446- Why IT Leaders Should Not Lead With No w/Bret Henning

446-Bret Henning

Host: Phil Howard

Guest: Bret Henning

Phil Howard: All right. Welcome everyone back. We have Brett Henning,

information technology professional is what you have as your title on LinkedIn,

but executive director, information technology at Avenza Therapeutics. a long

life of technology. how'd you get started in this world of technology? What was

your first computer? I'm sure it was like you were born and knew right away that

I wanted to be, head of all the guys that open up tickets and fix everything so

everyone doesn't lose their mind.

Bret Henning: Now, that's not really how it got started. I actually was

originally a music major in college and, I was a mediocre musician, which kind

of hurts a little bit. greatness was not part of what I had. And you can't make

any money.

Phil Howard: And so. The allure of fame and being a rock star, I think might get

a lot of people. I'm not saying that that's what it was, but.

Bret Henning: Well, for me, actually, I really was planning on teaching. Okay.

Right. So fairly low bar as far as music goes. but I don't know it just the

people in it. It just was an odd mix of, which is not any different than the

computer business. Right. Technology has an odd mix of unusual, as I call them.

So it's it's not drastically different. Again, when I started, Right. I've been

doing this for a long time. this was in the early eighties. pre PC, everything

was mainframes or minicomputers, my first computer was not a computer. My first

actual PC was an apple two if you want to go back far enough.

Phil Howard: No, mine was an apple two C the one with the disc where the disk

goes in on the side. But I think the apple. But all the computer labs, at least

in my school at the time, they were all apples sitting on top of two floppy disk

drives. The big fat one was that apple two E, probably.

Bret Henning: An apple two E maybe.

Phil Howard: Yeah, I think Apple two E.

Bret Henning: I think it's probably an apple two E but I actually worked for a

pretty innovative it was an electronics company, but the CEO was very technology

focused. And what he used to do is, he would actually pay you a reimbursement

for you to go buy a computer. So he'd pay you, like forty bucks a month. and you

could use that money to buy a computer, but you had to show your receipt for the

computer. And so he wanted you to buy a computer at home, so I had an apple to

an apple two E, I had a Lisa, if you want to go back far enough. I had a Mac,

one of the early Mac. I ended up with an IBM, PC, XT, I believe. and it just

kind of went from that way. So I've been through all of them probably at some

point in my life.

Phil Howard: Don't you wish you kept them all and you had your own little museum

at the house with them all plugged in, still humming.

Bret Henning: I do, and I don't because I already have a lot of stuff that I

collect at home. So

Phil Howard: Well, so you're a music major? That didn't work out. at least for,

keeping the lights on. But anyways, how'd you end up there?

Bret Henning: Well, there was a trade school in town that did computer stuff

and, I signed up and went, they were teaching programming and, pretty basic

stuff. and I went through that, graduated from that and just basically got my

first job at this kind of great small electronics company. at the time, it was

the lowest job there was in it, which was called a computer operator. So, my

job.

Phil Howard: Would turn it on and type stuff.

Bret Henning: Turn it on. I did backups, I managed the printers. I, did support,

change disk drives back in the day when you actually changed distress. we did, I

mean, that was my back.

Phil Howard: Then what were you backing up? Like, just like the, like the

accountants register or something. Like what?

Bret Henning: we had inventory. It was a manufacturing company. So we had

inventory that we did. there was payroll. We ran locally ourselves.

Phil Howard: Let's think of some of the earlier jobs that technology did that

was just like so helpful. Yeah, payroll would be one. Think about that. That's

just like really made a difference in some someone's life. And then, inventory

like, yeah.

Bret Henning: we did manufacturing. So we had manufacturing records of

everything that we built. Okay. and so it was a very practical thing. We had to

keep track of what we made, what went into it, how much it costs, and who we

sent it to. Right. It was very practical stuff. so it was important, right? You

wanted to back that data up and, the mean time between failure back then on some

of these equipment was quite short. so, a disk drive failure is not an unusual

thing. And, these were big platter disks with giant handles that you had. But in

essence how I got started was at that low level, again, the company I was at was

very progressive. And so, I ended up doing kind of development work and

programming and getting into that and doing building applications. And, again, I

got an experience doing, I had to do accounting systems. I had to do payroll

systems, I had to do inventory. so all the workings of a business I learned,

which made me a better rounded kind of person because, not only did I know the

technology part, but I also knew how the business worked.

Phil Howard: Super important, super important. At what point in your career

trajectory do you feel like technology started to stop being, like the dorks in

the back room that could like swap out the tape drives and stuff and actually

affect the business? Like at what point? Because you were getting that, kind of

education, I guess early on. At what point did someone notice, hey, this guy's

valuable to the bottom line. We should bring him in on a more in depth business

strategy discussions a k a maybe he should be in on some of these, executive

roundtable discussions and in general, just kind of like historically, what was

like kind of like this major turning point in technology where we realized that.

Bret Henning: Well, I think, early on the computer was the afterthought, right?

So you did something and then you told the computer what you did. Right. it was

I moved some inventory around and then I went to the computer and I said, this

inventory was moved from here to there. So the computer was what you caught up

to. Right. and at some point, there was a functional shift where you removed

that step that was done manually or on paper, and you did it just on the

computer. Right. and so that functional shift meant that you couldn't do

anything without the computer, and so it became how you did your work. and that

was really the functional shift where you couldn't do your work without your

computer.

Phil Howard: You couldn't like, mid nineties or.

Bret Henning: I would say it was probably about the mid nineties, when, systems

were broad enough, the cost was low enough. everybody had a computer on their

desk.

Phil Howard: I remember a time where it was like acceptable to hand in like a,

it was still acceptable to hand in like a high school paper, either handwritten

or on the computer. Like there was people still handing in their papers

Handwritten, which for some of you out there, I mean, can you imagine, like you

just can't have a spelling mistake or what do you do? Write it in pencil and

then go over it in ink?

Bret Henning: Well, we used to have and some of our papers had to be typed on a

typewriter.

Phil Howard: I remember the typewriter.

Bret Henning: Days.

Phil Howard: White out

Bret Henning: if you have an IBM Selectric with correction on it, you were the

king of the world. Well, there again, there was a functional shift where the

computer became how you did your work versus what you did after you did your

work. And again, that was probably about the mid nineties. PCs were on

everybody's desks. you had laser printers, you had, Excel or, Visicalc, I think

was the first version of that. and that's how they did their work. I mean, if

the computer wasn't there, there was not much you could do except stand.

Phil Howard: Can you believe we're talking about this? Like we're two people

still breathing, living, still alive.

Bret Henning: Oh, that hurts.

Phil Howard: Like, no, no, but we're like, no, but it's, it's insane. Like, I

still like, I don't, I say this all the time. I never get tired of talking about

this, but like we're alive. And look at how far it's come.

Bret Henning: It's a pretty short period of time. it really took off from the

nineties forward.

Phil Howard: at what point did you feel like a business leader versus just the

computer guy? At what point did that really kind of like take over? Because that

was like, okay, we have to have technology in the business. We have to have it.

We have to have a position now. Ninety five like you're like, the position is

established. If you don't have a computer guy in your company, like, I don't

know, what are you doing? Like, you're probably the laundromat or something

that's can still survive maybe without it, but the laundromat that actually

brought in like a POS system and something like, you know what I mean? Like, at

what point did it become like this valuable business partner you think? I mean,

from like a strategy standpoint, cuz you said you were learning the business.

Like I'm assuming you mean like bottom line cogs and flow through profit,

EBITDA, stuff like that. At what point did the IT guy know what EBITDA meant?

Bret Henning: Honestly. and this isn't a good thing. this may be a bad thing,

but the year two thousand.

Phil Howard: Mhm.

Bret Henning: when we did the switch and the Y2K, I think that's at the point

the business realized. Right. Because it was such a crazy thing. I remember I

had to work, I had to be there at midnight. The business realized it was

integral and it was so ingrained in what we did. and I think after that, people

started looking at it as like, how can we use technology to, make things better?

I did a very early CRM before they had the name CRM right before it was that

name, but I work with the.

Phil Howard: It's called a database before.

Bret Henning: Right? I worked with a external, we had an external sales team at

one of the companies I worked at. And they lived based on how they were selling

and what they were selling and to who. and so I actually worked with one of the

sales managers to build the system. So they had visibility of sales seems pretty

small.

Phil Howard: But no, no, no. if you think about like what VC like, or people

that are buying up a company, like what do they look at, right? They're going to

be looking at, like sales growth, like, typical customers, opportunities created

over time and all these different things. So yeah.

Bret Henning: Yeah, so I did a very early version again, before CRM was really

coined as a term. This was kind of an early piece of that. Yeah. and it really

made a big impact on that sales team. and it did get noticed. People went like,

wow, information is important. And getting information.

Phil Howard: Please tell me what you did or what it was popping out and what was

required. Because one thing that's really hard to get sales guys to do,

especially like top sales guys that get really arrogant and feel like they run

the whole company. And if I wasn't here, like this company would go under which

is true in some cases.

Bret Henning: Well, yeah, but the guy who's shipping the product out doesn't do

a good job. Doesn't matter what you did on the sales side. Everybody's important

in the food chain, right?

Phil Howard: Everybody is. I guess the old adage is like, nothing happens until

somebody makes a sale. The farmer doesn't get the order for the beans to get the

tractor to the market to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So anyways, what did you

put together? How did you gather that information that you were going to deliver

in said system? That was important.

Bret Henning: I think, well, the challenge was at the time, the said system was

a, typical green screen kind of, mini computer application. And I needed to get

it to a personal computer. so people could see that information. So there was

some technology we used, I found a company that would take data and move it and

get it to a form that I could actually then do analysis on and, it was pretty

transparent. I think that was the first time where I worked the business saw

this value because the salespeople were pretty blind. They would get stuff at

the end of the month, and it was, on a big sheet of paper. Right, right. And

they couldn't drill in on it. They couldn't see the details. And so I was able

to extract all this data out all these details, and then build a nice kind of

early web interface for them to see what was happening today. I mean, when a

sale came in, it happened today, but they didn't see it till the end of the

month. And so now they could actually see how they were doing throughout the

month.

Bret Henning: And see where that activity and they could focus their attention,

right. it's like, a lot of times they would focus attention on a customer that

already bought something, but they didn't know they bought something. and this

allowed them to focus their attention on the customers maybe that weren't buying

something or what those things or.

Phil Howard: Profile other customers that are like other said, good customers

that buy things go after more people like that.

Bret Henning: Right?

Phil Howard: It's whatever.

Bret Henning: They didn't have information. They didn't have information even

though the data was there. So it was really just taking information we already

had, transforming it into a different form and giving it to the people who

needed it.

Phil Howard: So fast forward to today. That sounds like a similar project that

someone with a creative business mindset could actually put together a good AI

point solution, to benefit the business because it's really the same thing now,

the same level of thinking just exponentially, insanely, faster and changing

every moment. Like back in the day, it used to be like, oh, what new technology

do we have this year? Then it was like, what technology do we have this quarter?

Now it's literally like, oh, what version of Claude are you on this hour?

Bret Henning: Right. and everybody already has access to this stuff. So you as

an IT person, your challenge is they're already using tools. They might already

actually be ahead of you in usage and stuff. And so it's a little harder to find

your value. because a typical technology person, the first thing they would do

is limit somebody's access. You can't use that because it's not approved. Right?

So they start pulling things away and they become kind of the bad guy. So your

challenge really is being able to embrace that or giving them something that is

good or is better than what they can actually get already. it's a bit more of a

challenge because again, everybody is now an expert, right? They use it at home,

they use it here. And so all of that comes into the office and you basically

like, I think use the term hurt have to hurt the cats, to some degree.

Phil Howard: Herding cats term one. it urban dictionary. okay. So I guess how do

you herd cats and still stay ahead. Now that everyone's an expert, how do you

stay ahead of the experts? And, I think some of the biggest, frustrations across

any department nowaday could be. And I would imagine everyone's dealing with

this is. Yes. Shadow I.

Bret Henning: Correct. Well, the first thing you have to do is not lead with no.

Right. The first thing you got to do is you can't tell them no because no gives

them license to do what they're already doing. Right. screw the IT people. I'm

going to do more shadow because they've just told me no. So you have to be

careful about that answer. so generally you have to say, what are you trying to

solve? how are you using it? What are you trying to use it for? How does it

benefit you? and you have to be willing to find something that you can accept

that does that same thing for them and have a conversation with them. But I

think the initial normal reaction of somebody is like, no, you can't use that.

I'm going to block it. it's this instant no thing. And it's much more of a

subtle conversation. you have to be able to provide something that is as good as

or better than what they're using. And you have to be explain to them why what

they're doing is probably not what's best for the company or you. And here's the

risks involved. So you've got to lead them with information. You can't just tell

them no because no doesn't work. people will say, no, that's not in our policy.

Right. it ends the conversation, but it doesn't end the habit of what they're

doing. You have to change their mind and you have to provide them something as

good or better than that. And you have to explain to them the why, not just the

absolute no. And it is more of a challenge now because there's so much of it and

it's everywhere.

Phil Howard: I guess two questions would be is one is how do you do that? is it

start by asking questions? What are you trying to accomplish? What's your

challenge is that.

Bret Henning: I think it starts by asking questions. Really, you've got to let

them tell you why and how they're using it and what they're trying to solve. you

have to listen first and talk later. again, that's not the typical response. A

typical response would be, here's the approved ones. These are the only ones you

can use. Here's the only thing you could use it for. really you start with this

whole limiting factor before you've had a conversation. And I think if you have

a conversation with people and you engage them, they'll understand the what and

the why. Why would you limit their choices? What is the risk to the company? How

can we help you solve this same issue in a different way? That conversation has

to happen. And if it does happen, people tend to be more invested in that

because they feel like they were part of that decision, versus just saying no.

Phil Howard: It's the art of telling someone no. What can we

Bret Henning: Well, you have kids. You know how it is. That is probably how you

have to treat pretty much most of your customers. If you have that view, it's

much easier to understand.

Phil Howard: So my follow up question to you was, which is first of all, like,

what are some of the steps of how we could explain to these people? My thought

was, one, like what you were saying was like, ask a lot of questions. Like, how

do we ask an open ended question to ask another question? You know, what's your

challenge? What are you trying to solve? So we can kind of understand their job

and what they're trying to do, because we might actually have like you said, an

option that's better than what they're trying to figure out with already

approved technology.

Bret Henning: Correct. So it's really listen first and it's one hundred percent

fair. You listen first you gather information to say, look, let me go back and

needle on it a little bit and then I'll come back to you with some

recommendations, right. Don't make a judgment call initially. Listen first,

gather the information and think about it. and then again, you gotta provide

them something that is good as or better than what they're using, or they're

just going to continue to use what they're used. So you have to set the

boundaries pretty wide.

Phil Howard: Mhm.

Bret Henning: Otherwise they will go around them. So again, shadow IT, it

doesn't happen. It's created and it's created because you're not providing them

something they need to do their job. Or at least in their mind, they need to do

something.

Phil Howard: There's a big communication gap between the IT department and them,

maybe the IT department they feel like is on their own island is what I'm

assuming is how often this happens. but the problem is, that at least in the mid

market to fortune five thousand space, the ratio of IT leadership to end users

is about one to one hundred. So you've got for every one IT person, you've got

one hundred end users out there, doing stuff. maybe you're more fortunate. my

follow up.

Bret Henning: I've done a lot of work with startups. when you work at a startup

or an early stage company, sometimes you're the only IT person. Yeah.

Phil Howard: I mean, I've had whole health care organizations with twelve

hundred end users. They got one IT person.

Bret Henning: Yeah.

Phil Howard: my follow up question that I want to ask you is how would you train

other IT people to be able to listen. In other words, how would you teach or how

would you coach? Because I'm assuming you've had some coaching experience and

you like mentoring other people growing up in it, how would you mentor someone

in the art of no.

Bret Henning: Well, again, here's a key component is, selecting your people that

are teachable, right? I hire a lot of underachievers, because overachievers tend

to be more problematic when it comes to saying no, because they're right. Just

ask them. Right. so I tend to hire people who are a bit of an underachiever,

right? They got good, solid C's in school. And they tend to work harder for

things. and they didn't always have things handed to them. So that's the first

thing is picking. Not assuming that a high achiever is going to be the person

that's going to be best at communicating. and it's really, you gotta listen

first, talk second. And when you do say something, it should be something that's

important.

Phil Howard: How do you find those people? Is it a feeling or is it like you can

just.

Bret Henning: It's a feeling I can usually tell after about 30s.

Phil Howard: Mhm.

Bret Henning: I don't know but, you do make some mistakes because some people

are actually really good at fooling you. But, you can look in their job history,

if you hire somebody as a support person, maybe their first technology job,

maybe their second technology job, right? And so you'll look and say, okay, they

were a barista at Starbucks. you're looking at a life history that says, look,

these people know how to deal with people. Yeah. And so that's what I tend to

look at more versus, somebody that,

Phil Howard: The Starbucks has actually really key. if they were at a Starbucks

for like multiple years. I really do think that that's like an arbitrage hire

for customer care.

Bret Henning: Yeah, no, it definitely is because they have to deal with people

who are kind of probably not the nicest people and probably don't treat them

well, but they're the ones that have to be the positive side of that. And so

that life experience is important.

Phil Howard: I went from Starbucks to a Cisco startup and I really do think that

a lot of my old restaurant management and Starbucks management history just did

so much more from a business management standpoint, because as a store manager

and they're like ridiculously strict on managing a P and L, but you have to talk

with everybody that comes in that place. If you're a good store, if you're going

to be a good store, you have to teach all of your people how to talk to people.

You've got to get everyone's first name. You've got to remember their drinks.

They know how to make it the same way every time. You don't have to tell them

multiple times. Like sometimes you come in and your drinks just already ready.

They saw you in the parking lot. well.

Bret Henning: it gets back to the original discussion that we started about,

which has to do with vendor relationships and that connection. Mhm. it's the

same thing, right? finding good vendors that give you good service and staying

with the person. It's the same thing on when you're providing support, right?

It's finding that good person who can connect, who has life experiences and

shows some level of empathy, right? That's the hardest thing to teach. and

again, I always believe that good technology people are born, they're not

necessarily made, you can change a person about twenty percent. That's my

theory. This is Brett's theory, so they are who they are. And you maybe can mold

them twenty percent either direction, but that's about as far you can move them.

if somebody's already a jerk, it's hard to unjerk them, so to speak.

Phil Howard: Yeah. that whole book series that started with, first break all the

rules. Now discover your strengths, now put your strengths to work or something.

It basically a pretty life altering book for me. First break all the rules. The

VP of Starbucks actually gave it to me as his personal copy signed it and I was

like, oh, thank you. And it really the whole like theory is focused on people's

strengths. Don't try to fix their weaknesses. And then it goes back to like, put

the people in the right seat on the bus and that type of thing. but you said

something that really stuck with me and I'll never forget it. And I want to say

thank you because I've already used it on multiple multiple calls and in talking

with people. And it's just the way that people put words together sometimes. And

it's probably not the first time that someone said this, but you said you really

appreciate people that honor the relationship. And let's just end with this. I

want to give you a few minutes just to say, what does that mean to you? What

does honoring the relationship mean?

Bret Henning: Well, one, there's a level of mutual respect, right, they have

some level of expertise that you may not have or some way of doing thing. And

you have that as well. And so knowing those things like your Starbucks thing,

that's the first thing about that is having some empathy for the other person

and respecting their expertise. Right. So they are good at certain things. And

you need to respect that. And that comes down to even when you're managing

somebody, if you have somebody who works for you and they have a level of

expertise, you've got to let them use that expertise. You can't be the person

that's telling them what to do and how to do that. You have to let them do that.

And so managing that relationship is, knowing people's strengths and weaknesses

and letting them use them. I think a lot of, especially new managers and new

people will be, the hover manager and try to make all those decisions. and

again, letting people make their own decisions and do the things. and honoring

that relationship is respecting that. And like I said, when I have a vendor I

deal with or a customer I deal with or an employee ID with, it's understanding

that and understanding where they're coming from. and again, I would tell,

people I would mentor would ask me, it's like, well, when you talk to this

person, you talk this way. And when you talk to this person, you talk this way.

And when you talk to this person, you talk differently because it seems like

it's inconsistent and you're having different conversations. And I said, no,

what I'm doing is I understand that person and where they're coming from. So you

have to communicate to them differently. You're adjusting your communication

based on that relationship. And that's a very difficult thing to do. And again,

you have to start by listening to them. and I think once you get to that level

of trust, and it's the same when you're working with, your executive levels,

you've got to get to that level of trust where they, trust you to do your job

and you trust them to do their job. And that you have, stuff happens.

Phil Howard: Is there any way, to speed that up?

Bret Henning: Well, AI is not going to do it. How's that?

Phil Howard: Not using AI. That's what not to do. Well there's true it's like a

lot of times it's what not to do, right?

Bret Henning: So you can be proactive, right? As a person, before you have to

interact with a person, you can actually reach out to them and have a

conversation. Just about nothing. But you help establish that relationship so it

you can be proactive to start that relationship and get it going in advance of

having to have a business conversation around that. So I think that's an

important thing to do is be proactive, which tends to accelerate it.

Phil Howard: I had asked you before, when it comes to vendors, what's your

single biggest frustration problem or concern? and then I asked you, it's what

vendors really knock it out of the park. And it's usually a person. It's not

actually a company. because people buy from people and relationships. And you

had mentioned the person that really honors the relationship, the person that

really listens. And I had a manager one time that said, it's T L T; the little

things count, the little things matter. Like how much does it make a big

difference when someone actually did a little bit of research on you or your

company before they spoke to you, or they made like, you know, they took that

extra step to just, I don't know, show that they care that you're like an

individual and you know what I mean? They're not just treating you like a script

or like something that they just have to show up to work and do every day.

Bret Henning: They honor their relationship. that is part of that. I mean, you

walk into somebody's office or space and there's personal items there. I mean.

Phil Howard: There's a notice.

Bret Henning: They care to know you. You notice it's like, oh, is that your

family? Right? again, it's the hardest thing for people to do is having some

level of empathy for the individual you're dealing with. Mhm. and find a way to

connect to them, trust me, there's plenty of people I do not like. if I was not

in this business, I would never have a relationship with that individual because

I don't really like them. But unfortunately, I don't have that choice. Right? So

I have to make that connection whether I like them or not.

Phil Howard: I learned that all the time. Like, I don't like people, but I do

want to see them change for the better.

Bret Henning: Correct. and it's the same, with the vendor relationship. You

could keep it professional if they have respect for you and you have respect for

them, it's important. And again, if the company doesn't matter, the company

actually generally is in the way. Right. the company is in the way. So you want

an advocate at that company that can help you get around that company and get

stuff to you in the way you need it, because they always want to give it to you

a certain way, and you might want it another way. Like I said, I worked at a lot

of startup companies and I'm looking at this technology. And they said, the

implementation is going to cost this and take this much time and you need all

these resources. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, you're not listening to me.

I'm a startup. it's me one person. Yeah, I still need this technology. And so

once you build that relationship, instead of me having to go through that

exercise, what I get back, as I said, well, I realize your startup, these things

are actually too complicated. Here's a good choice for you because the

implementation is easy, the costs are lower and you can work your way. So they

start understanding you and then they give you the information you need before

you have to go through the dance, so to speak, to get it down to that. And I

think that's an important thing and it works both ways.

Phil Howard: Bret Henning, you've been heard. Thank you very much for being on

the show. And, it's been an absolute pleasure. And we look forward to, having

you in our private community, communicating with the rest of your peers and

helping change the world and help people honor the relationship more. I think

it's very important.