foreign success whether it's professional or personal or even organizational can seem elusive especially during uncertain times well the person I have with me today will be talking about how you can actually plan for your success on any level welcome to 100 days of service now I'm Kylie Alexander technical trainer at Glide fast Consulting and today I have a guest that's going to blow your wig off yes you'll wig off he is the associate vice president at Glide fast Consulting he's someone that I'm so proud to know and to work with I want to Welcome to the stream Jacob Banker welcome to the stream Jacob all right thank you good to have you here good to have you here listen I don't throw up the air horns for just anybody so this is really special to have you here in the Stream I appreciate your time and I'm so looking forward to having a great conversation with you yeah I'm looking forward to it as well I'm really excited to be here thanks for having me every time we speak you blow my wig off so I was like yo we have to be able to have these conversations so other folks in the community can benefit from them so this is going to be a good one tell me this whenever we talk you have the concept of going wide and going deep and you talk about this both in your professional development and also in terms of how organizations can expand their business can you share a little bit about that what you mean by going wide and deep yeah so from a professional standpoint I talk about you know being on the technical side being a senior architect before getting to this level of associate vice president you know from a technical standpoint especially with something like servicenow right there's such a huge platform and there's so much that you can know you really do need to stretch yourself wide across the platform but you also got to find those areas where you do need to dig deep and you really need to understand certain areas and then when it comes to business it's the same way you've got to know things across the business but there are areas that you just need to really dig deeper and really understand at a much deeper level um than just at a service level and it also just kind of shows the commitment to what you're doing right that you're committed to going deeper and you're not just trying to stay at that surface level yeah and I think when I think about when you say you know business is going wide and deep and I think about you know the customer the end user there they want to know that that the company that they're entrusting their time their their dollars or what have you with they're investing something into that organization they want to know that that organization is really vested in what they do that this is not just at a surface level there are a lot of people who are coming to the ecosystem right now and I want to learn a little bit more about how you got here how did you get to servicenow and tell us a little bit about your I.T Journey I.T Journey it's over a 20-year Journey a 25-year Journey started off in the mid 90s doing uh tech support calling into Dell and Gateway those types of things and then worked my way into a help desk and then from there I really got into web development and found out that I kind of had a knack for coding I didn't know that I didn't have classes like they do nowadays in high school so I didn't I didn't know anything about coding until I got the opportunity to go to a web boot camp and learn HTML and then from there it just kind of took off I just kept basically absorbing everything I could anything I could you know get my hands on from a learning perspective I just kept going after it um which got me into remedy and I did remedy for a long time so I've been in this ecosystem for a while but in the 2013 is when I switched over to servicenow the company I was working with decided to just make the switch so I was part of that team that architected and implemented service now there when you in 2013 you said right what iteration of service now and what where were we Geneva like what what started off on Calgary and then when we went live I think we just upgraded to Dublin okay so Calgary Dublin so we're talking about some of the early days of service now how were you using servicenow then oftentimes people think of servicenow especially in the early days as a ticketing system tell them tell me about some of those early experiences with the platform so yeah for the people who don't know me a lot of my background has really been a nighttime in itam so when we were looking at servicenow it was when their very first iteration of it Asset Management had just come out and um obviously the platform has changed a lot over the years back then that's all you had was ticketing and then you had Asset Management uh but at a very uh introductory level right it was their very first release of asset management yeah we we started off under the idea that we were going to start with asset management and that was going to be our plan and it really is I would say for a lot of companies a really good place to start to start with the cmdb and asset management but unfortunately for the times it was just too new so we ended up switching and starting with itsm and really focused on implementing itsm and redoing the processes the company I worked at was a large global company um so we actually ended up having to rework the process and the tool to support the entire Global organization it was a pretty big undertaking but it was a lot of fun too I'm glad that you mentioned this because again when you think of those early days of servicenow people come in thinking of it as a ticketing system yours is a bit unique because you came in right away saying hey you know we want to do something where it comes to our asset management and then you kind of fast forward some years later here at Glide fast Consulting where you kind of have a pot that includes the item team I want to know a little bit more about your journey and a little bit more about your background in the role that you're currently in as associate VP at Glide fast and you have these various pods what are we talking about when we say pods tell me about what those pods do who they are tell me some of the work that they're doing so basically we're broken up by different product areas um so for me my pod I have itom item irm and secops and then there are pods for different areas HR CSM SPM itsm things like that so really part of our job is to kind of focus on being smes in that area right we might still work itsm we might still work other areas but really this is going that wide and deep right here we go deep deep into itam deep into item irm or secops right we want to have the best in the industry working here and again digging deep into how we Implement those and how we can support our customers with whatever they're trying to do within those particular areas of the platform sure you talk about the subject matter experts and the ham team the asset management team rather eam software Hardware Asset Management they recently are just coming off of a huge webinar that they did kind of going into some of the nuts and bolts of what it looks like to have a asset management implementation talk to me about what is unique about that team I had an opportunity to speak with each of them from Sandy Chris Lawrence and I was really Blown Away not just by their skill set but there was something that was almost like that X Factor can you talk to me a little bit about that yeah well one they are they are brilliant they are fantastic people and they're great to work with but a lot of it comes to that that care that we you know we really care about servicenow and we care about our customers right it's Glide fast we don't do anything but servicenow so we're attached at the hip with everything serviced now we need it to be successful we care about doing it right and making it successful but part of it also is that we we really do care about the customer most of us like myself and I know if People's ever seen Lombardo's story you know starting Glide fast he came from the customer side so we've been there we've been in your shoes we've been in you know that situation where you're trying to implement something that you know is going to make the company better but you're fighting Finance you're fighting secops you're fighting you know you're fighting those battles we've been in those battles right we've been there and we're ready to come alongside you and and help help that now so that's really a big part of it they really just care about doing it and doing it well yeah and when you when you are working with a group of folks like that you're able to there's that with that Synergy where you're able to rely on each other and so like the the entire the whole is equal more than just the end of visual parts and I just think that's such a unique characteristic at Glide fast and it's kind of really a unique experience to be be a part of that yeah especially those three that you you saw on that webinar y'all didn't see it I would highly recommend going and catching it it's recorded um but I mean I was there from the beginning when they started talking about it and just how quickly they each jumped in and you know took their parts and kind of really you know worked together to to again try to deliver something that was you know top-notch that was just something worth watching and they did a great job yeah they sure did when organization is looking for an asset management solution what are some of the the pain points that they're experiencing I mean maybe they've gone through the they maybe they've reached the extent of their Excel spreadsheet and email system but what are some of the other pain points that those organizations are facing when they're looking for a solution well there's quite a bit um depending on whether you're talking about Hardware asset management software Asset Management each one kind of comes with its own set of challenges but some of them are a little bit unique obviously cost is always a challenge and always a factor buy-in and adoption is always going to be something to overcome um that they have to deal with but a lot of it does come to also kind of the fear of the unknown right the changes that you're going to have to change your processes and if you have been somebody that's been doing spreadsheets for a long time or you know to get that real trust in the data um is a really big thing we have to work very closely with clients to help them get their data into the system get their data where they can trust the data in the system and that they can really rely on it and make sure you know especially when it comes to software assay management to try to get all your licenses all your entitlements uh pair that to what's being discovered by Discovery or SCCM and see you know what's actually installed out there if you can do it and do it well it's amazing and they they absolutely love it and the ROI is there um but it's it's getting all the data right that is one of the biggest hurdles when it comes to its Asset Management you talk about the fear of the unknown and I'm going to switch gears just a little bit and we're going to kind of go back and forth because we're talking about both organizational success as well as personal and professional success you talk about fear of the unknown it makes me think about risk and failure and their role in success you've talked a lot about this in our conversations can you share a little bit more for our audience here today yeah so I tell people all the time I have a couple different things but when it comes to this about leadership one you should never ask for permission to lead if there's places you can take initiative you can step up and Lead do it but to do that you can't be afraid to fail you have to be willing to take that risk and understand that you know the first time you might fail right even the second time you might fail it's about what you're learning how you're blowing through that really makes a difference right so yeah there is that fear of the unknown or jumping into you know maybe I if we can talk about a little bit here we have a Glide fast Consulting University I'm so proud of that program yes and we have people who have literally had to make the leap from outside of I.T into I.T hoping that they were going to make it through that that program and they have and they've done a fantastic job we have some wonderful people that have gone through that program um but I think about them when I think about that that they had to take that leap with the idea that you know this could fail but they they jumped in with both feet and they've worked hard and you know turned it into a success so just to really succeed in life you have to be willing to fail I'm glad that you brought this up and I didn't think that we were going to go here but since we're here we'll talk about it uh I always say this and I'm going to say it again it was October of 2022 where servicenow CEO Bill McDermott made the ambitious announcement of scaling up one million people and the platform of service now by the end of 2024. with rise up and we also are familiar with the next gen program there is a very unique program that Glide fast has created and has been implementing for some years now in Glide fast Universe Glide fast Consulting University or GCU talk to me a little bit more about it you talked about it here about the risk that those folks are taking tell us what GCU is all about if you can well it's just about that it's about scaling people up um and you know there's people that we've taken who've maybe gone through a JavaScript in boot camp so they had some background in it but then we also had people who come from completely different backgrounds I really just wanted to change their career change their lives and get into an industry that has you know so much growth potential servicenow it's it's everywhere it's continuing to grow it's not going anywhere that we can see anytime soon uh Bill McDermott done a great job leading servicenow and what he's doing there um so it's a great opportunity for people to really get into a field that maybe they didn't really have a background in um and then we train them how to do it our way how to do it the Glide fast way so they go through a lot of Technical Training they get certifications but they also go through mock implementations again so it's not all Theory right they actually get Hands-On and again it's about learning how to do it the way we would want them to do it because that's where we have people who weren't on the customer side right they didn't know that they didn't experience that necessarily so but we still want to instill that in them to help them understand that you know it's not about implementing the story right or even implementing the solution it's about driving value for your customers when organizations have a Glide fast service now implementation there is a score a customer satisfaction score how is Glide fast assessed what do we learn from those customers satisfaction uh surveys well those are one of our biggest indicators of our success right it's it's not about necessarily the number of projects it's about the number of uh fives that we get on our csat scores if you've ever been to any of our events we brag about that a lot because it means a lot to us it means that we are driving value for our clients and that's what we're learning is what where we're doing a good job driving value and where we can improve it's another part of you know success is you've always got to be looking for ways to improve you got to know where your shortcomings are know you know what you want to improve on and then of course set a pathway for how you're going to improve and for us that's what those csats are all about we go through those surveys we go through closures you know project closures with the clients and get Lessons Learned and we're always looking for ways to improve ourselves and you know one of our big words around here this year is best in class or big phrases right we're really trying to focus on making sure that we're not just the best in the ecosystem which we feel we are but you know there's other you know really strong competitors out there but we want to be beyond that we want to really be Best in Class we want customers to look at us as a best-in-class Services organization let me ask you this here we go we're going to this to the other side of this now you talk about Best in Class organizationally when you are breaking into say you did not have this 25 years of experience in it and all the years of experience since 2013 with with servicenow if you were breaking into the ecosystem right now March 2023 what would you do to skill up to distinguish yourself so that you could soon be or in due time become Best in Class we're going to go back to the the deep and wide here so the platform is so big now right there's so many different applications so many different areas of the platform that you can really become an expert in um but I would really encourage people to really dig deep on the platform first and foremost really know the platform because whether you're doing CSM HR or you know SPM or item or irm the underlying platform is always the same right it it really doesn't change business rules client script script includes the best practices behind all those all that stuff stays the same really know the platform and then for me I really tell people to focus on the cmdb and specifically the csdm know the csdm because again no matter what charity you're doing csdm is all about putting the right data in the right places to make you successful now and as you do future implementations down the road right so if you're focused on the csdm you know where to put the data in the right places throughout the cmdb and as of the most recent release of csdm it's really now across the platform not just the cmdb I appreciate you saying that I'm looking into my now learning and you know have myself on a on a track a schedule of like okay I'm gonna do this course next doing this course now I'm now doing by the way folks if you've not taken scripting and servicenow fundamentals from now learning you must take this class this is a way to not be afraid of scripting the class is phenomenal neither here nor there where you were talking about the csdm and cmdb I kind of had a little smirk on my face I don't know if it was showing but I was talking to my sister the other day and she's a platform owner servicenow platform owner at her location and she told me and she always tells me says look you cannot get away from the cmdb she said there's no escaping it you have to know the cmdb and I love that you're echoing that here there are many courses within uh now learning about the cmdb there's the the the the lar the longer course and there's like some smaller courses as well so I get folks in my DM all the time saying Hey I want to get into service now just talking to a young woman today saying Hey I want to get into service now I have all this experience in I.T I think what I have will be will translate well I'm like okay great let's look into now learning to see if you can get those skills up and so what I'm hearing you say right now Jacob is that get the cmdb training and that's going to be a foundation and you're going to always be able to use that no matter what domain you kind of go into right yeah really I mean if you're doing itsm I mean you log tickets against CIS typically hope they get notification services but you're logging them against CIS uh if you're doing a SPM right projects and uh application portfolio management strategic portfolio management a lot of that ties right back to the cmdb vulnerabilities and and risk you know you're usually putting those against the eyes as well right that it all ties back to the cmdb which is if you ever look at the servicenow you know wheel of applications if you know what slide I'm talking about or what image I'm talking about has all the different applications and areas that they that they have apps for and always right in the middle is the cmdb you know sitting on the on the platform right it's always right there in the middle because it is um it is a driver for almost everything you do in service now yeah talk to you a little bit about soft skills we talked about hard skills you need to have some certain technical skills set in acumen oftentimes when people don't have hard skills they believe like oh well if I don't have the hard skills by default I must have the soft skills but that's not necessarily the case you need to be able to kind of sharpen your soft skills act some talk to me about and this is not in a replacement of hard skills but talk to me about the importance of soft skills and in what areas should people and how should they be sharpening their soft skills well you're absolutely right with you know when we interview people um a lot of times I I tell people when I'm interviewing with a partner that I I do want to see the the technical skills but I can teach somebody the technical skills you can teach them soft skills but it's a lot harder right that takes a lot of you have to do that yourself type work right there's only so much I can give you a book on crucial conversations but you have to apply it right I can give you a book on you know the art of listening and those types of things and um but it has to come from you you have to really apply that and that's that's really getting deep when you're talking about growing your your soft skills because it takes a lot of effort on your part to understand what are those soft skills how do I become a better listener and Communicator um you know when you're working with a client don't listen with the you know intent to try to immediately respond just take it all in really understand what they're what they're saying um you know then how to articulate back what it is you're trying to say and how you're trying to especially when you get to the architect level you really have to be able to take very complex uh Solutions and Concepts and bring them down to a place where you can communicate with your client what you're trying to do without being in the weeds right you have to be able to pull up out of the weeds and have that conversation at a much higher level and again be able to convey some of those more complex Concepts um and it takes a lot of work and then of course written communication skills you might be easy to say oh I know how to go send an email technically you probably do know how to type some words and hit send um but there are trainings out there that can help with kind of good etiquette around how to uh how to build a an email or even how to use uh you know nowadays the uh chats and stuff like that slack right some good um slack etiquette but really just focusing on your your verbal skills and ridden skills for when you're communicating you know back to a client it's very important I like what you said and I'm going to repeat back some of the things that you said the first part of what you said had everything to do with self-awareness right and then you talked about the importance of of listening of communication both listening and speaking whether that's like verbal Communications bills where I'm actually talking to someone or actually written communication skills I'm talking to somewhat colleague on slack I'm talking to a customer I'm sending emails being able to communicate in a very strategic way and thoughtful way not just strategic but thoughtful and then I'm also going to hearken back to something you said earlier which I thought was so important and you said this to me a while ago when we first met in our very first conversation and I wrote it down and you said to me then and you said it during our time today was don't be afraid to lead when you see an opportunity go ahead and take it up don't wait for someone to ask you to lead if you have more to say about that I would love to hear it because when you when you talk about it it's so profound it always hits hits home when I hear you talk about it there's a lot behind that um but showing initiative I mean I had I've had people who you know always want to ask how do I get ahead how do I how do I move up I I know I told you one of my my stories of my my early days with that and most of it it just comes with you know taking the initiative right there's a few a few things that you can always do and do very well that are going to set you up for success and really some of it is as simple as showing up on time right to meetings and things like that responding to an email in a timely manner doing some of those things that seem mundane but they're so important because as I tell people all the time when we walk away from a client the client doesn't always remember how well the tool was implemented they don't see your code they don't know how good of you know code you wrote it might have been the best code in the world but they do remember how they felt and how they felt about you um and you have the ability to kind of make that impression and sometimes it's just as simple as you know taking that initiative because customers talking about what they want to do you saying well hey I hear you're wanting to do that but let's talk about you know this other thing or let me help make sure I'm leading you down the right path right to show them that you're you're really paying attention to what they're what they're trying to solve for not just the requirement you need for right now right um but even outside of that there's other places where you can definitely step up and take opportunities to to be a leader right when you hear somebody asking for volunteers to do stuff even if it's not something that you feel necessarily comfortably comfortable doing like even something like this well like public speaking um you know maybe step outside your comfort zone a little bit and don't be afraid to do that and you know if you think oh I'm not good at public speaking but not doing it's not going to make you any better at it right you gotta you gotta spend some time in it it's kind of like uh you know anything you want to really learn how to master you've got to really spend some time in it and master it so okay okay I'm taking notes uh what I heard you say was don't be afraid of doing the mundane well I heard you say don't be afraid of step into leadership and then I also heard you say is don't be afraid to step outside of your comfort zone so if there is something that maybe you're not good at maybe that's an indication that maybe you should start doing it and stepping into it right yeah I mean it's really easy to start taking the lead if you start finding out you know you start doing some coding and you find out man I'm really good at you know doing certain things in in service now like you know for people who do glide date time a lot of people hate doing it some people are really good at doing it uh it's really easy to say when somebody raises their hand and says hey I need help with glide daytime for you to jump in and take the lead where you're good but it's another thing to really stretch yourself and get outside your comfort zone and try to take the lead in somewhere where um again maybe that's not been your strong suit you're willing to again you're willing to step up and learn and grow and become the best version of you right [Music] [Laughter] that was good that was good so before we get out of here because I know that you've been at Glide fast for a little bit of time I want to ask you before we get out of here tell me about how you got to Glide fast and what do you like about the place no I've been here for four years uh just over four years um how I got here was actually through uh Lombardo he and I met at knowledge uh years ago as he first kind of started Glide fast and I kept up I kept watching kept seeing what Glide fast was doing talking to people who worked here hey what is it like what's going on over there because it all just sounded um fun and interesting and especially you know if you get around Lombardo he's he's very much a person that just attracts people man his personality is so fantastic and he's just you want to be around people like Lombardo um but then you know the the time came where I was like I think I'm ready to take the leap I'm ready to jump in right I'm I'm ready to step outside my comfort zone because honestly in my previous company I was kind of comfortable I could have probably stayed but I just decided it was it was really time for me to to step into something new um and I was I was a little bit scared of the whole work from home I'd never worked from home before and uh it was all a little bit different and new for me but I'm really glad I I took the leap um what I love is our culture and our people I'm sure people have seen me post on LinkedIn I just feel almost every day I I'm so honored to work with the people I work with I mean to name the people you talked about on the the item thing you know send deep and Keyser and Lawrence and so many other people that that I work with here on a daily basis that just it's such a privilege to work with them to see that they have the same care for their customer the same care for this company and the same care that we have for each other uh you know the Ubuntu spirit that we always uh show to each other and of course that lfg his spirit that is just deep here so it's it's a lot about the people that I work with I absolutely love working with the people here yeah and we have a Glide Fest coming up next month which you know is going to be my first Glide Fest which I cannot wait but listen I have to ask you this question what is your favorite Prince song oh my favorite Prince song oh man um that's a tough one it's usually I would say whatever one is playing right now but I think maybe my my favorite of all time is probably going to be um oh man take your time take your time is it 17 days is it uh when he did nothing compares to you that it should have never been recorded by anybody else but I know he would disagree with me but his was so perfect I loved it man yeah I think it's probably 17 days I love that song and I could listen to it over and over again yeah yeah so that's one of the things that you and I connected we are both Prince fans I mean binkup even has an altar but listen I appreciate you so much for joining me in the Stream we could talk about Prince on another stream or another time in another session just to play Prince music talk about Prince and his the influence that he had on my life and other people's lives absolutely we gotta do that we gotta do that listen Jacob thank you so much for your time and I will see you in the world win take good care bye all right thanks bye everybody didn't I tell you he was gonna blow your wig off didn't I tell you listen if you didn't take notes it's all good because this stream is going to be available for the replay value right so take note slow things down if you have questions write them down and think through them I think that a lot of times we come into the servicenow ecosystem I say we because I say we talking about the new school I'm part of the new school of folks who are coming into this this ecosystem right about now and we're looking for help we're looking for advice and we're looking to talk to someone a lot of times those answers that we're seeking they're pretty much publicly available we just have to take the time to listen to really think them through and think about how they apply to our own personal journey I hope you have found this useful I know I sure had a lot of fun being here with you but until next time y'all stay curious bye bye [Music]