In This Episode
In this episode, Bill Tingle, Founder - Tingle Leadership, joins me for Voices of the Vigilant Season 2, Episode 12!
You can learn more about the conversation and the guest below.
Tune into the audio version of this episode by clicking the player below:
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VIDEO: Voices of the Vigilant S2 Ep12
Patch Your Pitch with Bill Tingle Founder, Tingle Leadership
About the Guest
Bill Tingle is a former C-suite executive turned leadership coach and advisor. He has served as CIO, CIDO, and CTO across industries including healthcare, logistics, and transportation, managing budgets over $500 million and driving more than $4 billion in annual revenue impact.
Today Bill coaches senior leaders on executive presence, communication, and leading with clarity under pressure. He has worked with more than 200 directors, VPs, and C-suite executives through his firm, Tingle Leadership.
Bill believes great leadership starts with precise language, emotional awareness, and honest conversation.
Full Episode Transcript
Jess Vachon: 00:33
Hello everyone. Welcome back to Voices of the Vigilant, where we skip the vendor spin and we talk to the people actually holding the line. Here's an uncomfortable truth for many of you in cybersecurity. We can run a clean program, survive the audit, contain the incident, and earn your team's trust, but we can still not get the seat at the table. Not because you aren't good enough, but because the people that decide whether you make it to the table or not didn't hear what you can present in a language that they recognize. My guest today is sat on the other side of that decision. Bill Tingle spent 35 years in enterprise technology as a CIO, a CIDO, and a CTO across transportation, logistics, and healthcare. Today he coaches senior technology leaders on executive presence, communication, and leading with clarity under pressure. More than 200 directors, VPs, and C-suite execs through his firm, Tingle Leadership, have benefited. I am one of those clients. If you've ever been told to be more strategic and nobody told you what that means, this one's for you. Let's patch your pitch.
Jess Vachon: 01:46
Bill, welcome to the show.
Bill Tingle: 01:48
Jess, thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this.
Jess Vachon: 01:52
So, I'm going to open with this because it's my favorite thing on your guest form. You turned down a scholarship in jazz guitar to study electrical engineering. Walk me through that decision. Who were you at that moment in your life?
Bill Tingle: 02:11
Yeah, I was in high, let's go back to high school. I was in the jazz band, and I had been studying guitar at that point for what, nine or ten years. I started a very early age. And I made all state jazz band two years in a row. And I was, you know, through that, I met all these different professors and such. And so I was offered a scholarship to study jazz guitar. And that's really where my passion was. I always had a creative side to me. I saw everything through music, art, dance. You know, that's just kind of how I was wired. But my dad was a scientist. And his parents were deaf mute and very poor because of the kind of work that they did. So he grew up very poor and believed in a good job, which meant science. And so he really influenced me, encouraged me to go into science. And I was good at math. My dad would drill that into me. And so, you know, I was a little bit in a mood of resentment about it, but I'm like, okay, I'm going to go do it. And so went and studied electrical engineering, but I realized I could still play music. And so I, you know, in college, I still played in bands. I, you know, actually did some played some jazz. I still studied guitar because, you know, once you have a full load at school, you can take extra courses. And so I some of my best education actually was while I was studying engineering. But that's what led me, and you know, looking back, my dad was right. You know, I think a lot of my colleagues who are musicians, they still are musicians, but it's a hard life. And I think I've been able to sort of balance, I still play guitar, balance playing guitar, and sort of that, because we all need an outlet. You know, whenever I hired somebody, I always like, well, what else do you do for play? Because it's important that we have that outlet. So, and but I also I just learned a lot along the way, and I still draw so much from music and everything I do, and we could talk about that if we want to during the podcast.
Jess Vachon: 04:21
Yeah. Well, we're going to actually talk about it. So, is it still in your life and what does it bring to you at this point in your life now that you've had a distinct distinguished career?
Bill Tingle: 04:32
Yeah, I think you know, I still work. I love what I do in coaching. I also do some advising. I do advisory work for executive technology leaders. But what I find is when we're doing, say, our I'll call it our primary work, like if it's cybersecurity leadership or you know, if you're you know a COO or whatever you're doing, we get embedded, and we all know we go meeting to meeting to meeting, and we get embedded in these trenches. And I like what Dan Huberman, I don't know if you ever listen to Dan Huberman, but he talks about the neural trench. And when we go deep into our work, it's like all of our neuronal activity is clustered around what we're doing. And when we go from one deep work, you know, one deep thing to the next deep thing to the next deep thing, we lose our effectiveness because we have to pull out of that and almost unwind. I think of it as like unwinding all the neural activity so that we can reset and go to the next one. That's why I think meeting to meeting to meeting is such a it's very impactful, it has negative impact on our effectiveness. And so tying that back to music, I use my guitar, I keep a guitar by me. And if I, you know, I try to make sure I've got like a 10-minute break and I'll just pick it up and it immediately unwinds me. It immediately resets me and like pulls me out of that neural trench. So that's one thing. The other thing is it's such a great way of expressing, you know, like I'll still play in bands and I love to improvise. And I'm in my happy place when I can improvise because it's like there's really no rules. I mean, there's rules that we use so that the listener can appreciate the tones and the pitches and the rhythms that we're doing, but it's such an expressive and it's very much like art or dance or anything else. But I think everybody needs that play, whatever it is. It could be a walk, it could be drawing, it could be just sitting and breathing, but everybody needs that. And so, and I like making people happy. Like there's nothing, you know, when I go to St. Louis, I play with a friend and we do nothing but songs that people want to play. I never know what the next song is, and it's kind of frightening at times because I have this iPad in front of me and a song pops up, and I see the chords, I kind of sometimes I kind of know the song, and it's like, all right, let's saddle up, we're going to play this one. And you know, and people, but I know it's so interesting. People like when they want to hear a song, like their song, they're so forgiving, like whether you played it right or not. I mean, there's the guitarist that'll critique me, but it's the self-expression, it's the entertainment, it's the unwinding. And I think for anybody, whether it's guitar or you know, drawing or whatever, we all need that to decompress and reset.
Jess Vachon: 07:39
Yeah, that's I think great advice for those of us in the age of AI. I find in my work, and I think others are finding this, that AI enhancing our work is making us have to work faster or feel like we have to work faster. And you mentioned the break between meetings, but when you've got AI enhancing your work, making it move at a more rapid pace, others feel like they have to move at that same pace. And so that tempo of the meetings appears to speed up. You asked me a question before we went live about am I looking inward? And I it made me pause because I wasn't quite sure if I was looking inward, and I think I kind of squeaked out or found a narrow gap to give you an answer where I said, yes, I'm doing it, probably not as much as I did before. And I think that's reaction that I'm having and others are having to a new tool that we have available to us, and not yet understanding where to draw the line on the use of it because it's omnipresent to us right now. Yeah, and you know, I what I'm using now for my technique, I don't play an instrument, but I get up and we'll take a walk. And I'm thankful I have a dog that likes to have a little bit of exercise, so that's where I do my reset. Is it enough? I don't know. I guess I don't think it is because I get to the end of the week and I feel like to your earlier point that I'm not necessarily as sharp as I should be on a Friday. Yeah, or if I measured it against the Monday, I'm definitely not as sharp. Have I been producing a lot? Yes. Is the quality of it the same on Friday as it was on Monday? Questionable, questionable.
Bill Tingle: 09:39
Yeah, well, there's you know, there's and you and I go back. So I think we both appreciate like doing the inner work, the inner, like the inner, the inner thinking, and because that's where we get grounded in who we are. And I think it'd be nice to talk more about that because I think it can tie to the barriers that leaders have in getting what they want, or just employees in getting what they want. But I think whether it's walking the I love walking a dog, I don't have one now, but I used to, and because dogs are so like we can learn from dogs, like they always seem happy, they're always ready, they're always ready to go. But what whether it's walking a dog or picking up a guitar or drawing or noodling or meditating, I think it the key is to separate from that which causes us to be thinking about the task. And one of the things that I think is more important than what we do during our little breaks, which by the way, at a minimum, I think we need it every 50 minutes. It seems like we learned that when we grow up in school and the teachers teach it to us, and then we unlearn it in corporate. But I think what's more important than what to do, walk the dog, play the guitar. What's more important is what not to do. Because I think we mistakenly think that, okay, my meeting's over, I got 10 minutes, I'm going to check my email, I'm going to look at my phone, I'm going to scroll some social media. That is not the thing that we need. So I don't, I think, I think the right answer of what to do is up to each individual. And we can listen to our body and what works best. But honestly, for me, I walking with my wife over a break is as effective as picking up my guitar. It's the separation, I think. You know, and that's why you and I both have had these experiences, I'm sure, where, you know, as we, you know, when we're engineers, writing software, configuring, you know, technology, whatever, we get stuck and we get like blocked. And then all of a sudden we go, you know, we've been working on something, and we go away, take a walk, take a shower, whatever. We come and like we get the answer about 20 minutes after we walk away from it. And I think it's because of that, it's that reset. It's we get we can get stuck in like these neural trenches on what we're doing.
Jess Vachon: 12:09
Great. We departed a little bit from where I thought we were going, but I think that's an important, important aspect for leaders, and I think it will tie into the rest of the conversation very effectively.
Bill Tingle: 12:20
Yeah, well, just bring me back if I take you off track because there's all places I'd like to go. We haven't talked in a while, so I'd like we could go a lot of places.
Jess Vachon: 12:27
Yeah, we will. We will. You spent nearly two decades at Enterprise, and then you were CIO at Pods, then I think CIDO at MyEyeDoctor. What changed in you between that first leadership role and your experience in the C-suite?
Bill Tingle: 12:44
I think for me, how to build relationships and communicate at that level. I think I had some really good training ground at Enterprise. I was fortunate when I joined, like right away, the CIO had his assistant schedule interviews with employees at corporate and in the field for two months. And so I'm coming in, I got my strategy, I'm ready to build this data warehouse and analytical capability and higher stat, you know, PhDs in math. And I remember I handed him my present, like my plan, and he pushed it back to me and he said, We'll get to that. And he just sent me out to learn the business, talk to people. I had a binder of about 200 pages of notes that was basically how the business works at Enterprise Rent-A-Car. I went out in the field, and in all of that time, what I learned the importance of relationships, learning the language of all the business leaders. Like what are the distinctions that they care about, whether it's risk, revenue, compliance, sales, what's their language and how to, I call it altitude and latitude, how to communicate at the right level of summary and aggregation, and how to speak to the specific domain of the person that we're talking to. And I was so fortunate to have that. I learned a little bit about that when I was in consulting at Ernst & Young, but I really learned it at Enterprise Rent-A-Car. And I'm so, I'm so grateful for that opportunity. So, by the time I got to, I got had my first CIO role, I was very comfortable navigating the organization at all levels, including the board of directors.
Jess Vachon: 14:46
Thank you for taking us through that part of your experience. Two things I want to touch upon. So, at Pod, security reported up through you, correct?
Bill Tingle: 14:56
Yes, yes.
Jess Vachon: 14:58
And what did it look like from the CIO chair where you sat when your security leader walked into the room? What landed with you and what didn't land with you? And I'm asking this in the perspective of your experience to this point. So, what you learned versus what you were seeing.
Bill Tingle: 15:15
Yeah, it's interesting because I the so when I took on security, there was one person. One person. And there was some outside services that we had. And this individual was, I don't remember his title, security leader, security analyst, something, individual contributor. And what I noticed was everything, this is so interesting that you asked this. Everything was about the details of the technology. Everything was about really the jargon of security. And so it was all, you know, here's where we are with the filters and the firewalls and the and it was very relatively immature at that point in time. And so interestingly, I had already been studying the concepts that I coach today. And so I began coaching that person and worked with him. And this is one of the cool things about what I do and what I've been doing is and like Jess, you're a coach as well. Like you coach people, which I love that about you. Like you're a leader who coaches and teaches and mentors. This is what I was doing. I was teaching a coach. That person pretty quickly left and became a CISO someplace, and now is a CISO in other place. So it was a difference between being kind of an operator, executor, very technical, not speaking the business the executive business language to like elevating himself to being seen as an executive and speaking the language and building the relationships. And you know, and one of the things that I and I have a lot of clients that are in the security space. I don't know why it's happened that way, other than destiny, maybe. But one of the things I've noticed is that a lot of tech people in technology, but also people in security, it's a highly technical role. You know, so you're coming up, it's highly technical, it's intense. It in some ways it's a thankless job because you're doing all the right things and it's invisible. And then when there's a problem, all of a sudden it becomes visible. And I think a lot of security leaders, they're like leaning into the technical work that they're doing, but many of them are not taking time to build relationships with business leaders. And there's a level at which if you don't do that, you're going to stay doing kind of what you're doing. And there's nothing wrong with that. I never judge anybody for wanting to stay like individual contributors, stay technical, and we need that, right? But if somebody is wanting to be a leader and to be, I say a leader, everybody leads at one point or another, which I got something to talk about there. But if somebody wants to lead people, execute, be an executive, be a manager, then we've got to rise above this level when it comes to language, mood, or the way we hold ourselves, the way we present ourselves, and the relationships that we have.
Jess Vachon: 18:33
Talk a little bit about that because I think that is the key of what you help your clients to understand and overcome. What do executives hear or need to hear when you're in the room? And how do you say things that aren't just audible, but to your point, it's in how you're presenting yourself, that confidence piece, everything else that is that we know is part of humans interacting with other humans.
Bill Tingle: 19:10
Yeah, so there's three areas that are the foundation of the work that I do. And the if you think of like a model of us as a human, we have our language, everything we do is in language. And I was listening to your podcast with Dan Desco, and I love what you said just about like I think you said 50% of your job is talking, conversations, right? And like, look, if you don't want to do that, then maybe that's not for you. Maybe you know, you just there's nothing wrong with being an engineer, but if you want to lead, be an executive and have impact on a company and culture and like big outcomes, then you're going to be talking a lot. So there's that conversational piece. So one third of that of us human model is talking, language, communication. And then the other, the one another third is our emotion, our emotions and our moods. And emotions and moods are different, but they're very related. And I often talk more about mood because it's deeper, it's wider, it's more impactful. And then the last one is our body. And our body is the external, like how you're showing up physically, but it's also the internal. And body can be your breathing, your heart rate, your how you're feeling, it could be how much sleep you had, it's your knowledge. So part of your body is like you're acquiring knowledge. And so when I'm working with people, we look for the like we look for where are they stuck. And so because we could, and I use the word stuck like it's a thing, but stuck is the it's like a resistance in moving forward, like why am I not moving forward? And it can be in one of those three areas or like a combination of them. And oftentimes the one area where people get stuck is in their language, in this, in their in the what they're saying. And I often think of it like, you know, we often talk about usability, like we want everything to be easy, user experience of what we do, like our products, our solutions. Well, we I always believe there's a usability of our speaking. Like, are we easy to listen to? If I go into a board meeting or an executive meeting and I'm speaking jargon, I'm getting into a lot of detail, and the audience doesn't understand what I'm saying, they don't understand my language, and it's not resonating with what they care about, like revenue, profitability, customers, operational resilience, risk, compliance, liability, reputation. If it's not resonating with what they care about, it's Just noise to them, they're going to start looking and getting busy and looking at their fun doing other things. And you're not going to get invited back to that meeting. You're making it, you're being, you're, I call it being a high cost to them because their time is valuable. You know, they're they have a lot going on. And when we're working at that senior level, it's got to be clear, concise, crisp, to the point, summarized, easy to get quickly, front page. And it has to be in language that they understand. And we have that it has to be like, you know what? Jess is really, it's so easy listening to Jess. And she always like, I always get it. And I, you know, I want her back next time when we do this. That's what we that's we want to be invited back because we make it easy, informational, engaging. We're speaking their language. And so that's the language part of it. And then there, then there's the body part of it. Are we slopped over, sloshed over? Are we not breathing properly? Are you know how are we showing up? Are we smiling? And then what about our mood? Our mood, we say our mood is a predisposition for action. If I'm in a negative mood or an anxious mood or a fearful mood or a resentful mood, I'm only going to be, I'm only going to be taking action in certain ways that aren't going to be what I want. If I can be in a mood of curiosity and passion and wonder and energetic and excitement and enthusiasm, that's going to drive me, and we all experience it. If we wake up and we don't feel good or we're depressed, or we're resentful, it's not going to be a good day. We got to shift that. So when I'm working with leaders, we're working on ship shifting one or more of those things as needed. And I think that probably the most important thing is being a very good observer of yourself. You know, we all want feedback. We want to get feedback from our boss, from our peers, from our subordinates. But the best feedback, I learned this. I had a manager years ago. I love feedback. And he turned to me one time and at a conference we were at together, and he goes, You're a feedback junkie. And it just like boom hit me in the chest. And I was like, That's not good. Like, I gotta stop it, right? And it's okay to ask for feedback, but the question is, are we giving ourselves feedback? Are we being an observer of ourself? And I often with my clients will say, Imagine you know, you went out and got a security camera and it could float like above you, like always, kind of like these drones that file, you get you have a security and you're always able to see yourself. And not only are you able to see yourself, you're able to, you're able to under, you're able to see what you're thinking and saying. And you're able to see and hear the stories that you're telling yourself. If you could be that attuned and be present, you know, that's why I love this the concept of presence and mindfulness, because it's like being conscious as much as possible to be an observer, then we can be much more in tune into how we're showing up and how we're speaking and how people are reacting to us in a way that it's not just for self-gain, it's for being part of the solution, bringing value, serving. You know, people say there's so much talk, Jess, about oh, I don't want to brag and I want my work to speak for itself. You know, I'm just going to keep my head down and do my job. And if we can flip that and say, forget, forget about bragging. Because I get it. We grow up, our parents tell us don't brag, we get, you know, we get penalized for bragging or showing off. I get it. And I certainly never want to participate in that. But there's a difference between bragging and engaging. If you're in the game and you're in conversations and you're contributing and you're telling people about what your team what you and your team are doing, and you're giving your team credit. People know if you're the one that is creating the accomplishments because you lead the team, but you're engaging in the business and you're telling and you're talking and you're creating transparency and visibility, you're showing people, you know, we spent this five million dollars, and here's what we got from it. We're in such a better position now. That's not bragging, that's engaging, but it's showing up to the it's suiting up, it's showing up, and it's engaging in the game. And we do that with our language and what we say. And by the way, what we say to ourselves and our mood, moods of curiosity are the best mood for a technology leader, always be curious. And then how we're showing up with our body. You're going to trigger people by how you're showing up, you know. And one of the things I just I've talked to a lot of people in technology, they want what they want, they don't care what anybody thinks, which in some ways is good to not care what people think. But if you're triggering in somebody else an assessment that you are sloppy, you don't care how you look, you don't care how you dress, you don't care, then you're just signaling to them, and they're you whether you like it or not, they're making an assessment of you, and it might not be the assessment that you want them to have of you.
Jess Vachon: 27:37
There was a piece of what you just said that made me think of commitment. I think it was talking about accomplishments, right? So when we go as an executive and ask another executive to believe in us and endorse what we're bringing to the table, we have to make sure that one, the communication is heard and understood in both directions, but that there's also agreements and commitments. And this is something that you taught me that really stuck with me is are we sure that the other party is hearing what we're saying? Are we sure that the other party is agreeing to what we're saying? And if they're not agreeing and they're making a counteroff, are we understanding the counteroffer? Are we accepting it? And then what is our deliverable? So I think that's the piece that at the end of what you were saying that really triggered this thought for me is we can't just walk away from the conversation and think it's done. I just have to do what I was told, what I told the group I was going to do. It's more than that because the CEO, the CFO, they want to know that the money they invested and the promise that you gave them is delivered upon. Can you talk about that aspect of communication, but also how you coach to that and how people can understand that piece? Because when I coach others on my team or I mentor someone who's not on my team, that's one of the things I talk about when we talk about communications. It's about commitment, delivery, and follow-up.
Bill Tingle: 29:15
So good. Yes, I love that topic. The place, I often think the place to begin on that conversation is trust. I am going to talk, I am going to address what you asked, Jess. But I think the place to begin is trust. What is the value of trust? You know, trust is like money. If someone, if somebody trusts you, they're not going to go through a whole bunch of steps to vet out whether or not to assign something to you or to ask you to do something. When somebody trusts you, you're lowering the cost to them to work with you. So trust is like money. Losing trust, betrayal of trust is like draining your bank account. And the way we build trust is we first of first we're competent. And then second, we're reliable, and third, we're sincere. Let's go to reliability. Reliability is about continuously keeping a commitment. And so the reason I start with trust is that if we don't, if we don't have these conversations that we're going to go into, we can break trust, we can impact our trust. And trust is the most one of the most important things that we can have. And trust is an assessment of us or others have. So when we're working with others, and like you know, whether it's your manager or somebody, there's think of it like a like at like I we can there's a lot of technology metaphors here, but let's talk about communication protocols. A communication protocol, when it's been a while, at like when it's what is it? Boy, I'm going to at the transport layer. So all the network engineers are going to laugh at me now. But when you know when you need an acknowledgement back, it's like I send a packet, everything has to be just like it is, and then there's an acknowledgement back, and everything has to be lined up. So if you think about that or think about like an API. Now, if I report to you, Jess, and you say, Bill, I have a request. I'd like for you to put this report together for the board. I'll send you the sample of what I did last time, and the topic is going to be on our you know, our current risk profile. And I'm not a security professional, but like you, you're just like, this is what I want. And here's the definition of done. So, like, we'll know that this report is satisfactory and complete when it meets these conditions. Would you mind doing that? Yes, let me play back what I think you said. I think what you said is you'd like this and you'd like it by this date, this time, this time zone, and here's the format. Now, how do you want me to like when do you want me to get that to you in advance? And what happens is we're going back and forth, and it sounds like, oh, that's just simple delegation. Delegation, I think, is oftentimes understated and underrated because we're setting up an agreement on the commitment and shared understanding. And one of the areas I think happens is people, I think people can be either lazy, rushed, or they don't want to be seen as nitpicky. And so they very quickly get through it, like, hey, could you get this? Yeah, I'll get it to you. And there's no commitment to, well, what does done look like? When's the time? When's the like time zone? We're global. And then they run off. And I think the most important word in there is shared understanding. Do you really have a shared understanding about what we agree to? And that shared understanding needs to stay alive, meaning it might be as it might be a simple thing, and you make the request, you make the commitment, and you're good. But sometimes they're pretty complex. And it's an ongoing set of conversations to make sure that there's a shared understanding of that, because there's nothing worse than at the end of nine, 12 weeks, you think you're done and you're not done, and all of a sudden the assessment of your work is not what you'd like, and there's a trust issue, and that sort of thing. Does that kind of get at what you were talking about?
Jess Vachon: 33:38
Yes, absolutely. If you're not using the methodology that you just talked about, so I'm a leader and I have people on my team, and I just am constantly launching requests to them. How does that affect me as a leader? How does it reflect on me as a leader? How does it affect the trust that I have with the teams that report to me? What does that do overall to my ability to be successful?
Bill Tingle: 34:09
Are you talking about the effectiveness of your request or the effectiveness of the two-way exchange?
Jess Vachon: 34:19
Yeah, let me reframe it. So, some leaders are what I call shotgun leaders. They're just constantly firing off. Here's what I need this, I need this, I need this, I need this, I need this. And their expectation is I'm in leadership. You report to me, make it happen. That breaks the model that you were just talking about because the model has to work in both directions, as we talked about. And both directions doesn't mean peer-to-peer, it means up and down as well.
Bill Tingle: 34:49
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And well, you know what's interesting is I think that's problematic. I was doing some work with a big five firm and a group of leaders there, and they were in IT, and they felt like whether it was their leadership or their customers, they felt like everything was just an order and a demand. And what I worked with them on is you're going to get something as like an order, or let's it's a request, but it feels like an order, just do it. It's a two-way street. So you have an option of you can just take that order and hopefully you know what they mean and it's understandable, and maybe it's a standard request and you can go do it, or you could say, okay, I own part of this. I'm going to respond with my commitment to it, or I'm going to ask if I can renegotiate it, or I'm going to ask for a conversation to make sure we're clear about the conditions of satisfaction, the success criteria, the definition of done. Or I might go have a conversation, get clarity, and maybe even talk about trade-offs. Because one of the things that happens so often is this shotgun happens. Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it. Without regard of the capacity of the organization, it's like, I don't care, you just figure it out. And I and by the way, stop that, stop asking me for resources. And that's craziness, that's burnout, that's toxic, and that's and people are going to leave at some point in time. Nothing wrong with making a lot of quests, but there's gotta be it's two humans that have to interact on a commitment. And I think, you know, it feels like it all has to happen fast, but the work's going to take a certain amount of time. The capacity has to be there. And so I think that shotgun approach is irresponsible. Not I'm not saying I never did it before. You know, I think everybody, especially if you're stressed and there's a lot going on, but I think the more we can step back and say, look, these are humans, let's do it right the first time. I mean, I can't tell you how many situations I've seen where it ends up taking a lot longer because that upfront piece wasn't right. It's just like software, you know, engineering. If you don't get the requirements and everything up front, then the cost of rework is, you know, it ends up being more expensive than it would have been in the first place.
Jess Vachon: 37:37
Yeah, thank you for that. And I think that ties into what you were speaking to before. And I the term I use for it is managing up, right? Because a leader can't see everything, and someone who reports to a leader has to understand that, but you also have to be willing to tell the emperor when they have no clothes. Okay. You have to say, to your point, or at capacity, or the more nuanced version of that is I have A, B, and C on my plate. I can't give you D unless I can take something of the first three off the plate. Which one of those would it be? And that goes right back to negotiating commitments and delivery. So, and I like love to bring that up because everything that you teach, it's like a circle or intersecting circles, and it's all constantly moving and codependent on each other. So it's a skill set, as I see it, it's a skill set that you're helping leaders to develop. And I think it's vitally important if we narrow this to information security, mid-level security professionals and CISOs, how do you package this up so that they understand how to negotiate between the technical and the business and meet with success at a greater percentage than failures? And then tied to that, how do these professionals divorce themselves from taking what they perceive as failures personally? Because it's easy for you and I to say that these decisions aren't personal because we know we've sat on the other side and we know they're not personal. But how do we help develop these future leaders to understand that it's not a defeat and it's not personal?
Bill Tingle: 39:34
That's right. Yeah, so the first part of that, I think the that it gets easier to whether it's managing up or influencing a direction, it gets easier when you demonstrate that you understand the bigger picture of the business. Because if you know if you're if you have these concerns as a cybersecurity professional, if you have these concerns, you think these things need to get done, you need this much money. If the people that you're working with, whether it's the leadership team or the board, if they believe that you understand the bigger picture of the business, how it all fits together, you understand, you understand the importance of revenue growth or customer satisfaction or competition, but you also are balancing that against your knowledge of risk and threats and vulnerabilities. When you're when you can speak at a balanced perspective, number one, they're going to their respect for you is going to go up, like their appreciation is going to go up. Because if a person comes across like it's all about risk, it's all about threat, it's all about, I mean, CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CM, everybody at that level understands risk. And everybody at that level understands, nope, nobody wanted it wants to end up on the front page of the New York Times for like, you know, customer data getting into the public. And so they understand that, but I think they want to, they're coming at it from a balanced approach, and they want you to come at it from a balanced approach, but you're also expected to stand with your expertise and your authority and be a leader in that space and not, you know, not fall down, stay, stand up, take a stand, hold your ground, but also demonstrate that you understand the implications to the business and what this means and really see yourself as a partner. You know, one of the things that I when I work with people is we have titles, and titles on an org chart show up at different levels. Of course, there's the legal structure, but there's moments in time when you can come to the table and see yourself as a peer in the conversation. Because what happens so often, and I work with clients, that they go into a conversation, they go into a meeting, they're thinking about where they're sitting on the org chart. It's impacting their psyche, it's impacting the rules that they're creating for themselves, which aren't real. And then the they're making choices about what to say, what not to say, when to just yield and give in. And if we can, on one hand, acknowledge, yes, I'm this is I'm a director in this case, I'm going to be talking to the CEO and the CFO. I do have less power, so to speak, in the organization. But I'm going to enter into this conversation with my expertise on a peer-to-peer level for the conversation to do the right thing for the business with a respect and a reverence, of course. But I'm going to, because then when you do that, they're like, whoa, this person's showing up. This person's kind of showing up at our level and engaging in a very mature high-level conversation for the sake of the business. Was that kind of getting at what you were talking about?
Jess Vachon: 43:18
Yeah, absolutely. You talk about, and I this is tied into that, speaking in outcomes and not updates. So, when you're in that forum and you're having those conversations, can you give us an example of how you establish yourself as the peer, as the expert in the room using outcomes as the example?
Bill Tingle: 43:43
Yeah. So for example, if you're talking about a ransomware threat, you know, you can talk about the technical details of that, what's going on technically, and maybe how it happened technically. The board, the board cares about, you know, how much, you know, what's the what's how does this impact our operation? Does this impact our customer? Does this is this impact revenue? You know, what do we need to do from engaging outside legal experts in the situation? Like they're sitting there thinking about the high-level big items, not the technical details. You know, if there's or like they're you're wanting an investment. I mean, it's like, well, we need five million to improve our security and our in our monitoring, our you know, our identity security monitoring, then like they're thinking about, well, what's the risk reduction that we're buying? So speaking in terms of risk reduction, what are we getting at it from a business perspective? And so that's why I think it's really important. And actually I've had little workshops on this where we kind of map out if you pick every persona, pick the CFO, the CMO, the CEO, the COO, you know, go across. And if you list under there, what are their concerns? What do they care about? And there's always overlaps, but they all have all the their concerns that they care about. And they're usually tied up to one of those big level items like revenue growth, profitability, financial performance, customer experience, retention, business continuity, operational resilience, regulatory compliance, legal liability, stakeholder confidence, competitive advantage. You know, there's these high-level, you know, and so that's why when I talked about there's altitude and latitude, you know, at the highest level, you think about altitude and latitude. What are those high-level business concerns that they have? And you're speaking to those, you're speaking to those outcomes. And so you might be concerned about the details of a firewall or a you know, a filtering engine, but what's the impact to the customer? What's the impact to our reputation? What's the impact to our to the bottom line? That's why I really one of the things I love about IT technology security is you're sitting in a position where you have an opportunity to understand every bit of the business. You know, a lot of departments and enterprises, you learn your you learn the thing that you're doing. But in technology, it's so important to understand how does the business make money? What gets in the way of the business making money? What could threaten the business's ability to make money? Customer data gets leaked to the public, the public is unhappy, the public quits buying from us, our revenue goes down, our salespeople can't sell, our profits are zero, a company goes out of business. And that's why I think I believe most all in employees understand this. And I think especially cybersecurity employees understand it. But if I think to really understand the value we bring, if we don't do our job well, the company could go out of business. That's huge. And okay, well, what does it mean to run the business? And that's where having those conversations, I think, is really important. And one more thing on that, Jess, is that I encourage people, one of the exercises I do is to create a relationship map. And so if I'm a director, I'm any level, but I pick director. If I'm a director and I want to become CISO CIO, CEO, I'm going to map out the people that are in those positions, CEO, high-level positions. And I'm going to somehow make time with them. And I want that time to be valuable. I'm going to build a relationship, I'm going to learn from them, I'm going to speak in their, I'm going to learn to speak in their language and give them insights to what we're doing, how we're investing money and how we're getting the value for the money. And we're I'm learning the business, I'm, I'm, I'm being known, and I'm becoming better and better and better at having conversations, contributing, making offers, being valuable to the business.
Jess Vachon: 48:23
Perfect. Thank you for that. I think this is going to be helpful for a lot of CISOs and a lot of security professionals who are out in the industry. There's a lot to take away from what we've just covered.
Jess Vachon: 48:36
I want to move to a rapid fire, a lightning round as we come to the end of this, our time together. One phrase every security leader should stop using today.
Bill Tingle: 48:49
Oh, we'll just use AI.
Jess Vachon: 48:54
Okay. Okay. One question every CISO should be able to answer in under 30 seconds.
Bill Tingle: 49:04
What's our what how do we stand from a vulnerability and threat position?
Jess Vachon: 49:09
Best book on leadership you keep coming back to.
Bill Tingle: 49:16
That's a tough one. You know, part of it ties to my, I know this is lightning. I'll try to go faster. Part of this is tied to it's tied to the work I do, but language in the pursuit of leadership excellence by Chalmers Brothers and Vanet Kumar.
Jess Vachon: 49:32
Okay. Jazz or rock, and what's the one song you never get tired of playing?
Bill Tingle: 49:38
Well, that's a really hard one. Well, listening jazz, playing rock, Santana's Europa.
Jess Vachon: 49:47
Okay. All right. Santana, that's tricky. If someone listening is the best kept secret in their organization right now, what's the one thing they should do this week
Bill Tingle: 50:05
Have the courage to request a conversation with the CEO, the COO, one executive, and get to know them personally, ask them questions about the business and share how they impact the business.
Jess Vachon: 50:28
Awesome. Bill, thank you. This was a great conversation. A lot of us needed to have. I always learn something when we speak. Where can people find you and find your work?
Bill Tingle: 50:40
Yeah. Tingle leadership.com is my website. And find me on LinkedIn as well. Follow me on LinkedIn. If you go to LinkedIn, I publish a newsletter weekly. That would be great. I'd love to see you there.
Jess Vachon: 50:54
Yeah, Bill gives away a lot of great free advice. Highly encourage you to go out and have a one-on-one conversation with Bill and learn more about what he has to offer. And I would tell you to sign up. You'll learn a tremendous amount and you'll benefit from it. Want to give a huge thanks to our sponsor, Onyxia Cyber. Book a demo and tell them Voices of the Vigilant sent you, and your first month is free. Visit Onyxia today at Onyxia.io. To everyone listening, thank you. The work was never the problem. Go patch your pitch and keep holding the line. This is Jess Vachon, and these are Voices of the Vigilant. Until next time, bye.
