Chief Information Officer, West Point Grad, D1 Football, Brian Funfar: Leadership in Tech

In this week's episode I interview Chief Information Officer Brian Funfar, from World Leading Manufacturer Greenheck Fan.  Brian is a West Point Grad where he played Div 1 football.  We talk about how sports and his background at #westpoint have made him the leader he is.  #leadership #collegefootball

Logisolve i4 Marketplace, a Logisolve Company Melinda Hyde #sap #leader #changemanagement #projects #linkedin #linked-in #podcast #logisolve #i4marketplace #it #consulting #friday

Transcript

Chief Information Officer, West Point Grad, D1 Football, Brian Funfar: Leadership in Tech

In this week's episode I interview Chief Information Officer Brian Funfar, from World Leading Manufacturer Greenheck Fan.  Brian is a West Point Grad where he played Div 1 football.  We talk about how sports and his background at #westpoint have made him the leader he is.  #leadership #collegefootball

 00:00.00

Brian Funfar, we are live on the Kelly Wendlandt Podcast. How is your day going sir?

 00:16.46

Brian Funfar

So, it's a beautiful day. How's your day treating you?

00:20.54

Kelly Wendlandt

You know what? it's been busy but it's beautiful. It's 74° here in my home office and yeah, just getting through things. So it's been great, thanks for asking. So, Brian, I wanted to ask about your leadership because a lot of people have questions about people who get into executive roles. They’re interested in what they do, but they're also interested in how they got there, in their background. You have a really great background you went to West Point, you played college football there. And so, I wanted to ask you do you think there's a tie-in in what you are today as a leader? Do you look back on those days at west point and or you know playing football division 1 football as something that's helped you get to this point?

01:14.39

Brian Funfar

Well, I think absolutely. You know, you're always made up of what your experiences are and what's cultivated you over time. West Point was just a phenomenal experience and the ability to work with just top-notch Individuals. You know the classes at West Point are just the cream of the crop from an overall talent pool perspective. And as you transition out of West Point and you embark on your career in the military, I think, the military just gives a different lens as far as the type of leadership, the leadership style. The responsibility that gets thrust on you at such an early age. I was a lieutenant within the combat arms room, was in armor and so I was combat arms on tanks. The dynamic between the trust and the relationship with all the soldiers and your fellow officers was really dynamic. It gives you the ability to make decisions at a very young age and really cultivate on that over the course of time. Um, so that's been, kind of the base of all my leadership within that confines. Coupled with, you talked about athletics, right? I'm such a huge believer in both individual and team sports as kids grow up. The competitiveness and the Camaraderie, the ability to really understand cause and effect. and how it can do that in a fairly non-threatening environment, from that perspective. I think that was also the foundation as I moved into the military to understand when you understand cause and effect and you understand outcomes, it becomes real from that perspective. As I transitioned into the business world, I think the ability to understand that it is really about outcomes.  You can have all the best intentions, but you really want to be able to deliver value in all the roles that you really bring to bear for the businesses.

03:26.78

Kelly Wendlandt

You know with team sports, especially, there's a lot of focus on yourself. You know the coaches tell you don't worry about anybody else around you, support everybody around you, don't pay any attention to your teammates, trust your teammates, you do that. You make yourself the best player you can be. Is there any transition that you felt like you had to go through or is there anything you learned at West Point about saying hey it's not that.. I also have to hold people accountable. How do you balance that? You know, driving yourself and being that leader that people just follow, based on how you behave, versus, holding people accountable. How do you balance that?

04:13.39

Brian Funfar

And well Kelly I think that's a great point, right? I mean the key to good leaders are also, I believe, you have to have a level of domain expertise in what you're doing, or at least a complementary expertise within that dynamic. The ability to lead by example, is still very very much akin to that. I believe that even follows suit within the sports side or the athletic side of things too. If you really look at who tends to rise to the top to be a captain within an athletic team, usually, those that are working the hardest and also have coupled that with hard work and talent, right? Talent does matter and I think most talent is based off of skills and skills are trainable. They're learnable and the ability to grow and extend that, really gives you the foundation. To then have that expectation on others. I’m huge believer and you can't really expect anyone to be doing something that you're not willing to do yourself. In the IT world that comes all the way down to, hey, you know, IT is a grouping of highs and lows. We go through times of huge pushes where we'll work sixty-eighty hours a week to get a release out to get certain pieces into place. But, you can't expect the developers to be doing that if the management structure is not doing that as well and they're not sitting right alongside them within those pushes.So I think that lead-by example is just a huge component of success and bringing value back into the business.

05:57.28

Kelly Wendlandt

How much do you think, to put a percentage on it, how much do you think the success is talent versus hard work? Do you think it's None or is it 70% your talent and 30% hard work? What what do you think is more important?

06:13.13

Brian Funfar

You know that's an interesting question. I had this same conversation with some colleagues the other day. Sometimes it's a little bit hard to know what that ratio is. I like to think that it's almost closer to 70/30 or 80/20 around hard work. But the reality is there isn't a level of talent that, as you look at those that push to excel, they usually do that and cultivate talent along the way. So, it's a combination of just working unbelievably hard but, leveraging the talents that you have. Not everyone has the same talents and that's kind of the dynamics of building great teams. I'm a big believer of, you don't always have to work on what people aren't good at, what you really want them to work on is what they're really good at. And then you create a team that augments one another to have that great, right combination or culmination of a winning team from that perspective.

07:14.56

Kelly Wendlandt

What do you do when you see somebody who is in a role that maybe they're not cut out for?  They just aren't as good naturally at it but, you think you can [see growth potential], you know they have talents in other areas. Let's say in the instance of the person wants to be in that in the area that they're in, how do you approach those situations? 

07:40.00

Brian Funfar

Well I think that that comes back to relationships, Kelly. We've both known individuals that are just great, great workers. They have the right heart, they have the right values but, maybe they're just not on the right seat on the bus. If they're not sitting in the right seat on the bus, you know as leaders, it's part of our responsibility to be able to coach them and mentor them into a position that they can be successful in and that they can excel at.  Giving them an understanding that really, by doing that transformation or that shift or that change, that is really where their value comes back into the organization as well. It's about having those open dialogues. It's about open communication. It's about, you know, that open door policy concept of really the team. Knowing what drives them and being able to cultivate them through mentoring and coaching.

08:44.76

Kelly Wendlandt

Okay. Let's switch a little, let's switch over to you and your career. I think people are really interested in people who rise to leadership roles. When you started in technology did you have on your list, hey, “I want to be the CIO”?

09:04.83

Brian Funfar

You know, that's an interesting question. When I came out of the military, I started working for then Bell Atlantic, now Verizon, and I was in the billing organization. Large billing organization of over 200+ developers onshore. And really as we kind of looked at that, my goal was really just to be the best developer and the best coder that I could be at that point in time. I didn't know if I really understood the technology structure or how technology really melded into the business. I very rapidly learned to be able to make an impact and be able to garner value, moving through the ranks either through the technical side or through the management side, was the key to being able to make the biggest impact and create the most value. And that really excited me. It's that competitiveness around saying how can I do more for the company? How can I bring more value into that space?  It really just kind of cultivated or grew from there. As far as saying my technical aptitude was good but, I probably wasn't a great developer. Although I really wanted to be a developer, I grew what I ended up being more effective at, which was really the management of developers, and grew that into a career over the last twenty-plus years.

10:33.46

Kelly Wendlandt

As a technology leader what are your biggest challenges on a day-to-day basis? 

10:44.87

Brian Funfar

So you know in today's world it's all about talent, right? It is about retaining talent. It's about hiring the right talent. It's about challenging the talent and it's about getting that talent to be part of the most effective team. In today’s world, everything is driven by technology, even in a manufacturing firm such as Greenheck. Everything kind of comes back to technology in some shape, fashion or form. Our ability to garner leverage with the teams that we have over the course of time. And really drive productivity, drive creative solutions, and then deliver those solutions, probably more rapidly than we're always comfortable with, because the business is always pushing us. It really comes down to people. Right? I think people are the best opportunity but it's also our greatest challenge as far as sustaining constant value within the business.

11:47.70

Kelly Wendlandt

Yeah, what? You kind of answer this but, what's great about your job? When you get to work at 6:330 or 6:00 AM, I know you're an early riser, or earlier. What do you say? I'm really jacked up for this today..

12:03.85

Brian Funfar

Yeah, you know,I enjoy every day right? Some people don't necessarily like Mondays, I love Monday. I do get up fairly early, I look at all the stats from the previous week and from the weekend. Really set the stage as far as, how can we make an impact this week? for this month? for this quarter? for this fiscal year? Really seeing the growth on a day-to-day basis, I guess just really excites me from that perspective. Understanding the progression and the push that every one of the teams has to really meet the business goals. I say that very specifically because, in the technology world, it's not about the technology. It's about the outcome of the technology translated into business value. Seeing the teams continually deliver on business value is just really exciting for me.

13:04.90

Kelly Wendlandt

You've had some great success there. Your company's growing double digits for many years in a row. How do you continue that pace? How does the technology fit into that or how do the outcomes of the technology, you know, continue that help that continue, maybe?

13:19.76

Brian Funfar

You know, as a sheet metal manufacturer, you would think that maybe technology isn't as profound as it is within our business, but the concept of digital transformation over the last five years has been an imperative for us to continue our growth, continue our overall success in the market. Our ability to keep pace with that type of growth, on the shop floor in the manufacturing world, trying to sustain and retain and bring in talent, is also very, very difficult. Our ability just to offset our retirements, offset our turnover is a huge challenge. We do that through automation. Through technology progression and the digital transformation of our overall industry 4.0 strategy for manufacturing. That’s a great challenge from that perspective. How technology infuses into that, both all the way from the customer-facing systems to the actual manufacturing output, is significant. We’re well on our way with our digital transformation journey but, we still have a ways to go. We still have some hurdles in the manufacturing side. We have a lot of automation to be putting in place. But it's exciting times we have a lot of positive initiatives going forward both this year and in the coming years.

14:54.72

Kelly Wendlandt

Brian Funfar, thank you for your time, you are listening to the Kelly Wendlandt Podcast have a great Friday and weekend!