432- AI Should Not Speed Up Broken Work w/ Jesse Crane

Mike Kelley: All right. Well, it's great to have you with us again on You've

Been Heard, where we focus on the real world journey of IT leadership. For those

of us who already have a seat and those who are working hard to get there, we

believe in having authentic discussions about the challenges and growth required

to lead modern organizations. Jesse, thank you for joining us today and for

sharing your hard earned truths with the youvebeenheard.com community.

Jesse Crane: Well, thank you Mike. I'm really glad to be here.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. And today we've got Jesse Crane with more than twenty years

experience navigating complex enterprise environments. A compelling aspect of

Jesse's leadership philosophy right now is how he approaches the fast moving

world of AI. Your recent insights highlight a critical perspective evaluating

the data privacy, setting firm corporate guardrails, and understanding the

infrastructure required for localized AI processing power. Jesse, you've managed

the transition from building technical frameworks to driving corporate culture

flawlessly. I'd love to hear how you did it. Can you kick things off by

introducing yourself and sharing your path to the executive table?

Jesse Crane: Thanks, Mike. I know if anything's flawless in a world of it. yeah,

I actually have a little different background probably than a lot of folks that

came over. beginning of my career, I started in finance and accounting and, in

about five or six years in my career, I was financial controller of the

Indianapolis International Airport. So I was there for Y2K, which was kind of a

cool place to be. When you hear all these rumors that the planes are going to

fall off the sky and the power is going to go off. And just the world was going

to fall apart. And I was in the world of finance and accounting during that and

really fascinating. It really got me interested in technology at point. it was

like, wow, this is really powerful. all the internet was just coming up and it

was becoming a really big thing. And the dot coms and the startups. And there

was just a lot of exciting things happening.

Mike Kelley: well, I just want to break in for a second because I wonder how

many of those people listening to us know or remember the Y2K problem and what

the root of it was and what it was like to be around during that dot com boom,

where we had, what, five different browsers and we didn't have a clue as to all

of the websites. There used to be a, roulette and you just push a button and it

would randomly find a web page and bring it to you. and the Y2K problem of not

having enough space in our programming to have a four digit year. So we use two

digits. And we were coming to that point of, oh, is it nineteen hundred or is it

twenty something? And that's the Y2K problem. But back into your history, man.

Sorry.

Jesse Crane: You know, at an airport, at that time, we were all legacy systems.

it was a mainframe. There was one guy that could go in the back and he could run

the reports. And I remember he went away for a two weeks vacation and it was any

reports? You need to close the books. Like he's going to be gone. So ask him to

print it off. And then, when he comes back, you can, do the next part of it. And

so that was a really fun time. that led to us deciding, hey, we probably need to

up our game. And we actually implemented a new ERP system. This is when Oracle

ERP was a big deal. probably still is. But it was, very expensive. So we did

the, implementation. And, that got me experience from the business side, from

the customer side of how an implementation works. And being that I had that on

my resume, I had a friend that moved out to Silicon Valley and said, hey, do you

want to come out here and do Oracle implementations for startups? So I moved out

to the Bay area. I'd never lived out there in my life and, went out there

thinking California was going to be very laid back and relaxed and palm trees

and warm water. And, that's not what Silicon Valley is. maybe, SoCal, but not

NorCal. And, I tell you, like of the startups I worked with, there's nobody

left. I mean, it was all, these were all sort of crazy ideas that people had.

And because they had so much money through funding, it was a big deal to tell

your investors, oh yeah, we got Oracle. It's our ERP system. You had five man

shops that were trying to bring up companies and they thought they needed Oracle

financials and Spoiler alert for anyone that's never worked on the ERP side of

the house. You don't need Oracle for that or SAP or any of the big guys you

probably do with QuickBooks. so I did that spreadsheet. you got it. So that's

what got me to be more of an IT person. It was, I came in with understanding the

business side of it. I knew the financial side. I started learning how

businesses worked. saw the technology side. I was always someone that was very

impatient. And what I found on ERP land is there's so many different people to

get an answer. if you're just a functional guy and you don't know how to pull

the data yourself, you're going to be sitting around forever because you're

waiting for the DBA or the sysadmin or the developers. So I started learning how

to code a little bit, how to pull data out, how everything works. So I didn't

have to rely on someone that may or may not show up, at the right time when I

need them.

Mike Kelley: so Jesse, let me ask you, did you grow up in that culture of, hey,

don't touch those buttons. Because right there you're talking about that mind

shift of wait a minute. here I am with Oracle and the ERP and everything. And I

guarantee that at that point that you're talking about, you started to push the

buttons. You're like, what's this dude? What's that dude? How did you learn

these systems? That's how you learn to fish for yourself.

Jesse Crane: I will tell you, I might have learned the hard way a few times, but

my favorite was at a customer I had that was in Santa Cruz, and I was down there

doing some work and I had their production system open and I had a test system

open and I was kind of playing around. And in the test system, I was supposed to

open the calendar to sort of see that. Well, in Oracle, that basically updates

the database with all the numbers and it kind of starts to close your books. So

I did that trying to test something out, and I'm sitting in a cubicle surrounded

by, tons of other cubicles. And I start hearing people saying, hey, what's going

on? Why, are the books closed? Anyone know what's going on? And they all start

talking to each other and I'm like, yeah, I wonder what's going on? And, then I

realized, oh, wait a minute. I was in the wrong, screen. There I was.

Mike Kelley: In production.

Jesse Crane: I was production and to get a rollback to Oracle, they wouldn't do

that. And so I had to know somebody that was like deep, deep in the works that

like knew a way to get to it. So I'm calling everybody I knew, and I finally

found somebody that knew this sort of legendary script that could run to roll

back what I had done. And, that definitely, I learned my lesson there. I'm never

having a production and a test system open at the same time.

Mike Kelley: Definitely one of the ones that you don't forget.

Jesse Crane: No, no. And that's the fun of coming up in it. There's a lot you

can learn. And, so, I did, startups for a few years when I got into it, in

Silicon Valley, like everything was a startup and the company I came to, there

was about two hundred of us that were doing Oracle ERP consultants. Like that's

how many businesses out there were doing things. over time in the two years, the

bubble burst and I started seeing them drop. And so I ended up being one of the

last five Oracle ERP consultants we had. And the company closed down. and so it

was kind of a went from the excitement of, wow, I get to go every day to see

some new company and, deal with all these great, technical challenges and figure

out how these businesses work to just barely getting on. Like I would take on

any work they had, they needed three hours of somebody to go out and try to

problem solve, specific, problem. I was on it and I had no, ego on this. I just

wanted to get by. And it was, again, a lot of people had a lot more experience

than me. And they left or they didn't want the small stuff. So it was another

lesson I learned is like, do the small stuff, like take any work that is there.

Everything's a learning experience. And especially when things are going bad,

like do everything you can to keep things going. And that led me to move to

Stanford University where I ran applications for five years, which was really a

whole other experience, time period. this was in about two thousand and three is

when I moved to Stanford. So I got through the startup. So I went Y2K to

startups to, university and Stanford. When I got there, they were doing an ERP

implementation for Oracle. They were already two years in and they were about

six months from go live. And I thought, well, this is going to be easy. Like,

wow, we're right at the end of it. They've got it all figured out. And, I was

one of two Oracle ERP on the financial track. So there's already another one of

us. Like, how hard can this be? within about a couple of weeks, I realized they

didn't have anything ready. They didn't know any of the answers. And from a

business standpoint, it was one of the most interesting organizations I've

worked for because it was very siloed. And Stanford gets a lot of grant money

from from lots of donors. And what we found is the process when someone wants to

give money to Stanford to, getting it over to what they invest in and how they

how they give it to the, causes they want to support. It's like three different

departments, actually, there's four departments and no one knew the next step.

So you talk to the first group and you say, well, what happened? Oh, the check

comes in, I deposit it, then what happens? I don't know, go talk to this other

group mine. And we would have to go. And it was really interesting to learn that

no one really knew how this worked. And just over time, it just sort of built

up. And it was again, another organization, just like the airport that had grown

with legacy systems. So you had a bunch of people coding all this in the

background, and no one really knew what it did and how it worked. So we had to

tease, apart from the business side, what are you really trying to do? Because

most of those coders had retired. This is really old system.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. so quick question about this too, because to, put this in

perspective for the audience, you're talking about a siloed organization from

the ball is being thrown over the wall and, how many knowledge workers or how

many people sitting at computers outside of the student base, because when you

talk to departments, you're also talking about colleges with the same sets of

departments per college. And then you've got the administration over all of the

colleges and their departments. And so I can just think of I spent a tiny bit of

time at a university here in New Mexico. so trying to break through all of those

silos at that time. and it wasn't the norm to break through those cultures or

break apart those silos at that point. And they were still embracing siloed

culture.

Jesse Crane: Oh, absolutely. we were considered a.

Mike Kelley: The user base. that's the thing that I'm trying to ask.

Jesse Crane: The internal user base was in the hundreds. we didn't touch the

student systems, which was good, but we dealt with grants and accounting. We

dealt with finance team, we dealt with, the investment team. We dealt with the

R&D teams or the grant teams. there were a lot of different groups and what you

would find, it was a really interesting thing you said about the universities

within the university if we wanted to standardise something. So we're trying to

move from processes that were built over years and years to try to standardise.

You would go to the School of Engineering and say, all right, guys, talk to the

dean. You talk to the leadership team, hey, we need to make some changes. We're

going to start doing things this way. And they would say, wait a minute. Do you

know who we are? We're the school of engineering. We bring in this much money.

No, no, we don't want to do that. Then you go to the School of Medicine and

you'd hear the exact same thing. You'd go to all of them. You get to the point

like school of pottery. Are you gonna give us that talk track? it was crazy. the

trying to get a distributed user base like that, onto standard processes was

probably one of the most challenging things I've ever dealt with in my career.

Mike Kelley: And actually, I guarantee you that that same kind of culture is out

there at the universities, at the scholastic entities today. They're still

fighting those battles.

Jesse Crane: Yeah, for sure. it's a very different leadership style, also,

they're very collaborative in how they, they make decision making. So it's very

different from corporate world. So going from a place where there's very few

people made decisions to everybody had to agree and they didn't really have the

interest to agree. It was a very different, yeah, different.

Mike Kelley: Environment. And so, you've already touched on one of the common

points for IT leadership is understanding the business. So by coming from the

accounting side, by coming from that and your experiences in an ERP

implementation, you started to understand and really see the business side. And

then you started to learn the it so that you could fish for yourself. Now you

move into the siloed, the pure siloed environment? Well, actually no. Then you

go do the startups where you're getting to see the business side from many

organizations and then jump into the education side and see the siloed and try

to work through instead of the business culture, the education culture of the

collaboration or the common agreement that's needed to implement something

across that kind of an environment. and we're still talking the early part of

your career.

Jesse Crane: Yeah, yeah. No doubt, the next jump I made, I did five years, we

went live on Oracle. I got a chance to see, a lot of the change management, you

have to do with that big of a, rollout. And it was a lot because of the

organization. I decided then I did a little bit more consulting just to kind of

get my feet wet again on what else is going out there? And then I jumped over to

a company. It's a fortune five hundred company. It's one of the best medical

device companies ever. that I mean, it's known for its culture and just how

great of a place it is. It's called Stryker Medical Corporation. I knew nothing

about medical devices, in Silicon Valley. That wasn't the sexy work. you want to

work for Google at that time or, Facebook was still a hot place coming up. There

were a lot of other software companies. So coming to a company that manufactured

physical medical devices didn't sound like it was going to be something that I

want to do forever. It was close to home. So I like that I got to stop going up

to the city, going up to San Francisco, which was an hour and a half commute

every day each way. and it was great. I was still at this point consider myself

an Oracle ERP guy and the big aha for me came after we had did some reorgs and

my boss ended up moving to a new role where he took on enterprise architecture

and he took on middleware and master data. And these really just these terms and

these things that like I had no idea what they were. I kind of had a general

idea. and there was a point where I was going to stay in the ERP organization

and I had some opportunities to grow there. But I went to my boss and I said,

hey, I don't know any of this stuff that you're going to go do, but it sounds

really interesting and you're a great guy to work for. Do you have any chance?

And he's. Yeah, absolutely. So he gave me master data management, which, all of

a sudden I went from being an Oracle ERP guy to someone that's relatively

agnostic. I didn't really care where the data came from. We had a striker. This

was also a global role from when I started striker, it was a divisional. I got

to see every ERP we had. At the time it was probably seventy ERPs and multiple

versions of seven zero. Yes, striker grew through acquisitions, so every time

they acquired a company, you would usually have a commercial ERP system they

sold out of. And then very often you'd have multiple manufacturing sites that

would have really watered down versions of either what they were using or some

just manufacturing software. So I got a chance to learn of things. Asked man.

Man. Shad was one of the ones that came up. SAP of course, Other versions of

Oracle, all different versions. and it was really, really interesting. And each

of these systems, again, they had grown their own ways. They had their own data

that was over time. They all treated, they sold the similar customers, but they

had different ways that they recognized the customer information. So being able

to match things up to say across these seventy ERPs, what is Kaiser Permanente?

It meant different things to different people. So you couldn't get a good view

of what all that was. so that was.

Mike Kelley: That challenge right there. I mean, that I don't know that the

audience understands how big that was to, because even just the employee

information, the way that the personal information for each employee is stored

amongst seventy different systems. Yeah. you'd be amazed how many different ways

We keep first name, last name, middle name. Absolutely. and then like, in the

US, we've got the Social Security, there's other, I'm sure since it's

international, there's all kinds of different employee numbers or citizen

numbers or I don't even know. I've spent my whole career working with us, but I

can just imagine trying to get, trying to get a holistic list of every employee,

let alone every customer amongst those seventy systems. Yeah, yeah, that's a

challenge.

Jesse Crane: It was a lot, but it was again, it was like an education. It was

like going for your MBA. I got to see all of this. I got to learn about all the

product data. That product, honestly, product was probably the most complicated

of the domains because we would manufacture a product in a division in the US.

The plant might be in Mexico, but we sold it in Australia and Japan, and each of

them had a different system that they were selling it with. And there was, a lot

of different information that need to be there. There's regulatory requirements

around the data. So it was being able to translate all this. And this was at a

time when the organization was growing. I got there, it was like an eight

billion dollar company. Now it's a thirty two billion. So I got to see us go

from eight to thirty two. And all of that growth pains us, eventually went to

let's move over to one ERP. Great idea, but, spoiler alert, they're not quite

all the way down there, but, a lot of work. Yeah. So we had to figure out, well,

how do you sort of do all this? so yeah, again, you pull all the data, you get a

master data system where you would normalize it. So a lot of matching

algorithms, early AI, I mean, this is really you're looking for patterns and

you're looking for what do these things have in common? Yes. Correct. Correct.

So so we did some basic versions of that one. And we got by, I mean, it was

painful. And anytime we brought up a new, hey, we're going to move our CRM

system from the time it was Siebel, we're going to go to Salesforce. You would

see, the amount of work to try to have to report things and have it look the

right way. it was not small work.

Mike Kelley: Yeah, if you had seventy, ERP, you potentially had seventy or more

CRMs.

Jesse Crane: Yeah. We didn't have that many CRMs.

Mike Kelley: But.

Jesse Crane: We did have a lot of PLMs. We had a lot of CRMs. A lot of you name

the alphabets it was like the Noah's ark of applications.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. HR. Ms..

Jesse Crane: Yes. You got it, you got it. so I did that for a while. I did a

little bit of middleware in there. So again, that was another agnostic where I

had to learn how to move the data from one place to another. And then that one,

I used to joke somewhere in the world because we were a global company. Someone

was complaining that the data wasn't right. That came in from the wrong place.

It didn't come in, it didn't go out. We were just nonstop. Luckily, I wasn't an

operational role. I had a partner that did that, but just sort of watching the

amount of escalations at all times of the day, talking to China at night, and

then India in the morning, or Europe in the morning and us. And, it was a really

interesting challenge. And it honestly like that probably is when I considered

myself, all right, I'm an IT guy. Like if I'm dealing with a call of India at,

two in the morning, like, okay, I got my chops now, now my tea.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. Well, interesting because as soon as you were working with

Oracle and doing anything more than data entry into Oracle and consuming

reports, I was already thinking you were it then.

Jesse Crane: Yeah.

Mike Kelley: The you were doing that consulting you were it. But yeah, for the

imposter syndrome was gone by the time you're correct.

Jesse Crane: Because there was no time to have it. you were underwater just when

you start the day. So if you overthink things and you're not accepting it. You

just got to be in there. This is also where I learned I'm a learner. So I was in

my element. This is when I hadn't realized it up until this point of how much I

enjoyed learning new things. And every new project that was thrown, every new

challenge, every new obstacle, it was like crack. I mean, we could solve things

every day.

Mike Kelley: So you've got that other fundamental IT thing of, a puzzle solver

or a problem solver or, give me the mystery. I'll figure it out. there's a way

to get this done. All we need is time, imagination and money.

Jesse Crane: Yes, absolutely. that was really great. I did all of that for a

couple of years, about three or four years. And then really the big change and

the one that really kind of got me on the path that I'm on now was I was offered

the opportunity. I could have stayed in middleware and master data management

was another reorg or for big company got used to these ones or my boss actually

came to me one day and he said, you know what? I know you want to stay there,

but I'm moving over to this business partner organization. And good news is

you're coming with me. And I said, well, Kevin, do I have a say in that? He

goes, not really. I've already made some trades. So you're coming with me. and

that was previously. Yes. I dealt with the business. I dealt a lot with the

finance leadership team. I knew them really well. I knew parts of the

organization. this all of a sudden I was responsible for the whole organization.

Like I was dealing with leadership. It was no longer the low level projects or

support. It was strategy. I have to know what we're doing across all these

different towers in this division. I have to know what's our strategy on CRM,

what's our strategy around how are we going to deal with product lifecycle

management? How do we deal with, this is pre AI. So we didn't really have that,

but this was cloud was becoming a thing. We're starting to move stuff off prem.

There was a big push. We actually were in Northern California and there was a

big fire during the time that I was there that was close by that shut the plant

down. And luckily we had actually, the week before, moved our ERP system up in

the cloud. So we didn't have any damage, but if it had wiped us out, we could

have gone on. We would have had the resiliency. We really wouldn't have noticed

that part of it, wouldn't have noticed it. So these were things I didn't think

about when I was doing middleware or master data or even ERP. so it was really,

really interesting. And I was a business partner. They moved me down here to

Texas. I'm in Flower Mound, Texas, moved me down to actually own a site. And

this site was a challenge. It was the most complicated business in all of

striker, not the most profitable, not the biggest, but definitely the most

complicated one hundred percent configurable product line they built. they had

an acquisition of a competing product and they were trying to integrate the two

struggling with that. They had two sales forces selling basically competing

products. They want to get them on one CRM, consolidate the products down. We're

building a brand new facility here in Flower Mound from from scratch. They had a

site in Charleston. Charleston, South Carolina. They had to close that a lot of

craziness going on there. And we had to redesign the whole business. We had to

do it in basically a couple of years. And so it sounded like a great challenge.

I moved down here. it was honestly not a day went by that there wasn't something

crazy going on. And again, as I came from very, very comfortable talking ERP and

talking some of that side of the business. Now I'm learning about or building a

brand new building. Like what do we have to consider about that cabling and

where are we going to put the, closet.

Mike Kelley: And yeah, all of the ICS and so now true infrastructure and not to

mention okay, cloud starting. So then VoIP is involved. And then, the Wi-Fi is

becoming much more stable and more readily used as the primary networking

connectivity or the backbone for a lot of things, especially in a manufacturing

place. So that you've got the room on the floor to change, move things around

because yeah, you can't move equipment if you're stuck to a outlet in a wall or

in the floor.

Jesse Crane: Yeah. And now I think everyone takes it for granted if you're at a

corporate site, but we actually were the first one in the organization to move

over to Skype for our phones. So it was like, are you sure this is gonna work?

you're gonna be talking on headsets and, not having a physical phone, not

ordering physical phones. there were a couple of leaders that just like, no, no,

I want my physical phone. so we had to get those set up, and yes, early Skype,

if you remember the experience of that, was, not a fun, thing.

Mike Kelley: Well, I also remember telling Cisco, hey, why do I want to pay you

that much per person when I can just go to Skype for this and and I get video?

Jesse Crane: Yeah, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. But so.

Mike Kelley: But yeah, that's like twenty fifteen, twenty seventeen talking

those time periods when Skype was coming in. Correct. And what did they switched

it from Skype to link. and then a lot more of the, unified communications. All

of those guys came in to play around that time too. And I was like the leader of

it or the trailblazer.

Jesse Crane: And anyone that was doing business partnering in that time of the

world. the one thing that you talk to, like first thing you say, hey, how's it

going with your business? What's going on? Everyone would complain conference

rooms And I mean, there's still conferences are challenging. But then it was

particularly because you had new the AV scene was changing significantly. and we

didn't have standardized AV across any of the sites. Even within the site, you

had different things in there. you had Skype coming in, so you had that element

of it. There was so many things and my job almost became for a period, seventy

five percent of dealing with unhappy customers, especially leadership. Hey, my

call went bad. There's a million reasons why that could be. a lot of it had to

do with equipment they had, but, yeah, it was a lot of telecom and, a lot more

than I ever wanted to know about.

Mike Kelley: and then the fun of having a third party in that conference room.

And you need to be able to switch from the internal network to the, hostile

network that you let the third party use. So you put them on your guest network,

and then they need to be showing you stuff or interacting with your systems that

are on the internal network. That always made conference rooms a challenge.

Yeah.

Jesse Crane: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Mike Kelley: You're bringing back so many different memories, dude.

Jesse Crane: So that was a division and we were probably about a three hundred

million dollar division. So for Stryker, that was really nothing. my boss left,

he owned the whole business partnering for the division, which was a two billion

dollars division. So I got promoted up for that and it was really exciting. And

this is when I really learned about its place in where we want to be versus

where maybe people think we are. my reputation was great. I came down to

division that or a business unit that had a lot of challenges. I fixed a lot of

them. Great reputation. I knew everybody at the corporate level. I knew

everybody at the other divisions. I was very hands on everything. So when my

name was announced, the CFO was excited. The operations VP was excited. The

quality compliance. Everybody loved it. I didn't know our divisional president

that well, but we knew of each other. And I thought, great. I came out of his

division. This guy's going to love me. I can speak their business. I know I sit

in on all of the earnings calls. I know what their quotas are. I know a lot

about the business. I'm really geeked on this. And first time I go meet with

them when I've been announced in there, I was in their building in Northern

California and went back there to visit. And I went to his office and I'm giving

him my pitch about why as a business partner, we're a global corporation. It is

very complicated and it's really hard. There's a lot of red tape, there's a lot

of administrative work. I know how to get that done. And he knows my track

record from what I had done under his business unit. So he's nodding along. I

say, look, as business partner, I can help you if you get me involved with the

strategic initiatives up front. And he's nodding along and I'm thinking, I got

him. This is this speech has worked on everyone I've ever given. And I think

this is great. And he goes, yeah, yeah. it's great. That's exactly what I wanted

to hear. Okay, awesome. Okay. So what's the area you want me to lean into first?

And he goes, you know what? I have an idea. He goes, let's go. Get up. So I'm

thinking we're going to the CFO. I think we're going to the business

transformation. Maybe there's an acquisition. I'm going to find out. I'm ready

to sign the NDA. Oh, you know the story. I walk out of his office with him. He

stops at his administrative assistant. He goes, Julie, what's the problem you've

been having with the printer? Jesse's here to help you with it.

Mike Kelley: I'm just guessing, man.

Jesse Crane: so that was when my ego went from, I was on top of the world down

to, wow, this is what they think of me, like all this time. And they're

everything I've shown. I've been involved with heavily strategic initiatives. I

helped them get through acquisitions. I helped them get through,

reorganizations. I've helped with product launches, all these things. and I'm

the printer guy. So to make things worse, I thought that was the highlight of

the day or low light. I go back to my office, and there is a leadership meeting.

The leadership team is meeting. This is the first time that I am the IT person

for that leadership meeting where I'm a member of that. So previous. As a

business unit, they treated me. I had full voting rights. If there was a

business decision, they treated me at the business unit level as like, hey, I'm

a real adult. I can make decisions. So this one, I am not really sure if I'm

supposed to go in the room with them or not. I have the link. So I just call in

from the office. I think, you know what? I'm going to be conservative the first

time. I don't want to be assumptive that they want me there. And I'm listening

to them talk. They're talking about stuff, and all of a sudden I get a text and

it's from the divisional president. And I read it really fast. And as I read it,

I read it as, hey, I really want you in the room. you're here in the building.

You should come join us. So I'm all excited. I'm texting my old boss saying,

look, they, saw I wasn't there and they felt I should be part of this. They

called me in there. I get in the room, I go sit down. I'm smiling everybody. And

they're talking away. And I'm like, I want to look at this text again because

this makes me, I'm gonna like frame this text. I really look at it. No, that's

not what he said. What he said that I had to like looked over was, Jesse, you're

not in here. The AV equipment is not working. You need to get in here right now

and figure out what's going on. Somehow I miss all the bad stuff in that one.

Thought it was just welcome. So now I'm starting to realize, oh, I'm a little

too comfortable looking, just sitting here watching all this. What do I do?

Moments later, seconds later, the VP of sales, who again, I'd known for years

from from my previous role, who I thought was my guy. He gets up from his seat

across me, walks around the table. I think I'm getting the bro hug or like he's

congratulating me for being here. I don't know why I haven't figured out the

storyline yet, but, he leans into me and he goes, Jesse! And I won't use the

exact words that he used because a little bit more profane, but he's what the

heck is going on with the sales reporting? It's been down all morning since six

a m so now I'm sitting there, I've got the president who thinks that my role is

to fix the AV, that that's why I got called in and then the VP of sales telling

me, hey, why is our sales system down? So I tail between definitely between the

legs, got up and left the room and realized, yeah, I'm the guy that they're

going to call when something doesn't work. They don't view me as the guy to

bring in when they want to get it to work from the front. And that really

colored the way that I look at things going forward for the rest of my time in

the business partner. Org. And it was it was a struggle in a big division where

a lot of the old school leadership thought it was an order taker. That's what

you were there for. They will call you when it's your time to talk. And, we had

a run of conference room issues and I got punished because the the president

said, yeah, we're not fixing these fast enough. Equipment's all crap trying to

get the budget to pay for this. But it's not, gotta work with me a little bit

here. And, he basically said, yeah, I don't want you to come give updates

anymore. You can come once a quarter instead of once a month. And that was his

punishment to me because he felt I didn't fix his conference rooms quick enough.

Much less.

Mike Kelley: Yet. He wouldn't give you the budget to fix. Correct. Correct. and

and it's all your fault.

Jesse Crane: Correct? Correct. so that was the most in terms of maturity of like

really growing and seeing like, okay, if I had to do this all over again, what

would I do differently? And that's really where I spent a lot of time thinking,

going from a small business unit up to a large division. There were some ways I

should have been more formal. There was some ways I should have approached some

of these things. There was a lot of things I could do differently. but the key

thing in there for me is, I didn't get a chance to show him up front that I knew

the business. And I think if I went at it differently and I came in and I was

stronger on, okay, I've been looking at kind of how we're rolling out these

product lines. And I see kind of the sales guys are struggling with the

inventory field inventory management here. I'd like to go ahead and start to

work with the team to redesign the flow. And I've got some ideas, like I had

some things in my bag that I could have gotten to, but I thought I'd get to it

eventually. I thought I was already made, man. I came in from the business unit.

Mike Kelley: so let me hit you up on this a little bit, because this is a

critical growth point for those that are following behind us and those that find

themselves today in the organizations, because there's so many IT people that

find themselves being that order taker that they can't and they can't break from

being the order taker into this leadership, this executive piece that you're

talking about, this seat at the table, to having been heard. And so how did you

end up getting changing that because you had been the made man. Now you're back

to an order taker. You're not happy about it. And obviously you've made it back

to being a made man. air quotes around all of this. So, talk to me. What did you

do to help make that happen? Once you got that real gut punch of, oh, this is

what they think of it.

Jesse Crane: Yeah. So I had some advocates on the leadership team. Again, I knew

the corporate I knew the CFO really well. He was a big advocate for me. So I

started just saying, all right, I mean, I'm not going to overnight turn the

president. And, he had his opinions. And, so I started really focusing on what

can I do to make, the CFO's world better? How can I look for other areas at this

time? our organization was also starting to standardize going to one ERP system

across everybody. So being able to start to influence the direction that some of

these global initiatives were going. As an advocate for my division, that's

where I shifted my attention, because I knew if I could help be a bigger player

in some of these larger organizations, because my divisional president had no

say, we two billion dollars, we weren't the big dog. There was bigger ones out

there that were going to really focus on, how we designed the ERP. But if I was

able to influence it through my relationships and through the ability to really,

know our business. Be able to get it, made there. and that's what I did. I

focused a lot on those bigger corporate initiatives and really pushing our

interests there. And it did work out. It really did help me. I did start to get

credit for some of the wins we got. we were able to, move to a new field

inventory solution. and we did that right before we were on a legacy field

inventory solution. It was two weeks before end of the year, heaviest time of

the year for this specific business. and basically they went out of business.

This was actually during Covid times. So the guy just said, hey, you know,

Covid, what are you going to do? I'm closing the books. We're going to leave

your server up for a while. So, eventually probably they're going to shut the

power on it and, you can't use it. But we had to rush to get something built to

replace that. So it was things like that where I'm going to go out and just make

a name for myself. I'm going to go find where the problems are. And yeah, I

ended up doing two more years in that role. And it really helped grow me. and it

led to the next challenge that I went after before I left, the organization. I

did two years in cyber security. And I felt like it was a great jump because

cyber security is another one where like, well, they don't no one really wants

to listen to cyber security guy. Like, you're there to say no to them on all the

crazy stuff they want to do. So having already been in a position where like, I

know how these people think, I know what they think of it now I get to start to

think about, well, how can I help defend this in a way and sell them on what

we're doing with cyber. So it was a really nice transition. It was also sort of

that final piece I felt to kind of get the full picture of how it works.

Mike Kelley: When you jumped into cyber? Because I'm thinking back to the

particular time that we're talking about this is at the SolarWinds hack,

correct. That was worldwide. and, you guys were probably a large enough target

that they were paying attention to you.

Jesse Crane: I jumped over right after SolarWinds. So that was something that

they were talking about quite a lot. That was a campfire story that we would

talk about of things that could happen. Yeah, my intro to cyber was in my

building, my plant down in flower mound. I got a call from the CISO and he said,

hey, Jesse, like close your door. oh, I close my door. He goes in your building

somewhere. We've picked up a robot, a little toy robot. It's a Chinese dinosaur

robot. And it's broadcasting something back. We picked up the signals on there.

You got to go find it. But you can't let anyone know that you're what you're

looking for. Because we don't know if it's our people that are doing something.

If it's, something internal or if it's something. Someone went to China and

brought it back, didn't know. So I had to get my desk side guys and we had to

like, we call it, Jurassic Park, we're going on the dinosaur hunt looking for

the dinosaur. And crazy enough we'd never found him. The signals went away so it

could be someone came back from vacation and brought something in and just left

it at their desk. And then end of the day, they left. we never found the

dinosaur. But that was my intro to cyber in my division. And from there it was a

lot of stuff.

Mike Kelley: So wait a minute, your CISO had equipment around for anonymous

radio signals.

Jesse Crane: There was something they picked up. It was going through our

network. it wasn't radio signals. It actually was going through was connected to

our Wi-Fi. But there was something about the IP or there was something that they

were catching in what it was broadcasting. They recognized the device as

something malicious. Usually we pick up things like people bringing their game

console and their. And they're setting that up to play. Or you find some oddball

things that people are doing there. But this is the first time where it was

like, drop everything. Go look for the dinosaur.

Mike Kelley: Wow. Okay, interesting. Yeah. There's a story That's definitely one

of those ones where you can you break in and talk about something different.

Okay. Never found it. All right. Still doing cybersecurity. early twenties.

Jesse Crane: Yep. I did cyber for a couple of years. It was a great, experience.

I dealt with some pretty serious, that we had. So I got to see how our

cybersecurity group was top notch. And these are people that came from FBI that

came from military and they had processes that were, I mean, amazing. I'm still

impressed with everything that we had on there. and that kind of, again, filled

it out. And at that point, I realized I love cybersecurity. I could keep doing

that forever, but I really would love now that I've got the full, the full

bucket of experience, I'd love to go run the show myself. And so I started

looking around, I kind of narrowed it down. I wanted to stay in medical devices.

I think it's a really meaningful, industry to be in. I wanted something that was

local. I'm in Texas at the time. And I want something that I could build my own

organization. And so I found that the company I'm with now, Argon Medical,

they're close by. I am VP of it. I sit on the leadership team and having gone

through the experience of being a business partner, and kind of seeing what it's

like to not be treated as part of the leadership team. I know what to look for.

So as I interviewed with different companies, I was on the lookout for who's

going to treat me as I've got full voting rights. I've got the ability to speak

up in a meeting, and they're not going to say, no, no, no, no, be quiet. you're

the kid. and.

Mike Kelley: There's not a problem.

Jesse Crane: Yeah. Correct, correct. and they checked all those boxes and

there's a lot of work we need to do in it. I've had to do a lot of

reorganization of my org. There we've got both. Technology was underinvested in.

the people were underinvested in. We had some people that skills that really

weren't what we needed. we didn't have anyone that did any of the new

technology. So when I talked about AI like, yeah, a lot of them were just, they

knew less than just, the regular person on the street. So I had to go look for

somebody like, alright, I need someone who's younger. I need someone that comes

up with the, not the legacy, technologies, but I need somebody that is digital

native, someone that came up and grew up on their cell phone that grew up. So

looking to balance out and not just have I had a very, very experienced team,

which is great. And that's awesome. Except they didn't know all these new

technologies and they weren't really in excited about getting to, do them. So,

it's been a great experience.

Mike Kelley: Well.

Jesse Crane: Yes, I went from a place where I had a very large budget, again, a

big corporate, big fortune five hundred company. And I have a very tiny budget.

And I being a former finance guy, this really was an exciting opportunity for

me. I want to be able to manage my budget. I didn't want to be able to throw

money at. If we made a mistake. I wanted to be able to prove that we knew how to

use money that we were given. And then if I want more money, I can get it. I

work for the CFO. She's great. She's tough. she will push me and make sure that

we really need the money. But if I need it, she believes in what we're doing. So

it's been a really good experience. and it kind of puts all those experiences I

got together now to where I'm at.

Mike Kelley: Okay. so I started off the intro talking about some of the recent

posts that you've put out there about AI. So talk to me about what's happening

with AI in your world within Argonne Medical. So we're not necessarily Argonne

Medical, but just AI.

Jesse Crane: we don't have a digital product. our product is physical. we do

catheters, we do, biopsy devices. We do needles. Yeah. So I mean, these are

tools that make or break people's lives. And, so it's a very important role. we

have an older plant. this company's been around since nineteen seventy two and a

lot of the, equipment is older. So when I came in as a security professional,

the first thing I worried about was, all right, we got old plants. What's the

OT, what are we connecting to the internet for? Well, I got to worry about that.

we don't really have have a big OT presence there. it's a lot of really, really

old manual processes. so AI is going to play yes, AI is going to play a very,

very big role for us in terms of efficiencies out there. Because any process we

have right now, it is very manual from taking the orders to how they manufacture

stuff to you name it. And a lot of stuff they do around post-market, where

they're getting data about, how the products do out in the field. All of that is

very manual. So we have a lot to work with. I don't have a large budget, so I

have to be very intentional about what I choose to invest in. We're a Microsoft

shop, so we try to get the most out of the E5 licenses. I don't believe the hype

always are what they say. I'm cautiously optimistic about Cowork. I'm starting

to hear good things about that. I've had some peers, CIOs starting to say that

they're starting to use it for different productivity cases. typically our role,

we're not going to make anything, we're not building our own LMS. there's no

purpose for that. I don't have a big enough team. Couldn't afford it if I wanted

to. A lot of what I do is I'm looking for tools with my partners. What do you

guys have? So, for our ERP system, what do they have in there already embedded?

what does our CRM system have in there? We're looking at, a fabric. So we can

for the, data warehouse. So like we're trying to take advantage of stuff that

already exists. we're not looking to reinvent anything. And, we sprinkle in what

we have with copilot for productivity, we're moving along. I can't take the risk

of jumping too deep into anything too crazy just because it'll suck up my

budget. What I worry about is just long term, a lot of stuff, these vendors,

they offer it free up front or they want to get you hooked on it. And then they

start, once the tokenization starts getting in there, then it's, we're going to

see everything skyrocket just like Claude, right? A lot of the problem with

cloud was it felt a little bit more cost effective until like, you're on it for

a while and you realize, wow, you're paying more than if you had just hosted it

locally. so that's kind of our strategy right now. The other thing that coming

in from the cyber background, one of my fears is always just the data itself.

and the more you open up AI internally, there's an assumption that you know

where your data's at and that is protected. And you don't have the spreadsheet

with everybody's salary on it sitting on some, team site that, they didn't

manage to lock down. So I'm probably a little bit more cautious about that than

maybe some of my peers are just because from working in a very large

organization, I have all kinds of stories that I can't tell on this about what

people will put in places that they don't think about. So a lot of what I'm

doing for my strategy, it's partnering my cyber strategy. And I've got a pretty

small cyber team. but trying to partner them with what we're doing on the AI

front so that we're in lockstep, we're not waiting for AI, but at the same time,

we're building the governance and making sure that we have the data protected so

that we don't get any surprises that we could have avoided with a little bit of

foresight.

Mike Kelley: Man. So all right, where's your master data management? Where's

your data governance? Where's your cyber security at, at this point? or just in

general? what are the challenges that you're facing there?

Jesse Crane: Every one of them. I'd say cyber, I'm most comfortable with. I have

a really great director and he has done a ton of work to really, really fortify

our security. and he's just a great guy. I mean, we, we talk daily about just

different things we're doing. So, cyber, I'm excited about, we started with a

lot of tools and I think this is pretty common with most companies, you end up

with all these tools because there's so much hype out there, and then you end up

doing half the installation and you're on to the next thing. And so you end up

with a bunch of tools that aren't really doing anything. So we have consolidated

down and we are using what we have. So I'm excited about where we are there.

That gets into DLP also. So the data loss prevention and really making sure that

the sensitive data is locked down that can't be exfiltrated. so kind of that's

our big priority in that space master data overall. Again, the good news on the

company I'm at now is I don't have seventy ERPs. So when I hear our problems,

I'm able to kind of laugh and say, oh yeah, okay, great. We have one ERP that I

got to figure out what to do with the data. I can handle that. a lot of our

challenges on the data front. And I think it's under we don't talk about it

enough is, there's a strong component of like the processes and how you're using

the ERP with what the data output is. And, for a long time, our business has

been not really trained in how to use a system. And, this is one of the great

things about it. People we love to solve problems and we're really smart. We can

do all kinds of clever things, but we can be too smart. And so over time, we

have customized our ERP to the point where it doesn't really do what it out of

the box should do. So that ends up where you really pay for it as a data front,

because you're not capturing the data where it should be. It's not normalized.

it's dirty. And so we're doing a lot of cleanup of trying to tease back as we're

building out better processes, how do we clean the data and that? So that's a

lot of work right there.

Mike Kelley: And that itself. I mean, I assume that those processes that you're

working on and rebuilding, you're focused in on the current way those processes

are being done and refining those processes today and trying to make those as

efficient and clean as possible today. Correct.

Jesse Crane: a lot of processes. We want to start from scratch. we're trying

like, in some cases, it's easier just to say, that's great. You guys are doing

it that way. We're going to do it this way. And this is what the output looks

like where we can. We're trying to do that.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. And so one of the things that I've recognized and that's

coming to us as it, and as these roles, when we start leveraging AI, we need to

really look at those processes again, because it could be a radically different

process when we've got the humans doing it, when we've got the humans watching

an agent do it, when we've taken agents watching agents to do it. those whole,

all three of those are radically different processes.

Jesse Crane: One hundred percent.

Mike Kelley: Same thing.

Jesse Crane: honestly, I think AI, the biggest challenge we have and we're going

to see is that like, people just think, let's just, it'll make us do what we're

doing faster when in reality, we shouldn't be doing that at all. We should do

something completely different. So I love how manufacturing does things where

they do Kaizen and they do like that's the approach we're trying to take is we

try to Kaizen a lot of stuff. We're trying to use that type of methodology where

like, let's just see how the process is and then let's figure out what it should

be and not just sort of let's just go in and make it faster doing what it does.

but that is human nature. It's like, hey, we can make these guys faster with

just doing this.

Mike Kelley: Man. And okay, so back to the culture and trying to break through

things, understanding the business and then the radical shift that you just

mentioned right there of, hey, maybe we shouldn't be doing this this way. People

not liking change and, then just completely upending that world. that leads to

all kinds of new conversations.

Jesse Crane: I think the benefit we have a lot of the areas that are going to be

impacted most with what the changes need to be made and how we need to automate.

they've been beat up for so long. Like, there's all kinds of issues if you're

not automated, you're doing a lot of manual processes. There's a lot of overhead

that comes with that. And there's a lot of things that go wrong and they do go

wrong and all these people get beat up, you're not getting your orders out on

time. There's people aren't going to be happy with that.

Mike Kelley: Processing the invoices fast enough. You're not getting orders out.

You're not collecting the money. You got too many people doing too much and

we're not seeing enough.

Jesse Crane: Yeah, yeah. so when you can go to that group and you say, hey, we

can make this better. We can help you solve this, you gotta go and say, we want

to help you win. And it's not, we're here to replace you or we're here to just

change stuff. We're here to help you win. And most people want to win. I mean,

there are some people that don't care, but a lot of people do, and especially if

they've been beat up. So I think it's a really exciting opportunity because you

do see people light up when all of a sudden they're getting a lot of attention,

like they know things aren't working the way they should or they're not as

productive. They're having these issues like they want to solve it. And now all

of a sudden, they're getting a lot of resources thrown at them and a lot of

opportunity. Again, as long as we treat it as we're winning together, I think

people generally like that.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. So, I find myself at the center of a lot of those same

opportunities. And the, thing that I love at the current organization is that

they're looking to it, that one of the values of it has flipped, and they're

looking to us to help them win. Yes. Are you experiencing the same thing you're

pulling from you? They're looking to you going, please, please make this better.

Jesse Crane: When I got to Argonne, I think they had gotten used to the fact

that it we're a pretty small team. So I think they were turned away enough where

they thought like, why even bother? They're not they're not going to. and the

ones that did come to us said, this is how I want it to be done. I want you to

you, we want to use this software to do this thing. Well, why do you want to use

the software? What are you trying to do? Doesn't matter. That's what we want to

do. And yeah, I think legacy wise, we, we sort of went with, okay, you know what

you're doing. We don't know. We're not business process experts. That's changed.

Definitely. They're coming to us. We're getting invited to the Kaizen. They're

looking for us to participate or they're looking for us to help give guidance.

we're bringing in things that, I've got an applications Director who worked with

me at striker, and he's bringing in best practices from striker saying like,

hey, these are the software. If we want to be, on the sales side, if we want to

compete with some of these bigger companies, this is what we should be giving

our sales folks. And he is advocating for them and they feel it. They definitely

feel it. So we are getting invited to the table. And yeah, it's not all at once.

It's little bits and pieces. There's some areas that I wish were a little bit

deeper in, but honestly, I will definitely take the wins we're getting right

now.

Mike Kelley: Jesse, I'm really enjoying this conversation. I could keep talking,

however, the day is the day and we gotta keep moving through things. I promised

you a question. And that is, make a prediction for me. What will we as peers be

talking about in eighteen months that we're not talking about today?

Jesse Crane: So, I mean, AI is the buzz is all the great stuff on AI or if it's

going to take our jobs. I think there's a lot of talk that the cost of AI, I

think, is not as talked about as much as it should be, because they're still

figuring it out and the whole concept of tokens. And how do you measure, if you

want to release an agent, what is that going to cost? how can you mathematically

figure out what the cost of anything you're doing is? We don't know that. So

sooner or later we're going to start feeling the effects of it. Most likely it's

going to be more costly than people are expecting. So I do think we're going to

start to feel that as we start to throw more out and use agents for more day to

day. I definitely feel that's a big one that's coming.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. And I had somebody else, tell me about, hey, think about this

too. Right now, every one of those, major agentic companies or LMS or

everything, they're being subsidized by investment money today. Absolutely. The

cost of tokens is down compared to what it's ultimately going to be once all of

that investment money disappears and now they have to pay their way.

Jesse Crane: Absolutely.

Mike Kelley: So I think you're dead on with that prediction that because that

investment capital is going to dry up. And I think that's what I'm hearing is

our AI bubble. It's going to be this change in cost. And once we realize that.

Yeah. oh man. So. Jesse so truly, thank you for your time today, your experience

and sharing that with us. what an amazing journey. got any last thoughts?

Jesse Crane: I appreciate it. Thanks, Mike. it's been a great journey. it's a

really exciting industry to be in. we get the best of everybody. We get the

learners, we get the problem solvers we get. I mean, it's a privilege to be able

to do this. I work for a medical device company in it. Like, I don't know what's

better than that. Like we have the ability to actually affect people's lives and

make it better. every day I wake up, I'm grateful. there's a lot of other things

I could be doing right now. And it's a great space to be in and, having gone

through all those different, points in time over just, the last twenty year

period, all these different big things, like it's great to see what comes next.

they make everything sound scary. Y2K was very scary at the time we were going

through it. And we don't really talk about that now. So, it'll be fun to see

where we end up and, again, I'm a pretty optimistic person, so I look forward to

it.

Mike Kelley: it's amazing how fast things are moving right now. it's staggering.

It's, eye opening and it's some fun problems to solve or interesting problems to

noodle on because I don't have all of the solutions today, and I don't think you

have all the solutions yet either. And we're all trying to figure it all out.

And, the challenges and the opportunities abound right now. Yeah. And in a way

that I haven't seen for a while.

Jesse Crane: For sure.

Mike Kelley: All right. Well, thank you very much for your time today, sir. if

you enjoyed today's podcast, please remember to, leave a comment, leave a like

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