Inside the Internet's Hidden Backbone | Joe Minarik, COO DataBank (Podcast 408)

There's never usually a right answer to get to the solution of a problem. There's many ways to get to that solution. And you're always trying to figure out what's the most optimal, what's the cost effective, what's going to be the best speed. But if you're all thinking the same way, you're all going to come up with the same idea. And where diversity really comes into play is these people with these different backgrounds, different exposures, different influences in their lives will see that problem and they'll come from a total, totally different direction. And it opens up a perspective that you would never have thought of. And so it gives you information. So as, as a leader of the organization, I want those differing pieces of information because you know what, there's probably something there that's the best way to do it. But this idea over here had another piece and I can combine those and suddenly we come up with even better solution overall.

All right, our guest today is Databank CEO Joe Maneric. As the coo, Joe's responsible for all of the data center and colocation, operations, engineering, construction, managed services, network and security and IT operations. Prior to joining Databank, Monarik held senior IT positions at companies like Amazon, Disney and Napster. He runs over 700 of the 900 people inside a databank's organization today. He's been there for around three years. Brings in a great amount of leadership wisdom around. How do you actually become kind of that technical person, start learning the business and then continue in your kind of trajectory and leadership to actually become a great leader of people, really believes around people, around culture, around picking priorities. Learn a lot inside of this episode. We'll see on the inside. You can also watch this episode on our Second Command podcast YouTube channel. So, Joe, welcome to the Second in Command podcast.

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Yeah, looking forward to chatting with you. You're one of the very first people that I've had on the podcast who are based in Seattle. I had a woman, Anna, whose last name is escaping me right now. She was the former president of Amazon prime and she went on to work with bulletproof coffee, and she was one of the very first that we've had. But Seattle is one of my old stomping grounds. A great city.

It's a lovely city. Yeah, lots changed since the pandemic. But yeah, it's, it's been great.

Yeah, you've been, you've been there for 20 years with, you know, on and off, but not with Databank the whole time. But you've been in Seattle for 20 years. What's the culture of running a business in that market been like over the last 20 years? When you're dealing with Amazon right in the middle of it all, Microsoft kind of right in the middle of it all, and then everybody else coming. But what's it like when you're in that market competing for talent?

Talent's always tough. Competing in this general market. Even when I was at Amazon, you're always competing with Microsoft. Google, Meta have built up strong offices in the area. You know, it has become a mini Silicon Valley in a lot of aspects for that with all the tech talent and growth that's happened all around us. So, yeah, it's pretty competitive, pretty competitive overall.

You know, I remember back in the 90s and 80s, they had something called predatory pricing where they prevented, you know, the government was, which I don't love, but the government put laws in place to prevent the big companies from coming in and buying up market share by lowering their prices and buying up all the customers. Now it's almost like predatory hiring where the big companies have just got so much money and they'll, you know, 150 grand for an executive assistant, where you're like, wait, it's only a $50,000 job. How do you compete against something like that? Is it culture, is it vision? What do you do to compete? Or do you just have to throw money at it as well?

The hyperscalers definitely kind of set some of the thresholds and can throw money at people. That's something they have to combat. When you're a smaller company, databank isn't that small, but it's a smaller company overall compared to a hyperscaler. There is a lot to be said about the culture, the people you're working with, and the innovation that's happening at the smaller customers and the customers you get to deal with. So when you're dealing with a hyperscaler, you're a small cog and a big machine. And so your exposure to those various pieces becomes much more limited across. And you know, they have their cultures have high expectations in what they can have access to and what they can drive to. Whereas, you know, with Data bank, you know, a lot of it is about our culture and people. And you know, when our employee surveys, we, the employees love the people they work with. It's what keeps them there, it's what drives them. And the impact they have to the business. Their ability to feel needed and wanted and make those impacts across the board is important to them. The relationships they're able to build and how we're able to service. Those needs all become very important and it drives a lot. People aren't always fully money driven. We've had a lot of people go, oh, I can get a bigger paycheck. And they leave on the door taking that pay cut and coming back because they're like just, I didn't have fun. It wasn't rewarding. It did like, you know, I wanted to go shoot myself in the head after a while. Right. It's like, and I always tell people that the grass isn't always greener, it's just a different shade of brown. Everybody has problems and issues at their company. They may have solved something that's a problem for us, but they're going to have a different problem and you're not may not like it. And if you don't enjoy the people you're working with and solving those problems and taking those companies to where they need to be, it's no fun. And you're gonna. And it's gonna burn you out.

I love what you talked about, you know, when you're with some of these bigger companies and by the way, I've never heard the term hyperscale before. I've heard of hyper growth, but it's true. It really is hyperscaling. When there's these huge organizations in 25 years growing to what they are today, it's a whole different level of growth. But you talked about you're just kind of a cog in the machine, which is so true. How do you sell against that cog in a machine when it's in the job posting? You know, the initial. I understand when you've got them in front of you and you've got them in the interview process, but how do you start to attract in the right talent when they're still a little bit enamored with that brand or their package? Is it something you put in the job posting, the marketing and recruiting, or do you just wait for the candidates that come in and sell them then?

Yeah, it's a little both. You know, you really need to be able to talk to people to help them understand. You can put it a lot down in writing and people won't grok what the real impact is or what the real scope of work is going to entail. You know, you can say, hey, I need a data center engineer that's going to work in data centers and it'll sound exactly like the same kind of thing, you know, a hyperscaler is looking for. And then they're going to be like, well what's the difference right? And, and so a lot of it is that people and cult, the types of products we're working on, the growth that the company is experiencing and Databank itself isn't, like I said, it's not a small company. We have the largest geographic footprint in the US from a number of data centers that we have over 70 sites in 27 markets. So with that advent, it gives people the ability to understand differentials and nuances that happen through there and how to, how to manage and build that stuff. So a lot of it is we kind of, you know, you tout some of that in it, come join our culture but we have a reputation. Industry people talk, all people talk across industry. So they understand it, they learn it, they hear it and so it piques their interest to talk to us. And that's why culture is so important and our people are so important to us because it matters out there when you're trying to hire or you're trying to grow your team.

Yeah, it's so true that people do talk as well. I want to ask a little bit about that. Let's, let's back up and just tell us a little bit about what Databank is, what the company is, what size, kind of give us some of that, you mentioned the largest geographic footprints in the US Give us some of the scope and size and explain what Databank is and does. And then I want to go back into kind of your career and how you got into the COO role that you're in today.

So Databank is a data center provider. So we lease and rent space to various companies across the board. Anything from a single cabinet where, you know, it's a small mom and pop shop, just needs a few servers in a cabinet to run their business to mid sized companies to enterprises, you know, we've got banks and other larger companies that are part of, you know, utilize us all the way up into the hyperscalers which are the Amazons and Google's Oracles of the world are all customer base and we serve that need across that niche of all of them. They all have very differing requirements and differing aspects. You know, a lot of people in this industry that are data center providers will try to serve a niche. They predominantly go after the hyperscalers because they're taking down large amounts of capacity typically at wholesale rates and scale through that because there's just such demand there. Our sweet spot is that because of our geographic location we can serve more to the edge and we serve those Needs across a lot of the industry and particularly into the enterprises which don't have, you know, they don't have a lot of choices and a lot of different providers going after that market because they're chasing the hyperscalers and the big deal, you know, where the enterprises want 2 to 6 megawatts of capacity to build out, hyperscalers want 40 megawatts, 60 megawatts, 200 megawatts of space. So people go chase that big, that big number. And so our ability to serve through those different customer types is, is kind of, I think, a big win for us. You know, we are, what do we add about 900 plus people today across the company around there. And so, and it's continuing to grow. You know, we serve a few hundred megawatts today and we're around a path to continue to double and triple the size of the business over the upcoming foreseeable future in our plans. A lot of that's power and capacity and land that we've already secured and just building it out and continue to grow.

Can I, I want to ask about the, the size and the complexity of running it in a second. But I wanted to understand something just from a complete layman's perspective. I don't understand this at all. Why does it matter? Or does it matter about the geographic. Is that just the ability to go and sell a client or is there some benefit tech wise, where a company that happens to be based in Dallas wants a data center that's in or around Dallas?

There's a few pieces on that. There's a technical aspect which is to do with latency, latency and connectivity. So you gotta remember most of the companies that are serving are trying to serve back into the consumer markets. And so they want to be close to the population zones of those consumer market so that they can serve the data effective, efficiently and fast, right? And so think about it. Everybody's connected today. Everybody's got electronic devices, you know, we're, we're talking over zoom, right? Everybody's got an Apple watch, iPads, cell phones, everything's interconnected. Even got smart freaking refrigerators and washing machines these days, right? All of that data needs to interconnect back to applications and hubs to make it worthwhile and utilize that stuff effectively and efficiently. Even your connected cars today, driving down the road with that, you know, the businesses want to get to that data fast because latency matters. You don't like to sit there and wait on your phone or something to load or if videos got, you know, jitter and stuff happening and, and messing up. You want it to be quick, so they want to be close. The second aspect is a lot of these businesses, they got to maintain those servers themselves. So they'll put them in a data center and they're like, I need to send a tech over there to maintain it. And they don't want to be in a really remote location and just hire one or two people over in that remote location to drive over there and touch and feel it. Right? They want to see it, they want to, we can, you know, I, we called them server huggers in the past, right? Like, oh, I got to go see my stuff. I got to see and feel. And now you can work remotely and you can manage that through that aspect. Depending on your business and what you need, you can use remote hands in a data center to manage that, which, you know, services we offer. But, but a lot of people want to touch and feel it themselves and they want to be able to say that they control how that hardware is set up, what they're doing. You know, hard drives fail, memory fails. This box needs to be replaced. You're going to add new boxes for growth. You know, they want to be able to be there. So it's going to be again in those population zones and typically close, especially in the enterprise world, close to the companies that are building it, managing it.

And then do you own the hardware and lease it to them? Do they own the hardware and put it into the data center? Does it work?

Technically in the data center environment, they'll buy their own hardw where they're basically leasing space and power from us. You know, we'll build out an entire room for them, a whole building for them, or down to a small rack. Well, it's got a locking door or a cage where they'll have, you know, a mesh cage around it with locks and that are, you know, both access through multi, you know, multi factor authentication. What they'll do, they'll have their own badges, they'll have their own access. We will deny access to anyone else. They have, you know, secured access into the facility so we, they can put their gear in there and feel comfortable about it, but it's managed through that. And then we control the power and the cooling because all of these servers generate heat. And so we have to ensure that, you know, the, the air conditioning basically on layman's terms is working properly. So think about it. We're renting out a big refrigerator and we have to keep all the goods inside at the right temperature to make sure they work properly. So you know that it gets very complex when you have different customers with different requirements and different equipment in there. You'll have heat spots in different areas of the data center and have to be cooled differently and how it's laid out and what that capacity is and how it's managed and different power draws that you got to manage through. And then if there's always something always breaks, something always fit, so you got to manage that, that power goes out over here. How has it failed over properly? Have you built the right redundancy through the whole system to manage it? You know utilities go out, right? You know, people go home and turn on the air conditioners after work and suddenly there's a power outage going across the board, right? Because the grids can't handle it today. So you know, our data center's got to be able to generators and do that so no equipment goes offline. And so it becomes a pretty complex system to be able to manage that power and cooling on those availability aspects and you know, to meet all the customers requirements around that.

What are the 900 people doing inside a data bank? How would you kind of split that up between like sales, marketing, ops, tech, what's the, what's kind of lay of the land in terms of the people.

So a little over 700 of those people are in my organization which is maintaining and managing the data centers. Everything from the engineering and design to the construction to the operation of those facilities, to the maintenance of all the gear and equipment, to bringing on what we call service delivery. When a customer places an order and they're like, hey, I need a cage this size, we go build the cage, we spec out the power, they're going to need how many whips which are basically the plugs they're going to plug into, manage all that build out for them. So that entire piece of the organization and security, right? So we look at, you know, all of security requirements, you know, we, we set up those pieces. That's, that's the majority of the organization. We have another organization that is called Managed Services where we offer kind of somewhat of a cloud cert offering much like, you know, you know the Microsoft Google aspects out there. But it's more customized to kind of the enterprises because they need stuff that's a little more specific to them. So we can do a lot more of that customization and support for those organizations in building stuff out and managing that equipment for them. So in that aspect we will manage some of this, some servers and things where they just keep Totally hands off. And they're just pumping their applications into it. And then the rest of the company is kind of our finance, marketing, sales, hr, kind of pieces of the business. So it's much smaller or portion overall.

Now, when you're the COO of a company of this size, 900 people, you've been there for a little over two and a half years. We'll talk a little bit more what you do day to day in a second. But what was your kind of verbal resume like? How did you get here? What were some of the things that you did along the way that gave you, I guess, the skills and the confidence and the connections to get into a role like this and to excel in a role like what you're in?

Yeah, you know, I started kind of on the operations side. So way back in the day there was this company called Sun Microsystems and they came out with these Unix machines. So basically everything was Windows back in the day, predominantly, I mean, Mac was there, but predominantly Windows based. And when Unix and Linux started to come out, I started to learn and be a system administrator. So it was kind of understanding how to set those machines up, manage the operating system, doing adjustments in the OS itself on the kernel architectures and the CPUs and, and kind of optimizing those for the best performance you could get. As the advent of the web started to take off in the mid-90s. Right. So that's where it became really, really important. As you're running, you know, back in the day, you're running these, you know, web services on them. So the HTTP daemon that was running, which was a process on there, you wanted to optimize the machine so that their website wouldn't go down. And so I kind of learned about the systems and then they have to be interconnected on the network. So I had to learn a lot about the network and became a network engineer on the same point. What that did is I worked through all of these technical aspects. It gave me a really keen understanding of how to operate a site, how to manage a site. You know, we started having to manage data centers at that time. Used to be back then, you know, data centers weren't really a big building that you went into. They were a room in a closet or a chilled room that somebody built inside part of their office building. You'd have a side room and then.

So we had, with the argon gas that you had 30 seconds to get out of the room before you died, right?

Yeah, it took a while for them, like, oh, there's a Fire. You hit the button and all this cloud comes in. And then you realize people suffocate. So you got to keep them out, but you can't. Water's bad. Like, you don't want a bunch of water on electrical. All right, so they had other things, but yeah, it was crazy times. And so I learned a lot about managing those aspects. And then with the advent of the web and businesses are built around their web infrastructure and their product, the infrastructure to maintain that came a core piece of the business. And so it forced me to actually learn the business and the business model and what the revenue was and how the costs associated with the revenue was basically driven off the stuff I was running on the back end. And so it kind of merged into both a technical acumen and a business acumen that I had to understand as we.

I was wondering where that started. Keep going.

Yeah. So as I was building out data centers, gear, and we're doing network, I had to get Internet, so I had to start learning contracts. I had to start negotiating business deals. And I had to understand what the business drivers were that we needed in order to negotiate the right contracts as well as the technical specifications to understand that they were delivering to what we needed as well. Right. And so that merge of that thought and how that started to happen, you know, back in the, you know, mid to late 90s, really helped kind of progress my career as I started to move up into managing people, managing sites, building organizations, because I could, I could key our focus onto the right technical things, but also do it in a way where I understood the business. So, you know, we'd have to make trade offs. You have to make trade offs in what I was going to give up. And I'd weigh some of the technical requirements against some of the business drivers. No business has unlimited money. Even with all the money you see out there from Apple or billions in the bank account, it's still not unlimited. And so they have to be cautious in how much they're dumping cash into things to be able to manage it. Otherwise, it just turns them upside down. And if you don't have the right technical aspects, then it starts failing and goes out and your business goes under as well. So you have to manage that dynamic all the time. And I think that's been a key aspect of what's made me successful in my career. I like it.

It was interesting just to kind of hear some of the growth of that. So I was curious when you moved from tech into business and then from business, even into leadership, the technical side of the business has changed drastically. Right. Like everything that you learned 30 years ago, it's like you're talking Greek to someone, right? That part has changed. Has leadership changed? Have the kind of fundamentals of business changed? And where have they changed?

Off the top of my head, my, my quick gut, gut reaction is leadership is still the same in a lot of aspects in what you're trying to help people understand about the business, helping get them excited about solving problems and where they want to go with both their careers and the business itself. So, you know, leadership in driving those things is, is the same. Where it's different is in our approach, culture and dynamics of things that are available to us today. So overall, you know, the, the dynamics of culture across both the industry and people as a whole has changed a bunch. We're not the same or think about things the same way we did 20 years ago. The advent of diversity and equity inclusion is, is much more predominant today. You know, and so your aspects of leadership forcing you to think about those things because they matter to people. It matters to us and how we kind of scale up and what we bring to people to the table to bring that talent in and how we manage it overall in our culture. So those aspects are still dynamically changing. And so you have to learn and grow and understand that to be able to keep your workforce motivated. Right.

Can I speak or ask a question about that? Because I, I haven't worked inside of a big company in 20 years. I left 1-800-got junk where we had 3,000 employees 17 years ago. I'm curious around the whole DEI, the diversity, equity and inclusion. There's that old saying of. And it's completely unrelated, but those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind. How much do you balance the diversity equity of inclusion and then how do you balance that with like, the needs of the business as well? What's the. How do you do that? Because it feels like a real strong leadership skill that leaders need to get good at. And I don't think that any of the baby boomers are naturally inclined that way or think that way. Gen X, possibly not either. How have you learned it? How did you adapt with it and how do you balance it?

I've learned over time. I mean, I grew up in a small farm community in Michigan. Right.

So you got all the core values intact.

That's good, hard, get up early, all that crap. But you know, my experience.

But there's also, I think small town is also. We care about humans. Like there's a connection with people that matters.

There is definitely is. You know, you helped your neighbors out all the time. You worked. You know, we bartered for stuff. We do go work for them and, you know, they'd have some cattle and they'd give us some beef and trade. You know, it was unheard of for a neighbor to call us up and say, oh, hey, my pickup broke down. Can you, can you take me to the store? Oh, yeah, sure. Like, that was never a problem. Like, you were, you were open. We would, you know, I remember getting in as a kid in a pickup with my grandfather, and we, we'd drive from farm to farm, just keep pulling the driveway just to go talk to him and, and, you know, just show up unexpected, unannounced. Right. And you don't see that in the cities. You don't see people just kind of randomly going over to someone's house. You call first, you have to make an appointment, right? Hey, let's make a plan. And it was just a different way of doing things in a community. And, you know, we'd have picnics and gatherings and, and, and, you know, hey, we're gonna have a pig roast this weekend. And all the neighbors would come over and we'd just hang out and just, you know, and, and neighbors for us were 10 miles away. Right. So open. But it was, it was very interesting, very interesting times. And so, you know, but it did help me think about people and in people first. That's, that's a good point. It really, you know, connected that dot myself in my head. But as, as, as the culture kind of shifts and you get out there, you have to talk to people and understand their concerns in order to address it. So when you asked about kind of the diversity, inclusion and how does that impact today? You know, the thing I've learned over the years is that different experiences for people will help them think about situations and problems differently. And so there's, there's never usually a right answer to get to the solution of a problem. There's many ways to get to that solution. And you're always trying to figure out what's the most optimal, what's the cost effective, what's going to be the best speed. But if you're all thinking the same way, you're all going to come up with the same idea. And where diversity really comes into play is these people with these different backgrounds, different exposures, different influences in their lives will see that problem and they'll come from a. A totally different direction. And it opens up a perspective that you would never have thought of. And so it gives you information. So as. As a leader of the organization, I want those differing pieces of information because you know what, there's probably something there that's the best way to do it. But this idea over here had another piece and I can combine those and suddenly we come up with even better solution overall.

So it's like the return. The return on investment of time and caring for DEI pays off in better ideas and better connection to the group. Less group think.

Yes. Yep.

Makes sense. All right. You came into this organization with, again, the strong tech background, the strong kind of business background, the strong leadership background. But you started in the company at Data bank, right in the middle of COVID or. Or towards the beginning of COVID I guess. Right.

Like towards the end. But yeah.

Okay, so what was that like coming into an organization at that time and what were your first 90 days like? You know, there's a lot of talk around what the leaders first 90 days should be like coming. It was. It was already. How many employees at that time?

Yeah, it was still quite a few hundred. I mean, we didn't. Haven't grown that much. Seven hundred and something.

So what was it like coming into an organization of that size during COVID When you're coming in on top of a lot of the current people, how do you do that and what was it like doing it in the COVID era?

It was tough. I was on a plane a bunch. It really makes a difference to go meet and sit face to face with people. You can do it over zoom. You can do it. You know, we can have this conversation, but, you know, there's a lot more to be said about me sitting across the table from you. In real life, you know, conversations can take different directions. We're not limited on time. You can read body language a lot better as you manage through that. And so you can really build a personal interconnection. So getting on a plane and meeting with a lot of the people was helpful. Extremely helpful. A lot of zoom calls were for those that I couldn't meet across the board. Again, this is something that always was a mantra of mine at Amazon. People, new people would come in and they would immediately go, oh, that sucks. That's a problem. We need to go fix that. And they'd start marching to go do something like that. In a very specific technical term, they're right. Whatever they're approaching was dumb or sucked or not good. But there was a reason it was that way. And you have to understand the reason that Drove that outcome. Because whatever that outcome was being operated today was right for the time that decision was made. It may no longer be right, but there's underpinnings that cause that. And so you have to dig in and go, well, why are we doing it that way? And so learn the whys. You're like, oh, oh, wow, okay, I can see why you're doing it that way. Oh, crap, you're right. I don't have a solution now because it's you. Once I try to solve it, then this other piece pops up and it's a problem. Now you might go, oh, this is where that different perspective comes in. Ah, but maybe if we did it this way, it would solve for those. Okay, we're open to that. I had to take that same mentality going into Data Bank. I don't know why they were doing some of this stuff their way. I really had to sit and listen. I had to sit and understand why they were doing things the way they were doing things. They had done a lot of acquisitions. They were in the middle of, you know, closing up a big acquisition for a number of sites. Their systems were kind of, you know, still being integrated. So there's a lot of problems and things weren't working right as they were trying to get the data there. And people were frustrated and so. But understanding those pieces and then being a perspective of how we can get through it, like it's okay, like it is what it is today, we're going to make it better. How can we make it better? So viewing all of those pieces, understanding where the sore points were, but then really talking to the individuals, because the guys on the ground, they know where the problems are. They, they live and breathe them every day. As an executive, you can come in and you can see a problem, you know, that a process or an end result's got an issue. But that underpinning that the GU on the ground knows. You don't know.

Yeah, you don't at all.

Yeah. Gotta make sure you make the right decision to help the person on the ground, because that's immediately how it's going to go up. So my first 90 days was really a lot about absorbing a lot of that information.

How, how did you absorb that and how did you get to know people? Was it just a lot of meetings over zoom and a lot of talking or what was your first kind of specifically in the first 30, 60 did you do?

So it was a lot of talking, a lot of meeting with people, a lot of reading what documents they had, asking a Lot of questions, right? One of the things I learned at Amazon that kind of drove home is being data driven and really figuring out and learning things from data, from data points. And so I would start asking the teams, well, show me this, show me this data. Help me understand this piece of data and find out the teams didn't have that. Okay, well, can you go get it? So they would go get it and then they'd be grumpy because they had to do a lot of work to go get this data that they didn't have to do, do before. Okay, well, then how to build a process. So that makes it easier for you. But by the way, the data you get just told me, here's what it shows me. And they'd be like, well, yeah, you're right, that's. That's broken and here's why. And I can see the data on it. I'm like, great, so this is a focus point that we need to fix, right? And then they suddenly would have clarity on how to manage into these problems. So. And then it would uncover something else. And so it was this compounding effect that we could start digging into it. And then, you know, I had to start really learning the business side of it, too. Sitting down with Raul and the other business leaders of what was driving them. Where were we going so that I could make sure from the priority of the things that we had to fix, I was impacting the business in the right way. Because some of the things we had to fix, ah, we can live with that. Like, we don't have to fix it. Yeah, it's a pain. But now I gotta help the people understand that, like, well, I'm not fixing your problem or why it's a lower priority. So then I would say, well, here's my top 10 priorities in what we're doing. And suddenly when people understand, I'm like, well, do you think yours is more important than in these 10? And help me understand why. Now, sometimes somebody would come out of the blue with something. You're like, oh, man, you're right. We're going to readjust our priorities, right? But for the most part, people are like, oh, no, those are the right things. That's where I want to go. I can understand it. Or if they disagreed, you could have a conversation about why those were your top 10 and help them understand the business impact. And then they would kind of come back and go, oh, that makes more sense now I understand. So it's building this visibility into all the moving pieces so that we could set the Right. Priorities and directions. So, you know, my first 96 months was really understanding those and then setting up what our goals were going to be based on that. You know, a lot of direction came from Raul. He's like, oh, hey, here's where I think our top priorities are. Boom, boom, boom. I'm like, okay, you know, and they made sense at the time. And, and with the information he had, and as I dig into it, I would say like, hey, we've got to change a couple of these. We're going to add some more or give him information that he's suddenly going, huh, I'm going to re. Change our priorities. Joe, here's what you're going to focus on now. But, you know, it's allowing me to get that information and actually pass that information along to be able to make all those decisions and start driving how we were thinking about the business and where we're putting that focus.

Yeah. And it makes sense from a logic perspective and kind of the background that you had, that you have the intellect and the capability to make the decisions. I remember in the movie Tops, now this is going back three decades, but there was a. The head military cadet at a school was Timothy Hutton. And his father, kind of this general from the outside came in in one of the scenes and he said to, you know, the head of all the students, Timothy, he said, you know, the, the other students, the other cadets will respect your title, but they need to respect the man, they need to respect the person. How did you gain the respect of the people coming in? Because they all respected. Okay, you know, here we go. We got, Joe's coming in, he's coo. So they all are going to respect the COO title. But how did you get, get them to respect you like you connect with you in the first, you know, how many weeks, months it takes.

That's a good question. Probably better question to ask those people.

Right.

You know, I can, I can, I can guess at it. And it's one, listening, listening to them and understanding where their issues were and two, actually delivering and solving some of the issues that were impacting them. Them. Right. Showing, you know, people earn your trust is earned. It's, it's never just given. Right. And they had to learn to be able to trust that I was going to do the right thing for them. You know, I'll, I'll, I'll give you kind of an example. Amazon's culture is, can be pretty harsh. There's a high demand for people to work a lot and, and people were afraid that I was coming in as a, you know, almost 17 years at Amazon with that culture and going to drive them to the ground. Right. They're worried I was going to be harsh on them. And through that, Amazon's culture is to constantly raise the bar on your talent. So you are evaluating and letting go your bottom percentage every year. Right. And trying to bring in higher talent and to it. So it gets kind of a little bit cutthroat. You're worried about your job a lot. And so, you know, people were really fearful that I was going to do that to this organization. And then I came in and said, you know what? I don't like our review process. I want to change our review process now. They already had this fear and suddenly I'm coming in and telling them their rating systems and how they're rated and viewed is going to change. Man, I almost had a mutiny. They were not happy. Right. And it took a lot of time talking to them, listening to them and understanding their concerns for me to be able to address them. And then going through the review cycle a couple times to show that wasn't the thought. My goal is to make people better. And if you don't have the right bar and people are just kind of coasting along, they're not going to make themselves better. You got to challenge them. And look, and in any organization, in any number of people, you're going to have people that aren't right for the job for whatever reason. They might not just understand it might not be good enough. Might be a personality, a cultural fit. There's always something. But I want to give them the chance. And so when we go through the review process, I want you to tell me what's the issue? Why would you rate them low and do you have the bar? Right. Because not everybody is awesome. If everybody's awesome, then, then who's your best, most awesomest person and who's your worst? Like, you know, we'll change the terminology if I have to, but. But you're going to look at this, these people and some are going to need help. And so those that need help that you kind of put towards the bottom, is it training? Do we, do we have to work with them more? Do they have a different style that's just not conducive? And how do we adjust to manage to that style, really understand it and give them the opportunity to go through it, give them the training. Let's open it up. Let's manage that for people to succeed. And I think when people start to understand that it really is about helping and supporting people to succeed. You know, the trust started coming in there. Oh, he's not asking me to fire these people. He's not asking me to cut these people. And I want to understand it, but I also want to understand your plan. And that helps you be a better manager as well as a better individual down there because you're getting the right coaching to succeed. And it's all about, I want to know what their career growth is and what the progression is and how, thinking about it and helping them understand that. Look, in a company, you're always going to be limited. Not everybody can be the CEO. You got to have one, right? So how do you manage that up? If somebody comes better and better and better and suddenly they hit the ceiling because there's no place for them to grow into. So those positions are filled. What do you do? How do you promote them? How do you, how do you keep them? And a lot of times you can't. But what you could do is give them the right opportunities and skills to advance their career. Because you know what? They'll come back, back and they'll remember that. And when they come back, they're going to be stronger and better for you because a position may open later and you're like, oh, I can tap that guy. I can. Or person or female, whoever it may be. So they'll come back. And we've had that, We've had that happen a number of times. And they bring this experience with them and commitment and dedication because they love that somebody is supportive and they know that culture is there to support them, to continue to go.

What, what percentage of your time do you think is spent on developing and growing people versus, you know, the tactical of doing work?

Oh, geez. At least half, if not more. Yeah, it's. It's a lot of listening to people, coaching them, helping them understand the nuances of, through their organization, you know, and it's even, how do you understand priorities? How do you run that piece of your organization? It's part of the business. A lot of it is interspersed with coaching. It's not just, oh, we're going to go build a data center. You're going to do this on a technical diagram. Like that's small piece. Actually, the more I think about it, it's probably 70%, 80%.

Yeah. So a lot of it is coaching, delegation, situational leadership. Right. It's really the, the aligning and so talk about. I want to ask one quick question before we wrap on, on priorities. You mentioned, you know, if you're coming out with the top 10 priorities. How do you decide which are the the most critical priorities? Like how do you rank them from or do you rank them from like the order of highest impact to lowest? Like what, how do you decide which ones to go with? Because there's a million things we can do. How do you narrow it down to what we should be doing versus what we could be doing?

We look a lot at impact. So it's impact to the business and impact to the organization and the people. So those help drive what we're doing. So ultimately your business has got a business plan over the next 10 years of achievements that you want to make either through growth or expansion or things that you're developing. And so in order to hit that plan, we have to have things in place to be able to do it it. And there's things that can make it easier. Automation, different process, talent. As we scale up the organization, you know, as the business grows, you're used to, in a small business, you'll wear a whole bunch of different hats. I can do the finance stuff and I can do the procurement stuff and I can do the accounting on this. Like so I, I can wear all these hats and do all this stuff. But as you get bigger, there's just such a volume of stuff, you can't do it all anymore. So you have to start compartmentalizing. So as we scale up, we look at where are those compartments going to be, where do I need to put the resources? So you look at those pieces, that drives a lot of priorities for you and what you have to have in place. Now your secondary aspect is once I see those pieces, how do I make them better? How do I get there more efficiently? I can't do linear scale on headcount. How do I make my head count more efficient? I've only got a certain amount of dollars I can spend to get the business there. So how do I make that more efficient? That's where automation comes into play, ease of process comes into play. Looking at the data that is telling you where the things are wrong that are going to be your roadblocks, those all start to become the priorities to be able to get there. You know what's going to impact my cash flow, what's going to impact my ability to bill customers or what's going to impact my ability to serve customers. What if I have outages? What about the people workload? My people all burning out because I have a floundering piece over here that just needs some help. Those all you look At a combinations of those. And then you go, okay, with my limited amount of time, time, resources and you know, people and money, what's the best ones to put that to work? And then it's a multi year plan, right? You're like, this is what I can do this year. But you know, I'm probably going to get to that in the next two to three years and I kind of keep that down and we keep that list. And then as you're talking to people, those priorities sometimes change as new data, something changes in the market industry, in the business, you'll readjust those. But keeping that in sync with the employee so they understand it as well as my boss and the other executives keeps us in line and it helps us adjust real time if we need to.

That's interesting that keeping it's keeping the priorities in line with people so they understand because often it's not just choosing them, it is the alignment. All right, let's go Back to the 21, 22 year old Joe Manarik and you're going to give yourself some advice. What advice would you give the younger you that you know to be true today?

Advice about what? Getting into this type of role. Or business?

Or business in general. Life in general, whatever you want.

When you're 21, 22, you think you know everything and you're all gung ho, right? You look at things and you're just like, that's just dumb. We should do it this way, right? You got, you got strong opinions based on, you know, your limited life knowledge, right? Take a step back, listen, learn, understand what drivers are because it will open your eyes into the right solutions, you know, or how to solve things differently. Really listen to people, right? Because people, like I said, people in the trenches understand the details of what's, why something's a certain way or what the problems are they have. And you gotta take some time to listen and just don't think, ah, they're dumb, they're just doing it a dumb way. I can be better at this, like understand those pieces and listen. You may have a better solution, right? That's great. But if you work with them, help them understand what you're thinking, you will bring them along versus drag them along. Difference in that, right? I have to, that's something I always have to worry about as a leader is I don't want to drag people. I want them to come along willingly and understand so we're all marching in the same direction because they will understand it and think of different ways and make it better. If I'm dragging it. It's because they don't understand it. They know it's probably the thing, but they're not going to think of creative ways to do it better, faster, more efficient because they, they I'm dragging them and versus them being in line and understanding it. And so, you know, as younger self, it's like really think about those things. And then the other thing I always like is, you know, I was always a problem solver as a, as a, as a kid and as an individual and you know, I get excited about solving problems and you know, there's business problems all over the place and, and it's, I'm passionate about it. It's part of who I am. So when you think about doing something and you're going to progress your career, think about the things that you're good at and incorporate those into what you want to do. You know, hey, look, I could have been a finance guy. I like doing finance and numbers and math and I took some accounting classes and was good at it, did well, but it wasn't where my passion was. Are, you know, so being able to know the passionate parts and expound upon those makes, it makes you do your job better. There's pieces of my job that, you know, I could do better. I'm not great at. We all have those deficiencies. Make sure you concentrate on doing those well so they're not detrimental to you, but you don't have to put a tremendous amount of effort into the deficient aspects. You have have to try to make those great because if you're doing the things that you're naturally acclimated to, you're going to be great at them.

Right? Totally makes sense. Joe man, Eric, the COO for Databank. Thanks very much for sharing with us on the Second In Command podcast.

You have to have a very hard conversation with yourself to be able to say, what do you want and why are you doing this? And I think a lot of times the problem that you're solving no longer becomes relevant to you. And I think if the business that you have solves a large enough problem and you.