world, because that's kind of like what's just ingrained into our. And, you know, in worst case scenario, I have to go to I have to go to Lowe's. I definitely rather go to True Value and or Ace or something like that because, it's more family friendly. I buy my barbecue parts. It's more niche. There's like help, I get help. It's just it's kind of a mixed bag when you go to Home Depot. Okay, now I go to Morocco, where I live for a good portion of the year. Completely different atmosphere, completely different. It's still old school. It's still conservative. There's a little construction parts shop, there's an electrical shop, there's a lighting shop. There's a different little shop, just like it used to be back in the day on every single street. And you don't do anything. You don't fix anything yourself. You just pay the local plumber. You pay the local electrician. He shows up instantly. He does it for you. It doesn't cost as much. It's great, but it's very difficult to find reliable people you don't really kind of know. It's kind of like this mixed bag. And I was thinking, like, we need to take a database. You know, they don't have, like, the technology we need, like, we need ERP, CRM, we need to like, take a database of all the plumbers and things and rate them and do this and that type of thing. What would be really great in America is if there was a hardware store, wholesale hardware store that knew what I was working on, my projects or whatever I needed done in my house, and compare me up with local people that could fix and do the stuff. And it would be this like entity or co-op of people that could not only help me, but the hardware store makes money, connects it with local business owners to the actual human trying to get something done who's also business has everything else going on in their life at the same time without bending them over and like ripping them off and doing all these different things. There's like so much opportunity there in that space to provide a holistic approach to hardware and the homeowners, even business owners and other things as well. I'm just just throwing that out there. If you have data and stuff like that, that you guys could do that, that's where I see the future of technology bringing that in. Right, right.

Ken Widner: Those are the conversations we're having right now. Right? So you're talking about transformation. That's part of it. Like how do we enable those independent store owners to be able to create a network of professionals that they can recommend as contractors, and then how do they both make money?

Phil Howard: You have everyone already buying you. You probably have a contractor's code discount. I'm assuming you guys have that or. No, I mean, I don't really know how your model works or how people do. You have storefronts? Do you have order online where your business comes from and all that? But it would be a fun conversation.

Ken Widner: Yeah, And we do. And we're building out that network, right? And so that's an area where you're going to see a lot more investment from us, in those areas.

Phil Howard: That would be where you could make like a massive leap and jump. As much as I love just going online at Home Depot and ordering my stuff and having to do it all myself, Okay, what do most CIOs and CTOs get wrong that screw it up for themselves, that don't allow for this cross-functional alignment and relationship building? What do most get wrong?

Ken Widner: Thank you so much for asking that question, because I am definitely opinionated here. It's the emotional connection. And so you can look at neuroscience. And there's a lot of psychology research that's done in this area. But like our decisions are made out of emotion predominantly. And then we use logic to justify what we did. Right. Of course now.

Phil Howard: This is like sales one hundred and one. Yeah, right. Sales and marketing one hundred one. People use emotions. Back it up with logic, right?

Ken Widner: I mean, look at how many people are driving, large, Ford F-150, four by fours that will never go off road, right? I mean, it's that kind of mentality. But it starts with emotion. But the problem with a lot of IT leaders is that, we don't start there. Right? And so we show up to meetings with our KPIs and our charts and our graphs showing, hey, look at our on time delivery. Nobody sitting around that table is going to emotionally connect with the fact that you had ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine percent uptime. They just expect it like turning on the light switch. So when you're showing that report to your peers they don't care. There's not an emotional connection to that right. If you show what your release rate is right and how many, code enhancements that you've done over the last sprint. Right. Again, they don't care about that. But if you can get a quote from somebody that is working in your distribution center around how pick to light has made their life so much easier and so much more efficient, and you can lead with that. Or if you can lead with a quote from a customer that had a positive interaction with a new kiosk that you've put into the store and how easy it was to use. Right now, all of a sudden, you're starting to draw those connections, and they see how it is actually relating to the business. Like, oh, you understand that warehouse worker? You understand that store clerk. Right? You understand that person in accounting who is working with an outdated ERP system, right. That is in accounts payable and is frustrated because they can't get to the data that they want, right? You make those jobs easier and you get those emotional responses and those stories. Now you're showing the business that, hey, we're partners. We're not just this black box that you submit requests to. And then we try to determine whether or not we're going to prioritize it, right. And I think a lot of IT departments are thought of as just a cost center. And not that they actually bring value. It's just a necessary evil. And you've got to be able to show that no, you care about the organization, you care about the customers. You got to lead with that. And not so much around the KPIs around, hey, look how good a job we're doing keeping our systems up. Nobody cares if the system is up, if it's horrible to interact with. Right. I mean, if you've got a POS system that is clunky and doesn't make a whole lot of sense for the store employee, then it doesn't matter that it's up ninety nine point nine nine nine nine percent of the time, right? You've got to make the transaction easy. You got to make that interaction with the customer easy. I look at technology in three buckets. It either detracts from the experience it's invisible to the experience, or it enhances the experience. And Uber is a great example. And so I'll talk about the Uber ization of IT. Nobody teaches you how to use the Uber app right. I mean the first time you use it you pop open, you're like, I'm here, I want to go there. Here's the my choices for the cost. I'm going to choose this one. Okay. I go stand over there and then the driver comes to pick me up. And then while I'm in the car, I can see the route that the driver is taking and I can see what the estimated arrival time is. And so I know, hey, can I jump on a call? Do I have time to answer this email or no, I'm going to be jumping out of the car here in a minute, right? That enhances the experience. It's kind of invisible in certain aspects because nobody has to train you on it. It's intuitive, but it enhances the overall experience of getting where you're going. So how do we take that mentality and put it into everything that we do, so that the person's experience is enhanced when they go to work, right. They're not complaining about systems. They're excited about working about systems. And they have a voice. They feel like they're being heard. And so UI, UX is so important. Understanding IT anthropology, right. We design systems thinking that users are going to use them in a certain way. And then we actually observe them out in the field, and we find out that users are using them in ways that were completely, different than what we had expected. So you got to get out in the field and you got to have to look at how they're actually interacting with the technology to understand what you can do to make their job easier. That's where it brings value. That's where it needs to start is on that emotional side, not on the KPIs, logic, charts, graphs. Data because we love data, right? Everybody loves data. Data is king. But you got to start with that emotional connection first. And then you can use data to justify what it is that you're doing.

Phil Howard: It's beautiful. It's a mix of like show and tell while allowing for questions. But I mean, we can go all the way back to kindergarten like show and tell. I think it's showing them. But to your point, without just being KPIs and everything, but showing them, getting them emotionally connected from that standpoint,

Ken Widner: It goes back to marketing, right? It's marketing. You got to show the business why they want to be in a relationship with you, right? It's like, how do you court your business peers to get them to want to invest in you? And then it makes it so much easier when you need resources and you're looking to expand like it's because of the relationships I have with my peers that we're able to open this tech center now in Dallas that come first of the year, we're going to have a brand new facility there. And that wasn't just me going to the CFO and CEO saying, hey, look at all this work I need. And here's the data to prove that we need to be in this location. It's building the relationships with my peers so they can say, hey, yeah, it can bring value, and they need this tech center in Dallas. And so they help support me in getting that. It makes life so much easier as a CIO. If you can get that buy in and build those relationships with your peers. So they start championing your causes for you, and they're right there in the trenches with you, which is great.

Phil Howard: I'm going to bring up what might be a sensitive topic for some people, because I think the majority of IT guys are fairly genuine and, authentic. I think kind of at heart, because they're curious and they love technology and all that. But what about dressing for success and how we look physically? Because I think that it has a big emotional impact. We never really talked about this, but I've had various bosses over the years and when I started out this Cisco startup, I mean, it was like obsession about how you dress and look like if you didn't have like, like this right here would get laughed at and clowned at like this little collar here on my shirt right now. Like, if I didn't have the collar tie like the stay in the metal stay, you'd get clowned if like, it was about really being polished. Not because that's how you have to look, but because people, like subconsciously judge you. And I think there's something to be said about health and polished appearance. I just think if we want to do everything to get heard and do everything to get noticed, right. Is it important how we dress and show up, or should we or does it matter because we're in a workplace where HR is king and we could get sued. So if I want to have as many visible tattoos as possible and just come and look however I want and be, sloppy and whatever. Does that say something about I mean, I'm just saying it's important to dress for success in IT. And do you think most of us do it?

Ken Widner: I think it's very important. I think some do it better than others. I love the culture here at Do It Best because our CEO has stated you dress for the day, right?

Phil Howard: Your hardware store. So, I mean, there's a certain type of culture in each company, what I mean? Like, if you're a trucking company, what I mean? It's okay to come in with, like, maybe a leather jacket and a Harley Davidson patch. I'm just saying, like, it's. Right.

Ken Widner: Right. But it's all about. I look at my calendar And I see, what events I have on my calendar. And then I determine how I'm dressed according to that. So if if I'm going to spend the afternoon in the boardroom talking with, CEOs and leaders of some of our vendors, then I'm probably going to dress up a little bit, right? If I'm going to be out in the field talking to our members at their stores, I'm not going to show up in a suit and tie, right? I mean, I immediately walk into their door and I'm unrelatable to them. And when I was at Tailored Brands, which owns Men's Wearhouse and Joseph A. Bank, we asked our teams, just dress like you would dress if you were in the store, like if you were selling product in one of our stores. Dress like that. Right. And so that doesn't mean that you have to wear a suit, because not all of the sales associates would wear suits. But you're upscale business casual, right? Make sure you have the stays in your collar like you mentioned, right. But you can wear designer jeans or whatever. But dress like you would. You would be in a store. And I think that makes a lot of sense. What makes me a little nervous is then we have an IT meeting with the business. And the business is dressed, in upscale business casual. And then here comes the IT folks that are wearing blue jeans and t shirts, right? It's like, how seriously are they going to take us the moment we walk in? Like are we emotionally, invested in this relationship? And when we don't care about how we appear in a meeting. So I think you're on to something there, Phil. Appearance still matters as much as we want to say that it doesn't, that everybody can be an individual and just dress however they want. There's a cost for that. That is true. You can do that. But there is a cost for that. And it might be the relationships that you're missing out on that can help you in your career, and you just have to decide which is more important to you, your individuality, and the statement you want to make as an individual, or how do you want to contribute to your organization and the team that you're a part of every day?

Phil Howard: Yeah, Devin's in the chat here, and he said, we're all heavily judged on our facial hair. It's like, well, for me it was always a balance of. Yeah, doing the best appearance was good, but, results. Money always talks as well. So at the end of the day, like, if you're an IT department that just brought, just like, hey, guys, I just made us an extra, five hundred million. I don't think they're going to give a I don't think they're going to care at all how you come in dressed. But, there's a balance here. And, Joshua Milos from, from Birkenstock was one, like, way back, like three hundred episodes ago. He was on even more than three hundred episodes ago. And I've been working with them for many, many years. And, he works at Birkenstock. He's like, if you ever came into a meeting at Birkenstock with, like a pair of Crocs on like, forget about it.

Ken Widner: Yeah.

Phil Howard: Like, forget about it. It's like, you can't show up with a Home Depot shirt on, right? Do that. It's like everyone's going to laugh at you, but, it was great. So we had I think we already banged out some of the, ridiculous ness going on with AI. I mean, I do believe that there's some things that AI is, like, more than handy for, but let's make, you don't have to. It doesn't have to be AI at all. But I want a prediction. Eighteen months from now, what will everyone in IT be talking about that people ignore today?

Ken Widner: Wow, I wish I knew so I could invest.

Phil Howard: It doesn't have to. It could be, it might be a divestiture. What I mean? It doesn't mean you have to invest. I'm just saying, like, eighteen months from now, what do you think? Like what's, what's going to be going on? I was like, do we not? Because, there was a while where everyone was complaining about the IT job market. I don't know if they still are. There's, Microsoft making all of its changes come January with e agreements and stuff, which is really nothing new. It's like how how many pricing changes and things are they going to do over the next however many years? What is it?

Ken Widner: Yeah, that's kind of status quo for Microsoft, right? Every three years they blow everything up and then they rename all of their products and change their licensing models on everything. And then you got to go and get certified again on their licensing structure. So so yeah, that'll probably continue on. I do think that, there is something to the, AI bubble, and we're starting to see more of it show up in the news. I mean, the latest thing with Oracle and their investment in the AI data centers and some of the investors backing out what that did with the shares, I, don't think it's a bubble in the sense of the housing market or the dot com, industry back in the early two thousand because there's a real product here. I mean, there is something that is tangible with AI. It does bring value into an organization. Companies are already adopting it. So I we'll see. I think we'll see continued investment in AI and we'll continue to see, where it has some strengths. But I do think that it is getting a little overhyped. And I think that, when you look at that, Gartner, that chart of hype cycle. Yeah.

Phil Howard: Hype cycle. Literally. And yeah, it's almost like the hype makers created the hype cycle. Yeah. What can we come up with so that we're not the guys that are creating all the hype anymore? Oh, we need to be perceived as the guys that are evaluating the hype, not the guys that are creating it. It's really crazy. Does anyone else know? I mean, I'm just wondering, has anyone else noticed that, like, yeah, there's one of the biggest. Not saying they don't deliver any value. I'm not saying that there's anything but snapshots in time and there's much of a pay to play model. I'm not accusing them of that and in their entirety, but it's interesting that they came up with the hype cycle if they. I think they did. Anyways.

Ken Widner: Yeah. That's a very valid point. But I do think that we're coming off of that hype cycle and we're starting to get into the reality of AI. And I do think the reality is going to be huge for the industry. I just think it's going to be different than what people expect it to be with AI and doing away with all these jobs and all that. And what's interesting about AI is that, if you've been in technology for the last twenty five, thirty years or however long you've seen all of these technologies that come onto the market, that's going to revolutionize IT in a new way, and it's going to eliminate all these jobs. And, it's going to be completely different. So I go all the way back to, when I first got into IT, it was server virtualization, right? So I was a server admin, and back in the day the ratio was about a dozen servers per one admin. That's about how many servers one person could take care of when it came to patching and maintaining the applications, backing it up and everything like that. Virtualization comes along and the hype was that, oh, we're not going to need all these server admins anymore because we can stack all of these VMs onto a one particular server. And now one admin is going to be able to administer hundreds of servers. And so the jobs are going to go away. And what we saw was that the jobs didn't go away. Yes, it was true that now we could maintain hundreds of servers, with one person, but yet the technology was so much cheaper that we just saw an explosion in the number of servers that companies would have, right? Where it used to be, we were limited by physical racks and the number of systems that we could put into those racks now, like there was no limit, like you could just keep adding these virtual servers. And so then you had, three tier architecture, where you have an app layer. And then you had, a presentation layer and then your database, and it just exploded.

Phil Howard: For just a history layer. And you have deep experience in this particular aspect. Right. Because it's interesting how people get into it. Leadership. They might be like very specialized in one area, and then they just allow the team to take care of the rest. And that's why you're a leader. But for the education of people listening, why would you go from twelve servers to one hundred? Why would you want all those extra servers? What job did they perform? Why did they do that? I just think it's interesting.

Ken Widner: Yeah. So you can compare it to from an app dev perspective, what you do with microservices today. Right. So going from a monolithic mainframe where everything is done in one system to now you can break out your shopping cart from your payment system, from your item masters. And so your e-commerce site is made up of all these different micro systems so that you can make changes in one component without affecting the entire application.

Phil Howard: It's like the idea of diversification.

Ken Widner: Exactly.

Phil Howard: Not having all your eggs in one basket or not being single threaded like, yeah, right.

Ken Widner: And you can move a lot faster because now different people can work on different sections at the same time without stepping on each other. Right. And so that's what virtualization allowed us to do, is that we could then segregate out the different components of these monolithic applications, and then you'd have multiple people working on different sections at any given time. That improves your velocity, but.

Phil Howard: It created a new problem.

Ken Widner: Yeah, it's in cycles. I mean, you just shift the problem from one area to another, right?

Phil Howard: I mean, it created literally new problems because now we've got weird AWS, Azure sprawl and various different things and money being spent in other places and compute power and everything, which everyone loved. I mean, it was almost by design.

Ken Widner: Well, you also increased your tax surface too, from a cybersecurity perspective, right? There's more entry points now where somebody can get into your environment. So but all of that to say is that, yes. Did virtualization revolutionize IT? It did. Did it do away with all the jobs and everything that people said it would? No. Right. And then you move on. But only IT people really knew about that. Blockchain was the other thing, right? Blockchain was going to revolutionize everything. I would be in meetings and like, Ken, can't you just use blockchain for that, blockchain for this, blockchain for that? Right. It was the buzzword.

Phil Howard: Please describe to me what you're talking about and what that means. Blockchain disappeared. It popped into my head the other day when I was thinking, what the best company would be is a company that can only take payments in Bitcoin.

Ken Widner: Yeah. Nobody could explain that technology, but everybody thought we should be using it. Right. And it does have its purpose and it has its usefulness. I think that with AI going all the way full circle now, generative AI in particular, because AI has been around for a long time, we've all been working with large language models for quite some time, and especially when it comes to, harvesting customer data. And Amazon's been using it for over a decade with, people that bought this also bought this and the recommendations. So it's been around for a long time. Generative AI though was unique in the average consumer off the street could understand it and could interact with it and could somehow grasp it a little bit. And I think that's what added to the hype is that in IT, we've seen this technology come before and we've seen things that are going to revolutionize our industry. But this is the first time that consumers saw something like that, right? And so it makes for understanding why that hype climbed so high so fast like it did. And yes, it is going to be around to stay. Yes, it does bring value. Yes, we do need to invest in it, but we're going to be talking about it in a much more realistic sense in the next year than we are today.

Phil Howard: That was a thing. Is it still a thing? It's got to still be a thing. It's just, like, normalized now.

Ken Widner: Yeah, it's just normalized now. Exactly. And I think AI will eventually get there. I mean, and to put it in perspective, AI is like the new internet, right? I mean, you look at the hype of the internet and when, going back twenty years, people were predicting then that, jobs were going to be done away with, and our whole education system is going to be turned upside down and everything. And yes, it was.

Phil Howard: Yeah, it was.

Ken Widner: But yeah, it was there was impact by all that, but all of the doom and gloom that was being predicted by it, like, well, you can I guess you can make some arguments about social media and its impact on our mental health and, and society. It definitely impacted it. But we'll learn to live with AI. Like we will find a new norm with AI, just like we found a new norm with the internet. There's good things about it. There's bad things about it. AI will be the same way. We'll always be struggling with data. And I just had this conversation with somebody the other day that from a cybersecurity perspective, like we're concerned, like especially in retail and a lot of industries around ransomware, right? I mean, we're so concerned about somebody getting into our environment, holding our own data hostage. Well, now I'm concerned about people mucking up our data. Like, you really want to take a company down and they're investing in AI.

Phil Howard: Screw it up.

Ken Widner: Screw up their data. Right. And it will completely cripple them. And so now you can hold them ransom by saying, hey, I haven't encrypted your data. I've just put a bunch of Trojan horses in your AI.

Phil Howard: I thought about I was thinking about dreaming about that. Daydreaming about that the other day. There could be actors out there that are just screwing up the LLMs. Let's just feed it false information.

Ken Widner: Exactly. And we see it happening in social media.

Phil Howard: Small time stuff. I mean, I I think you could blame Facebook for a whole social revolutions.

Ken Widner: That's another issue with AI, right? Is all these deepfakes and videos like on Instagram. I don't know if I can trust any videos now. I'm always stopping and looking at the frames like, okay, how many fingers does that person have? Oh, they got six fingers. Okay, that's probably AI generated, right? But it's getting harder and harder to be able to distinguish on social media. Now what's true versus not.

Phil Howard: Is there a do you have any common sayings or quotes that are beneficial?

Ken Widner: I always tell my team challenge, align and commit. Right. And so that's our philosophy around here is that I don't want, a top down mentality. It's, you know, we empower folks, we hold them accountable. But you hire the right people and you trust them to do what you hired them to do. And, everywhere I've gone, I've always brought that model of challenge align and commit. Right. So and my direct reports will tell you that, I'm sometimes just throwing out about something that's completely off the wall in a meeting, just to see if somebody will call me out on it. Right. Like I want to know that my team is going to challenge me and then we can discuss it. We're going to align on it. Not everybody's always going to get their way. But then once we align on it, then we're going to commit and we're going to run the play. And I think that people want to be heard and they want to know that you're listening, not just given the voice to to speak something out, but they want to know that the leader's actually listening to them. And if they feel like that has happened, then they're more likely to, align and then commit to the vision.

Phil Howard: I love that you said run the play. I always say players got to make plays all the time. The like. Are you involved? Are you here? Are you doing work like, let's not like let's commit to something. Let's commit to delivering some results. Because results matter at the end of the day, like results really do matter.

Ken Widner: Commit to that emotional experience. Commit to that relationship. How are you going to make something easier for someone, right? Like that's what we need to commit about is how are we making people's lives easier? So they can get more done. I think everyone needs to be challenged. So I'm not saying, hey, we should have a life of ease and no challenge, but let's resolve the challenges that they have today so they can start tackling new challenges.

Phil Howard: I mean, we should be eliminating ten dollars an hour tasks. I don't want to be stuck doing ten dollars an hour tasks like like you said, to your point, like, we should make life easier on them. It doesn't mean that we don't do work. We just want to do meaningful work. Hopefully AI will remove all of the ten dollars an hour tasks and people will start getting paid more money. I don't know,

Ken Widner: Okay. I'll give you one more phrase that my team is probably tired.

Phil Howard: As many as you want. Let's go.

Ken Widner: But it's be directionally correct and precisely wrong. Like, you don't have to have everything figured out from the beginning. And I think in IT, we sometimes get crippled by this. We want to know exactly how something is going to turn out before we'll begin. And it's like you, just to get started, you just need to be directionally correct. Now, there are times for precision. Yeah. But you're not going to.

Phil Howard: Paralysis by overanalysis. No. None of that crap.

Ken Widner: One hundred percent. So just get it moving. And then we can figure it out. But there is a time for precision. I'm not saying that you can never be precise. There is a time for precision. And I'll use the analogy of, say.

Phil Howard: The quote again. Say the say the quote again.

Ken Widner: Directionally correct. Precisely wrong.

Phil Howard: So you gotta explain. Okay. So directionally correct means we're going in the right direction. Are you saying we're meaningfully going in the right direction?

Ken Widner: Correct. And so I'll use the analogy of, pilot. Right. And so, ninety percent of the time when that plane is in the air, it's not precisely, on course, it's being thrown off by turbulence, wind direction and so forth. But that pilot has to be precisely correct during takeoff. During any emergency and during landing. But the rest of that ninety percent of that flight. Right there. Directionally Correct. And they're making changes as they go based on the currents of the current situation that they're in. And I think from a business perspective, that makes a lot of sense. There are times where you've got to be precisely correct in choosing like, what are going to be your main objectives for the year. Like, you better get those right. But from that point, it's going to be about staying directionally correct until you land the plane.

Phil Howard: With this in mind, if you had to teach a new IT leader your playbook for creating real business outcomes, what would the. I have three steps here. I don't care if it's five or seven or four or two or what would the three steps be?

Ken Widner: Well, first of all is understanding the business, right? It's technology skills you can learn, right? But learning how to make connections and build relationships is absolutely key for IT leaders. It's one thing to be able to connect with your team, but you've got to be able to connect with those outside of your team. And so, was it the Five Dysfunctions, I think is the book. But knowing who Team One is, right? So team one isn't your direct reports. Team one is your peers, right? You're there to support your peers, and you should be aligned on your objectives with your peers. So that's number one. Number two is kind of that directionally correct. Right. Like you need to know where the company is going and how do you keep your IT and your team directionally aligned with that vision and those objectives along the way. And then also, if you want to be a good leader in it, you got to be good at marketing and storytelling. It goes back to the message, the emotional side of it, right? How do you connect what you're doing with what the business needs in an emotional way? Right. And how do you tell that story? How do you frame that story? And I told the team when I first got here that a lot of my job is marketing. Like, I need data to be able to tell the right stories, to be able to get people to buy in to what we're doing and what we're doing should be one hundred percent aligned with what the business is asking for and what those objectives are. So those are the areas that I would tell somebody to to focus on.

Phil Howard: It's interesting that you said the first part is your team is the team you surround with. And there's no, I don't have the right answer to this. This is just a kind of like a, Philosophical discussion on who your IT team actually is. And one of the things that we discovered, whether this is like whatever this data point is, is that when people go from, say IT director or IT manager to CTO or CIO, ninety four percent of the people still see their team as the IT team, the help desk, the all of their team, and only a small percentage see their team as the C-suite, even though they're now sitting in the C-suite. So you have it as the department of IT, separate from the business when it covers the whole business. Do you see a problem there, or is our team still our team of people that we're close with and getting the job done? And I don't know what the answer is. I don't know if there's a right answer or not, but I think there is some sort of disconnect between the US versus them. It versus. And it shouldn't be because we're all one. And it is the business. It's not like the separate entity in the business.

Ken Widner: One hundred percent. It should not be a separate entity. I think that a lot of businesses it is hence the name of the show. Right. You've been heard trying to get that voice, but I've been fortunate that I've worked for some really good CIOs, earlier on in my career, and I've worked for some really bad ones as well. And I can tell you, the ones that were thought of well by the company in general were the ones that fostered the relationships with their peers, and they saw their peers as being team one, and they were fully aligned with the objectives and everything that, that the business.

Phil Howard: Aka the IT department.

Ken Widner: So I'm sorry, the other C-suites. Right.

Phil Howard: The C-suite. Okay. So the ones that were successful were aligned with CFO.

Ken Widner: Correct?

Phil Howard: VP of sales, marketing and CEO.

Ken Widner: Correct.

Phil Howard: All aligned. All departments aligned. Okay.

Ken Widner: The ones that.

Phil Howard: That's what we're think. That's what I would say the evidence points to after three hundred and eighty episodes of this or however many we're at now.

Ken Widner: Yeah. And I would one hundred percent agree with that. And that's where I spend my time. I spend my time with my peers. Right. I have great leaders. I also spend time with. So I do this thing with Coffee with Ken, where every week I get together with five to six individual contributors within IT. And for an hour we just talk about, silly things like some icebreakers. And then I just ask them what's going well, what's not going well. Right. And so I want to stay connected with my team, but the individual contributors within IT, right? I want to stay connected with them. So I'm like, I'm engaged and I'm walking the floor and I'm talking to folks. But when you look at my calendar and where my meetings are, my meetings are with, our Chief Financial Officer, our VP over merch, our VP over logistics. Like, my day is spent with my peers, right? And, not so much on architecture and design. And, are we going to standardize on Kafka? Like, I've got really intelligent, architects and stuff that can make those decisions. I can stay out of that stuff and I can focus on the business.

Phil Howard: When did you stop being technical and start thinking like a business owner?

Ken Widner: Well, it's funny because, I didn't really talk about my background, but my background is not in technology. So my education is in psychology. Right. And so I was supposed to just find a temporary job for two years I'd go back and get my master's and go into family, marital counseling. And the job that I got as a temporary job was working on the help desk for a large telecom company, and I was a contractor at the time. They gave me an opportunity to join on as a team leader, a supervisor, as an employee. And we thought, well, I'll just do this for another couple of years, and then pay off some student loans, and then I'll go back and get my masters. And, here we are, twenty five years later or whatever, having this conversation. But I think that's why my answers are the way that they are about the emotional connections and the relationships. Because that's where I started. And I did get my master's in psychology, but I moved to from, clinical psychology more to, general psychology, industrial organizational psychology, like understanding how teams get along with each other, how individuals are impacted by groups, how groups are impacted by individuals. And so even though I was in the tech field, I did get my MC, I was a server admin and all of that. My brain was still thinking around emotional connections, right? And how do you build relationships? And so that's why I moved from, doing server administration work and network administration work into managing teams. And then kind of moving up from there because for me, it was all about having that connection with the business, really understanding the need of the business so that we could do our part in that relationship and build it. So it was never really a shift from a technology perspective. For me. It's like I'm just kind of wired that way.

Phil Howard: Well, I'm glad you didn't end up in marriage counseling because that would have been probably depressing. So final question and, in light of the theme of what we're trying to do here, when IT leaders arise, so does everything else. If there was one thing that, you wanted the world of the C-suite and executive management to hear, right? Because it's great to have a seat at the executive round table, but how much nicer is it to actually be heard? Yeah. What would that be?

Ken Widner: Yeah, it goes back to the understanding the business like the more you can talk the language of the business, the more you will be heard. Right. Like if you come in speaking IT, speak. Right. And talking about tech debt and upgrades and that kind of stuff is just not relatable. And so in my case, sometimes it's sitting with the customer support team, right. And listening to calls. It's going into the warehouses and talking with, the team members there actually, picking a pallet. Right. Writing with the delivery drivers. Right. Helping to unload trucks like it's getting your hands dirty in the business. That allows you to have a voice. Because if you just focus on the technology and goes back to kind of that team won mentality as well. If you're only focused on the IT team, it's really hard to get a seat at the table and to be taken seriously. And so when you're sitting in those meetings with the other C-suites, it's like, ask questions. It's not you're not trying to be defensive. You're asking questions to understand. Right. You're not questioning the decisions of the other leaders, but you're really trying to understand their business. And they will appreciate that, right? Then they will see you as a valid partner versus just talking about technology and what needs to be done from a tech perspective. That's the number one thing.

Phil Howard: I think you can do that prior to a meeting as well, so that you fully understand every aspect of the different departments in the companies flip flopping it. CEO what do you want the CEO or CFO to understand about the CTOs and the CIOs of the world that they may not get or may not be understanding right now, what what is it that they need to kind of get into their head that, for example, it's not a cost center, maybe. Yeah. All right. Right. What is it that they need to hear? To your point, specific and on target or on course.

Ken Widner: So the good CEOs and CFOs out there know how to tap into their CIO for the knowledge that the CIO has about the company. Because going back to what we said before, all companies are kind of technology companies, whether they know it or not, that CIO knows pretty much everything that's going on in every division, whether it's technology or not. Because if you're doing the things that we talked about, right? You're building those relationships and you're spending the one on one time with the other leaders of the organization, and you're asking the right questions in the meetings, like you're the one person that knows the ins and outs of what's going on, where the dead bodies are. Right. And where the opportunities are. And I see, really sharp CEOs and CFOs tapping into that CIO to know what's really going on in the business. There's a huge unlock there. There's a lot of knowledge, in your IT leader that can be tapped into by the other C-suites.

Phil Howard: And you said Every company is a technology company. Can we think of an example of a company that's not a technology company?

Ken Widner: It's really hard to come up with one, even when we're talking about plumbers and electricians and stuff earlier. But I mean, even they're showing up to the job sites using an iPad and tracking.

Phil Howard: There's no company that wouldn't be better with tech. There's no plumber that wouldn't be better with technology without. Is there a company that would be better without technology? Social media psychologist. But even they need to be on social media to advertise, to get the people that are all screwed up from social media.

Ken Widner: Right, And they can still use it as a platform to impart knowledge. Right. And help people.

Phil Howard: So off the grid,

Ken Widner: Yeah.

Phil Howard: Anyways, Ken. Absolute pleasure. So much fun having you on the show. I think there is endless, platinum, in this show and bits that we are going to, pull apart and deliver out to the world. A lot of timeless stuff here. Thank you so much.

Ken Widner: Well, Phil, thanks a lot for the opportunity. It was great talking with you. I had a great time this morning.

Speaker 3: It was awesome.

Phil Howard: Have a great time.

Ken Widner: All right. Same to you.

Phil Howard: Okay, bye.