Episode #152. AI Is Hungry: Feeding the Beast Without Burning Out the Grid, with Neil Morris, Head of IT at Redaptive

Summary

Podcast Summary: Risk Never Sleeps Podcast

Episode #152 – “AI Is Hungry: Feeding the Beast Without Burning Out the Grid” with Neil Morris, Head of IT at Redaptive
Host: Ed Gaudet
Date: December 4, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, Ed Gaudet welcomes Neil Morris, Head of IT at Redaptive, to discuss the profound impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on energy infrastructure, how organizations can adapt to new energy demands (without burning out the grid), and the importance of aligning technology with business goals—especially in the healthcare sector. Neil also shares his personal journey through the tech industry, insights on workforce disruption due to AI, thoughts on the resurgence of nuclear energy, and reflective advice for those entering IT and risk professions today.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Redaptive’s Role in Energy & Sustainability (00:37–02:28)

• Company Mission: Redaptive provides “energy as a service”—helping organizations, including industrial manufacturers and healthcare facilities, reduce energy consumption and modernize infrastructure.
  • Neil: “We provide energy, HVAC, solar lighting...allow them to reduce their energy consumption, which reduces their energy bill...in a similar way as you pay for your power bill, allowing different companies to buy infrastructure more directly related to their core business.” (00:37)
• Healthcare Sector: Hospitals and medical systems, while not Redaptive's primary vertical, are significant due to their energy intensity.

Scaling for the Future and the Rise of Energy Demands (02:37–03:46)

• Main Initiative: Scaling services to address soaring energy consumption and helping clients build more “energy independence.”
  • Neil: “If we can consume less, we put less pressure on the grid...taking our service and figuring out how we can scale that to support our customers better.” (02:37)

AI’s Impact on Energy Infrastructure (03:36–04:43)

• AI and Data Centers: Dramatic increases in energy demands from AI/data centers can strain the grid and indirectly impact Redaptive’s clients.
  • Neil: “Those large gigawatt colocation facilities...are putting additional strain on the grid, which creates risk for some of our customers. Can the grid keep up?” (03:46)

Nuclear Energy’s Reemergence (04:43–06:18)

• Small-scale Nuclear: Growing interest in small reactors and micro-nuclear production, especially for needs like data centers.
  • Neil: “Those small nuclear reactors and micro nuclear production...to power this energy greedy monster — that’s AI and large language models. I think it's definitely going to have a play over the next three to ten years.” (04:49)
• Regulatory Landscape: Some states, like Texas, are more receptive to nuclear development.

AI “Bubble” & Infrastructure Foundations (06:18–07:20)

• Comparison to Early Internet: Current infrastructure investments for AI may outpace current utilization but lay foundations for future advances.
  • Neil: “[Bezos] related it to when big telecom companies were laying down fiber in the early dotcom...a bit of a bubble...we’re laying a lot of the foundation.” (06:29)

The Unprecedented Pace of AI (07:20–08:41)

• Rapid Innovation: AI models’ capabilities are doubling in months, outstripping the pace of previous tech booms.
  • Neil: “There was an MITRE survey...talking about the capabilities of AI doubling every few months...it's completely unprecedented.” (07:30)

Societal Impact: Job Displacement & Reskilling (08:08–11:52)

• Job Market Concerns: Unlike past tech booms, AI’s disruption may not come with proportional job growth.
  • Neil: “If you can define your job algorithmically, you can probably replace it with AI...The human creativity I think is really where we'll be able to lean in.” (08:41, 09:22)
• Need to Adapt: Emphasizes using AI as a copilot for higher-order work, encouraging intentional upskilling and creative problem solving.

Navigating Overwhelm & Information Overload (11:52–12:31)

• Staying Current: The rapid pace of AI innovation can feel overwhelming, even for seasoned tech leaders.
  • Neil: “Nowadays, I'm reading constantly...it feels overwhelming to try to stay relevant across the conversation.” (11:53)

Personal Story: Career Path & Philosophies (12:31–18:13)

• Unconventional Start: Neil became a father at 16 and credits a family member for nudging him into tech.
• Diverse Experience: From early networking to VoIP, IBM, security, and leading IT in aerospace—Neil’s varied background provides bridges across industries.
  • Neil: “I'm not a finance guy or a healthcare guy or a telco guy...there are more similarities in a lot of industries than differences.” (15:26)
• Learning Across Vertical Silos: He argues that cross-industry experience broadens problem-solving capabilities.

Work Ethic & Personal Motivators (18:13–19:15)

• Passion for Problem Solving: Loves the challenge and admits to being far from a “40-hour-a-week” employee.
  • Neil: “Give me a pen, a whiteboard and a handful of geeks and let's just talk about...the biggest business problems.” (18:21)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On AI & Job Displacement:
  “If you can define your job algorithmically, you can probably replace it with AI...How do we use AI to do our jobs better...and hand off intentionally those things that are algorithmic to allow me to do things that are more creative?”
  — Neil Morris (08:41)

• On the Overwhelming Pace of Tech:
  “Nowadays, I'm reading constantly...it feels overwhelming to try to stay relevant across the conversation. So I end up almost picking a horse...”
  — Neil Morris (11:53)

• On Business Perspective in IT Careers:
  “If I was going to tell my 20-year-old self something, it would be to focus on understanding the business first...things got much easier...when I learned how to speak to HR, marketing, sales, legal, and finance.”
  — Neil Morris (19:15)

• On Industry Diversity:
  “There’s more similarities in a lot of industries than differences...I almost challenge that [narrow industry experience] because I think it limits our thinking.”
  — Neil Morris (15:26)

• On Work-Life and Learning:
  “What’s 40 hours look like? That’s vacation. That’s what 40 hours is.”
  — Ed Gaudet (18:55)

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Personal Side: Martial Arts, Teaching, and Family (20:45–26:33)

• Martial Arts School: Neil and his wife own a Kenpo/Kami Shinru Aki Jiu Jitsu school; martial arts philosophy influences his leadership approach.
• Teaching Aspirations: Enjoys teaching at the college level; envisions a future combining coaching, teaching, and leadership support.
• Family: Married for 27 years, father of four daughters, and a “girl dad.” (25:03)

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Advice for Young Professionals (28:35–31:05)

• Specialization & Impact:
  “Focus on solving a problem...become the go-to expert in that very narrow niche. AI makes generalism more accessible, but niche skills are still irreplaceable.”
  — Neil Morris (28:48)

• Business Alignment: Use deep technical knowledge to solve real business problems, ensuring you deliver tangible value.

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Music & Personal Taste (26:47–28:35)

• Eclectic Music Interests: From jazz and bebop to country, classic rock, and even Taylor Swift—demonstrating an appreciation for creativity and storytelling across genres.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:37 – Redaptive’s energy model and healthcare connections
• 02:37 – Scaling up amid growing energy and infrastructure demands
• 03:46 – AI’s effect on energy consumption and data center risk
• 04:49 – Nuclear energy’s return and micro-nuclear trends
• 06:29 – Infrastructure “bubble” and AI parallels to early Internet
• 07:30 – Exponential pace of AI advancement (MITRE survey)
• 08:41 – Job disruption, AI, and the need for creativity and reskilling
• 11:53 – Overwhelm of keeping pace with AI and tech news
• 12:42 – Neil’s origin story: early family, entry into tech
• 15:26 – Cross-industry experience and its value
• 19:15 – Importance of business acumen in tech roles
• 20:45 – Martial arts, teaching, and personal passions
• 28:48 – Advice for young professionals: specialize and solve real problems

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Episode Tone & Style

Candid, conversational, and pragmatic. Ed and Neil blend personal stories and professional insights, mixing humor and realism to explore the intersection of modern technology, business, and the evolving energy landscape.

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Summary prepared for listeners seeking insights on the impacts of AI, energy innovation, IT leadership, and career guidance in digital healthcare.

Transcript

[Neil Morris]

Foreign.

[Ed Gaudette]

Welcome to Risk Never Sleeps where we meet and get to know the people delivering patient care and protecting patient safety. I'm your host, Ed Gaudette.

Welcome to the Risk Never Sleeps podcast in which we learn about the folks that are on the front lines protecting patient safety and delivering patient care. I'm Ed Gaudette, the host of the program and today I am pleased to be joined by Neil Morris, the head of IT for Redaptive. Let's start off with sharing a little bit about your current role and your organization for listeners.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah. So head of IT for Redaptive. Redaptive is a energy and sustainability company. We refer to it as infrastructure monetization. Previously you might have heard of energy as a service, but we provide energy H vac, solar lighting, a lot of different. You have physical infrastructure elements for. You had different companies across predominantly the United States and allow them to reduce their energy consumption, which reduces their energy bill and buy those services that are important to keeping their manufacturing plant running, their hospital running. Right. Those kind of items in a similar way as you pay for your power bill, allowing different companies, you had focus buying infrastructure that is more directly related to their core business. So if you're a hospital like investing in a new CAT scan machine. Right. Instead of you worrying about the air conditioner on the roof. Right. As critical as that might be and not core to the patient results.

[Ed Gaudette]

And so sounds like you have a couple of customers in health care. A few, yeah.

[Neil Morris]

You have my role like leading it. I'm not directly, you know, chatting with all of our customers and it's certainly not one of our largest kind of verticals. A lot of what we do is more industrial manufacturing. But we certainly have had a lot of conversations of different hospitals and medical systems because like their facilities are energy dense, takes a lot of power. But all the, say, widgets that are on the building and generators, chillers, coolers, lighting. Why critical aren't the main part of their business in the same vein of making sure manufacturers can support and buy production lines, we make sure that, you know, medical facilities can buy equipment that supports their direct needs.

[Ed Gaudette]

So care delivery and patients and. Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. As you look out over the next couple years, what are some of your core initiatives for the organization really?

[Neil Morris]

It's scale. Right. So when we look at the organization and we look at what we've brought to market, we really built the energy as a service market and we're really building that infrastructure monetization market and we see you had power consumption going up across the board. Right. And we see aging. You have physical infrastructure to deliver that power. So it's more critical than ever for our customers to have more, I'll call it energy independence to a large extent. And you know, if we can consume less, we put less pressure on the grid. Right. We can have more stable outcomes. So it's really taking our service and figuring out how we can scale that to support our customers better. Right. And look at their entire portfolio of facilities and service those in a more large scale way to make even a bigger difference in how people are consuming power and how they're managing. You have the physical assets on their buildings.

[Ed Gaudette]

Have the demands of AI energy consumption affected you at all? From a strategic perspective, are you thinking about working in that area at all or applying your solutions in that area area?

[Neil Morris]

So there's certainly been some conversations about it. It's not specifically core to our target demographic because when you think of data centers, especially in the world of AI, they require a lot of energy and the building and the energy and the generation. Like that is their business versus you at healthcare or you had industrial manufacturers where most of our customers are, they are needed for their business, but they're not as core. We are impacted a little bit. Those large. You had gigawatt colocation facilities and you have plants are putting additional strain on the grid, which creates risk for some of our customers. And can the grid keep up and like how do you provide the power? And there's a lot of conversations there around data centers and AI, but not particularly direct to what Redaptive is trying to do, at least at this time.

[Ed Gaudette]

Now nuclear seems to be back in vogue. Do you see that as a path for the country?

[Neil Morris]

I do. I'm not talking about Redaptive specifically or any of those, but when I look at the military's use of nuclear reactors in the nuclear Navy and the Rickover reactor and its safety streak. Right. I don't believe there's ever been a nuclear accident like at sea. Right. With some of those types of reactors. Certainly you've had other issues, but those small nuclear reactors and those micro nuclear production for some of those data center applications I think could be a very interesting strategy. And I'm hearing a lot of different people talk about small scale nuclear reactors in one way or the other to power this energy greedy monster. That's AI and large language models. So certainly a fascinating kind of conversation and I think it's definitely going to have a play over the next three to 10 years.

[Ed Gaudette]

I think I saw Rick Perry was involved in building out a company in Texas to do that. Right.

[Neil Morris]

I don't know if I saw that one. It does not surprise me. But yeah, it's. It's all over the place. And definitely certain states are probably a little bit more regulatory friendly with that than others.

[Ed Gaudette]

Texas, that is Texas.

[Neil Morris]

I. E. And then it's. Yeah, I trying to figure out how to do that safely. Yeah, right. And all the right controls and governance around it and whether it's power and nuclear or AI itself. The whole governance risk. Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

Bring it back at scale. Like doing it at scale is so is going to be the challenge. Especially as the demand for AI and the consumption for AI continues to scale exponentially.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah, it's. I heard a conversation the was about a week ago and Jeff Bezos was talking and relating some of it to like when you had the big telecom companies were laying down fiber in the early.com and it never really got consumed at that time. And then there was a bit of a bubble in this constriction. We're seeing all this building and I do think there's a little bit of a bubble with AI. But we're laying down a lot of the foundation, whether it be large data centers and micronuclear reactors and all this physical infrastructure to support it. Like it might not all be consumed with the current AI models as we get more efficient and effective and. Yeah, exactly. Small language models. Yeah. The consumption's going to catch up at some point and I don't know if that's been five years or 10 years, but. Or three years or three years, which.

[Ed Gaudette]

Is incredible to even think about like this the pace at which you've probably been through the Internet. Boom. And yeah. So you remember that. And this is so more compressed.

[Neil Morris]

There was a. I think it was MITRE survey that's been referenced a handful of times over the last handful of months in conversations I've been in that's talking about the capabilities of AI. You had doubling every like few months. Right. And you certainly see OpenAI and anthropic and Google with Gemini and Grok and like all these models, you one up in each other it seems like every other week and like that it's completely unprecedented just the amount of adoption and advancement. And it's at the same time frightening to try to figure out how do we do it responsibly and entertaining and exciting all at the same time.

[Ed Gaudette]

So yeah, and like you said, scary because unlike the Internet, which and I haven't really done the calculus with AI yet to the positive, but Unlike the Internet, where the innovation drove growth and drove job growth.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

And there was definitely a readjustment of jobs, there's no question. But AI, that readjustment, I don't think we address it. I don't think we're really addressing what's happening right now. It's significant if you dig into the numbers.

[Neil Morris]

Oh, it is. And you see all these announcements on different job loss here, there and those kind of things. And, and certainly there's going to be some adjustment and some reskilling and like some adaption that people are going to need to do. Because if, if I tell people, if you can define your job algorithmically, you can probably like replace it with AI, which means as people in work, it's like, how do we use AI to do our jobs better? How do we really make it that copilot so we can get better results and better quality? And how do I start to hand off intentionally those things that are very algorithmic to allow me to do things that are more creative?

[Ed Gaudette]

Right.

[Neil Morris]

How do I better support customers? How do I better find people that are right market fit for us? How do I get more creative with interesting solutions? Because I don't think AI is there yet. No, I don't know if it will ever get there. But that human creativity I think is really where we'll be able to lean in. Right. And they'll certainly need hard math skills and those people to build AI itself. But if you're in accounting, right, and it's very algorithmic, it's like, okay, how do you really help the AI improve in those areas? And then how do you bring the human element to the forefront of the discussions, which is going to be some reskilling and you're certainly seeing job changes. But I'm also excited about it because I think looking at the telecom boom, looking at the Internet boom, looking at previous, looking at Ford, right, you're rolling out assembly lines and stuff, and the amount of employees that they hire now with machinery versus what they did years ago, it ends up increasing. But as you're going through it, it certainly doesn't feel. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't feel good.

[Ed Gaudette]

It doesn't feel good. It took us, I'll throw this number out 30 years to make that full transition from pre Internet to today. So you had, yeah, you had some pain, but it was, for folks that went through it, it wasn't. Doesn't feel manageable, but collectively it was probably manageable at a societal level. I wonder if it's going to be so compressed that's the problem is that I heard someone today on a webinar say the tech companies are not hiring right now, they've stopped hiring. So think about that like they were one of the big growth engines. They're not hiring. There's no new jobs in tech. And that is going to be the situation in five years, 10 years in every other sector.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah, I, that the speed of change and that ability to adapt. You think of you going through almost a grief curve of. Yeah, like you. That takes. Yeah, a grief curve.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's mind blowing.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah, it is. Trying to, and trying to do it on the timescale that that AI is enabling just because of such a rapid adoption just makes it really difficult for people to adapt and understand. And it's changing so quickly.

[Ed Gaudette]

Right.

[Neil Morris]

I think you had from telecom and dot com booms and all these previous generations. Like personally I felt I was able to stay relatively current and up to speed with everything that's coming out.

[Ed Gaudette]

Exactly.

[Neil Morris]

Nowadays, like I'm reading constantly and I always have. It's. It feels overwhelming to try to stay relevant across the conversation. Right. So I end up almost picking a horse, right. And say, okay, how do I stay really relevant with what anthropic is doing? Or how do I stay very relevant on what Google is doing? Or grok. Right. But then you see all these little news articles about what other ones are doing. It's like, oh, that's really cool. Yeah. All you have to do is sit down and wait about three weeks and then it's on the other platform. So it's like. Yeah, it feels overwhelming in some respects.

[Ed Gaudette]

It does feel overwhelming for sure. Yeah. No, I could talk all day about that topic. But let's dig into your origin story. How did you get to where you are today? What? How'd you get into this job, this role, this life?

[Neil Morris]

Yeah. So I, my, my career has taken a lot of various twists and turns. I never really thought I would be in a tech career. My wife and I got married very young and actually had a sister in law that was like I didn't know what I wanted to do after high school and grabbed me and said, hey, come through this tech program. Right. And that kind of started me off on my career because she wanted to make sure that I made a living and was able to take care of her sister.

[Ed Gaudette]

Oh wait, so you got married in high school?

[Neil Morris]

I got married just after high school. My oldest was born my sophomore year in high school.

[Ed Gaudette]

Okay, that's early.

[Neil Morris]

I was a father at 16. Right.

[Ed Gaudette]

That's early.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah. But you know what though?

[Ed Gaudette]

You're probably out of diapers now though.

[Neil Morris]

Maybe your grandkids are back. Yeah, My youngest is 20 and I got a 12 year old granddaughter.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah.

[Neil Morris]

But so that's kind of what got me into tech. Yeah. And I got in networking in the late 90s. Oh Canyon Vines or oh like X25 networking and hissy cards on the back of old Cisco 2600s when you had Novell, you have 3311 and Novell 411 were coming out and like you had active directory hadn't won the war and you could still talk SPX networking and.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah. When people thought Novell was an operating system.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

So.

[Neil Morris]

So I got into networking and like I was fortunate enough to see some of the curves with voiceover IP and really learned that and that led me into getting caught into Contact center technologies and right when I started getting into Contact Centers and learning software and, and the hardware and I really started to geek out on it at that point. Ended up working at IBM and Tata Communications and then ended up as an architect for ADT Security which alarming pre like mobile IP days all dial up kind of stuff.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah.

[Neil Morris]

Millions of signals an hour. Which was great fun. That then learned how to apply technology as a business person.

[Ed Gaudette]

Right.

[Neil Morris]

Which really then transformed it as I went to Digital Globe and Maxar and then you know, led. You had it as CIO for Ball Aerospace. They got acquired by BAE Systems and yet that led to me being at redaptive.

[Ed Gaudette]

But you're a, you're a prophet of the protocol.

[Neil Morris]

I am. And.

It'S a lot of packet pushing.

[Ed Gaudette]

A lot of packet pushing.

[Neil Morris]

Right. Just digital plumbing, all those kind of things. But just always had a fairly good knack of hey, networking voiceover IP call center. Oh now call center is starting to be used on cloud. So I was early in on aws.

[Ed Gaudette]

Oh yeah.

[Neil Morris]

Nice leveraging it and like you're now trying to really lean into AI and how can we apply it and how can we create differentiation for our companies using technologies that are really at the forefront to stay relevant across all sorts of industries. Most IBM I supported bank of America and Ford and Disney. Right. So a lot of really big logos. So I'm not a finance guy or a healthcare guy or a telco guy. Like I've been able to do all of it which just gives me a really interesting perspective. And it's funny because I just. Or cool I guess because I see a lot of relations between different industries. Yeah. Regulatory frameworks, different Governance and risk compliance kind of items. But there's more similarities in a lot of industries than differences. So people that are like, oh, you need to come from a finance background or you need to come from a healthcare background. I almost challenge that because I think it limits our thinking.

[Ed Gaudette]

Agree 100%. I've done 11 companies, all different backgrounds, all different technologies, all different.

[Neil Morris]

I ADHD probably. Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

But I need to have cha.

[Neil Morris]

I gotta be challenged.

[Ed Gaudette]

You're gonna need to learn new things. I can. My dad worked at the same company doing the same job for 40 plus years. It's like, that ain't me, babe.

[Neil Morris]

That was my father as well. He was a blue collar worker.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yes.

[Neil Morris]

From Pepsi. Pepsi Cola. Yeah. Right.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yep.

[Neil Morris]

I haven't, I've had three fairly long term stints at different companies that were all about six to seven years. Yeah. And those were pretty good runs. Yeah. I hear you seem to make it longer than that before. Looking for a new challenge, a new adventure, a new problem to solve.

[Ed Gaudette]

My, my third job, my third or fourth job into it, my, my dad reached out to me like, yeah, your mother and I are going to come up this weekend. We want to talk to you. I'm like, oh, okay. I'm like, what the hell is this all about? He sits me down. He's like, do you have a, do you have a problem with keeping a job? I'm like, what, what are you talking about? Well, we're really concerned. You don't seem to be able to keep a job. I'm like, dad, this is like, this is tech, this is the industry. This is what I'm in. It's.

[Neil Morris]

I haven't had as direct a conversation, but I up in various conversations over the years of like, oh yeah, because like I have a sister who's a wonderful teacher out in California and she's been teaching for now 20 years and her husband was in the military and then came out and he was a military police. And he became a police officer. Yeah. Long term career. Like, so my parents are sitting there like, what's wrong with Neil? Why is he like, well, why can't he keep a job? It's like, oh, that's just not really the way tech works. No.

[Ed Gaudette]

You just.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

I always say my mind's on fire. That's my response. Now it's on fire.

[Neil Morris]

But I enjoy it too. Just learning something new. New challenges. Yeah. Like I'm a problem solver. Yes. Hard.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yes.

[Neil Morris]

And tinkerer. Right. So like how do we move this business forward? Like what are its Biggest challenges. How can we solve these? Okay, how are we going to get these things fixed? And give me a pen, a whiteboard and a handful of geeks and let's just talk about what are the biggest business problems that we have. Let's figure out how to solve them and then dive into that with all the passion that there is. Then my wife will remind me also then tends to lead to a lot of hours because I've never been the 40 hour a week person either. What's that?

[Ed Gaudette]

What's 40 hours look like? That's vacation. That's what 40 hours is.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah, it's like. Yeah, eight to five. Happens twice a day. Right.

[Ed Gaudette]

That's funny. All right. I usually ask other questions about your background. So I'll ask you this first question. If you go back in time and tell your 20 year old self something, what would it be?

[Neil Morris]

Ooh, if I was going to tell my 20 year old self something, it would be to focus on understanding the business first. I got into tech really early and I did very well with it. But for the first decade until I got into my 30s probably I was about the tech and I was very leaning into that and things got much easier. And I saw a lot more career progression when I learned how to speak to HR and marketing and sales and legal and finance and started using their language and helping them apply technology to the problems they were trying to solve. If I could speed up the clock of educating myself that tech for tech isn't going to produce the results you want. Figure out the business and its biggest problems, then apply it there. I love it. That's what I would have. If I knew that 10 to 15 years earlier.

[Ed Gaudette]

That's good. I think. 160 episodes in. I think that's the first time someone said that. So that's okay. That's a good. That's a good note. I agree. It's like the things you learned throughout your career and you took a. I think similarly, once you understand the business and how the business operates, all of a sudden like you're. The possibilities become endless.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

Things work like versus the. You're no longer a cog. You're like the whole engine.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

Biologist. Yeah, I know. I love that. If you weren't doing this, what would you be doing? Which you. What do you pass? You got any other passions or.

[Neil Morris]

So I do have a. I got a handful of other passions. My wife and I own a martial arts school. Oh, right. I've done martial arts now for closer to 40 years than 35, which school?

[Ed Gaudette]

What type of martial arts?

[Neil Morris]

So it's a Kenpo school. Kenpo?

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah.

[Neil Morris]

So Kenpo school up in Firestone and we teach Kenpo and Kami Shinru Aki Jiu Jitsu, which is a fairly, I'll call it obscure kind of Jiu Jitsu. Right. If you think of like hopkido or some of those, you get a little bit more name recognition. But so that's certainly a passion.

[Ed Gaudette]

And what's the difference? What makes that unique?

[Neil Morris]

It's very similar to a hopkido or a keto kind of style. But when you say Jiu Jitsu, a lot of people nowadays think about like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and MMA and rolling on the ground. So it's more of a stand up, joint lock, small joint manipulation. Okay. Style. So I have a passion for that. But if I had to pick a different career and I've had the opportunity to do this on the side a few times and found I really enjoyed it, is I'd go into teaching. Yeah, I really enjoy teaching. I've taught at Front Range Community College. I taught at Ecotech. Right. So at that kind of junior college level or undergraduate level, I really like helping people explore ideas and those kind of things. So even when I get to do more like coaching and training at work, I find it very fulfilling. So I'd go into teaching. Right. If I had to, if I was going to do something completely different.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah, I'm doing a little bit of that now. It is rewarding. It's.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah, it's. I, I keep telling myself it'll be teaching, coaching, like executive support or something will be my down ramp when I get to that point in my career where I don't want to sit in the kind of CIO seat or leading it seat anymore and like help others be successful in that. So I'm still combining my second career.

[Ed Gaudette]

But yeah, if you could combine the two passions of Jiu Jitsu with teach like career Jiu Jitsu or something like.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah, something like that. Something like be cool. Right. There's a lot of good lessons in martial arts that you can bring into, you know, the boardroom. Right?

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah.

[Neil Morris]

Calm collective, take a breath, slow to flow.

[Ed Gaudette]

I love that.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

You could write a block piece on that. I might steal that. No, just because that's a good. That's a good. You do any writing?

[Neil Morris]

A little bit. A little bit. I've really started to be a little bit More active on LinkedIn and sharing different posts and writing a weekly article. Nice to try to help people understand and it's really about AI is what I've been focusing on. Cool. Talking about not using it for it sake, but applying it to the business. But don't just use AI, but like really align the business to what you're going to use and what problems you're going to solve. So you're not like you don't have a hammer strategy. So I don't think you should have an AI strategy. Right. You should have a AI enabled business strategy. Yeah, I like a lot of writing and focusing on kind of that from a.

[Ed Gaudette]

Is that a newsletter? You do the LinkedIn newsletter?

[Neil Morris]

I do the LinkedIn newsletter every.

[Ed Gaudette]

Check it out.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

Cool. This is the Risk Never Sleeps podcast. I have to ask you this question. What's the riskiest thing you've ever done, Neil?

[Neil Morris]

Oh, the riskiest thing I've ever done.

[Ed Gaudette]

Skydiving. Motorcycle.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

Bungee dump jumping.

[Neil Morris]

And I've never done it. Rave at 3am really like thrill seeking things. Right.

[Ed Gaudette]

You know, you a hiker, you must be a hiker. You must hike.

[Neil Morris]

I do a lot of hiking. Right. I've done an Ironman. Oh, cool. Yeah, I like show you some pictures of my wife. You had an eye in our martial arts school. Make you think that's fairly risky. Right. And in that vein, I joke you had a bit. And yeah, not doing the dishes is probably the riskiest thing because my wife has been doing martial arts for a very long time as well and she's going to make sure that I hold up my end of the bar again at home.

[Ed Gaudette]

I love that. Again, new territory for the show. That's so great. And you, how long you been married?

[Neil Morris]

So my wife and I have been together now for 32 years. Married for 27.

[Ed Gaudette]

Oh, congrats.

[Neil Morris]

As we met freshman year in high school. Incredible. It did end up getting pregnant. After that we lived apart and both finished high school and got married right after high school and now have four wonderful daughters. One granddaughter.

[Ed Gaudette]

I'm a father of three daughters.

[Neil Morris]

Okay.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah. Girl dad. Girl dad.

[Neil Morris]

That's that, that's what I tried to say the other day.

[Ed Gaudette]

I think I said something else like dad, daughter or something.

Girl dad. Yeah, I'm a girl dad.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

It's different, right?

[Neil Morris]

It is. No, I don't know anything else. No, I know exactly all my daughters and two of them are married now. I have one granddaughter. Oh, it's like when you guys choose to have children, I almost need you to try to have girls because I wouldn't know what to do with a little Boy, we.

[Ed Gaudette]

We got a grandson. Oh, six months. Yeah.

[Neil Morris]

Congratulations.

[Ed Gaudette]

It's incredible, Neil. I gotta tell you, it's incredible. And he's getting into the state of. He's got so much energy and he's only. He's not even crawling yet, but he's like.

[Neil Morris]

I could just see it.

[Ed Gaudette]

Oh, boy.

[Neil Morris]

Oh, no. This is gonna be fun to watch them go.

[Ed Gaudette]

This is good. Yard on the back and the legs. Yeah, no, it's already started. My wife is. God bless her soul. She's. She's. She's the built in daycare. So what? She'd kill me for saying so. Don't listen to this web. This podcast, honey.

I'm glad she doesn't know jujitsu or.

Because I definitely would be in trouble. I'd be on the floor. Yeah. Anyway. All right, well, that's cool. Let's see. You're on a desert island. We could bring five records albums with you. This is. What kind of music are you into? What would you bring?

[Neil Morris]

Ooh, what would I bring? I have massively eclectic taste.

[Ed Gaudette]

Me too. This would be fun.

[Neil Morris]

High school, Right. I played trombone in the jazz band and really got an appreciation for Dizzy Gillespie, Polonius, Monk, Lynn Miller.

[Ed Gaudette]

Nice.

[Neil Morris]

Like, you know, that kind of.

[Ed Gaudette]

Yeah.

[Neil Morris]

Big band. Right. Kind of music and just that. Did you like bebop?

[Ed Gaudette]

Do you like any bebop or.

[Neil Morris]

I do like bebop. I like blues. Yeah. Growing up in Fresno, you got a lot of kind of cowboys, 90s country as well.

[Ed Gaudette]

Right.

[Neil Morris]

Probably a lot of haters there as well. Right. That's. That can be polarizing. I like a lot of, like, classic rock. So you think I like AC dc? Those could be in there. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of Swifties out there. I wouldn't necessarily count myself as a Swifty, but I like a lot of Taylor Swift kind of music. Right. She produces a lot of it.

[Ed Gaudette]

Her recent album's been great. Like, she's really coming into. She's a great writer, lyricist.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah. Incredible musician, which I think is where I have just like very eclectic taste because, like the improv skills of jazz and just that kind of evolution of music is wonderful to watch. Listening to her music and kind of. It evolve in the writing and the storytelling is amazing.

[Ed Gaudette]

Okay. If we're at Red Rocks, are we together seeing this band?

[Neil Morris]

Oh, it absolutely could be. Yes.

[Ed Gaudette]

Oh, nice. Okay, cool. Which is a jazz band.

[Neil Morris]

Really?

[Ed Gaudette]

They're really like a jazz band with guitars and drums and bass and.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

That's what makes them so special.

[Neil Morris]

Absolutely. So yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

Oh, cool, Cool. All right, last question. If you could give advice to a new graduate coming in that wants to break into tech, high tech, IT and or healthcare, what would you say to.

[Neil Morris]

Him or her focus on solving a problem? And I think of. And I spent a couple years going through like a. A PhD program in organizational and behavior management. Never finished. I'll go back and finish my PhD at some point. Right. But as a research degree. Right. And you start thinking about dissertation, it's like, how do you become the seminal expert in one very specific thing? Right. And you see a lot of different experts in different areas. And the people that I see making the most impact are taking that same kind of laser focus on being that. That expert in solving one very specific problem. So very much looking at what that niche is. So if you're coming into like an organization as a technologist, as a person, Right. You figure out whether it's a technology that you're going to learn really well. Right. It could be cloud, which is a little bit more general. Right. But like, you think of like infrastructure as code for AWS or Azure or like Kubernetes. Right. Itself could be a very.

Full career just trying to master it and all the networking overlays and those kind of items. Or CICD or. But pick one, right. Because I think you'll get a lot further faster in helping the business solve problems than being a generalist and like tying that back to some of the AI conversations. When you think of the access to information and those kind of items, I think AI is providing a lot of capability for people to be very good generalists, but it won't help with those very special niche skills. So advice would be go deep, pick something you're passionate about and stick with it for a couple years. You might choose to move on, but pick something to stick with for a few years and become the go to expert in that very narrow niche. Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

Use that as a building block. Yeah. And use it as a building by. Solve real business problems like you said, and understand how the business operates so you can solve those real business problems.

[Neil Morris]

Yeah. Take that deep knowledge, apply it to something that adds business value and become the go to person in that niche. Yeah.

[Ed Gaudette]

Excellent. Great advice. We're here with Neil Morris. This is Ed Gaudette from the Risk Never Sleeps podcast. If you're on the front lines protecting patient safety and delivering patient care, remember to stay vigilant because Risk never sleeps. Foreign.

Thanks for listening to Risk Never Sleeps for the show, notes, resources and more information and how to transform the protection of patient safety. Visit [e-mail] that's C-E N S I N E T dot com. I'm your host, Ed Gaudet. And until next time, stay vigilant, because risk never sleeps.