Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

• A Manager’s Preoccupation: 1-1 Meetings and Focused Prioritization with Joseph Griffiths (2/2)

  Your manager has a preoccupation, but do you know what it is? The answer reveals a clue about their focus and the culture this manager will foster. Join us in episode 328 as Joseph Griffiths shares advice for making 1-1s with your manager and skip-level manager more productive, guidance for the aspiring managers listening, and observations from managing both technical and sales teams. We look at all this through the lens of a manager’s focused prioritization, the difficult part of being consistent, and the reasons we should all use boundaries and limits to improve the quality of our work. Original Recording Date: 04-17-2025 Joseph Griffiths is a tech industry veteran with experience across technical sales, enterprise architecture, and systems administration. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with Joseph, check out Episode 327 – A Passion for Growth: Storytelling and Interpersonal Skills with Joseph Griffiths (1/2). Topics – Optimizing 1-1 Meetings with Your Manager, Priorities as a Manager, Observations from Managing Different Personas, Manager Preoccupations and Culture Indicators, Advice for Future Managers 2:55 – Optimizing 1-1 Meetings with Your Manager * What would Joseph tell the individual contributor who isn’t used to 1-1 meetings with their manager or doesn’t know how to leverage them effectively? * “Everyone appreciates a human perspective…. If I as a manager come to the table and say, ‘here’s my agenda for the 1-1 that I expect you to do every week,’ it’s going to be real hard to come to me and be honest about the things you’re struggling with. It’s really, really hard to talk to someone who’s only business. As a manager it’s a lot easier if I just keep it business because then if issues happen or stuff it’s less emotional entanglement. But I think it’s the wrong way to do it. My job is to serve the people. My goal for 1-1 was to first breed trust and comfort.” – Joseph Griffiths * The secondary goal of Joseph’s 1-1s was to allow the individual to share items that require his help, encouraging honesty about the challenges. * Sometimes, a manager does need to use the 1-1 to deliver specific information that is best shared 1-1 (i.e. compensation changes, policy changes, etc.). * Joseph usually had 1 thing he wanted to cover with the individual per 1-1. The rest of the meeting was for the individual to control the agenda. * Joseph would recommend we take 5 minutes before a 1-1 with our manager to think about the overarching challenge we’re having rather than what is top of mind. * “It’s very easy to walk into there and come out of a bad meeting the hour before and go, ‘I just had a horrible meeting and this is why.’ But is that really the problem, or should we be talking about something that is bigger or wider or more challenging? I think spending 5 minutes preparing with a OneNote sheet or a Notepad or whatever and just writing down…these are the 3 things that I want to talk about…and I need either some guidance for them or I need you to knock down a wall. That’s another one. Ask your manager to knock down a wall.” – Joseph Griffiths, on 1-1s with your manager * Every manager is different, so you will need to feel things out with your manager when it comes to knocking down walls. * Joseph says we can also bring ideas to the 1-1 for things that might improve the health of the business. * If our manager agrees with our ideas, they can support the ideas and give us greater visibility within the organization. * Joseph mentions when we have an idea, it is unique and special. But it’s also something we are likely to spend extra energy and effort doing.

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• A Passion for Growth: Storytelling and Interpersonal Skills with Joseph Griffiths (1/2)

  How well do your personal and professional life align to your passion areas? For returning guest Joseph Griffiths, seeking mentorship helped uncover his core passions (service, honesty, faith, and growth) and fueled the decision to pursue people management. This week in Episode 327, Joseph details his transition from solutions architect to business solution strategist and why he sought mentorship along the way. You’ll hear about the impact of storytelling in executive conversations and job interviews as well as the concept of a value hypothesis. Joseph shares a perspective on management interviews, leading seasoned teams, and the critical nature of interpersonal skills for career advancement. Original Recording Date: 04-17-2025 Topics – Joseph Griffiths Returns, Storytelling and Conversations with Executives, Discovering Passion Areas, Management Interviews and Interpersonal Challenges, A Passion for Growth over Technology, Leading a Familiar Team and Progressing as a Manager 2:15 – Joseph Griffiths Returns * Joseph Griffiths has worked in technical sales in some form for the last 10 years. Before that, he worked for a multi-tenant service provider and the state of Ohio as a systems administrator and enterprise architect. * Joseph last joined us as a guest in Episode 18a and Episode 18b. At that time, we spoke to Joseph about his experience as a solutions architect. We wanted to learn more about what made Joseph want to pursue people leadership within technical sales. * Full disclosure – Joseph was Nick’s manager up until about 4-5 months before this recording took place. But Joseph and Nick knew each other for many years before Joseph became Nick’s manager. Nick invited him to speak at Spiceworks user group events, for example. 3:55 – Storytelling and Conversations with Executives * Going back to when Joseph was a solutions architect, his role was focused on understanding the pain and gain from a business perspective for customers. * He would often run workshops to understand the current state (pains that exist) and build the future state (the gains a customer could get). * As the company changed over time, Joseph’s role changed to business solution strategist. While the role was similar, it had a greater focus on speaking to C-level executives. * Joseph recalls meeting some wonderful people on this team who taught him how to talk to executives and how to do value management. * What was the biggest lesson Joseph had to learn in order to communicate effectively with executives? * “You have about 30 seconds, and you better be talking about money. That’s the short version of it.” – Joseph Griffiths * A good friend of Joseph’s is an assistant CFO at a large corporation, and Joseph decided to pick his brain on how and why certain IT purchases get approved, and others do not. * “And he said, ‘it’s really simple – story and a spreadsheet…. You had better tell me a story that makes sense to my accounting brain, and you better have a spreadsheet that shows me how we’re going to make money, save money, or reduce risk with the spreadsheet…. Those two things put together…if the numbers make sense on the spreadsheet…I’m going to approve it. You come to me with a story about how you’re going to install some new widget, go find the money in your budget. You come to me with a spreadsheet, but the story doesn’t make sense, go find it in your budget. You want money outside of your budget? They better make sense in the form of dollars.’ And so, for me, the biggest thing to learn was I had 30 seconds with a customer to establish why th...

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• AI Mistakes: Focused Resilience and a Specialization Bet with Daniel Lemire (4/4)

  If you had something to share, what would you say, and how would you say it? Daniel Lemire asked himself the same question in the process of creating AI Mistakes. As it turns out, AI Mistakes isn’t just a platform for learning in public. It’s something Daniel must be doing. Want to know why? After completing the vision board and gaining more perspective on the layoff event that would change his direction, Daniel knew where to begin. But it took time to translate what he had written on the post-it note about his needs in a role to a role at a specific company. Through intentional mindset shifts, feedback from others, and additional help from a mentor, Daniel chose to make a bet on generative AI. Join us for episode 326 and the exciting conclusion of Daniel’s story. We’ll discuss how the specialized pre-sales role at ServiceNow really is a culmination of Daniel’s experience to this point and how he’s filling some of the sales and marketing gaps from back when he was an independent consultant. Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025 Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. He’s also the creator of AI Mistakes. If you missed parts 1-3 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 323, Episode 324, and Episode 325. Topics – The Next Right Thing and the Genesis of AI Mistakes, Gaining AI Expertise, Mindset Shifts and Greater Clarity, A Role in Pre-Sales, Transition to Working for a Technology Vendor 3:14 – The Next Right Thing and the Genesis of AI Mistakes * John wants to hear more about the genesis of AI Mistakes. * The timeline starts when Daniel found out that he was in the group of people being laid off. * “So, here I am…I think I’ve got things figured out. I’ve done really well. I think I’m going to get a really great appraisal for having taken care of business and done a good job, but actually, I got nothing…. Even now I still don’t know what anybody actually thought of my performance that year that I figured things out.” – Daniel Lemire, on not getting a performance review * Though Daniel’s role had been eliminated, he and others were asked to stay on at the company until sometime during the following year (required to get a severance). * Daniel recounts having to comfort his team about his departure. They had not learned to regulate themselves as Daniel had. * “You’re going to be fine. You know what you’re doing. We’re putting you into a position to be successful going forward. You don’t need me to be successful. You just need to know that you can do this, and you’re good at what you do…. It just means that my next thing isn’t here, and that’s ok. I would not have been capable of having that conversation even a year prior because I hadn’t done the work that I needed to do to understand.” – Daniel Lemire, on comforting his team when delivering the news of his role being eliminated * Daniel says this moment was a big confidence builder, and he feels he handled it very well with his team. * Many of Daniel’s colleagues who were also part of the layoff did not handle it well. They were very angry. He reminds us these kinds of events are very difficult to go through. * Having a severance package certainly helped provide Daniel time. Daniel mentioned his brother went through this kind of situation and did not receive a severance. * Years early,

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• Overwhelmed by Ambiguity: DevOps, Innovation, and the Search for Clarity with Daniel Lemire (3/4)

  What happens when there is too much change at once after making a job change? Daniel Lemire had learned the principles of DevOps and combined it with his experience as an infrastructure architect to advocate for the adoption of new technologies and processes within a large enterprise. But when Daniel changed roles to focus on innovation and became a senior manager at the same time, there were many challenges for which he was unprepared. In fact, at times it was overwhelming. In the 3rd installment of Daniel Lemire’s story in episode 325, you’ll hear Daniel’s reasons for focusing on innovation in the first place, why he continued to persevere through challenges, the stress and impact of layoff events, and the unexpected way he found clarity amidst the ambiguity. Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025 Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. He’s also the creator of AI Mistakes. If you missed parts 1 or 2 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 323 and Episode 324 Topics – A Personal DevOps Value Story, Planting Seeds of Innovation, The Challenges of Impactful Innovation, Progressing from Overwhelm to Clarity 3:33 – A Personal DevOps Value Story * Daniel needed a reset and to determine how he could contribute to the organization where he worked. That’s about the time he discovered DevOps. * After a recommendation from a colleague within the security organization, Daniel read The Phoenix Project, and it has changed his career trajectory for the better. He read the book not long after its release. * Reading the book also changed the way Daniel thinks so he is able to help companies create value. * “…When I read it, I didn’t understand what was so great about it. I just knew there was something there that I needed…. I read it and I got really excited about it. But I didn’t really know what to do with it.” – Daniel Lemire * Not long after reading The Phoenix Project, Daniel recommended the book to a colleague who worked on the security and compliance team. There was a character in the book named John who starts off being very stressed but for whom things improve greatly during the course of the story. * “After he finished the book, he came back to me and he’s like, ‘let’s do something with this….’ I still didn’t know what to do with it.” – Daniel Lemire * Daniel’s colleague recommended they start by meeting and having a conversation. * After their initial meeting, Daniel and his colleague started meeting on a weekly basis. They started talking about The Three Ways and how these could be applied to make things better. Daniel and his colleague gave a presentation to a large portion of the IT Operations team to share thoughts on the way people do work and how to improve it. * “It really helped them think through some of their organizational challenges and the things that needed to be done because that was also a difficult time across our technology organization because of the big changes that were being made. But the lightbulb didn’t really all the way come on for me until The DevOps Handbook came out and I got the concrete ‘these are the things that matter to a technology organization.

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• Find the Missing Context: Perspectives and Observations from Enterprise Experience with Daniel Lemire (2/4)

  When you’re missing a specific experience in your career, how do you get it? Daniel Lemire was missing experience in a large enterprise to pair with the things he learned from pursuing a graduate degree. Join us this week in episode 324 to hear the story of what happened when Daniel got that experience that provided the missing context to apply what he learned. Throughout this discussion, you’ll notice Daniel’s continued openness to new opportunities lead him from a contractor position in a large enterprise all the way to technical lead. There’s also a parallel process of Daniel’s development of expertise and credibility alongside his observations of the enterprise organization as a whole that encourage us not to limit our focus only to the technical work we’re doing. Near the end of our discussion, Daniel shares his perspective on an organizational decision to begin outsourcing and the way it impacted his work. What would you do in that situation? Original Recording Date: 03-20-2025 Daniel Lemire is an AI Consultant working for ServiceNow. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 323. Topics – Missing the Context of Experience, Unexpected Opportunities, Confidence and Feedback, Enterprise Experience Meets Educational Background, Gaining Organizational Perspective, The Cascade of Objectives, Technical Leadership and a Change in Strategy 3:03 – Missing the Context of Experience * Daniel said after completing his master’s degree at UNT he did not have the context of experience to pair with his education. * As part of the master’s program, Daniel got an education in marketing, management, and technology. * In class, they might have a discussion about how CIOs make decisions or have a guest speaker to provide additional context from the business world. * “I knew what the right questions were, but I didn’t understand why those were the right questions. And it was a real challenge for me because I couldn’t place what I was learning…. I was learning the right things. They really were the right things, but I didn’t know what to do with it. The curriculum I took in getting the master’s degree was exactly what I needed to be successful in a large enterprise. But because I had only ever done the independent consulting, I had only ever worked with very small companies, companies that had less than 100 employees…. So much of what I was learning about management discipline and program development and project management was for these really big organizations, and I didn’t have the context to understand why all of those things were necessary….” – Daniel Lemire, thinking back on his master’s degree program * Daniel makes a reference to the 150-person relationship limit known as Dunbar’s Number and says this requires very different business management techniques. * Upon finishing the graduate degree, Daniel had learned 3 very critical things: * Daniel discovered through conversations with classmates and through completing specific projects that he had an aptitude for the subject matter. He also realized the program had been the right place for him. * Daniel knew he had a lot to learn but that he was missing enterprise experience. It was something he really needed to get the full value from what he had learned pursuing the graduate degree. * “The third piece of it that I didn’t understand until much later was that journey of taking turns between being overprepared for something and getting into something that you’re overwhelmed by. That’s yet another dichotomy because in some ways by getting the graduate degree I was overprepared for an enterpri...

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