Startups or Established Companies: Why Culture is Everything.
With Special Guest Brad Englert
Brad” Book ” Spheres of Influence“
Best Buy, Caterpillar, Whirlpool, Bell South, Deutsche Bank, and The University of Texas
Brad Englert is the founder of Brad Englert Advisory and an author, advisor, and technologist. Brad worked for Accenture for 22 years, including 10 years as a partner. He then served the University of Texas at Austin for eight years, including seven years as the chief information officer (CIO).
During Brad’s career with Accenture, a global management consulting and technology services firm, he worked in a variety of information technology leadership and operational roles for large, complex institutions of higher education, state governments (Texas, California, Minnesota, Montana), and commercial organizations (Best Buy, Caterpillar, Whirlpool, Bell South, Deutsche Bank, and Wyeth). When Brad retired as a senior partner in 2006, he had a proven track record in information technology operations, large-scale information systems implementations, and strategic planning.
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:00.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the WP Tonic Show. In this episode, we’ll be discussing all things culture, including how cultures impact startups and established businesses. I believe it’s the key to success in both startups and established businesses. We got a true expert here. He’s written a book, Spheres of Influence. He’s got a ton of experience. He has worked for several Fortune 500 companies, including Caterpillar, Whirlpool, Deutsche Bank, and the University of Texas. To say that his knowledge is quite extensive would be a slight understatement. And that is Brad Inglis. Brad, would you like to give us a quick 10-second or 20-second intro? And then when we go into the central part of the show, you can give the audience a more extensive introduction of yourself.
[00:01:05.660] – Brad Englert
Yes, I spent 22 years with Accenture, 10 of which were as a partner, and then I happily retired. I received a call from my alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, where I attended graduate school, and they needed some IT assistance. I volunteered to help an hour a week pro bono. That was in October. By March, I was half-time. By June, I was full-time. In eight years, I’ll be back later. I’m retired again.
[00:01:32.940] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s a great story. I’ve got my great co-host, Kurt. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:01:39.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
Sure thing, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Annen. I own an agency called Manana Nomas, which primarily works with membership and learning websites, as well as enterprise businesses.
[00:01:49.380] – Jonathan Denwood
As I said, I think this is one of the most important subjects we’ll discuss in 2025. I’ve looked forward to this discussion. But before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great show, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I also want to point out we’ve got a great free online resource. It’s special offers from the show’s sponsors, plus a curated list aimed at the WordPress professional, featuring the best plugin services, all designed to cut time and effort for you. You can get all these free goodies by going over to WP-Tonic.com/deals.
You can get all the free goodies there, my beloved WordPress freelancers. What more could you ask for? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get on that page. So let’s go straight into it, Brad. I believe business culture is one of the key factors that will determine whether a startup or an existing business will continue to thrive and prosper. However, it’s a very vassal-like term in business culture. Ken, with all your experience in writing this and all the interviews you’ve conducted, can you provide a bit more insight into the animal and give us some understanding of the company culture and business culture?
[00:03:47.720] – Brad Englert
Well, I would start with the mission of the organization. What is the vision? Where do they see themselves in five years? What are their values? Do they value customer satisfaction, or do they value growing their people? And then strategy. And the dirty little secret is that a lot of organizations do not have a strategy. So they’re rudderless.
[00:04:22.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I agree with the second main point you’re making. I I think a lot of people think a large company has got a strategy, but it’s just dealing with an endless stream of urgencies and just muddling through. But I also think there’s a tremendous, and I’m not just picking on US business culture. I think this applies to the UK, and generally, there seems to be a total mismatch on the public persona of companies and the reality. And it’s probably always been there, but I think this is only my personal take on it. And this mismatch is only grown over the last 20, 40 years to such extreme that nobody believes in it in the public statements of the majority of companies now. What’s your response to that, Brian?
[00:05:31.460] – Brad Englert
Well, I think a lot of companies have a short term focus. They’re only worried about the next quarter and may have their customers suffer as they try to meet their numbers. And so I think they lose sight of what they’re trying to achieve because they’re being slaves to the master of the financial numbers.
[00:06:02.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Is there any… I don’t really see… I don’t really… Obviously, that will change in the end because it’s not sustainable, really, is it? But I only see that changing with a major crisis, really, or is there a possibility of a more gradual change from that position?
[00:06:25.640] – Brad Englert
I think if you have a leader who understands the need for strategy. I have this $3 billion organization. The new leader came in. He said he was going to create a strategy. Great. Guess what? Four years went by and he didn’t create a strategy. It was just ridiculous. So you’re not going to ever make a change if you don’t have the discipline to think ahead and what is your differentiator? What makes you, what will make you successful? Frankly, it’s lazy.
[00:07:02.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Just before I throw it over to Kirek, would you also… This is my take on it, and I’m totally fine because you’ve got a lot more experience. I’ve just run a free… Over the 35 years, I’ve just run three very small companies and just made a reasonable living. Do you There seem to be, and obviously, I want to keep out the politics as much as possible, but economics and politics are one side of the same coin a lot of the time, in my opinion. The past four or five years, we’ve had a lot of what I call, and I’m a contradiction, really, Brad. I’ve always been in the private sector, but I’m a Christian socialist. I make it quite clear what my political position is. Most Americans don’t really understand what a Christian socialist is. They have no can’t. They think I’m a Communist, right? Which makes me laugh, actually, because you can get much further from it. But There seemed to be a lot from a lot of large companies, a lot of virtual signaling, and it seemed to be getting worse and worse and worse. Would you agree with that? And you got any insights what was driving this virtual signaling?
[00:08:48.180] – Brad Englert
Well, some companies are really good at it, and they do focus on the culture they’re trying to create. The companies I worked with, many of them, they knew what they were trying to achieve, and they were very clear about it. One company almost had a feeling of a family. They really treated their employees not like children, but they really They cared about their employees.
[00:09:32.580] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re talking about a philosophy like a famous company that had that attitude was Cabtree, the chocolate manufacturer, Glomere in the UK. They were a Quaker-based family. They sold the company, I think, to Nestlé about 20 years ago, but they were notorious for that philosophy. Would that be a good example of what you’re trying to point at?
[00:10:08.260] – Brad Englert
Absolutely. When I joined Accenture, I looked at all the big consulting firms, and they had a culture that focused on mentoring and coaching. It emphasized training. It had an ethical point of view, meaning it thinks Talk straight, talk straight, customer focus all the way. That’s why I joined the firm. If you’re looking for a place to work, I would look at the culture and see if that’s a good fit. I had another competing firm, and I talked to them. They would only hire people with master’s degrees, but they didn’t really train their people. Just That seemed pretty self-defeating. When I joined the firm, there were 40,000 consultants globally. Accenture now has 700,000 people working for them.
[00:11:12.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh my God. All right, over to you, Kurt.
[00:11:15.900] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, Brad, I want to drive you back to the original start of your answer when Jonathan asked you about company culture. One of the first things you had mentioned was having company values and all those things. And echoing Jonathan a little bit, there’s definitely a do as I say, not as I do mentality in the business world. And so if you’re looking to get into one of these companies or build your own company, what is your advice then for that not falling into that trap? A lot of companies have a list of values, or they have a mission statement, or they have some published strategy that they say they’re working on. But when you get into those small rooms, when the VPs and the presidents and the directors all get in that little room and have a discussion, that room is devoid of any of the company values and strategies and it’s that putting out fires thing. How do you identify that in a company and then know to run away? How do you see those red flags before you know?
[00:12:31.560] – Brad Englert
Well, when I joined the university, the culture of central IT was fire drills and rewarding heroics. And That’s opposite of my worldview, which is proactive customer service. And so I had to change the culture. So how did I do that? First, I talked to a number of constituents on campus and said, What do you want from the central organization? They wanted truthfulness, consistency. They wanted transparency. They wanted to participate in decision making. That became our values. Everyone who joined the organization had to go to a mandatory orientation. Some people slip away and try to… They were too busy. Well, I’d find them and get them into the next orientation the next month because I wanted them to meet the management team and I wanted them to hear about the values. I wanted to say that if you have an idea that’s going to help our customers, tell us. If you’re new to the organization, do that. Now, I had to replace three out of seven directors who could not make the transition to a proactive customer-focused culture, and they just couldn’t do it. And so I was able to replace them with people who did have that point of view.
[00:14:07.680] – Brad Englert
Also, once a week, I would write a blog, just a short couple of hundred-word blog, and I talk about the values. I talk about my expectations, which is, don’t check your email 24/7. If you have a school play, go to the school play. If you have a doctor’s appointment, go to the doctor’s appointment. If you’re sick, stay home because we have 330 people to back you up. Now, early in my career, I would rely on my management team to convey those messages. And guess what? It didn’t happen. Some managers wanted to keep the information from power. Others, it didn’t even dawn on them. They should tell their people. And so I did not want the grapevine to rule. And over time, It took nine months to a year. We slowly turned the ship to be more proactive, more customer-oriented. A lot of that was getting out of our offices and meeting with our customers. I had a woman who worked for me, and she read the manuscript, said, You’d left out my story. I said, What story was that? I said, When you demanded, I go meet with someone who hated us. I said, Well, I want them in the tent, not outside the tent throwing rocks at us.
[00:15:32.320] – Brad Englert
And sure enough, after about nine or 10 months, the person who, quote, hated us due to prior bad behavior, which we apologize for, slowly saw us get it more consistent, better service, more proactive. And after 10, 11 months, she became an advocate for us. And her boss, who also hated us because of bad behavior, which I apologize for, he became an advocate. So it’s a multi-modal approach where we all had our network of peers and influencers that we’d go meet with and our customers to make… It was like a nervous system. You could hear the feedback. It was a two-way communication. Also, we had quarterly meetings where we’d get together in person and hybrid, where we’d bring customers in and share stories. But it was really hard to change a culture where people were being rewarded for heroics and fire drilling when that’s opposite of what our customers wanted, but we were able to do it.
[00:16:51.680] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, and that’s the perfect segue into our second question, and that is those tendencies for leadership. Some people say everything hinges on leadership, right? Where do you think those fundamental differences come in someone like you or the seven people or the four people you kept versus the three you let go, right? The firemen versus the proactive people. Do you think that’s something that’s driven from family experience and upbringing, or do you think that’s something that you’ve had to unnaturally maybe convert your natural ways into being a proactive person?
[00:17:29.360] – Brad Englert
Well, I’m a big believer in Stephen Covey and the seven habits and being proactive. I was taught that from day one at the firm. Then really caring about your customers. I found there are three principles that help every business relationship. One is ask what their goals and aspirations are. You can do that with your boss, you can do that with your customer, you can do that with vendors. Second, set and manage expectations. I was really bad at that early in my career. I got much better later in my career. And third, genuinely care about their success. So when I got to the university, I met this professor. He’d been there 40 years, a crusty dude who is an electrical engineer. I’d worked with him 15 years prior on a statewide network design, which was successful. And I said, give me some advice. He goes, get out of the office and tell people you give a damn. And that was the best advice ever.
[00:18:39.420] – Jonathan Denwood
Wow.
[00:18:40.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
Jonathan, over to you.
[00:18:42.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’m listening to this, Brad, and I agree with you. This is my natural style. It’s like looking at great military leaders, some influenced, like Eisenhower, Grant, British great mirage leaders. But there’s another side to this. There’s people that are listening to this just think this is nonsense. We’re talking Basically, shit, basically. And they are more… It’s around the management style that’s promoted by Steve Jones. And bless his heart, I think he had great strengths. But after I was really… I’ve listened to the bio that was written by Walter Atkinson about three times. I’ve listened to it, and it’s a great… I don’t know if you’ve read the bio or listened to it, but it’s a great document of a time and place of the Bay Area and Silicon Valley and Steve being an outsider. But it’s clear to me that he was a narcissist and a bit of a psychopath as well. First of all, would you agree with that initial about the bio and about Walter’s ability to combine the culture of the area? Was it Steve’s oddness, he being adopted, being always feeling that he was an outsider, being part of the culture, the opposite culture, but also You just used people left, right, and center.
[00:20:53.100] – Jonathan Denwood
A strange concoction, yet he could be very compassionate, but icy cold as well. A strange concoction and a strange man. But he had this principle where he only wanted to play, he only wanted A players, and everybody else that was an A player was a Bimbo that should be used and dismissed as quickly as possible. I’ll put a lot of stuff to you, but hopefully you can see why this interests me. For you? Because I think this book and around Steve Jobs, and I think there’s a lot of people in the tech industry that really hold him up as the managerial example, don’t they?
[00:21:44.140] – Brad Englert
Well, I think there’s a founder culture. Excuse me. The founder culture, founders tend to be high risk. They’re willing to take the leap. They tend to be wildly creative. They tend to be personality-oriented. If you have a small company of 50 people, the founder has relationships with all those people. When you try to scale that, though, I think that’s when it breaks down, because if you’re trying to scale your company, you can’t have high risk, lots of fluctuating ideas. And that’s why a lot of mid-sized companies bring in professional management to actually take over for the founder, and they usually kick the founder up to the board or something like that. So I think the things that make a founder successful are not necessarily what makes a company successful when it’s trying to scale.
[00:22:54.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I see. Can I be truthful? You’ve just given me a very classical answer. Very. But aren’t we seeing, in the end, he was running an enormous company, and I think, let’s go for it. Elon Musk, one of the biggest entrepreneurs in the US that runs three tremendously large companies. They’re not startups, they’re major companies. And yet I think he adopts Steve Jobs on steroids, the attitude that if you’re a bimbo, you’re out. And other Silicon startup, Iology, it’s extreme. How would you respond, Brad?
[00:23:44.880] – Brad Englert
Well, he’s certainly been successful, but there’s also been some erratic results that have come out. I think if you have enough money, you can paper over So it’s not anything.
[00:24:02.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, because in some ways, when more information, he was always on my radar, but I didn’t really know much about him. And when he became more of a public figure, I delved into it and I saw extreme echo to Henry Ford. And Henry Ford’s always been… I’ve been always aware of the good side of Henry Ford, which cannot be diminished. But there was a real ugly side to Henry Ford as well, a very, very ugly side, which really destroyed His position should be seen as one of the top industrialists of the USA, but it’s totally been discredited by his dark side. So to get back to it, do you really… Because I I think all companies, their culture always from the start, and it echoes on to a long time, is based on family dynamics, really, because they repeat the culture that they were brought up in in their family, and in the period they were brought up in. Do you think I’m on the right road there?
[00:25:27.420] – Brad Englert
Sure. I think the way they treat people, you learn that from your family. That can be good and that can be bad.
[00:25:36.680] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. We’re going to go for our… I’ll give Brad some difficult questions here. He’s dealt with me very smarfully. He’s a true expert. We’re going to go for our middle break, folks, and we’ll be back. We will be delving more into the realities of culture, startups, and big business in the US in the second half. Three, two, one. We’re coming back. We’ve had a great discussion. We discussed Steve Jobs, American culture when it comes to companies, Brad’s dealt with me with ease. He’s just dealt with me with ease. But before we go into the second half, I just want to point out. Now, have you got a load of small clients that you’ve built out their website, and then now they want you to support their website. It’s 24/7 for you to be on the phone 24/7, to be in a verbal, weekends, whenever they want to call you or text you, and they don’t want to spend any money with you either. Have you been here, my beloved WordPress freelancers? Well, I’ve not a great situation to be in, being available to small All project clients 24/7. I’ve got answer here. You can go over to WP tonic/partners, and we’ve got a fabulous answer.
[00:27:13.670] – Jonathan Denwood
You can hand them over to WP tonic, and we will deal with them. And every year, you will get a check, a credit for 40 %, and none of the accro. What more could you ask for, my beloved WordPress tribe. Go and find more. Go over to Wp-tonic. Com/partners, and let’s chat about us getting rid of your problem clients. Over to you, Kirk.
[00:27:51.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I get to switch gears a little bit with you, Brad, which is fun. Jonathan and I, besides being completely interested in company culture and all those things we’re talking in the tech space. And we end up discussing artificial intelligence often, quite often, the term vibe coding and different AI tools and things like that. But we’re curious, where do you see artificial intelligence affecting corporations from a culture perspective? Do you think it’s going to like rip humanity out of the corporate circle, or do you think it’s going to cause us to run more firmly towards humanity as AI gets more and more prevalent?
[00:28:34.120] – Brad Englert
That’s an interesting question. I think AI is going to affect the entry level people in organizations, and I worry about the hollowing out of those skills. And just take the legal profession, for example. Yet, entry-level attorney is going to be doing research, going through files. Well, now AI will do that. So you don’t need them working on that anymore. And the question is, well, how do you train them to be a seasoned attorney down the road? And there’s a really good book, which I’m reading, Welcome to AI. They looked at 160 million jobs, and the ones that will be affected the most, legal, business, and financial operations. They’re thinking half those jobs going away. By industry, finance, education, scientific and technical services. So it’s coming. To me, it’s very similar to the move from mainframe computing to client server, server to cloud computing. To me, it’s that fundamental change.
[00:30:05.540] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Well, you bring up an interesting point, especially with your referral to Stephen Covey’s book, right? Because it isn’t one of his seven effective habits, replacing yourself, right? Getting ready to replace yourself. That’s right. If we don’t have a mechanism to warm the bench, if we erase that mechanism to have qualified people on standby, we really limit the ability of leadership to look at who’s available and who’s promotable and who’s trainable.
[00:30:35.780] – Brad Englert
Yeah. You can’t trust all the results. You still need a human to look at the output and say, Yeah, that’s correct. I don’t think we’re there yet, but you don’t need that human intervention.
[00:30:54.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah.
[00:30:56.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
Jonathan?
[00:30:57.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, sure. Where Where would you say we are when we look, you’ve consulted, you’ve been in the front lines of some of the largest companies in America. Where would you say we are? Let’s take the Fortune 500 companies of this country, of this continent. I’m a joint citizen. I’ve lived here for about 18 years. And the vastness of this country, I come from a very small country, UK, very small. I hasn’t really accepted, really, in my opinion, that it’s a small country. Especially the elite of the country find it very difficult to accept the realities of Britain. But when I come to this continent, the vastness of this country still overwhelms me. But where are we when we look at the Fortune 500 companies in general? Obviously, this is a ridiculous question because we’re talking about enormous organizations. But broadly, where do you think culture is when you look at some of the top companies in the US at the present moment?
[00:32:30.260] – Brad Englert
Well, I think most companies I worked with were top of the game. And that was the beauty of working for Accenture, because we do work with most of the Fortune 500 companies, and success breeds success. Eighty to 90 % of our customers are repeat customers. So we don’t work with everybody, and Even when I was running central IT, I didn’t have to serve everybody if they were a pain in their, you know what? And so not all customers are created equal. And I think We gravitated to companies that did have their act together and vice versa. And the repeat customers come because you’ve been successful altogether, and that can last over years and decades. So I think you have to be strategic and intentional about who you’re working with. You don’t have to work with an unethical firm. I was on the other side of the desk, and I had strategic vendor partners. What do I mean by that? The ones I’m spending the most money with. So tens of millions of dollars a year. And I had one vendor who was not ethical. And I caught them in more than one compromised situation where I had to go up their management chain, fire the account rep because they were unethical call.
[00:34:31.320] – Brad Englert
But at the end of the day, I had to drop that company because their culture was so toxic. There was no saving it.
[00:34:42.280] – Jonathan Denwood
What do you think? Obviously, these are very broad questions. I’m asking you some very difficult questions, but by watching the Alley interviews, I got the impression you were up for it. What are some of the main drivers for a company, a large company, to become totally unethical? Is it just making a load of money?
[00:35:11.280] – Brad Englert
Yeah, they were driven by the financial numbers. They didn’t care at all about our success. And in fact, they tried to build me for work that they hadn’t even started yet. Now, they had a tracking tool that showed they hadn’t started yet, yet they still tried to bill me for work. And it’s like, what are you people doing? Well, they were trying to meet numbers at the end of the quarter. I had the sales rep try to get one of my directors to sign off on a purchase that we didn’t even approve yet. It turned out to be the last day of his quarter. That’s the one I got fired. Then they came up with this technique. They sent me a letter saying, We want to audit all your software that you use from us. It’s like, Well, that’s expensive, and we don’t use that much. So I looked at my contract, and there’s no audit clause. So I said, No, I’m not going to do it. And the sales guy goes, Well, it’s not me. It’s compliance in California. It’s not me. So I basically told them, no. Well, a call goes to corporate to a lawyer, but it was misrouted.
[00:36:41.300] – Brad Englert
It didn’t go to the lawyer, it went to the CFO. And his assistant got chewed out by someone from this company about me not playing ball with them. And well, I run the phone system, so I looked at the number and guess who it was? It was the sales guy. I mean, that was the final straw.
[00:37:11.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Being an outsider, being British, I came here when I was 42, so I had a reasoning successful in the business in the UK. It was outside of tech, but it was only very small, but it was reasoning successful. So I always will see myself as British because I was brought up, so I’m a hybrid. I see myself… When I go back to the UK, my family think I’m very American. So looking at it, these are very broad statements, but in general, I find most Americans to be very hard working, a little bit intense, but generally hard working and affable, just really interested in their families, doing a bit better and looking after their children, if they have children, or that’s say a couple of two. But there seems to be also a drifter class, that we’re WP tonics in the e-learning business, and there’s a whole drifter class in the eLearning membership sector. But there’s a general drifter class in the business, in business, generally, and they seem to be promoted and looked up. I’m not saying… It’s in the UK as well. There’s a lot of class hypocrisy in the UK. It’s dripping with it.
[00:39:16.940] – Jonathan Denwood
But there seems to be a whole sector in the business culture in the US that seem to promote and really promote and highlight and celebrate a whole drifter class. I’ve always found this fascinating. Would you agree with that? And when you got any insight where that comes from?
[00:39:45.460] – Brad Englert
I don’t. In my experience, I haven’t witnessed that. I’ve seen people promoted who shouldn’t be promoted, whether they’re drifter experts or not. They might not have the skills. One thing that the firm did a really good job with is giving us field promotions. When I was a senior consultant, they’d give me a field promotion as to be a manager so I could run a little project and develop my managerial skills. When I became a senior manager, they had me serve as an associate partner level, so I managed a very large project on my own. And then when they were preparing me for partner, they put me in a partner role. And that the field promotions helped prevent the Peter principle because you had to prove that you could work at that next level. But it was risk-free because you weren’t a manager, you were a senior consultant. And so they were really good at helping you develop skills. So when you got to that level, you didn’t have imposter syndrome because you’ve already demonstrated you could be successful at that level. And I’m sure a lot of firms don’t do that.
[00:41:12.540] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. Over to you, Ken.
[00:41:15.260] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m not sure where to go, to be honest with you, Jonathan. I was going to ask if there were any AI tools or anything specific in your little quiver of tools that you use to be more efficient in your dealings now.
[00:41:31.220] – Brad Englert
I fully intend to, but I’m professionally paranoid, and I don’t trust the companies to suck all the data out of my computer. And so I want to wait till it’s either baked into a product like Gmail or Teams. If it’s baked in, I’ll feel a lot safer with it. But It’s a little bit of a Wild Wild West right now.
[00:42:04.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, if you use any Microsoft products, good luck trying to escape the copilot, man. They are forcing that into every nook and cranny of my computer. It is crazy.
[00:42:14.920] – Brad Englert
Yeah, I know. I had this AI tool to take notes in meetings. I can’t get rid of the damn thing. I cannot. You go to applications, it’s not It’s like, Come on, how do I get rid of you?
[00:42:34.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
It reminds me of when we were kids and we would watch Looney tunes, and there was the one with the two dogs, and the one dog was big and muscular and laid back, and the other little dog was going, What do you want to do now? What do you want to do now? What do you want to do now? That’s the way I feel AI is attacking my work style life right now. Jonathan, I’ll jump into the last one if that’s okay.
[00:42:54.960] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve got another question. Oh, shoot.
[00:42:56.980] – Brad Englert
Go for it.
[00:42:58.120] – Jonathan Denwood
In the first half, you You seem to indicate, or the impression I got, that when you were brought in to the University of Texas and other companies that you consulted and worked with, that one of the factors was a lack of trust and a lack of communication. You really tried to work on the communication element and actually building up credibility. So With all your years of consulting, were there other patterns that you observed that regularly occurred around why companies and their cultures were failing? Were there consistent patterns that you observed?
[00:43:47.940] – Brad Englert
Well, I’ll give you an example of a mission critical system for us. And if you’re in the eLearning, you know about this, a learning management system.
[00:43:58.870] – Jonathan Denwood
We know nothing about those.
[00:44:01.260] – Brad Englert
So 54,000 students, 4,000 faculty, 21,000 staff. To make that change is a big deal. My incumbent vendor had been in place for 10, 15 years, and they just figured the switching costs would be too great for us. So they just did not care about us at all. And the company would show up in the office once a year to get their maintenance check, which was always more than the prior year. I actually hired them to do an upgrade with pro things that had worked for five years. And so working with the vice Provost in charge of curriculum, we went to the marketplace and evaluated 15 learning management systems, and we found a modern cloud-based learning management system that actually used standards. My incumbent vendor had no standards standards. In fact, we could not plug email in securely, which is ridiculous, but they just didn’t care. So the faculty and students picked this new product. It took us two years to do that transition. The senior VP for sales of that new company would call me once a month, like clockwork, and ask how it was going. He really cared about us because he knew if he He could get this to work for our huge university, he could sell to all the other large research one universities.
[00:45:37.460] – Brad Englert
This was 10 years ago. Guess what? He sold it to all those other R1 research universities. It was such a wonderful day when I was able to fire the incumbent vendor who didn’t even hear the bullet coming. They were so clueless. I think it’s just that lack of caring and just worried about the money is what made them fail versus the company that actually changed their product to help us be successful, which, of course, helped them be successful down the road.
[00:46:16.600] – Jonathan Denwood
I think that’s fantastic. Just a quick follow-through question. Now, obviously, we’re, both Kirk and myself, are big into WordPress and big into open-source software. We do have some larger clients. We got a very diverse spread of different types of clientele, Brad. Where do you think open source is at the present moment? Do you think it’s still growing? Still larger companies are still interested in the cost savings and not being locked to a vendor like your fantastic example, or are they still, to some extent, a little bit wary and a bit dismissive of open source?
[00:47:11.700] – Brad Englert
I think in an enterprise like the university, which is a $3 billion a year enterprise, all our products need to be industrial strength. They have to be secure. They have to be accessible. For people, vision impairment and hearing impairment. There are criteria that we have to meet, and sometimes that’s hard with open source. Now, we have vendors to take open source and put those industrial strength wrappers around it. And we certainly have several instances of that being very successful. But we have privacy requirements at a federal level that we have to adhere to. And if I don’t get those terms and conditions into the agreements, I’m at risk. So there’s a pretty high bar for a large organization.
[00:48:17.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think I’ll throw the last question over to Kurt.
[00:48:22.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, Brad, we like to ask folks, a fun one, if you had an HGUL’s time machine your own TARDIS like Dr. Who, you go back in time, back in time to when your career first started, what advice would you have that you would give yourself?
[00:48:38.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, Brad, you can’t say you want to tell yourself you shouldn’t have come on this podcast.
[00:48:45.020] – Brad Englert
That’s fun. I enjoy the podcast because everyone has a different point of view, and I learn something every time.
[00:48:56.900] – Jonathan Denwood
Sorry, I interrupted you, Brad. Can Can you answer Kurt’s question?
[00:49:02.300] – Brad Englert
It froze on me, so I didn’t hear the question.
[00:49:05.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
Oh, well, that makes me lousy.
[00:49:09.600] – Brad Englert
It’s technology.
[00:49:10.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
If you had your time machine, like a TARDIS or an H. G. Wells example, you could go back in time to the beginning of your career. What advice would you give yourself?
[00:49:21.580] – Brad Englert
Do a much better job at setting and managing expectations. I did a crappy job job, which led me to work too hard and too long and with not much direction. One time, I received a call from a partner who was a Type A personality. Brad, I need a white paper. A white paper. And I, because I just read a book on managing expectations, I said, Whoa. I didn’t say no because that would set her off. I said, Whoa, when do you need this white paper? Oh, let me check my calendar. I’ll see the client in two weeks. Oh, it sounded urgent. How many pages do you want this white paper to be? Oh, three pages. I was thinking 10. Do you have an example of a white paper? Yeah, talk to David. I did one on XYZ Corp five years ago. Well, guess what? I went home and had dinner with my wife. Before I learned to say, Whoa, I would stay up all night, write a 10-page paper, deliver it the next day, and get yelled at.
[00:50:28.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah.
[00:50:29.000] – Brad Englert
Just give yourself some mental space and time.
[00:50:32.090] – Jonathan Denwood
I think that’s so insightful, Brad. You’ve got to understand the expectations of all these different people because there’s one particular client we’re dealing with at the present moment, and they sound very similar to the person you just talked about. But you’ve got to find out because you can get into a real or a fake argument, and sometimes you really have to put your foot down. However, if you end up arguing all the time, the actual thing they’re looking for is relatively minor. But I think it’s tricky. Because if you keep giving in to things, it can grow and grow and grow. There’s no black and white, is there?
[00:51:26.220] – Brad Englert
After I read that book and learned to say, Whoa, I never missed a vacation. I never missed training. I went to school plays. I went to the doctor. You just have to use your words. Your boss isn’t a mind reader.
[00:51:44.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Right, Brad. It’s been an excellent discussion. What’s the best way for people to find out more about you and your thoughts and your insights, Brad?
[00:51:54.140] – Brad Englert
I can send you a link to my website that provides your listeners with a free sample of the book, as well as information on how to purchase the book and schedule a time on my calendar.
[00:52:07.800] – Jonathan Denwood
I think I’ve got it. Is it, Bradenglert.com?
[00:52:14.340] – Brad Englert
Well, that’s my website, but this will be a customized link.
[00:52:18.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, great. That’ll send you. That’ll send you. That’ll send you. Yeah, we make sure that’s in all the show notes, Brad.
[00:52:24.120] – Brad Englert
It’s for your listeners.
[00:52:26.500] – Jonathan Denwood
Thank you so much. And if you’d like to support the show, why not visit the WP Tonic YouTube channel? It’s growing rapidly. I’m nearing 10,000 subscribers. Got a load of extra content on there that will interest you, folks. Subscribe to the channel. It shows you’re supporting the tribe, folks. We will be back next week with another great discussion like this one. We’ll see you soon. Bye.
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