What has been your business/work highlight of 2024 so far?

After nearly 30 years in engineering, I changed roles to the Product side of the business, which has given me the opportunity to learn, grow, and do new things. It’s been an exciting change of pace, though I do miss the day-to-day interactions with my old team, so I try to stay engaged with them as much as I can.

Who is your business hero and why?

This one’s not original but I would have to say my business hero is Steve Jobs. Though he was legendarily difficult to work with, I greatly admire his passion for design and simplicity in the user experience. It permeated everything he did. He knew that he was solving problems people didn’t know they had and created products people didn’t know they wanted or needed. And in doing so he changed the world in which we live.

What’s the biggest business mistake you’ve made and what did you learn from it?

This happened a long time ago at a previous job. The company, a regional CLEC, was struggling financially, and we were nearing capacity on our large cross connect systems. We’d always used the same vendor, the gold standard of cross connects back then, but, since we were struggling, I looked at alternative vendors and ultimately bought from a competitor at a significant discount. Research took months, delivery took 6-8 weeks, and then installation was another couple weeks. As the install was nearing the end, I asked for a copy of the installer’s test plan to make sure it was thorough and met our standards. I marked it up to include some of the necessary tests and brought it back to the installation engineer who told me, “this system doesn’t do that.” While it was capable of doing what I wanted — I knew it would or I wouldn’t have bought it — it would required additional shelves of hardware and cost significantly more, inline with our standard vendor. This was a $100k mistake. We ended up buying our primary vendor’s equipment used, and it took many months to resolve the dispute with the new vendor. I learned to be very detailed with what is on the quote will match the need — just because something *can* doesn’t mean it *does* what you want.

What’s the most inspirational book you’ve ever read and why?

I’m not sure it qualifies as inspirational, but I keep coming back to The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. The principles are timeless; the one that has always resonates with me the most is Habit 3, Put First Things First, which includes his four quadrants (urgency and importance) for time management. I refer to this again and again.

What’s the biggest challenge you face in your role in 2024?

Greenness. As mentioned earlier, I changed roles within Evolve IP earlier this year. And while I have worked closely with Product teams throughout my career and have a good sense of what the job entails, it is different once you are doing it.

What technology will have the greatest impact on your business this year and why?

It’s got to be Artificial Intelligence. AI is not only a buzzword, it is quickly transforming how people work and the services we will deliver, many of which haven’t been imagined yet. With the pace that AI is advancing, it will be important for the modern workforce to adopt or fall behind. But it is also important to caveat that with, do not do AI for AI sake. Know what business challenges you are trying to address, understand how AI may or may not help, and be prepared to do the hard work to make it work for you. Otherwise, you will be disappointed in the results.