436- No Technology Fixes Bad Process w/ Bryant Lister

Doug Camin: welcome back, everyone to today's episode of You've Been Heard the
platform for IT leaders. I'm your host Doug Camin. And today I am talking with
Bryant Lister, the vice president of information and technology at L.A.B. Golf.
Welcome to the show, Bryant.

Bryant Lister: Thanks, Douglas. Thanks for having me. And I'm happy to be here
to talk about it. And, what we're doing at, L.A.B. Golf, which stands for Lie
Angle Balanced.

Doug Camin: All right, lie angle balance l a b lab golf.

Bryant Lister: Correct.

Doug Camin: All right, so Bryant, you've been in this position for, not too long
at this point. a little over a year.

Bryant Lister: Correct. Yeah. It's been a bit of a journey coming from seventeen
years at state government, previously in Oregon, and moving into this role to
help the company go from a startup to kind of a scale up. Liv golf was purchased
by private equity about two months after I started here. And so there's been a
lot of work, just in scaling up the company, working on maturity, like cyber
security, and implementing an ERP, as well as just maturing our processes and
expanding what we're doing, around the world. we're trying to become a much more
global company as well. we do sell around the world currently, but we're looking
at expanding that even further and having more representation in other countries
where we're selling.

Doug Camin: I see. All right. And so you said seventeen years and state
government before that. variety of roles, in technology.

Bryant Lister: Yeah. I started out, at state government working as a developer.
Moved up through any analyzing systems, trying to get that holistic view of
things through project management and leading teams of application developers
and testers. Then I was, director of strategic initiatives for the IT
department, working with the CIO's office. Then we had a major breach, and they
asked me to take over the remediation of that breach and eventually lead the
Information Security and Privacy office there. And that morphed into other
director roles when I started managing one of our big data projects at the state
as well. a lot of holistic efforts there, bringing together multiple parts of
the agencies, so that they could bring their data together.

Doug Camin: Nice. So before we got on the episode here, you and I were talking
briefly, like we have an interesting mutual connection between us. because when
you work at state government, so I serve on, the advisory council for the
American Registry for internet numbers. Aaron and one of my fellows on the
advisory Council works for the state of Oregon. So like, even though we live on
opposite ends of the country, we randomly have like one person in common between
us. just like one of those small world moments. Sometimes when you get into
these types of things like across the country, two different IT people work into
two totally different states, clear, like full on opposite ends of the country.
And we still have mutual between us. So, let's, talk about what you're doing now
with lab golf, but I also like to talk about some of the lessons and things that
you learned. you know this is a leadership podcast. We like to dive into
understanding how you got to be a leader, why? What was the driving force, what,
different things like that. So, I'm going to go out on a limb and say your
formative years of leadership probably happened in your time in Oregon since you
were, there for so long. when you were coming up in the ranks there, you moved
into like your first management role. how did you prepare yourself to move into
management and, from like individual contributor roles up into management.

Bryant Lister: I had been management previously at another smaller company,
micro systems for education business, and that was a much smaller company,
mostly temps that I was overseeing in that. So I did have some management
experience prior to that. but at the state, obviously we're managing much larger
teams, getting the project management professional certification going through
the PMP was a big part of, just developing a lot of the tools, techniques and
that to start leading. Definitely not the end. It just the building blocks of
starting to lead, but it's also about understanding it in a way that you can
frame it for a team, that you can frame it in terms of working with a business
partner, because one of the things you do when you break out of that
specifically technical role of a developer or an infrastructure person, is you
have to work with the business, you have to understand their language, you have
to understand the intersections of technology and business process, how it all
integrates together, how they need to integrate with other parts of an
organization. And so my desire to go further with it was about looking at that
holistic approach of information technology and people, and where they needed to
bridge the gaps that they had in their organization or in their business area.
And so that was really what propelled me through my career, was continually
asking the questions, deriving where we can add value to the business partner.
And that just built up my reputation as somebody who's really engaged with the
business, wants to see solutions driven by what the business need is, rather
than the next bright new shiny object that it can provide. And it's really
diminishing, that technical to become more about the people.

Doug Camin: So now, I had a stint in municipal government myself. I spent almost
ten years, in local government. In your case, you were in state government. The
arrangement of the business can be different between these two. currently in the
private sector myself. But, a long time in, municipal government, we approach
things differently. You think about things differently. Leadership is considered
different. And some of it is because the fundamental aspects of how and what
we're doing are different. when we're in government, we're there to deliver
services where, there's a foundational component to the infrastructure of people
being able to survive or live, if you will, that's what we're standing up and
supporting as opposed to a business which may be delivering very wonderful
things, but is fundamentally in business to do things. so when you think about
the difference between where you were, and where you are today and I guess in
your case, you kind of went both, you went, in and out and in, right. you were
in private sector. You went out of the private sector for a while to government
and now you're back in the private sector. Yeah. what's different between those
two stints? you were there for several years in the two thousand, and now here
you are in the twenty twenties on the other side.

Bryant Lister: Well, obviously government, there's a lot more red tape. There's
a lot more people to be considered. The stakeholders are everyone from, your
Department of Justice who is looking over your shoulder. State C, I, O and
others that are looking over your shoulder. You might have a state data center
that you've got to work with, but you also have the legislature who's
representing the public, you've got the press, you've got a lot of different
stakeholders that are all contributing to what you're trying to achieve. And
you've got to be considering all those different partners. As you're working in
state government, you need to make sure your systems are up and running. We
can't just go to customers and say, hey, we need to shut down for two days and
redo some things. They're depending on those services. I was working for the
Oregon Health Authority and Department of Human Services. People are depending
on it for quality care, food assistance. We can't just shut down. There's
there's no downtime to providing those services. So we need to be very strategic
about how we implement things and providing continual support for our systems.
Whereas in private industry, little less process, little less rigorous oversight
that's occurring. we still have oversight. We still have a lot of financial
oversight that we need to be doing, but there's different stakeholders. Lab golf
recently was purchased by private equity, back in July of last year. And so we
do have that oversight there, definitely working with us to mature and improve
our systems here. And they've been a great partner in doing that and providing a
lot of direction and support for that. we obviously have our customers as
stakeholders and we want to be considerate of them, but the business is driven
by different motivations. We're trying to produce the best putters in the world,
help make our customers better golf players. but the final motivation obviously
is always financial when you're talking about the private sector, public sector,
while financial concerns are very important, and there's a lot of things we do
with budget and in that realm, we're really thinking about how do we produce the
greatest efficiency of services for the citizens in whatever municipality you're
covering so that they're getting what they need to survive? And golf's not quite
up there on the survival needs chart.

Doug Camin: So that's a, great segue into what you're doing now. so yes, you
spent years delivering the essential services that people need to survive and
that we expect our government to provide. Now you've transitioned. So, if you
don't mind me asking, like, how did you come across that? Was it just like you
stumbled on it as an opportunity? Or was it somebody like you knew and they're
like, hey, like Bryant, like, can you come and help us with this place.

Bryant Lister: Yeah. Recruiter came and talked to me and said they were looking
for somebody to head up it here. I was local to the area, Eugene, Oregon, which
is where the University of Oregon is. they're in Creswell, which is about
fifteen minutes south of there, and they were looking for somebody local who
could be there on site and, had this I.T. department that they were building
because they did not have anyone actually specified as an I.T. role prior to me
coming on board. They had fractional people. They had people who were doing the
infrastructure roles, setting up the networks and, plugging in the servers and
that. But, the actual I.T.. Support was very small. And so I've had to build the
team over the past year to be able to support the organization as it's grown.
Support the implementation of a NetSuite ERP. We're also implementing a new HR
system in the coming months. And so a lot of work here, a lot of improvements
that we've made. We've, put the whole Microsoft stack in place to increase our
security and our maintenance of our systems and working on a lot of cyber
security as well.

Doug Camin: It's funny, I just completed the implementation of a large NetSuite
implementation myself. Yeah. So you mentioned HR system. Like, are you just
using that for ERP or using it for like other functions like HR or any of those
things?

Bryant Lister: We're not using it for HR. We're using it for ERP w m s those
functions.

Doug Camin: Yeah. So, we did it as, kind of like everything, and we had that.
Now I work for a nonprofit that has, legacy systems. Yeah. I've been around like
thirty five years and, so we had disparate systems, Microsoft GP for this or
paylocity for payroll and, a different system for time keeping and stuff like
that. And, so the architecture was to bring them under a unified single database
so that it would, probably the most direct way to put it is it brings discipline
to the organization. So like in the past, it used to be a setup where say like
the HR team wanted to offload or terminate an employee, but the finance team
wasn't ready. They were two separate systems, so each one could kind of choose
their own adventure as to how the process played out for them. And NetSuite. No
longer is that the case. if HR is going to terminate an employee, the employee
gets terminated across the board, so you have to work out a process to make sure
that it happens. So, it enforces a level of discipline from start to finish on
the process and also pulls it together. So like, nobody can be like, we'll take
care of that in two weeks, you know? So your NetSuite implementation, was it, I
mean, ERP implementations always kind of take a little longer than you wanted
and they maybe have some costs and other things in there. So, I'll kind of take
it for granted that you had that experience too. but you get to the end and
successful delivery. and how are you feeling where you're at? Like how much work
do you have to do? Where do you got to go? And that type of stuff.

Bryant Lister: I feel we're at a really great place. We are, successfully
implemented. The system is working. NetSuite product is great. it's not the
functionality of the system that's a problem at all. We're just finding that we
need to make sure our people are trusting it. and that's the thing, you bring in
a new system and you can't expect everybody to just trust it. Day one. So the
big thing now is making sure we build trust in that system so that we don't have
shadow ERP showing up around the organization with spreadsheets and other things
that people are using. We want to build that trust, and the foundation of that
is training. The foundation of that is making sure that our people know how to
use this tool, know how to get the information they need out of it, and know
that when they put something in the system where it's going, what's the flow
through the organization that builds the trust? Being able to trace that lineage
of a work order or a sales order, and how it's progressing by looking at what's
in NetSuite, instead of having to go downstairs or over into the shipping area
or anything, just knowing that they can look at the system and what's there is
the reality in the organization. So that's what we've got to build right now.
And we're working on that to build that trust so that the system reflects the
reality that people expect.

Doug Camin: So you mentioned they had some people doing some technical
functions, like, people setting up servers or network stuff or cloud services or
whatever the case may be. they brought you in to harmonize that and build up a
team. what skills have you been using? What have you been looking for in the
people you're pulling together to build the right team? Like would you say I
want people? What kind of people do you want? I of course, there's the easy
answers, which is I want a team player. I want somebody who's this, I want
somebody that. But like, how do you find the people that are the team player?
How do you find that person and pull them out? How do you define that when
you're talking to them?

Bryant Lister: Well, the people I look for are ones who have some humility, who
understand that their job and it doesn't supersede what everyone else is doing.
They're here to enable and support the organization. They're not here just to do
it. They're here to serve a business function and that we're part of that
business function. I look for people who have got a growth mindset. I really
want people who are continual learners who aren't just stuck in one system. I
know this, I'm going to always use this, but are always thinking about what's
coming next. Always thinking about how can we improve this? How can I improve
myself so that I'm ready for those things? So I look for those characteristics
and the people I'm hiring. Obviously, the things you mentioned, team player,
hard worker, somebody who doesn't always want to resort to heroics. I found that
a lot over my career in it, I've got a lot of people I know who are heroes,
because they'll work over the weekend to solve a problem. I'd rather have people
that work during the week so they avoid having to work over the weekend. And so
really coming up with the processes, the strategies to avoid having to use
heroics to solve problems and really collaborating well with the rest of the
organization to do that. Those are the kind of people that I found are the most
successful people. I don't have to micro-manage. I trust them to do what they're
going to do. I trust them to let me know when they need help. And I'm always
reaching out to them saying, hey, what can we do better? And how can we serve
better?

Doug Camin: those are the qualities you look for in leadership. oh yeah. So you
mentioned the company was purchased or sold to private equity shortly after you
started. What's been the biggest change in terms of like your roles and the
things that are happening? I mean, usually the story that I, as I understand it,
is private equity comes in and there's a lot of investing that goes on early on
and things like that.

Bryant Lister: Yeah. I won't say. Money grows on trees. I mean, they're looking
for us to responsibly mature the organization. Yeah. I've got a huge list of
things that they want from me. A lot of it around cybersecurity policy, and
really meeting their expectations on that. So we've been working through that.
they have recommendations for partners to work with for systems they think would
be great. They're more than willing to meet with us any time and talk with us
about our plans, about our strategy. And you're really make improvements.
they've been a great partner. They haven't come in and tried to change lab golf
dramatically. I think there's something special about this company where it's
come from, how it's been able to achieve what it's been able to achieve over the
last eight years. That's a culture that they want to keep this culture of this
organization going because that's what enabled it to become what it is today,
which, they were a very small company. If you look back five years ago and where
they are now is, huge. It's the trajectory has just been, something I've never
seen in a small company, trajectory that I've had, especially over the last
three years. and they're continuing to be innovative. They're continuing to keep
bringing out products that they think will make the industry better that will
make golfers better. And that's been their primary focus is how do we produce
products that are really going to help the average golfer or even the pro
golfer, as we saw with J.J. Spaun winning the US open last year?

Doug Camin: Nice. So let's shift gears here for a minute. We talked about
leadership. We talked about your job history. I'd love to talk about I'll call
it more fun stuff. so we, frequently dive back into, listeners love to know
tidbits about, things that people have done and who they are and stuff like
that. So, can you tell us something about yourself that, people wouldn't expect?

Bryant Lister: The unusual thing is probably where my journey started and
surprisingly, where it's come to. I did, bachelor's degree in biochemistry and
then got a degree in chiropractic.

Doug Camin: There you go. That's what it was.

Bryant Lister: I was a doctor of chiropractic for a few years and decided, it
just wasn't for me. for a lot of reasons that I'm not going to disparage the
profession, but it just wasn't for me. And I've been around computers my whole
life. I had a book of programs or programming code back when I was six years
old. My father was a computer engineer. We had a TRS eighty. would you remember
anything about them? They have no memory. They store everything on cassette
tapes.

Doug Camin: A good old trash eighty.

Bryant Lister: Yes, exactly. And learned how to program these little games and
everything on that when I was very young. And so I kind of had computers in the
blood a bit for a very long time. And so it was a very short leap for me to go
from chiropractic back into it. And there are things that I learned in
chiropractic that I've used in my profession in it. chief among those is
everything is connected. when you look at the human body, you mess up something
in your ankle, you're going to start feeling it in your back at some point
because you're going to change your stride. It's going to change the way you
function and the way you walk. Similarly, if you have something going wrong in
your back, you're probably going to feel it in your knees. You're going to have
to adjust for that and it's going to affect there. So these changes, these
systematic changes that occur in one spot can affect other things down the line.
And it really helps you when you start looking at that holistic systemic
approach to diagnosing problems, not just in the human body, but in the systems
themselves. Most computer systems don't fail all by themselves unless they,
power surge or some mechanical problem. Most of the problems that occur in a
computer is because something changed somewhere, and you've got to trace it to
where that change occurred, whether it was a data change or a programming change
or somebody unplugged something somewhere, and you look for that. And so the
diagnostic tools that I learned in chiropractic have served me well, not with
the hammer, not with the, other devices and X-rays and everything, but just the
diagnostic way of thinking through a problem, looking for causes, getting that
root cause of a problem and then addressing it. that's been something very
applicable for one career to the other. And, it's made the chiropractic journey
an interesting part of my IT journey.

Doug Camin: Nice. So, you mentioned your first computer, the good old TRS
eighty. You've been involved. So you answered one of my questions, which is
often that I put out there for folks. So you started in chiropractic and you
jumped back or you jumped over to it because you thought it was more up your
alley. what made you think about chiropractic at first? Like, why did you get
into that?

Bryant Lister: Well, I never wanted to be called Mr. Lister for my whole life,
so I had to become a doctor. I like the holistic approach of healthcare,
especially with chiropractic, because, the school that I went to and the
studying that I did, it was very much based on that holistic taking care of the
whole body. what you eat, what you do during the day. Any chemicals you're
taking or exposed to. Those all affect your health. And so that holistic
approach, appealed to me. And I also like the fact that it was, fairly
non-invasive. the fact that we cut into people to heal them. It's a little
counterintuitive. but, there are reasons for it, but I did like chiropractic
because here you were using your knowledge to help people heal their bodies by
taking care of their bodies better. so that was what appealed to me, in entering
chiropractic.

Doug Camin: So I'm going to shift back again which is the pirate ship problem in
it. When what made you great starts holding you back?

Bryant Lister: So that came from our board. We had a board member, one of our
meetings for lab golf who suggested that, lab golf is moving from a pirate ship
to a navy. Okay. we've been very innovative, very nimble, do things our own way
for a long time. And it's been just very successful. But there are certain
things, as you start getting larger that you need to change in order to work in
this industry, we need to work with multiple stores and, large stores like
Dick's Sporting Goods, Golf Galaxy, etc., they have certain ways of doing things
and we need to work with them collaboratively. And to do that, we have to
actually conform to certain standards. there are certain standards for retail
transactions. There or certain ways of doing things that we need to conform to a
bit. And so we need to take that mentality and shift it a bit to that more navel
standard where we're following the rules and we're playing, with everybody else.
but we still want to keep what made us lab golf. We still want to keep that
spirit of innovation, ingenuity, and sometimes turning over the apple cart,
coming up with a new design, something radical, you know, that what we came up
with or what the original designs of our putters were fairly radical. they've
definitely changed the game of golf, especially around putting. And we want to
continue to do that. We do not want to just rest on our laurels and keep doing
what we've, been producing. We want to keep changing. We just came out with
another new putter earlier this month and, it's great. I've ordered one myself.
So, we keep innovating and keep growing. But that naval theme was something we
tried to carry through in, creating better processes, trying to apply governance
and other things to the organization in a way that's nimble in a way that allows
us to keep changing and keep growing. We're coming out with new products and new
ideas. We don't want to stifle that. We don't want to layer red tape and
processes onto the organization that can prevent us from being that ingenuity
driver. so that's a big part of our DNA in this organization. And that's
something we definitely want to maintain going forward.

Doug Camin: So what's one myth about it? Leadership. You wish the entire
industry would retire forever.

Bryant Lister: I think the biggest thing that I would say, as a myth is that it
is dependent on technology. At this point, it is becoming less and less about
the technology, the information that we need to get in order to make better
business decisions or to make better organizational decisions doesn't come from
technology. It comes from people having data that they analyze, that they use,
that creates information and knowledge, and then their wisdom and experience
goes into creating decisions that actually accelerate the business. And our
whole purpose in it is to expose people and their abilities and capabilities and
experience to the information faster, to give them a better access to that. And
you'll see that if you look at the last fifty years or so of computers, from
punch cards to the mouse to the interfaces we use today, along with AI, it's
been a progression to strip away the layers of ambiguity, to strip away the
layers of technical understanding, you need to have to utilize the processing
power of computers and to get access to the data. And AI is taking that even a
step further, where you don't have to have any technical knowledge to utilize
tremendous amounts of data and processing power. You just ask it a question and
it gives you what you need as an answer. Hopefully the right answer. But that's
a whole nother matter. Yeah. But the myth that it is about technology needs to
be stripped away because data is the new infrastructure, and the technology is
less and less important in what we do. I remember when we used to build
computers. That was part of the job is you built these desktop towers, you put
in all the RAM, you plugged in all the connections to the different peripherals
to the motherboard, and you maintained it all by hand. We don't do that anymore.
We order from CDW or some other vendor to get a laptop. That laptop goes bad. We
ship it back and they send us a new one. We aren't going in there. We aren't
opening these things up very often and looking at them or doing anything with
them. So the technology is becoming less and less of something that we're
maintaining. We're just ordering it and it's maintained either through the cloud
or just by warranty. And we're transferring that responsibility. So, the modern
cell phone. Smartphone. perfect example. People don't have to have any technical
training in order to use it. They just know it's very intuitive. It gives you
access to so much data and information. without having to understand the
technology. Nobody that's using these knows how they work, or at least the
majority of people, they couldn't tell you what's inside this and what's working
it, we probably could, but, the majority of people really can't. But it doesn't
stop them from using it and using it effectively.

Doug Camin: Yeah. one of the early things you said in that response, you focused
on, technology. I guess I would summarize it, that one of those early statements
says technology isn't always the answer. And that's really always been a true
thing. Like for many years, people would come in and be like, oh, I had a
solution. or I got a problem. What I need is a solution that's technological
based. And you're like, oh, you've got a process problem. like you've got an
issue that's different than technology. You think that what you need to do is
apply technology to the end result, but what you need to do is go five steps
back and figure out how you got here.

Bryant Lister: Yes. No amount of technology will make up for a bad process. I've
tried to educate people I've worked with outside of it on this for years. It's
you've got a process problem. You've got a problem with how you're integrating
your systems or working with other parts of the organization. Technology is not
going to solve that. It's not going to make up for that people problem.

Doug Camin: So if you could fix one big challenge in IT leadership tomorrow,
what would it be?

Bryant Lister: Bringing us in to the discussions earlier. Bringing us into the
strategy discussions. I think the business needs to recognize it more as an
enablement less of a service. We're not just here to support the technology or
the needs for information. We're here to enable your strategy to drive your
business to produce greater value. And if we're brought in earlier on those
discussions, we can help drive that even more effectively. It's the same thing
with your projects. If you start a project without project management, the later
you bring it on, the more problems you're going to have, the more work it's
going to be. Security is the same way. I always had the conversation about
shifting left on cybersecurity. Bring us in earlier. It same thing. You have to
bring us in earlier or you should bring us in earlier on those strategy
discussions because we're going to help drive, the enablement of value. We're
going to help drive systems that will produce greater value for the business and
help you basically do those processes better. And the more we're in there from
the beginning, the more we can help you because we're not just great technical
people. We also understand how these systems can be utilized better.

Doug Camin: So we're coming up to the end of our episode here. one thing I
always ask our guests is the advice round. It is what advice? Maybe there might
be a couple questions in here, but to start, some of our listeners are up and
coming. They're emerging leaders. They're learning, they're thinking about
getting into leadership and they want to know more. What advice would you have
for them about how to break into it leadership and what's most important?

Bryant Lister: I think first, get a mentor, get somebody who you respect, who
you look at and go, I want to be like them. And really try to understand how
they achieve that success and what they're doing well. Recognize that every
organization is different, and what's successful in one organization might not
be successful in another, and you need to find the organization that's going to
help you be successful. And so don't just take one failure at one organization
as meaning you're not cut out for leadership. It might be that organization is
not ready for your leadership L.A.B. Golf is at a different level of maturity
and organizational rigor than the state of Oregon, than the federal government,
than Apple computers. And we have to recognize that different leaders are needed
in those organizations, and different resources will have different levels of
success. the other part is learn the language of your business or your
organization. Learn how they view success, how they view value. Really speak
that language. Embrace it. Make sure that when you're talking about how
information technology can help them, that you're Translating it into what they
see as value. If it's dollars, if it's client served, if it's innovation and new
R&D success, make sure you understand that and can communicate to that and
translate what you're doing in it to that language, because they're not going to
learn it. The majority of them are not going to learn it, nor should they.
That's why they hired you. You need to be that vector of translation of
application of it to their success.

Doug Camin: Yeah. So I want to touch on a piece that you said there, about,
failure and change in particular organizations. So I have a friend who calls
this, leaders have seasons and, so. Your season may both come and go even within
the same organization, and, so. recognizing when that's changed is an important
part of the work, of being a leader. I want to say like, hey, know when to get
out, but that could be it, not like jump ship, but like, have I done the things
that I set out to do? And do I need a new challenge or a new thing in front of
me? So like understanding when your season is changed, if it has is an important
part of leadership, that I've seen personally, like, and I know I've had to
practice that at different intervals in my career to say, stop and say, hey,
like I'm struggling in this moment. And is it because it's time for me to like,
pull up the stakes and let somebody else have a stab at it?

Bryant Lister: Exactly. Yeah. your style, your, knowledge, experience, it can
contribute to a lot of different ways. You can be very adaptable, but the
organization might not be ready for it or might have passed that already. And
you've got to recognize that. Look around you. Ask yourself continuously, am I
producing value for the organization? If not, why not? And what do you need?
Either need to change in yourself or the organization. Meaning find a new
organization in order to make that success a reality.

Doug Camin: To be honest, I'm going through that exact process right now myself.
I've mentioned I implemented a huge new product and other stuff like that. And
it's now time for me to, move to the next thing, even in the organization that
I'm at. and so, those transitions are hard. And I'll say this, to our listeners,
like all of us go through those types of transitions in our careers. As times
change, the things change. Even, like the finances of the organization can
change and make you not be. I would say relevant isn't the right word, but they
might not be able to afford you anymore. and then it turns into like, it's not
personal, but like, you can't be here.

Bryant Lister: You can look at the startup realm and there are people who do
startup after startup after startup. They're great at it. They can do that first
few years of a startup. If you ask them to manage a mature business. They'll
either get really bored at it or not be very good at it, or have some other
challenge that just doesn't succeed for them. So you have to recognize what your
capabilities are, what your appetites and passions are, and use that to the best
of your ability for an organization and recognize what organizations need that.

Doug Camin: And, one of the other challenges that you see in those moments is
organizations that really struggle to do that transition well. so like, think
about people. I think about people like you and I, other, senior executives that
are on these, we have on the podcast here generally, we're all consummate
professionals, so like if somebody came to you and said, hey, Bryant, the
business is changing. But you know what, like, you've done well for us up to
this point, but by, the end of the year, we're going to transition out. it's
time for us to go a different direction. Typically, you give everybody the
graceful plan, but too often the business chooses, the leadership chooses to
tell themselves a story that's not really accurate in that moment. And they get
into situations where they're like, oh, you know what? Like we need to go, let's
get on a call and say something, and, so one of the important things for leaders
to think about is how you actually change things, not just like, what have I
done? what actions have I taken and things like that. but what are the choices I
make when I need to make change? And how do I execute those choices in a way
that is, empathetic and helpful and supportive? I had a story once in an
organization I worked at where they off boarded a staff person because he got
written out of the budget, but then nobody told him until like a week before.
And then, he was offered a different role, but it was like clearly a demotion
and had less money. And they didn't through a series of issues, he wasn't
informed. And then he gets informed like right before big freak. I think too
often that side of it, both sides get missed. like we focus a lot on bringing
people on, we focus a lot on, how do we get things done with the people we have?
And we don't think about the kind of like the trauma slash, empathy, the trauma
created by doing it badly on the other side as well.

Bryant Lister: Well, we see that throughout it. People don't think about how do
we get rid of software we don't need anymore. People don't think about the whole
life cycle of things where, okay, we're bringing on this new software. How are
we going to get out of it when it's time to get out of that software and
transition to something else happens with contracts, a lot of contracts that
don't have the end in mind. And don't have, okay, we're going to sign this
contract for three years. We're going to want a new vendor. We're going to want
a new system. Let's make sure there are things in that contract that provide for
that transition. At the end, they come to the end and they're like, oh crap, we
need a transition. They do an amendment to the contract and the companies
charging them twice as much because they didn't think about it from the start.

Doug Camin: Yeah, and when you work with vendors, like it has to be a win win a
lot of times because vendors are, I know that's like one of those like trite
terms that people have where they're like, oh, everything's a win win. obviously
everyone wants to be win win. But there's real meaning behind it, you're going
to get better results from your vendors and your staff. if you treat everybody
like it's a mutual decision, if you will, a mutual benefit operation. so if you
show up and it's just, this is what we need, like whether it's a piece of
software, you go to the vendor and you say, hey, thanks a lot, but no thanks. Of
course they're going to fleece you the next when they want. We have to do an
emergency amendment because they don't care. you gave them no reason to care
about you. and the same happens on the employee side. if you're not careful
about how you offboard or how you, push, take somebody out of the realm, the
same thing happens. so like those things are, those are real challenges. And
people do get that wrong a lot. So Bryant, we're at the end of our episode here.
And, I think I would just ask you, what one piece of advice do you have for
other IT leaders out there?

Bryant Lister: Be honest with yourself. Be honest with your level of experience.
Knowledge. don't worry about imposter syndrome. Just be honest with yourself and
communicate that honesty with humility to the other people around you. Don't
pretend that it is something above others. It's a service that we provide to
enable the business and have that humility and honesty with yourself and with
others, and you'll do well.

Doug Camin: All right, Bryant, thank you so much for investing your time on the
You've Been Heard IT Leadership Podcast, the platform for IT leaders. I am Doug
Camin, one of the co-hosts. And I will see you on the next episode.