455- Influence Matters More Than Technology w/Jeff Hobbs

Jeff Hobbs: I've traditionally used a profile called DiSC, D-I-S-C, and basically using it long enough, you can more or less figure out where someone falls in that DiSC profile. Not exactly right, but what it's helpful for though is a common language. So I might communicate with our CRO differently than our CEO, differently than our VP of operations in one location, right? Because They all don't have the same communication style. And so what I found very effective was having Copilot because it understands my emails and my Teams and everything else. I have it look at the communications from each of these people that I need to build a strong rapport with. And it then says, okay, I better understand how to communicate with this person. And so then I'll say, now this person likely has this DiSC profile. And now I'll write emails and say, okay, here are the points I want to communicate. Help me massage that so that it's more effectively read, right? The whole game here is transparency. I want to make sure it's as easy as possible for them to understand my point. And there's less back and forth over nuances.

Phil Howard: After talking with IT leaders, I've come to discover one thing, and it's the same thing you know. It's the same thing everyone else knows, whether they want to admit it out loud or not. Nothing gets done in any company without IT touching it. Nothing. But here's the thing. When everything's on fire, when nothing's working, when the ransomware hits, when the whole business grinds to a halt, IT is completely indispensable. You're the most valuable asset in the company, but when everything's running like a well-oiled Tesla, you're a line item, a cost center on a spreadsheet. You've done the work, you've built the career, you've earned your seat at the executive roundtable, but having a seat at the table is one thing. How much nicer would it be to actually be heard?

Mike Kelley: This Welcome back to the You've Been Heard. Sitting in the guest chair is Jeff Hobbs. Jeff, welcome to the show. Mind kicking things off by introducing yourself and sharing what your ride to leadership has looked like?

Jeff Hobbs: Thanks so much. Yeah, I've been in the tech seat, I think, for about 20 years. I had a kind of an odd start to the tech world, so I went to school To do more with geography because I have a real passion for geography and location. And that led to digital mapping, which then led to databases because I love data and analytics and really how to work with data. And then that eventually has kind of led into, well, let's build custom stuff because my real passion these days is around trying to drive business value And what better than to start to develop stuff? And this is before the AI world. So I hired a developer, which then led me into, okay, well, now I'm managing stuff outside of the traditional geography world. So it happened to go then more into IT. So that led into first development. And then because it's the 2000s, it was web development. So that became IT and charted development, web development, which led into SharePoint. And then it evolved from there. Okay, well, he's doing SharePoint now. Let's give him— Other systems, right? So then it was asset management, as in the assets in the ground or things of that nature, not so much IT assets, but it was asset management. And then it evolved from there. Then eventually it was computer servers, networks, emails. And in my most recent role now, I'm actually in charge of cyber as well, which was a new entry point. So I'd always been working with the CISO in the past, and now One item they missed in the JD was, oh, you're also in charge of cyber. And so, yeah, now I'm also tackling cyber, which has been a very interesting entry point, right? Because that's such a very dynamic world. So it's just constantly changing. And so that's been my background for the last 20 or so years.

Mike Kelley: Yeah, that's just a little bit to cover in that one paragraph there. So before we get into any of the AI stuff, tell me a little bit more about some of the Stuff that you were doing with the locations. I get to play with locations a little bit because I'm in transportation and, you know, we're always trying to figure out where the truck is, where's it going, if it's going to get there, all of those kinds of things. So GIS is something that's a little bit of a side hobby within work.

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah. So in my former industry, I was in the water utility space. So in the water utility space, like 85% of your assets are below ground, right? And the company was 100-plus years old, so it did a phenomenal job taking care of its records. So it knew where stuff was within reason. But 115, 110 years ago, you weren't thinking about digging it back up, right? It was bury it, cool it, call it a day. But when I came on there, it was really, okay, we need to modernize our GIS. And that's literally, you got to get it right. So most folks don't know that acronym, so I don't bother to use it usually. So For listeners, GIS is Google Maps before Google Maps was a thing. But its big focus though is more tying a database to that data you see on the map and less about the map itself, right? The map is a byproduct as opposed to Google Maps, that the product is the actual thing you see, right? Those graphics you see on the website. So, and so really it was a lot of folks enter into that and stay in that space. And I quickly pivoted to more of the database side because What didn't really interest me as much was the analysis. What was more or less is how do I make this enterprise-worthy, right? And in traditional old GIS, right, you may know Esri, I'm guessing. So back in 20 years ago, it was all very flat file-based stuff, right? So you really couldn't put controls into it. And so garbage in, garbage out, right? And that was what you dealt with. And what I loved with the database piece was being able to lay constraints down and say, we can't put X, Y, Z, A, B, C, it's gotta be a dropdown, right? And so really that's what drove me to learn more about databases, which led me to actually try to go for an Oracle DBA. And I go, why am I doing this? Because it was a bit too aggressive. So I backed off from that, but definitely a lot of SQL and really trying to understand how to work with an enterprise database, right? So whether it be SQL Server or Oracle.

Mike Kelley: And I'm sure that that taught you a lot about how to analyze too, because you're taking those datasets and The GIS piece of it is like population per square or whatever, and just those kinds of metrics and analytics. So I'm sure you learned a lot in that direction too.

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah, you definitely do.

Mike Kelley: Trying to run the DBA or be the DBA.

Jeff Hobbs: Right. Yeah, you definitely do. Because I mean, it was an investor-owned water utility, which means it's private. So they're on the NYSE. And so what that means is an easy example, right? They pay dollars to every city that they're in, right? As kind of a rental, I'll call it, of that land, right? And so you develop these contracts tens of years ago, right? And say, okay, but every year you gotta true it up because you're constantly adding new stuff in the ground, right? And so—

Mike Kelley: Right.

Jeff Hobbs: In that true-up process, you eventually go and say, well, are we actually paying the right amounts? Do we actually have this amount inside of their system, right? Or inside their city, I should say. And 100 years ago, 80 years ago, you didn't know. You was more trust, right? But now you can get down to the millimeter if you wanted to, right? Now, is that accurate? No, right? But it still does drive data accuracy, right? Which was once, uh, it's plus or minus 15, 20 feet. Now it matters a lot more. When it was once more cartographic, right, or map-based and less analytic-based, it mattered a lot less then, right? Now that you can do true analysis off it and say, well, I actually only have X number of items inside your city or X length of feed or whatever else, right? It's definitely a very interesting discussion, right? And then that's kind of where it leads more into the business side and less of the IT side, right? How does this drive revenues, right? And less so much, I care about 25 hydrants in the ground, right? Well, what does that equate to with respect to driving revenue, right? And I think that's where— I started to get much more interested into the latter of, well, how do we drive revenue and strategy through IT and less so much add a new database, right? Or add a new feature, right?

Phil Howard: Most IT leaders don't need more technology. They need less noise. Over the years, infrastructure quietly gets complicated, multiple locations, multiple internet providers, different contracts, separate bills, and reactive support. Nobody plans it that way. It just happens. What we do is vendor-neutral advisory. That means we don't sell platforms or force change. We start with low-friction areas— internet, telecom, Microsoft licensing— places where complexity builds quietly and can usually be cleaned up without disruption or CapEx. Sometimes we find savings, sometimes we find nothing. Either way, the outcome is the same: more clarity, less distraction, and IT that's boring in the best way possible. If you want a second set of eyes from people who sit on the buying side of enterprise infrastructure every day, just go to youvebeenheard.com and answer the questions to simplify, streamline, and save.

Mike Kelley: And that portion right there seems to be the common thread amongst the leaders in technology. How do we do more than just keep the lights on?

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah.

Mike Kelley: How do we drive value? How do we bring more, and especially nowadays, how do we bring more efficiency to the organization? Now, as I was reading through things from the pre-interview, it seemed like the CEO that you're dealing with didn't want to hear about technology debt and a couple of things like that. So you came up with a creative idea of using AI to help you with your discussions with the CEO. So tell me a little bit more about that because I alluded to it, but I don't think it's quite what I alluded to. But so fill me in.

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah. One of the things as an IT leader that I really believe in is you have to be able to communicate effectively, but you also have to communicate in the way they want to hear the word. And sadly, we all don't speak the same way. We all don't hear the same thing, right? And so for me, for a lot of time, I've always been very much aware and trying to learn more about how you communicate with someone and not to someone, you know, what you said a moment ago, basically. And so I've traditionally used a profile called DiSC, D-I-S-C, which I learned about 10, 15 years ago. And basically using it long enough, you can more or less figure out where someone falls in that DiSC profile. Not exactly, right? And it's not really an exact science anyway. But what it's helpful for though is a common language, if you will, is to say, okay, here's how I communicate. So I might communicate with our CRO differently than our CEO, differently than our VP of operations in one location, right? Because they all don't have the same communication style. And so What I found very effective was having Copilot because it understands my emails and my Teams and everything else. I have it look at the communications from each of these people that I need to build a strong rapport with. And it then says, okay, I better understand how to communicate with this person. And so then I'll say, now this person likely has this DiSC profile, and now I'll write emails and say, okay, Here are the points I want to communicate. Help me massage that so that it's more effectively read, right? So there's less back and forth, right? The whole game here is transparency. I want to make sure it's as easy as possible for them to understand my point and there's less back and forth over nuances, right? And that's been a big value add for me. And I will literally go through, depending on the email, 5, 10 minutes just back and forth with Copilot saying, okay, well, what about this piece? And, you know, cause if they're important enough, right. But I do find very often it's not a lot of back and forth. It's much more, okay, here's where we are. I might hear back once, otherwise it'll pause. So I do find it very valuable in that sense.

Mike Kelley: That's an awesome use of that. I was unfamiliar with The DISC and yeah, so communication styles, but it hits on something in a different way of something that I'd heard already, like taking the transcript from a meeting.

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah.

Mike Kelley: And instead of just dropping it in saying, okay, summarize this for me, like create 3 separate or 4 separate chats with your LLM, with Copilot, whomever you're using and say, okay, this one's the CEO. Chat, and I'm going to drop this single transcript into there. Now give me the summary from the CEO's seat, from in the way they communicate. And you're adding to it by saying, okay, dive into my emails, look at the way they're communicating and how we communicate, what kind of DISC profile they have, and now summarize it. Or here's the presentation I want to give them. Now give me the talking points for the CEO. Give me the talking points for the CFO. Because they both are looking for definitely different things from the exact same conversation.

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah, most definitely. And it's also very helpful for me because I learn various perspectives, right? Because from my standpoint, I'm very high D and high C, which means I'm very— the D I think is dominant for a call. But the idea though is you'll take the hill at all costs, right? But the C is also analytical, right? And so, but if the I is, I don't recall what the letters stand for, but the I is, yeah, influence, right? So you always know a person, right? So I got a person for this. And so if you're talking to a high I, right, you want to communicate in a way where, hey, I want to use this person to help me influence others, right? Not, and I use that term use probably more than it should be, right? I want to work with them, as better said, to be able to influence others, right? Whereas if you're a high D, I want to get this done with you, right? And the same end result, we're all just trying to work together as a team, but how you align on that style of communication is really helpful in that sense, right? How you leverage the relationships you have in order to be able to better get things progressing moving forward.

Mike Kelley: Okay. So when you were talking about the back and forth, was that back and forth with the chat or was that back and forth with the individual?

Jeff Hobbs: Oh, it's a chat. So yeah, I oftentimes ask it, are you sure this would be the right messaging? Right. And it almost never is exact. Right. So there's always editing for sure, but back and forth enough times and it gets really good at trying to understand that communication style from the other person, whether it be the CEO, the CRO. A VP of ops, whatever it might be, right? But it gets better and better as you're almost talking to Copilot as a surrogate for that other person, right? Okay. Yeah.

Mike Kelley: And so like now I'm trying to envision how to leverage this. I'm gonna steal this idea or replicate portions of this idea. And like we're using one of the routers. Or the aggregates instead of some, well, I guess Copilot's starting to do that too, where you can use multiple models. You can use multiple LLMs.

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah.

Mike Kelley: But you can have like a consistent chat and just keep adding to it. Or you can bring up a notebook or a project or specific conversations. Or as it's starting to get to the point, or not starting to, but every once in a while it'll pop up, this chat is getting too long. But I also need to recognize that that's the number of tokens that it's sending with each and every request too. So I need to be able to capture what was in one conversation, condense it, put it into like a memory or a skill, or add that to other portions of it as I continue to move through long-term use of these things.

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah.

Mike Kelley: But setting one up for the CFO, the CEO, the EVP and whatever roles that you're dealing with. It's, hell, even for your subordinates, for working with them on the one-on-one.

Jeff Hobbs: And yeah, I find it very helpful at least to be able to use a conversational piece to really just align, right, with what I'm trying to message, right? So I'm also a giant fan of Chris Voss, if you know who he is. So if you ever want to read a really good book about negotiations. He's kind of like the business leader in that area, right? So I'm trying to negotiate. Oftentimes I'll use Copilot and say, okay, here's where I'm at, and use the Chris Voss style of communication to help me better negotiate that or make sure we're aligned, right? So I find it very helpful in trying to apply— I'll use the word frameworks in a very general sense, right? Helping me Communicate more effectively, right? Not that I couldn't get there myself, but it certainly allows me to be more on point, right?

Mike Kelley: Well, one of the prior interviews that I've done, one of the gentlemen was talking about how he was trying to instantiate AI at his enterprise. And one of the things that he talked about was just having, teaching people, especially the executive team, use these tools to be your thought partner. Discussing just open ideas and asking it and just go back and forth. And because there's times where it will solidify, and depending on how you're asking the questions, it will also help widen your view.

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah.

Mike Kelley: It helps me widen my view and it helps me change perspectives and it helps me have these things. And then like the way you're talking about it is also helped me think about it from that person's point of view or How am I gonna negotiate? Hey, look, I'm trying to get a raise for the whole team. What are the best things that I can bring up when talking to these 3 executives that I have to condense to give me more budget for the team?

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah, I think you said a lot there. It was all really good, right? I think it's a very interesting thought partner as well, right? Because I'm sure I'm not the first to say this, right? But At the top or top-ish can be very lonely, right? And so who do you talk with that you're— and obviously we've got folks outside the company, right, to bounce ideas off of. And there's a lot of great communities, right? But it's like, it's 9 PM on a Wednesday, right? Who do I talk to then? Oh, and I need immediate answers, right? Because I've waited till the last minute, right? So it's definitely— I wouldn't say it's the end-all be-all answer, but definitely it can make you think broader about stuff, even more so when you're newer to parts of roles, right? So I hadn't managed cyber before now, right? So, okay, may I install this piece of software? I don't know what it even is, right? So you're in Copilot saying, hey, look at this from a CISO standpoint and let me know what your thoughts are. It won't make my call for me, but at least it helps educate me on what I need to be aware of, right? To make that call for myself, because who am I going to ask, right?

Mike Kelley: Right?

Jeff Hobbs: Or you go to the community, but I can't wait oftentimes even days, let alone what it might take in the community.

Mike Kelley: Well, I really enjoyed this piece of it, but I wonder what other things that you've done in this realm. So you've approached the use of AI in a slightly different methodology than I'm hearing many others. And like I'm struggling or fighting with how to instantiate it for the organization. And trying to leverage it to generate code and produce assets and make these things with it versus the conversations. What other things can you share or have you had experience with that you've done? Because I think you've taken some unique approaches.

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah, I left the IT world 2024 and I was just really just tired of IT for various reasons. So I exited IT for about a little over a year. And the big goal, right, was to modernize how we were doing business, right? And ChatGPT was relatively new, kind of more in the mainstream at the time. And so I logged in, signed up for the $20 a month plan, and it's what helped me learn a whole new industry, right? It was like, okay, tell me about this. I mean, before that, I'd all been In the utility space, the sales don't matter. We're monopolies, right? So all of a sudden now I got to figure out sales and sales pipelines and sales funnels, right? And we don't have this stuff. So help me build a sales funnel. Help me build all these various things, right? That help me build out QuickBooks. It's really a coach as to not me. It's not good enough yet to be doing going into QuickBooks and be modifying chart of accounts, right? And all that. But it certainly is good enough to be able to Coach you on that process, right? And I think as importantly, educate you though, right? So it's not just saying you're now the dumb doer, take a screenshot, put it in there, do that, right? It's educating, but at the same time getting wins, right? And so I found it to be very helpful in just really helping me learn a whole new industry and how to do stuff and to evolve fast, right? Marketing was all new, right? So how to create Mailchimp content. And so I've really tried to embrace it, you know, less so— I guess I'm doing a bit more on the software development side, right? And trying to do that, but more so really helping to try to educate and be that thought partner, right? How do I go about this? How do I increase revenues by 10% year over year, right? What are some thoughts? What are triggering points, right? So that's been a big area that I've leaned into even a year and a half ago and then still to this day, right? Helping out with roadmapping back in the IT world, right? How do we build roadmaps? And again, back to how do you communicate to the right people, right? What do they want to see, right? What views do they want to see of the roadmap? So it's really been very helpful in various, various facets.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. How much do you think it's helped you take on That role of CISO?

Jeff Hobbs: Probably about a third better, right? It's, I think the CISO, that's for sure helpful, right?

Mike Kelley: Right.

Jeff Hobbs: I think for me, the CISO is at a very basic idea, right? It's trying to figure out where a lot of your risks are and trying to plug those holes, right? I do have a luxury that I also run the network, right? Which has always been, I know there are competing ideas, or some folks don't like the CISO to be running the network. But others don't mind it. I think where I'm at now, I do run both sides, which can be helpful. I mean, I have a SOC as well, right? That helps with a lot of the advising. So I'm not going totally off rails, but it has been helpful to some extent. But I think a lot more of there is past experience, right? Just knowing what we've done in other companies and where are some of the gaps we've got now and how do we fill them in a timely fashion, right?

Mike Kelley: Yeah.

Jeff Hobbs: Where it can be helpful though, is back to that communication. Hey, here's why we care about this.

Mike Kelley: So, in all honesty, my career, I got saddled with security early on, and I was curious in it. And it was always one of the areas that, like, I know what the phone phreakers were, and I know what 2600 means to our industry. And I was talking with some young guys that are working with startups, and I'm asking them, hey, what the Captain Crunch whistle has to do with PRT at all? And they had no clue. So I got to have some fun being the old guy and teaching them about all of that stuff. But it sounds like, in all honesty, you kind of came into the security later in your career also. So you've always had somebody else handling it for you, right?

Jeff Hobbs: Correct. I've always worked for sort of governments for a few years. It's always been NASDAQ-based stuff or NYSE stuff, right? So at that point, They, and even more so because you're a critical utility, right? So if someone breaks into your network, they can do some real damage, right? And so they've always wanted to have the accountability more, to be more with a separate CISO or at least a VP of security, right? Someone that actually owns that role. And so, yeah, and so I've always worked with that person and learned from that person and vice versa, right? Because again, in past companies, right, it was that separation of church and state, right? And so we had, at times, combative discussions, right? But at times it's very productive, right? But his approach is, in the past, well, I want zero internet. Mine's like, well, it's going to work, right? So how do you meet in the middle at some point, right? So I've learned a lot just with working with the person and their points of views and their concerns and great at opening my eyes. So I've been able to take that and say, okay, I should probably at least think about these things, right, in the current role. Right.

Mike Kelley: Well, and now I see again how using the LLMs as a thought partner or as research assistant or those kinds of areas help us to expand in new areas. Because for you, it's been security, but if somebody comes in and they're in need of help with DBA, right? They can start to ask more questions or understand and hopefully understand or do more than just regurgitate what they're reading. Because yes, that's one of the things that I've already learned. I'm sure you have too. Well, you've mentioned it. You gotta refine, gotta pay attention to what it's saying. You can't just take it for granted and run with it. Well, you can, but good luck.

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah. Just realize in the end, those are your words, even though you didn't write them potentially. Right. So it's still your accountability. I'm not going to go to my boss and say, hey, well, Copilot said to do this, right? Therefore I did it. Right. And okay. It was still my call.

Mike Kelley: It's actually one of the highlights in one of our primary AI documents. AI said is not a defense.

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah. Big time.

Mike Kelley: Now that I say that and I think about it for a second. I don't think we ever had the chance to say, well, Google said we didn't take search engines as being that perfect. But I think people are taking a lot of the LLMs as being that perfect.

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah. I mean, because at least from my standpoint, I don't know better, right?

Mike Kelley: In those topics.

Jeff Hobbs: Exactly right. But you said it yourself, right? A database right now, there are definitely some SQL you can write that could cause some real damage. Truncate being an example, right? Truncate table. Know what you're doing there, right? Delete star from—

Mike Kelley: Johnny, drop tables.

Jeff Hobbs: Yes, exactly right. So I do think you got to make sure you're reading what you're putting in there. Otherwise, even now I'm working a lot with, uh, we're trying to do a lot of deployment right now on Intune. And we've got a fair number of PCs that are non-compliant, right? Well, I couldn't have told you what Intune, how it worked a month ago. And now they're saying, okay, how do we make PC3 compliant? Right. And Go through there, screenshot, paste into Copilot. After a while, it got good enough where it solved the various challenges where now I say, okay, now create a script for me to remediate, right? So now I have a PowerShell script, which has been robust enough where it solved most of the problems that I found with it, right? But I don't know how to use Intune, right? I don't know how to use PowerShell. So now again, I'm not going to just run it and say, pray, right? But There is the scanning piece, right? And also there's, what's the business value for me to learn Intune? Almost none, right? So it's negligible, right? Because it's a one and done, right? So I don't really need to know the exact details of it, right? As long as I can get the PCs compliant, the value is more now all of my PCs are now compliant and I can push down apps to them all or whatever else, right? Constraints or controls down to them all, right? That's the value. It's back to—

Mike Kelley: Right.

Jeff Hobbs: Bob loses his laptop.

Mike Kelley: Okay.

Jeff Hobbs: I can lock it down. Right. How I got there, that's just the IT piece.

Mike Kelley: Yeah.

Mike Kelley: You can lock it down and get him a new one delivered and image the next one without having to do much more than button push here, button push there.

Jeff Hobbs: Precisely. Right. And that's the business value part, right? Yeah, exactly.

Mike Kelley: But now the learning curve to understand and get done is much smaller. So, correct. All right. You're leveraging it within your department. You're leveraging it. How well is your team leveraging it?

Jeff Hobbs: So I have a very small team. There's 2 folks. And one is using it quite a bit because I'm kind of guiding him quite a bit because I'm like, this is technical debt, right? Like you mentioned earlier, right? And so we're trying to pay it down together. But whether it's something that he's seen every day of his life or never, still got to get addressed, right? And we can only outsource so much. And so really it's having him use Copilot a lot more to be able to just work through these things and debug them and try to remediate. Because again, it's back to the business value, right? Is a lot of this stuff is just one and done. How do I load this app into Intune to be able to deploy? It's so cool. We get the process and get the end result right now. We're looking at how do we upgrade Windows 10 to 11 via Intune? Because we've got a small but Resilient fleet of Windows 10 still. So I think they're using it more as well. My other gentleman who works with me, he's more on the ERP side and he's been using it quite a bit as far as I know, to really learn the ERP because he came in from ERP A, we're now on ERP B, right? So ERP A, he's like expert. ERP B, it's all new to him. And so I think he's using it a lot to translate. the idea from A to B to be able to then go into our current ERP, right?

Mike Kelley: Okay. Love it. Just gave me some ideas on implementations that I can do myself. What about the organization? How much is the organization? Are you having to drive that also? Or is there another doing that? Or is it still kind of not on the radar yet for the organization?

Jeff Hobbs: It's on the radar of the org, I think. Back to business value, how do you measure results? I think is where we probably are lacking some. So I am trying to work with a partner to do a project to better measure results, right? To know, are these the right folks that have it? Are they using it to at least some extent effectively, right? If not, can we find better power users, right? So we have about 20 seats out there right now of paid Copilot. But we're not really measuring success yet. I can tell you some folks, they're asking like some really hard questions back to me. How do I do this? And I'm like, wow, the fact you asked that question is impressive in and of itself. Right. So I don't know, but let's try it together. Right. And so we'll go through and start having working sessions. So some are using it quite a bit and they're really trying to test its limits. Others, I don't know if they're using it at all. So that's where I need a better answer to that question. And Figure out our longer-term strategy with it, right? Is it for roles? Is it for titles? What's the sweet spot? Is it more agents, less individual licenses? And it's not like it's getting any cheaper, right? So you're trying to figure that all out while it's changing all the time. I mean, yeah, it's a hard time to figure this all out because, I mean, Microsoft, who changes pricing a lot anyways, like now will charge you for cowork, Based off of consumption, right? Well, we won't charge you for Claude Opus yet for consumption, right? But at times I get cut off for using Opus though, just all of a sudden it died, but it's changing quite a bit though.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. I was watching a webinar earlier today on tokenization and methods to help limit token consumption. And so right to that point of how expensive it is and how much things are changing and They were mentioning something about how Claude changed the way that they're consuming the tokens and calculating the tokens and got like a 30% increase between Model 4 and Model 5 just by changing that. And there's no transparency into it.

Jeff Hobbs: It's really hard. I mean, to your exact point, Microsoft, because we were in our early adopters of, of CoWork back when it was part of the Frontier program. And all of a sudden they decided to start charging for it. And so thankfully I saw a post on LinkedIn like, oh, okay, I got to get in front of this. And so I was using Copilot to figure out how to create policies, right? To at least cap the consumption. Right. But it's not like you're told beforehand, this will charge, this will cost you 43 credits. Right. It's like, oh, it's just this account that empties every minute. Right. So.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. Depending on how much you ask and what you ask and Yeah. How hard it has to think.

Jeff Hobbs: Right.

Mike Kelley: Actually, exactly. It's not how hard it has to think. That's the model. Which model are you using?

Jeff Hobbs: Right.

Mike Kelley: Yeah. So, okay. It's been a great conversation around all of this stuff. What other experience, is there any other experiences that you have that you wanna share? Is there anything, we both have a little bit of gray. I noticed that. And the youngins that are coming up behind us, they have no clue what I was talking about when I said 2600 and the Captain Crunch whistle and And those kinds of things. Anything you want to share with them?

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah, I think what's important is your ability to influence people will matter a lot more than the technology. I think the tech gets you to a point of being noticed. But what's going to grow your career into next levels will be working with people and driving things forward and not so much, well, cool, I was able to learn the latest LLM. I was able to learn more about Meraki, right? Or firewall, right? Or certification. That's— most of that stuff is inconsequential in senior roles, right? The CEO doesn't know what a Meraki is, let alone, right, you're certified in it, right?

Mike Kelley: Yeah. And it sounds like something that he's going to order at the bar, not something that runs everything that he does.

Jeff Hobbs: Exactly. Yeah. And I definitely underestimated how important working with people, building rapport, meeting with people, knowing those key folks, whether they're of title or not, that you want to build rapport with, right? A lot of times HR is really important to build rapport with. A lot of times the folks in sales, right? And then they just be a power user who's of support, right? I don't think there's a title per se.

Mike Kelley: Some of my favorite people and some of the people that I always try to make sure are— I'm on their good side. Some of the executive assistants.

Jeff Hobbs: Yes.

Mike Kelley: They have the keys to the kingdom. They know their influencers, whether they themselves recognize it or not, but they're plugged into all of those people.

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah, hugely. Right. Big time. I could not agree more. I was going to say, I should mention that as well. You find those EAs and you're able to Because they'll tell you what matters most is what matters to the person you're trying to communicate with, right? If they care about the color of the sky being orange and it's only blue, that's what matters to you if you want to drive things forward, right? Not that you want to bring a Moroccan in. And I think the EAs oftentimes can help you understand, again, that mindset of that person, what matters to them, right? And if you're not looking at what matters to them, You're probably not going to get things moving forward, right? I mean, my current boss, right, when I was technical debt of being huge, and he's like, well, I've heard it. But what about all of these things? I'm like, okay, now I know what matters to you is not the debt, which he's not saying ignore that, but he's saying where I want to see is progress over here. Great to know, right? And he was very clear. He's a very high D guy, right? It's, here's what I care about.

Mike Kelley: Uh, heard.

Jeff Hobbs: Understood, right? For me to be able to get where I need to help us, I need to make sure I'm not losing sight of these things. This is what's important to you.

Mike Kelley: Yeah.

Mike Kelley: And full circle, right back into the thought partner and the discussions of how to talk to the other people. And as promised, I warned you about a question. So what do you think we'll be talking about in 18 months? That we're not talking about today?

Jeff Hobbs: Yeah, I think we are to some extent, but I think not enough, right? I think there's a big focus on AI rollout adoption, but I think we'll be looking a lot more at governance. How do we ensure, right? Because AI is so free in so many ways. You said Gemini, right? You were on Google hitting Gemini, right? How do I ensure those with important data, keys to the kingdom, aren't throwing it into free Gemini because they're already in Google? It's one thing if it's just typed in text, but what about the P&L for the last year?

Mike Kelley: Yeah.

Jeff Hobbs: How do I get that in there? And I've talked to various vendors about that pain point, because I'm always curious about technology that's evolving. And that's the question I've asked, right? A lot of them can already do it and say, hey, I'll be your proxy between the LLMs and the user. Great for stuff I write, but I can upload a 129-page PDF, and that's a huge DLP issue, first of all, but also you don't know what it's doing with it, right? So for me, I think we're scratching the surface, but I think we're talking about a lot more in 18 months when you've got so much, quote, free access to such phenomenal and immense knowledge, right? Okay. Now compound that by $200 million. All of a sudden that matters a lot more. And that's where I think we're going to have to be looking at this more, right? Not so much adoption, but how do we ensure that we help it enable the business, but don't create significant risk at the same time?

Mike Kelley: Awesome point to leave it on. So I've really enjoyed this conversation and Truly appreciate your time and your expertise and your experience.

Jeff Hobbs: You as well. It's great talking to you.