420- Lead How Technology Gets Leveraged w/Bart Waress

00:00:09 Mike Kelley: Well, welcome to another episode of, You've Been Heard. Today we've got Bart Waress, and Bart is a finalist for the twenty twenty five Webby Awards. Bart.

00:00:22 Bart Waress: so last year's award finalist.

00:00:24 Mike Kelley: Yeah. Okay. All right.

00:00:26 Bart Waress: Yep.

00:00:27 Mike Kelley: So, welcome to the podcast. we appreciate the experience that you're bringing to us. and do me a favor and tell us a little about you.

00:00:36 Bart Waress: yeah. Bart Waress been in it for probably longer than I want to admit, but, at least before windows, so. Thirty.

00:00:43 Mike Kelley: I got some grade two, man.

00:00:44 Bart Waress: Yeah, I used to have really long hair. No, I just, yeah, just, been just plugging away at it. Just trying to make a living and, raising, raising kids who are all adults now and doing their thing. and, so it's been an interesting trajectory. and so living a little vicariously through them and being young and seeing the world. But, been fortunate to be in the Denver area for all of my career as well. So got to be home a great deal. and pick and choose on the road and, yeah, and just grew up in a family of blue collar, dad had a construction company, asphalt and oil fields. And, the last thing on my mind was ever touching a computer, to it's a career. So, I think we've seen a lot of things happen during those couple decades. So

00:01:31 Mike Kelley: and, of course did a little bit of the stalking ahead of the ahead of things. and you've been in multiple industries, like myself, I've been primarily transportation for my twenty five plus years. But, but tell us a little about all of the different industries that you've touched.

00:01:47 Bart Waress: Oh, yeah. It was funny, my first touch of a computer was actually the Cray supercomputer. at Marathon Oil here in Colorado had a data center, pivoted into healthcare. So worked in data centers in healthcare, all the way up from the former mainframe vax to Unix to windows and NT and then got a chance to move into telecom. And of course, that was hot before the turn of the century. the US West quest, days of, rapid ascension into the, before the dot com bubble burst. So, then I c g communications and, going from everything from the background up to the forefront, rolling out windows and, going from vax administration and late nights printing documents and changing power packs to, front end of, shoot dial up modem creations and, then got an opportunity to move from there actually into kind of a finance group, which was home warranty company. so one of the largest home warranty companies, so moved from telecom into that. then got an offer to go into banking and got to learn cyber security and banking industry. and then lo and behold, they had that little bubble there, that burst when, undercapitalization happened. So the bank was seized and sold, by the FDIC. And so work through that transition and said, yeah, I think I've had my fill of banking. put my name back.

00:03:10 Mike Kelley: Why would that experience ruin you on that?

00:03:12 Bart Waress: Yeah, nothing like a few federal, sitting there with m16s telling you to shut down every system in the bank. that's always an interesting, story.

00:03:19 Mike Kelley: That's a heck of a day.

00:03:21 Bart Waress: that's a day. That was a Friday. when you watch those changes and you watch how businesses impact and people are impacted, and then you help transition a bank to the big bank that bought them. And so, that was good experience and then found myself interviewing, at oil and gas. And what was entertaining was that the recruiter was the first recruiter was like, yeah, you don't have any oil field experience. And I'm like, okay, I worked at Marathon Cray Supercomputer for three years, but I also worked in oil field. my father had a reclaiming, organization. We would do heavy equipment. And so I've actually worked in oil fields. So I just chased out another recruiter and said, could you put my name across? And they did. And lo and behold, I got the interview. the CFOs know, kind of around, especially in a town, know each other. and so going back to the telecom, they knew each other some. And so they could ask about me a little bit and they said, yeah, he's all right. so next thing I'm in oil and gas, right. and then, there's some interesting challenges that occur there, interesting learnings, and then moved over to another oil company for about six years, upstream oil and gas, which is the exploration, which I love. I get to go out in the field, sit in the truck, talk about what the teams are doing, how they're leveraging technology today, what we could be doing with it, just to improve how they go to work every day, right? Whether that means remote access to stuff. so they don't have to drive forty miles out to an oil field and touch something, to having visibility to the whole field at one time. and then, oil kind of went on. it's a commodity. It went on a seaside, kind of went on a seafaring thing and it went down to about twenty dollars a barrel. And that oil company kind of went a little nuclear and let a lot of people go. my wife and I actually, had an opportunity to take on, what we call pre fostering and foster some kiddos. So I took a little break. Finally, after about all those years, we took a little break, took in some kids during Covid. loved it. and then, at some point in time you go, savings was kind of draining. I might want to get back to work. fortunate to get in with Greybull, which, is an interesting, it used to be a van line and moving and then, for a year they're doing, kind of helping HR people, move people across the globe. And so that was really great business, great leadership there. and then got a chance to go into mining, in mining very much like oil and gas. So I moved into global gold mining, which is fascinating business fun. and then, left there for a data center opportunity. and then got to join vantage, which, as is one super fast growing high hyper scaling growth. and then left there and joined liberty back to oil and gas again. but on their power, new power division. So, everything's an opportunity just paying the bills, I guess is the biggest way to say it, but, I love a great opportunity, love a great story. and I love somebody that's looking for a little bit of help in it. And all these folks kind of had raised their hands saying, we need to change a little bit, each one a different story, but good stuff.

00:06:15 Mike Kelley: So what were there any commonalities amongst all of this besides the we need some help. We need to change things up. which ways did you change things up? what was the fundamental or was it a different approach at every one? Was it.

00:06:30 Bart Waress: I think it's still the same approach. you go in a little eyes wide open, a lot of interrogation of what is the business doing today? What could they be doing? What do they want to be doing? And those don't match up usually. and then you know, what, what is the direction they're trying to head and where is kind of their sticky points where have they not gotten to. That's where the changes really occur. you know what, what's believed at the higher level is not necessarily in alignment with the folks that are doing it day in, day out. The friction points a little bit different. so I love having those coffee conversations and other conversations, but it is the same, right? At the end of the day, you're measuring how well am I organized? so you quickly look at, is there a tier one organization, tier two, tier three, across all responsibility levels, whether that's desktop server network infrastructure applications. Just take a look at how are we approaching that? How fundamentally are we aligned as an organization, as a team? because what you'll normally find is over time, certain people bubble up to be in charge and other people just kind of follow along just to keep their jobs or just to be part of the team or just to survive sometimes. and that's actually, when you start talking about teams, that's pretty sad, right? you have a lot of skills that are just sitting on the sidelines and people have been put into these kind of sleeves of just operate within this vertical and that's it. and that's not why we became technology. We became technologists because we love the technology. Do we have fundamentally, things that we're better at? Absolutely. but doesn't mean we don't understand, what else occurs.

00:08:44 Mike Kelley: How do you discover those sidelined capabilities? How do you dig those out of people?

00:08:50 Bart Waress: Well, I've been fortunate because of all the industries to touch a lot of stuff. Right. and so in a lot of ways, I've done a lot of the jobs on my way up the, organizational ladder. but it's just asking those questions. Some of it's just looking at the data, I'll look at the tickets and look at the trends on tickets. So I'm not a big ticket counter. Like I'm not looking at necessarily numbers other than a volume level.

00:09:11 Mike Kelley: Yeah.

00:09:11 Bart Waress: But yeah, you look at the volumetrics, but you're also looking at where are they occurring? What organizations engaged? if the network engineers are engaged at the, people's ability to access the, the Wi-Fi, then we fundamentally have a floor, we're engaging at too high a level. So a lot of that is who's engaging and why. and it seems to go back to the same people and then it's starting to have a conversation with the leaders, supervisors and other leaders in the organization say, tell me about their skills. I'll get to know people. Right. Where did you come from? What did you do before a little bit? and then you look for, people that still are trying to have the right attitude, best attitude. I mean, it's hard coming in every day. I kind of equate it to if your parking spot changed every day you came into the same office, you come in a little grumpy, right? Well, that's kind of it. Your roles been kind of aligned for you. some people can get grumpy, so you visit with them outside of that, find out what makes them tick. and you'll find out predominantly, the vast majority of people just want to come in and add some value, right? and so it's a little harder, like advantage when you got one hundred and seven people across the globe, maybe a little tougher to do. but if you have a team like the oil company, which was great, you're talking twelve or sixteen folks and some outsourced managed services partners, it's a lot easier. You can build a lot more real quick.

00:10:30 Mike Kelley: I was going to ask how small was the smallest team and how large was the largest team that you had?

00:10:36 Bart Waress: Yeah, the smallest was about sixteen. Largest was not including contractors.

00:10:40 Mike Kelley: Six or sixteen.

00:10:42 Bart Waress: Sixteen. Okay. now we had, a lot of partners that we leveraged for things, socks and stuff like that.

00:10:48 Mike Kelley: You have to.

00:10:49 Bart Waress: Yeah. And in about every stop, the In cybersecurity organization reported to me as well. So it wasn't just it. and so everything but vantage and now here at liberty does not, did not report to me and does not report to me, but everywhere else, it ended up or started off reporting to me as well. so a lot of that is, and then I do a functional design on an org real quick. It's pretty straightforward. I mean, it's not something we and it don't know. We know what a tier one tier two, two three support organization looks like. We look at an engineering side of that of how we're moving things forward. and then start to measure what differentiators does this team have compared to other teams I've had. some of them might have a lot of capabilities on the development side, or they might have a lot of horsepower on the infrastructure side. and then as you, part of the interview process, but part of my interrogation of other leaders, which means just sitting down, having coffee with them and asking them questions, is learning, how we got here because that matters, right? Where we think that is. I'm always afraid to say, what do you think of it? Right. Because you always get the. Well, Mary's great, but Bob's kind of a, whatever. Right. that's not what.

00:12:04 Mike Kelley: That's not it.

00:12:05 Bart Waress: I need upfront. I've had that happen before, Well, Bart, now that you're on, here's a stack of, folks that work got, work actions against them and trying to improve them. I'm like, thank you. And I usually shove it in a drawer and say, I'll figure it out. Because what you find out is, some of the most frustrated people are actually the ones that have the most talent, right? and they're just trying to add some value. So the next is start to create opportunities for success. So we've measured all that about three months in and then you say, here's some windows. Let's see if people, how they react and how they lean into it. Some will get offended, like, hey, it looks like we have some network bottlenecking here. As I look at the documentation around the network or, boy, it looks like we're just taking every request into the development organization. How are we funneling that and prioritizing requests instead of doing, work for friends? some people will get hurt by that and others will be like, oh, finally. Okay. Yeah, we want an organization. We wanted to get to the next level. and people rise up, right. And some people have already been burned enough. And, sometimes it's healthy to have a change. It's okay to leave an organization, and carry on. not what I try to do. I've been fortunate in my career not to have to enforce change. I think when you give people an opportunity, some of them are like, I like a lot slower organization or I like, you know, I like to do a lot more just random development. Oh. Got it. Great. How can I help? Right.

00:13:28 Mike Kelley: So yeah.

00:13:29 Bart Waress: Yeah, that's kind of how I look at organizations. don't get me wrong, there's a little more secret to the sauce there. but you kind of gotta, gotta be in it a little bit. and again, I'm fortunate to be working with kind of the leaders of a company. and they do have a very broad approach to what they think is successful in that does not mean they're correct, but it does mean they have an opinion on it. Right. But you can start there, and then then we can talk about it. I've always said there's an intimacy that goes on with the language. We can talk about, bits and bobs or networks and servers. And that's great. And you could probably be more technically correct than I can be. But the intimacy of a company's language and intimacy of what you understand is different. I use the example like, if I say the word dog, you're like, yeah, I know a dog. But because you and I haven't talked, I have no idea what just popped in your head. But we know it's a dog. I mean, I hope it's a dog. I mean, we just, but, you might be this massive, Rottweiler and I might be thinking of a dachshund, and those are two distinctly different capabilities, right?

00:14:32 Mike Kelley: Yeah, for sure.

00:14:33 Bart Waress: but still at the top of a business line is a dog, right? so it's trying to get below that level in a business as quickly as possible. so then when we talk, I'm talking your language more than you're having to talk mine. because I get more truth that way. Right.

00:14:52 Mike Kelley: Did you run into any challenges as you went from industry to industry or back and forth between them? and with exactly that kind of nomenclature, going from the ducks into the Rottweiler.

00:15:06 Bart Waress: Yeah, it's a great question because, in traditional telecom and in healthcare, there is no OTT environment, right. and so that was a surprise. And that was, I could see where the recruiter was like, you don't know oil and gas, but OT environment is just another level down another other network.

00:15:27 Mike Kelley: So I would expect that healthcare had some OT. It may not be classified as the traditional OT, but all of the network, very specific types of machines that that are producing information with all their own sensors, they're all their own systems. I would think that they kind of fall into the OT, or at least you handle them like the OT.

00:15:50 Bart Waress: Yeah. You look at like a radiology department. right. Or an e.R. You definitely segmented that on a network distinctly, but we never called it OT. We just were very careful to create another gap, right air gap into those organizations because of the protective nature. So there's, you had to get your mind around. An ODT is basically what I was doing, but just a different nomenclature and a little different approach. Yeah. but when they brought it up, you're like, okay, I know operations tech not, but that gapping of it. we're a field like in mining, in Turkey, that field is so remote anyways, but you also want that operational organization, like even in the air, will they be able to stand alone if there's other challenges to the rest of the enterprise network or enterprise organization. So these sites can stand alone oil field site versus a mining site versus a data center can operate without access to the corporate network. so yeah, I think the transition was pretty quick, but it was still like, oh, so and for me, it's fly out there, get in a truck ride along. And having grown up working, that blue collar and in the oil fields with boots on, it was easy to sit in a truck and ask people about it. I'd learned that in telecom when, this was before Comcast had purchased AT&T broadband. We were rolling out Mdus, which is the multiple dwelling units on the sides of, apartments. And, we're building the network to support multiple homes accessing. Right. AT&T at that time. Now Comcast, offerings, whether that's internet video or whatever it was. just did a ride along with on a truck in downtown Chicago figuring out how does this tech do their job? Because we had to support their ability to show up at a house or an apartment and actually have something show up where they could plug the customer into getting, what they bought. Right. so there's a lot of takeaways just had to change mentally how you pictured it, right?

00:17:50 Mike Kelley: Yeah. it makes me curious about the overall security view that you got by being in all of those different environments, your thoughts and your experience around, security has to be fairly broad also.

00:18:07 Bart Waress: Yeah. Sometimes too broad. I gotta narrow it pretty quickly for some organizations. also, I think, I take a little different approach. a lot of folks, especially in the security leadership wise and security are very quick to point out all the risks. but they don't correlate them to the actual business definition of that risk, how leaders think about it. because how banking thinks about risk is different than how mining is going to think about risk to the business. they all have the same, again, same vernacular, but it's the layers underneath that help drive it. I'm also a big proponent of pushing that risk back to the business to define it better and better. for us, because then.

00:18:45 Mike Kelley: It's always a challenge.

00:18:46 Bart Waress: That's a challenge because I just want you to go just do it and tell me I'm okay. And it's like, I can't tell you you're okay. I can tell you my level of, I think success on battling the risk. You need to tell me if you think that's the right level or not and how we gauge that.

00:19:04 Mike Kelley: Yeah. Because the, ultimately the ones holding the checkbook are going to help set those levels. Absolutely. and that's one of the things that we've got to be good at presenting is talking to them about, okay, here's the level of risk we should be here. We're here. And, you're investing here.

00:19:22 Bart Waress: So and there's not a lot of trust because of most times I've come in, it's been, well, I'm beating you over the head with, do you understand you're going to lose everything. Right. and it's like, okay, we can take it, out of one out of five, I can take it all the way up to five. And I've always said, you know, if you had bonus me, if there wouldn't be a breach in a year, I'd lock your copy down so tight you'd never get business done. But I'd get my bonus. Right? Yeah. So somewhere in there, there's probably a good balancing point of you want to operate and you want to be secure. it's more art form because at the end of the day, we're technologists, we solution. And there are a lot of different solutions. and I can tell you that knew no two companies were exactly the same. I didn't bring any the exact same solutions. Some of them, I'm fortunate that I inherited some that were already good and we just took them to the next level. Other places I've come in and it was like, wow, you've got six of the same thing. Okay, hold on here. let's save a little money. let's do a little pivoting. so no two look alike, but from a high level, if you were to draw the picture, it was behaving the same. It was acting the same. It was doing the same things. and, a lot of it is just getting people in those positions to have visibility to it, access to it, and have influence over it. Because the nice thing is if you paint the picture appropriately, people will fill in the blanks. So if you kind of give the background of like a lake and a mountain and some trees and you're like, go color it, people are going to bring some amazing color to it. Right. And the funny thing is, I'm not a super detail oriented individual. I care about the details. I care that they're fleshed out and people are giving me those. I let the team give me those details and populate them. We may pivot some of those to go, hey, probably a tree right in the middle of lake is probably not a good idea here. Let's go ahead and erase that one and move it. Move it over here. or maybe that's great. I mean, that's so cool. I hadn't thought of that. Right. That's that's awesome. A little island. Let's put a little island there. so I think that's where the team concept really comes in because I think, you kind of pinged before some questions And, one of the things I like is, if you want to move fast, you move alone, right? But if you want to be good, you want to move as a team. And I would rather be good than fast the first three months. I'm moving fast for my sanity. Right? Right. But also for the opportunity to talk to the team so they understand what I'm seeing. The business need is, and I can speak to it in a language that the business would understand and the IT organization would be able to absorb in, and understand how people view it. It's okay to be honest to say, I've gone into an organization where the end user experience is being told by everybody in their neighbor to me is atrocious. And what you find out is, yeah, you have some problems getting laptops out the door and maybe we're not logging in as an end user first. So there's a wait. but all in all, it's actually pretty good. And so, people are a little hurt. Like we're doing a good job. I'm like, I'm just telling you what the noise is. Let's go ahead and bubble up that data because we never defended it, right? We never gave that, so, people understand data, they understand numbers. And so let's populate that. Let's get that out there. Let's get the story out. And if it's not good, then great. We'll pivot. if it's good then let's make it great.

00:22:44 Mike Kelley: I was talking with somebody recently and they were talking about, some of it's that having that hard truth. I'm talking to people about those metrics because nobody has addressed them. So they haven't even heard that the audience feels that way. They, they're doing the job the best that they know how, but they never got that feedback.

00:23:06 Bart Waress: Well, and they've never had a chance to take that feedback and, and, and get it not emotionally right. Uh, because, because, you know, I mean, it's always doing the bad news. The good news is nothing happened today. Nobody's like, that's great. Nothing happened today but high five, you know. I mean, that doesn't happen, right? You don't get a pat on the back. Um, because, you know, I compare it because.

00:23:27 Mike Kelley: Business got to focus on business and they weren't thinking about the technology because everything worked great.

00:23:32 Bart Waress: Yeah. You don't come in and go, oh my gosh, they emptied my trash can. It just you just get it right. Um, yeah, it's the same thing for us. And, you know, we're a service group. Um, you know, first and foremost, a lot of other things. Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to stop just there. Right. But if we lead with service and then we do it not emotionally, which is around the information and the data and the ability to measure it. Um, yeah. And you know, then then you take it out of it, you know, hey, it's, it's all my fault that we're bad at this. No it's not, you know, Mike's just doing the job he's been told. And so I'm not going to cast that aspersion to him. I'm going to say, look, this is our target. This is our info. Let's go get there. And that gives Mike the opportunity to kind of go, oh, well, if that's the case, then I'm going to change this and I'm going to do that, you know what? Before I wasn't allowed to. Or maybe I didn't want to, but I. I don't deal with the past. The past has occurred. Right.

00:24:26 Mike Kelley: So speaking of the past, a little bit have and all of these different organizations that you've joined and helped change and, and, um, enhance, um, what were, what were some of the most radical shifts that you had to go through? What were, were there any of them that sit with you? Um, yeah.

00:24:50 Bart Waress: Everyone has a little story because I think, you know, when you really look at everything, there's some really big gaps because, you know, people get their kind of blinders on. Um, but, you know, I was really proud of the work, uh, at discovery that we did. And I got a chance to work really closely, um, with a couple leaders, but mostly, uh, the CEO there. Um, and, you know, they were, it's an oil company. They've folks have been doing this for a long time. A lot of us had gray hairs. Um, they're, they're skater group was a little aged. Um, meaning they like to do it just their way. And it was hold a thumb up and figure out which way the wind was blowing. And, and we were starting to introduce other ways to get that information that we needed. And so the example was that I rode along with a pumper. And a pumper just has a big volume truck for fluids. Um, and there's a lot of different fluids that, that come out of the ground, right? Natural gas, oil, water, chemicals, stuff like that. And so each of these tanks have fluids and they would literally literally get out at each site along the routes that they had. And, you know, when you're dealing with hundreds of wells, there's a lot of these tanks. And they would climb up the stairs to the top of the tank and drop a string down, and it had a weight and they'd find out how much fluid is because, you know, is it worth, you know, taking a pretty empty tank and trying to put a little bit in? Or would I go to a more full tank? They would do that every day, twenty four by seven, touching everything. And, and, um, you know, and going back and researching it, we could put a float in and, and we were already, I was fortunate to take advantage of a field network that was already, although in kind of an infancy was already there. They just weren't leveraging it to a capability because nobody had asked them to. And so I was able to partner with that field network and field leadership. And we put floats on all these. And we we ran the SCADA system, getting all those readings for two months next to the people that were measuring it by a string. And we're able to show the leadership of that organization. Like, I can be more efficient, and you don't have to get people out of the truck. Right. And oh, by the way, we're putting technology in, looking at those trucks. And then now we can ride them only to the tanks that need right. Some, some, some loved ones that were getting close to full because they fill up faster because other areas would fill up slow. And so you take a look and this isn't done overnight. This is a year, something worth of work. And it just changed the way people operate. And the other thing they were doing is they were writing down these volumes too. So they're tracking them, but they'd go back to the office at the end of the day, get out of the truck, sit behind a desktop and gotta remember, there's over forty of these trucks running around at one time and two desktops. So people are lining up at the end of the day typing in their information. Um, and so just frustrating. Yeah. Frustrating because, you know, you might, if you got in too late, you're behind five or six people that could be. And again, these aren't the fastest typers in the world. Not that I am either. Right? You know, these aren't.

00:27:57 Mike Kelley: Folks climbing the ladder and dropping the string.

00:27:59 Bart Waress: And they're looking at their paper going, is that a five or a six or.

00:28:03 Mike Kelley: Was it when I.

00:28:04 Bart Waress: Yeah, yeah. Um, and so now spending another hour doing that instead of driving home. And so sometimes the office out of the field is the wrong direction from home. So all these things we take a look at, and I was proud to take a look at the go. You know, we changed the way they operate and and why am I proud? Because the solution wasn't hard. But it did. It did set us up for other things because people came forward going, you know what? We could do better. We could put laptops in those trucks. I could do that for you. Like, oh really? Let's try that. Why not? Let's go. Right. People were coming and solutioning and it wasn't it only it was others that were getting excited going, wow, we could, you know, and you get the answer like, I'm getting home at six p m now. Mark, can you imagine that? I'm getting home at six?

00:28:47 Mike Kelley: Yeah. When I used to get home at eight and the last two hours were spent, or at least.

00:28:51 Bart Waress: I'm having.

00:28:52 Mike Kelley: Dinner with my.

00:28:52 Bart Waress: Wife and kids. Right? This is this is where it wins and you get to see it. And then because of that, then they're like, hey, Bart, why don't you manage this group for a while? Bring in a couple of, of, of new folks in this one. Let's get some new energy in there. And then I handed it back to operations after that time and energy. So it taught me to to deal with a lot of other types of groups and, and change the way I lead, um, as well. So, you know, it's things like that. I could go across a couple companies, but that's where the energy gets created, where technology is part of the solution, not the solution given to them. Um, yeah. You know, and so there's a different ownership that occurs when that ownership occurs. Um, and this is what the CEO lead by because he's like, I don't know how to tell if you're doing it. He's just being honest. And we actually grew up in a small town in Ohio near each other. Uh, he was a little, a little bit older, but he's like, look, how do I know you're doing a good job? I said, I think it's, I mean, I could give you all the data about helpdesk tickets and all that stuff. You could care less. Right? Right. Yeah. But you know, when all your leaders that report to you and I are sitting in a room and they're talking about projects that, you know, I'm working on, that's winning. If I have to talk about the project, that's begging.

00:30:09 Mike Kelley: Yeah. But when the when the rest of your peers are talking about all of the projects and.

00:30:14 Bart Waress: CEO, CFO are talking about this, then I'm just part of the team. Yeah, I'm doing doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Right.

00:30:21 Mike Kelley: Right.

00:30:22 Bart Waress: Yeah. So and he's like, okay. Yeah. And so, you know, you get that little smile when, you know, CEO is talking about all these things we're redoing in the field network and all that. And he's like, yeah, okay, I got you. Yeah.

00:30:37 Mike Kelley: Yeah. Um, I it, it hit my mind like three times and then it keeps just trying to disappear. Um.

00:30:45 Bart Waress: I hate that.

00:30:46 Mike Kelley: Yeah. Me too. It comes with the gray. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so has your, has, you've been automating things through the different industries, you know, talk to me some about those experiences and about, you know, because it's kind of like what, what you're talking about with the floats to me, I see that as some of that automation and had definitely revolutionary to that that organization because now, you know, instead of guessing and hitting forty wells or forty tanks across multiple locations, they're just going and doing the work that needs to be done.

00:31:25 Bart Waress: Um, yeah, when you talk about a trucks truck drivers turnover rate, because I could go down the street because there's one hundred other upstream oil companies and get five dollars more. We had a seventy percent turnover rate, but we were also able to move down to twenty five trucks from forty after two years. So that's a two and a half million dollar operational savings, right? Yeah.

00:31:47 Mike Kelley: Yeah. Huge. Yeah. And and definitely something that, that. So yeah.

00:31:54 Bart Waress: So yeah.

00:31:55 Mike Kelley: The amount of people doing it and, and how upset was the business? How upset were the people?

00:32:01 Bart Waress: Well, they weren't because we just weren't replacing them. Everyone, we just were able to add, you know, we were able to redefine it and we were losing them so fast at that time because, you know, oil was so high priced at that time. Um, it was a really high turnover rate. Um, and then you're decommissioning trucks and then, you know, the conversation started happening. Well, why are we even doing water hauling? Couldn't we source that? Well, we can now because we know how much fluid is in there. So it's not by every, you know, because you can pay by the truck or you can pay by the hours or whatever. Now we can pay by the volume because not everybody fills their tank up one hundred percent. Right. But now we can put, you know, and again, this wasn't me thinking of this, but you know, that group going, well, we can put meters on these things and we can engage, you know, we can give them, you know, ways. Again, from a security standpoint, we can more securely tie this into our truck, taking that fluid, not somebody else's truck backing up and hooking a hose up. Right. Stuff like that. But to your point about automation premium.

00:33:04 Mike Kelley: Yeah. Go ahead. On the automation.

00:33:05 Bart Waress: I'm just gonna say the automation is again, just like it. It's just the the ability to see what the organization is doing and where opportunities exist. You know, you can call it machine learning on some things. You can call it the use of AI on other things. But you know, it's funny when you bring visibility up in opportunities and you can support it with data. Again, it's unemotional, but it's also a little bit of like, yeah, there is a tree in the middle of that lake. I hadn't seen that before. Like, okay, let's move that tree. That's, it's kind of in the way it's causing friction, right? Or you know what? Let's put an engine on that boat, whatever it might be like, okay, let's talk about that. What does that mean? What's the cost associated with that? Why are you doing this? Um, and then I become a partner, uh, which is a great, great place to be, right? Because the worst one is you stand on the table in a room and go, you need to be on this system and you need to be on it tomorrow. They'll do it if, if somebody agrees to it because the cost makes sense, but doesn't mean they like it. And most of the time it's just assumed it never you never get full value out of it.

00:34:12 Mike Kelley: Yeah, no, the sales person was really good at their job. They were really good. And they convinced them that that's that was the magic bean. Yeah. Um, and then we just end up having to implement. Yeah. And then, and then take ownership for how well it goes off. Yeah. Yeah. When, when we weren't part of it. Um, what did you earlier on in your career, what did you find as the way to, to become heard? Because obviously you've been heard obviously. Well, actually, you know, I and, and I've been playing with this inside of my mind, um, I've picked up on you definitely listen. And, and I think that that's a huge, um, personal thing, at least for me and obviously for you that you go in, you listen and you're paying attention to the organization, the people, the business. But how did you transfer that, listening into proof that you knew what you were talking about to the business? You know, especially earlier in your career, what did you do to to become heard?

00:35:21 Bart Waress: Yeah, yeah. I don't know if it's just just one thing. You know, when you work in a construction organization that your dad owns, right? And then mom's run the book at the end of the day, you got to come in and, and, and you see some things that you normally don't get to see. You know, if you're just going in and, you know, you're supposed to dig a ditch or you're supposed to clear some land or, or whatever, you do that and you go home. Well, I'd go home and then my mom would be like, hey, we're pulling all this and help me with all these details. And like, you're seeing other things that are going on. So I just got accustomed to seeing what all was going on in the business. Didn't mean I knew anything about it. But but you saw it like, oh, well, oh, we're we're paying, you know, we're renting this dozer like, and, you know, that equates to, you know, she would break it down. That's fifty five dollars an hour. We're charging back to this company every time we use this dozer. And, you know, and so, you know, you started to see how the whole project started to look. So I was always curious what else was going on. You know, even, you know, my first job was taking backup tapes and degaussing them and cleaning them and the Cray supercomputers sitting over here. And it looks really, really cool, especially for somebody that's never touched a computer. And so you just be like, hey, what's that do? And you know, what are you doing? You know, and, and, you know, I'm also, you know, at that time, just, you know, um, my wife and I were just getting married at the time. And, and so you're kind of like, I need a job. I need more pay, like, you know, whatever it might be. Um, and at that time, I was actually, um, an on air personality doing, uh, is this am radio, but is doing radio and playing vinyl and, you know, you, you know, you're bored. So you're just learning about stuff, you know, and, you know, um, so I think that curiosity, um, helped, but then I found out that curiosity opened up doors. I didn't, didn't even know existed. Um, I didn't have visibility upstream to a lot of stuff because usually I was working third shift or early first shift, um, in the hospitals. I was, you know, ten p m to six a m because it paid a dollar more. Um, but then when windows came out, we were the first to put a ventilator on a windows screen. I know that first, but first for the company, um, at children's Hospital. And so we were rolling out desktops and replacing their green screens with desktops. Now you can open up still a v t emulation window to the vac system and see patient records and stuff. And now they had a desktop and the nurses could play solitaire. And, and then people were like, you gotta lock that down, take away the games. They're playing games all the time. And so you just go, okay, I'll do that. I took away the games and then the nurse is like, but you don't understand. Our jobs are stressful. Why did you take away solitaire? And then you're going, well, I need to advocate for them, right? Like they just asked me to advocate for them. So I'm going to go because I'm not afraid to talk to anybody, right? I mean, what are you going to do? Let me go. I'll go get another job. Um, and so I learned to start advocating for these nurses. And, and don't get me wrong, you'd get mad at them for putting their password underneath the keyboard. But, you know, still, you know, you're advocating. And, and what about if we had minesweeper two and, you know, and then the internet starts to come up and you're teaching and, you know, all this was new. This was a frontier, kind of like AI that didn't exist before. Right. Um, and then, yeah, a couple people poured into me and said, Bart, you know, you, you ask about what people do. You don't, you know, technology y solution. They, they don't, they're not looking for the solution. They don't they don't want you to tell them what to go do. They want to be engaged in that. At the end of the day, we are going to tell them what they're going to do. Don't get me wrong, we're going to deliver it. Um, but I, but I had a few leaders that poured into me to that, you know, because again, I, I, I went back and finished my degree years into it because people were like, you can't manage teams if you don't have a degree. Fine. I'll get one. Um, yeah, that type of stuff. But I had other leaders that said, you know, I do think this is an area that you're pretty good at. Um, because as a technologist, I was okay, right? Like I could get it done, but that's fine. Yeah. Um, the challenge for me was, well, I played two sports in college. I was fortunate to do that. And you went from being kind of the guy at a young age to all of a sudden you're just part of this team and you had to figure out if you wanted to keep playing. You figured out how to add value, right? Um, right. And you also learn to come come in there to get work done. A lot of people, this is a social setting for them. This is an extension of home or extension of family. And it is to that degree. But so at the end of the day, it is work, Right? Right. I've been hired to add value as best I can every day. And I'm measuring myself against. If I was in charge of this company and I looked at Bart, is he adding value? And so I always feel compelled with that little voice on your shoulder that says, the only way to add value is to keep looking for a place to add value. So I'm never satisfied even when we deliver that next one. You know, so there's a little bit of that manic ness that has to occur. You got to be a little bit crazy.

00:40:21 Mike Kelley: How do you how do you remind yourself to celebrate the wins? I in all honesty, I struggle with that a little bit because I, what you just said, like resonated with me and that as soon as, as soon as I've accomplished that goal, I'm looking for the next one. And in doing that, I have a tendency to blaze right by all of the winds looking for the next win so that I can get to the next.

00:40:46 Bart Waress: I appreciate you pointing out my faults. That's really good.

00:40:48 Mike Kelley: Um.

00:40:49 Bart Waress: My fault, but we're supposed to be talking about the good stuff here, Mike. Yeah. Um, I don't know that I do that. Well, I think the teams, when you've given them space, there's others on the team that you kind of advocate. I just kind of I advocate to them. I just kind of go, go for it. Right. And let me know where to show up. Let me know. Because even like you talk about some of it's just awkward for me because, you know, it's the next game, you know, in, in basketball, you know, you're going to play forty plus games, right? Uh, in football, there's another game the next week. Like you just gotta roll with it, you know? And you know, you watch like a baseball player, the pitcher, like there's the next throw. That wasn't a strike as a ball. Like I didn't pitch. But you know, you just kind of some of us have that mindset of just on to the next, on to the next. So yeah, I'd say that's probably, you know, one of my, um, weaker points in leadership is, is celebrating it does not mean I don't appreciate people. Um.

00:41:42 Mike Kelley: To me, you found the solution though, right? And, and it's one that I'm leaning into currently, you know, you find the team member who does recognize that and empower them and, you know, enable them to do that, to call out the wind to recognize those things.

00:41:59 Bart Waress: Yeah. Because everything's just another step up the mountain, right. So, you know, some of them are a little more painful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Well, yeah. Thanks again though, for pointing weakness. It's all good.

00:42:12 Mike Kelley: That wasn't the goal.

00:42:14 Bart Waress: That's supposed to be perfect, man. Come on. So.

00:42:17 Mike Kelley: Oh, well. Oh. I'm sorry.

00:42:19 Bart Waress: That's right. You know. Yeah.

00:42:23 Mike Kelley: Yeah. And and actually, you hit on where I was trying to lead, um, with the automation question because because there's so much request today for, um, the AI, the agentic. And, and really it's just another name for automation. Um, and it's, you know, I think it's a, a revolution and it is changing the way that we can automate things and how many things we can automate and how quickly we can do it. Um, any, any feedback, any thoughts around, around this revolution and, and this change because I mean, you talked about bringing internet in and, and a lot of the leadership around me has been talking about, hey, you know, we equate this to what it was like when the internet showed up. Um.

00:43:13 Bart Waress: Well, I remember, you know, the modem pool used to be you had, you know, a big box on the wall that had twenty and different numbers.

00:43:22 Mike Kelley: Modem pools, Cray computer. I'm wondering how many of our listeners are going, what the hell are these guys talking about?

00:43:30 Bart Waress: Uh, you know, you would call a number to get to the internet, right? You'd call.

00:43:35 Mike Kelley: I know, I know what the modem pool was.

00:43:37 Bart Waress: Yeah. So you had twenty numbers and you'd go down and you found an open one, and you'd keep calling that number. And people were like, this is stupid. And you're like, this is stupid. And so you then you put a box in front of that that went ahead and automatically found the next available, basically port, right. But next available modem, right. And that was that was automation. That's amazing. You know, where I see AI is doing that. Plus being able to interpret who's doing what. Speed up that process. Take a look at what they've done. Traditionally get it started for them. Um, you know, it's kind of like the move from Netscape to Google where before you had to know the, the internet address. And then next thing you know, you can type it, you know, you can type white House in, it would give you a list of which sites there were. Yeah. So it is a next level. And I know that's going to be offensive to some people because there, there are great usages of that. But when you talk about automation, it's the ability to, to de friction, something that has friction by nature. Um, and so the friction might be good because it might be a checkpoint, like we want an audit there or we want a measurement there. Now AI does that. We don't have to, we don't have to insert right, Mike or Mary into that process or the handover to another system that does that, you can really make that a lot less. So there's absolutely no friction, but there's still ability to see the data and to see the movement. You know, I think of the ability to manage things at scale now where, you know, you take a look at onboarding, uh, of, of a lot of people and vantage had onboarded a lot of people at rapid. And so, you know, somebody that was helping in HR to onboard all these people and making sure that you had the next email out and the next document and all this stuff that's done. Now you can watch all that occur, and you have one person watching that at scale. Um, and so replacing that, you know, to me machine learning or that repetitive motion. Um, yeah, you know, if you don't know the friction points, how you're going to solve for that friction point. And that's.

00:45:37 Mike Kelley: Really cool.

00:45:38 Bart Waress: Yeah, it's cool from a chat and help me do my thing, but it's, it's removing friction for me. Now you extend that into the business. You really need to understand the business, and the business needs to interpret that for you and say, yeah, that is a friction point and I do want that solved. Um, and what does that mean when I solve that? Um, I don't think we do that well enough. So people ask about is AI an IT thing? Uh, it's a tool that it has just like machine learning, like data transport, like APIs and all this other stuff that, you know, before you had a database and a database and didn't talk. And then, you know, um, you know, we've seen all that genesis of that. So it is a next iteration and next level. Um, don't get me wrong, people are taking it to a level that's unheard of before, which is awesome because, you know, it really created a great growth opportunity. Um, I don't know. That's, that's the only next thing you know, you're asking about what's really happening in the future is I think we're going to unthread some of this AI because we kind of went too far, too wide. So I think the next one is going, okay, what are the boundaries that we need to in place? It's already happening in AI and radon.

00:46:51 Mike Kelley: I was going to ask you to make that prediction. What what do you think's going to happen in eighteen months? What are we going to be talking about in eighteen months that we're not talking about today?

00:46:59 Bart Waress: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's it's the institutionalization of AI as a commodity. Um, a lot of people are selling us on a lot of AI, and you drop it in and it does its thing by itself. That's great. Um, but as part of the, what I'd call the, the enterprise level that's coming up. And so I think there'll be some replacement of the current AI with as these, you know, companies fight to, to, to enterprise level, it'll be that enterprising of it. And then I think we can get a lot more momentum on, on quantum computing. Um, you know, I think there's going to be some, some really neat usages, as a stand up quantum computing. And you can leave some space on quantum computers. Uh, is it a game changer for every business? No, but banking and healthcare and some other things that you need to process at speed. Um, you know, I hope we get to start testing that we start to see valuable returns on, on that here in eighteen months because I hate to lose momentum.

00:48:09 Mike Kelley: Yeah, I, I would say that things have gotten to me at the very least. It's the cacophony around AI is loud and, and the stuff around quantum has just kind of it. I, I doubt that it's lost any momentum. Um, and actually, I expect AI to help it gain momentum, but it's been quiet. It's. Yeah. I haven't been hearing much through that. And maybe it's just because of the cacophony, like I was saying of AI and everything's AI, AI. Um, I, I, I find it ironic that you're talking about enterprising because I, I, internally we've been talking about enterprise levels of, of AI to versus, you know, the individual playing with it or using it to do things at the individual level. Now, how do we operationalize that and turn that into a tool that's organization wide or department wide?

00:49:07 Bart Waress: Yeah. You look at AI and it comes in boxes right now, right? It comes in a box for engineering. It comes in a box for HR, it comes in box for ticket management coming in about, I mean, there's lots of that. And then people are using it to help speed up some other stuff. But when I mean enterprising, it actually is doing something when you take a look at an organization and we didn't talk about that, you know, you look at the business value chain, you look at the business right from from how do we how does a business start? Whatever they do for a living, whether that's sales or whether that's take an order or whatever it is all the way through the life cycle to delivery. AI doesn't look at that whole chain. That's a great use of AI to go measure where there's opportunity and take some of the noise out. Insert right that, that, that, that kind of grease the skids on it of how does stuff just flow? We had a thing called flow through methodology when I was at AT&T broadband, Comcast took on that system. But you think about it when if you wanted to order internet at your house or you want to order video or whatever it might be, you call in and you go, hey, I want to, you know, order this and stuff starts happening in the background right to your house. Here's your data, here's this all the way to a truck roll to your house. Stuff has occurred. The network's been turned up. We have access. Now we just need to put that end unit on your box and speak back into the network and then go, oh, you got this is how you did telephone service in the old days, right? Yeah, I got that right. It's amazing. Like you think just running a cable to your house and you dial. That's not how it works. Um, that was that's that's frictionless. So when the truck rolled and they put that device on, they, they, they turned that device up. The customer's ready. That's a win. That's, that's, that's frictionless. Like the truck goes, hey, congratulations. Here's your, here's your modem. And we plugged it in and now you have internet or now you have phone and, and then by that happened twenty three percent of the time when I first came on board. And by the time we worked with all the organizations, it was over ninety percent of the time that they had dial tone. Not that they didn't have other issues when they were there, but they didn't have to call back to call back to other groups. And then all these other groups are scrambling in the background going, oh, you know, Mike Kelly's house is not working. That's where does he live? What's going on? You know.

00:51:21 Mike Kelley: Um, what's the disconnect? Where, where did we. Yeah.

00:51:25 Bart Waress: So, you know, when for a company is everywhere from I got a new customer or a new perspective or whatever it might be to I delivered something and I can maybe not close the books, but I can call it revenue.

00:51:38 Mike Kelley: Yeah.

00:51:39 Bart Waress: What's that flow through look like? That's where AI, I think, is once we get to that level, then, you know, you can really see where those bottlenecks are and you can impute change to it rapidly. Um, but that changes the way people look at business too. So the new new AI led technologist is looking at the business differently than, than you and I as a, oh, I'll just set a server up or I'll, you know, I'll just make a change to the network. That's just going to happen because you're telling it, hey, Mike has a problem. It looks like he is not this and then it will go and make those changes for us. That's the AI that would be in the future, right?

00:52:23 Mike Kelley: Yeah. I'm interviewing somebody yesterday and he was talking about how he's leveraging things to do exactly that. Oh, cool. And, and, uh, of course, that was part that wasn't shared, but, you know, it was the little side Conversation. But but what he was doing with it was pretty interesting. Really cool.

00:52:42 Bart Waress: That's right.

00:52:43 Mike Kelley: Yeah.

00:52:43 Bart Waress: We're going to lead with it soon.

00:52:45 Mike Kelley: Yeah, yeah. Really soon. Um, you got anything you want to promote? Yeah. You know the the the orbeez you got. Yeah. What else we got going.

00:52:56 Bart Waress: On about promotion. I, I was, it was a surprise. Um, because usually, you know, you, you operate in obscurity, you have small groups of, of friends, you know, I was fortunate to even in oil and gas, have coffee with some other great leaders where it's not a competition. And that's the nice thing about it is it's not a competition. You know, you might be at a competitor company, but it's not safe secrets to go, okay, what are the network challenges in OT that you're having? Oh yeah. Yeah. You know, that's okay to talk about. You know, it gives us both. So, um, anyway, you know, small groups of leaders that get together, I've been fortunate to call folks that have poured in led me as friends, and I've been fortunate to build up some friends that now lead that that weren't in leadership originally. Um, so the Orbi was a surprise. And, and at the global scale, I mean, vantage carried obviously a cachet. Um, is a lot of work, a lot of hours and a lot of travel. But, um, you know, it was great to see others and, and hear about the work they've done. And so just to be one of six finalists, um, at a scale of that is, is humbling. Um, you kind of feel like a kid let into the candy shop early a little bit. Like if they only know I'm filling my pockets, right? Like, come on man.

00:54:13 Mike Kelley: Yeah.

00:54:14 Bart Waress: You know, um, you know, so that, that yeah. Like thanks. Cool. Um, you know, you kind of like that imposter syndrome a little bit. Um, but it was also, you know, to, to my family's point, like, take it, take the win. Like it's hard to celebrate those opportunities. It's always weird because, you know, I mean, like advantage, there's one hundred people worldwide doing work, like great work, really working hard every day, showing up, getting stuff done. And you're like, why am I, why am I sitting here? This is this is awkward. I just got to go point finger and go fix that. Clean that up. Um, but it is nice to them.

00:54:53 Mike Kelley: Yeah.

00:54:54 Bart Waress: Yeah, yeah. It's a, it's a, it was a nice recognition. It's, it's, um, it's just, I'll just tell you it's just awkward, but it's neat. Right? Um, to stand there, it's an excuse to get dressed up and see some people. You don't really don't get to see. Um, well, I'm thankful for, I'm thankful for that recognition. Um, and, uh, yeah, thank you, like, for the questions that you ask. And, and I get to share what the teams have done at other places that I got to be part of. Um, and I got to influence, I get that, but you know, you know, the, the nice thing is I think you said, you know, trying to listen well, trying to give people an opportunity just to, to be contrarian a little bit, Um, you know, and never take yourself as the, the, the leader of technology, but the one that's leading how we're leveraging technology because, you know, I get to see a lot more than others get to see. And the better I get to show them that, the better our decisions are. Um, and I look back at some of the places I've been, and there's people that have stepped into those leadership roles that are just phenomenal. Taking it to a level. I'm like, dang, I wish I thought of that. Like, okay, cool, you know, but it's all good.

00:56:02 Mike Kelley: Know the know those feelings, know that experience. And, and yeah, it's, it's great to get to know the peers and, and to grow that community and, and yes, to definitely just be one of the ones helping make it happen. And, and I loved what you said just a moment ago of, of how, uh, being the one that helped lead how we leverage technology, not lead and say, this is the technology.

00:56:30 Bart Waress: Yeah, yeah. That because unfortunately probably haven't made that mistake coming out with the answer too early. You get embarrassed real fast, right? You get humbled.

00:56:41 Mike Kelley: Yeah. Uh, yep. Done that too.

00:56:44 Bart Waress: Yeah. Like, oh, well, I meant to say was.

00:56:48 Mike Kelley: Uh.

00:56:48 Bart Waress: Yeah, that boy is not the answer. You know, we probably should do this IP thing, right? So yeah. You bet. Yeah.

00:56:54 Mike Kelley: Well, truly appreciate the time and the experience part. Thank you for sharing that with us and, and letting us know about your journey and your world.

00:57:01 Bart Waress: I appreciate the invite. And, uh, you know, again, surprising, like, how did you hear about me? That's weird. There's so many of us that are doing stuff like, where do you find that? Yeah, but yeah, thank you.

00:57:13 Mike Kelley: Yeah. No worries. Thank you sir. And, and those of you that have been listening, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please make sure to drop us a like and, and to let us know what you thought of the, the podcast, wherever you're harvesting it from. So thanks again and, and everybody you've been heard.