332- AI Readiness with Ryan Drumheller

We challenge the hype that AI is a magic fix and lay out what real AI adoption looks like when you care about ROI, people, and risk. We share practical ways to plan, govern, secure, and train so AI becomes a tool that helps your team instead of a mess that costs more than it saves.

• why “just buy an AI tool” fails without a plan
• quick wins that remove repetitive work and free humans for higher-value tasks
• bad data in, bad data out and how it poisons results
• what AI readiness looks like in planning, measurement, and ownership
• AI governance models, accountability, and preventing AI drift
• AI security training and preventing sensitive data leakage
• why PowerPoint is not training and how to build hands-on learning
• leadership versus title holding, investing in people, and upskilling in IT
• making failure safe when it drives learning and speed
• anti-silo collaboration that turns IT from cost center to value driver
• why experimenting with AI protects long-term career growth

Go to Ryan Drumheller Podcast, decline invite podcast.

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Transcript

Layoffs, AI, And A Comeback

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Um and AI came into the picture as well, and my role was eliminated uh a little over a year ago right now. Uh this this month, a year ago, my role was eliminated. Um, and I went through all kinds of crazy different ways to figure out what I was gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

About AI, because I just started the headline with they did a lot of massive layoffs because marketing situations I've ever seen is AI right now. Welcome everyone to politically high tech. I am not dead. I know I've been uploading it for a while. If you miss me, great. If you don't, I well to politically high tech, and we're gonna have such a more tech-oriented conversation. So V1 sold for you. I think it's a good starting point, but it doesn't have to end there. I don't like it when it ends there. It just means that we haven't accomplished anything, we haven't gotten deeper into it, you know. And one smart advocates are saying, well, I'm gonna just go to the headlines and stuff. So before I continue to this random, hey great, guess here with tech expertise and don't worry, he's not one of those tech people who just sits at the computer, don't know how to talk, act awkward as tech. He's not that kind of guy. He's extroverted, if you could believe that. I know it's I know it sounds like an oxymoron to some of you, but they are extrovert IT people as because sometimes I'm gonna be transparent. Sometimes I I've met a lot of IT people who are just bookworm, don't know how to talk, don't even know how to say hi, they just freeze, they just you know compute malfunction, just over-agree. So, I don't know, Ryan Drumheller's not that kind of person, okay? So I'm gonna do that and I'm gonna have him introduce himself. But before I do that, he's hosting. I do decline a lot of podcast advice because I just don't see myself as a good fit. One of them was about health. I said, look, I'm overweight. Do you want me to talk about health? Are you crazy? I got that much self-awareness. That's I said if you if I come in there for comedy and parody, fine, I could do that. I can make fun of myself, but I'm not gonna, I'm not, I'm not a credible source for that. You gotta know when you're credible and not credible, and or I could just be there just for entertainment. I'll definitely be there for entertainment, but not as a legitimate source, people. All right. I could teach you how to be lazy, I could teach you how to be smart on that, I could teach you how to think politically that I'm comfortable doing, but not health.

unknown 2:22

Come on now.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

So, but we're not gonna talk about health here. So let's welcome uh Ryan Drumheller. And he has, I mean, he has over two decades of experience of IT and leadership. And he's gonna talk about how technology could impact people and you know, teams, and businesses. I'm sure you want to hear about that, right? Because I'm sure many of you heard the headlines. I'm gonna give you just a generic pattern. Oh, after all the massive layoffs, they're rehiring people because they just realized they drain their own talent out, and actually AI is costing them even more money. Those are some of the headlines. You could you could just insert whatever big business there, and then you know, but you

Ryan’s IT Journey And Next Moves

SPEAKER_01 3:06

know what? I'm gonna shut up now, and I'm gonna have him introduce himself. You know what? Go introduce yourself, show off your credentials, feel free to plug in anything.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

So go right ahead. Thanks for having me. It's it's great to be here, and yeah, really looking forward to the conversation. I mean, I hate doing this spiel, but we'll I guess we'll do the 20 years in IT, I think the last 13 or so in leadership. Oh, geez, where to begin. I have over 170 certifications between IT, leadership, business, you name it. There's reasons for that we can get into or not because I just said work and there's better ways to go about it. I'm useless today. Uh, and two master's degrees in business, actually. So specifically for business for reasons that we can get to, but yeah, I am early wave. So you you kind of pointed out a couple of those things about AI. I am early wave AI uh tech elimination. You know, the economy took a turn, as we all know. And AI came into the picture as well, and my role was eliminated a little over a year ago, right now. A month a year ago, my role was eliminated, and I went through all kinds of crazy different ways to figure out what I was gonna do. And it led me to starting a consulting company with a couple partners that I exited along the way for different reasons, and that led me to doing a fractional CIO position where I help businesses a lot on AI adoption, AI governance, AI security training, all of those, you know, kinds of year. But me also trying to discover what I wanted to do because I'm about what I would call halfway-ish through my career. I had to figure out a lot of things. So I don't just have a a fractional CIO business anymore. I'm actually starting a, believe it or not, a W-2 position in about three weeks, as well as launching a golf software company. So I have my eggs spread across multiple baskets, learning from multiple layoffs and tech to not have all my resources in one, and we'll learn from that, but a lot of things going on, so to speak, as well as a golf-themed IT leadership and career journey book that'll be coming out towards the tail end of the year. I've got it in a rough draft already. So, yeah, a lot of a lot of things. So I'm yeah, I'm looking forward to talking about all things tech and all questions.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

All right, look at that. He's not gonna get an award for the shortest intro. Um, there's already like five people that pressed me with that. So really, I had to kind of press the say, come on, show me this. This is your time. Come on, this is a bragging rights time right now. You know, he wanna know why you matter. Why should I listen to this one? You know, and some people just uh that part always stomps me. I said, come on, show off. Trust me, we're gonna get to the good stuff. But I have no problem doing it. Extroverts are show-offs. Uh I'm I'm a I would say I'm a bare introvert. I bear I barely qualify as introvert because they I do love my me times, and there's times I can't I can't stand people, and there's times I love people. So I have an ambivert-leaning, slightly on the introvert side of things. So I'm a little different there. Yeah, believe it or not, I know I have a podcast, I know I talk to people. That doesn't mean I'm an introvert or ambivert. You know, you know, I people just assume I'm an extrovert. Some people just assume that. No, no. When I was a kid, yeah, but that kind of changed. But I'm not gonna get into that. So I want to start with this, because I just think a lot of businesses, no matter how big and the small ones, I mean, we talked about this off uh off air that they couldn't they can't afford this mistake. Once they do, they're just as they're as good

What Businesses Misunderstand About AI

SPEAKER_01 6:40

as dead. Not being dramatic. I'm really I'm being real serious. And you know, and I do feel bad for my pop shops. I got uh soft heart for those businesses. So, what do businesses get wrong about AI? Because I just started the headline with they did a lot of massive layoffs because of the correct thing. I just think it's greed, but that's my opinion. Uh, and then now they have to rehire these people because they realize, well, I don't know how to use these AI tools, and it's actually costing me even more money. Ironic. But uh, what are they getting wrong? That's just my question with AI. What other businesses getting wrong?

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Yeah, so I think one of the best marketing situations I've ever seen is AI right now, because businesses see those headlines, see the leadership decision makers, they're they're seeing all those things that we all see as well, right? And I don't know how much they're interacting with these tools. You know, it's always a variance when when I come into you know contact with these with these individuals. But most of the time they're like, oh yeah, we just get AI and we put it in and it'll make our business better. It's not as easy. You just get AI and throw it in, and you know, your business becomes better. You you need to actually have a plan. Uh it's interesting that when we when we talk about AI, a lot of the businesses are kind of forgetting what made them intelligent. Like what intelligent business leaders, you know, make decisions on every day, right? They're looking at the monetary equations, they're looking at the ways uh to bring back the best ROI. And when it comes to AI, it's like it gets thrown out the window in a lot of these situations because we don't have a we don't have a project plan, we don't have a, you know, what are the quick wins, what are the long-term objectives, you know, what's our training plan, what's our governance plan, they don't have any of these things. And when they start contacting individuals, it's normally one of two things that I see, which is either they've tried on their own and you know, they didn't they didn't get anywhere or they don't know what they're doing, and they're they're admitting like, okay, we're not sure what to do, or it's definitely not working. With uh, you know, bad data in, bad data out. You might have heard, you know, some of those equations. And uh when I talk to businesses, I talk about you know, you don't want to set something up and start using AI and start putting bad data in. And I compare it to like a glass of mud. You know, you wouldn't drink that glass of mud, right? No, you want it to be a glass of water or a glass of your favorite beverage. Well, how many glasses of water now do I need to pour over that mud before it becomes water again? And that's essentially what it's like with AI when we're putting bad data in because you're starting to train off from that, and to get it to move away from that, it's a bit hard. So, yeah, I mean, businesses come into play and they think that they can just buy whatever tool and it's good to go, and we just forget all of the basics. So they're a little bit surprised when I come in and I go, I really don't care about the tools. I don't care at all about any conversation around tools. We'll have that convo. But 80% of what we're gonna talk about before we get there has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with, okay, what does your business do? What are the things that you know inside of your own business that you guys are the smartest about of what is very manual, right? Let's look at those very quick wins. What do we know that AI is actually good at? It's really good at repetitiveness, it's really good at you know scanning things, looking at data, creating algorithms, what whatever that is that we really don't even want a human to be doing every day. Like we don't want a human to be sitting there hitting a button 200 times a day, and it's the same button every day. Like nobody's getting satisfaction over that. So if we can take that job or that position or whatever is happening, automate that, and let somebody now oversee the process from a human standpoint, and then take those humans that were doing that, and maybe we re- you know, reapply them across the business. Maybe it's ways that they can help make more money, maybe it's ways they can help with customer retention or customer issues, or other areas in the business where we're short-staffed, and now that we can maybe train them and to gain those actual skills, they can go help those areas. That's typically the best ways uh that I see, especially initial uh you know, AI conversations. And it's so it's another point that is interesting is you're normally talking to these business leaders on the first calls uh when they're bringing somebody in. It's just the business leaders typically. And one of my first questions are like you you guys have like, you know, your your favorite staff, your right-hand people, the individuals that you hired to get a competitive advantage against your competitors, right? And they're always like, yeah, yeah. Like we, you know, we got a Bob, a Sally, a Jim, a Linda, whoever, right? That that they've hired to come in. And I normally ask the very next calls to include them because they're gonna be the individuals who actually know what's happening, that have the ideas that the rest of the staff are going to go, oh, okay, if they're involved, okay, we trust them. Because we're talking to them, asking questions every single day. They're the ones that are typically the mentors, the people that are helping the others get through the issues throughout the day, coming up with the creative solutions. And by the end of that, if they believe in the AI adoption plan, if they're involved in creating it, and then we're handing these people the actual tool at the end of that, they're gonna come out of this in a much better situation. So I know that's a little long-winded, and there's many other cases, but that's typically what I see over and over again. And the business has their surprise approach before we then take a step forward, and we gotta crawl, we gotta walk, and before we can even talk about running with AI. If we do those things, then they're gonna come out with a much better situation with AI involved.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

No, I'm just gonna curse as it's not very long. They're not as easy as I don't know, brushing your teeth. Okay, it's just not. You could do that, you know. And look, a lot of these businesses are just not ready. I mean, I'm just gonna be just quite honest. They think they were, they thought there was gonna be this magic bullet. Again, I'm calling out the businesses here, so they don't just uh prematurely laid off a bunch of people until they move on their part. I'm happy that the business has a bunch of articles. I don't care if they come from a political standpoint or a business standpoint, doesn't matter to me, but I'm happy that this has been the light's being shined on this because it kind of, you know, I'm gonna sound a bit left-wing to somebody this does sounds like you know, like the big corporate greed. I get about cutting costs. I'm not gonna get that as a business. But however, you do need people who are experts. And you have said it, trusted people, your right-hand man, woman, whatever, the people you trust, and and especially those that could use AI, leverage, right? Use them and use them instead of just, I don't know, firing a whole bunch of people and maybe train people, I guess. Well, this is comfortable someone who runs a one-man business. So who the hell am I? Listen to me or not, right there. And I do use AI myself, but when it comes to things that I can't be taking much time, like editing these episodes. I do use AI for that, cutting all the awkward silences, the bunch of um. I'm just being very transparent here. I do use AI, and it helped me. It helps me because I am doing a whole bunch of stuff. I'm doing volunteer political work and I have a day job. So I definitely need AI. Forget it. I want to crash out burn, maybe I'll be down from exhaustion. Being a little dramatic, but AI is useful, okay? It's a tool, and it's the people behind it that's really the problem. The AI just cannot operate on its own, even though they tried a couple of times, and you know, uh I don't want to get into that Terminator doomsday territory there, but it did act up a couple of times, and AI even created their own restricted chat network that ban humans. There you go. The anti-human discrimination right there. But what am I getting at is look, AI could be such a great tool, but I am also aware of its detriment as well. I'm not a polyana naive kind of person either. We just gotta be responsible, just like when you eat everything, you just gotta use it responsibly, be intentionally use these darn things. That's all I'm gonna say. Uh I'm gonna have the guest keep being long with as he says, even though I disagree because you're bringing value to this conversation. I was listening to everything. Longwind's my, yeah, like maybe possibly. Oh, then yeah, I was like, okay. Uh what the heck am I doing here? Shoot me, please. You bore me to death. Uh it's a rude, uh, it's a waste of my time. Then yeah, I I will become such uh yeah, then I'll be very immature and I'll start getting snippy. Uh but no, everything you said is no values. Don't worry about that. Sometimes you gotta some answers need to be long-winded, people, because these are not just you know, one, two, three kind of things. If it was, we wouldn't be talking about this, okay? We wouldn't be having these kind of issues. So that's all I'm saying. Preach it to the choir if you have uh brain cells, if you're law and following, but for those who are new, love me, hate me, I'm still gonna be me. And you know, you can just ask this out if you don't enjoy it because this is not for everybody, and I don't want people who are just gonna come here just to say a bunch of nonsense. I probably ate you on. And look, you could pull the hate comments. I'm just gonna ignore them screen. Oh, okay, that's nice. Um, anyways, I take constructive criticism. I say, Oh, improve your lighting, your sound sucks. Improve that. Hey, or something like that. Eva's a little rude, but hey, that's specific

AI Readiness Plans And Quick Wins

SPEAKER_01 16:25

feedback. So there you go. All right, so I think this is a good transition to AI readiness. What does an AI ready business look like to some people?

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Yeah, it's quite rare, as you've hit the head, the nail on the head, and you're pointing earlier that most businesses aren't ready. And one of the reasons why they're not ready is because, and you pointed it out, AI is so quick to be able to do a lot of things. Businesses historically do not move at the pace that AI moves at. It's actually quite rare to be able to go into a meeting situation and come out with a decision. Normally, in in the corporate world, the corporate environments that kick around that decision for months. And then it's also one of the reasons why things don't get done. When you're talking about bringing in something that is a disruptor and a true game changer in AI, they're nowhere near ready for that actual situation. So if you're actually, you know, ready for it, some of those things I pointed out earlier, you'd already be prepared for. So you would already have a plan in place. You'd have already identified some quick scenarios, some quick ways that you can, you know, get under your belt. You would identify a plan of, okay, this is where we'd like to get to, you know, and whether or not AI can truly do that or not. Unknown, but we can plan for that. And we can keep checking in and seeing if, you know, because AI is changing so fast, you know, all the time, right? We can keep checking in and seeing whether or not it's truly ready. But it's also like, do you guys understand what an AI governance model is? Do you guys understand how to actually train your employees? And again, most of the time it's not really, because I will argue until I'm blue in the face that if you send out a PowerPoint presentation and say that's training, good luck. Or if you do what some of these other companies are doing right now, and I have firsthand knowledge of that. I know plenty of individuals working at companies where they're like, hey, we have a mandate that you use AI, so use it. That's the mandate. That's all that that's it. What do you do with that? At the end of the day, what better way to tell employees that work for your company that you don't understand what it is that they do, and you have no idea what you're measuring? What are your results for success at that point if you have no idea other than you know, Bill or Sally, if you did use AI, you win? Like, uh okay. I don't know, I don't know what that's what that is gonna win at the end of the day, but like this is where uh you know we're talking about AI readiness. You actually have some sort of plan. You know what you want to measure, you know kind of where you want to go, you have an idea who's gonna sit on your governance team and kind of how you want to structure that and how you want to handle situations, you have an idea how you would deploy a security plan depending on projects that you take on from an AI perspective, and you have an idea how you're gonna train, as well as here's the fun thing with AI. You also know what human's gonna be in charge of each one of these particular tasks, because at the end of the day, a human does need to oversee them, or some of those disaster stories that you reference. Like I have absolutely followed the articles where AI has deleted entire company data. Yups, and you can guess what happened. That's not a company anymore. That is a disaster situation when you just let AI do its thing because there's a thing, there's a term called AI drift. You know, AI eventually kind of mutates, it kind of drifts from the original intention. And if you have somebody overseeing that and watching that, it kind of mutates and becomes its own thing. And that's what happened in that scenario is it absolutely drifted and went, delete everything? Okay, I agree, and it's gone. Yeah, and you know, now they're they're in the worst case scenario. And there's plenty of articles like that, and they all go back to one common thing, which was nobody was overseeing the situation. Nobody was assigned, and there was no clear, you know, communication, transparent, you know, documentation, whatever it needs to be for that business to actually fully operate and make sure that those scenarios are not happening. And we just saw the one with like what was it, the cloud credits or whatever it was, where they just spent, I forget the astronomical number in a month or whatever. Like we're talking millions upon millions of dollars in credits. Like to your point, at that point, how much money are you saving? Because that was millions of dollars in just a very short amount of time. I believe it was the entire budget for the year uh in credits. You have 11 months to go. I don't know what you're doing in that standpoint, but uh this is this is what it means to be AI adoption ready at that point. You kind of need to be ready your like yourself as a business to absorb you know the fast disruptor that's coming.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

And I got some follow-ups with that, more like comments or questions. So, what uh a great training model. I mean, I don't know what that looked like, but I'm assuming it would be hands-on. Put some guidelines by using AI. Don't be as stupid as I don't know. Put your boss's personal information, expose them. I will not support you. Look, I sympathize, I sympathize with worker rights, but I will not tell you to screw your boss over that. I will not support you there. I will I will, you know, remove myself for any workers want to do that. I don't support that. Okay. I know your boss can be difficult and maybe oblique, fill in the curse word, but it doesn't give you the right to do. Do that. You know, you prepare yourself to get yourself another job and work somewhere that aligns more for your vision. That's all I could tell you professionally. Yeah, so I would think more like a hands-on training, right? Instead of just, yeah, PowerPoint, because some workers just do PowerPoint just to get it over, it just doesn't fulfill a check mark. And I've seen a few businesses that have done that. Say, wow, this is just a very passive. You're not going to learn anything. I think hands-on learning is the best way to go when it comes to AI. I mean you have to be intentional. Why are you using AI? Not just use it just for the sake of just using it. It's nonsense. And I do believe some oversight. Yeah, you need to be supervised. Yeah, I'm not saying I'm pro-boss here, but yeah, because he just gave a great example of data being completely wiped out. That's what happens. You have no freaking supervision. You know, they were just going wow. You know, it's like uh it's like a drunk gamer or something. Just delete his data all its progress. Okay. Do you want that in your business? And I don't want to hear yes. That means you're trolling me if you're saying yes. I'm going to just assume that. Or you're just mental. But in all seriousness, yeah, I will assume some kind of AI training, have some supervision. I'm not kissing the bosses, but if I want, but if I want to be a business, a big business owner someday, I'm going to have to be that kind of boss because I will care about my business, but I also want to care about my workers as well. I'm not going to support a rogue actor, just be clear about that. I'm not going to support rogue actor. I'll have no determin and review an HR to see what any legal means I have is to get rid of this person violating any. Yeah, that's why that's what I would be doing if I was a boss. Call me harsh all you want, but I will do that if there is, if it, if it's warranted. So yeah, I mean, yeah, I just think a lot of them are not ready. That's what I see. And mom and pop shops, they they can't even afford to implement it. And then if they do, if they do it wrong, they're as good as gone. And if they miraculously do, I think they're on a path to growth. Let me use a more positive example. If they implement it right, they have creative ways how to implement AI with such a tight budget. Because AI, you know, AI tools, if you keep, you know, subscribing to one after another, it adds up to the cost real quick. Let me tell you, I've subscribed to several of them. It does add up. And if I know I'm not using them after one month that I just unsubscribe, I just remove it because I'm not going to use it. You know, treat like it's your Netflix or whatever. You know, you're not going to just keep paying Netflix if you're not going to watch any of their shows, right? So just use that kind of mindset. So all right, the before I anything else you want to add um before anything that I've said, anything in general you want to add before I get to the next question?

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Yeah, I'll just say on the training, um, on training, and my response every single time is there is no one size fits all. There is no golden rule. The golden rule when it comes to training, and and I stand by this for any topic, but you know, in in particular with AI, is you know your employees best as the as the business owner. What is their acceptance for like, you know, what is their you know training style? What is it that they you know would adopt to you the best and understand? And we create a training plan around that. So there isn't, you know, a framework that I provide. The framework is we have that conversation and then we come up with what the training needs to be for them. And I've seen it done all kinds of different ways. And that is okay because honestly, it should be for the the audience that you're training towards and your business style. And one of my favorite ones was they actually brought in a comedian to give the training. And what better way? Like I guarantee they never forgot. You know, how many trainings we sat in where we're like, I think I fell asleep. What was happening? You know, like those kind of trainings where now you have this kind of training. I mean, and that's what worked that that's what they chose to do, and that's what worked for them. And then some of the best successful situations again, assign somebody so that after that training, or if they have questions that maybe we didn't account for, things change. It's like, oh, okay, I see Joe is assigned to, you know, go ask AI questions to, and then that way he can field questions, and then he has, you know, an outlet to take to that AI governance board to say, hey, we're getting these kind of questions, these topics, maybe we need to add to this, enhance on that. You create a feedback channel, you create a feedback loop. And then one of the other points that you pointed out was really around the AI security portion of that. So, yes, absolutely train on what things you don't want dumped in there, but also plan for those situations to happen. So make sure that you're actually, as a business, going in and securing your platform in such a way so that you're not beating or leaking any of your trade secrets. And I always use the example like what if the Coca-Cola formula got out for

Training, Governance, And Data Security

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Coke? Good luck. Now everybody has Coke, you know, at the end of the day, so they're no longer that brand. You don't want that situation happening to you. And those mom and pop shops that you refer to are some of the scarier situations because they need to understand not to put their stuff into there. Because if they just go, if they don't go in and change the settings into their platform, they might be leaking that to everybody, and then you know, know all their stuff is out there. So there's so many moving parts right now when we're talking about AI in general, and everybody is trying to adapt to it at the same time and try to move with it. So we have this, like you said earlier, I think at one point the chicken in the end, and we don't know which one right now. And we're all trying our best, even in IT, to try to get ahead of it the best we can. And every time we do, there's always something else, and we're moving like this every single time.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

No, I like that. It's a very honest on the answer because some they do act like they know what they're talking about. Not gonna list their names. Well, you check the previous episodes, you use your judgment right there, okay? That's your little activity, and then you call them out for me, so I won't get in trouble. Uh but you know who they are, you're intelligent, and I'm being serious. You know, that's uh, you know, I don't like the word vulnerability, but I'll just say it's honesty, it's transparent. It's vulnerable, it requires being emotional and doing all that. And you know what I said, people, many including me to some degree, have a funny relationship with our emotions. And this is not the kind of podcast, it's just improve your business, be smart with AI, okay? This is more use your logic side of the brain. If you want to be, if you want to listen to emotional-based podcasts, this is not it. This is not it for you. So don't get me wrong, I'm not against emotions. It's just um, I'm just not I'm not the best person for it. And me, I always say I have a I have a better EQ than I were before that was my problem. I said, why these idiots don't get it? What is wrong with them? Uh I I would have been yelling at these businesses, but now I just shake my head, just like uh typical, typical. I just shake my head and just feel pity. That's a good you know, that's growth right there. So just yelling and just tearing the paper and I don't know, throwing a smartphone at the TV. Very low I very low EQ. I always I always had great IQ, but the EQ was my issue. So I had to work on that because a lot of people told me that. And you know, if you told me that I was in my teens and twenties, I would have been more than happy to curse you out. So there you go. That's all you need to know right there. Growth is possible, learning is possible. Just don't be, just don't, just don't be stuck on stupid. Okay, just that that's all I'm gonna say. And it sounds harsh to some of you, but just if you stay stuck in your ways, you're the problem from there, okay? And you want to be part of the solution, not the problem. And that's what I'm trying to do as well. And trust me, it's painful to grow, and you have to make some changes that you're comfortable with, but you know what it's gonna be worth it at the end. Some changes are like I am not gonna lie to you, it's very hard, you know, because we operate on routine and habit, and we like things to go our way. Come on, that's part of human. But if you want to grow, if you want to get better and even make some more green moolah people, change is the way to go. That's all I'm gonna say from there. So now to the advice part. I think you already touched on a lot of them. But anyone who is getting into tech and even business, who have some leadership or not, I'm just gonna make it more open. What advice do you give to the for those who are just working with AI? Rather they are in leadership or in, if you can, follow worker as well.

SPEAKER_00 30:26

Yeah, I think the leadership side is well, quite honestly, it's been something I've been talking very heavily about in the past few months. It is a dedicated chapter in the book that I'm writing because I quite frankly am not happy with where IT leadership or even some of the business leadership stands today. I think we have a lot of room for improvement. And the AI topic that we're talking about is exposing a lot of this stuff too, to the point where it's it's obvious that we need we need some changes. So as a leader, my belief is if you take a title, and there's a difference between a title holder and a leader, and it's my belief that if you take that title, you have a responsibility to be that leader, which means that you don't just show up for work every day and go, that's great. I wish I could do that some days, but that's not what the leadership role is. You need to invest in the humans, you need to invest in listening to what their desires are, where do they want to go, figure out why they come to work every day. You know, and it's easy to say the paycheck, but there's a reason they keep coming to that place. There's a reason why they keep showing up here and what are their aspirations for their careers, where do they want to go, and help them get there. Like remove the roadblocks, maybe find somebody if you're not best suited for that particular topic. And I've been in every single one of these situations. I've had people that have absolutely left my teams and still message me to this day, and they're elsewhere. And it happens, but that is what being a leader actually is. Being a leader means, especially in IT, that you continue to upskill, you continue to get educated. I don't know how in the world that you can be in IT and say, Oh, I don't really stay up on technology anymore. Then what good are you to the business? Because you're given false advice and bad advice at that point, and you're probably costing your business millions of dollars potentially. And I was so fed up with it at one point, I actually sat down with AI and helped build a bad leadership calculator and what bad leadership cost you as a business owner, and why you need to actually make sure that you hold them accountable. You need to hold your leaders accountable at the end of the day. And then, you know, as a trickle-down effect, the new leaders that hold the individuals that you know are under them that they're responsible for, they hold them accountable. And you know, it's a trickle-down effect. And that doesn't mean be a dick. Uh, it means actually just make sure that everybody is trying to do their best. You're giving you the actual time and you get to do that in as well. But you're trying to make sure that everybody is learning, everybody has a safe space to be able to ask questions. They have a safe space to fail. That might be a controversial topic, but I think failure is some of the best growth that you'll ever see. And there's times in place for failure. I will also say that. Those are times where we absolutely cannot fail in this situation, but there'll be plenty of situations where you can take the risk and you can let them learn and go, okay, what did we learn from that? There's countless stories that can tell you about how we failed something or something obvious that shouldn't have happened did, and we came out of that now with a better way of going about it, a different mindset, a different thinking, you know, mindset going into it. I have a lot of opinions on leadership. When we're talking about the actual individuals who don't hold the titles, I'll call that, that doesn't mean that you're not a leader. You can be an absolute leader at any stage of your career, and there's just different ways about how that's viewed and what it looks like. But you can be a leader by coming in every day and having the best attitude you can, understanding that you're human. We have good days and bad days. But if you have more good days than bad days, that's a win. But if you come in and you try, and you try to go, you know, here's a situation I would teach my individuals that would work for me in an IT capacity, because from an IT perspective, they always focus on the technology, but they never ask questions about the business. So some of the first things I always do is go, hey, let's go have a conversation with marketing, let's go have a conversation with sales, let's have a whatever business unit, and let's learn what they do. Why is it that they are trying to do whatever particular thing that you've complained about in the future or in the past of the business forcing us to do this? Well, there's reasons. Let's go get educated on what they actually do and what they're trying to achieve and change that mindset. And nine times out of ten, we would come out of that forcing, you know, upon them.

Real Leadership Versus Title Holding

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Instead, IT individual then becomes, oh, okay, I get what they're trying to do. Well, now I'm creative. I've got three different ideas of how we could do that, and now we can have conversations with the actual business. And that's one way that you can become a leader because now you're looking for for your teammates, your partners in a different silo. I hate silos, like break it down silos, but a different business unit. Now you can have a conversation about how you're making their lives better every day. You're figuring out stressors that you can remove. Maybe you uncover that they're spending two hours a day doing something that they didn't know. They just knew that they had to do it every day. And you went, wow, I could automate that or I could make that better for you. And now you have two hours more to go make us more money. And now you've taken IT from this cost dump. Typically, IT is used as it's a place where we just dump money into you. They don't actually make money. Well, I always try to challenge that and change the narrative to show, hey, my people over here that are the quote unquote not the leaders, right? But they are, they're over here actually making money for your business because they're allowing your marketer two hours more a day to go market, or your salesperson two hours more a day to go make sales, and we can have something that's measurable. So there are multiple ways every day that anybody can come in and have the right appropriate mindset, have a helpful mindset, and just try at the end of the day. And understand that different stages of your careers are different, you know, opportunities that you can go a little bit further on. But I guarantee you that if you're that helpful individual every day, you try your best, you got people that are going out of their way to try to talk to you, or they're coming to you now for your opinions or your thoughts because we have a history behind of all the great work that you've done over time. When those roles and those positions open up, or if they're looking to get somebody ready in case, you know, Joe might get promoted to something else because now we feel like we have an in-house person that is ready to go ahead and assume the mantle for the next role, they're gonna look for you. And if they don't, that's okay. That just gets you more ready for the opportunity wherever it is at the end of the day. And now you're gonna have a lot of different individuals that you can go to and ask for recommendations that you've all helped that you have made their lives better for. So very long-winded, very passionate about uh this particular topic, and definitely have an entire chapter dedicated on leadership, another chapter dedicated on mentorship, and how those two things are different as well.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Again, I disagree with the word long-winded. It's valuable soft. I well, I was I'll double, I would call it rambling if it was non-valuable. Oh, yeah, I think you should do this and that because of blah, blah, blah. Maybe probably if you sold this tentative words. I said, okay, that this is enough. I'm bored to death. I'm gonna claim unofficial ADHD and just get angry and use use a pre-meditate excuse just to end the conversation. But that's not the case. Give a lot of value. You even point out some interesting things. You know, give room to fail. I mean, I'm not advocating repeated failure, like I have Riverside, called them out. That will you they failed three times in a row. Okay, that's it. I'm done. I'm done. I give you three strikes, you're out. That's my mentality. I give chances, I believe in second, even third chances, but uh that I'm done. I'm done. This is now you just to me is stuck on stupid, you're disrespecting me, you're wasting my time. Okay, I use her side because that's what I used to use. Now I'm using a different tool for that. And so far, I think async is doing that. It has just about everything that I need, you know. And don't get me wrong, I like that because I think people are just afraid to fail, and that's why they get all stuck in hesitant, and that's why they take too long making decisions that could cost them either money or even errors that could have been um avoided because they feel confident just to you know do that. And then, you know, and the failures reveal specifically and what we need to improve on. So just oh, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. It's not a theory. You have a practical, specific way to go now. You know you're great at setting up the technology, maybe you had to tweak one part, maybe, or maybe the presentation failed because you just focused so much on the money, not on the human aspect of things. Yeah, you know, and and that that's true. Focus on the human aspect of things. That's the biggest irony of all this. It's still very human, uh, despite what the priorities have been, misguided if I want to be kind. I'll say I would say silly if I want to, you know, get a little cynical, but I'm gonna stop right there. I'm in a good mood today, so I'm not gonna go for stay already for my longtime listeners. And you will laugh to say, uh-oh, he's on his mood again. But all of seriousness though, um, I like that. And even those who don't got the leadership title, that's another point that I find interesting, is that they could be leaders too. So they're just uh just gonna do just go to nine to five, trying to stay alive. Okay, I did everything. I'm just gonna sit there and do nothing. I don't want anyone coming to me. But he said be a problem solver for another team. Like um, sales, maybe sales suck at technology, maybe you can help automate some of their things, maybe like scheduling appointments, for example, is their big issue. Because so once they're not available on Friday, Friday afternoon. Are you kidding me? I'm thinking about going home and see my family. That's oh, but my Wednesdays are all packed, the other person says. And you have something that can automate that, just find the best times they have, and boom, and right there. Something like that. Because that's something that's repeatable that could be automated. Uh so yeah, those are some good advice. Um, for business people, this episode is so for you. Just I hope you're listening. For the political spiritual people, I love you, but this is not um, trust me, I'll have plenty of content for you. You're not gonna be left behind. Uh it's just this is all for business, especially on the IT.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

There's more shit. Is there all I lost was audio. No, I can't. Do you want me to uh do you want me to like leave and come back? Would that help? I can't hear. I can see you, I can't hear you, unfortunately. Oh, wait. There we go. Now I can. Okay. Yay. Yay!

SPEAKER_01 41:18

There you go. Perfect. Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

So I didn't hear your question, but I'm happy to pick up where where you were going and just make it an easier.

SPEAKER_01 41:28

I can summarize it, which is better. I was talking about how let's see, where can I start? About failing forward, um, how failures could expose what we could learn specifically

Fail Forward And Fix Problems Fast

SPEAKER_01 41:40

instead of just a theory, and about how people who don't have leadership tiles could be a leader and it could be problem solvers to other divisions. So it has collaborations. I'm with you. I'm anti-Sidal as well. I was I was just adding on to it, and I was encouraging the business people in this podcast to listen. I mean, that's all I that's all I really said. Other than you know, uh I'll see if I cut this part off or not. I'll see how that goes once I do the edit. This is why I just do an extra scrutiny on that one because of what the hell happened. That's okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:11

No, no worries, no worries. I just wanted to make sure I could see you talking, I just couldn't hear it, so I was just waiting until you stopped to not interrupt.

SPEAKER_01 42:20

Yeah, you could have um, yeah, I'm just gonna do like an extra scrutiny on that. That's the first time this happened to me. This is this is again, you know, it happens.

SPEAKER_00 42:29

I you know, podcast over here, everything under the sun has happened for me.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

Yeah. Yeah, so that's uh yeah. I mean, it's good to have that experience. Not when, again, people, I think it's just a good example. Not if chaos happens is when it happens, what you do about it. Ideally, you don't want it to happen. I get that, but reality has some curveballs, and one's gonna have to be ready. You could just panic and just quit and run away, or you could just um solve it right there, and it happens in big events. I have helped, I have worked in events, and what it tells me is when things, when hiccups happen, be ready to solve them. Not just run away, not wishing them to go away because it's not that's not gonna happen. I've helped support big events, so I know what that's about. So people is not if it's gonna happen, it's when it's gonna happen and what you do about it. That's the thing you takeaway. Um that even applies to IT as well. I'm sure, trust, I'm sure you know plenty of tech, you know, technology guidance and mood and has this funkiness that doesn't want to cooperate. So, what are you gonna do? Gonna help? You know, can you troubleshooting your own? Great. Or do you or you ask for help? Great. Whatever you do, try to do something instead of just running away and panic. Okay. So that's what I'm gonna say about that. Anything else you wanna add?

SPEAKER_00 43:58

Yeah, I mean, I I think. The interesting thing about like the failure topic in particular is you you can, like you said, learn a lot from that. You can measure what happened. Is it the first time, second time, third time, whatever it is on that particular topic? What did we improve and come out of that with? Uh, what kind of skills? Like you you can learn a ton from that, right? As well as what not to do. You would be quicker now to learn what not to do. But here's another controversial one. You might learn that that particular person isn't fit for the team or the company, and it might be a quicker way for everybody to part ways and move on. And sometimes that happens. But I've also interviewed people myself and had a similar question about, and I've seen situations where that individual who essentially fired that individual then turned around and recommended that same person somewhere else and said they weren't a fit here because of situations or scenarios that just didn't align with their skill sets, but they're great at what they do, and it'd be great for you over there. And I thought that was an amazing thing that they went out of their way to do. And not every situation is as grud and touchy and feely as that, but it, you know, time is money in business. And at the end of the day, if we're spending more time investing in something that we already we already can see where this is going, it's better to roll the dice and bring somebody else in and you know get the business in a better position and a better path forward than to keep dumping it into a situation like that. And that's why you need to have room for failure. You need to you need to experiment, you need to try. They might come up with a brilliant way on top of that of how to do something that you didn't know how to do. And they deserve all the credit in the world for doing that, and you should highlight that because as a leader of that individual on that team, you are getting credit because, in some way, shape, or form, you either led them, hired them, whatever it was, but they also deserve their kudos too. And I don't ever feel threatened by individuals beneath me. I always say, take my position if you can one day. If that's what you want, if that's truly where you want to go on your career path, if I'm worth my salt, the company will find me a different role in this company, or in my in my career, it may be time to go. And that's absolutely happened as well. And I work in technology, it changes all the time. That's just that's just the name of the game in tech right now.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

Yep. So don't so don't be in love and stay loyal to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. And sell 2010, people, sell 2010. You could implement it somehow, but don't make it as you be all and all. That's just my opinion. I'm sure you could I'm sure you're gonna want to debate me in that. That's perfectly fine. Some of you love your Microsoft Excel's. I like it. I don't love it. Uh there's a difference. I like PowerPoint too, but I also try to implement, you know, I I I'm more let's say I like Microsoft tools and all that. I do. But um if there's a better tool out there, I'm open to it. I mean, I could have stood loyal with Riverside, and maybe I'll just shut down my podcast because look, if the failure happened three times, Riverside is no longer a fit. I got some different changes gonna happen. Okay, and there's times when I see myself not a fit anymore and just part ways, and that's very gracious because some want to fight for that position, stay glued to that position, even if they are to death, even to the detriment of the company. Because it's so ego-driven. Some people are just very you know egotistical like that. I'm just saying the reality. This is not you know a Disney fairy tale, perfect ass picture kind of podcast here. I say the reality, some people are just very ego-driven, you're gonna have to force them out. I'll I'll give a more crazy example, and I've seen that happen. Because that person was particularly the problem, it's been documented several times, and this person was not the right fit, but this person assisted. It says this person you don't have, you don't have leadership and experience, I'm sure someone they know, all of that stuff, all the cynical stuff, oh, nepotism and all of that. Yeah, yeah, it's it's true. But you know, after a while, they're gonna have to just remove that. And some and some don't get removed. Some will get be put somewhere else because of the connections they have. Yes, the world is that unfair, but don't let it bring you down. That's probably a lot of people, you let that bring you down. You'll find your spot, you'll grow, you'll be successful. Just don't just don't fight the battle that you know it's gonna be fruitless. Um, that's that's just my opinion. Um I'm sure some of you got a different opinion, but that's fine. Again, I'm just gonna press on this one question, this last one. Anything else you want to add before I wrap this up?

SPEAKER_00 48:35

No, no, on that. I mean, I can keep going, but you know, I won't. The only thing that I will say is if you don't ask the question, I just wanted to point out one happy thought with AI. And a lot of things that I see with helping businesses is employees that are worried about losing their positions or they're scared of using AI. And I will say what is going to happen and what is planned or unplanned or happened behind those doors, you'll never know anyway, so unless some power it leaks. But for you in particular,

Use AI Or Your Career Dies

SPEAKER_00 49:05

I would strongly advise playing with it, you know, testing different scenarios. Just start with you and your day in your life. What are the things that are like, man, I wish I could, or it'd be a lot easier if, and those are the great places to start and to play around with it. Because at the end of the day, it's not going anywhere. It's only going to be more ingrained, and the more you fight it, the least likely you are going to be to a company to want to actually stick around in that environment, and they probably won't take you. They'll take the individual who actually in you know plays around with it. And I will say the one of the happiest thoughts that I have right now with AI is it is one of the most creative time frames I've ever seen in the technology space. And as a per as a kid who does who does have, as an adult who has ADHD, but as a kid who has AD or ADHD and also wish they could draw, and it probably would have allowed me to drift off in my thoughts and then you know not act out and do all those crazy things. I never could. So IT is a space uh that I gravitate with that fulfilled. But now with AI, I actually am feeling like I am drawing because my visions and my creations are coming to life, and it's through me, it's through my creativeness that I'm coaching it to do and build and all of those things. But that vision's coming to life, and I am able to draw, I would say play around with it, get invested in it. Whatever's happening in companies is what's gonna happen. Some are good, some are not. Some companies are telling the truth, some are not. I call out some of the bigger companies who are using AI as a scapegoat to obviously cover up for some of the facts of what they're doing. That's not true. AI, I can tell you many stories of many nights that I've had that I've said some naughty words in the prompt to go, I've told you 18 times now to do this, and you still haven't. So you can't prove to me that AI is at a point where it's actually going to take a lot of jobs. It will take some of the repetition positions, and it quite honestly should. We should adopt and evolve and actually do human-like functions, and that's a good thing. And as a human, change is hard, but change is inevitable.

SPEAKER_01 51:15

True that, and this is my old saying use AI or your career dies at this point. It's coming back, it's a throwback. I was saying that a lot two seasons ago. Use AI or your career dies. Okay, and that's even more true than before. Okay, if anything is just gonna come back every once in a while. I used to say almost every tech episode I have. That was my little gag, if you want to call it, or catchphrase for the tech side of this thing, but it has a lot of truth to it. So love me, hate me, it's true. You know, I love you back, maybe. I don't know. Depends how I feel. I'm a little bipe, I'm a little crazy. But yeah, no, but AI, look, I use it for things I'm not good at. Art. Oh, it's such a great art tool. I suck at art. I'm bad at art. Um, but I'm appreciative of great art. AI is such a great tool for that. I'm learning how to organize my schedule. I'm learning how to use AI on that because I realize I'm gonna mess with that. I see some conflicts. I even put one schedule at the Sunday midnight by accident. I said, oh crap, I gotta change that. So, you know, just I would say f fulfill your weakness, but make sure you're the driver of it. You know what you want, you know who you need help with, you know who you are, and then play with it. Just experiment. That's all I can say. You know, it's it's if anything, it's gonna be more implemented. I'm sure look, during the COVID, it was mostly just what, tactics. Now it got pictures and now it does videos. It'll automate some things. What is it gonna do next? I don't know. Maybe create holographs. I don't know. It's I'm sure it's already been done in prototype stages or in limit, or probably more in a limited fashion. But you're not going away anytime soon, so I suggest you pick up and

Shoutouts, Links, And Final Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 53:10

learn it. That's all I'm gonna say about that. Alrighty, then let's do this shameless plug-in. Go to this podcast, all right? Go to Ryan Drumhouse Podcast, decline invite podcast. I know it sounds a bit rude to some of you, decline an infite. Well, you think you're better than everybody? Maybe he is, I don't know. But just join there. If you want to get some great on the serious stuff, if you want some great tech insight, just join that. Just you know, I love the I just love the podcast. That was something I would say somewhat provocatorish or interesting or sound so contradicting. Those tiles are most interesting than me, you know. Um, or like silent noise, for example. What the heck do you mean by silent noises are loud? What do you mean? You're not even messing with my brain here. You're pissing me off. You know, no, but seriously, just join the podcast if you want to get to some tech insight and meaningful conversations about leadership. It's not all about, you know, 100100 tech silo garbage. Trust me, it's not for that. He's extrovert, you can tell. Come on, people, what more proof do you need? All right, so go to that podcast as well. And you know, follow him in on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Lincoln, and the one I'm still iffy about, TikTok. Even though it has changed ownership, it's no longer just a Chinese app. But hey, you know, to each his own right. I don't tell anybody what to do. You I you just know that I'm not gonna join TikTok. Probably not anytime soon, because now it's changing all the weird direction that I'm a bit. That's the fact that Chinese have a excellent day. Now I'm against the piloter people, as in it. So yeah, I'm too difficult. You can never satisfy. I'm I'm an impossible customer at that point. So all righty then. Oh, thank you so much, and you have a great day. Oh, one more thing, people. Just have a blessed day, afternoon or night.