Episode 2. Building a Culture of Ownership: IT Innovation and Leadership

Well, welcome to Executive Checkpoint, where we dive into the insights and experiences of leaders shaping the future of technology and security. I am your host, Tino Urbina, and today I'm very excited to have with us Jerry Mecca, an industry veteran with a track record of leading transformative IT initiatives across major brands like Keurig Dr Pepper, Datascan, and Tropicana. Jerry has been at the forefront of navigating complex mergers, driving innovation, and building agile teams and thriving challenging environments. His expertise in fostering culture of ownership and leveraging technology to create business value is Truly inspiring. In this episode, we'll explore his journey, the lessons learned from his most demanding projects, and his vision for the future of technology in business. Uh, Jerry is currently the principal in EKG Group. And Jerry, thank you so much for being with us today. This should be a great chat.

Yeah, looking forward to it. I have been since we first, uh, connected. Hopefully I can help provide something of value.

Great. Well, you know, let's start from the beginning. You have an incredible career in IT initiatives and, you know, managed some well-known brands as a CIO. Tell us a little bit about your journey. How did you get involved in the technology sector? And what, what was the driving force in doing so?

Sure. Well, without going back to my birth, my dad was an engineer with cable television business and We always had all the cool gear. I was intellectually curious and everything from stereos to CB radios. And then in 20— oh goodness, no, goodness, I have to say 19-something, don't I? I'm a little older than I realized. But I got into the local Radio Shack and they didn't know anything about computers. They were really good with stereos and CBs. So I became sort of the neighborhood kid that was the one that sits there and figures out how to plug everything together. So I spent the first half of my career being more of a hardware and infrastructure guy, networks, things of that nature, back when you had to buy every single subcomponent in order to put everything together. You know, these days everything comes ready to be plugged in. But, uh, in, uh, you've mentioned all these other brands. You didn't mention ConocoPhillips or Burlington Resources. But those companies are pretty big too. And I got my first break when a college roommate of mine, actually a post-college roommate, but a roommate nonetheless, called me up and said, hey, I just got IT and I don't know anything about it. Would you come help me?

That's great.

Yeah, it was not the way you typically have. And I wasn't sure I wanted to do it yet. And then eventually he convinced me to come down to Houston and And sort of figure out what's going on, you know, get be his eyes and ears. And then we reshaped the whole department, changed everything over to what I would say is a really efficient model. Actually, Burlington became Conoco after I left, but nonetheless, that was my first five years of IT. I would call it almost accidentally because I came from the the. I thought the value in technology was going to be making money selling it.

I see.

So, and I'm not— I still believe that there's making money selling it for those who do that. But I never really saw myself on the practitioner side. But because of that first, say, 15 years of selling, I was a relationship management person. I talked to the customer. I didn't talk techie. I knew the technology because of the upbringing I mentioned. But And then I was getting my master's degree. I met a guy from, from Dr Pepper. Interestingly enough, Burlington was paying for my college and they had a need. And next thing I knew, I was the CIO of Dr Pepper and the rest is history.

Wow. Well, earlier, earlier we were chatting and you mentioned something that I thought was very interesting and that makes sense now. So your IT background, your technical background came early on, and then that sales shift kind of gave you the opportunity to, to, to have both.

That's right.

Because I think in leadership positions, you, you sort of need that ability to, to present your ideas in a way that for sure are going to be welcome, right? So is there a— you have an interesting background where, um, your approach to technology and innovation is very obvious. So is there a point in your career where you find maybe before you become CIO or as you're sitting in the chair that you felt, you know, pivotal moment here to understand innovation and bring it to all the culture?

Yeah, that's a really good question. In fact, I would go as far as saying the— in the early years, all the IT people were like, what was the old Saturday Night Live skit with Nick the computer guy? And he would say, like, move over, you dummy, you know. All the people in the world of use, they felt the IT guys were, you know, scaring them to death. And there's still some people in the security space that abuse that, you know, they're all gonna— things are gonna come crashing down. Sorry, security guys. But it became apparent to me that they needed somebody to talk to them in a very non-technical way. I used to have a Nanette Judge used to tell me if I said stuff one more time or thingy instead of what it was. And I was going like, Nanette, I'm just trying to explain it to them in terms they understand. And so early on, I realized that there was some technophobia in the C-suite.

Wow. Yeah.

And what they didn't understand, half of them weren't reading their own emails at that time. So it was a pretty big sort of realization. And by being there in the corporate office with the executive support team, I got unprecedented access to C-suite leaders. And I realized that was— that's the superpower. If you can transcend, you know, the technical details into something they understand, it's easier to sell the value prop. It's easier to get money. It's easier to talk ROI.

Right.

That's why I went to— in fact, I went to get the master's degree simply because there was this whole batch of auditors who were coming up and all getting MBAs and then being dropped into the IT function. And I was like, why? I mean, I don't understand. Why would they not? Well, it turns out, you know, they could talk to business and it made them feel better when they were talking to the CFO who at the time Owned IT.

Yeah. And the budgets, you know, and again, it goes back to, you have to justify the cost. I feel that companies now understand that being nimble and incorporating new technologies is a business edge.

Sure.

Right. It does, it does bring definitely benefits to the company. The bottom line, were there some— I understand you went through some mergers with the companies you work with. Was there a point where you find things that help your teams focus and still be nimble and get through the transition? What were those things?

Also a really good question. So again, I think of myself as being somewhat lucky. If I talk about the soft drink business, I was not a soft drink guy.

Because you started with oil and gas. So that's kind of like— Yeah.

So I go from one fluid you better not drink to one that everybody wants to drink. But I will tell you that, and if I can just put a little note into those who might be in the recruiting function watching your podcast, if I hear one more time that the CEO really wants somebody with oil and gas experience or soda experience, I look back over my career and with the exception of technology, when I was at Ingram Micro and at ACT, my career had zero to do with the practical experience I had in a particular industry. But nobody said, man, that Mecca guy really can't do our business. Because when I left Dr Pepper, there wouldn't have been a person there who didn't think I didn't drive a truck, fill a vending machine, know how to run a fountain.

Right.

Shrink-wrapped product. But to your question about innovation and transition and mergers and acquisitions, keeping them focused on what we had to do for Our living. How do we make money? If I could keep focused on that, the things that they would get wrapped around the axle about, like oh, they're on a different version of SAP and it's going to be so hard and blah blah blah. And I was like, guys, at the end of the day, you got me. I've got your back. I'm going to be in the room with these folks and I'm going to make sure that we take the proper steps. They're going to listen to me because the business has developed. We've developed an intimacy with our business. they believe when we tell them this is a good idea that we're not just making it— we had this term called HITEC, hard on IT, easy on customer. H-I-T-E-C, HITEC. Because the customer was the one that needed to have it right, and it didn't need to be, let's make IT easy and so make it really hard for people to log in or make it really hard for people's PCs to boot up because we had all this protection software. Let's figure out a nice happy medium. And the business loved it. I can't get over, you know, somebody told me the other day, you never know how much you were really liked until you ask somebody who was a customer years later and they tell you how you changed everything. And it's so good, such a good feeling, even though at the time you thought you were, you really thought you were in the way or slowing them down.

Annoying people, right? In security, we always think about the friction that is created with when you implement security. Sometimes when you— I imagine the same is true for IT.

It doesn't matter what area.

Exactly.

I think their favorite this or their favorite that, and you're changing their world. And when you change their world, you've got to— change management is huge. I'm a huge proponent of when you know you have a big initiative, or you put a 3-year strategy to make rock solid in your security platform, 6 months before you start your very first, you know, identity management component, you should have already engaged a third-party change management company because they're the ones that are going to go out. They're going to tell everybody this is coming. They're going to let them know it's going to work this way. The world's not going to come to an end, you know.

Right.

All going to be good. And just about the time they're tired of hearing from you, they finally start to get it. So that the friction is eliminated— not eliminated, minimized.

Minimized. Yeah, we call it fluid, right? We, you know, kind of flow, help the transition flow. There's a book by John Kotter that many, many years ago, I was a former professor, Harvard professor, and his book was all about— at the time in the '80s, was all about changing, managing change and expecting change. He said, let's get ahead of change, lead the change.

That's right.

And today I think it's more important than ever. Speaking of changing and embracing transformation, one technology that is on the cusp of really impacting everything, if it's not already doing it, is AI in business. Is there some of, you know, the current trends in technology that you believe are game changers, and how do you see it playing from a technology standpoint of view?

Well, I knew we wouldn't be able to get a conversation done without talking about AI somewhere. You know, I think, first of all, AI is definitely one of them. You know, you're going to see more and more applications of it. I think the real important part is for every company to embrace it at some level. I'm in the I'm in a world of really neurodivergent and sort of crazy— not crazy thinkers, broad thinkers. That's so wrong because I don't feel I'm crazy, but we really can get off on tangents about where this could be going. But every company should at least be experimenting with AI. And to your point, they're foolish if they don't think half their users are already doing it. The real important part is when it becomes part of your commerce, when it becomes part of how you make money, that's where it kind of gets a little scary, both from the biases that can be done by setting up your own stuff that basically tells you how to drink your own juice and doesn't help anybody, but also bad information. You know, your model needs to be really as clean as possible. And I have lots of feelings about AI. I saw something the other day though that— and I committed to fixing, to doing this myself. I have produced a ton of content. I've written so many pieces. People know me if they meet me. I'm a straight shooter. I don't pull punches. I'm going to tell somebody their baby's ugly, blah, blah, blah. If it is, I'm not going to just be mean. But I met a gentleman who had compiled all of his position papers and graded his own LLM on him.

Wow.

And so then you could go to his personal AI page and ask his AI bot a question, and it would answer almost as if it was him answering it.

Interesting.

I totally dug that. And, and I think that's important in the future that, that, you know, I see a lot of LinkedIn posts and a lot of pieces of somebody bragging about something somebody else said or how honored somebody is about some award they got. I really don't care. I want to know what you did, not that you got.

Right.

What is it that you did? What was the special thing? And what was your unique viewpoint? Or what learning can I take away from it?

The contribution, right? Yeah, it's interesting. And now here's what I want to thank CF for driving my intent to do a podcast. And that's exactly it. It's like, so over the years, and I'm sure, Jared, you, you are leading large groups and corporations, there's impact that comes from sharing that knowledge freely.

Absolutely.

I feel like it's a responsibility and an obligation if you have the opportunity to do so and have something positive to bring. That's the reason we created this podcast, because I think every leader has a story to tell and there's a legacy that can benefit many other people, right? We have a few mutual contacts and we're really interested in looking to see what comes out of this conversation. I tell you, I think in the world of security, right, I think that's a nugget that I would like to pass on from a CIO perspective. What keeps a CIO you know, up at night when it comes to security matters? What's that like? And to follow that, how do you approach that with your security groups within your organization?

It's a great question. So again, I'll go kind of history, then come to today. Once upon a time, it was mostly risk-based. The audit department would bring up all these management recommendations, and it was Good, real easy. Don't give them LAN access. Don't give them an email address. If they want to do something, we're gonna have one clerk in the department who has an ID and password to log in. You know, it was really, you know, deny them access, right? It's the way to solve security problems. And, and for about— just like Moore's Law, in all cases, things progressively got faster and faster. I mean, I, at one point, And different companies have different profiles. So like I said, you have to figure out what it is that you need. But you're— it's moving so dang fast. 2 years ago, I was recommending a suite of products or a managed service like EY or somebody. In fact, at Tropicana, we put in a managed security platform that was a combination of all the usual suspects managed by Ernst Young. Great program. But today, I wouldn't make that same recommendation.

Right.

Not even close. Everything's moved to the cloud. The world is completely different. And so what I would say from a, from a what keeps me up at night is how fast this stuff is changing. And from an investment standpoint, as a business, I'm now really trying to help companies recognize that they don't just make a one-time investment in security and move on. And it's not like SAP, where you pay your annual maintenance and you get all the upgrades. Threat changes, you know, who's coming in, where it's coming from, the new gear you're buying. I mean, pagers that have been pre-designed to blow up on you. I mean, just that stuff is what makes me go, oh my God.

But I think that, and to your point, I think the value from the security professional standpoint of view is to make or to bring that value information to the decision makers in a given organization because Like you said, it's such a fast-moving environment for the C-level and everybody involved in organizations that sometimes your best source of information and reliable, you know, solutions comes from your trusted partners, right, your trusted advisors.

And if you think about it, like you do insurance, like, let's just use cyber insurance. At some point, people figured out you just had to buy it. And it was just going to cost you something. And Some entity was going to decide how much likely, you know, you would have to pay so you pay the proper premiums. In the case of security, there is a— yes, build a strategy, but play it like a strategy because with each year you roll off, you better have a new one in the outer years.

Right.

And you better have the money you can invest in it because it will never stop. And I know this is where the security practitioners are like, yes. But the reality is, it isn't their fault.

Right.

And they can't do anything any better than tell you what's working today and what might protect you for the next 6, 8 months. But that's about as far out as you can go.

Right. And I think it's good to have those conversations versus being reactionary, right?

That's right.

Assuming the risk is never a good approach.

Get a plan, put a dollar amount, assume you're going to be— your pace of change is going to be just like what the current curve looks like. And then that way the business is not shocked by it when you go in and said it was only going to be a gazillion and now it's 10 gazillion. And they're like, wait, you didn't tell us. And you get in trouble for being a business person who didn't give your boss the proper, you know, look into what the cost was going to be or what the change was going to be like. And it's just very difficult. That keeps me up. That keeps me wanting to engage with CEOs and continue to put my arm around him and go, look, dude, I'm telling you, don't come yelling at me when some new threat pops up and we have to band-aid it really quick and then put a strategy to permanently put it down.

Oh, that's even more expensive half the time.

Exactly. Exactly.

All right. Well, I do have a question. Sure. You know, with AKG Group, um, in our previous conversation, you shared that bringing value to those professionals and helping them navigate the current situation is what you guys are focusing on.

Mm-hmm.

What is— seeing the new CIOs come in and the conversations you have with your peers or former peers now as a practitioner and mentor, what are the things that you will tell them they need to be focusing on or not focusing on?

Wow. So I'm gonna— you touched on something I just, I kind of want to say, you know, we had some great momentum in the CIO world when we were starting to penetrate the C-suite as an equal player reporting to the CEO, being strategic and being valued from our transformative, you know, brains. Also, at the same time, technology has become ubiquitous, so much so that the COO seems to think he's the IT guy, or the CFO thinks he's the IT guy. And believe me, when you have an economic condition like there is in the world, a lot of CEOs are thinking, yeah, how can I get all I need or all I want without paying another C-level guy to be sitting— the chief marketing officer, the chief HR officer? Well, in my view, We need to get back on that because CIOs need to take the bull by the horns. If they're too technical, go get some people skills. If you're too people and, you know, your department doesn't respect you because you don't know the technical stuff, then surround yourself with rock stars. But don't change the value at the C-suite or up to the board. And I've seen companies really go downmarket all because of economic reasons. Bringing in some senior director and suddenly making them CIO, sometimes it's so they don't quit because they want a title, and sometimes it's just because they're— the companies are— and I'm going to put this on the backs of the McKinseys and the Bains that are out there really trying to make everybody think that technology is ubiquitous and that we don't really technology is part of everything. Well, no, I mean, the average business person is not going to ever be a CISO.

They have an understanding, but they don't comprehend the impact that can— that decision make.

And I do like, I like changing the name to Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Transformation Officer, or Chief— I don't see CTO. That to me is always a person who's much more in the development of a product. And product is also— it's much different than delivering operational efficiencies, even though you can't deliver operational efficiencies with crappy products. So there, it's just a view. So I'm not sure I answered your question.

But I think you did. I see if you're in that chair, to be congruent with both sides of the equation, right, you almost have to be bilingual. In the sense that you have to speak tech. That's right. You need to be a student of your craft, to be supported by your team. And in the flip side of that, upstream with the C-level folks, you have to sell your ideas. So communication, for sure, and likability and patience.

Well, the thing you said there is, I just think we're in a, we're in a weird spot that's combination of economics and frankly smoke and mirrors where I've seen too many business leaders to try to make the boss happy. They convince their boss that they need— and inevitably it's because the CIO was not business intimate. He or she did not give the business the impression they understood their needs well enough. They didn't staff the IT with business analysis, you know, business, you know, process managers, people who really understand supply chain and bring that back to IT versus people in the business coming over to IT and going, I didn't get what I wanted, you know, and, and that's our fault.

Yeah, that's our fault. Well, do you have a— outside of this conversation, is there anything that Your colleagues will be surprised about your little hobby or experience that you have enjoyed.

I don't know. People up here in Dallas, or if you ever go to my Facebook, which I'm also very prolific in the social media space, I am an avid baseball player. I've been playing baseball since I was 8 years old, and I'm playing in the 60 and over. But, and also, I'm a, I'm an Eagle Scout coordinator. My son's an Eagle. I am, uh, I'm big into, um, you know, giving as much as I can. I— a boss once told me, give until it hurts. Right now it's been hurting a lot. But, uh, but I do think that, uh, you can't just be, you know— well, be, be, be dynamic. I've had crap going on in my life that I'm not really happy about either. I try to be a good guy. Everybody needs to be. Do the right thing. But, but at the end of the day, whatever your passion is, whatever keeps you young, whatever it is that makes you happy, you should do it. And I got lucky as a kid. I fell in love with technology, and I've had the— through the grace of God, I've been able to do this my entire life. And somebody decided to pay me well enough to where I could give back. I could do my fun passions from time to time, and then If I wanted to go camping and tear it up or do whatever I wanted to, I can. That's life. That's what I would pass on if people— what else do they not know about me?

That's great. Well, Jerry, this has been a great conversation, but I do want to ask to pass some of that wisdom to the new commerce and technology, whether You know, mirroring your career, just starting and looking ahead and the potential of this career. Obviously, you're a great example of what a successful career looks like, and it seems to me, based on what you just said, that is because you love what you do, right?

I love it.

What will be a nugget of wisdom that you can give these folks coming in, coming up on the food chain, wanting to get to those larger positions and responsibilities?

So, I mean, again, have a view, you know, build good teams. You know, I hate to use this because it sounds sexist, but, you know, don't hire duds, hire studs. You know, A's should hire A's, B's hire C's, and you just need to understand that there's only so much in this technology space that you can personally know. When I was doing this early and everything was about building PCs and deploying equipment and standing up networks, it was easy enough for me to understand it in its entirety. That is no longer humanly possible. I don't care what MIT degree you have. And so I would say continue to learn, network your butt off, get out there, get loose, get comfortable talking to people. I am an extrovert, you know, but I can't tell you how many careers are either cut short or not fully developed because even if you're not, you know, a talker, you get out there, you meet people, and you connect on LinkedIn or you connect through your networking communities. Dallas has got to be I don't know whether I'm just because I live here, but I worked in Chicago and I can tell you that the Dallas IT leadership, whether it's the SIM, whether it's Evanta, the Executive Connection, a number of different groups, or even through your old MBA school, wherever you happen to go, they're incredible opportunities to meet people. and to practice your, your people skills.

Great networking, that's for sure. Remember reading this book years ago that stuck in my mind, Keith Ferrazzi, Never Eat Alone, right? And, you know, what great advice. Treat your colleagues as friends and friends as colleagues and be still professional, but, you know, build that community around you, right?

I was doing a— I used to do a group called The Herd, which was Long story. I won't get into that. But we had a guy come speak and he said, he told me something called 100 cups of coffee. And so, I have now and have now for 15 years, I have 100 cups of coffee. Now, that means in 365 days of the year, I have 100 unique coffee sits with people I either know as a follow-up or new people I haven't been introduced to before. And I love doing it. And I'll— and if you're buying coffee, I'll also offer up a couple of whatever the heck it is I can help you with your career, what you're doing with your life.

Yes, that's, that's great. Mentorship is rewarding, right? And that someone starting, they need to know that approach someone that you feel that can help you and mentorship— mentor you. Well, Jay, this has been great. You know, it's very enjoyable, I would say. And look forward to maybe have you in a roundtable in the future.

Perfect. Perfect.

Thinking about bringing different perspectives and see how that works. It should be interesting.

I hope it was meaningful to your audience. And of course, I'm available if someone wants to look me up on LinkedIn and connect with me. They're free to do it. I do have both You know, one-on-one kind of 30-minute get-to-know-mes, and then I do coaching. And of course, any CEO who is planning a plan for their future of IT and really wants to have somebody come in and kind of take a sniff about what's going on, I do that every day.

Perfect, Jerry. We'll be on LinkedIn, so, you know, comment and follow both Jerry and the podcast. So Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you to the audience, and we'll see you in the next, next podcast. Thank you so much. Till then.