419- Common Sense Over Theatrics w/Nick Feczko

Mike Kelley: All right. Welcome back to another. You've Been Heard, today. We've got Nick and Nick's got some great experience to share with us, why you walked away from an advisory partner and started trusting your peers instead. and what has that saved him? And, just, a chances to improve on things fighting shadow it shadow AI. so, welcome to the show, Nick. I'd like to give you a moment to introduce yourself and tell us something about you.

Nick Feczko: Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm Nick Feczko. I've been leading the IT team here at Dubois Chemicals in Cincinnati, Ohio for just about six months now. But I've been in it for about twenty five years across a number of different companies. I won't read my LinkedIn out there, but my hope in doing this today was just to have a genuine conversation, and hopefully somebody out there hears that and goes, oh, that resonates. That makes sense. there's other folks out there that are relying on common sense and less theatrics to create an IT career. So I'm hoping that that resonates with somebody somewhere.

Mike Kelley: Yeah, it's definitely going to resonate within the community that we've got and You've Been Heard. and for those that are following us and listening in on the podcast, because I know that there's a lot of geeks and nerds and intelligent people listening, people who are, fighting some of those challenges. So, let's jump into that one about the shadow AI and how it's just shadow it, with better PR. Tell me a little bit about what you're thinking there.

Nick Feczko: Yeah. to me, it's scary stuff, right? as we've launched copilot here at my company starting in January, the first or the second question you got after is can I get premium? Right? Can I want to start building my own agents. And I like the entrepreneurial aspect to it, but I think, the response for all this stuff has to be, where are the edges? Right? I think to go to entrepreneurial, you could see, some data leakage, you could see the dangers to me abound. And maybe that's my recent risk background coloring the way I see things, but I feel like it is shadow. It kind of two point oh. So we're kind of figuring out right now is how do you encourage entrepreneurship, citizen development, and then make it a, maybe a breeding ground for ideas. And then the IT organization's role is maybe not to build those from the ground up, but to maybe harden and deploy those as they get to a certain point. So you want to encourage that. You want to do it in a sandbox kind of way. But I still think technology's it best in the hands of professionals, not hobbyists, right? Not amateurs. Everybody who's building an agent, that's probably not their day job. So I love the idea ground. I think it's a place that your average employee can can play. But then when it's time to get serious, when it's time to deploy it, time to make it scalable. I think that's how a constrained resource like it can come in and say, great job getting it here. Let's take it to kind of the professional level. Does that make sense?

Mike Kelley: Oh yeah. No, it's exactly the battle that I find myself in. You know, I started this morning with meetings about that exact subject and those topics and how we're trying to figure out our find our legs on that. And, to flip the coin a little bit, some of these, I'm trying to think of the term you used and I'm trying to think of, the enthusiasts. Yeah.

Nick Feczko: Hobbyists.

Mike Kelley: Yeah, yeah. those people that are trying to build these things, they're also usually subject matter experts, right. And they know that portion of the business much better than it does. So their ability to do something that's meaningful for them, is enhanced by these things. But yeah, their ability to understand what it takes to make it scalable and make it an enterprise app. That's where there's a disconnect between the two. And that's where the two need to really merge. And we've got to figure out how best to, get in lockstep to help each other with that process. Because I think that's one of our largest challenges.

Nick Feczko: Yeah. It is that hallucinations, piece two is really, I think, not knowing where the edge is on that. If you want to say, deploy an agent that gives product information to salespeople, let's just say generically, if you communicate to a user that, yeah, this product will work in this environment, no problem. And that's not right. you run a major risk of, legally, but for reputationally all kinds of different ways there. So trying to figure out how to teach the agents to, know where those edges are and then to start to default. Right. And that might feel like old chat bot kind of stuff, but to me, that's where we need to be careful about this stuff and make sure we're kind of do it in a very, focused, kind of deliberate way versus more haphazard.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. And so that's like, I've heard of a solution there. And we're talking about ways of doing that ourselves of you create that persona or you create that, those rule sets that you're going to feed the chat before you start trying to get to the answers. Okay. You're going to do this. You're going to be an expert about that. You're going to have, here are the files or here's the directory where all of the information that you're going to go through is at. and, like for us, one of the things that we were doing was a policy, a bot that helped people get to the to policies, okay? And depending on what that policy is, we want to make sure that we give the whole policy, not just a summary of it. Some of them a summary is great. what's my vacation or what are the vacation policies? But something that has to do with safety or these legal situations like you're inferring. yeah, I think we both realized that we both touch specialty chemicals. So specialty chemicals, there are certain times that every step needs to be followed. And you cannot have that summary. And so realizing that and creating the persona now having that library of personas for our enthusiasts to use and, or to just make sure that every prompt starts with those personas or those rule sets for the enterprise solutions that they're going to build.

Nick Feczko: Yeah, exactly. I think that's where it can provide value on seeing around those corners. And, taking an enterprise view of things versus the citizen developer who, you're right, has a lot of context, right? But maybe isn't thinking at the enterprise level. And that's where the two, I think make can make for a really good marriage there.

Mike Kelley: So yeah, and I think it's going to behoove us to do that. And we've got to make sure that we, at least in my experience, I'd rather it be a work together than an adversarial. Exactly.

Nick Feczko: Yep.

Mike Kelley: It's starting off. I think it's starting off kind of adversarial. They're going, well, you guys can't move fast enough. And we're going we're moving as fast as we can. and so they're hitting one hundred miles an hour and we're like, hey, yeah, you might want to close the door. Right. Buckle up. Yeah. alright. What tell me a little about your history. Twenty five years. we started off the conversation, and talking about how, the, before the conversation about our experience with leadership and with peers to follow and or role models. That's the term I'm thinking of role models. I didn't really have many role models to follow. I saw what other people were doing, read the articles in the backs of the, the seats in the airlines. That's, aging me a little bit there. I'm not sure how many people do that anymore. there weren't very many role models to follow. What, how did you learn back in the day?

Nick Feczko: Yeah. For sure.

Mike Kelley: Figure this stuff out.

Nick Feczko: Yeah. I worked, at a very large, multi, global conglomerate. when I started and, I think in my opinion, there was a certain type of leader they were looking for, right a personalities. bang your hand on the table. I found myself after several years there looking around and saying, I just like you said, I don't see role models. I don't see people that I look at and say, I could see myself there someday. And I think, if anybody's listening, that's a yellow flag at least. Right? Are you at the right place? If you look around and don't see people, even across, it and non-it functional roles that don't exhibit maybe the leadership behaviors, right? That you don't find yourself attracted to that, maybe that you've got a cultural, challenge that you've got to be honest with yourself about. Right. so that was one big thing was looking for those role models, early that might have been folks that I resonated with just more personally. Right. And then, not being afraid, being vulnerable and bringing, using them as a sounding board. So I think creating that network, it means you need to be intentional about it. I think it rarely happens by accident or not often are you going to be tapped on the shoulder and said, hey, here's your mentor. Here's somebody who can answer all your questions, like my advice to, earlier career people would be to find those folks and cultivate those relationships. Be vulnerable. and then take that advice and incorporate it in or don't. I think there's as many times that I've learned from leaders over time on what to do as far as what not to do, or I've seen something and said, boy, I wouldn't have done it that way. and then trying, finding opportunities in life to try those things on a smaller scale and, fail forward, right. If something didn't work, take that lesson to heart. but that role model piece was big on me on being intentional in finding those folks and then pulling those, teasing those learnings out, putting them into practice.

Mike Kelley: I think that's a really valuable piece of advice of, if you don't have that role model at the organization that you're at, are you at the right organization? Right. it's a huge thing. I know for me, I spent decades at an organization where I didn't really feel like that. I didn't feel that. And now that I'm no longer there and have moved on, I recognize the value of that piece of advice. So that honestly, that fellows.

Nick Feczko: Yeah, that led me to Dubois today, right? I told this story the other day with our board, but, that I was looking for a place with, no ego leadership, right? No politics, no, theatrics, right? That the success theater, I've seen so many other places and, this leadership team here that I found has all that. and I think it doesn't happen by accident, right? It's a very intentional top down set of either, stated or lived out, cultural values. And the older I get, the more time I spend working, the more that it's important to, be in an environment that clicks with you, right? that's something that you want to get up and go to work every day and work in that environment. I'm not saying the way that I found is for everybody, but my advice to other people would be, find those environments that click with you, that inspire you because life's just too short, right, to be miserable.

Mike Kelley: So yeah, I watch my kids and I see them evaluate different jobs. and I think back to when I was a kid and it was for me, it was a job as a job, as a job, a paycheck, I got it. There's a reason work is a four letter word. and so I put up with stuff that not necessarily should have. and it was a hard lesson to get out of. And so I, watched the younger generation saying, not going to do that because it's not, doesn't fit within my values. And I'm thinking, but you gotta pay your bills. And so for me, it's that whole shift in. It's a paradigm shift. It is. Yeah, but being able to turn around and look back and, validate what you're saying, I completely agree. If you can find that culture, find that culture. Yeah. Look for that culture.

Nick Feczko: Yeah. And you'll, I think to your point, you only you or only I, right. Can put a price on that, right? There are probably, certain environments where maybe the culture is a B, but the comp is an A like you, only you, can evaluate that and make that trade off decision. But for me, again, the later I got in life, the more I wanted to I put more of a premium on that and I could do the math when it came time to figure out versus the comp piece. And I just, I just found myself valuing the culture piece much more these days.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. Being able to enjoy work is huge. So all right, let's use that as the next topic. what do you enjoy? What brings you joy, especially when it comes to the tech and the geek world. What are the puzzles you love to solve? Yeah. I think that's a common thing that we have.

Nick Feczko: Yeah, I think I like problem solving, but to me problem solving with a tangible outcome, right? as I tell folks, you're going to be handed a million problems every day. And I would say you can't solve them all and nor should you solve them. All right. You the standard you should hold yourself to and your business partners is what problems can I solve that make the biggest impact to why we're here as a company, not why you're here as an IT leader or not. Why the HR leader here is but the biggest impact you can make. So for for us right now, with such an emphasis on organic growth, I'm pointing as much of it towards sales and growth as possible. Right. We want to be a part of this great story that we're telling here at Du Bois. And I could go get internal, right and get get the best help desk metrics I could have or set up the best managed service. But if it doesn't, if there's not a direct line that anybody can draw between the story that we're trying to tell as a company and what we're spending time on in my organization, it's all for naught, right? And so if you really, really want to level up as a leader, listen for those things that it's important and figure out how technology can be a direct enabler. And I feel like you'll find yourself in better positions, you'll be trusted, right, with more and more opportunities and pulled in earlier to conversations by listening and responding kind of very deliberately to those business level challenges versus maybe running the old play of, well, this is the IT shop, and I'm going to stay in these walls and keep this running. I feel like what gets me out of bed is those business level challenges that we're all kind of rowing towards as a business.

Mike Kelley: And you touch on two huge things that I've been really latching on to over the last couple of years. And that is one of those is the story. Yep. I need to be able to communicate the story in a way that's interesting to the audience that I'm talking to. And it's really important that I'm able to communicate that story. But I also need to be able to listen to their story and hear this. the second piece is that value, because if I'm not bringing value or if we're not adding value to the business, then yes, we get to play with shiny things. but we're not helping the organization. the goal, why are we here? What are we here for? and why is that person asking for that solution and if I can figure out what the value of it is, if I can communicate that value, that's even better.

Nick Feczko: that's something they don't teach in school, right? Like, or at least there's not an emphasis on it that I had to bolt on the storytelling aspect. And I got lucky. I think it was two years ago. I took a class called Structured Thinking that helped you. It should have been called structured storytelling because it helped introduce ways to tell stories that were intuitive to any kind of logical brain. Right? And starting with the big idea, starting with the thing that leadership, especially if you're, presenting to leadership, right? Starting with that and anchoring on that, I think snaps in the attention better. And then I think the second piece that you just touched on was context, right? Is if you can tell that, if you can tell a story that's anchored to what the company is trying to do, but if you can weave in that, you as it people have spent the time on the shop floor, on a sales ride along, like living the life of the person that you want to better. that context, people respect the heck out of that. And I think not enough of us as IT leaders spend time to do the Gemba walks, right to go, see, whatever your shop floor might be, right? It might be sales, it might be, any kind of industry, go spend time living those lives, because then I think you'll find even more valuable insights on things that you think you could improve for them.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. And I think the stereotype of the guy in the back closet that you slide the pizza under the door and roll a Red bull to them. I think that one's disappearing. I mean, I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. We really need to be out there talking to the people on the floor and engaging them in the way that they do the business and understanding the challenges that they have.

Nick Feczko: Yeah. I think you got to earn the right to be at the table. Right. That we're always going to fight that stereotype, right? If Nick Burns your company's computer guy, right. from Saturday Night Live. But what I tell my team is we gotta earn that, right? So you got to show up and you have to do, the do no harm piece? You have to do really well. but you gotta earn the right to be invited to the table, I think so.

Mike Kelley: So is that is you mentioned it. Do no harm. Is that something that you teach your teams? Is that something that you carry as part of the culture, the internal culture?

Nick Feczko: if it is the Maslow's hierarchy, right? To me, the bottom level, the food and shelter level is stuff can't be broken. Right? I think back a couple of jobs ago, we came into a place, myself, I came in working for a CIO that I'd worked for before and we called it P1 Mondays. Right. Everything was on fire. Everything was broken when people came in Monday morning. You can't have strategic conversations about consolidating ERPs or about, getting to a single source of truth or doing the fun stuff right until you've earned the right that things aren't breaking. Right. So that do no harm level to me is the basic, if you don't do that well, you're not going to advance up that hierarchy and invite it into the the discussions about how do we change the game on here? How could technology possibly play a role? Or they're just going to go around you on stuff, you know?

Mike Kelley: yeah, that shadow AI that we started the conversation with that's going to just blossom. If all you're doing is spending your time fixing things and trying to keep the network up.

Nick Feczko: Yeah, exactly. And I think part of that too, is to be honest with yourself as an organization on where should you be spending your time, right? Should you partner in certain areas if your customer, if you're not differentiated in the marketplace by doing that, right, go work with a managed service partner, right? Let somebody else whose business is that be great at it. And I think far too many organizations say we're just going to do it. All right. I'd say, have a little less ego on that and look into ways you can partner, versus trying to do it all yourself too.

Mike Kelley: So, I've been running into some resistance on partners and the resistance that I've been hearing is, well, we just end up having to rebuild whatever we partner with somebody for. any thoughts or experiences and ways of managing around that? Yeah, I agree with that.

Nick Feczko: Absolutely. I think if you take it back to. Because to me, the managed services is a solution, right? It is not. Right. What is the outcome you're trying to achieve? And if you can get, say, a manufacturing partner or somebody to say like, well, what do you ultimately need? Well, I need printers to be up, one hundred percent of the time I need to have never, reach for, ability to print a label on a product and the printer be out of ink. if you can boil it back to what they need and then show the solution connected to that value. I think there's, you break down some of that resistance. And then I think this is true to me with any IT solution, but you need to treat it like a null hypothesis and do small tests that prove the value, right. If there's a resistance to that, say, you know what, you're right. I think we got to make them prove their value. Let's start at one site. Let's start with one group, one floor, whatever. Right. Let's prove it out. Let's measure it on the things that you told me are important. And here they are defined quantitatively. And let's do it for a month or a quarter or whatever and come back. I think that private aspect. But if you're willing to do some of that give and take, I think it shows partnership. And again, you're just going to be relied on more as a partner of choice versus somebody to go around.

Mike Kelley: So yeah, and it's the way that you build that trust that you're talking about also. And you're building the trust at the, wider part of the base back where the needs are the food and everything versus the higher levels. Because I like that analogy. because it, just, if I'm stuck firefighting, if I'm stuck trying to get email up or, get the email gateway to let things through, then, I can't even be trusted to get my email or I can't trust you guys to let me email. other experiences you want to share other challenges that you've overcome?

Nick Feczko: yeah, like I said, the cultural aspect has just become more and more kind of, important to me. I think, how you show up is really, really important, right? And I think that the, I know it sounds like, putting too much thought into something, but even the language that you use, right? even if somebody shows up and says, hey, we're going to buy this thing and you don't need to do anything that a lot of IT leaders would, that would feel combative, right? It'd feel like, hey, we're going around you and we're not doing this. I've probably learned from good leaders or soften my approach to say like, oh, that's awesome that you found a solution. Like, can I get thirty minutes? I love to learn. I want to learn more about the problem that they solve. Instead of saying, no, you can't do that doesn't violate this policy. And we're not this. And what about that? Of course you're going to get into a fight when you come with that approach, but I've tried to soften my approach, tried to treat it as a learning opportunity. And then sometimes I've been able to say like, hey, how are they solving A, B, and C? That's really interesting. I want to learn how they're doing that. And they say, oh, they're not. So what do you mean A, B, and C, right. So if you can be that person who helps see around corners again, you got to earn your way in there. we're probably never at the top of the mountain when it comes to being the first partner and only partner of choice. but I feel like you just have to continually re-earn that respect and you have to do it in a way that, feels more partnering. You might need to be. It's not a fifty fifty. You might need to be eighty sometimes in there. Twenty. but just taking a bit of time to be a little more, open in your approach, I think can help you get into better situations and long term partnerships.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. For sure. so I'm curious about, cultures become so important to you? what were some of the challenges that you ran into in your history? what were some of those points that that have helped you decide that that's really important to you?

Nick Feczko: Yeah. I feel like motivating, teams is a big part of any leadership role. And I was never motivated when I heard a message that did not, that had cognitive dissonance to it, right? When a leadership group would say, oh, this is going great and this is this, and you're like, but no, every day I see this is broken. This doesn't work. Here's what I'm hearing from our users. I think being, professional and honest is really important. And I think people will follow and respect folks that aren't being. I think you need to be positive, but you don't need to be overly. And, inauthentically positive, right? If something's bad, I think people respect. If you say, hey, look, I know this isn't working right right now, but here's what we're going to do about it. And here's the next step. And then we're going to check in and see if we're better. I think people respect that much more than some folks just think. That role is to be so overly positive all the time. To me, that disconnect in reality turns people off. And so that's a cultural thing that I saw again, yellow flag, maybe red flag at places that I said, I don't know if this is the right place for me because I'm not seeing honest communication, right. with folks on the team. So that's one aspect that probably, I hope that my teams, if you asked him here, they would say, yeah, he's pretty honest about stuff. He's never talk about it, right? He's inspiring, but he doesn't step around or avoid issues where it's a difficult conversation because things aren't going well. Does that make sense?

Mike Kelley: Yeah, it makes sense. It reminds me of, a book that I was reading and how somebody else termed it being kind and being nice and being nice as those people who are, oh, everything's great. and you got to be nice and you can't tell them these things, but being kind was being that forthright, honest and tell them when things are going wrong so that they have a chance to learn and adjust because they don't always know. I mean, some of the things that I think are obvious. There are times where people don't realize that the way they're communicating is they came in combative from the beginning of the conversation versus, hey, let me. So how does this work? and what problems are these? Is this going to solve? And, let teach me more, and I also think of that, hey, you got two ears and one mouth. Use them in proportion.

Nick Feczko: Yeah, that resonates a lot with me. I feel like, especially when you come into the neat part about it is you can work for a number of different businesses, right? You could work for manufacturing, finance, like there's just a million different things you can do. So I feel like, in one's career, even within a big company, you could support different divisions. listening, learning, treating every opportunity to, like you said, listen and hear about something to either get smarter on or a new opportunity that maybe technology can solve. is kind of a neat thing. So I feel like being in that learning mode and being vulnerable and open and saying like, I don't know, these things help teach me this. People will bring you in if you come in with that mindset versus some other more combative mindset or approach.

Mike Kelley: Yeah, no, you can't do it this way because I noticed you brought in policies right away and, you know, what are some of the current challenges that you're facing?

Nick Feczko: Yeah. I think, how to approach AI at a company whose, product is not software, right? It is to me, it's two sides of the coin, right? Like, we talked about, it has some, risk, but it also has a huge upside, I think never in the history of at least, twenty five plus years in technology have I seen a technology that is more available to everybody almost immediately. Right? There's no cray supercomputers you need in a data center, right? there's not a huge barrier to entry, right. Anybody can have it in their pocket today, right. so that to me is really exciting to have that opportunity, but then to again, do it in a way that it's not sprawl, it's not messy, and then it's not dangerous. So we're taking a pretty deliberate approach here, creating a council that draws in people from across, different parts of our business, not as a bureaucracy method, but as a way to ensure everyone's voice is heard. And then that group is empowered to prioritize what we work on and that it's connected to outcomes. There's a rubric to evaluate, good use cases. I think AI has become so ubiquitous that people are like, oh, can we throw AI at that? You're like, you could or that's just an automation or it's just, an RPA or it's something else, right? that AI should be a tool in our toolkit that we use for the right use cases and not for everything. so trying to, I'm really, really excited about getting that stood up and starting to do again, these quick test, quick turn things with either build opportunities where we're creating agents internally or BI opportunities where if the marketplace has solved something for us, let's go, a borrow that right and install it in our environment or connect to it. But let's not go try to solve something that's already been solved and it's not germane to our business. So yeah, that I'm really excited where we're going to go this year. I think it can lead to real differentiation in how we're valued as a business.

Mike Kelley: That you bring up an interesting point because I'm hearing and seeing, effects in the market just in general, where instead of going after that SaaS solution, that huge ERP or HRM or HCM or sales CRM, all of those things that people are starting to craft point solutions utilizing the AI and, doing those kinds of things versus that huge investment into the large thing. And, but then also, that cognitive dissonance between a point solution and an enterprise solution again, and the challenges that happen there. he also gave me a thought of, the council because, we're talking about internally about a steering committee that's going to have ultimate approval on financing, or endorsing a project going forward. But I'm also thinking that council would be like a peer group within the organization to help, evangelize, the utilization of that tool across the board to try to coax those ideas out of the woodwork. Yeah.

Nick Feczko: I think as we rolled out copilot, we stood up a community of practice here. And that's a term that I borrowed from the last place I worked. But the idea is to, you know, people call it guilds, right? But it is again, cross-functional. It brings people together that wouldn't necessarily organically talk to see if there's opportunities and it brings your power users together. We do it once a month. but we're trying to find ways to find value that's common, right? And it's really tough as constrained resources to go meet with everybody instead of bringing it together, helping kind of cross pollinate some of the great best practices and uses. But my real hope, Mike, is to tease out the best ideas to scale those at an enterprise level. So we've created a few forcing functions here. but again, it's ways to help make sure we're hearing about all those things, but also to kind of, a forcing function to hear how people are using it. And maybe we learn something and we go, that's great, let's make that the next big thing we work on.

Mike Kelley: So yeah, no, and I see that the value behind all of that too, I think one of my superpowers is being able to recognize, oh, wait, that tool can adjust that thing over there too. and because we as it are as technology or yeah, we get a unique chance to spread across the whole organization, right? We get a view point that most people do not have a chance to get. Yeah. because they, they get their, in their group, their department, their area of expertise and they stay in that swim lane. and we're watching the whole pool.

Nick Feczko: Yeah. No, exactly. And that's, I think that's a unique position, right? that and not taking advantage of that is it'd be a shame, right, if we didn't see how. So I'm probably most interested in those use cases that not only solve a problem for this pocket of people or this department or this lab within this department, but solves it organizationally, because again, I think if we're not using if we're not taking the, fewer, bigger swings, we're probably doing a dis-service to the organization.

Mike Kelley: So yeah, too true. but I also want to make sure that we enable all of the little swings too, because I never know when one of those little things that somebody's just thinking about their world, but I see where it has ripples across every lane. yeah, again, our unique viewpoint or perspective on things will help see the value that can be brought across the organization.

Nick Feczko: Yeah. You bring up a good point. I think that's where kind of safe self-service tooling has a play, right? Microsoft's stack these days, with the right license, they give you so many of those tiles, you don't need to be an IT expert to stand up a list and do a light power automate, and we're trying to do a better job this year on doing some just open push communication brown bag sessions where this isn't, hey, let's take this on and build it for you. But say, here are three low code, no code, toolkits that you can add into your existing set of tricks and use those to build solutions for your group or yourself. It's safe. It's protected, right? It's scalable. It checks a lot of those boxes. But, I think enabling our users to do more of that stuff is probably where it should be looking. Right? How do you put some safe things in the hands of users and let them run with those things? We don't have to be involved with every email notification on a list or any of that stuff. Let's do some safe self-service tooling here. So I'm trying to embrace more of that this year.

Mike Kelley: Have you got any lessons that you've learned? Anything, any walls that you've run into in that realm that you're willing to, advise people on.

Nick Feczko: I think as we've explored, like copilot's premium options and the agent builders there, I think we're learning that, the promise there and the hype for your average, non-technical user, the hype is probably exceeded the reality, right? And trying a few things on myself. And then we've enabled, a few small group of users to try some stuff in a very, guarded way. it is not as easy as what you read on LinkedIn, right? the vibe coding stuff, if you've got a strong software engineering background, I'm sure in the weekend you could whip out this amazing, web app that does all these things, but your average, non development user, it's not as easy as they say. So I would say have a healthy amount of skepticism on some of the promise of those app building, agent building kind of things. which to me, selfishly, I say that's great because it, helps us to adapt faster. Right? And to bring some guardrails to this, but don't believe the hype or spend the time on your own to invest in learning those things to say, hey, here's my experience, here's what I try to do, and here's what didn't work. So I would say that piece is something definitely to keep an eye on.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. one of the things that we recognized and I've actually moved away from copilot because of it is a lack of agency, copilot weaved into so many things. But when I say, hey, I need you to do this or I want you to start that. And it's like, oh, I can't do that. I'm not allowed to do these things. here's how you can do it in Power Automate. And then I try to follow those instructions within power. I mean, I have that background and I can't craft these things and I can't get it stood up to do it. So we've actually moved to different tools and models that have more agency, and once given the authority to, access the APIs and that information, then I've got the ability to do a lot more and I'm seeing more advancement through those kinds of things. Yeah.

Nick Feczko: There's probably a certain area that, like you said, works really well for a huge percent of the population, but the ceiling is lower on that stuff. But then to me, as soon as you cross that barrier into, like you said, when you're hitting APIs, when you're doing some more technical integration kind of work, that to me is where I need to say like, hey, let us help you. Let us be the professionals. Let's talk about your outcome. Let us help you set this up in a scalable way. I'll be honest, I have yet to define right where that line is, but I think it's a I know it when I see it kind of thing right now.

Mike Kelley: So yeah. but I think also that as I try to define that line, I've got the business side coming in and they're defining their line. And we're finding that these things are I know, I recognize that I've got to be flexible here. and I can't just take the old school methodology of. No, this is my infrastructure. I'm responsible for making sure all of this stuff stays working well. sometimes it's here's the rope.

Nick Feczko: Yeah. And that's, I've seen it with like data solutions too. Right. We had a couple jobs ago. We had a great, snowflake implementation. We had this great curated master data source, but we also let folks build their own views. And the idea was that if it got to a point that more people were using it, you would go through kind of a certification process and then you wouldn't have. To me, the hook into that is you tell folks, and then you don't have to worry about supporting it. Right. And the payoff for us is we're not seeing that shadow versions of stuff where it's dependent upon one person. I think at the end of the day, most of those functional folks building stuff, they don't want to support it either. So if you can offer that olive branch and say like, hey, when you've got this ready to go, we're not only going to take it over, learn what you do, document it, but get it stood up and then we'll support if it breaks, that might be, somebody's entry point that they could use hearing this as a way to get into that conversation more. So.

Mike Kelley: you bring up a couple of the points and help me to define some of that line in the sand of, it in the past hasn't been the best at generating documentation. this is a perfect use of AI is to, hey, go read that code, tell me what it does. right. Format it into this document. Hey, use this persona to create this format and tell me what that code does. now you've got that, piece done, but now we're going to have all of the citizen developers doing these kinds of things and they're not going to think of, hey, we need this documentation so that this application outlives me at the organization. Somebody's going to need to understand how to deal with it tomorrow. Yeah, that's the sustainability. Some of the stuff. Yeah. That's some of those things that that we think of as it compared to, hey, I'm just trying. I just needed a faster way to get this answer right.

Nick Feczko: Yeah. And to me, that's where we should feel empowered to, to say, oh, that's awesome. I want to help you get that too. here's a set of self-service tooling, right? if it's a problem that only that person has, that's probably a self-service thing, right? If it's, very unique to a department, maybe there's a couple sets and then maybe you spend a little time. But to me, it's like if someone says, here's a problem I need solved, and everybody here has this on this daily basis, that's when our brains should fire and go, ha, I really want to help with that. Let's talk about the outcome real quick. Let's lean on success. And then let's talk about tooling. Because again, it might not be an agent. It might not be, an integration, it might be a power BI. it can take a number of forms. But I feel like we're best poised to help answer the how question. And our functional partners are still best poised to the what and the why of things. And we should be.

Mike Kelley: Very interesting. other things that are on in your world besides AI, because I know my world is busy. AI just got thrown on top of everything else that we're already doing. what other challenges are you trying to work through?

Nick Feczko: Yeah, it's tangential, but data is a big focus for us right now. We're, growing our data engineering talent. And one analogy that has hit home that I've been, again, pleasantly surprised with, my functional team here is that they understand that garbage data in is garbage data out. You can build the coolest looking agent, but if it not only A hallucinates, but B gives you the wrong information because the input was bad. they recognize that work needs to be done there. It's unsexy. It isn't particularly like flashy or cool, but working on old school data governance, data inventory, setting up some of those things. And again, agents can help you discover those things, can help you document them. Climb the curve faster than the old days. but the data infrastructure is something we're spending a lot of time on and getting data right so that we can move faster later with some of this AI stuff. So it feels, I guess regressive in some ways, right? That was a big topic, twelve and ten years ago. But now we're starting to be really surgical about where we spend time on data governance and data quality before we move fast on some other things. So does that make sense?

Mike Kelley: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I again, ironically, I'm faced with a lot of the same challenges. Join an organization that has a bunch of reporting servers and no data warehouse. And so, different versions of the truth. You, mentioned a single version of the truth. And then now, how do we help maintain the value behind all of that when somebody can spin up a dashboard like that through these new tool sets and when do we need to take over or recommend that it gets passed off to the enterprise support versus, a point solution again, point solution for the individual.

Nick Feczko: That's right. Yeah. it's a bit of yin and yang, right? push and pull. But for the most part, I've come around on, I want our business experts to be the visualization kind of report builders, right? And then I want it focused as, I had an old boss call us enterprise integrators, right? We'll do the glue work, we'll make sure the data source, and then we'll do the really hard stitching together, creating a published certified data sets. I think the more I spend time on that, again, the more functional folks, they don't want to do that stuff. Right. It's not germane to driving an insight. It's not their job, right? Honestly. So folks are more than happy to give up that work. And again, I think that lets the professionals in data engineering spend their time doing what they're paid to do and really good at, and then let the analysts drive insights, let them create the best visualization that communicates things. I think the, new interesting, intersection of those is how do we use AI to drive predictive insights or do things that your average analyst couldn't do? Right. I think about things like the notion of a next best action, right? How can you tell your sales force an idea of, hey, I've noticed these three trends. Take a look at these things or you should really think about this that live somewhere to me between data engineering, modeling, right. And insights, I think one of the things to keep an eye on is where does that skill set best poised to live in the organization? I don't know, I have a great answer for that. What do you think?

Mike Kelley: I think that that's a heck of a question. I mean, it's a real challenge that. In all honesty, I hadn't even made it to that point yet within what we're doing. But what is the next best action is a it's something that we as humans are faced with every day, right? and being able to ask that of one of our agents or of the generative models, isn't always something that we think of asking that, I know that some of the things that I've been playing with, I've said, okay, I've gotten to this point. You got any suggestions? and it's come up with a list of eight different items. And so I'm like, okay, we'll take item one and item three and let's start there with those and then enhance. but trying to set up that predictive and to build something that's consistent with that, that's a, it's a really interesting thought. I like that.

Nick Feczko: Yeah, it's something to keep an eye on, I feel like is to see what that latent. It's almost it's data science in a way. Right. and I don't know that that skill sets permeated every organization. But if I'm, keeping an eye on what's going to be big in the next eighteen months, I think, does data science permeate more and more organizations that that wasn't a latent skill set, right. And now it's just a new toolkit to use to do that. But there's a ton of organizations that data science is not something they consider a core competency. I'm curious to see whether companies add that to their core competency, in-house skill set, or does the market emerge to partner with data science companies and have them be, I guess, like, model builders on demand to help point at very specific, problems to solve in their various organizations.

Mike Kelley: it's interesting you bring it up all like that because one of the reasons the partner that I chose for our organization when it comes to the AI is data scientists on demand. Okay. To help us with those models, to give us some of that feedback. And I'm trying to bring up one of the juniors and have them bring what they've recently gotten from college education, from their masters in that realm into the organization to because we're so used to operational decisions from the data on the ground versus that predictive. And I know in the transportation industry, predictive stuff has been we've been talking about it for decades, but I think we're now on the edge of being able to see some of that really happen.

Nick Feczko: Yeah, so I agree.

Mike Kelley: you touched on it. You started with some of this predictive or prescriptive. what do you think we'll be talking about in eighteen months that we're not talking about today?

Nick Feczko: Yeah. it feels hard to predict, right? Because I don't know that I could have predicted, I think the speed at which these some of these things are changing. it feels almost overwhelming at times. part of me wonders if we don't see something of a slowdown in a reset. Right. I see some of our software providers are now able to make changes so fast that it names are changing. Right. What was that license. What's that product? Oh it's this now it's the change. The pace of change. I just wonder if, humans can keep up with that pace of change on some of these things that the things that get surfaced to users, right? Can we not keep up with that? I think that is something to keep an eye on as to some people start to maybe slow down to stay at the pace of what humans can accept as change. And are those companies going to be better, poised to succeed because they're meeting, people where it's at? And then I also think there's a reset coming with, kind of what AI is used for in a company. I think it's a real litmus test that it's almost like a mirror, right? If you go in looking to cut people, to cut costs, you'll probably find opportunities to do that. But if you look at it as a way to augment your human workforce, right? We're looking at really innovative ways to help our bench chemists, right in the labs be more effective with their experiments. That if you look at it, that I think that A, it reveals your culture, right? What did you go in trying to improve? But B, I also think there's a way to that. We've glossed past the let's help a human being be more effective. And I think there will be a lot more focus over the next eighteen months on how do we get back to making people more effective than trying to replace them overall. So maybe I'm an optimist in that regard, but that's what I'm hoping to see.

Mike Kelley: I see both camps and there are definitely cultures in both camps. So it's an interesting thing to see watch and yeah, I'm reminded of that. I believe it's a military chain. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. And I think we're going to see more of that. I think you're right. And I think some of that's going to come with, people are talking about the AI bubble already, right? but there's so many things and yeah, it's such a growth curve compared to, or a change curve that is happening so fast compared to anything else I've ever seen. I remember having a dial phone numbers with the rotary dial on the phone on the wall. And we've got these Cray level computer in our pockets now. Yeah. So it's an amazing change. But that took decades, not three years.

Nick Feczko: Yeah. It's you. Yeah. It makes me wonder how sustainable some of it is, but I do think there's a hype portion of it that will be kind of pushed and realized and the truth will bear out there. But then to your point, there is still so much that any company can use to improve themselves. There feels like there's no end to that. It's just how do you do it in a real and meaningful way versus get falling into the hype trap. So.

Mike Kelley: Oh, well, thank you so much for your time today, Nick. it's been great to have this conversation and, I hope you engage with us and with your peers at the You've Been Heard community because there's a lot of us out there that, and, there's lots of great questions and topics that we've brought up. So, all of those that are listening, please make sure to give us a like and a thumbs up or whatever the stars, the reviews, wherever you're getting your podcasts from and come check us out at youvebeenheard.com. So thank you very much. Thanks again Nick. Thank you.