Remote Work Cybersecurity, AI Business Automation, and Capital Presence with Roy Edwards

In EP032 of "The Startup Defense," host Callye Keen engages with Roy Edwards, an expert in business automation and remote work. This insightful dialogue delves into the nuances of integrating AI and automation in both government agencies and commercial businesses.

Topic Highlights:

[00:00] Introduce Roy Edwards 
Callye Keen introduces Roy Edwards, President & Chief Operations Officer at Capital Presence, where he helps Organizations and the Military to #WorkWherever while being more productive using Microsoft Power Platform. 

[06:13] Embracing Automation and AI 
Discussing the early resistance and current embrace of automation, Roy Edwards highlights the evolution and impact of AI and automation in streamlining processes and enhancing efficiency in various sectors.

[13:09] The Transformation of Government Processes
Edwards shares insights on how government agencies are increasingly adopting automation, moving from traditional methods to more efficient, AI-enhanced processes, significantly improving operational capacity.

[20:30] The Necessity of Hybrid Work Models 
Keen and Edwards discuss the inevitability and current reality of hybrid work models, stressing the importance of adaptability in today's workforce and the role of existing technologies in facilitating this shift.

[29:00] Training and Security in Remote Work 
Addressing security concerns in remote work, Edwards emphasizes the importance of training and appropriate network use, ensuring data security even in non-traditional work environments.

[34:57] Building Remote Work Cultures 
The conversation shifts to how startups can cultivate a thriving remote work culture, focusing on the importance of clearly defined processes and core values for effective team collaboration and cultural integration.

[39:23] Advantages of Remote Teams for Startups 
Roy Edwards discusses the strategic benefits for startups in embracing remote teams, highlighting the potential for attracting diverse talent and the importance of adaptable processes in a remote setting.

"Processes over people, people over technology. That's my baseline." - Roy Edwards

Callye Keen - Kform

https://kform.com/ 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/callyekeen/

Roy Edwards - Capitol Presence

Roy is a Cloud executive, Microsoft Subject Matter Expert, and the current President and Chief Operations Officer of Capitol Presence. Roy specializes in Robotic Process automation, Artificial intelligence, and is a remote work advocate. He is the host of the Work Wherever Podcast.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/roy-edwards-spsme/

https://goworkwherever.com/

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/work-wherever-podcast/id1512353766 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I might happen to be in sweatpants in my bedroom and that's my version of remote work, but the warfighter who is on a ship in the middle of the Pacific is also a working remote, because so often times we think we can't get anything done if people are working from home or working remote. Welcome to the Startup Defense. My name is Callie Keen. Today I have friend of mine, roy Edwards. Roy is like my go-to guy talking about business automation. We talk about AI. I was just on his show. We were talking about the security around remote work and AI. I'm sure we'll get into a little bit of that today. He's a big advocate for working wherever you want and a big advocate for using modern tools to make that work a little bit more accessible for everybody. That means different things to different people, so I want to give it, through this DOD or high security lens, what that means. Roy. How's it going, man? Yeah, thanks for having me on. It's good to see you again. Last time we were on my show, now I'm on your show. I love it. This is great. I don't see enough, callie. I know I need to fix that. I need to be better about that. We live like 10 minutes apart and I see you like twice a year. That's one of me. I'll take that. So, roy, before we jump into technical geekery, what people should be focused on, what people should be concerned about? I'd love to start off the show with this what are you passionate about right now? Yeah, man, that's a good question.

Speaker 1: 1:26

I'm passionate about time and giving people back their time. You mentioned there in kind of the introduction that what we do is we build automation so that people can work wherever I am from the federal world. I'm a former federal employee, and so a lot of the things that I really enjoyed about being a federal employee is the respect for time for their employees, where you have comp time, you have credit time, you have that build up of leave and they really encourage you to be a civilian and to enjoy time with your family. So I'm passionate about that for sure. I believe that no one should miss a dinner table with their kids. I believe that you shouldn't miss a t-ball practice or a game, that we're not put on this earth to work per se. We're put on this earth to carry things out, if you're asking me, I believe that, as a Christian, I have a whole viewpoint on why we're here, but I believe that the family is a core component of where we should be and where we should be spending our time and in the community. So I'm very passionate about time and protecting people's time and that's why I do what I do within the work wherever.

Speaker 1: 2:38

And, like you touched on in the beginning, work wherever means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Defense related, it could mean deployment of troops, but our vision kind of started with the remove the 90s cliche of the dad who is running late or has to send his assistant to go videotape the baseball game. In the movies we saw that a lot. That was with the movies that we grew up watching Callie right, it's like the dad wasn't there and then he comes to this aha moment by the end of the movie where somehow he's able to make a baseball game. And that was what we grew up in and it was like totally normal for, like the dad not to be at the dinner table. So I'm definitely passionate about fathers and mothers being home where they can, and that could mean homeschooling, that could mean just not missing dinner, that could mean coaching the T-ball game, that could mean vacations. It could mean a whole world of things, but I believe that the opportunity exists with the current technology that we have available to us, so why not put it to good use With trends?

Speaker 1: 3:36

I think of you often, because you've been working at this before, everyone was on lockdown, talking about business automation, before there was this giant, you know high train of AI. You were talking about remote work before remote work became a necessity and watched this progress of the world move towards where you were already. And so now people are oh, did you know you can automate this, that you can use these tools in Microsoft and you can look at these BI tools, look at these little agent tools, look at this way that I can move data or I can route piece of otherwise paper through my organization. And you're like, yeah, I've been doing that for a long time. We probably met each other. I don't know what it is now. Four years ago, I immediately saw the necessity of this because I've worked with very large corporations and I see how their process will be absolutely ridiculous. It's like, oh, you got to print this out in a yellow sheet and then you take it to the yellow cubby and then our yellow team knows that this is a priority because of that. And then they process this like this. You know you can just email that, you can just set this through, and no one was really that interested in this, except for small companies that need to respect their time.

Speaker 1: 4:57

Entrepreneurs are, of course, always looking to shave off and be more productive or find a way to alleviate some kind of burden. They need capacity and capability, and I think that the DOD shares that sentiment a lot as well, because the mission is often far outstrips what the current capacity to handle that mission is, or that might be shifting really quickly. So the idea of alleviating routine burden makes a lot of sense. But for your normal big corporation, that's kind of what they do. They're really great at building these processes and bureaucratic systems. So people are like Roy, I don't really care about that, like I don't really care about automation. And then today I'm sure the conversations completely change because they're like Roy, how can you automate? How can you use AI in my company? How can I do this Right? Yeah, it was definitely a struggle in the beginning and it was more along the narrative. If you think now there's the argument of AI is going to take your jobs, at least we have some sort of an idea as to what AI is and what automation is, because everybody is dealing with that type of technology on a daily basis now with Siri and Alexa, and there are different components of this virtual assistant that is already a part of our lives.

Speaker 1: 6:14

When we started the business well, 2014 was really the general idea of it. 2016 was actually the official launch and when we were telling people like, hey, you don't have to do paper processes anymore, you can automate these things. And we got major pushback. Major pushback where we were seen as somebody who was going in and we were trying to take jobs away and we were trying to change the way business is done, which a lot of the early days that we were going through. This was just how to deal with human emotion around change. It was change implementation, change management. How do you deal with somebody who thinks that things are always going to be done a very specific way, which we're starting to see that Again surface through artificial intelligence?

Speaker 1: 6:57

But it was an interesting time then and we were seen as a Luxury, not a necessity, where people were like, oh yeah, that would be nice, but that's not really how things are done. It doesn't matter if somebody wants to be at home like really need to check their email. Come on, roy, exactly, it was that'd be nice if they could work from home. But real business is done in cubicles and offices and on paper, right, it's the office. You know where Michael Scott is. Like real business is done on paper and you're like sure it is buddy. You know like, maybe once upon a time, but the computer was invented, the internet was invented and we build and innovate as things go.

Speaker 1: 7:36

I mean, I had our original first CMO tell me that it was a bad idea. He's like look, this is not. I don't know how we're gonna market this. This is a bad idea. My first campaign that I wanted to run was don't go to work. And he was like that's a terrible message. You know like why would you want to portray that? It portrays laziness. And I'm like well, no, that's just, that's the enemy. The enemy is the cubicle and the enemy is paper processes and inefficiencies.

Speaker 1: 8:07

And we used to use this example when I was a federal employee where it was like Imagine, you have this Excel sheet because everything was done in Excel and to some degree still is in certain agencies, but you had this in a six cell sheet that was saved to the shared drive. So bill went into the shared drive, opened up the Excel sheet, began editing and then went on vacation. Now that Excel sheet is locked until bill returns God willing he doesn't die While he's on vacation and your business is at a standstill. That was like the early days of look, we can fix this, there's a better way to get things done. So that was like.

Speaker 1: 8:44

The original pain point that we aimed to solve was how do we reduce the inefficiencies of human error and human lives? And the first project that we ever were on was with an agency I won't say the agency, but we were with an agency and they had an admin for every office and division within the organization whose entire job essentially was to fill out paper work PDFs and then physically walk them down the Hall to a director who then had to sign it, and this was part of the purchasing process. And so the purchasing process. After that admin got all the signatures, which rarely happened in a single day Then they had to go back down, sit down and purchase on GSA advantage, and if you've ever been on GSA advantage before, you know the prices are constantly changing. So the inefficiencies of this process that took between 24 and 48 hours to go through the approval process, the price of these pencils or Notebooks had changed and we got to do it all over again.

Speaker 1: 9:49

We went in and and we were like, look, you can automate this, you can put this into Forms and PDFs and, and you know, can route it through SharePoint workflows. And they, instead of seeing the amount of time and the efficiency and how we were going to process this, they took it as we were replacing 15 people and essentially an entire division, and that was a really hard lesson for us in Change management that you don't drive with technology, you drive with human emotion. We're not looking to replace people, we're looking to become more efficient and productive so that these people can do other things or learn new skills to produce More for the agency and and ultimately, the taxpayer. You understand that, like the way that hiring and job descriptions work in the federal government, that's baked into their position Description. They can't just give them new assignments because now it's more efficient. It would have to go through a whole process of changing that position description, rescoping it, maybe rescoping their steps on what their pay and promotional steps will be, and so it's much more complex than just going in saying, now we can automate this thing they should do, because that really impacts how they can move up and Become a director one day or move into a different role, because it's not just as easy as changing a job.

Speaker 1: 11:04

Everything is very Let, developed and bureaucratically approved and there's a lot of real reason for that. Right you, you want stability In those positions, like you would. In a broad strokes view, you want stability in people that are looking after very important roles infrastructure Responsibilities in the US government. But then, when you come from an innovation perspective and disruptive perspective, you can't just go in and say, well, now you have a bunch of free time so you can do more stuff or do new fun things because they're like well, actually I can't because it's baked into my P-map, but this is what I have to do. Very, very difficult lesson to learn about innovation.

Speaker 1: 11:46

Yeah, so I was a GS employee at the time and I had begun to build some Automations and some things in the agency that I was working for and it was seen the same way. It was like, okay, well, I'm doing all this work and I'm pushing forward all these projects. Ultimately, my P-map said that I was supposed to be doing something completely different. So P-map reviews were always very difficult, where they're like, okay, well, this says you're supposed to be doing this and I have to grade you on your P-map as to this Are you doing it? You're like, well, yeah, kind of, but I'm doing these things over here and it end up creating Details and it was a mess. Exactly what you're saying right now. That was me in a very unique position, doing a role that nobody understood.

Speaker 1: 12:33

Nowadays, automation business processes is more a part of agencies Agendas. At the time it was a new tool. It was like, hey, we have this thing, we don't know how to use it. There's no positions available because there is that element to what you're speaking on. Right is okay, well, let's say we do free up those 15 individuals and let's say that we no longer have a need for them in their current working capacity. Okay, well, and the way that you move up in certain positions Positions inside the GS scale is you have to apply for positions. So now you have 15 people actively applying for other positions and roles that may or may not exist, which is a major problem. That was 10 plus years ago, when automation was still relatively new. Fast forward to where we're at today and the way that agencies can potentially look at automation is more so the human in the wheel.

Speaker 1: 13:21

So I use unemployment as an example. There was a conference that I was at maybe a month ago where one of the speakers for the unemployment was talking, and he was talking about how they used artificial intelligence and automation to, instead of replace individuals but enhance their production. So maybe prior to unemployment, agents were able to process about two packets a day and so naturally the pandemic happens and there are multiple people, a huge threshold of individuals, who are thrust into unemployment, unfortunately, and we all know what happened during the pandemic. So it was a very unique situation which totally overran the current systems of running within unemployment. So what they did was they implemented artificial intelligence to begin the early stages of the packet to say, hey, you're filling out this form, you're filling out this information, what is it that you're looking to accomplish? They can catch those early mistakes of fill out based on okay, you filled this out wrong, which oftentimes in government processes, the devils and the details really is. Things are getting sent back, reviews are becoming multiple because you didn't check a box or you checked a box when you shouldn't have, and so they utilize artificial intelligence and automation at the beginning of the form and to answer specific questions, so that when they got to the individual reviewer who was actually running the process, that it was much quicker and they moved from processing to a day to 10 a day, and so that individual was no longer thrust into a new position, which some artificial intelligence and automation might have done 10 plus years ago. But now you're a human in the wheel and you're able to do your job more efficiently and process what it is that your actual PMAP says that you're supposed to be doing. Then they built in a second layer of artificial intelligence and automation where members could then ask bots and gather additional information to assist them in the filling out of the forms, instead of just hey, you filled it out wrong, try again. Now they're actually being coached to fill out the form. That was the second layer of artificial intelligence, and they moved from processing 10 a day to 100 a day, and so they were able to get through their backlog relatively quickly, extremely quickly compared to pre-pandemic.

Speaker 1: 15:40

So that was one example of how automation and artificial intelligence didn't replace the individual because, mind you, the unemployment agencies. They were like well, how are we going to do this? How are we going to process all of these? We're going to have to hire, and hiring at that time and getting people trained up was just going to create more bottlenecks and funding that they didn't necessarily have. So how could they go about it? And they implemented artificial intelligence and automation to get it done, and they did it without replacing people or losing people. They didn't have to hire people either, but they didn't have to repurpose anyone in terms of PMAPs and what you were talking about, where you're essentially looking for new roles. So they kept the human in the wheel, which is a big topic of discussion in today's day in terms of artificial intelligence and automation, and they were able to get through their relatively long backlog.

Speaker 1: 16:27

I mean, that's a perfect use case or a perfect case study, and I would say, the benevolent application of AI. I think if you look at any technology trend, it's fundamentally shifted value creation in the economy itself, and so those people were in mass repurpose. If you think of the Industrial Revolution, there's consolidation of agriculture and then there's this new industrialization. It's not that a bunch of people were then unemployed, they were re-employed into the new trend, or they were enabled you could think of it as their productivity was enabled, but their productivity was largely consolidated by corporations or organizations or people that had the ability to implement the technology. And so I, as an advocate in my defense space, I'm saying, hey, we're not going to get rid of analysts, we're going to enable analysts because right now we're in a situation where there's infinity signals or infinity data or infinity traffic to analyze, and so it becomes a capability and capacity expansion versus it being like there's no way that it's going to be a replacement of people, but it certainly will.

Speaker 1: 17:40

I think in the broader market, it will transform or change or eliminate roles. Similar to like when I was on your podcast. It's talking about whaling. It's not like everybody that was involved in whaling never worked again and their families never worked again, but whole towns were shuttered. People didn't need the boats. For the same reason, people didn't wail. There was upheaval and then, at the end of the day, there was a transformation. And so we're now experiencing a little bit of this upheaval work.

Speaker 1: 18:09

At the end of the day, I do feel like if the quality of AI that's out there right now, if it can blow you out of the water for what you're doing. You're going to need to shift your skill set a little bit, probably have a little bit more interpersonal work or understand it on a deeper level. You need to be on the ideation side, or the intellectual property creation side of things, versus the utilization side, because the utilization side is going to be so empowered and it already is very, very empowered. So thinking of new ways to analyze data or implement tools will, for the foreseeable future, be a very important skill set. That's not replaced by AI.

Speaker 1: 18:51

But utilizing existing tools properly is something that you're in trouble if that's your business I think we were talking about like Fama Marketer that spins articles for SEO. If that is your only business, you just got destroyed because nobody needs somebody to spin articles which, if you're ever be able to listen to, like take an article, rewrite it in a different word, so then you can publish it on different websites. This is something people used to do to hack their search engine rankings and it's whole departments of people just writing bad articles and putting you search anything on Google and you'll see this repeatedly just trash content. So if you're in the business of doing poor work, you're in trouble, but if you're in the business of doing something that is critical, then we're in a very interesting time to look at. That perspective is how many unemployment reports do we have? Well, far more than we can hire for.

Speaker 1: 19:45

Unfortunately, the HR process in a lot of agencies, groups whether that's in DoD or another agency or just in the market it's more meticulous than you'd have in Silicon Valley. So it's very difficult to hire because there's a new need for more analysts. So AI and automation has really come into play as okay. Now we can actually do the job that's set that I'm supposed to be doing more flexibly. I think that's a great application. I really like that unemployment case study, though.

Speaker 1: 20:17

I know we talked about that before, but I want to dive into your thoughts around the security that that brings, because we could bifurcate this conversation. You're, again, a big advocate of remote work. I'm coming around to your okay, I'll be saying, and I listened to your content I think about okay, how can we set this up? Because my background is in manufacturing. It's the ultimate. You got to be at the job to do the job business right. It's not going to run itself, but more and more we're running lights out. We're working with engineering teams that are all over the country, and so there's tons of questions about how to do that safely, how to monitor it safely, how to enable it in a secure way, how to integrate other teams into our team. So many questions, but I think the hybrid organization, it's not like the way of the future, it's the necessity of now. Yeah, I totally agree, which we've been running hybrid for quite some time.

Speaker 1: 21:16

We just haven't realized that we were necessarily running hybrid where, for instance, in the Department of Defense, we have deployed troops all across the globe. Those troops, they're remote. Those people are ones that you need to communicate with mission critical information. You need to do it so securely so that they can carry out the reason why they're there, and that is work wherever. That is remote work.

Speaker 1: 21:41

Now, I might happen to be in sweatpants in my bedroom and that's my version of remote work, but the warfighter who is on a ship in the middle of the Pacific is also working remote, because so often times we think we can't get anything done if people are working from home or working remotely, and then you have to kind of change the way that you think about it to say, well, how does the military operate. You know the SOPs, the processes, the sharing of data securely, the carrying out of things through the military and the Department of Defense. Those are directly applicable to business in the way that they carry things out and how they're able to function. They're able to send Morris code to somewhere across the world and then they know what actions to carry out. And so you're saying that us as a business organization, then I can't articulate through a team's message what it is that you need to do. So I think there is the thinking, the mind shift that organizations need to take around remote work and hybrid. But you're exactly right, like hybrid is here, it's not like, oh it's coming, it's here and it's been here and we have the systems in place to get these things done.

Speaker 1: 22:49

I believe the Department of Defense is fully on 365 now, most agencies at least. I know that I won't name any agencies, but there are certain agencies that are in a hybrid state where they're still running certain information on servers. But the tools that exist within Microsoft 365 can enable your team to work wherever you can get these things done and you're not going to have to go out and produce many purchase orders or even bring in new technology, which is a huge hurdle for the government. Just the purchasing of licenses, the purchasing of software is extremely difficult. And then when we're in an age like we are right now, where artificial intelligence, there's a new software every other week about what it can and cannot do, and all of these SaaS platform boom that we've seen recently, that adds to the complexities of this, and that's why the Microsoft model is so important to government agencies, because you no longer have to look at.

Speaker 1: 23:46

If you think about the pandemic and how Zoom, everyone was like well, we're going to do Zoom. Oh, just kidding, we're not going to do Zoom because of the running through servers. It becomes a security concern. But all of the while we had teams. So it was just that miscommunication of understanding as to what we could and could not use to get these things done. And we look at that again now. We have Zapier, we have Appian, we have all of these different products that are on the software market that we're being. You know, you walk down the metro in DC and the metro pillars are plastered with advertisements around artificial intelligence and what you need and what you don't need, when in reality, microsoft has done a really good job of keeping within your firewall, within the defense firewall, and being able to push things in an automated state. Not to mention OpenAI runs on Azure, so there are areas of artificial intelligence that you can implement.

Speaker 1: 24:41

I think it starts with a mindset of is hybrid here? Yes. Is artificial intelligence and automation here? Yes, but first we need to take a look at what we already have access to and what's already available to us before we get into this belief that we have to go purchase something new, because I don't know that there are new tools on the market that are necessarily better than what we already have access to. It's just a general understanding of what is already in our toolbox and how we can make things better before we ultimately decide OK, you know what we do need X, y and Z, or we do need this other thing to help bolster us, but the tools are there and it is going to take to your point. It's going to take members understanding and looking, trying to learn new skill sets, understand the innovation, going to conferences like the one that you put together so that you understand what's there, so that when you come back to your agency, you know what to look for, you know what questions to ask. And now, are all of the questions going to be answerable at every agency? Probably not, because commercial moves so much faster than the government space, the GCC licenses, especially the DOD licenses in Microsoft, but the topics of discussion can be created and then you can put in place a plan of implementation to put members to say OK, we want you to keep the pulse on the trends, we want you to think about new ways that we can innovate inside of our agency so that ultimately, when those things do become available in the DOD or in the GCC environment, we're already moving, we're being proactive as possible instead of being reactive and then falling even further behind commercial, which happens most of the time.

Speaker 1: 26:23

I would say I really like your description of the warfighter as a remote worker. It's especially important from the perspective of the internet was built by the military for remote work. Right, we want to make this much more complicated, but it was developed for the intent of information sharing, utilized in academia and military for information sharing because of the direct need for accessing remote teams. It's for this exact thing that the internet was built for, and all of the fun stuff that we use it for is just a downstream product of decades and decades of simplification and implementation and commercialization of that concept. And so, to look at it from that perspective, I think a lot of the technology that's over in the DOD space kind of lost sight of the fact that, even though the internet is a very commercial proposition right now, it initially was a military proposition, and that we should be looking at it from that perspective.

Speaker 1: 27:26

What was the problem set then? What is the problem set now? What does that mean for security now and what do we need to put into place, versus kind of sticking with tools that were available 15 years ago and saying like I can't do this or I can't do that. Or I understand the need for airgapping systems, we absolutely understand the need for, like variegated backhaul and lots of different networking possibilities and capabilities and you know so. Fancy systems I totally get that, but for the most part it's some dude somewhere on a laptop and to be able to plan for that, I see a direct parallel is if they wanted to work from home or work while they're traveling for a conference. That's the same kind of innovation muscle as if they then needed to hop on a plane and go to XYZ country.

Speaker 1: 28:19

If you can do it securely, in a reasonable fashion for remote workers, being the warfighter, which we can very well today Like, why can't we do it and work from home? But if you were to speak to the agency now or corporation that works in this so if you were to speak to a prime contractor they would have a very difficult time understanding that you can access Microsoft Office or database or particular websites from your bedroom, even though their end customer is going to access a hundred times more critical and actionable data in the middle of the desert. Now the warfighter obviously knows not to connect to a Starbucks in an adversary country. Right? That's the disconnect that I think the real topic of conversation around security and remote work comes down to is are these approved networks that your workforce is connecting to? And so that is gonna come down to simple training and knowledge transfer of the agency to the individual employee so that they know not to connect their GFE to the airport Wi-Fi or to Starbucks or to wherever.

Speaker 1: 29:32

And there are approved Wi-Fi routers that are USB routers. I have one. Don't bring a Wi-Fi puck to a military base. I'll tell you that right now. I've done that before and I was not met with open arms. I'll say it's not a good idea.

Speaker 1: 29:51

There are certain approved, dod approved USB one-to-one device routers that you can plug in. So if you do have to go to a base or somewhere where you're not readily accessible to an open Wi-Fi network, those exist. It's more, training your workforce in a similar way that we do ethics training. We all know every year, in order to maintain a PIV or a CAC, that you have to do those trainings that are like gamified to like how do you spot the potential terrorists? Bill is divorced but he's going to all of these crazy places and buying all of these crazy things is a potential security threat.

Speaker 1: 30:31

And it'll be part of that process, that security awareness training to understand, hey, remote worker or just worker in general, because nowadays you can add to your phone, you know that in a sense, just the getting of email on your phone could be looked at as a potential security concern. So there are different elements now that it needs to be baked into our security awareness training, where it's like don't go to Starbucks and if you do, make sure you have a DOD approved USB Wi-Fi. And then there is another element to say even when you're at home, make sure the IoT of your devices are not available on that network to be able to be seen into your devices, which that was the target hack from. Oh, I don't know what, it was a 10 years ago or something, where the members came into the HVAC system and then got into the target networks and were able to extract and hack in and grab all of those social security numbers and credit card information, et cetera. So there is that element of knowledge that it's like hey, we know that at home you probably have like an Alexa device in every room and maybe you have a nest for your smart home, a smart connected vacuum cleaner, right, right, your kid's tablet is connected to all of different ways and using. So there is that element to say, hey, look, you're gonna need a secure network. Don't connect and make it shareable to the kid's printer that is doing doodle sketches or whatever. So that's the biggest difference in concern, I think, between the warfighter, who understands these things, because when they're taking a DOD approved tablet or whatever into an adversary's environment, it's a very specific one-to-one connection, whereas we, the civilian at home, it's not. So it's going to take an understanding of how to connect, how to do it securely, and then on the government side, how to monitor, to ensure that your people are abiding by the rules for those red flag policies, to make sure, hey, this person is using X, y and Z. This is an IP address. This is an impossible travel those sorts of things that are available to us. So there is the added element of security, but ultimately it's gonna come down to just knowledge transfer of security awareness that are largely already in place. We just have to think about them in new ways.

Speaker 1: 32:53

Roy, I have a bunch of questions about remote work and I think I should have you back on the show to talk about building remote team cultures that are still innovative For all the startups that are listening. This is the challenge. Really, we can talk about security. You can work with Roy. You can work with other people that we've had on the show to talk about how to secure this. I really I want to jump into this of the why with you, but building a culture around that is very difficult. So I think that's our next conversation that we need to have is how do we maintain venture speed, how do we do this securely and how do we build a great culture so we can work as a team but not be physically located together, cause you've done a really great job of that with your business.

Speaker 1: 33:38

But for today, how can startups bake in? So I mean, if you're an agency and you're listening, what Roy said totally makes sense you probably already have an initiative to work on security in some way, like we have our security initiatives to start working more remotely BCMMC compliant, upgrade this. Do that, because we're kind of already in the defense industrial base. We understand that we build a lot of the tools, like the thing that you're mentioning. I built that, so it's like I build a version of that, right. So like I know what you're saying. But if I'm a startup, I think that team is like 80, 90% of success, and so if I want to have a really great team, it is theoretically improbable that the best members of your team are going to be geo located within a distance that they can commute from your office. So you're almost assuredly unless you're a strict manufacturing startup, you're one of these hardcore LA engineering startups and even then you're probably have remote software people, remote engineers, remote procurement people, right, so begin your own lately. How can these startups bake into their growth strategy that they will be working remote? How can they like start on that now, while they're small and agile, so they can take advantage of the momentum that they'll get with remote workers. Great question Oftentimes, a lot of people will point to technology first, which is certainly a strategy.

Speaker 1: 35:04

I don't think it's the best strategy, but it is certainly a strategy, same with artificial intelligence and automation. You have these where people are like, go get these tools and because they will help you. And so my answer for how can you bake in a remote culture is not going to be a sexy one that maybe people are going to go and repost as reels and stuff like that, but it's, I think, the best way to go about it. That is, your systems and processes. So you're building around people, you're building around your core values, you're building around your systems and processes, and when I say systems and processes, I mean SOPs, checklists, things that are on paper or on a one note or online. It doesn't necessarily have to be on a physical piece of paper, but it's written down so that people understand what it is that we're looking to accomplish and how to accomplish it. And then, when you have your standups because we do standups daily we're a full remote organization.

Speaker 1: 35:55

I feel like we're pretty good at building culture about that. We've been the Washington Business Journal best place to work three years in a row. So I feel like we have a pretty good remote culture and it's built around our core values and it's built around our standing operating procedures, which it's hey, this is the way that we do things, this is how we run a morning call, this is how we communicate, this is where we communicate using Microsoft Teams, using applications that are already available to us, but it's more so directing people of how to do something, as in the steps of the process the spaghetti chart, if you will, of the process map and directing them of how to do that and guiding them through that so that they learn the culture and they learn the ways. In our instance, capital that's the non-sexy answer of how do you bake it in is you get super specific when you are in an office. There is an element that can be like an element of winging it a little bit, because they are there and we can grab them. If you're in the oh hey, morning standup, go around and touch everybody and make sure everybody is coming to this room. You can do that because you can shoulder tap Remotely.

Speaker 1: 37:01

It gets a little more difficult. So you're like, hey, we need to join this call or we need to do this and we need to ping you. Maybe they're not online or so you have to build in a structure around when you meet, how you meet, how you communicate, where you communicate. One of our core values is over communication. I need to know more than you think. That you need to tell me and this is an example I always use with my team is like if you need to go to the bathroom and you go to the restroom, let me know. That might be a little bit TMI, there might be a little bit too much information, but let me know when you're stepping away from your machine, because we need to ensure that we're not dropping any balls, that we are able to move through our processes efficiently and that we're constantly communicating. So over communication is a big, big part of what it is that we do, and we analyze every little bit of the processes and how we do things, whether it's how to run a stand-up meeting or a scrum call, how to run a customer call, how to reset a password, how to do anything. We lay it out into work instructions and SOPs so that when we do get a new employee. We train them on the SOPs and on the culture and through the way of doing things, the way that we do it. So that are they remote, yes, but they still feel part of the culture and as the organization, as we grow and then, like I said, we can have a.

Speaker 1: 38:17

I mean I could do a whole podcast on this. I have a whole podcast of multiple episodes that talk about this, but there are lots of little things like video on. It's something like 83 to 90 percent of communication is nonverbal. If your video is off, then how can I effectively communicate certain points that I'm trying to make? That's one element. There's a multitude of things, but I think that, starting with systems and processes, that's my go-to with just about anything that you want to implement Systems and processes, processes over people, people over technology that's my baseline. That is a great place to end this episode, but we're going to make sure that your podcast is listed because I was on it. It's an excellent podcast.

Speaker 1: 38:55

That aside, right, so shameless self-promotion, but it is really great and it is around the theme of working anywhere. So it's a great tool and, quite honestly, I'm working with a lot of startup teams and they struggle with this right Because they're coming out of a larger organization a couple of people have left with them, or they're coming out of an academic situation and they have people that they know or resources they know from that school. So they're like, yeah, I went to Stanford and everyone on my team went from Stanford. I think, uh-oh, there's a limited set of those people from Stanford, although your team is amazing and I'm very impressed. I'll be very impressed when you hire somebody from Oklahoma on your team, because then I know that you have resilience and you have processes and that you have a great way of hiring and attracting the right talent. I'll know a lot more about your team dynamics and you've become more investable for a number of reasons to me.

Speaker 1: 39:48

When I see that it's not all just your two former roommates from Stanford although that's an excellent place to start Like what's the next step and increasingly that's becoming this hybrid organization Really great tips there I think everybody has to pause it and kind of go back and like, listen to that answer again to really get all the pieces. But you should come back and we can talk specifically about building a culture of innovation when people aren't face-to-face, because there's very specific challenges that are associated with accepting other people's ideas, moving forward, having consensus or moving against consensus. There's a lot of problems that you have when you're not in that direct work space that are not easily overcome, but I think every business on earth is going to certainly every business in our space will have to overcome immediately. I really appreciate your time. Thank you for coming on the show, roy. This is really really great and we'll put your links in the description so everybody can follow. But what is the best place where someone can engage what you're up to? Yeah, so I guess that would be goworkwherevercom.

Speaker 1: 40:58

Goworkwherevercom is going to have you linked to all of our other sites. Capital Presence is obviously our parent site. That's our federal contracting organization. We also support commercial organizations as well, but goworkwherever is where you're going to have the podcast. You're going to have additional resources. There's links to quizzes that can help you implement some of these things. Goworkwherever is probably the easiest way to get in touch. All right, perfect. My name is Callie Keene and this has been the Startup Defense.