EP 11 – Amanda Fennell in Conversation with Den Jones

Speaker 1:
Hello, and welcome to Get It Started, Get It Done, the Banyan Security Podcast, covering the security industry and beyond. In this episode, our host and Banyan’s Chief Security Officer, Den Jones, speaks with Amanda Fennel. Amanda is CSO and CIO at Relativity. Trained in archeology and anthropology, she loves people, in addition to her deep technical background. We hope you enjoy Den’s discussion with Amanda Fennel.

Den Jones:
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Get It Started, Get It Done. I’m the host, Den Jones. It’s Banyan’s, I guess, adventure into podcasting. If our software business goes to crap, then I guess we’ll try and become movie stars or some shit.

Amanda Fennel:
This is the backup?

Den Jones:
This is the backup plan. That’s maybe the best we got.

Amanda Fennel:
Awesome.

Den Jones:
We actually have a really cool office in San Francisco, so I figured we could maybe turn that into nightclub. This episode, we have Amanda Fennel. Relativity, is that how you say it, is Relativity?

Amanda Fennel:
Yeah.

Den Jones:
CSO and CIO. The wearer of many hats.

Amanda Fennel:
You want to know which I have on today, right? You’re like, “Which hat is it on today?” Is that what you’re going to ask?

Den Jones:
It’s funny because I’m about to do a blog post, Amanda, where I’m like, “Hey, I’ve worn a million hats in the last year.” So we can chat a little bit about life as a CSO at a startup where you wear more than just tech hats.

Amanda, first of all, thanks for being on the show. Why don’t you introduce yourself, a little bit about you, and a little bit about the company?

Amanda Fennel:
Yeah, so I am Amanda Fennel. Thank you so much for having me on. I actually came here five years ago to be the Chief Security Officer, and to do the things that we do with securing all of the stuff. So it’s like the company, but also the product, and then the compliance side, and everything in between, and privacy.

As you said, your remit kind of grows when you’re at a startup and you start all these different things and ESG, and ERM, all the different acronyms. Somewhere along the way, they threw the acronym in CIO because of IT. I think that’s become quite a trend these days now that people are moving security and IT to be together. Because we’re both fundamentally trying to do the same thing, that we want everything to run really fast and smoothly, securely.

That’s been the past five years. Before that, I had a career, I guess I haven’t used that word before. It makes me feel older now. I’ve spanned a lot of different things, but I started out as an archeologist and went into digital forensics and then started a career in that, in incident response. My background’s primarily in the cyber realm until five years ago, when it started to become the product security as well.

Den Jones:
Awesome. Archeology to then digital forensics.

Amanda Fennel:
Are you going to say you’re going to dig into that?

Den Jones:
I don’t want to dig, because normally you need a little brush, and a little thing, and good attention to detail. I don’t like that level of attention to detail, but how did you go from an archeologist into forensics and cyber?

Amanda Fennel:
Oh, man. I don’t know how it was for you, but for me, it was student loan debt. I started in a master’s program for paleo hominid biology and realized there were no jobs in it and there was no career really to pay back the 130,000 student loan at dollars I would have to pay back.

Den Jones:
Wow.

Amanda Fennel:
So I said, “Well, where can you do forensics and have job security?” And I stumbled upon this new versioning field of digital forensics and it sounded really cool. The matrix had come out. Computers were the big thing. It was a huge boom of time. I lived in DC, so this was a huge industry for malware and research, advanced adversaries, all these things.

So I went into the industry because the George Washington University had a program for digital forensics. So I just moved and lifted and shifted and said, “Okay, I’m going to move away from human forensics and move into digital forensics.” And that was it.

Den Jones:
That’s awesome. I mean, it’s funny, right? My origin story, I’m a musician. I love music gear, as you can see behind me. And I’m crap at music really. I mean, I’ve got some talent, but not enough to make money or not enough to make enough money.

Amanda Fennel:
That’s another backup job. That’s another.

Den Jones:
Yeah. That is absolutely the backup job. My buddy, I was at his house and he had all this music gear and this was before I was doing IT stuff. I was a postman and I just wanted gear. And I’m like, “Hey Bruce, how did you get all this?”

And he was like, “Well, I do IT.” Now, reflecting on that, then he told me how to get into the field. But reflecting on that, I was thinking back the other week, I’m like, sure as shit, I’m glad he never said he was a stripper. Can you imagine? He’s like, “I’m a stripper.” And I’m like, “Oh, I’m going to do that.” And then…

Amanda Fennel:
That’s his backup job.

Den Jones:
That’s his. Well now actually he’s a photographer now, so he’s even out of the IT field, but he still has more music gear than me and he has some of the most amazing music gear. I just know I can’t become a photographer because I’m really crap at that.

Amanda Fennel:
It’s a weird thing I’ve noticed in every industry though, and photography is no one to be shy of this. Every industry does require so much technical acumen now. Every of them. So even archeologists, when I was leaving that industry, we were using ground penetrating radar to find out where we should dig. We were using technology to make it faster and go further, faster and efficiently.

But even in photography, there are very few photographers out there that are not using technology in some way. Not necessarily for Photo shopping, but just in terms of production and things like that. So he may not be in IT technically, but I bet he is still using that skillset.

Den Jones:
Oh, he is a technologist and it’s really cool, because he’s obviously a Photoshop user and me working at Adobe for 20 years, I got to meet the people that make the software, then I got to connect him with them and stuff. So it was pretty cool.

Yeah. Now there’s something, so a couple of, let me go through, we’ll do some worky businessy things and then we’ll jump into…

Amanda Fennel:
Wait, you actually told me I didn’t have to talk about any work businessy things on this. You said we were just going to hang out. Now it’s changing the script.

Den Jones:
Yeah, well I think there’s a couple of great things here when we’re talking about things I could ask here. One of the things for me is as a leader, first of all, you’ve been at CSO for over five years, which is pretty commendable because most CSOs last a couple of years and then they jump and then they jump.

Amanda Fennel:
18 to 24 months, right?

Den Jones:
Yeah, I think it’s like we’re playing Russian Roulette. It’s like, “I’ve been in this company, never got breached. Okay, cool, better leave now before the shit hits the fan.”

Amanda Fennel:
Yep.

Den Jones:
So being five years, but in your career you’ve joined companies, you’ve built teams and building teams is not an easy thing if you want to hit the ground running. So what kind of experiences have you got from building teams and what advice would you give to other leaders that are trying to… New job, inherited the team, and they’re trying to figure that out?

Amanda Fennel:
I’ve recently been through this because I had some new direct reports in the past six months and I had to work with them really closely because they had a different style or et cetera than I thought about for building a team. So I’ve had to recently ask this question of myself, what do I think is most important? One of them, I think is that you have to have something to believe in. Now I know that’s cheesy, I get it. It sounds cheesy, but the reason we do things like a vision or a mission is because you have to have an alignment that everyone’s working towards the same thing. And it has to be something compelling. It can’t be, we’re here to make money or whatever because human beings are inherently existential. We want more than that. We want to know that we’re doing more than just, time to make the donuts and punch in a check. We want to feel like we contribute to something. So I think having something to believe in is fundamentally one of the first things that you have to look at.

The second thing that I see that people struggle with, I feel like I had this ready by the way, and I didn’t, this is just a triggered conversation I had recently. But the second thing was that you can’t throw the dart at what that is, without involving other people in it. That’s the mistake I see a lot of people come into an organization and they’re so sure they know what they’re doing, they don’t do, and I don’t want to get all archeologists on you, but you don’t look at the context. You have to actually look at what came before and what’s going to come after, and you have to understand how all that worked together and what the stratigraphy was. That skillset has actually been super helpful in a lot of stuff is understanding and appreciating what came before and what you want to build together and getting people involved in it.

So I think that’s something to believe in, having appreciation for some of the context, and then I guess just being a little bit crazy. You have to enable a curious mindset where people can speak up with really weird ideas and you give it a shot, and you don’t just shut it down. “That sounds ridiculous.” Instead, I’m like, “I don’t think that’s going to work, but though let’s give it a shot. Let’s do it.”

Sometimes it works. I’m like, man, I was glad to be proven wrong. And I think that created a really cool environment in the times that I’ve built some teams. So I hope so.

Den Jones:
Yeah, and hopefully I think the one thing is how do you build trust quickly with people, right? Because for me, I’ll follow someone to the ends of the earth if I really trust them and I know they’ve got my back, and they support me in a way that helps me grow, but it helps me be successful in the role.

When you think of building trust, it seems like being clear, being open, but really helping people share their ideas and getting a shot at that. Is that kind of your ethos there?

Amanda Fennel:
I do, but I think this is actually, if I always do things in threes and now you’re messing me up because now I want to add a fourth one based on what you just said. But I think what it is, is actually, I don’t know a really cool way to say this, but I actually am just insatiably curious about human beings. I’m just curious about them and I actually like them and because I like people, that comes across as authenticity as a leader. I don’t do a one-on-one because I have to. We could choose to not do those. I do them because I would like to get to know you and I would like to understand better what is it that compels you, and what are you going for? How can we align on what you’re trying to do and whatever other things you could read in any leadership building workbooks and stuff.

But I genuinely enjoy that and I like that. And so I think that that’s probably the biggest part of what you’re saying, I think is the ethos is like, do you like people? And if you don’t, you may not want to be in a leadership role.

Den Jones:
Yeah. Well it’s funny because most people in their career, they’ll go through technical, “Hey, I’m a techie person, techie then a senior techie, then I want to be an architect.” And somewhere during that path they suddenly feel like, well the only career step next is management. And it’s like, “No, if you are a techie and you’re a shit people person, but you’re insanely gifted technically, maybe being a manager is not for you.”

And then for me, I always knew management was in my journey because technically I’m good, but my desire to engage with others is way, way stronger. My EQ is way stronger than my IQ and I kind of see it as being, I want to promote and help and enable the success of those around me, and it doesn’t have to be because it benefits me. Indirectly, I think a really good leader gets benefited when they bring their team and they make their team successful.

Whatever you can do to empower and enable your team, and then ultimately I learned early on that trust was huge. Back to my post office days actually, I had a manager that I worked for and I just caught him out lying on several things and the minute I did, I’m like, “I can’t trust you and I can’t do anything for you.” And I had no desire to stay. You just totally twisted it. Now actually I had no desire to be a postman anyway because Scotland, I don’t know if you know this, I mean it’s raining in San Jose today, but Scotland, it rained a lot and it snowed a lot. It was bloody cold and walking in the streets for five hours carrying mail was not really a good plan. It didn’t ring home for Den Jones.

Amanda Fennel:
There’s a part there though I was going to mention that I think is interesting. So two things. One is I do think that people often get to that moment of, “I started out technical, I rose up to a certain level, now I need to make a decision. Am I going to be a long-term individual contributor slash architect or I’m going to go into management leadership?” This does happen often and I think the reason why I see a lot of people make the jump into people leadership and management isn’t because they like people, unfortunately. It’s because they realize that they have no gravitas with decision-making whenever you’re just an individual contributor with your voice. The reason why isn’t because the voice isn’t important actually, it’s because when you’re in a leadership role, you know, again, all that context of the business of what’s going on.

So you make decisions that affect the product or you affect the people, you affect the process, et cetera. And you make your decisions wisely about the holistic thing, as opposed to your one subject-matter expert area. So when I sit at a table, I don’t sit at a table as a Chief Security Officer, I sit at a table as an Executive and I know just as much as what’s going on over there in rev ops as I do that’s going over there on legal, I know all the stuff that’s going on. I think that that’s kind of the difference people have when they start to look at the roles, and “Where do I go?” That’s the big separators. Are you going to be able to look at the whole picture when you make decisions, or can you only hang out in your one domain?

That’s number one. The other thing you said that really struck me because I just walked out of a one-on-one with somebody and they were struggling because they have a long-term really technical person who just seems to fight with every decision that comes up. And I was like, “Yeah, they’re not fighting with you because they don’t agree with you or whatever.” I said, “They just don’t trust you.” And they were like, “What?”

And I was like, “Yeah, they don’t trust your decision-making. The irony of this is that five years ago you and I had the same conversation,” and I was like, “Five years ago I said, ‘You’re going to have to learn or trust me or this isn’t going to work out very well.'” And I was like, “What’d you do?” And he was like, “I trusted you.”

And I said, “You’re going to have to have the same conversation now, just pay it forward.” It does start with trust and I think you’re totally spot on with that.

Den Jones:
Yeah, I was thinking back as you were saying that there, one of my leaders in Adobe had an offsite with his team and they were just talking about my desire and stupidly or not, but my desire to shut down on-premise act of directory. That was one of the, we’d done the directory and authentication services for Adobe and I’m just like, we got to start this path to shut this shit down. And this guy, Microsoft-worshiping nut, basically, but really smart guy but very, very eclectic personality or outspoken personality, he decided to have a rant and a rave about this decision. The thing that was interesting was I was like, I’ve not made this decision. Microsoft made this decision when they laid off the people in the organization that supported us for on-prem AD, because everything was going Azure. I’m like, so you got to think beyond.

But to your point, a lot of technologists they see was within their little vision bubble and they don’t see the outside. And even in his case it was outside, it was in his subject domain with a vendor that he works with every day. So you would hope that he would’ve seen it, but he was so fixated on, “This is my job, this is what I do. I’m an expert at this thing and don’t mess with that.” And whereas there’s me in the background really pulling the rug from under these guys carpet of people who do AD.

Now historically for me, I was a [inaudible 00:17:25] guy so I didn’t bloody active directory anyway. I thought it was shit. So I didn’t really have any religious worshiping of the Microsoft ecosystem, but I ran that for many years or my team did.

Amanda Fennel:
So how do you generate and maintain the trust over time? So that was one exchange and they didn’t know maybe if you had different reasons or if you had good reasons for the transition, but you still had to work with this person later. Did you maintain the trust and how do you work?

Den Jones:
Oh yeah. I mean like I say, the guy’s a talented individual and stuff and actually he’s one of my hires for over the years. So it was a, hey, let me explain this and let me explain how this isn’t actually my thing as opposed to an industry thing, and then let me explain how I see this and how I’m aware of this because I’d like you guys all to be aware of it. Not just the one having the meltdown but everybody because that was in front of 12 or 15 other people.

The way I stopped the conversation, which is one of my cheeky responses, usually when someone’s having an absolute meltdown, I remind them, in this case of Adobe built all these doors that you get to walk out of and you get to choose whether you want to walk back in. And I’m always like, “Let me be honest with you, I’m really enthusiastic the way you’re speaking to me in front of everybody else right now, but you walk out the door and if you want to keep arguing with me about it, just take the door, go home and calm down a little bit. And if you want to have a same conversation, we can have a same conversation.”

Some ways, it’s almost like knee jerk stop the thing, brings some calmness back in and then explain. Ultimately trust for me has always been, and it’s kind of like this podcast title of Get It Started, Get It Done. Many people over the years working with me because they know we’re going to deliver the result. Now many people will tell you I could be a bit of an asshole as we deliver the result, because sometimes it’s not collaborative, sometimes it’s very collaborative. But ultimately we’re under pressure within the business to actually deliver the result. And that result isn’t always, “I just deployed some technology.” It’s a “What was the business value that the technology enabled?”

And people that work with me and the teams over the years I’ve had people work with me three times, they’ve actually applied for a job that I’ve had, third time and it’s like, “Holy shit, are you still mad?” But if you trust each other, I think that goes a long way. So yeah. Now one thing, I’m going to twist this a little bit and move away from…

Amanda Fennel:
We’re pivoting. We’re pivoting.

Den Jones:
Some less work shit. So here’s something that people have commented to me that I’ve done fairly well over the years. I’ve got the work hat and I can have a big argument and the debating something with somebody during the day at work and then at nighttime we’re doing some social event and it’s almost like that thing never happened because we’re best of buddies and we’re socially hanging out.

How do you compartmentalize that situation of “Hey, you’ve got work and then you’ve got work-related, but they’re more social events.” How do you separate that?

Amanda Fennel:
Okay, well I mean the first thing I should probably say is to set the stage here is that I am in Myers-Briggs, like I’m an INTJ and if you don’t know what that means, it’s most closely aligned with Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars. Not a whole lot of personal feelings going on over here, and it’s actually a really interesting dynamic because it’s just over the years, I think I was in my twenties, I probably still was emotional in my thirties maybe, but as I’ve gotten now I’m 42 and I’m a really level-headed person that doesn’t take anything personal, it’s just business.

So the first thing is I don’t take anything personal. That energy’s not there, and so as a consequence, those engagements, whenever people get super elevated and excited about a topic in a negative way and they’re arguing… Oh man, crack some knuckles, you just let me win.

Den Jones:
Oh really?

Amanda Fennel:
When you do that, don’t do that. So instead I try to calm everything down too, like you said, and let’s just bring that down a bit because when you’re emotional, I can’t hear you. But when you bring it down to the business side of it, I can understand and I can relate to that. But if somebody wants to come at me with a whole bunch of emotion, I don’t really have a whole lot that I can do with that. From a very binary perspective, it’s a very, that doesn’t process and compute.

Den Jones:
That’s pretty fascinating. I was trying to find here, I think I’m INTJ as well, it’s been such a long time and I am pretty much, my friends say to me sometimes they’re like, “You know, run your personal life as if it’s a business.” And I’m like, “Yes, sometimes I guess I use the tips and tricks and techniques that I’ve learned in my leadership career to benefit me or deal with problems and situations in my personal life.”

Amanda Fennel:
And vice versa.

Den Jones:
Just because it’s conflict resolution.

Amanda Fennel:
And vice versa though, I had a good friend of mine who’s worked with me for a long time and he went on to become the CSO now at BIG ID. I’m really excited for him.

Den Jones:
Yeah.

Amanda Fennel:
So he called me not long ago and he was like, “I don’t understand how to be a good dad right now with these small children and stuff and I’m so stressed out about this the other thing.” And I was like, “Oh,” because I look at this differently. I do have three children and I look at them as my superpower. So that time of you know, take your time and you finish a zoom call, then you take the 10 minutes or you’re out there with them making them dinner or whatever it is you’re doing.

Actually this is my answer to your entire question. I enjoy what there is to enjoy and I suffer what there is to suffer. So that’s how I go through everything. So when I’m in that moment of maybe I’m making hot chocolate for one kid or trying to explain to him what the southeast states are and et cetera, those moments, I relish them and I embrace and I fall into that moment like you’re in the ocean. I drop into that moment and I’m fully present and there, but I’m also fully present and there for all of the work things that I’m doing. So I give a hundred percent or more, for everything that I do so that I know at the end of the day I did everything I could. I have no regrets. And so I feel like I balance that.

Den Jones:
That’s awesome.

Yeah, and I was just going to say the one thing about work-life balance is, my daughter’s about to turn 18 and she’ll be going off to college in summer and it’s almost like, wait a minute, I just remember when she was five. That time passes so fast. So it’s almost like, yeah you got to be present especially with your family and friends and your loved ones and stuff. Not that all your family need to be friends or loved ones actually, but that’s a different podcast.

Amanda Fennel:
I did a lot during COVID and stuff and I think that that was actually what spurred me to really become way better in this area of embracing a lot, because you couldn’t travel and you couldn’t leave and all of a sudden you’re locked in with all these people. So I learned how to just enjoy it. But the other thing is I went into doing cooking. So I did culinary school and I started working at a restaurant and nothing is more humbling to an executive than starting on the line in a restaurant in New Orleans. So there was a lot of takeaways that I took from that and brought that back into my job and I was like, “You know what, maybe I’m not right.” Or I was a lot more humble about the way that I engaged with things. I also had a lot more appreciation for the setup for things like mise en place, putting everything in its place and getting it ready before you do something.

So I think it’s that taking the pearls of wisdom you can get from anything you’re doing, from work or home or other jobs or passions, music for you. We take those things. I would expect that somebody who’s really into music, you probably spend a lot of time looking for the pattern in conversations and you recognize when something’s missing and when something needs to be brought in and you realize when there’s like, it’s almost like a maestro moment of, “We need more empathy here or we need more data there.” And I would imagine that’s probably what you bring in from music, but I think it’s a great.

Den Jones:
Yeah sometimes. So we’ll jump to that one in a second, but let’s park that. I want to come back to the cooking business. So what made you decide to do some culinary classes and then how did you take that leap from there to do restaurant work while most restaurants were not even open?

Amanda Fennel:
Yeah. Well there’s no great political answer. I lost a lot of weight and so I changed my relationship with food, I think over a year. And I wasn’t a hundred pounds more or anything, but it was just not as healthy as I could have been. When you change the relationship dynamic from the fundamentals, you look at it differently. It’s a little Minority Report, you look at it from all sides.

So when I did that, I started to really appreciate the art behind food and plating and what’s going on with flavors and the orchestra that’s there. So when I did that, I went to do it formally because I don’t do anything halfway, I’m not going to take a class or something. I was like, “I’m going to get a culinary degree.” It’s intense, and I got French trained and it was really intense but they actually won’t let you graduate unless you work in a restaurant. I didn’t have an option originally and I had to work in a restaurant as a stage for I think it was about 7, 8 weeks, maybe two months. I ended up staying on there for many more months because I just actually enjoyed what I was doing.

Den Jones:
Enjoyed it.

Amanda Fennel:
I became really good friends with the sous chef and I worked my way up and it was my place in life where no one was bothering me to ask me questions about work, because I was in a kitchen. You can’t answer the phone, you can’t answer a Slack message. My hands are covered and I’m probably de veining shrimp or something. So there was this pocket of time, of it was just me and the work and I loved that and I literally, my last shift was two weeks ago.

Den Jones:
Oh wow. So you were doing that part-time nights and weekends while you’re doing your day job, while you’ve got the three kids, running the household, juggling all these things. So how did you survive?

Amanda Fennel:
I think I just have, so I still drive a manual car. I also went to school to pay for that school originally, to get through school I paid by being a car mechanic. So I love cars and I think I’d liken it to, I have six speeds and I would just shift into whichever gear I needed to be in. And I still do. I’m in Chicago right now for work and so I’m in work gear, right?

But tonight my nine-year-old wants to watch the Golden Girls to fall asleep and I’ll be Face Timing to do that. So I’m going to shift in mom gear. So I just shift between those gears with no grinding, basically, you know how there’s the grinding of gears when you’re not really in there? I don’t do that. I’m seamless at this point because of the past couple years of focusing on how to do that. But I just shift seamlessly into different gears. [inaudible 00:29:18]

Den Jones:
Yeah, it’s a lot of time. I mean I’m guessing there’s not much you time or alone time, but I get the impression, your personality, you don’t need alone time in order to feel emotionally strong, or I guess because the cooking stuff, because I loved to cook as well, and when I was at college I worked part-time in kitchens.

So I was a dishwasher and then I was a line cook, I was doing salad prep and stuff like that. It was not great restaurant. It certainly wasn’t culinary genius. But like you say, you get an appreciation for how organized and how you need to multitask and things of that nature, right?

Amanda Fennel:
Yeah.

Den Jones:
So for you, does the cooking and these other activities actually de-stress you from a hard day’s work, or?

Amanda Fennel:
No. No.

Den Jones:
So where do you wind down?

Amanda Fennel:
I’ve got the worst answer ever. I bet anybody who’s listening this far is like, “Here we go, here’s the good stuff. We’re going to get the secret of success, right?” No, at the end of the day I get the most energy because this is what you ask, “Where do you get your energy from, and where do you lose it?”

We spend so much energy throughout the day on all these different things that we choose to prioritize. At the end of the day, I get my energy back from two things. Three, maybe. One, of my kids and I all actually really video games and doing our own thing near each other quietly. And so we quietly are around and I read a lot. I read while they’re around and I feel like that’s my energy moment. There’s a fireplace crackling, hanging out, it’s quiet, cup of coffee, this is my quiet time. That’s me time, and I don’t mind other people being there. This may be because I grew up in a really big family, I know how to secrete myself in front of everybody and be by myself even though there’s a lot of people around.

Den Jones:
You can still zone out, right?

Amanda Fennel:
Yeah, I can totally just flip that switch and be like, “Yeah, I’m surrounded by five people but I’m in my own space.” So that’s one. But the other one that’s not the secret to success: glass of wine and watching The Office. That’s how I end the day, or Seinfeld probably most days. It’s just a gear shift again to be like, “All right, I’m back in first gear. This is where I get to de-stress, it gets prepped.”

And then the last thing I was going to mention, I am obsessed with making sure I get sleep. I go to bed, my husband jokes this all the time. He’s like, “It’s like 8:35,” and I’m like, “All right, I got to go.” And I’m going upstairs to relax and get to bed. But yeah, I sleep nobody’s business and I also wake up at 5:00 AM.

Den Jones:
Oh wow. Yeah. So I was going to say, so most successful people I know, they’re all risers and then I feel like I’m the total the imposter syndrome. I’m like, I’m the imposter because I like my sleep. And for me, seven o’clock now feels like an early morning. Especially in winter when it’s getting dark and stuff, I’m like geez. I’m also a night owl so that I’m not sleeping before midnight.

Amanda Fennel:
So is my husband and he is a brain surgeon. But I will tell you that guy stays up till 3:00 AM watching TV or whatever he’s doing or prepping for a presentation and he would easily sleep till two o’clock in the afternoon if I left him alone.

So I think it’s definitely just different people. He is a night person and I am not, I am a morning person, which also makes me annoying in the morning because I’m the person that’s learned over time that people don’t want to talk to you in the morning. So we just don’t talk and I just drink my coffee, but the whole time I’m like, “Hi.”

Den Jones:
Well that that’s it. Yeah, it’s funny, right? Because I’m also, I’m less talkative in the morning and I’m less productive in the morning, and I am most productive late morning all the way through till I can, for me, even when I’m working on slides or something, I’m sometimes quite happy just having say have a glass of wine, throw some slides out, I can be more creative, I can put some music on and I can just chill. I think I think more creatively when I’m in that mode as opposed to my morning is good for me just churning through tasks that are repetitive, that are mind numbingly board, but they’re not requiring a lot of creativity.

Amanda Fennel:
So this is part of the best part of team building that I highly recommend that people do and I love this. And it’s by asking the people on your team, what is their most effective time of day for them, and then mapping out your group of people to see if you have any overlap and only scheduling meetings during that time when you work together.

So we’ve done that before because we have some people in Poland and stuff like that. You would think Poland wants us to do our meetings in central zone, early mornings, so it’s still during their workday. No, the people that we work with actually love working at 11 o’clock at night. And so we just mapped it out to figure out when do they like to have the meetings. But that idea of when you crank out your best work, everyone has different answers, but if you map it, you can typically figure it out and then find out our team is most effective at this time of day.

Den Jones:
That’s awesome. So one of the things, going back to team building or team structure and organizing your team, I started in Adobe, I continued on when I got to Cisco and it’s no meetings on a Friday. I’m just like, I just want to get to position. We have so many meetings at work, if everybody in the organization says “Right, we’re not doing meetings on a Friday.” That gives you time to wind out your week a bit of a quieter day, you can maybe get some productive stuff done. And my team loved it. I think they probably loved it because it’s a nice chill day. Fridays are chill days. But it really meant that you’re not doing stupid meetings, or because sometimes people they cut out early for the weekend and if they’re going to do that then you’re maybe missing key people and stuff. So I loved doing that.

Amanda Fennel:
Though, you need trust to believe that your people will do the work they need to get done and make sure that they’ll set themselves up for success by doing that, and also the organization. So I’ve done this in my team, the no meeting Friday, that’s our norm and the rest of the organization had a lot of problems with it, and eventually they tried it out on a trial period, et cetera. But at the end of the day I had to do what was right for us even if I couldn’t affect the change around the whole work. But over time they did get interested but sometimes you just have to say, “You know what, the line has to stop somewhere, and my team will not be working on these days.”

Den Jones:
My thing was, I wasn’t so strict about it. It was a case of hey no standing meetings on a Friday. It’s not to say you can’t take a meeting on a Friday, but let’s be thoughtful about it.

The other thing I also told my team to do is block out time to do work and block out time for breaks. So if you really want to do lunch, just block out 12 to one. It doesn’t mean that people can’t get that time if that’s the requirement, but actually now…

Amanda Fennel:
Actually I had somebody ask me that one time about how do you, because I’m super, super time efficient, right? Someone was like, “How come you never let anything slip through the cracks? How do you always stay on top of everything?” And I was like, “Oh because if I don’t finish an email or the need from an email in my inbox, I make it a time appointment on my calendar.” Like, okay, well I’m not going to get to this today, so tomorrow from nine to 9:50 I’m going to work on this task or whatever it’s needed or whatever.

So I clear my email out every day because I’m one of those people, there’s like two kinds of people. I clear everything out because I either get it to where it needs to go to keep it moving or I will block out time on my calendar by making it a meeting that I’ll do it. But super helpful.

Den Jones:
That’s funny. I do that as well. And I tell people, block time to work and if you’ve got a backlog of work, so people have backlogs and they’ll store them in, sometimes it’s system G, whatever. But for me it’s really simple just to go calendar invite, things to do, and I list all the things that need done, and I’ll add things to that list and then I’ll continually move and block time through the week to do it.

Because if you don’t block time to do it’s like, well when are you meant to do that work? I’m trying not to blow my evenings on weekends, just working all the time. So yeah. Now is, I’m conscious of your time and stuff. I’d love to know a couple of easy ones for you. So when you’re at dinner party with friends, how do you describe your job?

Amanda Fennel:
Okay, so I actually didn’t mention this earlier, but let’s say what does Relativity do? So the people who have any tech experience, I say it’s like Splunk, but for legal data, if you know what Splunk is. But for people who have no idea, I just say that we’re a company and what I do for a living is I work security at a company that we organize a lot of data, we have to figure out what it means and what it does, and then we help people to do something with it. Most often in a legal environment or compliance. But a lot of people are overwhelmed with data and don’t know what to do with it, nor is it evidentiary value that it can be going through the court systems.

So our product came around and that’s what we do as a company. We organize data, so people can do something with that and make it actionable. My job is to make sure that nothing bad happens with that data, that it is secure in transit, at rest, that everything we do that is securing the house and the fortress and everything is done correctly and well and with a lot of honor. So I guess no one actually has asked me in a long time cause maybe I don’t go to enough parties. But that’s probably what I would say.

Den Jones:
Although yeah you’re, you’re probably not parting as much as I’m not going to say I’m a party animal, but I certainly like to be social. So I do try and hang out with people and host events and stuff.

Amanda Fennel:
Nobody actually wants to know the depth of that. So normally I just say I do security. And if they’re like, “What kind?” I’m like, “Cybersecurity?” And you just leave it at that and it just sounds…

No one asks any anymore questions because they don’t want to talk to somebody who does cybersecurity. I’m normally at parties with doctors, they want to talk to other doctors. So that’s typically what.

Den Jones:
Or the interesting thing is between [inaudible 00:39:58] and audits and CPAs and that bucket of people that are considered boring people. So I over the years when I’d ever be out, and especially when I was on the dating team when I was a young kid, I used to come up with all sorts of nonsense. So in Scotland in the nineties, computers were becoming a thing and everybody wanted somebody to help them build a computer. So eventually I decided I was a dolphin trainer. So whenever I’d meet people I’d be like, “I’m a dolphin trainer.” And then Scotland, about half an hour from where I lived there was a sea life center. So I had this whole story.

Amanda Fennel:
I would totally have dated you then. That sounds like an awesome answer. I’m going to steal it, but that sounds awesome.

Den Jones:
Yeah, so it does. So when I moved to California, just so I wouldn’t get caught up in this, can you help me with my computer shit? I told people it was an igloo repair man. Now I don’t know if you know about California, but it’s quite a hot place. I’m assuming you do. So an igloo repair man, I don’t know if you can imagine not a lot of work for igloo repair men.

Amanda Fennel:
They have to [inaudible 00:41:06] on that though. How would you not still end up helping somebody with their computer?

Den Jones:
Well, because I was doing servers and networks and directories and not work stations.

Amanda Fennel:
They don’t care.

Den Jones:
Not your computer. So, so people don’t care.

Amanda Fennel:
They don’t care. I spent the first decade in terms of my twenties when I was dealing with cars. I would get calls from any one of my sisters like “Hey my car’s making this noise, what’s it mean like, [inaudible 00:41:33] whatever.” And I’d have to diagnose that over the phone or help them figure it out.

Nowadays, I still get the same call but now it’s, “My computer is making this many beeps, what does it mean?” And I’m like, oh okay, here we go. But it’s like no one cares. They still don’t care what you’re doing on the daily. They still think that you just know computers so you can fix it. Now the worst party is debt. They’re not wrong. They are correct. We do translate what’s going on in the cyber world for people who don’t understand it. Yeah, technically you’re probably busy.

Den Jones:
Yeah, there’s busyness and then there’s enthusiasm and I don’t know if there’s a tally if we’d account for every time we help someone with their computer problem. But yeah, I stopped counting that shit and I try and avoid it to be honest. I do try and avoid it. I’m like, “Oh maybe you should take that to the Apple Store.”

Amanda Fennel:
Oh you know why? Because it just takes a long time for the troubleshooting because you could go down some serious rabbit holes. I totally agree. It’s just that the problem is I have too many siblings so I still get stuck with it.

Den Jones:
Yeah, yeah. Well I’m fortunate because all mine are back in Scotland, so very rare earlier they calling me these days for that kind of nonsense. So anything as we wrap up, any questions for me? Why don’t you try and throw something my way, a little curve ball or something.

Amanda Fennel:
Okay. So out of curiosity, you can’t say today, but what has been one of your favorite episodes that you’ve done of this podcast?

Den Jones:
Yeah, so excluding today, obviously. Oh yeah, I’ve been fortunate, really fortunate. So couple of one points. One is I’m one year at Banyan this week. So I decided in my one year I would write a blog post on a Lincoln article, which is the marketing team are now having fun with. But I was going through it and kind of like what’s my observations as a first time CSO, one year in the job, right? And the podcasting bit was cool, but one of the things is, I’ve been blessed with my last couple of companies of Adobe and Cisco to have done great jobs there that enabled me to meet some fascinating people. So for me, Theresa Perrin, she’s the ex White House CIO.

Amanda Fennel:
Yes.

Den Jones:
She is as mad as a hatter, but she’s an amazing woman. Brilliant, brilliant to hang out with. But then when you really dig in to her life and what she’s done and what she’s doing, it’s just brilliant.

So for me, she was excellent, and then I’m always at all the FBI team and some of the stuff that they do in the background that we never really hear much about. So Elvis Chans and another guy that I’ve met over the years, a brilliant guy and he leads the cyber team in San Francisco. So getting to talk to him about some of the stuff that’s going on there was excellent.

So yeah, it’s been pretty cool because I’ve got to meet people over the years and then when I took this job on and we decided we were going to do a podcast and I reached out to everybody, there’s one person I need to chase up because I know he is a busy guy, but everybody that I’ve ever asked have always said, “Yeah, I’d love to come on the podcast and do a show and stuff.” So that’s been pretty cool.

Amanda Fennel:
Go ahead.

Den Jones:
I was going to say one thing I wrote down in my notepad to not forget was you mentioned earlier about the music maestro, right? So as a musician in me and how I bring that back into my work life, I’ve never thought about that before. I hadn’t even thought about it the way you described it, but I’d certainly think of myself as being someone that compartmentalizes things that we need to do really easily, likened to music track and building where you’ve got all the drums and percussion, you’ve got the baselines, you’ve got the keyboards and synths, vocals and all these things and the elements. Well, to do a song these days, especially an electronic dance tune, it is about 50 to 70 tracks of music all organized and arranged in a certain way and blended together to hopefully finally make a tune that’s worth listening to.

When we do our work, we actually are coding strings and juggling and organizing to that same level as well. So one project, there might be 50 people in the team and there might be two or three PMs working on it. So for me, I guess there’s been a level of translation, but I think the most important thing is my being organized. And a lot of my success hasn’t really been music related. A lot of it’s more been from the cooking days when I worked in kitchens because the prep work, as you said earlier, you prep before dinner service so that dinner service is smooth, and the more prep you do before dinner service, the smoother dinner service will be. I think of that just like a project, the more prep that we can do in the project upfront before you go live, the better that cut over that go live, or that thing will be. So I’ve thought of that more as being part of my success than probably anything else.

Amanda Fennel:
Yeah. So my last question I will ask one more that I did have that I was thinking of is what’s your favorite live music event that you’ve been to?

Den Jones:
Oh, so I’m a huge fan of Above and Beyond, their record label and a lot of the stuff they’ve done. So that’s been brilliant. But I would say mainstream artists and concerts… P!nk was probably one of the best artists I’ve seen because her show’s just phenomenal. I’d seen U2, thought they were great. Coldplay I think is probably one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen.

But yeah, I try and go to a concert every couple of months if I can. I mean, I want to see good shit but I don’t limit it to just electronic music, which is my thing. I kind of go see anything. But Coldplay’s concerts, if you’ve never seen Coldplay live, they’re probably one of the best bands. And then P!nk, she was just phenomenal. And I’ve seen Lady Gaga and I’ve seen Madonna and I’ve seen P!nk. And for me P!nk was a better show than the other guys.

Amanda Fennel:
I’m not surprised. She seems like quite the acrobatic theatrical, person. I think it’d be awesome.

Den Jones:
Yeah, yeah. I’ve seen her twice actually flying around the air while she sings. I’m like, that’s quite skill.

Amanda Fennel:
Yeah, for sure.

Den Jones:
The only time I’m flying around the air singing is probably after I’ve had quite a lot of alcohol, so.

Amanda Fennel:
Quite a bit.

Den Jones:
It’s quite a different show you’re getting at Den’s house, so yeah. Amanda, thank you very much. It’s been awesome having you on the show.

Amanda Fennel:
Thank you.

Den Jones:
I’ve got one final question as we wrap up.

Amanda Fennel:
Okay.

Den Jones:
For all the listeners, what would be the one piece of advice or takeaway you want them to leave with that you think would benefit them in their career?

Amanda Fennel:
I think if I was going to summarize the things that we’ve been around and around here a little bit today that probably hits home, is that your most effective leaders are built by what’s going on from their past experiences, both personal and professional. You bring all of that with you to become who you are and I think we have to embrace that.

Den Jones:
Awesome. Amanda, thank you very much. It’s been amazing having you on the show. Really appreciate it, and we’ll hopefully see each other in person one day soon, I guess.

Amanda Fennel:
Woo. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Den Jones:
Thank you.

Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening. To learn more about Banyan Security and find future episodes of the podcast, please visit us at banyansecurity.io. Special thanks to Urban Punks for providing the music for this episode. You can find their track Summer Silk, and all their music at urbanpunks.com.

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