Calculus of IT - Season 2 Episode 2 - The Modern IT Paradox - Part 1

Remember when IT's job was simple? Lock everything down, say no to everything, and go home at 5? (This did actually used to happen…once). 

Well enough of the nostalgia crap, in this episode of The Calculus of IT, Nate and Mike dive into the modern IT paradox of freedom versus control and why finding that balance is the defining challenge of IT leadership in 2025. We can’t do the rest of the season without tackling the current “scenario,” and so that’s the plan here.

We explore how IT evolved from the “Department of No” (this also used to happen) to whatever we are now (we're still working on the branding). Join us as we unpack why traditional control is breaking down faster than your Zoom room during the weekly Monday morning outage and explore the new challenges of modern IT - like explaining to your developers why their 3-minute cloud deployment needs a 3-week security review. 

As we promised in Episode 1, no LONG episodes…so we just sort of slammed on the brakes in the middle of dissecting seven perspectives of the IT paradox and decided to split the episode into two parts. Tune in next week for Part 2, where we'll tackle the remaining perspectives, including the three models of IT control, the real cost of getting IT wrong, and how to set up a modern balance that doesn't make everyone hate you.

Also, Nate is definitely on to something with this Beatles theory of world domination…stay tuned.

Transcript

Season 2 - Episode 2 - Final - Audio Only
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Mike Crispin: [00:00:00] I am now. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, so. I think it's a good position to look at, you know, whenever you put something in, like you want to put it in from a value proposition that it's going to last a little while and you can build on it and you can continue to use it and it gets ingrained in the architecture that you have.

That's just my 

Nate McBride: thought. 

Mike Crispin: I think this 

Nate McBride: season we have to answer, there's a lot of, everything that you just said, we have to answer. Basically, even the idea of getting, getting life out of something, like getting useful life out of it. Yeah, it's hard. Um, Where does the, like, even the decision to determine what is useful life is part of this season.

So like, uh, oh well this platform costs a million dollars, therefore we should be able to get x years out of it. I mean that's, that's basic math. That's like finance. But [00:01:00] is it truly, are you going to just as an it leader say, yeah, finance team says we have to get minimum three years. So fuck it like three years, we'll get three years.

We'll figure out how to squeeze three years out of this thing. And even after a year, we hate it. We're going to get two more years out of it because that's what finance said to do. I mean, 

Mike Crispin: no, no. Sometimes you're contractually obligated other times. If a system doesn't work and it's causing pain, you rip the bandaid off.

You've got to make a change. Um, but you know, if you're. Putting a system in and you've presented on it and you've and you've partnered with your business partners and you put it out there and it's a failure. It's you don't want it to be so it's so I mean, but, but, but again, 

Nate McBride: even the definition of failure is, 

Mike Crispin: but if it's a.

Yeah. If people aren't using it, if it's not working, if you're losing data, if it's been breached, if people can't train on it or learn it, I mean, there's a number of things that can make it unsuccessful, but you know, it's, [00:02:00] it's also change management. If you don't manage the change appropriately, it's incredibly difficult to do that.

I think in a lot of instances, it is how hard you train people to try and do that. Like it's all personalities and push and pull, but to the point of having the system in, I don't want to. Like we talked about the whack a mole thing, be like, I got to revisit the system after three months and make sure it's still running.

Great. If it, if I'm not hearing this swell that the business isn't getting done, there's this system over here we got to implement or we got to maintain. So we've got to have our whole catalog, um, sort of managed, maintained. So I'm not going to, it's also, I mean, if you're talking to, you've got a cat, you've got a portfolio of, uh, you know, maybe a hundred applications across all the business units to continuously change them.

Um, I think it's creates a little bit of, uh, not just churn within your own organization, but also some. some questionability about whether or not [00:03:00] anything that gets put in is going to last. Um, so I think some of it's building your credibility and sticking to your guns and making it work. Um, but if some, like I said, if something comes along, it's going to have a huge impact, positive impact, cost savings, you know, you, you, you should be open to be flexible.

But that's thinking about the next. I'm not thinking about the next system two weeks after I implement it. You know, I'm thinking about how can I make this work the way it's supposed to work, continue to build credibility in the application because those systems all go in as part of a group decision.

You know, people chime in, you want to get buy in from your partner to a 

Nate McBride: degree, to a degree, Mike, I mean, ultimately you're, ah, this is so, this is so good. The question of, you know, you as an IT leader are making the decision to allow other people to make a decision with you. I mean, that's autonomy.

Autonomy Waterfall 101, which is, [00:04:00] okay, I'm exercising my autonomy as a leader to allow others to help me make a decision about a thing, which is the best for the business. Also, decision making autonomy round table, 

Mike Crispin: effectively. We haven't, you have a decision making group and you can, you can go as far as, you know, formalizing scoring and all this stuff.

But a lot of times it's just like, uh, you want to get everyone in the room to understand what, how this, these applications are going to work and how they're going to benefit. I've had a ton of stories where it's like, everyone agrees. One person leaves the organization, go forward with it. Anyway, the new, the new person comes in and drops a bomb in the middle of it.

And it's like, Oh, geez. You know, we're going to continue forward on this and someone continues to keep it from really moving forward. And I mean, I can think of a couple of those, not a lot in my career where it's like business continuity is a challenge. You bring someone new [00:05:00] in and they bring their thing in and you're having to be like pump the brakes.

We, we, we made this decision as a company to go in this direction, you 

Nate McBride: know? And it's, it's a controversial question. And of course, one that every CFO is like, absolutely fucking no. But. Uh, the question is, should I. T. be the only one making decisions about technology investments? And you know what? There's, there's a lot of strong case to be made for the fact that if you're hiring an I.

T. lead to come in, there should be nobody else making the final decision. The I. T. lead can take feedback, they can, they can hear the key stakeholders sort of opinions, but there's nobody else making the decision but them. Single throated joke and all that. Yes. But as opposed to decision by committee, where ultimately even with decision by committee, it still falls in the IT show, uh, IT leaders shoulders.

And, and the reason I mentioned the first question is because people do leave. I mean, the IT leaders leave of [00:06:00] course, as well, but I anecdotally speaking, I think IT leaders leave less. Then those around them, I T leaders take years to get up and running, get their shit together, like make the world perfect.

They're not ready to jump very committed. Well, in, in most cases anyway, but, but people in the company, Oh my God, they're just like revolving doors. So why would you put any credence? In a functional line leaders opinion, other than to say, thank you for your opinion, I will take that under advisement, but we're going to go this direction because I know you're going to leave, but yeah, okay, well, 

Mike Crispin: yeah, I, I, I agree that I think the head of it is responsible for and is accountable for a lot of the decisions that are made, but as long as they gather that feedback and they've heard that feedback, it's, it's important that they're doing that.

Not. Just and taking that into account and explaining why that either may not be the [00:07:00] right path forward, or it's not applicable to the current state, or it's not a fit with architecture or their security risks or. Any number of things, but usually if you're going through the bigger process, you're, you're, you're getting, you're weeding things down to a couple vendors and you start to get a better idea of which way it's going to go.

There's been a couple of things that I've stopped from moving forward that I can think of as well, where people wanted to go the other way. Yeah, you ultimately have to be accountable for that decision. And you do have the power to make it. You do have the power to make it. But it's, you're also thinking about how will this work.

These, I'm not in there working on these tools every day. So a lot of times through the testing. process of a lot of these things. Um, kind of user acceptance testing a lot of these systems. It's, it's just getting people aligned that they're able to use the tool and not let the vendor take over. That's the key thing.

I think the business [00:08:00] leaders and the IT group should be in lockstep and trying to get as close to an agreement as possible. It's the vendors who often are, you know, they're making promises or they're putting The A team on the pre sale squad and the D team on the implementation squad and everyone's expectations are destroyed.

You know, that's just the number of things that you've got to keep control over your internal, so your internal shop and be aligned with your path forward. It's, it's not, you know, that stuff, implementations can be really hard if it's a big cross functional project. 

Nate McBride: Well, I think the real question, Mike, is how do average Joes like you and me through get, get 500 billion.

Yep. From the U. S., from the U. S. government to invest in our technology. Like, 

Mike Crispin: how do we do that? We, uh, invent, uh, superintelligence. In a world [00:09:00] where signals bloom, we compute our dreams in rooms. Data streams and byte balloons, algorithms make us swoon. The calculus of IT, we value autonomy. The calculus of IT.

Nate McBride: Super intelligence. Okay. So, Oh, welcome to the [00:10:00] episode two of the calculus of it podcast season two. Yeah, season two. If you, if you feel like you walked into a nightmare, you, you did, um, we're talking about autonomy. So they were kicking off season two with an intro to autonomy. Um, I'm Nate McBride, and this is as always my, my beautiful, wonderful, Mike, uh, co host Mike Crispin.

And together we are Wild Stallions! Orcs and dorks! Orcs and dorks. I remember the first time I saw Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and I'm like this is the greatest movie ever written and of course I was 18 at the time. So what do I know? It's still a timeless movie so Dust in the wind dude. Yeah, let me let me rephrase my earlier statement.

This is episode two ish Because I have this feeling yeah, call me crazy, but [00:11:00] we're gonna go past our hour ish mark Yeah, so we'll end up making this into two episodes So it's episode two, possibly three, all rolled into one. We'll see. Uh, if we decide to cut it in half, we'll let you know. Um, but I wanted to say hello.

Good to see you. Uh, we're remote again, uh, tonight for various reasons. Um, I had some problems with Airtable and, uh, I think I've solved them with their tech support. Mike's got some commitments and so we are remote, but it all works out. Well, If you're allowed to say and it's actually good that you're not in the barn right now because it's fucking cold as shit in here My fingers, I'm just getting the feeling back and barely I'll break my mouse I don't think you'd enjoy it very much, but I got my little space heater 

Mike Crispin: going here.

Nate McBride: So I'm I'm ready to go [00:12:00] Okay, you got a little fire some sticks and twigs and some rocks 

Mike Crispin: going on a candle went out. Oh, that's not good I don't like that. I gotta get this relit. It was keeping me warm. So we start the episode over No, no, we can keep going. I'll just light this thing up. 

Nate McBride: By the way, did I, did I read this correctly?

You did 60 miles on the Peloton? 60? 6 

Mike Crispin: 0? Uh, I don't know. I kind of black out during it sometimes. I'm pretty sure I read 60 miles. And I think I may 

Nate McBride: have, it wasn't that, I 

Mike Crispin: honestly, like, were you, were you, 

Nate McBride: were you like, were you having a heart attack? Were you stuck on the bike? Did something happen? Yeah, it was, uh, because of why the world, when was that?

I honestly don't know, but I'm going to find, I'm going to find out because it's my 25 or 

Mike Crispin: 30, [00:13:00] it's like 24, 25. But it might, uh, I might have done that and just blacked out because sometimes I yeah. Oh, no, sorry. 60 minutes. Yeah. 60 minutes. That sounds good. 

Nate McBride: That sounds normal. 60 minutes. Okay. Okay. I read that wrong.

60, even still 60 minutes sitting on a 

Mike Crispin: bike. What's wrong with you? Oh, I have this fricking trance thing going. I'm just locked in. Like I said, I don't remember. A little 

Nate McBride: like Paul Van Dyke circa 2000. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, I got some Paul Van Dyke. I had, uh, Ali and Fila on last night. Oh, nice, nice. And I have, uh, the Silicon Zoo light bulbs.

Oh my god, dude. It's a dance show down here. All these lights, they all go, uh, they all go crazy. You should get a big fan and have it pointed at your face so you feel like the wind as you're riding. Oh, I, I'm working on all aspects. All sensory stuff, just being Green screen, the whole thing? I mean, alright.

It's it's amazing. I mean, just stay tuned 

Nate McBride: for episode four, where Mike broadcasts live from [00:14:00] his bike as he travels through the upper Normandy region. What happened? I need some music now. 

Mike Crispin: Let's see. Let's hear it. Hold on. I should play our new theme song. Iron Man Buren 2000 Club O. It's EA. You know, I really like the calculus of IT.

Oh, I love that band. 

Nate McBride: Are they on tour this summer? Say, Oh, 

Mike Crispin: wow. I didn't hear it. I'll get over here. All right. Get over here. This will be better. I think it will be here. This

Nate McBride: can't hear it. Mike 

Mike Crispin: can't hear it. Okay. All right. It's turning up now.

Nate McBride: Is this [00:15:00] thing on? Hello. Okay. Here, Mike. I'll have to put that on later. Yeah, we have, by the way, Mike did a new theme song and outro for the show. I am so excited to play it. In fact, depending on when I inserted it into the episode, you may have already heard it, TBD. Maybe it's coming up. So, all right. So Mike's down in his trans studio, ready to cut his new, um, album for, um, ultra ultra music festival, 2025 Miami.

So, uh. In terms of keeping with tradition now, we have a new segment every episode where we read out sort of the job alerts, um, of what's going on in the world for IT leadership jobs. And, and so I'm going to go through that again. So, VP of IT, Sequel MedTech, still looking for a VP of IT, MIT, still looking for a CIO, [00:16:00] Formlabs, also still looking for a CIO, Chimera, looking for a Senior Director of IT.

Flagship, Director of IT, ClearPoint, VP of IT, Wave Life Sciences is looking for a Senior Director of Discovery IT, Cape Cod Healthcare is looking for an Executive Director of IT, PepGen, looking for a VP of IT, Garuda, wasn't Garuda, oh, it was Darude, did Sandstorm. Darude, yep. Darude. So Garuda, not to be confused with Darude, is looking for a director of IT.

Aptnamed is looking for a senior director of IT. Odyssey Therapeutics is looking for an AD IT, and Mercy Bio is looking for AD IT. And also, new this week, Ironwood is back on the market! Wow, they're 6th or 7th I can't, I've lost count, um, could be the 6th I think. [00:17:00] So Ironwood's back for a new VP of IT. BMS, that's Bristol Myers Squibb, is looking for a, this is a long one, Senior Director.

Of the Devins Digital Plant and Site IT Lead. And you really gotta read the job description to understand what this is about, but it actually looks pretty cool. You basically, Fort Devins has a digital plant for innovation. And they're looking for somebody to be an innovator. Uh, Verve Therapeutics, not to be confused with The Verve.

Uh, or The Verve Pipe. But Verve Therapeutics. Looking for a director of IT, GNA business. 

Mike Crispin: That 

Nate McBride: sounds boring. Uh, Oh, also, no, I'm sorry. The title goes on director of it, GNA business partner and socks compliance lead. Oh my God. Um, Viridian is looking for an AD of it [00:18:00] ops. And crossfitter, then noble N O B U L L.

I was looking for a head of it, a VP of IT Top Dog role. Plus you get free no bull shoes for your CrossFitting. So if you're a CrossFitter and you like it, then there you go. Uh, blueprint is looking for a manager of technology, operations and information systems. That's A-M-O-T-O-I-S, Moto Motos. And Deciphera is again, looking for a senior director of infrastructure and operations.

So those are the new roles this week. If, um, that's your cup of tea, best of luck to you. Call, call or slack Mike and I, and we'll give you a reference. Cause we're sure you're the best for the, for the role. [00:19:00] Yeah. Um, also as we did last week and last week, it was actually really, really fun. We're going to be releasing every episode of this podcast in two formats.

Or two additional formats. One will be our format as normal, as we're doing right now. One will be, um, an AI redux version. Using, uh, a platform of our choice. And then we'll probably do a jort of our, um, episode. Which will be done by yet another AI platform. And we'll probably release all two or three at the same time.

Um, Sounds good. Yeah. Jorts are the best. Last week's Jor was pretty funny. I, I gotta say, like, I was listening to that in the car and I was, I was cracking it up. 'cause Well, yeah, you have to listen to it, but they were pretty fixated on the things that were 

Mike Crispin: not it. That's right. That was great. The sample set that we used for that was good.

Oh, by the 

Nate McBride: way, speaking of, uh, that jort. And [00:20:00] not to, not to beat this dead horse, but I'm going to because okay. Okay. So after that episode, I was listening to classic vinyl on XM radio, uh, on Tuesday in my office and sure as shit, uh, some Beatles song comes on. And, and then the announcer says, and right after this is Joe Walsh.

And by the way, Joe Walsh is the, uh, brother in law or was the best man or something at Um, who's the drummer for the Beatles? Ringo? Ringo Starr? Ringo Starr's wedding. So they're related, like through a brother in law connection or something. And the DJ was like, read this whole soliloquy about how that's important before the Joe Walsh song came on.

And then they did a Joe Walsh soundbite, like how he didn't even know until he was at the wedding that it [00:21:00] was Ringo Starr and the whole thing. And so that's why I'm convinced. Now, more than ever, all classic rock stations, like turn on your local classic rock FM station. They're all actually Beatles stations.

It's all singularly designed to get one to listen to the Beatles with other shit like thrown in and related to them. So six degrees of Beatles, that's classic rock. They're everywhere, man. They're everywhere. I just had, like, I had to remember, mention that because literally like I'm in the office and Miranda's there, my number one.

And I'm like. Did you hear the episode? And then immediately after I said this, this whole thing happens on Xtreme Radio on Classic Vinyl. Okay, my point is made. Alright, enough of this. I won't bring it up next episode unless it's relevant again. So, anyway, um, So, the promise is each week, again, we'll [00:22:00] give you an hour long episode ish.

And then If it goes longer, we'll divide it into more than one episode. Um, I want to also disclose that Mike and I, um, have figured out basically a whole season here, uh, about the discussion of autonomy, but reliable to go off on tangents. And so we'll try to stay on topic with this idea of autonomy, balanced with risk, innovation and productivity.

But if you go off tangent, that's just the nature of the business. Um, we have a Slack board that's growing. And if you want to join, it's in our line. It's in our not liner notes. This isn't an LP it's in our episode notes. So come on in, um, vendors are not allowed. And if you want to continue the competitions on our shows, um, you can do that or you can just, uh, Email us Mike or Nate.

Well, it's Mike at the C O I T dot U S and Nate at the C O I T dot U S if you still use [00:23:00] email. And if you like our show, give us five stars on all the platforms, subscribe to all the platforms, make an account on all of them. And then wherever you go, just find us and give us five stars. If you want to buy us a beer, other people have done before us that are amazing people, the best people on the planet, you can do that.

By following our show notes. All right. Woo. Enough of that. There we go. So season two, Mike, we're in it now, man, we're in it to win it. So we had last week was kind of like an intro to what the season's about. Um, I want to do set some backdrop again for the season. We are talking about autonomy, autonomy as applies to IT leadership, uh, which is a big.

Pretty big deal actually. Um, and autonomy doesn't exist by itself. It's balanced out by three other key pillars, risk, innovation, and productivity. So in effect, we'll be talking about all four the season and how they interrelate, but the real [00:24:00] discussion is about autonomy. And what I mean, what I mean, when I say autonomy, what I mean is every single day as an it leader.

You're making a decision about something important. I mean, probably multiple times, but at least once, and you should question how you arrived at a decision point. What influenced me to make this exact decision at this time? And is it the best one? And you can go the way of simply saying it's what I felt at the time.

So I'm going to go with that. Or you can just parse it out a little bit more and maybe determine that you actually were influenced to make the decision. You didn't make it on your own. So we're going to talk about that. And. I mentioned the four pillars. I talked about them last week, but again, to briefly recap, and I won't do this again in any other episodes, but Risk.

We're not just talking about risk, like hacking someone's system. We're talking about the whole package, security, compliance, and all the controls. Okay, we're talking about innovation. [00:25:00] We're talking about not just playing with shiny new toys. We're about taking those toys, or taking the toys we already have and improving them to make life better.

Figuring out what tech actually matters, and being able to do it quickly, and sometimes completely transforming how IT operates as a result. For productivity, again, everyone's favorite obsession, metrics, metrics, metrics. This covers everything basically from streamlining workflows to automation, uh, and to using collaboration tools that actually work, not just buying more and more of them.

And then lastly, like I said, autonomy. It basically means being able to choose all of the above, uh, and creating a tech stack that has a balance between priorities, business needs, your experience, expertise, and deciding where to put your resources. Um, they all connect, they all sort of interrelate in some weird, constantly evolving Venn diagram, and so that's what we're going to talk about today.

For the [00:26:00] next, I don't know, 12, 15, 30 episodes, however long it takes. So each week we'll take our topic and we're going to sort of talk about why it relates to one or more of the pillars and then take some time as well to discuss a specific archetype or of an autonomous situation. Um, and how our fearless it leaders out there, that's you audience can address it.

So, um. At a high level, here are the archetypes we'll be discussing this season. The, the great homogenization. Basically, everyone's jumping on the same tech bandwagon as you. Um, the ultimate trust me bro technology, which is AI. The cloud custody battle. The integration apocalypse. The security squeeze. The Great Tech Consolidation Massacre.

The Skills Identity Crisis and, oh my god, upskilling. What a word. It's [00:27:00] everywhere. The Compliance Catch 22. The Technical Debt Time Bomb. And the Innovation Theater. So tonight, we'll be focusing on number one, the Great Homogenization, but we'll get to that in a bit.

So I want to mention one last thing for the season, and I won't mention this again after this episode, but throughout the season, we're going to use some very specific technology terminology to talk about decision making. So we're calling decisions zeros and ones. It's very binary. It makes sense. It works.

So a zero decision is when you basically, um, shrug your shoulders and go with the flow. You decide to just simply not make a decision and go with whatever the industry is doing. This is zero decision. You've made no effort. A one decision does not mean that you've decided to go completely anti zero, but you decided to put in all of your best thinking thought, uh, uh, application of process, [00:28:00] evaluation of data, um, risk, et cetera, to come up with a final decision.

So zeros and ones, and we'll be talking about that interchangeably throughout the season when it comes time to talk about like a decision points. And what we're doing last but not least, and again, I will only mention this one more time, and this is anecdotal at the least, because I know this for a fact and talking with colleagues of mine, it leaders are all asking themselves the same question right now about 2025.

Do I follow the herd? Do I build AI into my plan? And if so, how, how the hell do I do it? Uh, what should I be doing around ethics and acceptable use? How much money does all of this cost? It's so hard to put down a number. Where should I be innovating and how exactly do I innovate and measure it? And [00:29:00] lastly, how does this impact everything else I'm doing?

I'll pause there. I have some articles that I'm going to actually share at a future episode about the worker autonomy loss point. But ultimately all the things I've just mentioned, as we go into this episode, they really come down to, there's a balance. Like you're not the only one, like IT leaders aren't the only people that have an autonomy break point.

Every single person in the company has an autonomy, um, fence. And when you and I were talking before the show, you had mentioned that it's kind of assumed that the IT role, um, even if it's not discreetly written on paper, Is [00:30:00] the CISO is the head of risk. Mm-hmm . Is the head of cyber, um, is the head of development.

Sure is, is all these things. And so just by virtue of that implied understanding of the role, there's already a loss of autonomy that's occurring. Okay. You, the business is basically making an assumption about this head of it. You've got no choice but to resolve these things, which have been put on top of you.

So with regards to this episode, I wanted to start with a very, very high level view of this paradox. The paradox of freedom versus control, which is, uh, what you, I guess, call the modern IT paradox. I mean, [00:31:00] deciding whether to go with AI or not is not a paradox, right? That's a pretty bullying decision. But this is a paradox.

Freedom versus control, like. What am I going to be as an it leader? Someone who strives for balance between freedom and control. Someone who strives to give everybody complete freedom and sacrifices control or the other side. Sure. Sure. So do you remember Mike back in the day we were in the bullpen at TKT?

Yes, I do. 

Mike Crispin: Working hard. We were working so hard. We were working so hard. So, so much, so much work. So much work. There was a lot of work, but we had a lot of fun. There's a lot of 

Nate McBride: work and a lot of fun. Yes. Um, things I remember about that, about that job were that we got in around 9. Yep. We left most days [00:32:00] around, what, 4?

4. 30? I honestly don't remember. Yeah, probably around the 30? Yeah. Cause I remember, I remember having to drive to get on the pike before 4. 30 to get all the way back to Milford. Uh, and drive that horrible commute. Yep. But we all just kind of like, you know, 4 o'clock, pens down, shoot the shit for 30 minutes, and then we're out.

And that was it. End of the day. Well, when was the last time you remember doing that? 

Mike Crispin: Um, I mean, like, well, yeah, I remember I leave, leave early, but get home and work a lot of times. So yeah, I guess it's just a little bit different, but yeah, I don't remember as much of a, where you're just pens down at four o'clock and you're just like, I'm done, but, um, at times it happens, you know, depends on the, uh, on where you are with your, with your cycle and where you're, what your, where your goals are, but.

[00:33:00] It's been a while.

Nate McBride: It has been a while. Right. I got to think about yesterday I left at three o'clock from my office. It was pretty empty. People are at conferences and doing things. And so I came home to work the rest of my day in the barn. That's, yeah, that's where I ended up working till working till almost eight. I ended up working till almost eight o'clock, um, because I looked at the list of things I could do.

And instead of saying, no, I'm going to do these tomorrow and making that choice, I decided, no, I'll do them tonight. So I think back to that and like reflecting on this back when it was simple, like we could leave at 4 30 job is done. Day was over, you lock it all down, go home. And I think those days are, are not only gone, but they're permanently gone, but they're not coming back.

There's not. And that's been a, probably been a thing for quite [00:34:00] a while. True, true, true. And one of the reasons I think between that, that, the death of that idea is because the freedom and control element keeps us, um, having to always respond to either I don't have enough access or, um, I have too much access and I have problems.

So. I wanted to start with this because it nicely frames all the episodes to come. It's likely going to take more than one episode to get through this, but let's see what happens. Um, and I want to open up a lot of questions. Like, I have basically several models I want to go through tonight, if we can. Uh, and I'll, I'll kind of give you an idea what they are.

The paradigm shift. So how IT went from being Department of No to being expected to enable innovation. Why traditional control is breaking down. The new challenges of modern IT. The three models of IT control, [00:35:00] the real cost of getting IT wrong, which, by the way, is very, like, even in and of itself, who, the only person that can actually say something with IT is wrong is the person who's the end user or something that Really fails quite miserably these days.

Um, setting up the, setting up the modern balance and the path forward. And I think by defining these and talking about them each, we'll set a, we'll set the perfect stage for the rest of the season. So starting with the paradigm shift. And again, I want to reflect on this a little bit. And keeping the four pillars in mind, at what point did I.

T. go from being a department of no, and if you reflect back, you will, you'll find it's not too long ago that we were, we were more no people than we were. Let's investigate people. [00:36:00] I don't know exactly when I pivoted. I think it was probably like in 2010, 2011, but I started becoming less of a no person and more of a let's explore that person.

Sure. And so with that, with that in mind, too, the other point is around the same time that people started to become know people, we could also, and again, this is anecdotal, start to see a rise of shadow IT people saying, well, I can pay for this on my corporate card, or I don't need IT's permission to create this web account.

And then that all ends up with a scenario where you and I look around and we have like, like you said before, a hundred apps. And so the paradigm shift is, is, I think, key to understanding why, [00:37:00] like, why we decide to let this happen. So if you can think about this for a second, why did you decide, like, what compelled you to finally decide to let people become innovators as opposed to being a no IT leader?

And I'm not saying you ever were an IT leader that was a no person. I know I was. You know what I'm talking about, which is that there was a point where we were like, no, no, no, we can't do that. We're very, very strict towards, towards the opposite, which is saying, ah, do what you want. We'll control it. Yep.

Mike Crispin: Yeah. Thinking the In the want to be somewhat supportive of some groups, you know, in terms of what they're trying to achieve. Sometimes it's easier just to say yes, but I do think there's a balance between the I mean, that's part of our I think our job really is to balance freedom and control. And that's part of the expectation.[00:38:00] 

Um, I mean, if you take security versus productivity, um, almost the same thing in a lot of ways, right? Having to balance the guardrails. Uh, with the, with the kind of the productivity, the openness of a platform, the ability to work in the platform for it to be easy to use, for us to be able to share data effectively, all that, all those things, um, on the optimistic side, I think there's just been a lot of innovation in the tool sets that we were supplied with and were able to choose from more and more giving us both things at once control and the ability to have freedom and there's.

Can I pause you one 

Nate McBride: second though? Can I pause you one second? Yeah, go right ahead. You just, you just said a moment ago, our job is to balance security control, but what, what, like, where's that in the 

Mike Crispin: job? It's in decision making. It's in data, data management protection, I think is a big thing. Um, [00:39:00] I think as a head of IT, and we're talking the scale of a small biotech.

I think one of the first things that people think about a cyber security and maybe even more so than freedom and enablement now, more and more, it's, if you want to talk to someone at a lunch and learn for an hour, they're going to ask you about cyber security, most of the time, um, and you know, or AI or whatever, but there's more of this, like cyber security affects me at home too.

And I, everyone has their horror stories and you always get in these great conversations and people are more willing to. Should I think of outside the box about how they can manage their data and work with their data, which gives flexibility to let them do more to train them to give them that opportunity to to manage their own systems and their own tools.

But I do think, uh, yeah, I think, how do we do that? It's it's decision making, sometimes more on the control side and sometimes more on the freedom side and taking a little more risk, depending on [00:40:00] the outcome you're trying to achieve. It takes, it's a lot of times a case by case basis and having the right sounding boards around you to work with and to partner with, depending on what you're trying to achieve.

I like to have different viewpoints and different ideas from different groups to before we formulate a decision on how we move forward on any new project. So that's sometimes can bring balance in itself as having different processes and different diversity of thought and approach. It's when it when it's everyone saying at my last company, I did this when it's like, okay, let's just think of for a few minutes about what company we're at now.

And, you know, let's let's let's pretend we're starting from zero. Um, no, I do think that's part of. Uh, our role, especially in the respect that we're, we are expected to secure the data, but we're also expected to enable the company to be better, faster, [00:41:00] more productive, more automated, cheaper to run. Um, and all those things come together and they have different facets that sometimes mean overgeneralize it, but no, it's fine.

I mean, I, I mean, 

Nate McBride: let's back up one minute though. So. Um, do you, I mean, I'll be on, I'll answer this first, but I'll, I'll let you, I'll ask the question. Do you feel like you have, um, a balance between control and security at your company right now? And I'll, I'll answer this first and say no. I don't. I don't feel like I have a balance between security and control.

I feel like I'm more on the control side and less on the secure side, which is not a good, a good thing. I feel like there's people that are potentially using things that have not passed my purview, therefore aren't in my control, which contribute to security issues. [00:42:00] And I don't think, I don't think it's malicious on their part.

I think it's just, I don't have as much control as I think I do. 

Mike Crispin: I agree. 100%. And I think that's where, um, it's, it's our job is, and this is where innovation comes in. A lot of people don't think about innovation from a cyber security perspective, but there are, there is a lot of. Like if I'm going to focus my time on trying to do something more efficient or differently right now in the current state of small businesses, small companies, that's, that's where I'm focused is where are there solutions, even if they cost a little bit more to put in that people may not really even notice, but they're keeping it and that, and I can get.

So when, when, um, because they're so invisible, people have this assumption of security, right? They're like, well, why are we spending all this money? And, you know, on these things. So this is where showing what you're protecting, [00:43:00] what you've stopped, um, Yeah. Basic metrics. I know we don't like the N word that much, unless they're effective.

Um, but having a basic way to pull out and say, pull out some sort of picture and say, this is what we're up against. And this is what we've prevented. There's a whole other list of things we need to work on, uh, trying to prevent, but not only that we need to plan to respond to all these things, um, and assume that they're going to happen, even with all this work, we're lowering the probability little bits by little bits.

So what you just said about lose kind of not having the control over. Whether it's shadow it or I like to use this cool tool that I use at home and I can install it without admin rights or I can install it on the web and a cloud browser or whatever. We have solutions. We access control. Uh, we can talk about, you know, the new.

Identity as a service platform is really not new now, but you're probably a decade old now that help [00:44:00] us abstract the access control layer from application control. Uh, we've got an enterprise browser now that's out there and we can, we can control the box, but not need to control the application and these things where we're able to build these glass walls around things, um, which allow people still to see through and access certain things, but protected is where we can, where we can innovate.

and have a little bit of both, if you know what I mean, on both sides. So give freedom, but retain control. And uh, as you're going to talk about kind of a gilded side of things, it's how do we do both? I think there's There's a lot. That's where the innovation is for I. T. People is how do you, how do you almost internally create experiences that do create, um, influence and create freedom for people, but also control the company data set and the company's confidential information and work ethic and culture is trying to do 

Nate McBride: so.[00:45:00] 

I think I think that's a key point. So, um. God, you know, it's been decades now of doing this. And I think that I'm at a point finally, where, um, I've convinced the business to trust me enough that. I'm going to give them a framework in which to innovate. I'm going to give them a framework in which to, um, screw up safely.

And their, their responsibility back to me is to tell me when they're doing something new. And I like that. I love that. Well, what it affords me is this, this capability to say, you know, that's a really good idea, but. We already have that functionality. Let me show you something, or B, it would be very helpful to the company for you to understand how to do this [00:46:00] more.

Do you have the capacity to learn this all the way? Um, I don't have the bandwidth right now, but that trust that I've built has allowed this to happen. Now, if I walked into the company, it's like. Day 60 and someone says, Oh my God, I want to go ahead and innovate and try the XYZ. I'm going to be the no person because I don't know enough.

They don't know me. Like there's not enough knowledge built to understand. This person may actually be legitimate and understand what they're doing. Sure. Um, I don't have enough data to make a, to find a balance. Like I can't, the second I say yes to them, I'm creating an imbalance, which I then have to spend time rectifying later and bringing them back and they may take it so far, it takes me a long time to find balance.

Mike Crispin: Yes. Oh, definitely. Uh, it's, it's not easy. That's why we're talking about it is it's not, um, it's, it's hard [00:47:00] to bring method to it because every business is going to be different. Um, it's just your influence on how much you can innovate and then how painless you can make things. You know, when you're talking, 

Nate McBride: I mean, absolutely true.

And it doesn't like, so people conflate freedom to mean, Oh, well, everyone in my company can put whatever they want. And no, that that's bullshit. Like freedom is the ability to let people put in platforms in a, in a manner that aligns with your innovation. Uh, pillar that you control and oversee. It does not mean, Oh, I just let everyone install whatever they want.

That is not innovation. I mean, it is, but innovation is such a, a, uh, loss of risk. And productivity, you're basically throwing them away for the idea that somehow someone's going to come up with something so novel, it's going to transform the business. That to me is not a balance. That is very much [00:48:00] everything in one 

Mike Crispin: bucket.

And more, there are more and more business technologists that come into organizations. Now companies that come in, they're part of the resume. They're looking for people who understand the business systems. And yeah, and as long as. You know, when you're bigger, there's the enterprise architecture component, I think is important, but when you're, you're, you're under a thousand people, probably, you know, somewhere in there, it's, it's, um, how do you secure it?

How do you control access? How do you make sure you're compliant in partnership with the key compliance people in your organization or the legal quality, the people in the EU, your privacy, people, cybersecurity, and get everything so that. It's not impacting so much how people work though, though, you know, compliance and governance are there so that people work consistently the same and there's no questions [00:49:00] that can make enhance the business to enhance the business processes.

So it's especially governance. Um, so it's just kind of the finding the, the balance and sometimes by, by Exerting some control, it simplifies things. So if you're able to say, if people are very busy and I got to get this business outcome, I got to get this X thing done, just tell me how to do it. I don't want to go to your 10 meetings and vote on it and everything.

Just tell me what platform to use. And I think that happens a lot too. And then you may not get that feedback you're looking for. You've got to go out and figure it out and put it in. And then you're accountable as well. You know, so it's like, 

Nate McBride: sure. 

Mike Crispin: Definitely got to have that back and forth that you have the time with people to, what exactly are the, you know, what are the requirements?

What are we trying to do? Um, not just this one little thing you want to get this outcome, but we got to peel back the onion a little [00:50:00] more so that, um, as you build a team or you leave the company, this, this. Function this capability can live on efficiently. Um, and that's I think one of the risks of a freedom, right?

Is that if you give someone a SharePoint environment or, um, you know, a smart sheet or an air table and you say, go nuts. And we're just controlling the access, but this group is building a, uh, a small kingdom of integrations and everything else. Is it going to be you and me holding the bag after they're gone?

Or is it going to be the, the, the head of that department that has to figure out where to go next? No, who will, 

Nate McBride: who will also be gone? I mean, this is, this is why, I mean, talk about a segue, Mike, you just, You just handed it over to me. This is why our second, our second point is called why traditional control is breaking down.

So I listed [00:51:00] a couple of points, but let's skip over the first few and go right to the like technical debt point. Yeah, sure. So freedom. I mean, talk about, let's talk about balance. Let's talk about innovation and productivity. Put risk and autonomy aside for a moment. Innovation and productivity. I want to let you, Mike Crispin, my head of XYZ, blah, blah, blah.

Have a lot of freedom, have a lot of freedom to do stuff. That's going to help the business go forward. Great decision on my part, strategically sound, creates a lot of trust between you, me and your function and great. You go off and you're like innovating like a madman. One year later. Mike Crispin leaves.

He's got a better job offer because he's so good at what he does. 

Mike Crispin: Oops. 

Nate McBride: Now, I still have And he's 

Mike Crispin: not available to contract for you afterwards. 

Nate McBride: Right, he's not available to contract, at least [00:52:00] legitimately, uh, uh, initially anyway. Um, so, and then his department leaves. This, this, the tattered shreds of his legacy all depart.

But even if they stay, Mike Crispin's gone, which leaves you with technological debt. Decisions that Mike made During his innovation, uh, what do they call it? A walkabout. His innovation of walkabout in the wild bush of Australia has yielded us multiple platforms that are now fucking useless because he's no longer here.

Technical debt is, is one of those questions that comes in a balance of, like a, sorry, a pillar imbalance. Okay, I've just given you full innovation and productivity as your targets. I put away risk and autonomy. I, I'm maintaining risk and autonomy on my end. You get productivity and innovation have at it.

And that speed of business versus traditional process. Like I'm, I'm [00:53:00] saying to myself, I'm the I. T. leader, by the way, in this scenario, um, wow, Mike, Mike can move so fast, but I have this process over here, uh, that lets me, that I put in place to govern Mike. But do I put this process in front of Mike and slow him down?

Or do I put the process to the side and let Mike run free? And. And you know, the irony is in either scenario, a fricking year later when you walk out, I'm either left with a pile of governance that was meaningless or I'm left with a bunch of technological debt because you've walked out. So 

Mike Crispin: this is, and this is maybe a specific point from an implementation perspective.

This is where, and this gets away from the freedom piece, I think is, is the mandatory out of the box only configs. So if you're going to give [00:54:00] someone a business, the business technologist, the ownership, they're going to manage the application. There's no customization allowed. So that's a governance rule.

And then you're taking, right. You're taking some of that freedom away. But that helps to not cement, but make it easier for continuity to happen and eliminate some technical debt, but it obviously doesn't limit all of it, but the over configuration of systems, you almost 100 percent of the time we're and I've certainly gotten into trouble with that.

And it's because the business owner. Feels the need that they have to change it to align with the business process they have. And then that person who was very, very passionate about that and basically made it happen, you know, forced, forced us to some extent, even through a battle, lost the battle, um, creates hundreds of thousands of dollars [00:55:00] of throw away the system afterwards.

Because it was all really configured and no one can use it. And then people like, well, why didn't we just go with the out of the box config? That's be because we're following the business requirements. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. But, but Mike, but Mike, you're so, to your earlier point though, you're the IT leader. So you're in the position of saying 

Mike Crispin: that's a lesson learned.

That's a lesson learned. Like, yeah. When as an IT leader, and in this instance, this is not a system that I had influenced, certainly even new, I was learning about it on the fly, is, um, yeah, these people know what they're doing. They know what business processes they need, you know. I was very, I was very supportive and like, okay, let's go.

Um, and out of the box that wasn't even offered as an option at the time. Now, years later, that's the default option. That's the recommended option. Um, and I think that's a lesson lesson. I've certainly lessons learned for me. Well, it's a lot of two, three companies [00:56:00] have been at, have been trying to stay on that path.

It's very difficult. If, if you, you know, if you can't hold that line, it's. It's not easy, but it's a semantic argument though, Mike, because the lines move the line. 

Nate McBride: Well, the lines moved, right? So if if before, that's a loss of autonomy. 

Mike Crispin: It absolutely, it's a 

Nate McBride: total 

Mike Crispin: loss of autonomy. That's a total, and that's, and that's a cha that's a real challenge.

I mean, I think that that's a, a good example of where, it's a great example. Think a lot of leaders lose it because they're trying to stick to an out of the box config, which is the absolutely right thing to do. 

Nate McBride: It is. But sorry to interrupt you. No, no, no, no. Good. Okay. The, the issue is that the out of the box is, is, um, and again, I changed so much 

Mike Crispin: talking about in the scale of the company sizes we're talking about like, oh, oh, for sure.

Sure. But 400, 400 people. 

Nate McBride: I think [00:57:00] scale, I mean, out of the box now is, um, in a SaaS cloud world, out of the box is everything you get everything on the first day, what happens is it shuts off 30 days later, 30 days later, you're knocked down to a free plan or nine days later, you're knocked down to a free plan.

So, so. There's no more out of the box like, Oh, um, out of the box, we only get like this small part, we have to customize it. No, out of the box, you get the whole fucking thing. And then you have to figure out in 30 days, how I make this work for my business and then you have to whip out the credit card and start paying.

Mike Crispin: We talked about platform as a service versus software as a service. There's like if we're talking about systems that are built to house unstructured data, like we've talked about right in the past, or, or, uh, or, or database structure, structured data in a database format or workflows anywhere where they can accept any sort of code where.

Now you're expecting, [00:58:00] we're going to a level from a pre configured package system to a very configurable SharePointy, uh, you know, you name it, uh, system that I can write code on top of this. I can build integrations. And so I see where you're going. Like it's absolutely true. For the platform as a service, you give someone salesforce.

com. And just like, uh, yeah, go ahead, build your, it's, it's going to be over because that's where the, the, the G word comes in or the compliance, like to have a basic SDLC. I don't think a lot of the people that are maybe sitting in the seat in the functions are going to be like, we need to have an SDLC. So they got to go back and nobody wants 

Nate McBride: to SDLC.

Mike Crispin: It sucks. That's the point is there's no, there's no struct to, to know, to test, to know what to do, to test none of that stuff. Right. So that's why I [00:59:00] think as you get bigger, that stuff kind of has to flow back to some central place just to, just to have it, especially on GXP system perspective. And maybe there aren't that many of them, depending on what company type of company you're in.

Well, but that brings us back to, yeah, maybe there does need to be some sort of centralized owner to some of these things and you can put pieces of it in the business. But you need the control element to, to be sort of, uh, like to use the sort of glass walls thought process. It's like someone's going to help to foster that.

And it's, um, it's tough. This project, it is 

Nate McBride: tough, Mike, but there's no, there's no amount of scale. You can be a CIO of 10, 000 people. Yep. Um, the problems are exactly the same balance. It doesn't matter that you're. You have DevOps, DevSecOps, and Git, and all these other things running. I'm just giving you an example, I think 

Mike Crispin: it's 000 people, you might have [01:00:00] a group that focuses on those things.

Maybe, but you're 

Nate McBride: still, to your point, um, 

Mike Crispin: it's 

Nate McBride: still 

Mike Crispin: assumed 10,000 other problems to deal with on top of that. 

Nate McBride: Exactly. I mean, you're Yeah, 

Mike Crispin: I hear we go, I hear what you're saying. Yeah. 

Nate McBride: That's, I mean, exponential of 

Mike Crispin: more problems. . 

Nate McBride: God, that's a whole episode in of itself. Like, and, and a company of that size.

You're might be the C you might be the CIO. But you would have multiple, multiple CIOs underneath you that are all responsible for all, you know, it just trickles down. There's still, there's still autonomy, water falling happening. Um, but it's happening at a slightly different scale, but you, you mentioned.

And it's again, thank you for the segue. Uh, This is why I love you. By design, all by design. By design. Yes. Cause the third topic was the new challenges of modern IT. [01:01:00] And you had mentioned, um, this growth exponent, uh, effect. Yeah. The reality is you don't even need it. You don't even need an IT person anymore.

You can have somebody in research or development spin up an AWS environment in three minutes. Yeah. Um, And meanwhile, you can also have this wonderful, beautiful security and compliance review that takes three weeks. Oh, no, no. You can't have a new server. It takes three weeks to review it. But then you have this guy over here who's like, no, no, I just push a button and watch three minutes later.

I have an EC2 environment. Oh, no, it's all built. It's good. And then over here, you're like, well, we need it. We need to assess that. It will take three weeks. And the guy sitting there like, what the fuck are you talking about? Look, I just push this button. And And I get I get I get a thing. 

Mike Crispin: And so and then you have to spend a month explaining why you know why that's you need to maybe [01:02:00] Think about that, that pro and then have the time to do it right.

Well, so you're in the, you're in the, uh, and then when it doesn't go right, they're calling you on the phone saying, or they're 

Nate McBride: just making a new one and you're left with the old one. I mean, so like the, the bullets I came up with were attacked. Cloud, cloud and SaaS have blurred every traditional boundary where it's ever existed.

Remote work has dissolved any network perimeter period. Um. I have a person who is in my mass spec group who has to work on mass specs stuff for CMC from home. And so I have to create these VPC tunnels in AWS. And of course her home internet provider changes the originating IP like every week. So it's a struggle, but I think about I think about a lot in terms of like anomalous behavior [01:03:00] detection, how many doors I'm opening for to allow this to happen, um, to make this work.

And, and that's a remote work problem. I never, I never thought about in years past. Like I have this group of people that need to work from, from remote places and do work inside here, but they're actually doing it. through here as a proxy to another, another location. Um, it's a new, it's a new paradigm.

Then we have a sort of, of course, this new generative AI effect. And then lastly, we have, um, zero trust versus agility. And we had our, uh, we had our, um, we have a beer and we have the same called a beer and learn every, every, um, Maybe like six weeks or so at Exilio where we go over the latest phishing campaign results and other things Uh big security updates, etc, etc And we talked about this today because we had the beer and orange today, but about[01:04:00] 

Where does agility Like how, how agile do you need to be? Where does agility reach a point where you're so risky that you're no longer really even part of the company. You're just kind of like a rogue agent. And that was a discussion point today. Um, So I think about, again, these are new challenges, and I mean new challenges even to you and I, who've been around since the beginning of time, that, let's back up, how would you, how would you, so I know that this isn't a problem right now, your current company, but think of a generic company, someone comes to you and says, I want to spin up an EC2 environment to solve this problem for research, and then you say, Or you know that you actually have a process that's pretty complex to qualify that instance.

What are you going to do? I'm going to assume we 

Mike Crispin: need to qualify it, [01:05:00] unfortunately. 

Nate McBride: Would you, would you though, would you think about, and I would too, because it exists, but Would you think about, then afterwards, the need to amend that process of compliance to perhaps speed it up, even if you already thought it was already as fast as it could go?

I mean 

Mike Crispin: Well, I mean, I think it is a question of It's that weighing the risk and it are you depends, right? What level of compliance are we talking about? Is it is it? You know, if it's something if it's G. X. P. then it's not necessarily I. T. S. Yeah, we're we're there to support that. But, um. You may get some, some, uh, support from your quality partner, quality department if you need to keep things in place for that reason.

Can you enhance the process? Can you make it better? Make it, yeah, that would be great to be able to do that. Uh, being that you know, that you're impeding the [01:06:00] speed of, of productivity by having this process, but there's probably a a reason that's in place. I mean, we're in office space and there's no. The movie office space and there's no reason.

So it's a complete red tape stuff. Then yeah, that's, you know, uh, and as lead it, maybe leadership in certain organization changes, you always should revisit those things. Yeah. I think if. It needs if a part of your policy is to do it. XYZ you follow the policy. Um, and you can go back and look at the policy and revisit it.

But if you know you're at the absolute best you can do, then, um, this is part of working in life sciences is maybe these things aren't going to happen as fast. Um, but if it's, if it's some over, you know, exaggerated, like CYA IT process that some two CIOs ago put in place and it's just the way we've always done it, then absolutely it should be changed.

[01:07:00] Yeah. Um, and it's just, but yeah, it's, it's tough. It's, it's not fun to be able to, to, to give that news because people want to move and we get stuff done. They may not. Understand. So just like cybersecurity awareness training, the beer and learned, you just mentioned, you're doing that to make the company aware, why maybe certain things are being done or why there are certain processes or documents they need to sign or certain behaviors they need to exhibit that maybe aren't always.

You know, the fastest or best ways to do something, but they realize why they need to do them. And same with quality, uh, groups and other compliance or legal and code of conduct and other things that exist where they train the organization. So even though it's an inconvenience for these, for people, and it might inhibit them from moving faster, they know why they have to do it and why it's important to the company as a whole.

Right, but awareness is so important. So that sometimes needs to be amped up [01:08:00] as opposed to the efficiency in the, in the, uh, in the system or in the process. It's more, hey, people just, okay, I get why I need to do this now. Yeah, it sucks, but okay. I get it. Um, alright. 

Nate McBride: All good, thanks. So we're at 107. 20.

Here's the decision. We keep going, and then I'll split it in two episodes, um, for the next two weeks, and the next week you get a buy, or we can record next week too, or we, we stop tonight at, uh, this example, and the next week we pick up at the, we still have, um,

Four examples plus the archetype effect, uh, number one. So we can forge ahead on [01:09:00] tonight and do the rest of this. And like I said, split it up in two episodes. And either next week take a bye or next week, um, record. And then use that one for a forward episode. Or we can stop. What do you want to do? 

Mike Crispin: I would say, um, let's, let's just, let's cadence where, where We go for the, you know, hour and a half here and then we, we start pick up where we left up next week and just to get us sort of in that, in that sort of bounce every week.

And so for 107 right into it, 

Nate McBride: no intro, just like we go right. 107 20, where we pause the next week is no preamble. Yep, just go right and we're just gonna go pick where we left off and I mean we'll have like a very brief preamble Yeah, sure where we left off and but then we get right into it, which is Well, actually [01:10:00] no, here's what we do is next week We you and I would talk for a little bit ahead of time to get back into the rhythm We would then press the record button and then just start up on the three models of IT control 

Mike Crispin: And finish there.

I like that because it'll get us in the habit of like, looking at the clock and being like, Okay, every week we're gonna keep it going. And it doesn't seem, it'll seem like a fresh episode every week. 

Nate McBride: Yeah, I think it's, so I think, I think it's a good breaking point. 107. 20 is where we broke. So. Okay. Um, and we're not doing that, like, goodnight, five stars, dogs, and all that stuff.

Yep. Do that, we'll do that next week when we finish up next week's episode. That works for me. Yeah. Part two. It's hard to stop, but at the same time I'm like, hey, this 

Mike Crispin: could actually work. Yeah. Um. We got some good fire tonight too, which is good, and we just gotta keep that going. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. [01:11:00] And so next week we start off with the three miles of it control, and I'm going to, I'm going to have a preamble for this that I've already thought about, and I'm going to punch it right to you.

And then I want to, this is going to be a good one because the three miles of it control and the real cost of getting it wrong, I think these are two topics that you have, that'll be near and dear to you. Oh yeah. So think about how you want to respond to those. Sure. And that'll be a good, it'll be a good episode.

I agree. Yeah, good stuff. Awesome, dude. It's a, it's 

Mike Crispin: a, it's a new change for us. I like it. Yeah. It, it forces us to kind of box it a little bit and then, and then it's also fresh. I mean, if we go in for another hour, an hour and a half, it's like, by the time we get through that next 30, 40 minutes, we're going to be like, start to run up a little bit of steam.

So I think we just keep that the intensity going. We do it in smaller chunks. It'll keep moving. All right. Well, next 

Nate McBride: week would need to be remote then again, because I think we want to stay with the [01:12:00] same, but the week after that, we can possibly talk about going out to a bar. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, that sounds, that sounds great.

All right. Let's do it. 

Nate McBride: All right, 

Mike Crispin: dude. 

Nate McBride: All 

Mike Crispin: right, man. Be good! Binary whispers in the night flashing the screens that glow so bright. In the matrix we take flight holding truth within our sight. The calculus of IT. We value autonomy. The calculus of IT. Without you, it's all on me Yeah,

Through the side of paths. We glide in the circuits. We can find no restraints, no need [01:13:00] to hide in the system. I fade in the data.[01:14:00] 

We skate zeroes one That can't debate we control it. It's a Mary whispers in the night, flashing screens. The glow so bright in the matrix. We take flight, holding truth within our soul. The calculus of I. T. Revalued on me. The calculus of I. T. Yeah. Yeah. 

Yeah.