452 -Make IT A Business Partner w/Jim Harden

Phil Howard: Everyone out there listening. We're speaking with Jim Harden, CIO

at Singleton Schreiber. Give me just kind of a little background, man. Like, so

what do you guys do? How'd you get started? What was your first computer? How'd

you get into this wildness?

Jim Harden: Yeah. I mean, like, my, journey into, it, started back in my

military career, believe it or not. So it's, started off, as an enlisted guy

going through boot camp became a tactical data networks, guy, building. tactical

networks out of commodity type gear out in the deserts. Right. and, that was

kind of my forte into really what led into more of corporate i.t coming out of

the Marine Corps transitioning into a corporate job. I ended up working for EDS,

which was a, they were at the time building. Nmci. it was the largest

privatized, government network or contract at the time. So privatizing the

entire data systems for the Navy and the Marine Corps. so it was a really

interesting brush coming from, a couple of guys setting up tactical data

networks in a field to, a user base of a million plus, at the, on the corporate

side. and then then from there, I had a lot of really great, mentors coming

through the military and everything else that encouraged me to continue my

leadership journey. and really ended up, starting to get more interested in the

leadership side of things than the, engineering side of things. And, although I,

cut my chops as an engineer and kept my skills up to snuff, really moving into

leadership and mentoring people from my side was much more appealing to me. and,

the legal industry is something that, I never dreamed I would be a part of at

some point. Like it's not one of those, industries that you, you know, if you're

going to be a lawyer, great. from the it side of things, it really is just like,

hey, what's, like I said, it's kind of, it's a little bit of an industry that

time had forgotten.

Phil Howard: yeah, well, first of all, the amount of people that are in IT

leadership now that were in the military, I mean, it's a good twenty percent of

the people that have been on the show. So I don't know what that is. I don't

know if it's the discipline. I don't know if it's the, calm under fire. I don't

know if it's the I can take a thousand things and still like projects and crap

thrown at me and still be calm and deal with that and still lead through that.

Maybe it's that, I wasn't a marine or I wasn't in the military or anything, but

I know that there's like a test that someone takes somehow and they're like,

okay, like you're really dumb. So you're going to peel potatoes and we need

potato peelers. That's like kind of like the joke, right? And how did you end up

there?

Jim Harden: Yeah. I mean, so when you kind of go through the recruiting process,

you take that, it's called the Asvab test, you take that and that that really

kind of gives you what your competencies are. And then based on what the

military or the whatever that branch needs at that time is what they, start,

plugging holes for, they have a whole planning process of, we're losing, six of

these guys, five of these guys, we need to, recruit to have these particular,

spots filled. Right. And, initially I did not get in, as, what I wanted for the

field data technicians because, actually there's a lot of requirements. And one

of them is, you have to pass a color blindness test. I failed that I had to get

waivers. I had to.

Phil Howard: Like every guy, you guys or something fail that. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Harden: Well, and then so then my option was like, hey, if you're not going

to do data, we're going to put you as a weapons instructor because you can see

black and white on the targets, right? So, I ended up training as a, small arms

instructor, while I was waiting for my, waivers and stuff to clear, to become a

field data technician, which ultimately, it did.

Phil Howard: So sweet. I really love one of these subjects that we're supposed

to talk about today, which is building an IT culture that thinks outside the

box. And it's so important, I think, in any small IT department, because each

little IT departments kind of like their own business or their own

entrepreneurial kind of thing that needs to figure out how we don't speak in

ways that are just like super technology and glaze people over. And then we

don't just show up and do a job every day because with the way the technology

changes so fast, you just can't do that anymore. You can't just be like, I'm the

network admin and I'm going to only do this forever. And I don't know if that's

what you meant by when we talked about thinking outside of the box, but how do

you get a technical, maybe engineering minded technology person that has

blinders on that only sees things? Maybe one way to think outside the box?

Jim Harden: Yeah. I mean, it's by nature for it, right? That we've spent so much

time trying to be inside box and work within parameters. When you come to

compliance and certain things where it's like it's very black and white, right?

And that's where, I think that anytime you're sitting within some type of

framework or, certifications or things like that, again, they're very kind of

like, they're almost to the point where they're restricting, having the ability

to use the creative side of your brain is not always something that's been well

received in it. Right? Because it's, those are the types of things that, hey,

well, we're going to try this just to make it work and you may end up taking

yourself out of compliance. Or the million things you haven't considered. Right.

And I think that, when we think outside the box, as far as large scale

solutions, it's about how it can be a business partner rather than a cost center

with the business. Right. So, most of the time it has a budget, you're spending

our money, you're keeping us compliant, all these things. Whereas like, more of

the out of the box thinking these days is how can I provide value to operations?

How can I provide value to marketing? How can I provide those types of things as

I t when we're supposed to be, fitting or coloring within inside the lines, so

to speak. Right. So it really takes a company or a firm. that is progressively

thinking enough to allow you to have that seat at that table because, again,

like this podcast here. That's why it's sparked my interest. You've Been Heard.

There's been so many times within my career, where, not only did, were we not

heard, but didn't want to be heard from. So, now I feel like with the deep ties

to everything that we're putting out as platforms, whether it's AI, whether

it's, newer, case management systems or things like that. the business wants to

hear from us and hear our thoughts and hear creative ways to, actually make a

problem go away. Right? and it's been a balance because again, you always have

to operate within, compliance and things like that. in the legal industry,

there's not a whole lot of gray area. it is or it isn't. So, we have to still be

mindful of what we do, but we also have to not just, fit inside a framework all

the time.

Phil Howard: Any tricks to getting the staff to kind of open up or think outside

the box or maybe connect with, lawyers who might not be the easiest people to

approach or might be a bit intimidating from time to time or expect things done

in a certain way. This is me completely stereotyping them, I don't know.

Jim Harden: Yeah. I mean, so lawyers are always looking for creative ways to

bring, information and cases to court, right? So they're looking for things

that, again, the letter of the law is black and white, and there's no coloring

outside the lines. but there's ways that to go about things. And I think a lot

of it has to do with the kind of culture you create, because you had mentioned

that, how do you do that from a culture standpoint? And a lot of it is, just how

you approach, making sure that your team is heard and that their ideas are not,

just because you sit in this role doesn't mean that you can't come with a great

idea on how to solve a problem, even if it's a very, very complex problem,

because you might ignite a spark that, lights a fire and we're able to get, go

off to the races. So a really good example is, just, coming back to kind of AI,

everybody wants to bolt on AI component to their individual legal tool, right?

So you end up with this entire stack of, AI tools, whether you want to pay for

them or not, because they're all, put together as part of your package. Now it's

all included in your licensing and everything else. everybody wants their own

flavor and there's all the buzzwords. Claude. And then, one lawyer hears it and

then it spreads like wildfire. So what we've done is, we kind of approach it as

our creative solution to the AI problem in legal tech has been we are going to

invest in one tool, and then we're going to work with workflows and integrations

within the tool that actually gives people what they're looking for with the

added capability of having the wrapper of, the context through like copilot or

something, because we're a big Microsoft shop, right? So, people want to use

Claude. they want to use, Westlaw, they want to use Everlaw. They want to use

all these other things. What we want to do is we want to, not shy them away and

say, no, you can't use that stuff because we haven't vetted it. It's going to

take us six months, whatever it is, we're going to create agents within copilot

that are going to actually, perform these workflows that you're looking for that

not only gives you the information you're looking for through those platforms,

but we're also going to have copilot look at contextually, you send an email to

so-and-so about this. You had a meeting about this three months ago. So it's

more of a force multiplier than it is addition.

Phil Howard: Okay. So number one, it sounds like the end users, the customers

that you serve, the lawyers a are a bit savvy. or I guess, or are they using AI

more as a glorified, Google for research. So I guess my first question would be

is, do you have any kind of AI steering committee and broken down that yet?

Like, do people have a way of being educated on AI.

Jim Harden: Yeah. So we've, put as much into, training and education as we have

the actual platforms because that was something that we baked in initially. so

we have not necessarily an AI steering committee, but we do have a tech

committee that we come together and we talk about, these tools quite a bit. and

rather than, somebody coming and telling us like, hey, this tool is great. I

heard it from this guy. Can we implement it? then we, take that step back and

say, okay, what's the problem we're trying to solve for? Right? Because there

are a lot of these things are waiting for problems to solve that we don't

currently have yet, right? So we don't want to fall behind, but at the same

time, we don't want to throw a bunch of stuff out there where we're managing and

having to, look at compliance on all these different, tools, right? So, really,

it was kind of the spark of like, hey, well, how can we make this as simple as

possible? Because there are a lot of lawyers that have an appetite for the

technology and want to use the latest and greatest tech and everything else.

There's also a handful of lawyers that are just as comfortable with a legal pad

and a pen. they don't want to use, all this high speed technology and everything

else too. So how can we best deploy our tools for the much broader user base? So

like at a minimum, these guys are using, they're living in the Microsoft world

because that's how they get their email. That's how they live in word, putting

together, docs and things like that. So the best thing we said, okay, well, how

can we integrate all this stuff then in a copilot? Because if we can give them

one tool that can do all these other things, rather than a bunch of individual

tools where you have to remember to go to this to do that, or, vice versa. that

was kind of the strategy. It just really is, what's the minimum entry point that

we can get into maximizing the value of these tools because again, when it comes

back to an ROI discussion, the lawyer that wants to use the legal pad in the

pen, we want him to use the tools to realize our ROI on this stuff. So we have

to make it as seamless and as simple as possible for them to actually use it

than to try to remember where they have to go. Or, oh, I even forgot this tool

existed, right? Come back to the same place, find your agent and go. that's our

philosophy.

Phil Howard: We could talk about this all day. Okay, so now what about the

security guardrails? What about the data dips? And I mean, there's just so much

for it to just kind of worry about, I guess, or be concerned about how do you

deal with that?

Jim Harden: So that's really the, philosophy and the way that we're doing things

is really because of that, right to set up the guardrails where we have the

control of, whatever these workflows and agents are doing within our Microsoft

environment that are all bound by the same privacy policy that we have with

Microsoft versus waiting. somebody will go out and dump something in a web

version of ChatGPT, and now all of a sudden we've got, anything from client data

to, any type of like, trade secrets or anything else, which has happened. not

necessarily our firm, but we've seen reports of other, law firms putting stuff

into ChatGPT to, analyze and to create documents. And, they're not using an

enterprise product they're using, and oh, I didn't check the box to say don't

learn off of my input.

Phil Howard: And I don't think that I wonder if that even matters. Do you guys

know if that even matters technically, because I think you can still search

every public ChatGPT, even if they didn't click learn off my knowledge, I think

it's still possible to search those strands.

Jim Harden: It was for a while. I don't know if it still is, but I remember it

making pretty big news and I thought they made some changes, but I'm not sure.

Yeah, but keeping it within our walled garden, right. With Microsoft, if we're

providing agents for this stuff, we know it's not because, we've looked very

closely at the agreements. Our in-house counsel is, checked stuff to make sure

that we're not feeding what we shouldn't. And, basically anything that we're

filtering through an agent that we build within copilot, whether it's making a

call out to, another tool or to a AI subprocess or anything else like that. it's

bound by that same privacy policy as Microsoft and we vetted that and we've been

able to test it and know for sure that's the case. Anything else, any new tool

that comes out there and people just start using it. it's the wild West,

Phil Howard: what's your prediction eighteen months from now? What do you think

everyone's going to be talking about that. They're not talking about today.

Jim Harden: what happened to AI, honestly? I mean, all these things that they've

promised, I mean, there's been so much on, that was made of this stuff about

how, again, it's going to replace people. It's going to automate your mundane

day to day tasks and be, again, it's kind of a force multiplier rather than,

adding additional, headcount and the knowledge of people that have been in the

industry for a long time. I mean, you can't, train an AI model to have twenty

years of legal experience. They'll tell you like, hey, well, this thing's

constantly training. It's going to know it. But I mean, there's seasoned trial

lawyer who's been in the courtroom for twenty plus years. it's like you're not

going to be able to replace anything like that. An experienced paralegal that

knows exactly how to work with their attorney. from just a cultural and a

communication standpoint, AI is the big shiny thing, but the bubble's going to

burst. And, the, people aren't realizing the, revenue coming from it that they

thought they were going to.

Phil Howard: Tokenization is going to be an important one to weigh out. I mean,

there's so much to kind of break down there.

Jim Harden: I say this a lot to some of the folks around. It's kind of like when

you go buy a car and you pick what engine you want in it, you want the six

cylinder or do you want the upgraded, V8 or do you want, I think it's going to

be that where, like you said, the tokenization is you're going to pick your

platform and then you're going to pick your engine like it's not a this or that

or all in or all that because I'm starting to see the way that Microsoft is,

marketing copilot and the way that they're building it out. And, going forward,

it's they've integrated co-work with Claude. Where you again? tokenization

there. It's not you're not dealing directly with Claude. You're dealing with

Claude within copilot, same with open AI and, all these other things.

Phil Howard: That actually scares me. That part. And the reason why that scares

me is because it happened to us. So we were using Claude and whatever, open claw

or whatever, right? Not to be confused with, like, Claude and built out like a

pretty big model, based on that. And then, literally overnight. It was just sunk

because Claude, shut down the, open claw like tokenization, whatever it was, I

can't remember. It was Greg would know and be able to speak to it a lot more

than me. but literally overnight, it was like, well, that sucks. It was like an

entire production. All of production was like, just shut down like literally

overnight. And it was like, okay, we've got to now, okay, we gotta take five

steps back, break this, break that, and then rebuild this and go back to this

way. That scares me. and it was bad for us, but we're a team of, what? Ten what

about a company with two thousand end users or a million or something that's

just like, it would be like, it'd just be bad. It'd be, it could be really bad.

Jim Harden: That's why we're more investing into the workflows and the tools

because if we get too heavy into a particular tool. Yeah. like you said.

Phil Howard: Focus on the instructions, focus on the skill sets, focus on the

skills, the instructions, how you build it out. yeah. And then if you can share

models like if we can build the agent and then have that agent pick the model

that you want to run off on any given day in a secure single source of truth

that does not access the outside world through a wholesale, type of, great.

Jim Harden: Yeah. That's exactly what Microsoft's doing in their model. I mean,

if you look at how their copilot config is and some of their AI, subprocessors

that you can, add to your Microsoft tenant. if you look at like the researcher,

agent within Microsoft, you can select, I want ChatGPT or I want to claw this

version or whatever it is, you can select that, but most of them are defaulted

to auto where it's like, hey, well, I'm going to understand what the request is

first, right? and they're going to pick that apart and figure out what's the

best model for them to use? It might be the copilot model. It might be OpenAI,

it might be cloud. So Microsoft's doing that. And I think that's going to be the

future of this stuff is like you said, it's it's really like.

Phil Howard: Of their empire to continue.

Jim Harden: Yeah.

Phil Howard: All right. Okay. we have something to talk about, which is no seat

at the table to driving strategy. because the stats out there are that ninety

three percent of IT leadership, does not think of their team as executive

management or the round table. They think of their team as the help desk. They

think of their team. This is my team. These are my guys like this is and then I

got promoted. These are still my guys. So I don't know if that has any fits into

like no seat at the table, the driving strategy. But what do you mean by that?

Jim Harden: Yeah. I mean, where I came from previously was very much like you

just said, like, hey, out of sight, out of mind. Just fix things when they're

broken. And, we had great ideas and we had great people. We had great minds, in

those seats. but just no platform and no voice to express it. And, when you get

into a situation where it's very kind of closed off at the top and there's just

not a lot of communication back and forth. you're flying blind and a lot of

decisions are made, on systems and everything else at an operational level, not

having that seat at the table, which is, again, valuable as a business partner

rather than just being, a utility or a cost center. Right. and as much as, we

try to, raise our hands and say, hey, we've got some really great ideas on how

we can do stuff here. it was always just fallen on deaf ears. Right. And, I

don't know how you break through in those types of scenarios other than, move to

some place that's going to actually listen to what you have to say, right?

Because you could do it till you're blue in the face and you just build a level

of frustration where it's, I want to have some creative input on this stuff and

figure out how we're going to move forward. but you got, operations and bean

counters that are, making decisions at the top based on, oh, well, we signed

this a bad contract or this then we get pigeonholed and we can can't do anything

about it. Right. So, really my move to Singleton Schreiber was, along the lines

of the conversations I had with everybody there from our, managing partners to

our executive team, they were very much saying, we want to hear what you have to

say. We want you to drive the ship. which is you always take it with a grain of

salt because that's what I was told previously too. Right. And we, never got

there. so coming in, it's been a breath of fresh air and really just, being able

to, kind of temper like I had all these things, all these great ideas. And I had

this great plan that I put together and everything else too. Well, now you're

stepping into some place that's brand new. You got to temper a little bit of

those expectations and say, okay, well, there's a lot like, what don't I know?

And as you're taking that information in, then you're starting to develop your

longer term plan.

Phil Howard: Just a little bit of background though, just a little bit of

background. You just started at a fairly large law firm as their first ever CIO.

Jim Harden: Correct? Yeah. And the firm I was at previously was the first time I

was actually with a law firm directly, and I was at a director level there. So,

I again, I never thought I would be into the legal industry, but, I worked for a

company where, I had a compliance and security became a big thing. And I worked

directly with their legal teams quite a bit. and I found that both, interesting

and fascinating, so I said, well, shoot, I had a really good time working with

those teams. why not? try for a law firm. Right. and I'll tell you right now,

defense law firm versus plaintiff law firm, they're completely different worlds.

So, they're almost a different industry really. you deal a lot with the same

tools, but it's just the cultures, the attitudes, the leadership and the

direction that you go and those, different sides of the aisle it's crazy how

different they are.

Phil Howard: Some industries are definitely easier than others. Some industries

are more prone to it as a cost center. however, I do think. It's this is never

supposed to be about like it versus like the C-suite or the C-suite versus it.

It's supposed to be. That's the whole point of You've Been Heard. It's supposed

to be like, hey, we hear you C-suite, or we hear you executive management and

like, you hear us, we're all like, like together trying to bring the business

forward to what the ultimate goal is. And a lot of the problems that I deal with

is a breakdown, or a lot of the complaints that it have is a breakdown of that.

And so if you hear someone that has like, we have thirty projects we could never

possibly like, finish them, it's because there's no strategic seat at the table.

There's no strategy. It's like, well, how does this project fit in to here. How

does this fit in? How is this actually going to drive revenue? Back to your

point about ROI earlier, is it even worth doing this AI project if there's no

ROI on it, we could just hire five more, data analysts or whatever, three more

humans that could actually do it physically better, faster and, more personable.

So if that makes any sense, that stream of consciousness.

Jim Harden: Yeah, yeah. And I'll tell you, I mean, I have definitely have that

seat at the table. I have the voice. I mean, my, executive team at the firm and

the partnership are huge. They couldn't be any more supportive of what we're

doing. because they know that we're there to help and partner with them, rather

than to be, dictators, driving solutions down people's throats. we want to make

sure we're, listening and we're coming with solutions rather than just products

to,

Phil Howard: So whoever that is, I would like to give them a high five and a

standing ovation. I would love to have them on the show and actually have them

say why we, are a pro technology like whatever it is. And it would be like,

sitting in like an Amazon meeting with Jeff Bezos. And he's not a proponent of

it as a business force multiplier. I'd be a complete joke. if you had to put it

in like one sentence or something? Like what did they say they wanted from it?

Or the relationship around this leadership kind of like structure and

everything.

Jim Harden: I mean, I can sum it up in one word and it's strategy, because

again, there wasn't a whole lot of strategy and, strategy was probably being

driven by, more operational and everything else where, I think there was a

realization that, everybody's asking for these new tools. And again, the

technology in the legal industry has, literally exploded again, there hasn't

been a lot of like forward thinking or a lot of, tools are built on prem old

legacy, relational databases. it's just very, very old school, right? So now all

the forward thinking and seeing and plus, the growth of the firm too. That's the

other thing too, is that the growth also pushes forward, the hunger to innovate

and how we do things better because as we're doing more business and we're

opening more offices, I mean, we can only throw so many people at that right

before it becomes, an issue.

Phil Howard: So when they say strategy or when you say strategy, but we want it

to help us do X so that we can deliver Y as a business. I'm assuming it's

something like that.

Jim Harden: Yeah. we're paying one point three million dollars a year for a case

management system because like they're, best in breed or something like that.

Like, hey, is that the right decision. there's new things on the horizon. we

keep hearing about AI. what's our AI strategy? Everything is what's our growth

strategy? What's our, onboarding and off-boarding strategy, what's our AI

strategy? Everything would need to come down and we needed to make strategic

decisions and actually build out, two, three year plans for, our strategies

because again, it's kind of just growing, growing, growing, and, unless you

strategize it's going to eat you up. And, my first year here, but front of mind

when I first came in here was what strategy do we have? And then as the firm

grew, it was more, instead of piecemeal, like, how can we put an enterprise

solutions and things that are scalable and build to growth as a platform and a

solution rather than, oh crap, we just acquired some business in another state.

Now we need to turn everything and ramp up and, add more stuff, right? we just

want to scale up. We don't want to necessarily just keep throwing,

Phil Howard: Money versus reaction. So responding to it versus reacting to

things that just kind of blow up and, the old break fix mentality.

Jim Harden: yeah. And again, strategy being important is, we've opened up a

handful of new offices around the country and it's, we've gone from deploying

those things in days to deploying them in hours, with infrastructure as a

service with, outsourcing certain things. So again, our strategy before put a

bunch of people on a plane, order a bunch of gear, get down there on the ground,

put it all together, everything else. Now, with the miracle that is,

infrastructure as a service, we build this stuff out, we drop ship it there. We

have a contractor show up rack and stack, and we're off to the races.

Phil Howard: So when it comes to dealing with the plethora of vendors, CSPs,

vars, technology solution distributors, all of these people and the new, influx

of, AI stuff that's out there. What is your single biggest frustration problem

or concern as it pertains to that model of, I guess selling.

Jim Harden: I think a lot of it is, there aren't very many vendors that I've

seen out there that can be, they try to be a Swiss army knife and do a little

bit of everything. And it's always that inch deep, mile wide. And I'm okay with

a vendor that does one or two things really, really well. I don't need you as a

vendor to do everything. Like give me what your best, business model is and what

is it that you're known for? And, we just had a meeting with a big, national,

hardware vendor, last week. And, they showed us a slide about how we've acquired

all these companies and we do all these things, right. our conversation with

them is like, look, we're focused on getting this part right with you guys. And

then we can have discussions on the other parts, but we don't want to sit here

and talk about how this could be an all encompassing solution like show us first

and then we'll have additional conversations because, we've got a vendor for

this or that or everything else, and we've got two years left on our agreement.

Right? So I'm happy to come back to the table and talk to you about it, but

let's get something in place first. And don't pitch me. the entire playbook,

right? give me one running play and one passing play that's going to hit every

single time. And then we can start talking about expansion from there. I think

that's the biggest thing is that, it's a great idea to have that one vendor that

takes care of all these different things, but it's like, how good are they at

each one of those things, right? That where you really have a need. I'm okay

with having two or three or even four really good vendors that do one or two

things. Great.

Phil Howard: I can tell you that to do like a really good telecom project, if an

I.T. guy was doing it by himself, and if he was like evaluating all these

vendors and he went to that guy, in reality, it could be a nine month project.

And there's no way that someone can just add that on and that they know about,

everything to do with every pots line. and, just porting numbers and operations

departments on that day and just every possible thing that could go wrong with,

a large group of end users. And I'm just trying to think of the snapbacks and

just like, how you map out auto attendants and IVR is and now point solutions

with, skills based routing and all these different things. and then on top of

it, it's like how many people actually have, any type of legal experience with,

FCC rules and regulations and what's allowed. And most people don't know that,

like a ninety nine point nine nine nine percent SLA is kind of a joke because

it's a geographical downtime over thousands and thousands of customers. So any

company with a thousand customers is going to have a ninety nine point nine nine

percent SLA. so there's like a lot of these kind of like dumb things. yeah, to

your point, you can't be everything to everyone. That's why.

Jim Harden: I don't want my circuit provider trying to sell me Microsoft

licensing and security services. I don't want that. But but they try to all the

time. But I mean I don't want them managing my Sentinel instance in my Microsoft

tenant. If you want an edge firewall, fine. but I'm not going to wrap up, all

that spending with Azure and, Microsoft three hundred sixty five and all that

stuff to like spectrum, I'm not going to do it.

Phil Howard: there's no way that they're going to be really, really good cloud

desktop designers, right? Or, some real niche, like real niche kind of

healthcare, azure cloud desktop design. And then, it's just like you need the X,

submarine Navy guy that works over at whatever Microsoft company. Now that's

really, really good at that. I just there's so many submarines. Guys, I don't

know why submarine Navy guys that are good with desktop design and Microsoft,

but for some reason I know two of them. It just seems like you're also a

submarine guy that was underwater for this many months. I just think it must go

hand in hand with like, you know, fires and subs underwater and stuff. so. But

the other thing that you kind of said is that whole Swiss Army knife approach.

And I just kind of wanted to dig in a little bit more because what that tells me

is that they care more about getting paid in any way possible than they care

about delivering you a specific solution for a unique company with a unique

group of end users. And to me, that vibe is not the vibe that's going to vibe

well with my IT department. I don't know if you agree with that or if you've got

any deep thoughts on that, but that's from when you said Swiss Army knife

approach. I just heard, dude, we just want to sell as much as possible and hit

quota and appease investors. And like, that's what my job is. And what I've

heard from other guys is they say, well, we just do all the research ourselves

now, and then we go to the CSP and just say, hey, sell us this stuff. And to me,

that's like a unwarranted gift to them.

Jim Harden: Yeah. and don't get me wrong, I mean, the Swiss Army knife can be

useful in certain scenarios, right? And there might be customers that are, well

positioned because obviously if they're selling it and they're making money off

of it there's somebody out there that's willing to buy it, when it comes to more

enterprise and, holding vendors accountable for things, we can't have a single

account executive that we reach out to when we have a cybersecurity problem

versus laptops didn't show up at a particular office. Like that's just not,

weird, right? And when I make that phone call, I want to talk to the CEO of our

cybersecurity company to say, we've got a major problem. I don't want to call

account executive for, a Dell or a CDW or something like that and say, hey, we

have a cybersecurity issue. Run it up the chain to whoever it needs to go to.

Right? Like I need help and I need it now. So let's figure it out. so that's

where, having, the compartmentalized, pieces of that and, it helps with the

accountability as well. So, and then, there's inevitably you're going to change

vendors for things when they're underperforming or everything else. what if one

piece of this is not working out, right? you have to pick apart the whole thing.

You have to have a new agreement, new contracts. And, hey, if my, hardware isn't

working out. Cool. There's five other places I can go that do hardware, and I

know that they do hardware right now. If it comes up to a solution that we don't

know anything about, like, hey, we're kind of dabbling into this. We don't have

the in-house expertise for any of this stuff. we have those people that we can

go to also and we work with a boutique firm here for cybersecurity. that's based

in San Diego and everything else. And they're really great at telling us what

they're good at, but they're also really good at telling us what they're not

good at. And when we call them and we say, hey, let me bounce this off of you.

Hey, I got somebody else. let me put you in touch with them. rather than saying

like, hey, we got this project quick, let's go hire a guy and make it happen for

him like that. That never works out. I've been in that situation a handful of

times. It has never worked out well for us one time. So,

Phil Howard: Please give me an example.

Phil Howard: Real quick. I got to know that example just like a real quick. This

never worked out and this is how we did it.

Jim Harden: Yeah, exactly. we had a firm that was, acting as our CSP for a lot

of our Microsoft licensing. and then, this is still back. We had some stuff on

prem. This was years and years ago, but we said, hey, we need to build out a

new, intranet within SharePoint. We have to integrate it into ServiceNow. And we

have all these like things that we want to do. And they're cool. Yeah, we can

totally do that. nowhere on their website did they say that they were in any

type of software development. they sold SharePoint licenses. They didn't build

SharePoint sites. Right. And these were very complex things. So it's, hey, well,

we got a guy and it was a sub of a subcontractor or something along those lines.

And I mean, I can't remember, I think we were about forty thousand dollars into

it when we said, no, we're done. We went out and found like the premier,

SharePoint, developer that we knew of in our area. And, we ended up not only did

we end up eating the forty K, we only ended up paying them, I think, marginally

more to actually get it done right the first time, but it had to be scrapped

completely. So it was a waste of money. It was a waste of time, was a waste of

resources. And it actually put a strain on our relationship with that vendor to

say, you told us you could do this, what the hell happened? Right? So I'm more

willing to take the advice of a vendor that says like, hey, we don't do that.

But let me put you in touch with somebody that does tell me what you're not good

at. I know what you're you are good at. Tell me what you're not good at and how

we might be able to, get put in touch with somebody that can help us out.

Phil Howard: Average IT project cost overrun twenty seven percent.

Jim Harden: Well, I'll tell you what.

Phil Howard: What oh no no one in six projects become a black swan with two

hundred two hundred percent overruns,

Jim Harden: I'll tell you what having a good project manager is, worth every

penny that you pay. when you find somebody that's good because that's one of the

additions we had added to our team here recently is that we had a ton of

projects. We had a ton of stuff to do. We had a ton of talent. we had engineers,

we had vendors, we had everybody else having that project manager to avoid any

type of scope creep or overrun, has been incredible for us. And, you look at

some of the costs of, sometimes a PM or something like that, and you kind of go,

oh this person's too expensive. you almost can't afford not to have them when

you're doing a lot of projects.

Phil Howard: More IT guys need to say exactly that. And they need to say that to

executive management because, and this is the way I think we should say it. And

this is, oh, man, I'm so glad you said that. And one of the biggest

underestimated investments in business is just paying a lot of money for the

right person.

Jim Harden: Yeah.

Phil Howard: Because that one person could like just skyrocket, like production

and streamline like X, Y, Z and bring the company to the next level. It's like

the Netflix story, right? Like what did they do? Rather than hire like three

hundred developers, they just went and cherry picked and like guerrilla

recruited like the absolute best dev guys in the world. And they're like, we'll

pay you ten million a year. Like they're getting like five hundred thousand a

year or whatever. We'll pay you ten million. you know what I mean. It was like,

let's get ten of the absolute best ninjas in the world rather than hire like,

three hundred people and end up with a bunch of broken code. This is my

understanding of that story. Someone else probably knows better. Last question.

Jim Harden: Yeah.

Phil Howard: You go back in time, you have one piece of advice to give your,

younger, more ignorant self. what would that piece of advice be?

Jim Harden: So I learned a lot from some really good mentors. I've learned even

more from bad leaders that I've had in the past. so as you're getting frustrated

and you're saying like, I can't believe that they're doing this or, you start

feeling, anger or you start, I'm going to rage quit or I'm going to, rage apply

for jobs on LinkedIn after a bad interaction. Take that as a learning moment.

And because when you land in your next spot, you can emulate great leaders. What

it's more important to not do the bad habits that you've been exposed to in the

past. That's the biggest piece of advice I would give to any young leader in it

these days. There's so many people out there that are, managing it that don't

know or haven't been in the trenches and haven't had that experience. it's

terrible. And, it creates a lot of frustration, but use that as something like

that's going to make me a better leader in the future to like, I know what not

to do just as much as I know what to do.

Phil Howard: It's a really, humbling, kind of question and It's like, when you

think of the worst experience you've ever had from a boss, what experience and

memory came to mind? And we will end with that. Don't do that to other people.

Right. It's like I can think of a few.

Jim Harden: and it's, you know what? In the journey of leadership, you got to go

through those things. I mean, that's, the thing is like, nobody that's ever

mentored me or anybody that I've looked up to as a leader has ever said, like,

it's been such an easy path to get there. And I just grew as a leader, like you

have to walk on the coals to understand that they're hot, right?

Phil Howard: And so many cry myself to sleep nights back in the day, I think it

was more than I think it was more the retail restaurant days.

Jim Harden: and if you don't go through that, like if I never went through any

of that, I would never be here. Right. So that's the way I have to look at it.

Phil Howard: the VP of Starbucks at the time, who became the VP of like whatever

coffee and tea company, he gave me a book first break all the rules wrote in the

front of the book. He said, Phil, do this. And, in the book, there's an exercise

where you take your whole. And I've talked about this on episodes before. You

take all of your team, whatever it is, employee group, whatever it is, put them

in a room, lock them in a room, put one person in charge and have them all go

around the room. and there's like a series of questions that they ask that the

leader asks about you. It's completely like, I'll never know who said it. I'll

never know. Whatever. It's like all feedback. It's like, what do you do good.

What do you do bad? What do we need him to stop doing? What was this? All that

right. And then that one leader in the room takes all of that information and

types it up in an anonymous like report and delivers that to you. That's a

humbling experience. But you have to be willing to do that. And I think a lot of

people might not be willing to do that.

Jim Harden: Humbleness is one of the main leadership traits that a lot of

people, don't realize and end every single one of my one on ones with everybody

on my team as what can I do better for you? What am I missing? The mark on? what

would make me a better leader for you? I ask those questions at every single one

on one that I do, because you have to maintain that humility and that

vulnerability. Otherwise, when you're in the C-suite, you're not looking at any

more promotions. So your growth has to be within yourself and within the way

that you lead. that's how you have to take it.

Phil Howard: So yes, been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. And thank

you for your time. And, You've Been Heard.

Jim Harden: I appreciate it. Thanks for hearing me.