Be human. Be courageous. Know the business, speak in business terms with executives. Otherwise they are viewed as the boogey man.
Watch podcast interview now with Chris Ratliff and the HALOCK Radio host Terry Kurzynski.
TRANSCRIPT BY WISTIA
We are here. HALOCK Radio. This is the first time we’re at studio six fourteen. So we moved to six fourteen. We have Chris Ratliff, IT and security leader in the Chicagoland area and we are here in person. This is a great honor. So, Chris, thanks for being here.
Yeah. Thank you very much. This is, this is awesome. Love the studio.
It’s, it’s fun. It’s like the ultimate man cave, right?
So, but this is all about, IT security and leader and we wanna give a lot of, information to the next generation.
That’s really what the focus of this podcast is today.
But history wise, we’ve been working together since going back to the 90’s. Life Fitness, right?
I think that’s right. Yeah. Nine probably late nineties.
Late nineties. And eventually they were bought by Brunswick and you did over ten years there.
I did eleven years.
Eleven years.
That’s a long time.
Yeah. So then then you transition to Tootsie Roll. Right?
And so at your CIO, VP of IT at, Life Fitness and to its enrollment.
Director, at Brunswick, Life Fitness and then moved into the executive role at Tootsie Roll. Okay.
So Tootsie Roll. Tell me about that. The, working for candy.
Yeah. Well, it was a sweet gig.
So, a lot of fun.
It was an organization that needed to dramatically improve in technology.
An old family business.
Yeah. That seems like a huge name, but not big really at all, but needed a lot of help.
Very cool South Side of Chicago
And every day, you could tell what they were gonna make because you would drive up and you’d go, oh, cherry tootsie pops today because you can actually smell the odor as you drove into it. Yeah. Amazing.
Wow. So and you did how many years there?
Eleven years there.
Eleven? So you’re eleven.
Eleven It goes to eleven apparently.
So then you transition to Spartan, and I think they did a lot of government work.
What made some kind of weapons or great stuff over there. Right?
Yeah. We made something called a sonobuoy.
Sonobuoy is something that we get dropped into the ocean in front of your naval fleet.
It was actually an air force device. They would drop out of a plane and would try to find enemy submarines in the ocean.
So if I recall when that there was some plane that was missing for a while.
And the country of Australia buy a lot of these to try to find this plane?
They did use our technology to do that.
Even more recently though when that submarine went down that was going to check the Titanic.
Okay.
And then you heard somebody say, we heard something. Yeah. That was the technology that was leveraged to hear something.
I did not know that.
Yeah.
That’s great. Okay.
I’ll have to kill you now.
But So you were VP of IT, but you oversaw security there as well.
Right?
Correct. Yeah. I did Tootsie Roll and Spartan. It was it was all the same.
I mean, I goota imagine that state-sponsored actors really wanted to come after this technology in a bad way.
They did. And we had numerous. We saw numerous attempts. The actors trying to go after that.
So then they were bought by private equity. And then you said it was a good time to move on.
Yes. Yeah. So I moved on to SP Plus corporation.
Standard Parking.
Got it. Standard Parking. And, was there for about four and a half years.
And thought, what a great place to be? Why not go to hospitality right when COVID is about to start off?
So, just kidding.
But they seem the weather well though.
Yeah.
The the management group there did an amazing job. Keeping it together.
But is was a great experience. Not gonna lie.
It was good being in that vertical and understanding how to navigate that.
Alright. So was about four years.
Four four and a half years.
Four and a half years.
Alright. And then now you are CIO at large for Korn Ferry.
Correct.
Anything you wanna say about that right now? You just kinda getting going in that in the last year, right?
I am. And I will say it’s a perfect time in my career to be doing that. I’ve been able to take a lot of my experiences and leverage those experiences to really help other organizations forward.
So I’m really loving it.
Well, one thing I’ve always, you know, over the years, we’ve known each other and worked together. I’ve always admired how effective you were in working with people.
Is there any, you know, do you have any advice on the strategies you use to manage.
It’s a difficult role to be a VP because you have to manage up to a board.
You have managed to the peeps and then in the department level.
And it’s a different language for both of these. Right?
Yeah.
Do you have any sort of insights.
I do. Yeah. I would say that it’s important to be human. And I’ll give you a great example.
I was in just recently, I was in a conversation with the CHRO.
And we were talking about some things, and she asked me a question. It really hit me hard because I said something about DNS and DHCP. I just sort of blurted it beause it was a network issue and I said it.
Couple acronyms.
Yeah. And she looked at me and she was like, What I heard was the alphabet.
That’s all I heard.
So, you know, I think that as you think of folks in IT roles and even specifically in security type roles.
We’re sort of the boogeyman.
And I think really important, like John Wick.
Yeah it is. But it’s important to humanize a little bit.
I believe that’s what keeps people from being able to connect with technology individuals.
There are always these weirdos that are saying weird things and know things that I don’t know. So I think you have to be human, and you have to understand how you’re communicating with your folks.
Not just above you, but the folks that report to you and your peers.
Here’s always the difficulty I see in IT and security working with the business trying to put things int business terms. You know, talk to me about that. What do you do to be effective there?
Yeah. I think the most important thing to do there is you have to learn your business.
I’m always amazed when the business leadership teams look at you like, oh, you like know what we do?
And, yeah.
Because all the past ones never took the time out to learn the business.
That never did. And as an IT leader, guess what? You have no boundaries.
And what I mean by that is everybody sort of likes to keep their arms around their particular areas.
In IT, you touch all of them.
It’s important to be someone who can go across those boundaries, provide perspectives, and use data for your perspectives. Don’t just be emotional about it. Come prepared. Come with facts.
You the individual or the team can go across all of those boundaries.
I think it’s important to realize that.
Perfect. I remember being at the board meeting.
The top technology people would show a lot of pen test reports or something to the board, and they didn’t know what to make of it. They didn’t know what does this mean? Beause things weren’t translated in their language.
Right.
Their love language is, is this gonna affect our objectives in the business.
Yeah.
Are in trouble with the law and regulators? You know, are we not gonna be able to get new customers? That’s how they think.
Are we gonna be profitable?
Can we do our jobs? Yeah. ANd that’s the other thing too is I think as individuals in our roles, you have to walk a little bit in their shoes.
I think there are many individuals in our roles that just say, nope. I am turning your stuff off, and you can’t do anything about it because I am the CSO, and I’m sitting in this chair.
And that’s a horrible way to look at it.
Great. The best CSO probably just turns everything off. You will never have a problem, and you will not get one thing done. I think you have to walk in their shoes and understand what they’re trying to do.
So we have a whole other generation coming. That is going to be eventually in leadership roles in IT and security specifically.
What advice do we give the next generation and the skill sets they will need to conquer to be effective managers of information security or just technologies in general?
Everybody wants to get their certification. Everybody wants to do their educaton. You gotta do that, right?
I mean you have to be agile as a technologist.
You have to be agile. So that would be one of the things I would say is continue with your education.
But always keep your eyes open and always be trying to look at what’s around the next corner.
Whenever we would talk sports, I would always tell my kids to anticipate or try to anticipate next steps.
By the way, I love sports. I think you know that.
My kids would make fun of me because every statement I would make, did you try to anticipate?
As my daughter watched te soccer ball go flying past her, and then she chased the soccer ball, I’m thinking ahead a few steps.
Why don’t you try and figure out where the ball might be going? And then you’ll get there faster.
And so I think our leaders need to anticipate a little bit. I think our leaders need to use their big brains.
I say this a lot to the people that work for me. I payyou to use your big brain. You make pretty good money. Use your big brain. Don’t wait for me to tell you what to do.
I think that’s really important.
I think to be a successful leader, you need successful people that can make their own decisions.
I mean those to me are some of the biggest things.
Oh, I guess the other I would say is don’t be afraid of making mistakes. You will make mistakes.
Just don’t make the same mistake over and over again. Right?
Good leaders will make sure that their people can’t make a mistake which buries them.
Yeah. Right?
That’s what a good leader does.
Don’t be afraid because our society today if afraid to make mistakes because then everybody has to resign and everybody has to do that. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Be courageous.
I noticed over the years because we have a 25 year history.
You’ve been able to amass teams of really skilled people everywhere you go. Because you’re hiring, you create your own teams.
What did you look for in the skills or how did you create that team dynamic? What was they trick there?
I would say for me, I want hunger.
You can’t teach hunger.
You can teach skills.
And if you can get everybody playing their part, you can really create an amazing team.
Everybody has to understand what you’re trying to do, what your goals are, what your north star is.
But get people with some hunger. With it burning in their stomach.
To me, that might be one of the most important things. The rest sort of takes care of itself. Yeah.
Amazingly.
And don’t get in the way. Let people do what they think that they do. People don’t get up in te morning and say, you know what? I really wan to suck today.
People get up every morning, and they really are motivated to try and do that. If you get somebody that wants to suck every day, then you just can move along, but human nature does not suggest that.
You’ve looked at really big companies and these roles can be stressful. I’ve seen it, I’ve seen people just absolutely crack.
What do you do?
This is the personal side. What do you do to get your Zen back and recharge?
I say that there’s a couple things. I’ve always enjoed athletics.
So I think the challenge of athletics has always been important to me.
I love working out.
When you’re working out, what are you thinking about?
Are you thinking about the other stuff or how am I not gonna pass out and fall down? It gives you the ability to compartmentalize.
I think if you can compartmentalize, you can get some of the silly stuff out of your way. I enjoy yoga.
And that’s not that’s a new thing.
That’s a new thing.
It was really intereting bevause I’m so used to playing basketball and baseball and football. And then you’re in yoga, and they are trying to teach you the Zen stuff. You said Zen? This is a Zen moment. And here I am trying to do this warrior pose.
And it’s, you know, it’s work.
As I am working throught it, I find myself trying to explode into the move beause that’s what I would do.
Then I have to relax into the good. And my point is even at my age, I’m learning new stuff every single day about things and that’s what keeps me motivated and keeps me going. So itt was just a pretty cool moment.
I’ll have to try more yoga. I’ve done a class or twor, but nothing to that extent. That’s really good.
Alright. I gotta ask this. Last sone or two on your playlist from music.
A couple of them I would say a little eclectic. I think Jason Mraz. I’m Yours.
Love that song. Love the guitar in that. And Honky Tonk Woman by the Rolling Stones. If you don’t know how Honky Tonk Woman starts, and you don’t get jamming when it does, you don’t have a pulse.
I think they played it live a couple of years ago when I saw the Stones.
Yep Milwaukee. Very fun. Very cool.
One of your biggest or bigger accomplishments that you had in your career. It could be the 90’s or recently, but something that was a tough thing, you got it done. Is there something that comes to mind?
Wow. There is a lot.
And I’m gonna just touch on a few of them and then tell you why.
I’ve got back office experience, implementation.
If you’ve ever implemented an ERP system, you’ll always say at the end you’re never gonna do it again.
Because it’s a pain. Dont it multimple times.
The one Tootsie Roll Industries was amazing because we changed every process.
We moved everybody’s cheese.
And it got to the point where people were singing praise on to where we had gotten. I’ll give you an example. It took 8 hours to load a truck full of candy, and truck drivers were nuts waiting for 8 hours.
That’s a long time.
We got it to thirty five minutes.
Amazing. But the pain was brutal getting throught that.
I leaarned a lot about how to manage up and to manage down. And this is what I learned. Implementing something you’re the leader, and you sit in a room, and you’ve got ten people there.
All those people are on the same page – it’s easy. It doesn’t matter how complex the thing is you’re trying to do, it’s easy. And I remember sitting there going, oh my God, we’re about to go live.
What are we gonna do? Order management. What are you gonna do? And the manager of order management goes, well, if we can’t do it, then we’ll take notes on paper.
Then we’ll work through the situation. We’l get all the orders back in the system. That’s genius.
That’s easy, and we went around the room and did that. Everybody was at that point, a failure could happen, and it wouldn’t matter.
And people had your back?
It wouldn’t matter.
They had their own backs.
They wanted to make sure they were succeeding no matter what.
As a leader, it’s like hey Chris – Great job. And I was like thanks. Yeah, I didn’t really do what I needed to.
I was in the meetings with them.
How did you get that buy in?
You’re there with them. You’re in the pits. You’re in the fox hole. That goes a long way with people.
Trust.
Instead of dictating, you say, how can we do this and succeed? I’m trying to get the detail. People wanna know the nitty gritty details.
I’ve heard someone say a leader one time said to me, these people don’t respect the chair. Why should they respect the chair? They should respect the individual that is actually leading it.
You have to build the respect of the team.
You have to sit in the trenches with them. You have to expect them to do things that you would do and that goes a long way when it comes to the execution. I promised I would say a little bit about football.
The football team that I wa on was undefeated. We just lost right before the state playoffs, and I hate it. I hate myself for that, and it was a long time ago.
I will tell you that something about that team that I built my entire professional career is those twenty two starters. There’s eleven on both by the way.
They would have killed each other for anybody else on the team.
There wasn’t somebody that said ‘I’m amazing.’
You’re not. It was twenty two people fighting for the same thing.
We weren’t that good. We weren’t that big. We weren’t that strong. We weren’t that smart.
But twenty two of us were on the same page. We almost made it to the end, but we were pretty damn good.
You take that same mentality when you build a business or build a team. You are not going to lost.
Everyone’s gotta be rolling together. Do your part. Everyone does their part. And you depend on everyone who do do their parts. That’s great.
It’s a great team play. That is probably a good time to talk about our sponsor real quick. Today’s Radio HALOCK podcast is sponsored by Reasonable Risk, they cybersecurity risk management, SaaS platform.
In fact, I think even Standard Parking has implemented Reasonable Risk.
So we may have been one of their first to actually take Reasonable Risk on, and I will tell you to this day it is still inplace. Greg Warren is our CSO there, so maybe a good opportunity to talk to Greg.
I should do them on the show.
You should.
Alright. So we’re in a studio I guess I gotta ask your musical history then. You had some songs ready to go. You know your music. Did you play an instrument?
I did. It started when I was in the sixth grade. I played the clarinet.
I thought it wasn’t me, but it was some guy that was playing the clarinet. That is an amazing instrument that can do all kinds of octaves and beautiful sounds. I played that through the eighth grade.
My friends and I decided that we were gonna start a rock band like all eighth grade boys do in the eighties.
Also played the guitar. Took some guitar lessons and played that for a while.
Guitar and clarinet are probably my two best I dabbled in drums when I was in eighth grade interestingly enough.
When my kids got older. I have adult children now.
When they got older, we used to make them go play for the church band.
And they never wanted to do it. In order to get them to do it, I picked up the clarinet.
I don’t expect them to do something I wouldn’t do, so I picked up the clarinet. I hadn’t played since eighth grade, and I didn’t suck.
The music teacher laughed at me because I told her I was really only playing every other note.
My embouchure was terrible, and I couldn’t do it anymore. Funny enough, I still remembered how to read music. I remembered the notes and fingerings on the clarinet. 20-25 years later, it was fun. Good time.
Guitar. If you had to pick out a guitar in here to play, which one would it be?
Any one of them. I think they are all amazine and beautiful. They are all amazing.
We’ll get your hands on some.
I love it.
Chris. Awesome to see you again.
It’s been great. Thanks for inviting me.