Insights from an IT Leader: Max Sanchez

Lauren: Hey, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today. Today I have Max Sanchez, who is an experienced IT leader. He’s here to tell you all about what it’s like to be a leader in the IT space, give you some hints and tricks about things that he’s learned and help you, as a new leader, learn to succeed.

Max, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Max: Hi, everyone. A little bit about me: I started out in the tech space in about 2004, started working at Rackspace as an intern in the data center, and worked my way up pretty quickly to a technician, then a team lead within a year, and then a manager a few years after that, where I ran the San Antonio data centers for them.

I’ve worked for a number of companies, small and large, from Rackspace and Amazon to smaller local companies. Led teams of different sizes, shapes, and sizes.

Lauren: Again, thanks so much for being here.

Let’s start first by you telling us what the most important thing you’ve learned as a leader in the IT spaces.

Is it a skill?

Is it the way of working?

What’s the most important thing that you’ve learned so far?

Max:, The most important thing I would have to say is never stop learning. Keep learning whatever you can, especially in the I.T. space. You have to know what your technicians are talking about you have to know what they’re doing in order to effectively lead them. That’s what I try to always do every day. Try to learn some kind of new technology. Something new that I didn’t know before.

Lauren: How do you keep that learning going? What do you actually do day to day to make sure that you’re up on the new stuff that’s going on?

Max: News articles. Sometimes Reddit is a good place to go and talk to fellow geeks that are, that are doing the same kind of thing that we’re doing. For technology articles out there, Microsoft has some good sites out there that, for security issues, things like that.

Lauren: Great. So, let’s take a step back and talk a little bit about your development as a leader.

What is a mistake that you’ve made, either earlier or later in your career, that you made as a leader that you learned from?

How did you actually learn from it?

Max: One of the biggest mistakes that I’ve made was when I was in charge of having a data center built out for Amazon web services. I was responsible for signing off on all the new construction.

I didn’t take into account the weather and I approved the cutting of a hole in the roof for the HVAC units, and we had inclement weather. Not great, but we were also in California; it doesn’t usually rain very often there, but it did. We were running around with buckets and just putting them on, underneath all the leaks.

The biggest thing I learned from that was you got to not just look at what you have in the past; you’ve also got to take, you’ve got to look at all the different factors of every aspect of what could possibly go wrong. I just didn’t think of the weather at that point in time and it’s something that I should have.

Lauren: Yeah, consider all the variables when you’re planning. Plan for the best-case scenario, but also consider the worst-case scenario at the same time.

Max: Right.

Also, ask your peers.

I should have asked some of my peers, “What are some of the things that I need to think about before I go ahead and approve this?”

One of my peers told me, “Yeah, that happened to me. The same exact thing.”

Lauren: Something about the rain loves to attack Amazon builds apparently.

Then, moving on from that, you remembered or realized you have to remember to collaborate.

What top three skills would you say are necessary to be a good leader?

People skills, interpersonal skills, or whatever.

What do you think the top three skills should be for a new leader to really focus on?

Max: Probably the top skill is learning how to deal with your team and learning the skills of your team.

Each team is different and each team is going to have different people that have different skill sets. And to me, learning what those skill sets are is a skill in itself. Once you figure it out and have that key point, then you can kind of start putting the pieces of the puzzle in place and have the right people in the right spot.

One example of that is that when I was at Amazon Web Services, I showed up there and everyone complained about this one technician. He’s lazy and didn’t work. But when I looked at the numbers, I’m like, his numbers are better than everyone else’s. I don’t know what’s going on here.

So I pulled him in and I’m like, “What’s going on here?” And he smiled and goes “You’re the first person who’s actually asked me that. What I’ve done is scripted most of my job.”

Lauren: I’m surprised he admitted to it.

Max: Yeah, but at that point, I realized we had him in the wrong spot. He needed to be on a different team that was responsible for doing scripting and creating those kinds of tools.

Amazon still uses those tools today and it saved a lot of man hours for everyone.

It wasn’t that he was lazy; it was just that he had scripted himself out of doing most of his work so he could concentrate on other things.

Lauren: It’s great that you were able to have that conversation with him, and then instead of just firing him, you moved him to where he needed to be.

You know, a lot of people in leadership roles would have thought that he was betraying them, that he was wasting company time and they would have just immediately got rid of him. But you realize that no, you really have an asset here and really make use of that.

Max: Exactly.

And that’s why I think it’s one of the biggest skill sets that you can learn is learning how your technicians work, what they’re doing and what they’re best at and putting them in the right place.

I have a lot more examples of that, but that was probably the biggest one right there. He was really good at his job after that. He was really good at it before; he just scripted it.

Lauren: He was so good at it that he figured out how to code it and didn’t have to do it.

Max: Yep. Another skill set that I don’t know if it’s a skill but is an effective way of leading a team is lead by example.

Again, when I was at Amazon, my first, I think it was my first three or four days in and at my data center. We had to have the network drops run by the end of the week, and there was no way we were going to be able to get it done. This is on a Wednesday, so we can do it on Thursday or Friday because we had construction crews in the area that we were going to be working in.

I talked to my team, the team lead, and he said, “Yeah, there’s no way we can do it. This is not possible. I don’t have the technicians to do it.”

I said, “Well, it’s just network drops, right?”

He goes, “Yeah, but we need two people for it.”

“All right, well, let’s go run it.”

He later on told me that that was one of the key points where he realized that I was going to be a good manager.

I was willing to get down and dirty and start running drops with them and I have no problem doing that. Once you do those things, the technicians or employees, they respect that. They know that you’re not above them or feel like you’re above them and you’re willing to do the same work that they are.

Lauren: Really get in the trenches and you’ll have that camaraderie.

And then what about the third most important skill?

Max: The third most important skill is communication.

Whether it be with your supervisors or with your employees, sometimes you get directives that you don’t personally like coming down from your supervisors, and you have to relay that and you have to relay it positively, even if you don’t agree with it sometimes.

Communication is so key.

I mean, whether it’s interpersonal skills, dealing with the team or just relaying some bad information, “Hey, you haven’t been living up to the standards that we have,” or even good news for the team or good news for individuals or reporting bad news up to your supervisors, “Hey, this project’s not going to be done on time.”

Learning how to communicate can help you manage your managers and manage your team effectively.

Lauren: Yeah, for sure. That’s definitely one of the skills that I talk a lot about on this channel. So I’m glad you brought it up.

You mentioned communication as being one of the most important skills that a manager can have.

How do you communicate with your team?

Do you have a specific way of doing it?

Do you do it multiple different ways so that you make sure that they absorb the information?

Same for your peers or your leadership; how are you actually communicating with them so that it’s effective and people are actually hearing what it is you’re trying to say?

Max: I guess the one way I have is to not have a single one way of communicating.

Everyone’s different and you have to learn how everyone communicates. Praise: for example, some people enjoy the praise, public praise. And some people, if you praise them in public, they’re going to completely shut down. So you have to learn your employees and know how to handle each individual.

Peers are a little bit different; I’m usually pretty direct with my peers. That way, I need to get information across to you: this is what’s going to happen; here’s what I need from you; here’s what I’m going to provide.

That kind of goes across to my managers as well. I’m pretty direct. I relay the information. I’m not going to sugarcoat anything for him, but I will be a little bit more delicate and with some of the bad news, but you still got to deliver that bad news.

Lauren: Yeah, it’s all in how you frame it.

Max: Exactly. There’s no one, one way of doing it.

You have to kind of learn how each individual. communicates and takes the communication.

Lauren: For sure.

So you mentioned how some people shut down when they get praised. So how do you give feedback to your direct reports?

Do you take them aside?

Do you do it in a bigger group?

Especially good and bad. How is it that you’re actually giving this feedback and how often are you giving feedback to your direct reports?

Max: Generally speaking, I give the feedback one-on-one, unless it’s team feedback, like “Hey, the team did great on this. We accomplished these goals.” Then I’ll it’ll be an announcement or an email. Usually I’ll send an announcement out and congratulate them out on a team meeting or just kind of go and talk with everyone and say, “Good job,” and try to reward them with something like pizza or something that, that makes them happy.

For individual praise, I usually do it one-on-one because most people, at least in the tech industry, are a little bit more shy and don’t prefer public praise. So, I tend to be a little bit more one-on-one with them, unless I know that individual prefers to be publicly praised and then I’ll generally give it to them and say, “Great job on this.”

Lauren: And then, how do you prefer to receive feedback from them?

Do you ask for it?

Do you just kind of see if they say anything?

How are you kind of seeking that out?

Max: I usually have weekly one-on-ones with my team, depending on the size of the team. If it’s a large team, 20 or 30 people, that’s obviously not doable, so it’s usually every two weeks or once a month.

I start off with the praise. “Here’s what you’re doing great. Here’s where I can use some improve where you can do some improvement.”

Then I asked for feedback from them. “How can I help you? What are you struggling with? What can the company do for you to help you succeed?”

I try to, during that one-on-one time, face-to-face, get that, get them to open up and try to talk to me and let me know.

Lauren: And give you, your feedback back to you.

Max: Right.

Lauren: So then, you do these one-on-ones with them.

How are you also working to keep your team motivated and focused?

Is it mostly in these one-on-ones?

Is it team pep talks?

How are you helping them stay focused on the goal and also moving forward and not kind of slacking off?

Max: It’s a combination of talking with the team during a team meeting. “Here’s what our goals are and here’s what we need, where we need to be, here’s what I need from the team.”

The one-on-one/coaching where I can individually talk to him. “Okay. Here’s where we, here’s where we need to be. Here’s where I need each individual person to be to help us get to that point and here’s where you’re currently at. Here’s either what I need from you to get you to that point,” or “you’re doing great; keep up the great work,” and go from there.

Lauren: Okay. So you’re constantly motivating them, reminding them of the goals, and kind of keeping them focused on it.

In that sense, how are you kind of balancing making progress toward those goals but also team development so that the team is improving, they’re learning new skills?

How are you balancing those two competing priorities within the team?

Max: Generally speaking, like personal improvement, I generally give that during your annual or quarterly reviews. I try to add goals in there.

Here’s what I want you to learn.

Here’s a new technology.

You have stated that you wanted to say, move into networking. Here’s a goal to take: take your network plus and pass it by the end of the quarter.

And during our one-on-ones, I do include that. “Okay. Where are you at with your network plus? How’s that going? What can I? Do you need more time to try to work on it at work? Is there anything I can do to help you with it? I try to keep them on track with it.

But it is a fine, delicate balancing act sometimes—you know, balancing out the work and helping them succeed.

But at the end of the day, it’s also on them to try to get to where they need to be, and sometimes you have to do some work after the job is done, so that way you can improve yourself.

Lauren: So you try to support them where you can, give them whatever support that you can, but also kind of encourage them to seek it out on their own, sort of balancing it out.

Max: Exactly, yeah. I’ll try to give them resources where I can and the time if possible.

Lauren: But yeah, sometimes those deadlines are pretty tight, and, you know, there’s no spare time. I understand.

So finally, what’s the biggest piece of advice you would give to someone new to a leadership role? Whether inside the I.T. world or outside the I.T. world, what’s the most important thing that you think they need to know as a new leader?

Max: Always know or always try to learn as much as you possibly can.

My suggestion is if you haven’t done the job, go do the job.

If you haven’t done that tech job, then you’re not going to know what your team is doing.

You’re not going to know how they operate.

You’re not going to be an effective leader.

You really need to be able to know how they how the team interacts with each other and how they work. And what work they are actually doing? That’s probably the biggest key to me.

Every time I join a new team, the first thing I do is go in there and try to learn.

I’m like, “Okay, what’s your daily process?” And I just do it. Try to learn and figure it out for them.

Once I know how they work and what they’re doing, then I can effectively lead them and put personnel where I need them.

Lauren: Yeah. So, you’re not always doing the job. You’re just doing the job to learn it at the beginning. And then, okay, just making sure we have a lot of command-and-control managers out there that like to go in and actually do the job.

Max: Nope. I don’t believe in that unless you absolutely have to, you shouldn’t be doing that.

Lauren: you can’t be that effective as a leader if you’re doing that. But learning it at the beginning is definitely important.

Max: Right. Exactly. Yeah. It’s just learning and knowing how they, how they do it. Every once in a while, I do step in and help, but only when the team is slammed, so that way I can take some of the pressure off of them.

Lauren: And I think that’s part of being a good leader, too, is recognizing when the team needs that kind of help, where you can be most effective helping them do their work as opposed to leading them.

I think, you know, being a good leader means knowing that balance.

Max: Exactly.

Lauren: Okay, well, thank you, Max, so much for being with us today. If people wanted to reach out to you, how would they go about doing that?

Max: Thank you for having me. If anybody wants to reach out to me, you can find me at www.linkedin.com/in/maxmsanchez or email maxmsanchez@gmail.com.

Lauren: All right, Max. Thank you so much. Have a good rest of your day. Bye.

Max: Thanks for having me. Bye everyone.

For the sake of readability, some minor adjustments have been made to the interview transcript. Instances of stumbling, superfluous words, and repetitive phrases have been omitted to enhance the flow of the conversation. These edits were made with the intention of presenting the interviewee’s thoughts in a clear and concise manner without altering the substance of the discussion.