SA's & IPA's Episode 2 - Michael Colonno, Kyle Mullin, & Rob Owen

Welcome back to SA's & IPA's! On today's episode, Michael, Kyle, and Rob sit down to discuss what they think are critical tropes to being a good leader and building a great corporate culture, all while revealing a little too much about what Disney princess they may be, who's the 'stump the chump' guy, and more!

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Transcript

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just like a nice hard alcohol, might cut through the grease or whatever, This is SA’s and IPA’s presented by CDI Studios. All right. Thank you, everybody, once again for joining us for SA’s & IPA’s. I'm your de-facto apparently host Michael Colonno, the AVP of Data Center Solutions. Thank you guys for joining us once again. We have... I’m Kyle Mullin, vice president of Solutions Architecture at CDI. And our resident jester. I am Rob Owen, the Chief Architect/Pontificator of CDI. Happy to be here again with you. Two gentlemen, the CPO. CP- A chief pontificating officer. It's a blessing to be back. It is. It is a little colder outside, but that's okay. Yeah. So? So last time we. We kind of finished up kind of setting the stage for leadership. And, you know, we're huge on leadership here at CDI in general, especially our team. Partially, you know, Rob's kind of instilled that to us or on us. But, you know, really, it's about how do you lead? Know every direction. You know, it's not just people reporting to you. It's your peers. It's your customers. You know, like - family... You know, if you're if you're married, if you have kids, if you have, you know, friends and aunts, uncles, whatever. Right. You know, it's that kind of sphere of influence. You know, my big thing is like I'll kind of kind of like we were telling stories last time, You know, my big thing when I was an engineer is a lot of engineers start off with they have that one resumé bullet that they think defines them. Right. It's they're a you know, you said you were one of the first VCP’s right. Like I said, I was the last time I dropped that I was a CCNP. And you said you did Microsoft stuff, right? So. So you said you didn't have any certifications? I don't. I mean, I don't have any active I don't know, but who knows? But along those lines, like what? Engineers tend to find that thing they think they're good at that defines their resume and they hold on to that and they don't share it with anybody. Right. But the problem is, is they don't realize that actually makes them the go to person for a bad reason. So you get that weekend phone call. So for me, leadership was I started at my last- my last job or should I say my last company. I started a newsletter. Basically. I kept up very, very highly. I kept up with blogs and posts and RSS feeds and things like that. I pruned through all that stuff and did a bi weekly newsletter to everybody on my team because I thought the sooner I'm not the only one that knows something, the sooner I can make it somebody else's problem, you know, kind of thing. Right. So like to me that was my first kind of like sphere of influence or my first kind of way to lead. And I think that's that's important. I think people should understand that making people better around you means that not only does it free you up for other things, but it also allows everybody to genuinely get better and then you earn respect. Right. Sure. Yeah. So for me, like what you're saying is like, you really boil it down to scale. Right. So sometimes the best individual contributor gets kind of hung up on this idea that they have this thing that makes them really special. Right. So if I. I go and teach somebody how I do the thing, and that's like on one side of it, the other side is, well, it'll take me just as long to teach somebody else. How to do this thing as it will be to do myself. Right. Both of those things are like the death nail of leadership scale. Right? And I think, you know, you guys hear me talk about this all the time, like scale and brand are two very, very important things as it relates to leadership. And, you know, I reiterate what you said before, that leadership isn't something you kind of wake up and turn on and off, right. When you're a real, true student of leadership and you're looking for how do I build not only my own individual brand, but the brand of those around me? What does that lead to? It leads to scaling what you do, which actually gives you peace of mind, and it stops you from being the one person that everybody goes to for everything. Right? And yes, I used to joke around like I can only be in in one place that, you know, I can be wherever you want me to be, but I can only be one place at a time, right? And with especially with you guys over the years, we've really scaled that down to the point where now you guys went through that same cycle where people would fight over you guys to be everywhere all at once. Right. And now we've we've kind of pushed that scale and brand down throughout the rest of the organization. So that's not just something that we hold on to. Right. We're happy to see our peers, you know, people that we work for on the teams get better and take on that responsibility, which then leads to the scale and brand of the actual organization. Right. Can't be an organization that's growing at kind of the pace we are without enabling that scale through - Well it can't be an organization of one. I mean, that's the thing is like at the same time, you know, we've do we've definitely, you know, we've I've done that previous companies as well as here. Like, you know, you find something that works well and you try to oversell that one thing. But there's, you know, a couple of pivotal people that are part of that, Right? Yeah. And how does that scale? It's it's a cycle that kind of gets weird in terms of overselling that thing. But it's a person, you know, a person represents that. I think we do a really good job of that here, right? Right. And in embracing the culture that we instill here at CDI and kind of doing our best to lead individuals in that regard. But I think we also do a very good job at meeting people where they are, right? And working with them and make sure it's a collaborative effort with everybody in the team to ensure that, you know, I want to use the word infighting, right? But we're all working together towards the same goal at the end of the day, and everybody understands. So yeah, everybody understands the assignment, right? Everybody is working towards the same goal, right? Everybody's owning that goal. And it's almost like a No man left behind type, you know. Methodology. If people out there kind of doing the work, if you will, and this is not just like a business argument, but you can bring this into every facet of your life, you know, every relationship you have, right. Like if everybody's working and understands what the mission of that thing is, they're going to be much more, you know, willing to put in the time, effort and kind of like help each other to get to that end goal. If people are- don't understand what the mission is. Right. You're going to have what you described before, you gonna have infighting. You're going to have people jockeying for position. And that's counterproductive to the overall kind of scale and brand. So something that stuck with me that you kind of always go through, Rob, is the Halloween masks that you kind of go through and like, why that? I think we should show the not an easy button. It's a bruh, bruh. So so something why I say that is because I think with with leading people, whether it's a talking to a customer, whether it's helping a coworker or whatever it is, the faster you understand who they are and how they absorb information or how they can be influenced. It's meeting people where they are. Yeah, well, that's that's exactly it. And, you know, if, like you know, one of the things that, like, I remember you saying to me is like there is like, you know, there's only so many personalities, right? Just like Halloween mask. You know, you kind of went through that. There's like a ghost, a vampire, a witch, and X, right? And so, like, learning, like in a room, like if you're talking to people, you're presenting things like that, you know, there's usually that one person that's very technical. There are someone that's very business. The ‘stump the chump’ guy. Exactly. You know, like, and- Not me. Definitely not you. You, you know, and so like, you know, you have to decide how you portray what you're talking to, to earn each personalities respect. Right? And, you know, it's the same thing with employees, you know, So if it's your coworkers or like us, we have people reporting to us. You know, it's understanding what they need and how their personalities perceive things that you say to actually lead them to get better. Yeah, it's accelerating that timeline, too, right? So the quicker you build your awareness, Right. So we're talking a little bit about two different things where we're talking about what are people's personality types? Really. You know, Halloween mask theory is one of them. There's only so many of them in the world, right? So the faster you build the awareness to what they are and how they're going to interact with your own mask, Right. Who you are. Right. And at times, people can throw on a different one, like variations, if you will, like different superheroes, as an example. But the quicker you build your awareness not only to your own kind of personality, type the types of other kind of people. People will be looking at us. Or align with or. What's what superhero. Are you? I don't know what are. Which Halloween mask are. Yeah, What are you guys like? I am a Disney princess. You're a Disney... You’re Bell. Yeah, Bell. He's got tats. I'm probably more like the teacup Yeah, definitely. It's true- This beer is terrible by the way. You know, I asked beforehand. That's. That's not very nice. He didn't finish his thought here, I’m sorry. I interrupted you my little princess. Well, I mean, we were both smiling to each other. Really. What we're talking about really Boil it down. We're talking about awareness. Right. And the sooner you build your own awareness, your own strengths and weaknesses and those around you that you're influencing on a daily basis, the better outcome you will have. Right. And I, I see this and I think it's a widely known statistic, right? Most people leave their jobs because they don't like leadership. Right. True. They don't have a clear understanding of the mission. They don't have clear direction from the person they, quote unquote report to and the person they report to probably views them as their employees and not working for them. Right? Sure. So then you take on that mindset of like building your awareness, understanding who you're working with. And like, we've seen it. I mean, you know, there's plenty of people out there that can be top performers, but they're toxic to be around, right? And you can turn those people around once you make them realize that they're part of a bigger thing. Right? They understand the mission, they respect the people around them. And then you teach them they're in a position of leadership as well, whether they have people reporting them or not. And there's upside, there's goals, There's there's there's challenges. Right. And you enable them to, you know, leverage their skill sets and get wider and learn new things and adapt and change. Right. Well, so hold on. Let's do a good job. So hold on. So let's so let's take a pause. You know, so- *bruh* Rob, you've been in a leadership position by title for a longer period than Kyle and myself, right? So Kyle, you know, like, especially, you know, because the CRN article came out, you know, you're you're a rising star. I mean, I don't know if you're a part of a constellation now or what happens exactly. In the Milky Way. But but like, along those lines, you know, so so, you know, you you and myself have have risen through the ranks pretty quickly. Right. And, you know, what do you think now that you've had to learn some of these soft skills, as well as developmental skills, that whether you've learned it from Rob or other things like what? What do you think is something that's that's good for for people to know on how to develop themselves or how have you used any techniques to develop others? I mean, I think to be honest with you, I think we covered it already, like I think Rob is spot on with with the awareness. Right. Self-awareness. You don't need to build his ego. Thank you. Sorry. I'm the tea cup. A little teacup is right Right. It's me personally. It's being awareness. Understanding your strengths and your weaknesses, surrounding yourself with people, you know, to plug those gaps. Right. And I think we've built, again, this culture where we are co-creating, collaborating continuously. And it's it's no man left behind. It's it's change or die. And we're working together again towards that same goal. So that's, you know and I think CDI, I've been fortunate, right? I mean, we have a lot of people at this organization that have been here for 14, 15, 20, 25 plus years. Right. And, you know, they were instrumental in my growth, right, at this company. I still work with people on my team that have been here for 22 plus years right? You know, there were no there was no ill will there. There was no hard feelings or everybody was just like, hey, you know, everybody embraced it together. And because of that, I think we're great, to be honest. Huh, okay. So it's cultural. So. You have to drive the cultural belief in the mission. And then once you have that, the the kind of mass effect happens, right. Where everybody believes in what's going on. Right. And and the fact that they can grow themselves. Right. That's a big part of it. Right. The minute people stop believing that there's any like if they believe they're on a hamster wheel every single day, it's really hard to get people now to like, outperform where they were before. Well, so so let's take let's take that for a second. So so one of the things I know we're huge out here, but I think is kind of a thing for for anybody, whether no matter once again, if you're working at a customer, whether you're in a vendor or whomever. But that's huge at CDI, that's very frustrating in terms of like kind of what you said is is acting as if, you know, which CDI is huge on the three of us are huge on it's acting as if you already have exposition, as if you already have X knowledge, you know, all those different things. It's kind of empowering yourself and those around you to kind of lead into that position before you actually get it. Now, why say it's frustrating is because whether it's pay, whether it's responsibilities, whether it's your calendar, you know, it's very difficult to kind of take that ownership and really understand that like, you know, you're doing these things without being asked and there might not be someone that's literally even measuring what's actually going on. Right. It's really you building your kind of internal resume and your personal resume to possibly one day get whatever this it's- For the record I'm not sure on everything, okay? Nothing- No stone left unturned. Okay. Well, I have a spreadsheet, so. But, but I mean, that's that's tough, right? I mean, that's that's really tough to do a job that you haven't been asked to do and that you're literally not being paid to. Right. But that's that's true in every thing. Right. But not everybody's like that. And that's that's the thing is like but how like it's sometimes how you build that drive that goal setting - So you’re talking mentorship a little bit? Well I think it's you know, hopefully I mean I think all three of us are huge on I think having a mentor, whether they're in the industry or not. Right. But and I think it's, you know, it could be anybody. It could be like your your brother or your friend, whatever, you know, somebody to kind of be a sounding board. Right. Honestly, that's a good thing. It's just a really good exercise to go through with anybody who's kind of like struggling with, doesn't really understand it. Like my own leadership coach, which you guys, you know, Jim Riv who we’ve all used in the past here at CDI. One of the first exercises you had me do years ago was make a list. Like. Who are your heroes? Who who are heroes? Who are your mentors? Right. And it's actually harder to do than you think. And the list doesn't necessarily really matter. At the end of the day, it's the exercise of like thinking through the why, right? Because the qualities that they possess that you admire and you. Want to I just wrote Rob over and over and over again. I mean, I don't know about anybody else. You know, I can't speak for- 45 on my list. Put Bart Simpson, Rob Owen. but, but yeah, I mean I think I think that's all right. So. So he's picking it up so I might as well mention. Horrendous. That that's not nice. I don't, I don't appreciate that language around here. So it's not so it's not so it is so. So I'll tell you what this is. You know, our CTO lives really close to me. He knows this this brewery as well. It's Fort Nonsense. It comes out every year around Thanksgiving, which is when I got it. So. So it’s a year old? Yes, that’s disgusting. That’s On that. Like when you’re eating a real greasy steak? Exactly. Oh, you haven't had like, a nice old fashioned or something like that. Exactly. Well, if you this year I'm deep frying in the- deep frying the turkey. So you know. You gonna drink the oil afterwards? You can drink the oil from with the mainline that oil well Yeah. So cranberry so it's a cranberry sour. It's supposed to be tart. It's supposed to be like a little bit biting, a little bit dry It's supposed to be. And imagine you're having that turkey dinner you got, you got stuffing and everything else. It cuts straight through that. It's good. I like it. I appreciate you bring it for me. I still think it's a zero of ten. I think I'd rate it a little higher than zero. Four? Well, coming from someone that drinks like Michelob Ultra. I think for me, it's the cranberry. I'm not a huge fan. Okay, that's fair. Now, as it relates to a sour and how well it's put together, it's better than a 4 or a 0. It's probably a seven on the scale of quality of a sour. I just I'm not a huge cranberry fan. I will say I've never drank-en it. I've never drank it, I've never drank. I've never drank it. Were you pre-gameing this? I've never drank it without a meal. So it is very tart, I will say that. But if you I won't listen to your opinion. You like light beer. Sandwiches or something to go with it? I probably would. Oh, nice. One of those like next time. So we're going to have Thanksgiving leftovers. There we go. To Thanksgiving leftovers next. I appreciate it. Nice like Meat and cheese plate Mike? A- A charcuterie board? Nice. Very nice. I would like a charcuterie board. Very nice. Well, I'll get I'll get right on that. So the last thing I want to kind of talk about is how do you get your information to basically be able to raise yourself up, to broaden your knowledge, to broaden your team's knowledge, to to be able to speak intelligently to those your not necessarily selling to, but you're trying to influence, whether it is internal, external, sideways, whatever customer's right, you have to be knowledgeable. So how is it, is it certifications? Is it blogs? Is it webinars? Is it conferences? Is it everything, which is a lot of very time consuming? Like what? Or should I say, what's your go to? So for me, and this is a really simple answer. There is so much out there, right? There's there's movies, there's videos, there's there's people who make a living regurgitating leadership, right. And at the end of the day, you could go read 40 books on leadership, and they'll all say roughly the same thing with different little spin or semantics that they use to get to that point, Right? So to me, if you really want to go down this path and you want to become a better leader in your personal life and in business, you have to find the person who speaks your language. You have to find that person who you have some respect for and what they're saying resonates with you and how you feel and your awareness of yourself. And then once you do that, you should almost throw away everything that they've ever done. Right? Like read it, consume it, understand it, but don't. Make it yours. Yeah, You have to kind of find your own spin on it. And that's where the branching out from that space has been. The first step in my mind is you got to find somebody who really speaks to you like you gravitate towards and you can really absorb the information because what you're going to find that if you really become a good student of leadership, every book you read, you end up doing this. You're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep, overlap. They're all the same right? What frustrates me is when people say they've read a load of leadership books but don't actually implement any of the things they've read, right? So they can regurgitate all of the different ways to spend different ways of, of thinking about leadership. But then their actions don't actually align. And practice what they preach. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so so let me ask you, is there before we move on to Kyle, is there a particular author that you've kind of grabbed? I mean, I think everybody knows I mean, I'm a big fan of Jocko Willink, the whole concept of extreme ownership. But like once I read the first book, which I read cover to cover and I've gone back through many, many times, his subsequent books are regurgitation of his own. They are first, they are kind of lead at it. And I was like, It's not like. Oh, leadership. Is probably he buying his books as they come out. But and I bought his children's books and I've read some of them to my kids and stuff like that. But just the concept of extreme ownership resonated with me. And he's a big, tough kind of Navy SEAL guy. And I love, you know, I just I gravitated towards his messaging and his storytelling. And what really did offer me with him was his TED talk, which is like, I think it's less than 10 minutes, It's like 7 minutes long. And he tells a story and, you know, I'm big on storytelling. So as he went through that story, you could tell like he's giving you everything he's got in that 7 minutes. And then I read his book and, you know, after that, I've now read, you know, more than I can count. But like I said, I don't spend a lot of time studying different versions of that anymore. What I try now to do is remind myself to act as if, like we talked about before and really practice it. Right. And that's what it comes down to. You got to find your own path. It's not about emulating someone else. Exactly right. It's finding out what the concepts are, finding somebody who tells you the story in a way you can consume. But then you have to go and do it right and you have to go practice. And it's okay to not be right all the time, right? Like it's like when you have kids or you have you have a dog. Training A dog is leadership. Like I know it sounds crazy, but like if you don't train the dog to be consistent with how you do it, you're not going to have a good dog like your friends are going to want to come over. Dog's going to jump all over them, bark and bite them, you know, like nobody wants that, right? It's this, this. That's the simplest way to look at it. But it like it's true in every- So I'm going to kick it over to Kyle. But I do want to say what, you know, kind of a footnote for us for for either to talk about a little bit more today in an episode is failure, right? Extreme ownership is also about how you fail, how you move from failure. Right. And how you handle that failure. Right and owning that. So let's kind of take a pause on that. Let's move to Kyle in terms of, you know, it doesn't have to be just leadership. It could just be I.T. in general in terms of knowledge, you know, how you keep up with it. Yeah, but I was a little confused. Think we took a little turn there, but that's okay. But it's. Both we covered leadership That’s what the Chief Pontificator does. Pontificates. No, I don't think you messed anything up. I think. Yeah, I agree with all your points. Right. I think you're spot on. What, the same time? I mean, you are mostly. I mean, you still keep up with technology. Obviously, you're still pivotal in a lot of conversations, but at the same time, more of your role at this point is leadership, right? Growing, growing myself, growing the team. So that should be generally more of it. Where Kyle's and myself is both. It's a kind of that massaging of positions as well as the technology itself and kind of grooming the next leaders. Right? So, so. Very generous way to say he's not technical. I mean, it was very generous. And, you know, I'm. You can only spend so many hours... You can only spend so many hours a. Day and you know what that brings me to my next what to answer your question directly, a wise person at CDI who will remain nameless, once told me all I do every night is watch 20 minutes of YouTube videos. Okay. On a topic of interest, variegated night tonight, five days a week. Pick up tidbits along the way. Sure shavings, pick up. Shavings, make a pile. And I was like, Wow, that is like I'm on the couch

at 8:30, 9: 23:49

00 every night watching TV. Might as well watch a YouTube in 20 minutes on various topics. SASE, SD, Whatever the hell it is, that's not in my current. I don't want to call Wheelhouse. I don't never have a subject matter expert anything. But like an area of interest. Sure. Yeah. Right, right. So I think that's relevant to the field. Right. And the other thing going back to the topic of meeting people where they are, right? I am a big believer in and in making relationships and keeping relationships. The people who are implementing from a CDI perspective, implementing the projects that I am designing and selling. Right? So when I do a design, we sell a deal, we complete the project, I go back to the consultant and I say, Hey, you know, how did we do first and foremost? Right? Any gotchas, anything I should know about? Yeah, sure. What's your opinion on this? Any feedback? Yeah, right. So, so I like to think that, you know, I do that and that's very helpful for me for future opportunities because I could say when a customer is asking me in a deal, like, you know, anything I got to be thinking about, Yeah, right. There might be that one asterisk that you learn from. Whatever. Yeah. And you look like you’re smart. Yeah. So, so reading blogs, whatever the hell it is, LinkedIn videos, whatever we're doing, right. In addition to the 20 minutes of YouTube and the feedback loop with our people, the feet on the street or actually doing the, you know, delivery of these projects, that's where I feel like is the most value. And then honestly, like the last thing I think, which we're doing it right now, like this, this constantly sharing of ideas with your peers. Yeah. And like talking about leadership, like little. Roundtable, people. Talking about it, I see a lot of people, you know, getting up and professing things at times, but like talking about it with not only your peers, but like people who were interested in learning, like listening and talking about what your beliefs are, what theirs are, comparing notes like make it better, and you got you got to constantly be a student of this. It's not you don't just learn it. And then you're like, All right, I'm done. So it's a constantly evolving thing. And I'll say, I'm I'm somewhere in the middle of YouTube. I do a little bit of both. You know, I listen to books on tape type of thing. I miss reading physical paper, but you know, with life, kids work, whatever, right? It's harder these days, but windshield time is a real thing. And listening to podcasts. And books definitely helps. But, you know, I definitely like listen to some some leadership books, you know, And even one of the reasons why I like this, this kind of format we have here is it's tough. A lot of them are very sales oriented, right? You know, they're very like large corporation oriented. But still, like you said, taking little tidbits. But at the same time, like you said, what I like to do is, you know, there's there's there's no limit of webinars and things like that. I think during COVID, everybody kind of got OD'd on on that type of format. But what are the things I like to do is like, if I'm sitting there for too long on like some sort of social media platform, why can't I be thumbing through blogs, you know, at the same time, like I have an app that has all kinds of, you know, blogs that I've added to it over the years. And I just kind of swipe, swipe, swipe. What app for your audience? Feedly - Feedly. But what you're talking about is like the concept of the diamond in the rough, right? Like there's a lot of rough. And to find the tidbits in each one of those things makes it a valuable use of your time. Well, that's the thing is exactly is you know I thumbed through and whether it's like to you I try to add things that are diverse. You know I want like an SD-WAN article. I want like all these different aspects. Right. And it's kind of going through there and seeing what I find interesting that I think I can find a nugget from. There's, like you said, shavings. Like what can I find that little knowledge and I'll get from that would give me value in a conversation because I think also at our level, you know, we're in very strategic, high level conversations where you need a broad spectrum. You're not that SME. And, you know, but I think it's important for also people to understand that getting deeper in your field is also good and it's okay. You know, there's plenty of room in our industry in terms of being an SMB. Sure. So like, you know, people need to understand that, you know you don’t just need to be a generalist, if you are that super technical person in a particular area, you can be that. I mean, and that's even like. It's it's necessary. Well, think think of I mean, the perfect example is I like to think of as a CDI has hit that critical threshold where not everybody needs to be a generalist anymore. You know, we literally have towers made up of specialists that know technologies, right? You know, we have security people, we have SD-WAN and and VDI and, you know, all these different aspects that now people can literally gravitate towards what they love. They're not forced to learn something that like, well, I don't want to learn another storage array. You know, like so it's it's the same thing goes- Opportunity of you know educational path it's technology based leadership space a lot of aspects to it. Yeah I think I think it all kind of circles up in terms of understanding that deepening your knowledge, you know, no matter what it is, is important understanding how to portray that information to everybody else is important. I think that I think failure is and I think also how you portray and storytell I think is another thing we should probably talk about in an episode is not just not just pontificating for the sake of it, not just giving super detailed information, but students. Always be a student. Yeah. And it's not a skill that everybody has, right? That takes time. And yeah, so the first issue that you got to teach people how to be students, right? And if you're a good leader, you're also. And tell stories and how to tell stories, you know, and that's the thing. So I think let's. Don’t every buy this beer again. It was. Horrendous. Cheers. My goodness. Cheers. Yeah. So definitely. Thanks, everybody once again for joining for SA's and IPAs. I think next time we'll go over a little bit of once again how to handle failures, a little bit of how you do some storytelling and get people's buy in and what your what your what you're saying to them. But thanks again. I appreciate it. SA's and Ideas is a production of CDI Studios hosted by Michael Colombo, Rob Owen and Kyle Mullan, and is produced by Alyssa Hall and Spencer Grogan. To learn more about CDI, you can visit CDI LLC, got Tom.