Calculus of IT - Season 2 Episode 1 - Official - "Welcome Back!"

Aaaaaaand we are back!!  Welcome back to the Calculus of IT Podcast!!  In Season 2, we will focus on how Autonomy, Risk, Productivity, and Innovation intersect and how IT Leaders can construct an optimal equilibrium for their worlds.  When is it okay to concede autonomy to achieve an outcome, and when have you gone too far?  Do I follow the herd, and who the fuck is the actual herd? Do I build AI into my 2025 strategic plan even though it doesn’t fit? What should I be doing around ethics and acceptable use? How much money does anything even cost anymore?  Where should I be innovating, and how exactly do I innovate? How does this impact everything else I am doing? These and other questions will be answered throughout the season.

Additionally, for all of our episodes this season we will be releasing the official episode (this one), a Bot-driven TL;DR version (courtesy of NLM), and occasionally a jort or two to keep things interesting.  Welcome back everyone!!  It's going to be a great season.

Transcript

Season 2 - Episode 1 - Final - Audio Only

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Nate McBride: [00:00:00] So I think, I think it'll be, I think when we get into this discussion tonight, it will be good to like, I've written down a lot of these points. We'll we'll get into some of the site as a preamble for the season. Um, I honestly think this is going to be a fantastic season. I think this topic, this idea, not only does it touch on so many points of season one, um, and new it leadership, but also the veterans of it.

People that have say like done 25 years and they're like, ah, just fuck it. I am just gonna go ahead and just subscribe to whatever's popular and do that thing. Or the veterans who are out there saying, you know what, actually, no, I'm tired of that. I want to do something new and important. I don't want to just sort of be a flesh stick in a seat.

Um Yeah, we don't want that. [00:01:00] No, no, no, no drooping flesh sticks in seats. That's disgusting. Actually, that's a good image. Oh, I think, I think we're actually alive. Hold on. Yeah, I think we're alive now. So, um, yes. Hi Mike. Hello. Hi, Nate. How are you? Good to be back. Good. Before we get into this, by the way, I had this thought this morning.

Uh, so XM radio in my office. Okay. And, um, they have this, they have a Beatles channel. Are you a fan? Well, let me tell you something, Mike. So I like a couple of Beatles songs, you know, Hey Jude and, and revolution. And, you know, I like the catchy tunes, right? I'm a big fan, but I'm a fan of all catchy tones and I don't have a musical bone in my body.

I couldn't even, you know. If I strum a guitar, it makes my fingers hurt, like I don't have anything. But they have a Beatles channel. And every single time I [00:02:00] hear the classic rock DJs on, uh, Series 6M has a channel called Classic Vinyl. And they play a Beatles song, and it's like before every Beatles song they have to say, Oh, by the way, Paul McCartney turned 140 this month, And he's got a new album coming out, and a new tour, And, uh, all the Beatles fans lose their shit.

And I have to wonder, like, do these DJs ever get tired of having to say some little pithy anecdote about the Beatles before they launch into a Beatles song?

Yeah, exactly. They're like, someone's like, hey, offstage, like, here, read this. And the person's like, the fuck do I care of Ringo Starr's dog? It's his anniversary of his death. And the DJ's like, hey, it just so happens that today marks Ringo Starr's second dog's death anniversary. So we're going to go ahead and play You know, yellow [00:03:00] submarine for you.

So sounds great. One of those thoughts that passes through my mind, but at the same time, a classic rock DJ's job is literally to give you some kind of preamble, like, okay, coming up, we have the 19 minute version of Inna Gada Davida, and did you know that when they wrote this song, the lead singer was completely shit faced and was talking about in the garden of Eden, and they just went with it.

And you're like, oh my god, I knew that fact already, but it's good to hear that. But then the Beatles song is coming on, and the DJ just has to swallow it. Just has to take it and be like, 

Mike Crispin: You 

Nate McBride: think the DJ just took the Beatles? Yeah, some fact that is irrelevant. Yeah, every Beatles fan's like, wait, what?

Wait, wait, Linda McCartney bought a Saab on this day in 1985? Holy shit. And they're like writing it down. I got to buy [00:04:00] every Beatles album again. I don't know. 

Mike Crispin: Wow. So you really, you really took this in is that this morning, you listen to that. You really, I did 

Nate McBride: really listen to it. Mike, you think about it?

Yeah. I, those things were 

Mike Crispin: check out watercolors on a, like 

Nate McBride: doing watercolors at home. 

Mike Crispin: It's like, it's like, um, elevator music at the department store in the nineties. Uh, you know, muted, muted horns and electric faces and stuff. Likeer 

Nate McBride: Sergio Mendez or, uh, or, uh, like kind of, um, what's the guy that does B Baker, baker Street?

Mike Crispin: Nope. You know, this little things, you know, it's not, it's like new age jazz. 

Nate McBride: Oh, well, great. Actually, my, my latest addiction, or the thing I've, I've sort of centered back to after all these years is Phish Radio. Okay. [00:05:00] And I have found that never more than ever, like, I mean, I used to listen to Phish a lot, but, um, like Phish, Phish, the La Phish live sets from like, say the last 15 years have gotten so good and they're.

You're just like, is that the same song? It's been going on for 45 minutes and sure enough, you turn, look at the little tiny Google hub and it's like, holy shit, it's still going. I wish I'd been at that concert. Um, I feel like I wish I could have 

Mike Crispin: seen them at sphere. That would have been awesome. That was in Las Vegas.

I've never been, uh, it'd be amazing to see that or like, or see open fold there or something. It would be 

Nate McBride: awesome. I think any band there would be a mind blowing experience. I mean, amazing 

Mike Crispin: stuff. 

Nate McBride: Maybe we'll take the Calculus of IT on a road trip. Yeah! And do a live broadcast from the Sphere in Las Vegas.

I'm not allowed back in Las Vegas, technically speaking. Why is that? Uh, because I [00:06:00] lost a substantial amount of money there in 2007. Um, at the CDW, um, uh Altyris Conference. Yes. Right before Altyris got bought by Symantec, I went to their big Foufara in Vegas and nearly lost my house. So, um, So, yeah, I'm not allowed back.

There's certain rules. What were you playing? What were you, just roulette? Roulette. Black or red. 

Mike Crispin: Oh my 

Nate McBride: gosh. And I won a few and then I put the whole, the whole thing. Everything I had like on, on the color. And you lost. I lost it all. Oh boy. I spent the next three days in a fetal position in my closet in my room.

Um. 

Mike Crispin: Coding the matrix, it's how we play. Algorithms crafting the future our way. Silicon visions from dusk till dawn. [00:07:00] We're the wizards of tech where progress is born. With every line, we're defining the time. Creating a world where the virtual

climb. Sanchai is for winners. Sad salads, profound. Oh, Bonies and bubble gum floating around Tech Accord who's bored the calculus of IT with Nate and Mike drown in the nether or just escape to Neverland[00:08:00] 

Nate McBride: The Hotel Wow Yeah. So welcome to, welcome to episode one of season two of the Calculus of IT podcast. I need to make up about 28, 000 from a 2007 bender in Vegas. And, um How we doing so far? So we, uh, we have, uh, well, we'll get to that in a moment. Okay. But I think, I think we're, we're up about 60. Nice. So we're, we're nearly there.

Um, each, each week. So we, we've been on a bit of a hiatus. Mike and I, if you didn't notice, uh, if you, if you, if you were paying [00:09:00] attention, the last 15 episodes weren't us, they were bots. Yes, they were. And I know you're like, what? I thought that Mike was just using a female voice. Nope, It was bots. So we did 15 episode recap of the prior 39 episodes using the magic of generative AI and, um, I actually think people like those better than us, but, um, you know what, people don't know what they're doing anymore anyway, so who cares what people think, right?

I thought it was awesome. Yeah, it was awesome. Some of those are pretty good. Although, you know, those AI bot podcast things tend to miss the key points. Yeah. And focus instead on details that maybe aren't so important. So anyway, if you want a good laugh and you want a 15 minute TLDR [00:10:00] version of like several episodes, uh, go back and listen to those.

Um, so. If you have never heard the Calculus of IT podcast, Mike and I meet about every week and we dissect what's going on with IT leadership, especially for new IT leaders. Uh, we do all of our own stunts. So nothing that you see or hear is actually performed by anybody else. We actually do it all live.

Um, we're excited to be back. We took a nice long break, well deserved. We went for a full year on that podcast, 39 episodes. Added an additional 15 bonus episodes. And now we're back together. 

Mike Crispin: It's awesome. 

Nate McBride: Um, we were, we're actually planning on getting, what's that? 

Mike Crispin: That's quite a feat for a year. 39 is a 

Nate McBride: fee for a year.

Uh, you know, we, we met 39 times for 39 episodes and we made, uh, no money, which is cool. I had no problem with that. We don't do it [00:11:00] for the money, man. Don't do it for the money. It's like chameleon error says, you know, I just got my ride and I'm going to go do what I'm going to do. Actually, that's not, that wasn't Chameleon Air.

I forget who said that, but probably 

Mike Crispin: it was, it was a good song 

Nate McBride: nonetheless. And Chameleon Air has some good, good hits. Um, I'm excited to be back. Uh, I'm with my cohost, Mike Crispin, uh, who's the, the, the head of it, head of all things digital at Cardurian. I am the head of it at Auxilio Therapeutics. Um, We both do a lot of our fun things on the side.

Uh, we've basically crossed the border. I think if you're going to think about Larry David, we've crossed the line to say happy new year. Um, we, we could have went over. The statute of limitations on saying Happy New Year, Happy Holidays. We're just, it's just January 15th. 

Mike Crispin: Happy 

Nate McBride: Happy [00:12:00] New Year. Ides of 

Mike Crispin: January.

Nate McBride: Yes. Yeah. There you go. 

Mike Crispin: Happy belated new year. 

Nate McBride: Happy belated new year. Happy almost. What's the February. 

Mike Crispin: It's halfway through January. It's unbelievable. Valentine's day. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. We got to do something big for our Valentine's day episode. Mike, maybe get like a hard hats. Let's go out to, let's go out to a romantic dinner together and podcast.

Mike Crispin: Let's make some paper valentines. 

Nate McBride: There we go. I'm going to send you a valentine, a valentine Necco heart. 

Mike Crispin: That sounds good. 

Nate McBride: Um, I should mention, the research has come back, I did some research while we were away. No way, really? Yep, and sure enough, for all of 2024, we were the only reliable source of information on the internet.

The only reliable source. Information mining. Which is a trend I think we're going to continue through 2025. Absolutely. So, but that's what happens when you're as [00:13:00] AI AF as we are. So just truth. It's all we do. We dispense truth. Uh, constantly. It comes out of our mouths. So, um, I will ask this question though.

I think our audience wants to know how many new phones did you get for Christmas? 

Mike Crispin: I didn't get any new phones. I, I bought. I bought a Peloton. Um, that's not a phone, that's, I dunno if you knew This's. It's an Android device. So I guess, wait, does it have a phone built into it though? No, it doesn't. It's like the dumbest Android device in the world.

You can't make calls from your Peloton. You can't even play your own Spotify on there. What the fuck good is that? I don't know. 

Nate McBride: So what does it do? Do you, does a, is it a live person, comes down there and tells you that you're, you're sucking 

Mike Crispin: it basically took a, a smart watch. And put it on a screen on, uh, on a nice spin bike.

This is the bike, [00:14:00] I have the bike plus. Um, I love, by the way, I love this thing. But as a technology device, it's like, 

Nate McBride: Hold on, we're not getting, we're not getting paid by Peloton, Mike. They can do so 

Mike Crispin: much more with that than they do with what they, what's in that machine. 

Nate McBride: There's got to be a GitHub channel for like hack repos of Peloton software that you can Oh, 

Mike Crispin: definitely.

I'm, it's, I'm going to hack my, uh, Peloton, but I got that. Like it, like a lot. That's very cool. And, uh, no other real, got a 3d printer. So I'm printing stuff now. I don't even know, like little figurines and, uh, figurines of what, uh, like this, uh, one little, like a little poop one that I made. It's really cool.

There's a bunch of , so, well, you know what we should do, Mike? We 

Nate McBride: should, we should sell authentic Crispen figurines to make money for the show. 

Mike Crispin: We, we could, but I'm sure people would, would buy that. 

Nate McBride: They're 

Mike Crispin: little plastic [00:15:00] figurines. Uh, maybe 

Nate McBride: next, maybe next episode. You can bring some of your figurines on the video and you can sell some of them to help us defray 

Mike Crispin: the cost of our podcast.

So the cool thing is I'd have to start printing them now for them to be ready. Um, they take forever to print. So well, it's starting to start now. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I'll go up and do that. 

Nate McBride: Okay. Well, I mean, I actually, I want a 3D printer too. It's not, it was, it was on my Christmas list. Santa couldn't get down the chimney because she was too busy stuffing down my socks.

Uh, So, you know, how it is. Yeah, 

Mike Crispin: I do. I do. 

Nate McBride: No 3D printer, but I got a lot of good wool socks. And they're pretty good. I like wool socks. 

Mike Crispin: Any books or anything else? Oh yeah, tons of 

Nate McBride: books. I got like 20 books. I mean, you can't go wrong. If people [00:16:00] are ever like, by the way, if you're out there listening to this podcast and you're like, What am I getting Nate?

Any book. If you just literally walked down the street and found a book in the garbage and gave it to me, I'd be like, Holy shit, this is the most amazing gift. 

Mike Crispin: And it's just like in Ghostbusters and the guy says, no human being would stack books like this and they should have said that's what Nate's Nate's office looks like just stack books from the ground to the ceiling.

Nate McBride: Well. Uh, I don't want to give away, I don't want to like spoil season 2, like right away, but I'm going to say this right now. We're going to do season 2 a little differently than season 1. Season 1, we didn't really know what we were doing. I mean, I googled podcasting, like a Wikipedia article on how to podcast, and I took some notes.

But we didn't really follow the prescribed. Like, I didn't know it wasn't supposed to be four and a half hours long. I thought four and a half hours [00:17:00] was like typical for podcasts. I thought, you know, you're supposed to like, just get drunk with your friends and just talk about it for four hours, but no, apparently Mike, that's not how you're supposed to do it.

Do shorter, shorter episodes are good. Yes. Shorter episodes make the money. That's how we're going to make the money. We're going to make shorter episodes. I'm thinking like an hour ish. And you know what, if we're, if we're in a groove and we're just going, we'll just keep recording, but then we'll just use the magic of, uh, the internet stuff, didn't slice it in half.

Mike Crispin: Yeah. We'll just cut little pieces out here and there. Yeah. We can use those little pieces for other things. Oh, like jorts. 

Nate McBride: We can finally make some jorts. 

Mike Crispin: We can make some jorts. Jorts and jorts. 

Nate McBride: Are you going to jazz fest? Has it already happened? Did I miss it? Is it coming up? 

Mike Crispin: No, it's going to be, um, it's going to be the last.[00:18:00] 

Weekend of April and the first weekend of May, and I'll probably go to Oh yeah, 

Nate McBride: that's so far down the road. Okay. I just thought it was like right around the corner and you could do some jorts from, again, from, from New Orleans. No, 

Mike Crispin: Carnival and Mardi Gras is coming up in February. Oh, that's right. 

Nate McBride: Okay. So for starters, everybody, no more for our episodes.

I promise for now, I guess the internet, the, the podcasting theme is like 30 minutes, but we can't do 30 minutes and we can't even get through our introduction in 30 minutes. So I think we're like, like more like an hour is probably more appropriate for this podcast. So that's, that's number one we're bringing to you.

Um, number two. This, this whole season, I won't be reading any books. Uh, we're going to talk to you about no book reading, no chapter reading of any kind. We're going to be focusing on some big meaty topics. Uh, and I don't have anything like I have like notes here, but like no books, [00:19:00] no Nathan reading anything.

So, so there's that. And then what we're also, what we're also going to do is the, after every episode, I'm going to use the magic of the internet and Microsoft paint to. Take our episode script. And then make a bot version of it. So there'll be two launches of every episode. There will be Mike and Nate, the raw, uncut version.

Then there will be the bot version, which will be much even shorter than that. Which will be, I'm sure, humorous and mostly inaccurate. And we're gonna release both at the same time. So that will be Season 2. 

Mike Crispin: We should do a podcast from the Metaverse. 

Nate McBride: Which Metaverse? 

Mike Crispin: We'll find one. We'll just get a cheap VR set or something and we can do one from the metaverse.

Nate McBride: Do you know that by virtue of the fact that you said [00:20:00] metaverse, you just made a metaverse? I know. We're now in, we're now just in, we're now in your metaverse. 

Mike Crispin: Hey, we're, we might be inside of multiple metaverses at the same time. 

Nate McBride: Well, you know, you know how, like, uh, you can't, a vampire can't go into your house unless you invite them.

Mike Crispin: I just had to say the word. 

Nate McBride: When you just said that now you invite, I'm in, I'm now in your metaverse. It's weird in here. The walls 

Mike Crispin: are all curvy. We could take this on for a couple hours. So let's start talking about this. All right. Well, Bear with me one moment because I'm gonna get some bourbon. I'm totally kidding.

No, no, hold on. Oh, geez. Here we go. I don't even want to know. Tonight's 

Nate McBride: sponsor 

Mike Crispin: is wild turkey. 

Nate McBride: Oh, okay. Uh, this is a, this is a one on one wild turkey. I like wild turkey. It was 

Mike Crispin: a 

Nate McBride: gift. [00:21:00] 

Mike Crispin: Wow. So books and alcohol. That's what we should get you. 

Nate McBride: It was a gift because I did a favor for somebody and they were like, what do you drink?

I'm like, you know what? Just get me some well bourbon, like the cheap kind. And this is perfect gift. How big is that thing? What was that? Uh, is it a big boy? It's the, it's the big one. Oh boy. It's the big one. So, and you know what, uh, Wild Turkey 101, it's hard to beat, it's hard to beat, you can, but you, it's hard to find in a well these days, you have to go down south.

If you go to like, uh, like a fancy place, like Ruth's Chris, or the other one, uh, Capitol Grill, and you're like, yeah, give me a well bourbon, guess what it is? Um, well, you're thinking too long it's, it's, it's makers makers. Yeah. And I'm like makers in the, in the well, like what the fuck it's college town. So anyway, oh 

Mike Crispin: [00:22:00] yeah.

So all this stuff that's, that would have been called before, right. That had been called whiskey called bourbon. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. So now it's now they, they don't give you the wild Turkey or the doers or anything. No. 

Nate McBride: And if you requested, they're like wild Turkey. Like we don't have that, but we have this like 25 a glass bottle of.

Um, your mother's, you know, rocking chair up here and you're like, Oh, I guess I'll drink that you'll drink it like it for 40 a drink, you'll drink it, you'll take it. I want to mention, by the way, that Ryan White bought us 16 beers. What a guy, Ryan White to you, like, fantastic. Thank you very much. 16 beers, Ryan.

Thank you very much. That's very nice. I'm going to go out and I'm going to parlay that bet at Mohegan sun. And I think I can make a hundred beers this weekend. So standby. 

Mike Crispin: [00:23:00] What's the tax rate on beers? 

Nate McBride: Zero. 

Mike Crispin: That's right. It's there's no, 

Nate McBride: there's no, there's no tax on beers. Like if someone bought us a thousand beers, I'm just saying like, if someone did.

You don't have to, no one has to, but if someone did buy a thousand beers, they could, we would get taxed on that. But I mean, you don't have to, again, no, one's got to buy a thousand beers, but if you did, we would get taxed on that. We'd be really 

Mike Crispin: happy. 

Nate McBride: I'd be happy. A thousand beers would last us

a month, five days. Just kidding. I hope not. I mean, I'd be like, I had to call in some heavy hitting dudes. I know. To, uh, to make that happen. Get that a thousand views. My goodness. So, uh, anyway. Yeah, we're gonna get everybody a shorter version of the episode. A TLDR version from the [00:24:00] bot. And I think that that will be cool.

Maybe people will like the bot better. But you know what? People, they have thoughts. And that's the whole point of this season. People don't know how to think for themselves anyway. 

Mike Crispin: I have an idea. So I think we We take note of the minute mark right now, and we, and we, we cut it and just see what the AI says about the first 51 minutes.

We've just done 21 minutes. Okay. How do they summarize? Well, I talked about how we got a Peloton bike and he's upset about the operating system. Oh, yeah. A lot of people talk about operating systems on bicycles. It sounds like a pretty 

Nate McBride: good thing. We will do that. So we're going to, we're going to release a bot version of the first 20 minutes of this episode and see how the bot digs Peloton wild Turkey.

And well, And then 

Mike Crispin: give a, we could write in afterwards, give a psychological summary [00:25:00] of Nate and Mike.

Nate McBride: All right. So if you're not already subscribed to sub stack subscribe, because we're going to just. Dump a whole bunch of stuff that comes out of this 

Mike Crispin: episode. 

Nate McBride: This'll be, this'll be fun. Um, we do have a slack board. It's been growing steadily. Uh, we're, I'm kind of enjoying how it's evolving. I released an opportunities channel today with a forum, people can submit job descriptions and roles.

And speaking of which Another new change this season is every episode or maybe every other episode, but when we have them, we're going to sort of do a roll call of open roles that have come across our desks, uh, in the area. Now, if you have roles that you would like us to read that are open, that you want to hire for, or you want to recommend, just come on the Slack board and DM us or go on the Substack place place.

Oh my God. I can't believe I said that. That was the oldest thing I've said today. [00:26:00] Go on the Go on our substack place and comment it, yes. Yes, go on our substack place and just, uh Post your Insta 

Mike Crispin: picture 

Nate McBride: on the 

Mike Crispin: pixel page. Now what's the new one that's out there and taking over Instagram. You want to be cool?

What does it call? 

Nate McBride: So, um, I'm going to do the roll call right now, if that's all right. So, so if you're out there in, in a podcast land and you're like, Oh man, I hate my company. My, my boss is a dick and I just want to get out of here. Or you don't have a job and you're looking for a job or maybe it's, I don't know.

You just ready to make a change. Um, here's some roles that have come across my desk recently. These are companies that I either know or have friends at, uh, and, or Mike knows and or has friends at, so, uh, Cal Vista Pharma, that's K A L V I S T A. [00:27:00] And I don't understand the origin of that name. I tried to find out, but I don't understand it, but I'm sure there's a meeting.

Cal Vista Pharma is hiring a VP of it sequel med tech. It's hiring a VP of IT. Discovery Life Sciences is hiring A-C-I-O-M-I-T-V-M-I-T, the Massachusetts Institute of Transportation. What's that? T stand for Technology With an M Technology. Yeah. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is hiring a CIO.

Uh, form Labs. Oh, form labs. That's gotta 

Mike Crispin: be an interesting job. Don't you think that that's gonna be wild? I bet, I bet your budget is 

Nate McBride: pretty fricking 

Mike Crispin: big. I bet that's wild. I mean, you're surrounded by all sorts of interesting things. And 

Nate McBride: you're basically surrounded by 10, 000 CIOs. 

Mike Crispin: Um, 

Nate McBride: uh, form labs is hiring a [00:28:00] CIO.

Chimera is hiring a director slash senior director of it. UMass Chan medical school is hiring a CIO, a flagship ventures, a VC company that, uh, builds out. Life science companies is hiring a director of it. ClearPoint is hiring a VP of it. Wave Life Sciences is hiring a senior director of Discovery it, which sounds pretty fun actually.

Interesting. Cape Cod Healthcare is hiring executive director of it. Pep Gen. Pep Gen, not Pepsi Gen, but Pep Gen is hiring a VP of it. Garda, G-A-R-U-D-A. Garda is hiring a director of it. Aped. A P N I med. It's hiring a senior director of it, Odyssey therapeutics and actually an associate director of it and mercy bio and associate director of it.

[00:29:00] And that last one I might add is a hot position. It's hot. It opened this week. It's hot. So mercy. 

Mike Crispin: There's so, there's a lot of great roles open out there right now. That's, that's really encouraging. 

Nate McBride: It is encouraging. 

Mike Crispin: It's that, that, that, that, that your turnover. Yeah, people get a lot of taxes and I and I almost guarantee you there'll be a All slew more in the second quarter.

That's even more than the first people wait for bonuses and all sorts of stuff. So it's like the door will open even wider when you get to March, April 

Nate McBride: timeframe. No, no question about it. And budgets have kicked in and, and people as like, uh, initiatives and projects that kicked in, people need resources.

So between now and probably April, May, we'll probably have a lot of these good roll calls. But if you have a role you're trying to hire, or, you know, have a role that's open, that's hot. And you're friends with somebody who needs that role filled, whatever. Just again, go on the sub stack.[00:30:00] 

Mike Crispin: There's, there's a place down the street. We call it dance place. And then my son make up and it's a cool place. It's packed all the time. We walk by it and we make up 

Nate McBride: jingles for it. Like, do they have a cool URL? Like ours, the C O I T dot U S. We definitely have the coolest web. If you want to go to the substack place, you just go into your internet, uh, web, web thing, and in the web application, web application at the top of the program.

Web program at the top in the bar, you type in T H E C O I T dot U S the quite dot us 

Mike Crispin: sounds right. 

Nate McBride: Um, and then you can be on the Substack place, or you can come on our Slack page and to get on our Slack page or Slack board or Slack place, you find our Slack invitation and all of our, um, [00:31:00] episode notes.

Wow. I love the Substack. It's, it's just such a well laid out site. Oh, the Substack place is so cool. There's all these other places on Substack too, with people that put things on there. Yeah. I don't know how they do it, but I read a lot of things on there. There's a lot of things on there to read. There's a lot of things on the slip stack, please.

Um, and if you want to continue the competitions on our show, or deep dive into anything else, again, those are the places you can go to find us, and other people like us, that like talking about things, that like the things we talk about. I also want to mention that if you like our show, As always, give us all of the stars on the platform that you listen to.

So if it's the Apple platform or the Spotify one, or the Pandora, or, um, you listen to MP threes, that's not a platform or the Limewire 

Mike Crispin: Limewire was gonna say, or Kaza download off of [00:32:00] Kaza 

Nate McBride: or like hot. Hotline or, um, you know,

Nutella, Nutella was always slow. We should have an episode just focused on cool apps. We used in two thousands. We need a nostalgia, like a retro, Oh, retro episode. All 

Mike Crispin: right. We'll have the screen share and try and load these things up on a, you know, Christ, my Amsterdam. 

Nate McBride: My, all my 

Mike Crispin: penny, 

Nate McBride: my Pentium three, small form factor,

two gigs of Ram. That would be great. Also, we're also we're on the YouTube. So if you're on the YouTube, we have a channel, the calc, the calculus of it, I think. youtube. com or something like that. Just search for the calculus of it. There's only one of us. Um, if you want to buy us a beer, like Ryan white did, you can find in the [00:33:00] liner notes of our episodes, how to buy us a beer and.

Jesus Christ, we need beer. So just, who doesn't have 3? All right. Buy a, buy a medium Dunkin Donuts coffee and then use the extra money to buy us a beer. So all we need, we need beer. Exactly. Completely in for the beer. Think about how many wars would never have started if people just had beer and could play like checkers.

So anyway, onto season two. So season two. Guess what? We still are thinking about our IT leaders. They're near and dear to our hearts. Mike and I are near and dear to each other's hearts. Because we're IT leaders. We're in the same trenches. We're dealing with the same things every single day. We take the same slings and arrows that we all take.

We all have faced the same dilemmas. No one's special like, [00:34:00] oh my god, you wouldn't believe that I got this CFO. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we all got that. you know, same executive, right? So what we're going to do this season is we're going to focus on a new way of decision making. So what we talked about this at the end of season one, we touched on it many times, starting all the way back in episode 31, the idea of autonomy, even more importantly, the loss of autonomy, the loss of decision making, like how much decision making, how much ground do it leaders lose because they don't have trust because they don't have.

Um, a sense of desire to, to box the trends. They're too willing to simply, um, Oh, you're right. Executive. So, and so I shouldn't do that. Let me just, why don't you tell me what to do or, Oh, the industry wants me to do this. I should probably follow the industry. And you don't want to 

Mike Crispin: fall into that trap where you're.

Asking people above [00:35:00] you, what you should do at your job as a leader. Absolutely not. That is like, uh, so, uh, yeah, you, you want to be making the decisions or ultimately feel and have built the trust and credibility, whether before you even came in the door to some extent, hopefully, but if it's your 100 percent and they're follow a lot of the things that Nate and I have talked about in the first season and, uh, he kind of well on your way, but you gotta.

Build up that credibility and trust. 

Nate McBride: Well, I think, I mean, you made this point to me earlier, Mike, before the show started, we were talking, um, ahead of time, just about, you know, some ideas. And you had mentioned that like when a company hires a head of it, Yeah. It's it's for a couple of reasons, right? One, they probably have some big catalytic event that's coming or the catalytic event just happened.

And they're like, Oh shit. 

Mike Crispin: It's yeah. It could be reactive, reactive. Sometimes that's a good place to be because [00:36:00] you might come in and say like, all right, tell us. Let's go, we, but you gotta have a plan. It 

Nate McBride: can be, or they could hire somebody because The person who's hiring them just wants that, that comfort.

They want to have a person who can just do the things and get it off of their plate. Like there's many times where almost, I think all the time, that's a big piece of it. Yeah, for sure. You have that CFO who's like, I'm tired of running the MSP. I got more important shit to do. So it's not a catalyst so much as it's a, just.

Bring somebody in who can just deal with this shit. Right. But regardless, the point you made, Mike, was that when they hire you, even if they're hiring you to sit in a chair and nod your head, there's still an expectation that they want you to lead. They want you to provide some kind of leadership, uh, make a decision like, is it yes or no, do this, don't do this.

Right. [00:37:00] So there's, there's that element, no matter what. I don't think that 

Mike Crispin: there's ever situation by and stay consistent with your decision and stand by it, right? Like if the water gets hot, stay with it. Don't. Yeah. Be overly influenced or pushed around. You know what you're doing. You're, you're in the seat for a reason.

You got to stick to it and, and build trust and alliances and partnership with, with your peers. And that's an important part of the job, really. Totally. 

Nate McBride: And it just, it's getting more complicated. I mean, with decision making now having to deal with, uh, cybersecurity, uh, craziness and of course, generative AI, I mean, there's all this shit, right?

Like Yeah. Uh, these I. T. leaders, new, recently new, or even veteran, are all saying, like, how am I going to make decisions about this and do it in a way that is me making the decision? You know, so Nate, making the [00:38:00] decision to do this thing based on, you know, experience and a pool of data, but making sure it's my own decision.

Um, so we talked about all the different avenues that lead to this moment in season one, building credibility, building trust, those key stakeholder interviews, you know, the ones that you have in the first 30 days of starting a company. Like the moment we start building trust, credibility, and then you start doing all those small little wins, right?

You're building that credibility. You're building up the, the tank of future credits that you can use when you have to make decisions. We talked about all of this, right? So, so now it comes back to us in season two. So in season two, we tackle the topic of autonomy. And I'm not talking about. Like, we, at the end of the season when we focused on mostly the loss of autonomy, this season we're talking [00:39:00] about the preservation of autonomy.

Yeah. Which is, you know, semantically kind of the same thing, but it's not really, we're talking about you being able to look at this crazy ass landscape of what's coming and say, You know what? The best thing for this company actually is not to go gen AI or it's not to do this. It's not to buy into the hype or the media or the Zeitgeist effect.

It's to actually do this one thing. Um, We talked about, like, I had you and Kevin and Joel on the podcast talked about why the head of IT role exists and what does it do these days. We spent two episodes talking about, like, how do you make decisions? And all four of us collectively, I mean, we all had over a hundred years of experience.

We've come through this minefield of careers. To get to where we are today, so we can all reasonably state that when we make a decision, [00:40:00] we're doing it with this whole arsenal of information. Well, not every new IT leader has that. So I'm not going to do a recap of season one. I mean, you can listen to the, the bots tell you all about it, but.

Season one was all about those first three years and, and it was a high level focused on all the elements of tactical, like what you should do day one, day 90, so forth. Now we're going to sort of bring it back to the beginning and also talk about, even if you're like a 20 year vet and you've been through this, how you can think about autonomy, how you can think about decision making, how you can think about defining your strategy.

Like I. I just literally, at the end of December, sat down and submitted my final 2025 IT strategy. And I honestly had to ask myself, how influenced was I when I wrote this? [00:41:00] Did I write this completely free of influence? And if you read it, as an objective outsider, you might say, well, it looks like he was influenced.

But I do feel, after several iterations, that at the end, it's actually, it's actually me. It's like, it's truly how I feel and how I feel that best aligns with what my company needs to do. 

Mike Crispin: So it's important that you feel that way because you, you want to go into decisions with confidence and with, you know, you know, you know your stuff and you feel good about it and you like what you do for a living, you know, like you're, you're unsure and you're kind of questioning the decisions that you make, you're probably doing that while you could, you could be doing other things that you like to do.

And don't let that bring you back down and bring you to a place where it's like, I don't know what I'm doing. I think to some extent, [00:42:00] we all don't know what we're doing. There's days where we don't know what we're doing. I would agree. But the stuff that we know That we, that you know, you know, you, you 

Nate McBride: know, well, I think there's a point.

I think there's a point where you say, okay. I mean, the, uh, we talked about this last year briefly, but there's these insights programs, insights assessment, where you're given one of four colors, depending on what kind of person you are. Um, I'm a red, uh, and red means that I just need the, I need enough information, enough information to make a decision.

I don't need all of it to just. give me the download and then let me think, right? And so the, the problem with being a red and the using the insights terminology is that I'm often very willing to take risks because I need, say 70 percent of the data, whereas somebody maybe who's a blue needs 95 percent of the data.

They're not making a decision [00:43:00] until they have a giant data set in front of them where I'm just like, you know what? Uh, yeah, that looks pretty good. Let's just go with that. So I always have to operate. In my mind with saying to myself, I feel really good about this. I wish I felt amazing about it. And sometimes I can get too amazing and I'll usually do that on my own.

I'll say, okay, I'm really good about this. Let's do it. And then I'm going to spend another two weeks on my own time. edifying my belief, doing my own testing, further research, uh, et cetera, et cetera, to basically approve my own decision. But there have been times where I've gone back after I've made a decision and done additional research and said, Oh shit, I should not have done that.

But That's something that I relish, the fact that I have that decision making capability to say, yes, this is good enough, I can make a decision. And then [00:44:00] also the follow up effect. So, autonomy, it's a really big topic. Um, It's covered in so many layers of our cultural spectrum. Uh, we're just focusing on autonomy as it relates to decision making and it, but there are there autonomy doesn't exist by itself.

There is actually four circles in this Venn diagram. Like when you think about it, decision making and leadership, it's not just autonomy. Autonomy is one, perhaps the biggest of the four bubbles, but it's one of four bubbles. The other three being risk. Then you have productivity, you have innovation. And so when I say, Oh, I'm going to be super autonomous and just forget all the news and all the research.

I'm going to just do this thing by myself after my own research. Well, that's really autonomous. I mean, [00:45:00] you've gone to great lengths to make an independent decision and bring the business forward. But at what cost of risk 

Mike Crispin: and and what and who and what are you doing it for? Are you doing it for the business or are you doing it for you?

Right. Exactly. Is it, is 

Nate McBride: it an ego boost? Is it a status quo bucking thing that you're, you're prone to? Um, what's the hit on productivity? And yes, you might be high in the innovative scale, but it's a, it's a, it's a fire that might grow from a small little thing to a big thing. And then what are you going to do?

Your, your autonomy won't solve the problem later down the road. So it's finding the balance between those four pillars, we'll call them. So in terms of autonomy, we, we've talked about that risk. We're not talking just about, you know, risk from a perspective of like, who's going to hack my system or [00:46:00] do I have DR in place or ERM, whatever.

We're looking at the whole package. Breaches, fines, system failures. Um, like when zoom shits itself every Monday morning, which, or maybe it only happens in my company, but, um, sometimes though with risk being too risk averse the other side, which is, oh, I can't take any risk can also impact autonomy. So there's like a fine balance in the middle, right?

Like a certain amount of risk you can accept. That will help you maintain your autonomy. Um, then innovation is the other pillar or one of the other pillars. So it's not just about playing with shiny new toys. Like who doesn't love a shiny new toy? You do. I do like whatever. Um, it's about improving what we've got.

This is like the hardest thing in the world. If you say to somebody, um. [00:47:00] Or they say to you, well, we just, we want something new. And then you say to them back, well, but the thing you have can be improved. That's a difficult dilemma. Uh, why do you need a new lawnmower? You can just fix this one, or you can just put a new.

I don't know, fucking blade on it and it will cut twice as good. Oh, well, I just, I wanted to get a new one, right? Um, these are decisions about innovation that you can say, actually, you know what, let's step back, let's look at what we have today. Let's not spend a single dollar on new things. Let's just.

Bigger things that we have better. That's like innovation, the definition of it. How do I make this piece of duct tape into a supercomputer and then drawing that line between all the things that has to happen, or I should say quantum [00:48:00] computer to be. Accurate. So, cloud migrations, uh, automation, which is a big topic we'll cover this season.

Of course, generative AI. Um, these are all great examples of, uh, just bolting on to things you already have to improve them. But again, again, to speak about the other end of the spectrum, if you're not innovating, if you're simply just accepting. So, accepting a vendor's new thing is not, by the way, innovating.

That is just staying with your non autonomous decision making profile. Uh, vendors says, Oh yeah, we're releasing out a new benefit. And you're like, Oh, that's great. I'm innovating. You're not innovating. You're just accepting what's coming. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: So, and then lastly, we have productivity. So again, we talked about this.

Ad nauseum last season, we talked about ex, uh, and, and its impacts on productivity, but productivity is that [00:49:00] thing that everyone's obsessed with. They will never not be obsessed with it. I have a client right now who for 2025 initiative, just simply said to every single function, show us your value. So every function in this company has to demonstrate value.

I mean, can you imagine? So. It's like, uh, productivity, everything from employees pulling their hair out over bad tech to ensuring it is spending all day putting out fires to, uh, making the whole company run smoother. Like it's all in the productivity umbrella. But again, there's the other end of the spectrum.

Every single time that you're like, I've solved that problem and I've made you faster, there's a cost for that. You don't just get away with making short term productivity gains for free. Like every single time you make a short term productivity gain, there's a cost at the end of it. So you, you have to think about productivity.[00:50:00] 

Innovation, risk and autonomy overlapping and maintaining a perfect balance between them and how hard that is, right? The good news is though, Mike, that's what the season's about. 

Mike Crispin: That's right. 

Nate McBride: Is, is that exact balance? So, um, throughout the season, uh, we talked about that again this last season, but for those that didn't listen, we're going to be using some specific terminology.

Uh, it's called one and zero. And I thought about this last season and it kind of started to make sense. We started to talk about it. Uh, I may have gotten it from somewhere else. If I do, and I didn't correctly cite it. I'm sorry, but I also think that maybe I thought of it on my own, so I don't know. But the 1 and 0 principle that I came up with is that whenever we mentioned a 1 principle, that is going with status quo.

That is not making a decision. That is simply [00:51:00] agreeing to go with what is happening. It's a 1. response. A zero response is not doing that. It is saying, and you, and a zero response is challenging to the point where you're going to determine whether or not one is appropriate or not. So you may do a one response and say like, okay, we're just going to do this.

And that's that. But you may do a zero response and say, actually, we're not doing that. I'm going to go research for the things. And if the one response is still the best at the end, fine. But I'm going to go look at something else. So, ones being trending, going with what's what, zero being taking an alternate approach.

We'll use one and zero, uh, extensively throughout this season. So just, I wanted to present that now. I'll, I'll reflect on this, uh, example throughout this season. So people that are new, [00:52:00] understand the difference between ones and zeros when we use them. But, um It's like binary. It's relatively Binary decisions.

Yeah. And so, uh, I want to start wrapping up this one particular episode. Cause again, we're sticking to our new timeline. Oh, and by the way, we need a new, we need a new, uh, we need a new song, Mike. I think for season two, we should have a new, uh, Calculus of IT jam. 

Mike Crispin: You guys can work on that. Actually, I already have a few ideas that I can try.

Nate McBride: All right, cool. So, um, so for this season, we're focusing on autonomy, but also how to maintain a balance between autonomy, risk, innovation, and productivity. We're going to be focusing on some big questions that IT leaders are all facing today. And of course, if you've subscribed to any, uh, E zine, email, you know, CAO magazine or CompuWorld or whatever the frick you subscribe to.[00:53:00] 

You'll have seen these questions, but like, uh, IT leaders. Do I follow the herd? And if I do, like, who the fuck is the actual herd right now? Who do I, who should I follow? Do I, do I build my AI strategy in 2025? And what does that even look like? Okay, it's idiotic to think that there's such a thing as a generative AI strategy that stands by itself.

No, you have collaborative AI, integrative AI, multiple layers of agentic AI. You have SLMs, LLMs, VLMs. Like, what does it even look like to write a strategy? Okay, uh, what should I be doing around ethics and acceptable use? So, where do I draw the lines? Like, if Mike decides to write a prompt query and ask a question of Claude and take the results and then put them back into a PowerPoint deck that goes into production, what's Mike's responsibility about that prompt?

Does it go fall under SDLC? Should it go into a prompt template [00:54:00] database? Like, where do we start tracking this information? Um, how much money does anything cost? How freaking hard is it right now to write a budget? Oh my God, so hard. Um, where should I be innovating and how do exactly do I innovate? So what does innovation even look like anymore?

Um, do you have to be so egregiously out of box? That's not, doesn't make any sense out of box. What's the one I'm thinking about outside the box? 

Mike Crispin: Outside of the box. 

Nate McBride: Outside of the box. 

Mike Crispin: Outside the box. 

Nate McBride: You have to be so outside of the box. That doesn't sound right. Is that how it said? Is that how it goes?

Mike Crispin: You have to be so outside the box. You have to be thinking so far outside the box. So far outside the box. 

Nate McBride: Thinking so far outside the box. Oh my god, that sounds so wrong, but I know it's right. Okay, thinking so far outside the box, , [00:55:00] fuck it. So how do I innovate? What, answer that question. it, it Mike, it all starts with the box.

And then lastly, once I've answered all the other questions, how does this impact what I'm doing? And oh, by the way, I only have 245 working days in this fiscal year, so 

Mike Crispin: say how much time do you have, 

Nate McBride: but I've already lost 10. So, holy shit. Like, when do I do all this? Don't you worry, we're going to answer this for you.

Uh, we're going to leave you with at least half of half a year left to, to go and undo all your mistakes by the time we're done. Um, so We have this wonderful list of 10 sort of like meta examples of autonomous decision points. And we're also going to [00:56:00] incorporate these into our episodes going forward.

Starting with episode two next week, we're going to start with our first example. And I'll just give you a kind of a sneak peek. Uh, it's called the great homogenization. So our first example of autonomy concession is like this. So everyone's jumping on the same tech bandwagon and we might call this bandwagon generative AI faster than faster than any, any, anybody else with no particular reason.

And your CEO's golf buddy told them about this amazing, you know, new thing they must do. And suddenly you're expected to implement it yesterday and the pressure just go with the flow and adopt whatever else else is using is higher than ever. But here's the kicker. Being like everybody else is a terrible strategy.

That strategy's never worked. So that's going to be covered in episode 2. But in episode 2, we're also going to talk about storytelling. So, the [00:57:00] key theme for next week is why storytelling matters. We're wired for stories. Did you know that? Like, that is our, it's in our DNA. It helps us understand complex information and explain complex things to other people.

It helps us build consensus and buy in. It helps us inspire and motivate, and it helps us differentiate us from everybody else. So we'll talk about why it matters, how to create an effective IT story, which, when you start writing your IT story, it actually makes you think twice about your autonomy. If I'm going to write a story about Microsoft and Microsoft Teams, that's not a story.

It's not even a comic book panel. Oh, we're going to go with Microsoft Teams because, uh, It's bundled. That's not a story. We'll talk about the stories. Talk about maintaining a balanced intersection. So connecting your story back to risk, innovation, productivity, and autonomy, how to keep your story [00:58:00] alive, and then a call to action plan for what you can do.

And then, like I said, we're talking about one of the key themes for. Where autonomy concessions go wrong, where autonomy as a concession is disruptive to your, to your goals. And anybody who knows me knows I'm very. Well, I'm not anti, so much anti status quo, as I am just always looking at all of the angles, as opposed to the easiest angle.

And so, clearly you're gonna get a heavy dose of me, uh, expositing on this point throughout the season. But Mike's my counterpoint. As he always has been. And even though I don't want to speak for you, Mike, but even though you also like the newest and the best things, you're way more pragmatic than I am on a lot of different areas.

And so I [00:59:00] think between the two of us, and we're also going to have lots of new guests on, by the way, this season, I'm looking forward to that. Some old friends, some new friends. Uh, We're going to shed some light on this, this new world. Our it leaders are entering into on decision making 

Mike Crispin: it's a new world.

Nate McBride: I'm excited about it. 

Mike Crispin: Me too. Me too. I mean, I think it'd be interesting to get some different points of view and, and plug some of this into how, how we're working. There's a lot of other outside forces, right? Drew that leaders are going to not just it leaders, but all leaders can have to deal with. In the technology space or in the social space or anywhere else.

So there's so many So many different forces. I mean our our it leader 

Nate McBride: listeners and it leaders that have been bombarded for the last nine months By this napalm blitz of gen ai bullshit and propaganda. [01:00:00] They've been hit so many ways. From the news, from people in their companies, from their senior leadership.

Uh, it's almost as if it's a fait accompli. Like, what am I supposed to do? I have to do this. That. It's an autonomy concession. And maybe you do go with a gen AI strategy. Maybe you do find a way to incorporate in your company, but God, you have to go into it, having the most objective approach. I have done the research and I myself personally believe this is the best thing to align with corporate strategy.

Um, it's hard to do. 

Mike Crispin: It is hard to take, take a more piecemeal approach to some of these things. You just have to. Work, work some of them into your strategy, not make it the strategy and take different pieces and [01:01:00] work them, work them into your strategy. 

Nate McBride: That's a fantastic 

Mike Crispin: point. It's so easy to take a few big cornerstone technologies and buzzwords and build a strategy off it.

And it's, you know, you take components and bits and pieces of that, those new technologies and you weave them in. Then if one of those technologies has a really strong, Impact or you can see it based on your business model, but maybe you go deeper on that one, but All these AI things are just getting baked in anyway, whether you pay for them or not.

I think the companies that are making it expensive are losing and they're not going to make it unless they're building a product based on that. I mean, if you're using Gemini or OpenAI and you're using a lot of cycles and tokens and whatnot, okay, yeah, it gets expensive, but you're talking about collaborative AI and you're going to get, it's like Grammarly on steroids.

You're going to get the stuff regardless. And whether you choose to use it [01:02:00] may be more up to your users than you. It doesn't really matter that much as long as you're in your safe. So don't let it be the strategy. Make, make sure it's, yeah, we will, we will support and help you learn it and leverage it.

You don't have to use it if you don't want to, but we're going to make sure it's safe and it's effective. 

Nate McBride: Yeah, 

Mike Crispin: we'll be, we'll be able to, you know, it's going to get interesting when, when the agents start to get more mainstream, which is probably this year where people are starting to trust these sort of automated.

It's really automation with a face. And it's just, um, it's going to be interesting to see how people adopt it. And if they try and replace, because a lot of companies struggle business process, right. And they bring in consultants and we've got business analysts and we've got documentation. We're trying to get business processes, perfect to see how many agents get thrown at the [01:03:00] wall to try and fix some of these problems and probably some of them will probably fail pretty badly, but it'd be interesting to see who picks that up first and starts to leverage it in some of the, some of these companies.

Like instead, like, what do we do right now? We have manual processes where we, we hire people and we go talk to them and they do it, they do the same thing over and over and over again, haven't automated our processes. So if you can go talk to a person and do the same thing over and over again, but you don't actually have to do that work.

We may see business processes get more automated. But as follow the same repetitive processes we do today, and it's going to be interesting to see how that stuff gets implemented. How is your I. T. leader look at that and go, Hmm, when do I want to get involved with that? Because as we all know, it's very popular now [01:04:00] to go on to LinkedIn and these A.

I. companies are going to start emailing your C. E. O. and your chief commercial officer and everyone else. So that's, to your point on autonomy, that's another, like I said, new forces, different forces. Coming from different directions that even outside of our what we've We've been talking about I think the last year, there's going to be new challenges that, uh, kind of force you to look deeper into some of those areas and decide what you want to take based on the job you have and where you work.

Um, because the key message is try and stay on top of it. It's true. I think, I think 

Nate McBride: episode three or four, I can't remember which one we have coming up, but we'll have a guest on our show and we can ask this guest directly how influenced they are by what they read on LinkedIn. How influenced they are in terms of their decision making by the latest, uh, insert [01:05:00] vendor here, uh, analyst, uh, um, report.

Like when you read these things, how much does it shift your strategy and way of thought, or are you able to simply use it as a piece of evidence in your decision making discovery on your way to an autonomous and, and, and, uh, objective decision? Right. You know, so autonomy isn't just about decision making.

I mean, and we'll cover this too, it's about um, how forced you are into making decisions too. Yeah. So, it's not just about, uh, I could go A or B, it's how forced you are into picking A. And again, to go back to the top of our conversation. If I'm a new employee starting a company and I meet the CEO or CFO and they're like, yeah, we're staying with SharePoint.

Uh, I mean, I'm quitting the job that day myself personally, but that's when you've just had the rug pulled out from underneath you. You no longer have autonomy [01:06:00] and then the rest of your tenure, that company, you have zero autonomy. 

Mike Crispin: I also think that if it's a great point that you. Every head for the door because why why is someone in that seat care so much about chirping?

Yeah, well because because they have no autonomy like they've also second. I don't even know about it Or why even it's even on their list of things to to push on you. It's almost You'd always want to look for the thing that's going to fit your business strategy, and that's the thing, that person is relying on the new person, the new IT leader to make those decisions, hopefully.

So if they're making those decisions, or trying to, um, maybe because they're getting an earful from someone, one of their reports, but It's that's not, yeah, I agree with you. It's not, we'll have to 

Nate McBride: be, we'll have a guest on here this season. We have a special guest coming later this season who will tell us about his journey with executive team that felt they were [01:07:00] all it leaders and how much that, that destroyed that company and his, um, His ability to do anything, ultimately leading to him leaving that company.

And when we talk about this competition, you know, it brings to light previous experiences I've had in my career. Um, you've probably had the same where you encounter people who want to force their own loss of autonomy. On to you, which is to say they've lost their ability to make decisions. And so by God, who else is going to be allowed to have the freedom to make them around them?

Nobody. So, um, so I'm excited for the season. This is going to be awesome. Me too. Me too, Nate. It's going to be fun. And maybe we have 15 episodes. Maybe we have 30. I don't know. We're not putting a restriction on it, but we do have a really good plan, a really good outline, and lots of [01:08:00] guests, and it's going to be a good time.

Um, I had a note here, maybe to get to some industry news, but you know what? It's just all so damn depressing. And we'll just going to skip all that shit tonight because listen, honestly, who, who gives a shit about what some social media platform is doing or not doing anymore? Uh, just get off social media, everybody.

Um, so with that in closing, I'll say again. If you like this show, please give us all the stars on your favorite platform or comment and on the sub stack place about it and talk to us. Come on our slack, our slack board and we have some merchandise. We're going to be updating. I have some new shirt ideas.

I just have to get around to putting them up. Um, don't be a dick, especially people in it. We're doing our best. Um.

Yeah, be cool. And it will get paid back to you in spades. It's going to be a long winter. Everybody is dark in the mornings. It's dark at night. Uh, just be cool. [01:09:00] Um, also have your pet speed or neuter anything that you want to add Mike, before we close out tonight. 

Mike Crispin: Not particularly just that excited to be back and.

Feeling good about the new year. I, I think this is going to be a, um, in our, in our industry and in our tech space, it's going to be a lot of interesting things happening that 

Nate McBride: we can all 

Mike Crispin: figure out the good, the bad that come with it, but this is going to be one of the more fast paced years. I think that we've had.

For many, many different reasons. So excited to be here and be able to talk through this leadership journey that we're all on. And maybe even just a little bit philosophically about where we're headed and how, how we get there and bring more change to our industry and. To our peers and partners while developing as best we can.

Nate McBride: I'm with you. I feel so weird. I'm like, [01:10:00] we're at one Oh seven for the show. Now, what do I do? Have a good night, 

Mike Crispin: everyone. 

Nate McBride: I'll master the show edits and, uh, I dunno, maybe like go eat dinner or something. Um, I think we just set a podcast record. Actually, we didn't. We set one for us. This is our own podcast record.

So gold star for you, Mike. All right, everybody. See you next week. Uh, be good and all that stuff by Mike. Take care, everyone. Thank you. Yeah. Take care. Bye everybody. Cheers. Good 

Mike Crispin: night. Give us five stars because we are awesome. Adopt and oppose some. We need Frozen Twinkies and Johnny Walker Gold Drinkies.

The Calculus of 

[01:11:00] IT.