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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the Leadership Boot Camp podcast. This is Jeff Strauss. You'll have to forgive this pre recorded introduction which is coming to you from a hotel room in Conway, Arkansas. I'm on a cross country road trip and my office comm recording studio won't be finished for a couple of weeks. So thank you for the grace with the differing audio and visual quality between this recorded introduction and the forthcoming interview. My guest today is Robert Potter. Robert is the CEO of IT asset management company Oomnitsa and he has an extensive background in leadership with a career spanning more than two decades at preeminent security companies including RSA, Symantec, FireEye, Mandiant, and as a venture capitalist, investing in companies that create disruptive transformational technologies that reduce security risk. Robert is also a former captain of the Quinnipiac University hockey team, which informs a broad and interesting mix of leadership capabilities that he brings to bear. Today at Omnitza we talk about the importance of professional networking, mentorship, authenticity, important leadership characteristics, motivation, finding your passion, and other topics. And now I bring you Robert Potter. Robert, thank you so much for joining me on the Leadership Bootcamp podcast. Really happy to have you here. I'm very excited to talk to you. Before we jump into questions, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, your time at Oomnitza, a little bit about Oomnitza and then we'll jump into. We'll jump into the interview.
- [01:43]
B
Yeah. Jeff, first off, thanks a lot for having me on the show. It's an honor. I really appreciate it. You know, look, my story's been an awesome one. It started coming out of college. I had a computer science degree. I got my first job down here in the Maryland area and just had a great opportunity to work for an awesome company, IBM, as a developer, writing some operating system capabilities. And then I ran into some great people and just awesome mentors and got exposed to customer interaction, became technical consulting back then, I think they're called SES now. And then, and then I got introduced to sales and through that part of my career again had had some great mentors, some great coaches had. I was a part of a team of people that just embraced having an engineer come in and start. And then I ran into a guy, Art Coviello at RSA and was given my first opportunity into leadership. And then it just kept expanding from there and I've had the opportunity to work for some awesome companies. Landcope, which was acquired by Cisco and Symantec after that and had the opportunity to do a startup with a fantastic set of co founders Chris Key and Ben Chanciruso, and we were acquired by FireEye, which later became Mandiant and then was acquired by Google. And then I was honored to be asked to become a part of Syn Ventures with Art Coviello and Jay Leak. And then that led to the opportunity to become the CEO of Oomnitza. So it's been a very fortunate, fabulous career that has really allowed me to meet some fantastic people and really work with some great teams.
- [03:36]
A
You have a very amiable and approachable manner about you, and I've seen some of your, you know, your recorded talks, where you're up on stage and how naturally that comes to you, and it's clear that you're a very natural speaker. Did you find the transition from going from like a developer, which is normally not necessarily customer facing, doesn't require, you know, as much charisma, let's say, to being in front of clients and having to, you know, do like an outbound job, did you find that transition to be difficult or was that an easy transition for you?
- [04:19]
B
No, I think in hindsight it was. It was very natural. The, the hard part, I think, was all those years that I sat in an office by myself writing code, I don't think I really understood what I was missing for those, those 10 years. But, you know, I think that you're, you know, you choose the path from an education perspective, you know, based on what you think you're good at. And for me, I was really good at math and really good at cognitive thinking and programming. And what I found was that I loved the team dynamic. I loved, you know, I think growing up playing hockey and other sports, I love being a part of that atmosphere of a team, of a collective group working for the same thing. And I think that's what really drove me out. And I think just the welcoming atmosphere of other people on that team gave me the confidence to feel comfortable speaking out and being vocal. And then I think I had some great people to follow and watch how they communicated and how they were, you know, they were very respectful and empathetic to people. And I've just tried to take the best traits I can of each of those people and make it a part of the way that, that I lead and interact with people in our company, our customers, and just, you know, in general friendships in life.
- [05:48]
A
How do you suggest people who are in a phase of their career where they may not necessarily know what it is that they're good at? Right. You seem to have a clear idea of what you're good at. What about people who don't necessarily have as clear of an idea? How do you encourage them? Or how do you, you know, what kind of advice can you provide those people to, like, help them identify what it is they're good at?
- [06:16]
B
Yeah, I think the first thing is it's okay not to know what you want to do. I think a lot of people, I work a lot with young people, including my two daughters, and I think the one thing that I try to communicate to them is it's okay not to know what you want to do. And I remind people when I'm chatting with them that when I went to college, I went to college to become a vet. I wanted to be a veterinarian. And after one year of that and working a summer with a vet, I was like, nope, I do not want to do this. And. And it gave me the opportunity. I had a great advisor at Quinnipiac University, and he really talked to me about the things that I liked. And so when I talk to young people and even people that are in the middle of their career, I think the first thing you have to do is really figure out what's important to you. And for me, family was always number one. And any decision I made was always around, what impact will that have to my family? And I think from there, integrity was a big part of it. And that's not just integrity in the people you're working with, but the product you represent and the benefit you're bringing to a customer. And then I think from there, you really got to think about, can you be passionate about what you're doing? I think people who get caught up in jobs and who. They're not excited when they wake up in the morning, or they're not excited to go do what it is that they have to do for eight hours, I think that's a terrible story. You've got to go figure out how do you find that passion that aligns with the integrity of presenting something to a customer where they can get value, and that aligns back to your family? And then I think the last two pieces, which in many cases are tied to each other, but they're certainly the last two for me are, what is it. What is it that your career path can get out of this decision to go down this path? And then the last one, for me, it's money. I mean, if all those other four can be met, I don't mind being out there being paid for doing all those things. And if you're fortunate enough to find all five of those. I think that's fantastic. But I think the first step is really understanding that it's okay not to know what you want to do, but you do have to put some effort into understanding what's important to you in terms of making that decision.
- [08:54]
A
Yeah, that is great advice. I have found myself leaving companies in the past when my personal values have diverged from the values of the company. I think that's a really important aspect a lot of people get. You know, I've had friends of mine who I've known have been unhappy at jobs but have not want to leave because of the golden handcuffs. You know, they get paid a great salary or that a company that gives them a. It's tough, you know, gives them a great logo on their LinkedIn and they don't want to leave. And I think that, you know, people make their own choices, but to a degree, that's. That's sort of a sad thought to a degree to be unhappy with what you're doing every day. But I understand the constraints that people are under. You know, ever since having a child myself, I think about the same thing, like what's best for my family. And it's definitely a difficult. Adulting is a difficult thing. So it's definitely a difficult challenge. Yeah.
- [09:51]
B
Yeah, it sure is.
- [09:53]
A
So speaking of the ethical perspective and being values driven, you know, you joined Omnitza as the interim CRO and you were named the CEO within a few months of that. A challenging transition to become the head of a company so quickly. What did you do in those early weeks to earn the team's trust? And what's your advice to somebody who has to lead a team?
- [10:26]
B
Yeah.
- [10:27]
A
When the team didn't choose them as their leader.
- [10:30]
B
Yeah. Well, look, I think first, behind the scenes, right, everybody looks at when a person becomes a CEO, that it's all happiness. Right. Look, there's a phase that you have to go through. I mean, the company was founded by three people, and all three of them had a say in how we moved this forward. And so, you know, Arthur, Ramin and Trent all sat down, had the opportunity to chat with me. I had the opportunity to chat with all the board members. And, you know, truth be told, it was not an instant, hey, we're just going to throw you in the CEO role. Right. There was a period of time there where I was an interim, and I think the first thing that had to be done was to. To really gain the trust of the founders. This was their baby. And Arthur, at that point in time had made A decision he wanted to take a break. Ramin and Trent had stayed within the business, and you have to build that trust with them. Arthur was on my board. As a co founder and former CEO, that's always a level of inspection you have to be very respectful of. I had Art Coviello on the board, who's a CEO that I had worked for and someone that had invested in previous companies. And then we had some pretty fascinating people sitting on our board and investing in us. The first part of it is really earning their trust and really showing them that you've got the transparency and the integrity to lead the company. I think the second part of that, which is equally as important, is to make sure that the people in the company see you for who you really are. I've worked in organizations where we've had people that they were very fake and you could see right through them. And they were people that manipulated and misled the organization and sometimes even did things that were questionable in terms of legality and certainly questionable in terms of morality. But I also had great leaders that I could follow who knew exactly how to walk that line. And so learning from them and then coming into the business and really proving to the people that there's a degree of integrity, there's a degree of accountability, but we're also there to have success together and celebrate that success together. And I think once you get past that part of it and you really start to build the culture that you want to have inside of the company, a lot of the things that follow on, they take care of themselves. And I think, fortunately, in the first two quarters of my leadership stint here at Unitsa, I think we were able to really define some of that. And I had a great leadership team, and that team really helped to enable that path and. And really create the foundation of where we are today.
- [13:41]
A
That's lovely to have that idea of camaraderie and teamwork. You mentioned that you were on the Quinnipiac University hockey team. What, through lines are there in terms of leading an athletic team and leading a business are there through lines there are there lessons that you can take from one to the other? How did one inform the other, if in any way?
- [14:11]
B
Yeah, I think, look, I'm a big believer that sports and someone that plays sports, people walk away from that with a set of skills that definitely translate into business. Right. It's the ability to depend on each other. It's the ability to trust that someone's going to do their job. You know, when I think about the sport of hockey, I often tell people that if you're a forward, you have to trust the defense is going to do their job, but you have to also be accountable to get back and help them. And if you're a defenseman, you have to trust the goalie's going to do their job, but you have to be held accountable to get back there and help them. And then as a unit, you have to be able to move that puck up the ice and score. And I think that learning how to trust each other, how to depend on each other, but also be dependable and know that you have a job to do and build that reputation of being dependable, I think that all comes from sports, at least for me personally. But I think the big distinction is that when you go into leadership, you've made that shift from being one of the players on the ice to being one of the coaches on the bench. And you have to often realize that your role is to make sure that you're setting the guidelines and the abilities and removing all the obstacles for those people to be successful. And you have to trust that they're going to go out there and do their job. And so I think what sports taught me to a big degree is that, you know, I have to make sure that people in my organization can depend on me to do my job, but I also have to be able to delegate down to them and trust that they're going to do their job. And it's my responsibility to hold them accountable. But it's also my responsibility to make sure that we're setting the metrics and the ideals in place that allow us, as a team and as a company, to be held accountable.
- [16:12]
A
When you walk into a company and you get to shape the leadership team, what's the first quality or what's a major quality or set of characteristics that you screen for in a good leader?
- [16:26]
B
Yeah. So I think there's two ways that that happens. I've been in organizations where I've walked in and I have a team, and I want that team to be successful. And then there's times when you walk into an organization and you've got to make some replacements in that team. I think one of the, I'll say, probably most enjoyable moments in my career was when I had an opportunity to become a leader at Symantec. I had a whole team of people at that company, some really fascinating people, and some of them are fantastic leaders today at other companies. And when I came into the organization, there was a lot of question about the leadership as to the skill sets and whether or not they were the right people. And what I quickly learned walking into there is that they were an organization of leaders that were not being given the opportunity to lead. And I think the first thing that I look for in people is the confidence level they have to make decisions and to run their business and not be afraid to fail. All of us have failures. Everybody does. And, you know, I think whatever analogy you want to use, the basketball player that's got a terrible, you know, extra point shot or foul line shot, sorry, not extra point, foul line. You know, the batter that hits, you know, 300, which means, you know, only hitting one out of three hits, right? I think whatever analogy you want to use, the fact remains, people that are afraid to fail or people that have a fear of what the outcome of failure is going to be typically don't succeed. And those that have the confidence that their leadership is going to support them regardless of the direction that that goes in, and they know that they're going to have the opportunity to fail, learn from that, and then go forward and do it differently. Those are the people that are going to have success. And so for me, I immediately look for the people that have the courage to speak up, that have the courage to voice their opinion, that have the courage to have a different opinion and have the courage, quite frankly, to be wrong and know that we'll have an opportunity to go correct ourselves moving forward.
- [18:53]
A
Do you think that you are able to identify a capable leader who may not have all of those skills yet? Because I think a lot of those skills are learnable skills, right? You don't necessarily have them innately. Is it possible to identify a capable future leader who may lack some of those things?
- [19:20]
B
I believe there is. I will tell you that the first thing I do in any organization that I go into is, is I will ask people to give me an overview of their business. So a qbr, a business review, however you want to define it. And I'm always intrigued that every time that I do that, immediately I get requests for, hey, what's the format you want? What's the template you want? Do you have an agenda? And I don't respond to those. And in many cases, you know, it really frustrates people that that's going on. But the reason why I do that is because you cannot see where the gaps are in a person's ability to run their business and their leadership qualities unless you actually see them in their own element. And so if I give you a template, I don't care what your skills are If I give you a template with a set of questions, you can answer them and. And you probably can actually make it look pretty good. And in today's day and age, you could probably sit down with Claude or OpenAI and you could put probably a pretty good business case going forward. I think when you're put on the spot to present your business the way you run it, what you think is important. I think it really exposes where people have gaps and strengths. And I think in that process, often it's pretty easy to identify where people are in that maturity curve of their leadership skills. And I also think in some cases it's easy to identify where are people actually going to be able to make that leap and mature as a leader, and where are people really going to struggle. I will tell you, though, when I'm looking at new people, probably the most important question I ask somebody in the interview process is, have they ever fired somebody and what does that process look like? And I often am amazed at how many people will minimize that most critical moment in leadership where they have to tell someone that they've lost their job. Because when I think about that, I think about, you know, what kind of accountability and ownership do you take on when you have to do that? And then more importantly, what's the empathy that you have that that person has to leave your office, go home and communicate to their family that they just lost their job? And I can tell you many times I've had people in my office that when they go through the interview process, they do a fantastic job and they get to that question and they think that the right answer is to. To say, oh, I have no problem firing people if they're not doing their job, they're going to be fired. And that's just not the kind of leader that I want on my team. And so I think when you think about your question quickly, the people that demonstrate empathy, the people that demonstrate a human side, and the people that are not afraid to communicate how they run their business and do that in a way where they're confident that even if someone else's opinion is different, that they have that confidence that they're doing what's best for the business. And I think in that scenario, those are the people that mature pretty quickly in their leadership style.
- [22:49]
A
You know, your response makes me think a few things is a very thoughtful response. And the first thing that came to mind for me to ask you was, do you. Do you have any sort of reflection practice that you use? Do you ever, like, reflect on your own work Reflect on how you've done things, and if so, how does that inform your leadership style? And the reason I ask is because I have a very similar thought as you do when it comes to firing people from work, I've had to do it. I've been in the unfortunate position of having to do that more than once. And I approach the. I approach the event in a very similar way. You know, my. When I reflect on it, I put myself into the shoes of the other individual and think, okay, if I were standing on the other side of this table, I have to go home and I have to tell my wife that this happened to me today. It's going to be a real shock to my system. I. I don't know what it's going to feel like waking up tomorrow morning. It's going to feel like the whole world is over. I don't know what I'm going to do. Work is a big part of my identity, and it can be a very jarring experience. But the way that I wind up getting to that place is by reflecting on that and thinking about that very deeply. Do you have a similar sort of practice that informs your leadership style and helps you improve your leadership, or do you have a different mechanism for developing your empathy and seeing through those things?
- [24:28]
B
Yeah, so, great question. And I think an important question for anyone thinking of going into leadership. First off, the answer is yes. I maybe sometimes harp on too much thinking about these types of events. And it's not just firing. It's the way that I promote people, the way that I recognize people, the way that people get disciplined. Certainly when you think about the role that HR has as a business partner for any leader, those are certainly people that you have the opportunity to reflect with. I think about it like this. You have to have kind of a core direction. You have to be thinking about how do you want to operate as a professional and frankly, as a human being. And that can be a level of arrogance, that can be a level of conceit, that can be a level of dishonesty. You know, I've made a decision in my career that I find significant reward in watching others achieve more than they thought they could. And so I spend a lot of time reflecting when I look at people as to where do they think they are and where do I think they could be, and how do I encourage them to get there. And so for me, a lot of reflection goes into, you know, how do I drive things for the betterment of the individual and the team. I also think that from a coaching Perspective, you have to reflect on what's the message between how you are running the business and how you're coaching people to someday run that business. Because they're very different. Right. Being in a position to make decisions and run a company and also being in a position to mentor people so that they can gain that knowledge and the qualities that someday they'll mature to. Those are two different paths. And you have to sit and consciously reflect sometimes on, you know, how are you going to make sure that you're thinking about both running the business and then also mentoring the next generation that will hopefully step in and run that business after your stint.
- [26:57]
A
And that's a great segue. I am also a huge proponent in mentorship relationships. I think they are extremely undervalued and they're underutilized, and I don't think enough companies have mentoring programs. What is your view on the importance of mentorship to leadership development? Is there a mentorship program at Omitsa? But what is your general view on the importance of mentorship? Finding a mentor? And I know you have a very interesting. You have a very interesting outlook on this because you have a sort of a layered mentorship sort of approach, which I'd love to hear you talk about.
- [27:37]
B
Yeah. So first off, my career would not be where it is today if I didn't have the mentors that I have. And those mentors come in a lot of different forms. It's some of the probably best CEOs in the business, some. Some of the best friendships in IT security, you know, their customers. Look, my philosophy is this. First off, if you're a person and you haven't really thought about mentorship, you're already behind. You've got to be doing it. And I often coach people to think about it from a layered approach. And what I mean by that when I say it is that you should have a mentor that is at your level, but should not be in your company. And I say that because most of the time, you want someone that's got a similar perspective to you. But what you're going to find yourself doing 99% of the time is probably starting off with venting with that person and then getting to a point where you're actually finding growth in your current role, in your current position. I think you also need to have a mentor again outside of your company that is a level above you. And the reason for that is if you want to advance your career to that next level, it's important to get the perspective of what that person is doing. And Understanding how they go about their job so you can learn a little bit about that. You also have the ability at that point to kind of understand what are they looking for in terms of your success. And then I think it's important to have a person that's above them as well. And the reason why I think that's important is because if you want to advance your career, the likelihood is that the person you're reporting to is not going to be the person that promotes you into that role. And, you know, I used to tell people that worked for me all the time, you should be going over my head and talking to my boss if you want my job. Because chances are that if you're taking my job, I either got fired, I got promoted, I went somewhere else, I got hit by a bus. But I'm not the person that's actually hiring you. And I tell them to also think, think about how you go and speak to other executives, because 99% of the time, an executive that's making a hire into a role is going to ask other executives what their thought process is and what their perception is of that person they're thinking of hiring. For me, I've always tried to have mentors at multiple levels. The level I'm at, the level just above me, and the level above that. And then I've always tried to find somebody, and it maybe doesn't give you the same amount of time as these other mentors, but someone who was in kind of, where do I want my career to end up? For me, I was very fortunate. I had a CEO in Art Coviello who gave me a tremendous amount of time and coaching and really set the foundation for. For my leadership style and the way I think about people. You know, I think when you. When you think about where you want to go with your career, having the opportunity to sit down with someone that's in that position and learn as early as you can, be very fortunate to find that relationship. I'd say the last piece that I would coach people on from a mentoring perspective is don't go into it with half effort. You've got to be prepared that what do you want out of those relationships? What do you want to put into those relationships? And you've got to give some clarity to that person that you're asking to be a mentor so they know what that commitment is, they know what your expectations are, and they can help drive the outcomes you're looking for in terms of your coaching, your mentoring, and your career.
- [31:46]
A
I love, love, love that pro tip Of I'm not going to be the person hiring you into this job. So go to the person above me. I think it's so important for an individual at a company, an employee in any kind of company, to be empowered to do that sort of thing. It really signals something very important ethically from a values perspective, to be able to be empowered to do that, especially hearing somebody say, go above me and talk to that person. So I really applaud that. It's not something you hear every day, but it's such a. It's such a. It's such a clear, you know, tactical step. It's so important. You never really hear it described that way. So that's really, really important. On the note of speaking to the person above you, let's use that as a segue to my next question, which is on networking. And also, despite the bad rap that the terminology gets politicking within a company.
- [32:48]
B
Right.
- [32:49]
A
Company politics do exist. It is, my opinion doesn't mean necessarily that it's bad. It does get a bad rap, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad. And it's important for an individual to create developmental networks. One of those ways is by mentoring, but also through a level of healthy politics within the workplace for individuals who are coming up in their career. And there's a very common conception of networking and quote unquote, politicking as being like a dirty word. I don't do that. It's disingenuous. I don't want to do that because it's not a give and take relationship, it's a take relationship. How do you reframe that individual's perception of that and help them realize that it can be a necessary and even a beneficial activity?
- [33:43]
B
Yeah, I think first off, for me personally, there's two very distinct differences between networking and politicking. Politicking, from my perspective, is you either communicating to the detriment of somebody else or to the selfishness of your own career or outcome. Networking is the mutual benefit of you building a relationship with someone where the outcome of that relationship, the benefit of it. The pendulum is going to shift back and forth. For me, I look at networking and I base all of my networking off of one philosophy, and that is you should never have the next time that you're talking to somebody that you consider in part of your network, be an ask. Right. It should be an outreach, it should be a relationship builder. It should be something that's contributing, you know, to that relationship. I personally put a lot of effort into my networking and many times people will say to me, well, you just know so many people and you've got so many relationships. And you know, the secret is it's not easy. You know, I have a spreadsheet that I keep and every aspect that I learn about someone I put into that and I put a lot of effort into to making sure that I'm reaching out and having conversations with people on a regular basis. And I'll tell you, in going From I spent 30 years in the cybersecurity space and left that space to come to Omnitza and really get into the data trust space and the asset management space. And in doing that, I didn't have a network of CIOs, I had a great network of CISOs. I knew, I know some amazing people in that space that are just awesome, awesome friends. And I really didn't know anybody in the CIO space. And I've spent the last 18 months really building that relationship up with IT leaders and CIOs and VPs of IT. And it's really challenged me in the autumn of my career. It certainly has challenged these theories that I had about networking. And it's good to see that the things that made me successful years ago, I still remember and I'm still applying. With that said, I've built so many great friendships in these past relationships that I still put the time in to stay in touch with those people because it was genuine. It wasn't politicking, it wasn't butt kissing. It was genuine love for the people that I'm engaging with every day and working with every day and knowing how their family's doing and giving them a call when a hurricane comes in or following an earthquake or some disaster and just calling them after you see on LinkedIn that they got some great promotion or a new job. And while time is is very precious, finding that time to keep those relationships going, it's an effort and I would encourage any person who's really thinking about building their network and having a healthy network to think about it from that aspect. It's a relationship that pendulum should shift and at times that relationship will benefit you and at times that relationship should benefit that other person.
- [37:34]
A
I couldn't agree more. I've told the story again and I will not bore you with it on this call. But I've told the story before. Where a number of my jobs I have been, the door has been open to me because of relationships I've built at previous places and the power of relationships. And I've seen it as well, you know, all my siblings are entrepreneurs, my parents are entrepreneurs. And seeing their success built on top of strong relationships as the foundation has never been lost on me. And I see it time and again. And so I totally agree with you. It's so important to build those relationships. And like you said, it's not always a take. It should be, you know, it's a give and take situation. You should really be looking to give more than you take. It's much more fulfilling.
- [38:28]
B
So, yeah, I think it's most important thing when you think about that stuff. It's critical.
- [38:36]
A
Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree. You mentioned transitioning from the cybersecurity space into the asset management space. And now Oomnitsa itself as a company is shifting vision slightly into more enterprise technology management. So speaking of setting a vision and a mission and rallying the true to, you know, you mentioned earlier, you know, rallying the team to achieve a common goal. How did you get your own engineers, your salespeople, your and your customers to believe and buy into that shifting proposition? You know, for a long time, Ramin and I, one of one of the co founders, have known each other for a very long time and we finally got the opportunity to work together here at my current job. And Oomnitza has been what it is and has been building the capability of what it is for such a long time. Shifting the vision could be a challenge. How do you approach that challenge and bring people along for the journey?
- [39:46]
B
Yeah. So I think first of all,
- [39:51]
A
if
- [39:51]
B
you're believing your own hype, you, you're making a mistake. Right. I think when I came into the company, I think one of the things that, you know, our company was facing was that we, we were not listening to our customers, we were hearing our customers and we were shaping the direction of where the product needed to go. But if you go back into to 2023 and 2024 and you look at our roadmap, a lot of our roadmap was really the idea and the engineering of our company and it was not, it was not our customers. And when I came into the company, the first thing that I did was, you know, look at anytime you come into a company, you have a little bit of a level of arrogance and a little bit of a level of overconfidence. And thankfully for me, I immediately had the opportunity to sit down with a couple of CIOs and quickly realized that in the world of cybersecurity, your vision is very narrow. It's an important, narrow lane. Okay. But it's Narrow and that is that you are constantly looking at operationally active devices. And what I learned quickly is that the difference now having this position, I'll probably get killed for this statement. But the difference between a CIO and a CISO is that a CIO is looking at the entire life cycle of an asset. And there are aspects of that that they are accountable to share to the ciso. And the CISO is extremely accountable for making sure that the operationally active devices are behaving properly and are not exposing the company to risk. And then the two of them combined are really building what that financial and security and governance posture looks like for the organization. What I learned is that many products out there that are trying to communicate what the visibility of an asset looks like are challenged because they weren't designed for it. Like if you think about products that are, that their basis is a cmdb, those were systems that were designed for collection to support a ticket based application. And that ticket based application really was user initiated or event initiated. And it's very well defined what it's task is supposed to do. And what quickly happened was companies decided that, hey, not only do I have to solve this problem and address this ticket, I've got to understand the actual ecosystem of the assets and the inventory that I have across hardware, software and cloud, but the systems weren't designed for that. And so for us, listening to customers tell us that our technology was a fantastic aggregator of data, that our system actually normalizes and continuously reconciles that data and then ultimately gives you this visualization of the complete picture of an asset, an asset centric view is what we call it and does that in a way that it completes the actual picture of that asset. There was value in that. And as customers continued to tell us that our technology has the ability to give them this foundation of trust, the word that the customers were using often was this single source of truth. What we realized was that what we're finding now is that having that layer of trusted intelligent asset data is quickly becoming recognized as a critical piece to these systems that drive autonomous workflow. Or as a lot of the big players are saying now, these systems of work, these agentic AI platforms that people are building and this frontier AI model. And what we're seeing is now organizations want in some cases bypass those investments of these systems of work and these platform players and go straight into a cloud or an open API, OpenAI and write directly to an MCP server and be able to just access the data. And we're enabling that. And what we're finding right now is that organizations are looking at how they're making investments in AI adoption and they're seeing that if they've got bad data going into their AI, it doesn't fix it, it just amplifies the problem. And so it's creating a tremendous, we have a strength there and we have a uniqueness there. And these players, you know, across the board, all the big players, as they continue to build out, you know, control towers and you know, they continue to build out their agentic AI strategies and they continue to build out their ITSM platforms, they're really creating an awesome space for us to go play in because they can't do this as well as we do. And that ability to deliver this level of trust in the data to support that AI adoption and those autonomous workflows is really rolling up to be able to enable them to take that trusted data and really deliver defendable decision making capabilities to the leadership. And it's allowing us to have some of the best growth we've had as a company and, and really be a part of some tremendous success stories. And look, there's still risk out there, right? We have to continuously prove ourselves to be able to do that. And again, I'll go back to the statement of perfection. We've got customers out there where at times we're still struggling to figure out how do we aggregate all the data. But I think what any of our customers would tell you is that using our system has definitely up, leveled the trust they have in a CMDB from the 40, 50% range up into the 92 to 98% range.
- [46:40]
A
I can attest to that myself. You mentioned at the very beginning you noticed when you came in as a CEO and you started looking at the company, company's roadmaps that you were, that the roadmaps were focused on more of building, of roadmapping the company's development rather than the need of the customers. Yeah. Let me ask you this. I've always been fascinated by seeing a CEO come into a role, particularly after there's been a long time CEO in the role and making very fast but very powerful adjustments in the business. And you know, you can't have hindsight bias. You have to be cautious. You know, you have to check your biases. You can't say, well they should. Other CEO should have known. You know, the new CEO comes in and makes all these changes. Not fair to gauge somebody in that way. My question to you is what did he, what did you see different than the, let's say a former CEO or another leader would have seen or how did you approach that, that enabled you to see that vision? Is there a particular characteristic? What innate trait do you have? Is it something that you learned to look for? But you came in, you saw the direction, you made a change, you called out this very important. You know, you called up this very important, this red flag. How did you do that?
- [48:18]
B
Well, I like to tell you it's some masterful thing where I'm, you know, a sabat above other people. But I think the reality is it goes back to the comment you made before. You kind of take a step back and you reflect, right, look, I've had success in my career, if you want to call it that, because I listen to our customers and I listen to our people. And I'm smart enough to know that I don't have all the answers. And I'm confident enough to know that when I hear enough input, I can make a decision. And if that decision's wrong, we'll adjust, right? It's. It's like sailing a boat. You know, you're constantly moving that sail. You can't just lock it in and go, right. The wind's gonna shift, the boat's gonna shift, the waters are gonna shift, and you constantly, you know, you have to. You have to be really watching it, and you have to be ready to. To. To. To react. I will say this. I think some advice that I got a long time ago was that a good CEO has two of three qualities. The three qualities are that you need to understand what your product does and to a capacity where you have the ability to get. Give that sales pitch and present your capability. Every CEO that I worked for that was a fantastic CEO knew how to communicate the value of the product they represented. As a CEO, I think the second quality is to be a technologist, which means that you understand how you're building that product and how you're making that product and how that product actually works. So I understand how we're building it, how it works. I understand the value proposition it creates, and I can communicate that value proposition. The third one is to understand finance. And the person that told me this laughed and said, look, if you want to be a successful CEO, make sure you understand your product and can sell it. Make sure you understand how it's built so you can't be lied to and go hire a really good cfo. And so, for me, I'm very fortunate. I got a great cfo. I think I've proven in my career that I don't sell product to people, I partner with people, and if my product can deliver value to them, we figure out how to make that happen. And I've always had a passion around technology and tried to stay sharp on that and tried to make sure that I could always add value or at least sound credible when talking about the solutions I represent. And I think those qualities have put me in a position that when I came into this company, I could quickly articulate, where is our differentiation? Like, you know, technology companies, they sell on differentiation. I would argue all products sell on differentiation. And so understanding that differentiation, understanding whether or not it's real or not, and understanding whether it actually has value versus perceived value, those were all things that put me in a position to really push the organization to think differently about how we were approaching this and really go and enhance things like customer advisory boards and product exchanges and partnerships in development and our early access program and all these types of things. And by the way, those aren't all things that I came up with or I built, but I'd like to think that I helped create the environment that allowed people to challenge themselves, to come up with those and come up with a way that we were going to go execute them to make our customers successful.
- [52:38]
A
Do you have. You may have just answered this question with those three pieces of advice that you were given, but have you ever been given a piece of advice that remains with you to this day that informs or has had a measurable impact on your performance as a leader? Or was that it?
- [52:55]
B
Yeah. As funny as it's going to sound, don't screw this up.
- [53:03]
A
Great advice.
- [53:06]
B
Some of the best advice I ever got. No, listen, I think there were two bits of advice that I got in my career that really stick with me. One was early in my leadership maturity, I had a real problem with delegating, and I really. I wouldn't let things go. And I had a. I had a leader. Brian Nayland. At the time, he was at rsa. And I remember the call to this day, I can tell you exactly where I was sitting. And he said, the reason you're gonna fail as a leader is because you think you're the only person that can make you successful. And that really hit home because it went against everything that I learned in sports. Right. As a teammate, you win together, and you have to go back to what I said before. You have to trust that your teammates are going to do their job, and they have to be able to trust and rely on you to do yours. And yet, when I got into leadership, I wasn't doing that and I was micromanaging and I was getting involved in things that I didn't need to get involved in. That was tremendous advice and it woke me up and really changed the trajectory of my career. I think the second bit of advice I got was definitely from Art Cobiello in my career where he said, you spend too much time thinking about something before you do something and you can get paralysis from analysis and you have to be actionable. And so I think what my career has taught me is again, you've got to delegate and trust people will do their job. And you've got to encourage people to be actionable. They've got to make a decision, They've got to got to do something. And look, I remember reading the tenets of Jeff Bezos and the one that stuck with me was trust your gut. And if you've looked at all the data and it makes sense, make the decision that your gut tells you to make. And if you're wrong, adjust. Right? That's not verbatim, but basically that's what he was saying. And that's kind of how I operate. And I've been very fortunate that I've got good people around me to give good data points and I've got people I trust that I can go have a candid conversation with and I can be vulnerable and tell them where do I think we should do something and where do I have question of what we should go do and trust that that team's going to operate in a way that, that is looking out for the, for the best direction of the company.
- [56:00]
A
It's a wonderful piece of psychological safety building to be able to say if you don't have all the information, let's make a decision and if we're wrong, we'll adjust, you know, like that's it, that's. It's really powerful. Robert, in our last couple minutes together, is there anything else you'd like to share? Do you have a project you're working on? Is there another anecdote you'd like to share with us? Is there something about Omnitza? What's the next phase for the company? Is there anything else you'd like to share?
- [56:36]
B
Something I think that often gets overlooked is the relationships in the work environment. Work is such a. And work's not just your company, it's the people you work with, it's the people you call, it's the customers you're with and the community you're a part of. And I think sometimes people forget how much of a factor that is in your life. But I think, most importantly, and I hope that I live like this every day, is I tell people all the time, work's going to always be there. Your friendships, your family, your health. Those are things that if you take them for granted, ultimately they're going to impact not just your life, but they're going to impact your work. And so I think you have to constantly be looking at that balance. And for me personally, I'm very passionate about the concepts and the practice of mental health, and I think it gets overlooked a lot, and sometimes I think it has still a stigma to it. And I will tell you that I take that very seriously with my employees, in reflection for myself, with my children, my wife and family. And I would encourage people that if you don't have a process by making sure that you've got the right balance and that your mental health is intact, figure that out. Because ultimately, that will impact so many things that will really limit your ability to be successful, not just in the working world, but in your personal world as well. And so my closing thought would be that of all the things we talked about, I think having the right mindset, knowing that you're healthy and knowing that it's okay not to be okay, and how you leverage your friendships and the relationships you have, that's probably the most important thing you could hopefully take away from today.
- [58:57]
A
Well, Robert, on that note, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It's been a real education. I'm glad. I look forward to the next time we get to talk. Thank you again so much.
- [59:07]
B
Yeah, me too as well. Thank you so much.