Something’s Amiss featuring Kevin Steele

Transcript

Rob Dwyer (00:02.058)
Hey, we're back. Another episode of Next in Queue today. I've got Kevin Steele in Queue. How are you, Kevin?

Kevin Steele (00:09.433)
Doing great, glad to be here.

Rob Dwyer (00:11.68)
I am glad to have this conversation. You are the Director of Client Support at the Arbinger Institute. And you and I had a conversation not all that long ago about partnership and support. And so that's what I want to talk to you about today. But before we get into all of that, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you find yourself in the support work?

Kevin Steele (00:40.773)
Growing up, I was a big computer geek and getting out of high school, I dropped into like, I worked at CompUSA, if that means anything to our generation. And my dad actually started the family in Apple Macintosh stuff. And so when I went to CompUSA, I was in their

first ever Mac store, right? And I ran that and and then just from there kind of took my experience, ended up working some call centers, building out support. did Internet for high speed at hotels back when that just wasn't common. There weren't Wi-Fi connections everywhere. And I developed the the Mac customer

guides to how to use the technology if you were traveling around with a Mac laptop and ended up getting hired directly by the company and doing server side support for them. then it's just kind of this weird thing of being in computers and being familiar with technology, but then also having this niche area that I just

kept developing on and because of the work that I did there, I got contacted by Baylor College of Medicine's Department of Molecular and Human Genetics because half of that department were Mac users. Not the clinical, but the testing and lab teams, many of those people were Mac users and they needed a Mac administrator. So it was kind of like hopping around from these different roles that just took me from one place to another.

and going from being a Mac user to expanding into Unix, to expanding more into the Windows side of the world and ending up just in a very heterogeneous computing experience. But everything I did was taking care of people. And so down the road, mean, from then I've worked with ITSM and ITIL companies, disaster recovery.

Kevin Steele (03:01.987)
learning management systems and all technology based. Right. But all support. The last few years before joining the Arbinger Institute, I took the leap of faith that I never thought I would take. My wife would have laughed at you. I would have laughed at you and said, hey, he's going to become a manager. It's not what I thought I wanted. I had some good leaders who saw something in me and

I took that leap of faith. I've been managing international teams and then, you know, the way of the world and technology right now got laid off back in 2003 and landed at Arbinger. And it's completely different. It's completely so I've I've had this whole life in tech support. And here with Arbinger, we do leadership and organizational development.

And so a lot of the product we're delivering is training and education. And that's not that's not hard drives and hardware and and bits and bobs and everything. It's.

But what I found is because all of our customers are coming to us, especially on the digital level, there was a relatively young company as far as the technology side goes. And they were really in startup mode, even though they've been around for a while. And so they're like, well, we don't have a support team. We have everybody wearing different hats.

And what we need is, you come in? And so I built their support organization infrastructure and everything up and I've just continued working on that. But it's been honestly one of the most rewarding last couple of years that I've had because I got to really focus on the customer experience and what it means for customers to engage with them and finding that at my root, whether I'm dealing with tech support or customer support,

Kevin Steele (05:18.957)
That's where I thrive. Sorry, very long-winded response.

Rob Dwyer (05:22.358)
Wow, I love it. I love it. I have a quick detour. What's the biggest difference between using a Mac and using a Windows machine? Or maybe what's the biggest difference between the users of those different machines?

Kevin Steele (05:41.765)
Depending upon who you ask, and I say this tongue in cheek, depending upon who you ask, each user will say the other user stuck up, yada, yada, yada. But the reality of the difference between Mac and PC is what do you need to get done? I've had the whole PC gamer, console, Mac, Linux, et cetera, and really at the end of the day, I'm not going to judge anybody for it.

I want to know what do you need to do and do you have the tools to do what you need to do on the machine you want to use? Because if you do, great. I found that and that's that's really the difference. And sometimes just not being aware of it means you don't know. I had people tell me I couldn't add Mac to Active Directory on the on the university.

infrastructure and I'm like, really? Look at these. You see this structure over here? These are all Apple users. yeah, but you can't apply rules really because these like, it's like, guys, let's step back and looking at this as what I assume you can't do. This isn't anything you can do, I can do better. And you know what? If people want to be that way, they can. But for me, it's like,

Not that you can't do it on a PC, but I see a lot of people in art music production, especially on Macs. Sure, gamers, certain types of mathematics and number crunching go really well on PCs. You want to run the Internet backbone, you don't use either Linux, Unix kind of stuff. So.

At the end of the day, the biggest difference is what's the purpose? And can you accomplish what you want to do?

Rob Dwyer (07:44.92)
Yeah, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. it reminds me a little bit of the conversation I just had with Reagan Helms when we were talking about switching platforms. And sometimes you have this preconceived notion, maybe rooted in a truth at a particular period of time about, well, I can't do this because. And I hear that.

today, right? We can't support Mac users because, and the reality is that maybe that was true at one point in time, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's true today. And it's always good to revisit your notions of what can and can't be done because the world is changing really quickly.

Kevin Steele (08:36.213)
actively practice the Dunning-Kruger check. Be okay saying, I don't know what I don't know, and am I making an assumption or do I actually have information that tells me this doesn't work? Because there's a big difference there.

Rob Dwyer (08:39.181)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (08:53.794)
Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, let's get started with true or false, Kevin. True or false? No one wants to talk to support. True or false? Tell me more about that.

Kevin Steele (09:01.55)
Ooh.

Kevin Steele (09:08.751)
True.

Right. I live by that. And I know that it drives some of my contemporaries a little crazy when I say that. Listen, we can build and we do build amazing support experiences for many companies. But when you get down to the brass tacks, the very bottom of the barrel, no one wants to talk to support. Nobody wants to send the email, pick up the call, open the ticket. They have

whether they've got it on a physical list or not, they have a bunch of other things they would rather do than anything than talk to support. It doesn't mean they don't need to talk to support, but they don't want to talk to support. And the reason why I can say that and say it very strongly and with a straight face is because if I can focus on that core principle.

It allows me for every customer that calls in, sends an email, opens a ticket, sends a chat. I see them as a human being. And when you get sometimes caught up in the churn of case after case after case, sometimes we we lose sight of that. And so if I just remember, hey, this person, they don't hate me, they don't even have to be mad or anything. They could be the happiest person on Earth.

But even then, they have other things that they'd like to be doing. And so it helps me respect the bind that they're in, that they've identified a need, that they feel I can help with that need or my team can help with that need. And give them room and space to help me help them.

Rob Dwyer (11:05.39)
I love that. think all too often we do get caught up in

Thinking about things through metrics instead of thinking about things through people. I have heard a lot of talk about, for instance, handle time. Is handle time important? And certainly it is from a workforce standpoint. But when it comes to me as a person who needs something done,

Handle time is important to me because I don't have all the time in the world. I don't want to be on the phone or on a chat or waiting forever for a response to my email inquiry. I want it solved quickly. Now that doesn't mean that I want you to dismiss and cut corners just to knock, just to make things faster.

Because more important than that is I want my issue solved. That's number one, but I do want it done efficiently. I think there is this misconception that it's okay to do things more slowly or less efficiently as long as you solve the problem. And to some degree that's true, but I do care about efficiency.

Kevin Steele (12:42.913)
I've found, I imagine others have worked in organizations where individual agents are measured by the handle time and you have to have a handle time under this. And it's commendable because it's supposed to be about how quickly you're resolving a customer's issue. However, what I would find is that they wouldn't be getting the tools they needed to be efficient.

And that's what led to cutting corners, deciding not to do some of the troubleshooting. so you get, unfortunately that turns into you're halfway down the rabbit hole and find, wait, I didn't do this one thing back here, but now I do that, it leads me in a completely different direction. And nobody likes, the agent doesn't like to be stuck in that, the customer sure doesn't like to experience that. But it is one of those things of...

Rob Dwyer (13:30.2)
Yeah.

Kevin Steele (13:41.005)
When I look at my agents...

Where are they getting stuck at? And rather than looking at them as the problem I need as a leader. And this is so, for instance, this is an Arbinger principle that we teach is that humans naturally and I mean this very legitimately, naturally we see each other, especially at work when we are engaging other people. We tend to default in the back of our heads of seeing other people as objects.

their vehicles to the success of something you're trying to do, their obstacles to something, or they're insignificant. Now that doesn't mean like they don't matter. It just means that they're not having an impact, positive or negative, to your goals. And the problem with that is that if you only see people, if you get into that mindset of only seeing people as objects,

you get locked into almost very binary solutions when an agent is not performing their handle time and they're an object. You don't have a lot of options to to fix that. But if I can see them as a person, I'm not necessarily going to rubber stamp apply the same approach to each of my agents because they're going to have different superpowers. Heck, they're just going to have different abilities.

regardless, they don't even have to be superpowers. But if you if you can see them that way, then you can say, oh, so maybe Rob has a higher handle time. But what I'm finding is that Rob may not be as efficient as other members of the team, but he is effective because I'm not getting callbacks on the cases that Rob closes.

Kevin Steele (15:30.925)
And so, and sometimes it's the, do you make allowances for based upon a person's performance in impact on the customer? And sometimes there are things of, yeah, actually I'm finding that more people are affected this because they don't have the tool. We have something blow up, new product releases, new bugs, new problems. And we need a different tool because what we have is thinking about where we were rather

Rob Dwyer (15:59.789)
Mmm.

Kevin Steele (16:01.029)
And so it's a different way to think about people of like, do they have what they need? Am I thinking about them and what they bring to the table? Because metrics are really good, but I honestly believe, and I had an old boss that taught me, the best thing about metrics is they help you determine what the next question to ask is.

Rob Dwyer (16:24.654)
Yeah, that's great. correct me if I'm wrong, but you're not just talking about looking at the people that you work with as people, not objects. But that extends to the people that you're helping in a support role, the customer who is inquiring about an issue.

And the reason that we decided to record this episode was just because of something that came up one of the times when you and I were talking. And you explained to me that there's a common approach and then a different approach that you like to take. Tell me more about that.

Kevin Steele (17:15.717)
So let see if I get this one right. I see you're pointing to the thing you're pointing at, the table. And I'll share this. This comes from one of my former employees, Mark Henderson, who is a technologically brilliant person, but in many ways, and almost more important to me,

Rob Dwyer (17:21.368)
There's no right or wrong, Kevin.

Kevin Steele (17:44.463)
He's a very empathetic human being. He was very connected to customers and how they're feeling. And he was one of my tier three escalations. And he taught this to the rest of the team that more often than not. And this happens in customer support, technical support, SaaS support, enterprise, SMB. Like, doesn't matter. This is a mindset, not just a pure behavior that

We tend to see the customer coming up. It's like you're at the Geek Squad table. They come up to the counter and they set their problem on the counter and they say, is my problem. And you're standing there on the other side of the counter saying, yes, I see your problem. well, there's this. And then you're asking questions. But it's very, they're here, you're here. And what Mark taught people to do through language,

through the way they communicated on the phone, on email is instead of saying your problem, my help - to virtually. Get on the other side of the table and stand next to them, treat them as the partner, as this is our problem to solve when you start talking about this and that actually shows ownership.

more than any and it's a very subconscious thing. But when we use the R, you know, working on these things together with our customers, I can still take ownership of the things that I need to do, but I don't want them feeling like there has to be a barrier. Like you stay on that side of the table. I'm going to stay I'm going to stay up here on the pedestal while you're down there, Mr. Customer, get to their level.

And sometimes that happens through understanding the language. know, we all, every company, Arbinger does it. We've got acronyms galore and special terms for our software or hardware. And we talk in that language. We get so used to it. And then the customer comes in and they have a different vocabulary that they apply to the same thing. And sometimes they're using words we use in the wrong way or the wrong way. And so getting on their field isn't just about turning

Kevin Steele (20:05.719)
your side and turning your chair and being on that side of the table with them is also making sure that you understand what it is they're saying and what it is they want and how they're trying to accomplish it now, what's going wrong, and bringing your language down to their language without being like, well, actually, it's this word. Well, actually, it's that.

We know how fun it is to be talked down to like that. And many people in support do it completely unaware that they're doing it without with no malice, no ill intent. It's just where we become the teachers. And so in this way, we can become the buddies in the garage and we can still own, hey, fixing this is my responsibility. But.

Part of the ground rules for partnership in this as a partnership mentality is number one, communication is non-negotiable. And when I say that, mean, sometimes we get stuck in really sticky situations and agents will lock up, will freeze, and it's human. But avoiding communication creates that FUD, that fear, uncertainty and doubt on both sides.

customers wondering what that's going on. The agent's like, how are they going to respond if I tell them X bad news? like communication is non-negotiable. That means we have to talk to each other. Second is healthy boundaries prevent conflict. And so it's OK that we're talking to each other, but we have a right to say, hey, these are the ways I can work with you. These are not.

the way you're the language you're using to talk to me, the tone you're using to talk to me. There are certain things that are not OK. So, yeah, communication, healthy boundaries, clear rules, strengthen relationships. And that means I can do X, I can't do Y. And being open like transparency, Lord, which is down there. And the other one, there's I can do X, but I can't do Y with a customer. The other is I have to do X.

Kevin Steele (22:25.133)
before I can do why? Because sometimes customers are like, well, just change that one thing. I'm like, if I don't check this, I can do that. But if I don't do these steps, we could change this and it could kill the entire system. it doesn't have to be apocalyptic, right? We can change this. And these other things will just cause them minor headaches that they can take an aspirin and get over. But

It's good to be clear about let's do these things and going back to communication, communicating why we do these things. Space in relationships nurtures growth. that's that rule is simply. When we're communicating, not too short, not too long. My goal with my team and I understand that this differs unless a customer says otherwise.

Rob Dwyer (23:03.821)
Yeah.

Kevin Steele (23:25.485)
My team was every case every day. Touch a case, make sure they're communicated with every day. Unless, again, unless the customer says otherwise or unless you come up with it. If you've got something that's in development and and it's going to take some time to resolve, telling the customer every day for 30 days that it's not fixed yet is not good communication. So it's space in relationships, nurtures growth.

But it's still, you can say, hey, I've got this. Our estimated time of completion is 30 days. If it happens sooner, I will contact you. But as soon as we have an update, you're going to hear from me. And we stick to that. And last but not least, this comes with transparency is respect and honesty build trust. And that you don't.

Rob Dwyer (24:21.954)
Hmm.

Kevin Steele (24:25.733)
I don't do when I worked for a disaster recovery company, we dealt with managed service providers. And I dealt with my product all day, every day. They were dealing with a variety of products, and it could be easy to be like, well, why don't you know this? This is your job to deliver this to the customer. Why don't you know this? And that's not a mentality of respect.

It's not and it sure as heck doesn't build trust. But when they come to you and tell you that things are wrong and you give them the time to tell you, in this case, as a leader, I was OK with people being mad, being angry, yelling about things and like getting through just hearing it and being able to set aside the angry stuff and get to the root of what it was that they were experiencing because then I could repeat back to them, it sounds like.

We're having this, this and this problem and that's causing these headaches for you. And I can fix X and Y, but Z, that's probably going to be something I need to get to development. And all of a sudden, the anger or the frustration that they are entitled to because they are experiencing this, it's real, melts away because they don't have to be angry to get motion.

And unfortunately, we live in this world at times where we've even developed systems that require us to be like, no, zero, zero, zero, I want to talk to a human being.

Rob Dwyer (25:55.534)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (26:05.945)
Ha ha ha ha.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm hearing a couple of things, right? I'm hearing, I just had this conversation in a CX Accelerator thread today, which is part of what we are always looking for is how to get our people to care about our customers. And my first response is, right,

you start with hiring the right people. And you kind of touched on this, right? People who are empathetic, maybe have a developed EQ, although that's something you can, you can build, but like people who want to help naturally is where you start. Then there are all these skills that you can layer upon that kind of foundation of wanting to help. And you're talking about

the words that we use, the way that we phrase things absolutely matters. And my intent is not always clearly communicated if I don't use the right words, if I'm not keeping people updated so that they know that, I'm still working on this or I'm getting help or I'm looking for.

some additional information to make sure I have all the right contacts. Whatever the case is, being able to communicate clearly with your customer at their level, that's a skill. It's a skill that takes time to develop, which we can do, but it's important that we take the time to do that with our people so that we can foster this approach of

Rob Dwyer (28:03.758)
Partnership with our customers that we've hired the right people They want to do that and now we're just helping them Execute on that through specific skills. So I really love that

Kevin Steele (28:21.355)
It's interesting. I learned along the way that it's easier to hire with empathy in mind first because I can teach tech in a way that sticks a lot easier than I can teach EQ. And you hear those like, don't want to hire the smart jerk. And don't get me wrong, I want to hire smart people, but

Rob Dwyer (28:38.275)
Yeah.

Kevin Steele (28:51.071)
That smart jerk, for lack of better term, is somebody who doesn't just create wedges with customers, but within teams.

Rob Dwyer (29:00.584)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And can work to really tear down your culture if you're not careful about it. So we've been talking certainly at a, I don't know, theoretical level. I know this is not theoretical, but I'd like to actually put some meat on this table, if you will, and talk maybe about a specific incident where you were able to

make that pivot from I'm across the counter, I'm across the table from a customer to I'm now beside you and we're working on this issue and how that changed the conversation with that customer.

Kevin Steele (29:51.083)
Yeah. A good example, one that my brain always goes back to is one of my partners in Ireland, in Europe, I think it was in England, but my team was in Ireland. he was one of those people that some or subordinated organizations might classify as the problem child, the guy who always is something going wrong.

And who always thinks they are the smartest person in the room. And they talk to you that way, unfortunately. And the team was at the point where they were just like, who wants to get him? know, they'd see the number. They knew the number. They're like, who wants to get him? I can't deal with him today, that kind of thing. so, and to the point where there was also just like.

you know, the inside jokes. And I believe that it's kind of like saving private Ryan. Gripes go up, they don't go down. And so I'm like, bring it up. But first and foremost, like, you have to be really careful about how we talk about customers, how we talk about coworkers, talk about each other. I'm not saying this person doesn't drive you crazy. I recognize it. I recognize why. But the more we talk,

amongst ourselves this way with a native look, we share things that don't give us the opportunity to see this person. Right? So first, to set the baseline of the tone that we set when we're talking about other human beings. And they were using a very new product that we had just released. All of our engineering was done out of Utah. And so they're in Ireland in

Amia timeframes, you know, and all the engineering work, the tier three product support agents, they're all in Utah. And so they're this, you know, lone island covering all of Europe and

Rob Dwyer (32:03.15)
It's like a seven hour time difference, give or take.

Kevin Steele (32:04.951)
It is. Yeah, depending upon the time frame and where you're at and everything, says good seven hours. And so they could only really catch people like right at the end of their day as the tier three people were coming in. And so there's this window of time. Right. And this was brand new. This was a brand new SAS product for disaster recovery that we working on. This was a brand new

support team over in Ireland as we had decided to branch out directly into Europe and soon after we followed with Australia and Southeast Asia. But the problem was is that they already have this customer that they're familiar with with older customers. They have this attitude towards them. It's like, let's reset that first. Second, let's actually take a look at the cases that he's been bringing in about this new product and why is he having so many problems?

And come to find out it wasn't that it wasn't that he was having so many problems, it's that he was one of the first adopters. So we were hearing it the most from him because other people just hadn't started using it yet. And so and he was he was a smart he was a smart person and he was trying difficult things that should have been possible. And yet they weren't.

And so I'm like, so the next part is see the opportunity for what it is. We had gotten really good at working and engaging with our development team. And so I'm like, hey, we have an issue. you do what can you do to duplicate it? And I'm like, so like, take that from him, like, be appreciative and respectful, honor and respect the work he's done.

But say, work with him to say, I want to reproduce this over here so that I can get this in front of my engineering so that we can make sure it works in the seamless way we're all actually expecting it to work, because it's not. And we hit this bump of Jira ticket, Jira ticket, Jira ticket, like more engineering tickets. And they're like, the VP of of of engineering came down. He's like,

Kevin Steele (34:30.989)
What did we do wrong?

Rob Dwyer (34:33.655)
Ha ha ha ha.

Kevin Steele (34:35.605)
And it's just like, hey, you know, there were things that we weren't expecting people to do, but that realistically in the world, they do it because it's the most effective way for them to get it done. They're actually doing it the right way. And so it's causing this trip ups. And I'm like. The thing I can do for you in development is do the best job we can to capture that information and get it to you. And it's like, keep doing that.

Like, it stinks to have this many problems on release. And we're like, we get it. We feel that. Our customers are feeling it, which means we feel it. We're not passing this on to say, you guys stink. We're passing this on because our hope is we make things better. And then if they do that, then it makes our life better by making our customers' lives better. And just having that communication. initially,

Like recognize the customer for who they are, set the baseline for how we talk about them. Make sure that if you're engaging other teams, that they understand the purpose behind why all of a sudden they've got this influx. Sometimes just it's easy for, if we're not good at cross-functional collaboration, that we just make assumptions about those other guys, those jerks in support. And then it came back to

communicating with him and actually, Raf, one of my agents at the time, was like, he did a really good job of being proactive, checking back in with him and saying, okay, we've got these, here's some suggested changes you can make that will fix X, Y, and Z. And he had, we extended access invisibility so Raf could actually go into the Jira's because initially we,

That was the closed system. Support doesn't look at the engineering tickets. Now, because these were things we had submitted, they're like, yeah, you have it. We need you to know where we're at so that you can communicate to that customer. Because what it got to is some tax, some brand new tax. We're like, well, let me see if an engineer can talk to you. And it's like, no, no, no. We speak for the company to them, and we speak for them to the company. I'm not trying to just put

Kevin Steele (37:01.603)
roadblocks, unless there's a very specific reason to have an engineer on a call, we don't hand that responsibility off to the engineers. They're doing their job. They're doing it fine. We communicate this. But Rath's approach with this guy, and Rath was one of the people who was annoyed with this customer.

Kevin Steele (37:23.599)
But Raff saw the value in what the customer did. He was the first person to go in, capture all the information, duplicate the stuff. He started creating the first tickets and he just kind of took ownership of this thing that became this. And this is a set of dominoes that we had to get through for the product to really get solid.

And at the end of all of it, his response was, you know, I don't know what you did with your he told me this. He's like, I don't know what you did to your team to get them to actually be helpful. But they were amazing. And I'm like. I can't take credit for what they did. All I can do, all I can tell you is that we needed

a little bit of right sizing our perspective of you. I needed them to see you in the way you needed to be seen. And he's like, well, keep that up. And. Eight years later, right before I finished, he was still he was still an avid user of our technology and still opened up cases, still did.

Rob Dwyer (38:28.78)
Yeah.

Kevin Steele (38:48.773)
crazy, hard trying things. But I had a support team who was like, that's really cool instead of, my gosh, what did this guy do? And it's that it's that mentality of saying like, yeah, I mean, we get it. There are some people who just drive us up the wall. One of my old managers had some T-shirts printed out that have a picture of a hard drive and it says,

Rob Dwyer (38:50.542)
you

Rob Dwyer (38:57.964)
Yeah.

Kevin Steele (39:17.603)
You're right, sir. It is run on magic because he was talking with a technician from another company who just said, well, I have a virtual machine with a virtual hardware in the physical hard drive behind it was going bad. And he's like, there is no physical machine. That's why it's called a virtual machine. like, and it does like back and forth. And this is again, before times. And so it just came the snarky response. You're right, sir. It's run on magic.

And the guy said, you're right. It's so cool, isn't it?

And honestly. That it's so cool, isn't it? Kind of snap everybody out of the conversation and realize he's not trying to be. Dim. He just has his experience with it, he still has to learn and our job is still to make sure that his physical he understands how those things are linked. And.

Sometimes it's what the customers say and sometimes it's what we say, but it was that opportunity. So we laugh about that even to this day. And it's that it's that snap. Does that make sense?

Rob Dwyer (40:36.29)
Yeah, Kevin, I can't tell you how much this resonates with me personally, because one of the things that we recognize at Happitu is that the people who report bugs or issues or have questions about how to accomplish something, those are the people who are actually using the application.

Kevin Steele (41:03.107)
Yes.

Rob Dwyer (41:03.736)
Those are the people who are engaged. Those are the people who are, A, probably your biggest fans, and B, will help you find the problems before they're really widespread or have a chance to impact a lot of other people. And we are grateful and are always encouraging our partners to

Give us that feedback. Tell us what's wrong. Go in and break stuff. Do whatever, because we know that you're engaged and you're using it and you see value in it. If you're disengaged and you're not using it and you probably don't see a ton of value in it, you're probably not going to stick around as a customer. So I think often,

In support, we forget about that piece that the people that we're probably dealing with the most are actually our biggest fans. And we should probably treat them that way.

Kevin Steele (42:19.045)
they want it to succeed.

Rob Dwyer (42:22.678)
Yeah, absolutely they do.

Kevin Steele (42:25.601)
It's, I'd go out and visit European and Australian partners. And they always looked at me a little weird when I said, know, thank you for your CSAT surveys that you fill out the information. You know, we have a 97 % CSAT in the MIA this year. And that's my team servicing you and what you have to say about the team. And I know that that 3 % that some of you are here.

I'm happy to talk to you to see what we can do. But let me tell you, I appreciate the numbers, but I can do something with the feedback. So hear me out when I say I love numbers, I love positive numbers. That's great. But if you tell me what's going wrong.

Rob Dwyer (43:04.43)
Yeah.

Kevin Steele (43:15.243)
I can do something. can act on that. I can work to make this experience improve. I'm not shooting for 100 percent. I'm not shooting to change that number. I'm shooting to improve the experience you took the time to talk to me.

Rob Dwyer (43:31.886)
I want to tackle a slightly different topic.

Rob Dwyer (43:42.126)
Tell me about Cthulhu. Or do you use an alternate pronunciation because I know there are.

Kevin Steele (43:51.203)
There are. Cthulhu works for me.

Rob Dwyer (43:53.377)
Alright, well let's share with the audience who has no idea what the heck I just said. Tell me about that.

Kevin Steele (44:02.031)
So I love reading. I'm a big science fiction fantasy person. And in the early 1900s, there was an author named H.P. Lovecraft, and he wrote all sorts of like weird and strange tales, know, those old pulp magazine, like literally. And he was a contemporary of Edgar Allan Poe and...

And he wrote what were called the Cthulhu mythos. And it's the idea that there were bigger, greater, more powerful, like incomprehensible things out there. And one of them is this old one, one of the great old ones called Cthulhu, who lives under the sea, he's asleep under the sea in the city of R'lyeh. And I probably butcher that according to some people, too. But, you know, for me,

I love that kind of stuff. And normally I've got like, you can't see it here, but I have these really big Funko Pop of Cthulhu. I've got a Cthulhu coffee mug. I have a few things in it. And the reason it speaks to me isn't just Cthulhu, but the mythos, the things that he created, that H.P. Lovecraft created, talked about the...

that of all the most powerful things on Earth, the experience that we have, fear is the most powerful. And fear of the unknown is the greatest power over humanity. The things that we just, we don't know what we don't know. And the idea that if we were ever really to just have all that wipe away and have full view of the cosmos and how everything worked, we would go crazy. We would go mad. And it's

Kevin Steele (45:55.909)
It sounds funny to people when I say that, but like it's the idea that we don't need to know everything. It doesn't mean don't have a search for knowledge. that exploration and desire to see more and understand more, we naturally label things because we want to give name and understanding and definition to the world around us. And that's powerful. But there's also the things it's like

do we really need to know? And sometimes that is just a reflection of, can I find peace? And it's a really weird way to twist it to some people, but for me, it's a place of being like, okay, I've worked hard for what I know. I worked hard to know, to be able to experience the things I've experienced. How can I go out into the world and keep an open mind?

And but yeah, so this Cthulhu is literally this monstrous, towering creature with an octopus type head and tentacled face and dragon wings and. And gosh, and I'm a big lover of like B rated creature feature horror kind of stuff, so like it was right up my alley, but.

Kevin Steele (47:22.593)
I appreciate that kind of like there's a dark sense of humor to the universe.

Rob Dwyer (47:29.752)
love the idea of getting comfortable.

in a space where there are unknowns and will continue to be unknowns because, you know, we live in this world where there is all this information instantly available at our fingertips, right? The connected age, the promise of the internet is, you know, the world's information at our fingertips. And yet, despite all of that,

There are things that we still don't understand. Some of those are about our planet that we live on. Some of them are about our existence in a more existential way of thinking about things, but being able to get comfortable and live a good life in spite of not knowing is definitely a great goal to move toward.

I'm curious to hear from you. There are lots of people that I know that have lived in all kinds of places across the globe. You, among, I would say, are among a few that have lived in a pretty diverse set of places in the US, spanning really coast to coast, right? mean, so you're from

Pacific Northwest, if I'm not mistaken. OK. even we just added something to it, right? So you're from Southern California. You've lived in the Pacific Northwest. You've lived down near the Gulf. You've lived in Utah. Now you're in Baltimore. That spans an awful lot. There's maybe even some spots in between that I don't know about. I'm curious.

Kevin Steele (49:07.535)
Flindy Eaglem.

Kevin Steele (49:11.887)
specific cell.

Rob Dwyer (49:33.996)
What's your favorite place in the US that you've lived in and why?

Kevin Steele (49:44.781)
in the U.S.

Rob Dwyer (49:46.124)
Yes, I did put some boundaries on that.

Kevin Steele (49:49.029)
No, no, that's good. I spent part of my childhood in Saudi Arabia, so that just helps me keep the focus in.

Kevin Steele (50:08.621)
I love the ocean. I am a water person. having lived out in Pacific Northwest, up in Portland area, getting out to the sea, I was a very, I don't remember living in San Diego. That was short time. But the beach is just where I can find myself rooted. That's where I just feel comfortable.

It sounds odd. I'm really loving after 15 years in Utah, being out here in Baltimore with the amount of green that we have is just stunning and being able to walk down. I don't have to go far to get to a beach.

to just enjoy the space. I'm not far from nature, so I can literally go out exploring. I love that, I love that. Just finding places. that looks interesting. So I would say, and I think it's just the time in my life that I'm at, I'm out here in Baltimore with my wife and three kids and three dogs, and we literally uprooted my entire family to come out here. And it was the best darn thing for us.

and it comes with its own set of challenges and everything, but I am really appreciating where I'm at in Northeastern Baltimore. even the opportunity that I have in the morning to get up, take a kid to work, take another kid to high school. And that's all before I even start my job for the day.

and I get out with them and I have some time to just chat and check in with them and that wasn't something I was doing or really had the time to do before. And here I am having this and it's like there's a lot of great things about the many places I've lived but enjoying the East Coast is something I think if there is a place in my heart it would be the Pacific Northwest that I could just be like yeah.

Kevin Steele (52:23.525)
Yeah, I can do this again. Yeah, send me there. But I will say the one thing that is the absurdity in all of it is getting into the middle of nowhere Utah, into the national parks, Cathedral Valley, the Temple of the Moon and Sun. They are otherworldly. And I'm not

I'm not a hugely religious person, but it is one of the most spiritual experiences to be where you can't hear humanity. You can see things that the earth has created from all of its movement and friction and water and erosion and

and just to see what's left standing and to know that if we do well for the amount that humanity can impact it, like we can keep these things. We can preserve them and appreciate the enormous complexity of this world without understanding it.

Rob Dwyer (53:39.246)
Hmm. Hmm. You know what I appreciate, Kevin? I appreciate you joining me today on Next in Q. This has been a fantastic conversation. I hope everyone who is listening and or watching has enjoyed it as much as I have. I really can't thank you enough for joining me today.

Kevin Steele (54:00.971)
It's been a pleasure. I really enjoyed it.