Enterprise Security Leadership: Learning Methods for Cyber Leaders

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My my dad worked for, like, 35 years for U S Army I group from Fort Mama down New Jersey, and he was able to, like, retire a year early. And I remember asking, Dad, what? Why are you return to your early and he, like, hadn't taken a vacation in Big said Never noticed.

00:45

But you said there was a terrible idea.

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You know, I think you should.

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It should be sort of a requirement that you can't carry over like, 20 years of vacation.

00:54

I think vacations are important. So I certainly hope you guys will take some time away from

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the day to day work. And as you'll see today,

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there may be some real value to that because we're gonna be talking about learning, um, talking about different techniques for learning,

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and you'll see that you know what goes on in your mind. You know, perhaps when you're not working, maybe Justus important is when you're focusing and concentrating on a problem so little bit time away from

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that the Mac book air that you're staring into all day might might not be so bad. So we're gonna focus on learning methods. Obviously, for enterprise security, that's what we all do. We're security folks were

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sort of dancing in the areas that are more leadership in business management, even personal growth. But that's that's the idea where place it in the context of enterprise security. So for those of you may be new to the sessions, the session for you go back and look at the other ones.

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It's been my observation that,

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you know, most of us are pretty good of earning the technology. And nice, of course, is its library. That will help you in that regard. But to become a successful leader, manager, executive, even a group leader, you be some crazy executive and just be leading a spotty

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to do that, the skills that are required, or usually things that cybersecurity people are not

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good at way. Spent,

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you know, during the 1st 3 sessions, we looked at some of the

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areas where you may not have a lot of facility. Now this one is different. I think this is learning because your nerd like me,

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then you think, Oh, I I have no problem learning. And your mind immediately goes to calculus and physics and

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Python 12 and three and operating systems. I learned that stuff really well. Like I can sit in the math class,

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um, and learn number theory and really enjoy it. But learning other things may not be such a comfortable experience. We're gonna focus me

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a little bit less

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on on technical learning and more around experiential learning and and ingesting kind of what's going on around you, and you'll see a little bit the power of guessing. And that's something that we learn a scientists. I'll talk about that in the context of George Polio, who may be the

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the most interesting contributor, at least in the last 100 years.

03:22

Two techniques for learning. And he knew how to talk to people who were techies because he was a math professor at Stanford, so

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Well, look, a little bit of some of the things that he that he I think talk years are We started, like some sentence here that I write out the emphasis here, by the way,

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continuous learning. That's why it's the different color. Um,

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I think if you share a generation with me, and if you do, you have my sympathy because I'm getting so darn old. But if you're in your forties fifties or older,

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then learning was this discrete thing. You did like get the high school at the college and then you graduated and that's you did your learning. And now you go get a job and you know, you do what you got to dio. I mentioned my dad earlier.

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Um,

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a unique guy, by the way, the second or third PH. D in computer science at any wherever. University, Pennsylvania, who's done electrical engineering? They said, Hey, could we call this computer Science 1966?

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Um,

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he was one of the first examples ever saw somebody who would always keep learning, I was remember, thought it was sort of odd. It would be not unusual. My dad's like 87 90 c but be unusual. When I came home to see him sitting on a chair with a physics book,

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I'd say that way, reading that you go well, I always wanted. I was wondered about,

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you know, this electromagnet, magnetic something rather because I didn't really get it in college, and I want to know it now. Remember that that's sticking with me. Was a kid

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I knew in some said, That seems sort of pointless, but it's sort of not, and you'll see as we go through it, that the habit

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of wanting to continually learn is really quite a quite a wonderful habit in something that

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makes sense. By the way, I know there's some questions and answers that people are offering. Go ahead and top them up if it looks like what you're asking is is appropriate or or connected to what I'm talking about. A pause for that. There's a couple I know, John's asking The question doesn't get you. Go ahead and answer. Some of them were housekeeping type questions

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Well, certainly get answered before we're done, so keep them coming. We do monitor the

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questions and answers.

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Now let's look at where we do a model

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and I'm gonna show you model that I think is okay. But I'm going to talk about polio's model, which make Max would be better and I don't know. The whole idea is you got to come up with one, which will be the point a minute. I'll get to

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that. It's not a model, it's your model. You know what you do toe learn. So some people would start by saying, You know, you just go off and learn. And I remember in my own life when I was the technologist that collapsed. I was, you know, a pure gate working in the lab,

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and

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I realized I was becoming a supervisor. So they sent me off to Columbia Business School to learn things I didn't understand. I didn't know what an income statement. Waas. I didn't know what e that Doc Waas Not still not sure I know what it is. You get the point stuff like that basic stuff.

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And if you're like May, most cybersecurity

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folks are very direct. And if you have confidence, you're willing Teoh to admit when you don't know something. So I was admitting things that were seemed shocking toe. Others, like I would say, What's the difference between profit and margin and everyone would gasp and then they'd realize maybe they didn't know either.

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I don't even know now.

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Is there a difference? Relax point. So they sent me off, and I learned quite a bit

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and generally viewed in that macro sense. When you're learning some, just continue learning the first thing you're gonna want to dio

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back and discuss it like learning is infectious, right? If you are watching podcasts

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and and it's some idea that sticks with you like you might have a favorite podcaster upon the sort of that graffiti sort of area, like somebody like my like Joe Rogan, right, he has all these people. Come on, and there's very

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I know some basil edgy theater. Elon Musk on their smoked weed on there. What are you learning? You listen your and discuss it with me. It's my wife. When she's cooking, I'm poor Progress glass one, we said. We talk about stuff that we learned and did. That's been our habit for married for 35 years, one of the best parts of the day.

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Then when you learn something, want to discuss like I couldn't imagine

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living on a deserted island

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for my life and what you learn. But kind of what good is it right? Learning? Is this collective things. You want to discuss it and then you want to put it into some sort of practice, like you

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do something with it. You know, try and apply it something that has come up. But it may be a PSA Terek. In the some sense, esoteric learning means it's hard to do this stuff.

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But, for example, one of things you know, we're gonna talk to Leaf Jackson later on during our time. Yeah, OK, I'll quit. About 15 minutes early, we'll talk to leave.

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You learn that cyber is one of important things that the A lot of focus and emphasis on its not learning for the sake of learnings leading team put things into practice, and I think that's really, really, really important.

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You know, when the tree falls in the woods, does anybody hear it? My belief is now,

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and when something is learned and it's not put into practice, is it worth it? I kind of think No, I think that learning has to be something that

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is gold or you may disagree, but this is a model on you again when we get to

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Yeah, in a minute. We'll look at some alternate views here that might be sort of interesting for apply

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means. Once you put in breakfast, then it could become a habit. Like I could have put the word habit here, where this really becomes something that is part of your daily routine. I have this this way of dealing with worry.

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I blogged about it on only dinner. About are actually before Cove it. A lot of people said, What were you predicting, Cove it And I just noticed, cause I coach see SOS. I spend a lot of time in my consulting practice I coach and

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and a noticed

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a growing percentage of people I work with,

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lamenting their fears and their worries.

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And I always found Dale Carnegie's how to stop worrying and start living to be an amazing tool for not worrying. And I almost memorized the book, all these techniques, and I share them with the folks that I

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that their coach, I found that for some of them, they actually applied in their day to day life is these ideas these thought ideas about how you could

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minimize worry if you don't know this, that book by Delcarmen getting get for free on the Internet, probably violating every copyright long the book. But

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I think, like on YouTube, you can hear, hear somebody read it sometime. Recommend you do it. And then finally, I think this slide comes a little blurry, but you get the idea. Challenge means that at some point

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it makes sense to go back

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and rethink things that have been put into practice that have become habits and question whether they still apply. Maybe the situation has changed. Maybe you've changed. Maybe the circumstances have changed, which means you have to go. We go back and re learn again. So

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so that model, that continuous model. And are these things serially? Now you know that maybe you're jumping around. There's a 1,000,000 different ways that these things

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potentially could be put into practice. But you kind of get the idea so so that working model is one, but there's another one

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that I think is really quite interesting now.

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Dumb me, I forgot to do this, But on YouTube

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there is a great video, and I'll share with the cyber re folks. They might actually be able to find its from 1966.

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It's an American Mathematical Association video on George Kolia, the great Hungarian mathematician,

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and it's so incredibly amazing and delightful like I when I think about people being on you, like on Netflix, looking for something toe watch during Pandemic. But I always find it a wonder causes some better stuff that you can find its older and this this guy drug George Paul, Um,

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by the way, with a forward here from John Conway, who just died of Corona virus

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in one of the most wonderful mathematicians. And sadly, he passed away from this terrible pandemic but of Apulia had this. Let me tell you about his solve it model, and then I want to tell you what he teaches about about teaching and learning. But again, I'll make sure the YouTube video

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that American Mathematical Association, it's polio speaking

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beautiful is that this Hungarian accent, it's just it's so much fun to watch that an hour. But we'll get the lake sent out. Maybe tot are if you guys could reminded me so don't forget to do that, but in right

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Absa polio in this book, which I think you should buy. By the way, this is one of those books, like Strunk and White, you know,

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or like a thesaurus, or like new things to volumes on algorithms that you kind of feel like should be on your shelf like I have one.

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I've never read it. I know it's in it. You know, Young's have book like that. It's there. It's got this canonical message.

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But you say, Did you ever read it? You think I don't know that I ever really read it Like everybody read Strunk and White Elements of Style. I I don't know that anybody ever read the fact. I don't think anybody ever read canoes volumes on sorting and searching. I have them.

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I have all these probably five editions of the darn things right there. My shove. They were a bit of a rate polio's book out of Solve It. He has this habit that he says you should dio

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when you're solving problems. Its four steps I gotta go through quickly because I want to get this theories on teaching first is understand the problem

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and that seems so obvious, but every one of you have been in a conference room

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where everything's banding around. Your team is talking some problem with the Sammer with your you know something or having problems with the you know, your to factor system. And but and you're realizing it's going out around around and nobody's going to stop the say, Wait a minute,

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let's understand the problem And it's amazing how that magic phrase sometimes

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brings a room to silence,

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and then you actually sit down and understand what the problem is. Then he says, Second is before you solve it plan. How you gonna solve it like think through the different options? What are some ways that we can actually do it? What's our plan is? What's our plan of attack? Then the third step is you actually go ahead and do the solution,

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and the fourth is check your solution. Make sure you

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go in and and validate that. What you did was right. Now that's basic 101 stuff. That's why I say this would be on your shelf. But you would you read it? I'm not like in third grade. You probably have some teacher

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that goes through that and you're too young to appreciate. It would be an old guy like me toe actually appreciate the beauty of that. So so think that something. I should have it on any of the South solving. But here's one of the things that polio talked about, and that's teaching.

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And, you know, for you I want you now to think less about you is a learner and you more as a teacher, and and here's the idea, he said. What is teaching and for you? What does that mean as an enterprise security leader leading a group leading organization leading the whole Sisa lead group?

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What does it mean for you to nurture a learning environment? You will be a teacher to do that,

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neither teaching by example ever but his definition of teaching.

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I think it is a beautiful one, he says. Really, it's an opportunity for learners, for students to think on their own.

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That's a

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like to discover not I give you information,

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You write it down, you memorize it. Now you got it. That's all right, he said. Teaching is an opportunity to guide someone to discover things on their own. That's a beautiful concept. That is not something most supervisors do. They think about every boss you've ever had,

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right? I mean, we bet most of them don't do it that way,

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you know, saying in the office grumble something they demand you do X y z,

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you say okay and you go do it. You know not.

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You know, let's think about this. You know what's the problem?

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You know, let's plan how we might approach it.

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What do you think?

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And this is the part of polio said. And he says in the video, That's so amazing. He says, Really,

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this is a little controversial. Maybe, he said,

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learning it and always starts with gase.

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So everything always starts with a guess. And Feinman said that to Richard Feinman degree fizzes, my favorite physicist of all time.

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You've never read. Surely you're joking, Mr Feinman. Then drop everything. Just get off this call now and go by the book. You It's way better than this lecture. So go, go! Do away! Stay until we talked the leaf. You like that part, but go buy. Surely you're joking. Was fired was great, but But this idea of guessing

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is spectacular. because it it suggests

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that finished things

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presented to you are not the way the lawyer

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so mathematics. I always had a beef with mathematics education. I'm a computer scientist. My PhD's in your beer sign, but under God is physicists. I ingested a lot of bad math teaching,

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and the reason I say bad is because math has always presented done. Do you ever notice that we know in a proof of your like an atomic theory is showing the pumping lemma It's done

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and you memorize it and you follow the steps. And then on the midterm, you write it out

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and you could memorize something done, but nobody showed you how to make the proof.

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Nobody should know he gave you a theorem that may or may not be right,

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and now you go prove it. Or do the math, or figure out if it's possible to connect this site to that site.

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I don't know the answer, and you're guessing your and then this posit this. Guess it's translated into an experiment or a proof of concept, or a demo or a system are expect. Whatever you do work we're all obsessed with POC is where really a POC is an answer to a guess.

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Will this thing help me?

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And you say

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I think it might

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And here's how I think it might guess.

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You're saying I'm guessing that this war,

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and then you're going to go demonstrate whether you're right or wrong.

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Welcome to learning. That's it.

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It's always guessing whether it's your your son. Just talking to Leafs little subtle a while ago. So cute, kid,

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Um,

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if he said to me,

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Why is the sky blue?

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Um, it would be dumped for me to answer that. It would be way better to say

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Hey, little dude,

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why do you think it's blue? Let him guess

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and let him think it through and let his brain sort of hash on. I wonder why the sky's blue And then you show a picture of the moon and you say, Look, here's the men on the moon.

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Look, what color is the sky on the moon is black. Wow, Why do you think it's black there

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and blue here? What's different?

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And then they're guessing they're guessing that can atmosphere comes to mind and light through. It gets really interesting and then remember that for life. It's a spectacular way to think about learning and for you

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the guide, your team and how they learn. Let them guess. Let them discover When was the last time you had a manager do that for you? Right? It's so rare

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that that's the kind of thing. What? I mean, if you have that, then you're very lucky. But a lot of really bad learning experiences at work. Um, okay, here's an interesting guy who learned during expecting to see this is Rockefeller

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as the richest man, maybe who ever lived.

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And he lived his life in two parts. And by the way, Bill Gates, same thing.

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First part of his life.

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Really miserable. Cratchit E guy just obsessed with making money,

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Not the kind of person you would you would want to be associated with.

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Uh, worked seven days a week.

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He was like Ebeneezer Scrooge and then around mid life Look, this is him. Young in the top, right?

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This is him, I think, in the picture. In the bottom, right. That's him. It about age 45 or so. Maybe 50. Look a jalopy. Sha.

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And he was so sick

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from stress

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that his doctors put into bed, and basically the guy was living on alkaline powders of milk. He had more money than most countries is living a diet of a popper.

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So the doctor said,

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You have to change your life

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or you're gonna die

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is your option,

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Keep doing what you're doing or change

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And they said,

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Number one,

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Get rid of all the stress, which means no more of this business stuff. You got to go do something else. You gotta learn a new way to live.

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And then a couple other things. Two things I remember, they said, Always take a little mild exercise every day. Not crazy exercise, but mile

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and continuous exercise every day. And the third, they said. So, his room said, Always get up from the table a little bit hungry. Just eat enough So the V even some but never eat two full, they said. Remove stress, mild exercise and always get up before your full

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and the guy lift toe like 90 some. This is him.

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I think, with this little kids so cute, like, if you look at him here, you think what a nice man and it's freaking John Rockefeller Sr. The meanest old crotchety guy. Now the reason that's important is because he learned a completely new way. The live.

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He was not somebody you'd want to be around and he could change. So you're with your team.

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The lesson here, AKA and Bill Gates saying thing Bill Gates was no picnic man when he was in business at Microsoft.

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I was, Ah, that was a shark. Now you look at him and I think he'll go. This is my personal opinion.

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It's one of my favorite people in the whole planet. He's like a rag spends of life trying to eradicate disease carries around. You ever see what Bill Gates does? This is the richest guy. Maybe it's number two. I forget of him. Are Bezos? He's probably to. Do you ever see that book bag he carries around? He carries one of those.

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Let's those look like those Candace book bags you got in college.

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I haven't and why you want around here somewhere and he's got a stack of books in it. His wife, Melinda, jokes about it gets everything from poetry to mathematics, computer science. I should mail him some of my books. I wish Bill Gates would have my books in this bag of probably good for sales, right? But right, he has these books in his bag.

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Any devour SSM every day?

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That's Bill Gates is a lifelong learner, and Rockefeller did some similar things, and he started the Rockefeller Foundation, which you've heard of,

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and it was his life's pursuit to make the world better. What a story. I mean, you haven't read. I have some on my shelves. Here are the life of

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a biography of John Rockefeller Sr is worth reading, especially the younger person. Read the biographies of these great people.

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There's so much to be learned. Read about the Andrew Carnegie in particular for what we all do. Read that I just finished them

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biography of Thomas Edison that came out recently.

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Um, Crusher, Forget who wrote it and and I obviously want to read about the Bill Gates book by Isaacson's Really X Excellent book. Isakson also read, wrote a book about Einstein that I devoured so good. Walter Isaacson, my favorite,

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one of my favorite biographers. We read these things because you learn. That's what we mean by lifelong learning.

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Here's another sort of learning pictures kind of sad, right?

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So learning has its value, right? I mean, at some point, we're in business. So there's a reason why we want you to learn this guy. We're here. Solemn burger. I don't know if you know this, but when when the big crash happened and he landed the plane here and everybody lived,

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Yes, 58.

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And

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he had been flying for

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no

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40 years before that. Like way back in 1973. This thing happened in

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January 2009 was when this happened

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way back in 1973. This guy Sullenberger was the top flying cadet at the Air Force Academy, and then he became a fighter jet pilot and said, This is a dude that could fly.

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I mean, he had the experience, the learning, the confidence. So when this happened, every person here on this boat, like, you know, standing on the wings, living

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benefited from his amazing experience.

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So we all benefit when somebody devotes their life to something. There's a time when that really comes in handy. That's why, again not to get political, they're freaks me out that in many countries, including our own, we have this idea that expertise. Maybe doesn't matter, and gut feel would be better and just kind of going based on

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Hey, I don't need

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toe have all this training. I can figure it out. Well, here's a guy on the right. He tried to figure it out.

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So there's a guy who said eh, flying he you know, he was not instrument rated. And in July 1999 the crevices Who's the rubble? He crashed and killed three people, including himself.

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Sure is a hell of a good guy,

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you know, It's not like he was doing something mean, but he just didn't seem to value the idea

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that you really ought to be certified beyond just visual flying if you're gonna fly into a terrible storm.

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Um, so this on the right is gut feel, and this over here is really experience and expertise. I'd rather listen to this guy than this guy when it comes to flying,

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and we see that every day on the news. You know, there are people who are capable and the people who aren't, and it's wonderful to be

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honest enough and educated enough to know the difference. That's something that I hope you isn't a supervisors of as a leader in your team. Just knowing the difference is so important. There is a difference between knowing something and not knowing something.

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Have you ever seen, like, walk into your security operation center

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and go up to one of the senior folks? And you see that said this This But somebody sitting there and you say,

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You know, tell me about, um I don't know, five g telemetry. How's that gonna fit our fit in with our sin?

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And you'll see this expert will look a gin. She'll say something like, Well, I don't know anything about five g telemetry I on a person about it, but

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here's what I do know. And then three hours later,

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she'll stop and you'll have 60 pages of notes on something she barely knows because she knows the difference between knowing and kind and knowing, like Sullenberger. 40 years of flying I'm gonna give the guy he's an expert

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is for me. I've been doing cybersecurity since I was a kid. I told you my dad was a computer scientist was growing up. I had a connection to the arpanet when I was little boy writing Pascal programs So I've been doing this for 40 50 years. So when I said no something, then dammit, you should listen because it's all I did in my whole life.

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I can share. I can give back now.

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I can't tell you the first thing about biological virus side that took two semesters of biology in college. That's it

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in chemistry.

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So I don't know that. And I don't purport to note that I don't pretend to know that. And when you see people pretending to know something like JFK Jr

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I'm they're gonna crash. So don't be that person Take the time to learn, take the time to apply.

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You know, the energy required to really kind of dig in for something. Now, what we always dio,

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um, is we go through a series of sorrow rules,

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you know, that I think are applicable to the topic here. Um, I'm gonna policy. What chat here. We got some questions here. Let's see a couple things. Looks like a little bit about this. I bury yet Leaf agree. You guys definitely do that.

28:47

Looks like we're update. Thanks for people sharing some of the links here. I looked pretty good. Dale Carnegie, but excellent.

28:53

Good chat in here. So, um, I think there's nothing pressing your So let's go on to, uh,

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the first rule.

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Um,

29:03

so here's the 1st 1 and that's that. Lifelong learning

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implies that you'd be doing it from the time you're young

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to the time you're middle aged to the time you're old. And it's not age discrimination to say that people get old, they dio. I'm in the process of it myself. There's nothing wrong with that. I come from an Italian culture where, as you get older, you command more respect, so that's what it should be.

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But I learned differently than my Children dio,

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I just do. I learned differently. You know what? I used to take notes when I'm listening to high tech stuff.

29:44

His pencil. This is what I use pencil paper. In fact, I even have some of those little eraser caps that you got in third grade because I find them useful

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and my kids go. Oh my gosh, I remember that from kindergarten and they laugh, laugh, laugh, you know, but But I learned by writing things flow through my ears and eyes down through my arm through my hand onto paper, and it's a way of flushing learning through,

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and I can't do it with a computer. It doesn't feel the same.

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But maybe when I was younger was different. I don't know. All I know is that learning styles changed. If you're really going to be a continuous learner,

30:26

you have to adapt for the way people learn. Now. I want to touch on a topic that's a little uncomfortable, but I'm gonna bring it up anyway. It's age discrimination, so I do see it in business. I see it frequently,

30:40

and I think that there's two comments I'd like to make. First off,

30:45

it's illegal. Don't do it. And if I saw you doing it, I'd be furious and I call the police on your something or whoever you call when you see that

30:52

HR the HR police.

30:56

But second,

30:56

if in fact,

30:59

you were not a continuous learner,

31:02

like if you've lost the habit and you've stopped,

31:06

don't get mad at me for saying this, but you deserve to be fired because of your age.

31:11

You just stop learning and you live in a world where if you don't keep learning,

31:15

then you're you're not, You're not keeping up,

31:18

so I don't think that's a mean thing. I know any time you touch on age, people freak out. But I'm just saying, Look, I'm a part of this. If you're continuous learner, you can work to your 160. It doesn't matter.

31:30

But if you stop learning

31:33

and sometimes the reason the stop learning happens is because learning resource is change. Like

31:40

my kids learn physics problems

31:44

by watching videos.

31:45

And I think it's nuts. But I didn't say anything because I watched them. You know, of Khan Academy or whatever it is, will a problem. And cyber is a lot of video to.

31:56

That's not how I learned, but they do so fine.

32:00

But I should go through your career. You kind of gonna do the best you can define styles that match up again. You know there's so many good options and we'll hear from Leaf in a little bit, will probably have something to say about learning styles and so on. So keep that in mind. As you go through your career,

32:19

you can't be. I like I said, a coach. I get a lot of people sometimes get on phone Sam. I guess from 63. I can't get a job. It's always age discrimination, and I'll say, Well, tell me about your skills And they start talking about when they were programmer doing COBOL

32:34

When I go,

32:35

you know? I mean, I remember that, and I still have an old COBOL book somewhere in the attic, and it was fun.

32:40

Come on, man, that's not It's not relevant now. You can't always hearken back to like, when people say, Oh, cloud Oh, it's the same old thing. It's the same His mainframe.

32:54

No, it's not is it is different, So you can't just kind of hang on the old stuff. You got to keep learning. It's important enough that I want understand this one for a least a couple of minutes

33:07

tailored. So this is This is related. See hands on versus theoretical I.

33:15

It's hard to describe, you know, anything that's general here,

33:19

but I think the one general rule is that if you're gonna allow your team toe learn, you have to acknowledge that at times it's going to have to be Callard for different individuals.

33:30

Some people can learn visually. Some people learn by readings and people learn by,

33:36

I don't know. Um,

33:37

like, met with math. Did you ever see?

33:42

Sometimes there are these things, like Singapore math. I remember where they tailored the math learning.

33:49

So

33:49

then two boxes and shapes. I didn't like it. I remember my wife and I sitting. My wife's on the board of my kid's school and I went They were doing this presentation on Singapore Man, and I'm such a jerk. Everybody sitting, watching, being so polite and I'm shifting around grumbling on I don't like that my wife keeps kicking me, saying Shut up, will you, please?

34:09

But I made the joke. I said, This is like

34:12

math teaching for people who hate man. I didn't like it, but I was being stupid because you know something

34:19

if it helps someone learn and great and if if if it doesn't then do something else And he that person showing meth was saying, there's a lot of different ways to learn. Here's a new way and yeah, if you prefer to do it in your head like I was like doing math in my head, I didn't like working out all the steps. My son is like that too.

34:38

And he went to Lehigh undergrad,

34:40

And it would be he would just write the answer and get like, 20 points off, saying you didn't show your work And he said How I show my work I did in my head and I resonated with that.

34:52

So you get the point. But you as a leader, you should be recognizing that you look at amongst your group. You can't say all of you go do this thing and then expect them all the learn, the same way they're going toe learn differently.

35:06

I hope that that sinks in. That's important. Learning is done differently. That's why you have often Taylor this one. I believe, from a team perspective. Diverse teams will always land better. I don't care what anybody says. This was one. I've never seen a case to The contrary. Never. Um,

35:25

I reviewed a cyber security company this morning. Start up

35:30

and they showed me a picture of the team was 20 people and I looked at them

35:35

Is all white males 100%

35:38

and

35:39

I sort of brought it up.

35:43

But then I sort of didn't

35:45

like I wanted to make a stink at

35:46

I think you're right in a couple of females in there. But it was It was There was no question that there was no diversity.

35:53

I'm thinking back now, and I feel like I'm a mad that I didn't make a bigger deal of it because I think I would been doing them a favor by pointing it out.

36:01

Um,

36:02

look, ago. Look, look, a bunch of the vendors that you have

36:06

And if you look at the picture, that inevitable picture look on, linked in, you know, very all so happy. And there was a shirt.

36:14

Um, everybody looks the same, usually even in my own little start up. I think sometimes I have too much sameness with a lot of women, and we do have some people with varying backgrounds, but I don't think I have enough diversity. It's one of the things are really trying to fix, but if you want to make your team better,

36:30

you want them to learn battery. One more perspective, more dimension.

36:35

Diversify the team. It's a tricky can use. I don't even call it a trick. But I'm just saying, like if you don't want to do if you say I'm not gonna do any learning initiative. But I wish the team could learn more. Just diversifying the learn more Now,

36:50

you know, probably bad for business. That's I bury. Might be saying that, but just diversification is gonna make

36:55

the team learn better period. No, No exception to that rule that I've ever seen.

37:02

Um, focused attentions. Here's something I always recommend to my graduate students at the, you know, Stevens and at N y. Oh, I know. Tell you guys what I think is, Well,

37:14

um,

37:15

if you have never

37:17

read a technical paper

37:21

from start to finish,

37:22

then you're missing out on something that here's what I mean. I mean, you go find yourself some journal paper on artificial intelligence are on processing telemetry for evidence of compromise. Where for?

37:37

How to connect up your five G systems to ah STN network or something. Whatever it paper that you read out of ah

37:45

journal article or download from someplace.

37:49

The way you read a technical paper

37:52

is you have to read it like code, meaning

37:55

you can't really like a novel. Every word matters. If it's rent written properly, she have to sit down, take the paper

38:02

and start reading

38:05

and you started that they usually rely. You agreed the pencil started to begin me the paper and start reading. And if it some point your mind starts to wander, stop

38:15

and mark where your mind is wandering. Meaning this very meditative right? Like it. It means you have to be able to focus on one thing.

38:23

If you've ever tried to meditate, I hope you try. But if you haven't try,

38:29

it's really, really, really hard. That means,

38:32

can you Can you get your mind into a state

38:37

where you're not context switching?

38:38

So sometimes it is like I do have a mantra, everything One thing But in a technical paper when you're learning,

38:45

if you can zero in on one thing

38:50

and not context switched too Oh, my side hurts. Or while what I got for dinner later, or GM bored with this thing Or, you know, uh, why is the sky blue, you know, or whatever it is you're thinking of, if your mind's bouncing around all this cookie stop, you're not some focused attention.

39:08

Now, one thing that I know that drives my wife crazy

39:13

is that I've always had the ability to do one thing and stick with it.

39:16

Which means I could be in the room with somebody looking at something They start talking in. 10 minutes later, I look up and say,

39:25

Were you saying something? And I have no idea how have stayed married 35 years with that terrible habit. But I got to tell you what

39:32

for? Learning for, certainly for computing, it's it's a must. So So when I teach my grad students to read, I have rebuilt the thing. Mark. When they start and then go away, come back to the paper, Come back to the place where you circled and read right through that. Keep going until your mind starts to wander again

39:52

or until you reach something you understand? Then, Mark that

39:57

you got to go off, figure out what you don't understand, come back and it can be a chore to go through one paper.

40:02

I think a graduate student doing a PhD might find 45 really, really important papers and spend one year just reading four papers.

40:09

I did that. It was Leslie Lamport at the S R I international red, all of things he wrote on DATs how it started my research

40:17

so focused attention is weird because we live in a society where nobody focuses on anything. You know, they just thinks all the surface stuff, but really taking the time. Focus like fishing Tests are kind of cool. We're in fishing. That's a learning moment. You got their attention.

40:35

Take advantage of it. Little bit alert. You be 30 seconds or less with two seconds. But long as you got your attention,

40:42

you might as well use it.

40:44

Rule five year personal interest.

40:46

This is where multimedia comes in. And this where interesting presentations or better than boring ones. I remember Bill Gates saying One time,

40:55

he said. You know,

40:58

there's a lot of bad

41:00

math teaching going on. It said somewhere like in Ohio somewhere

41:06

there is this great math teacher,

41:09

and that great math teacher should be teaching everybody virtually. And it's like almost like a advertisement for cyber, you know, instead of

41:21

you know, everybody having their own little teacher regionally. Just get something really good. Just blasted out everywhere on the reason, it says, because if it's interesting, you'll want to keep

41:30

doing it. I remember my dad telling me, Hairy interested, really. It's a really interesting books and videos on philosophy. And I was like, Dad know that you guys know. I think you'll like this.

41:44

And I went, What is it? He says it's guy name Joseph Campbell.

41:47

You know what? Who is like this professor at, uh,

41:52

place my daughter, my niece, One school there are popping in my head where his teacher in New York. But

41:59

so I saw it, and I would watch it with my dad and was most interesting thing ever saw in my life. You know, he's talking about myths

42:06

and in history and philosophy and storytelling. And if you've never seen them, you got you know, you go on YouTube or Netflix and watch Joseph Campbell's He since died. He also beautiful book. I loved it so much I bought the book. I probably have around your son my big, beautiful book. Why was that was so super interesting.

42:24

And I think I've even applied some of that stuff that I've learned who would guess, You know,

42:30

power of myth, drug, computer, security, person lot. But it's interesting, so you learn to imply it, so being boring is terrible if you're if you're boring kind of person to make sure you have somebody around. It can help

42:44

drive a learning environment for your team. Somebody who's interesting innovation, never gonna innovate unless, sure, everybody's kind of learning. It's just not gonna happen. I had the great privilege

42:57

to have grown up in and around Bell Laboratories during a big chunk of its heyday

43:02

and said these things on Fridays, Who was the research calendar?

43:07

And it was like You're in a university every Friday, something amazing would come in and we would listen and in the innovation would come from that to be discussions afterwards. I knew Google does. These Google talks

43:20

reminds me of that. I think about some of the stuff that came through

43:24

that was just so

43:27

interesting and led to innovation afterwards, stuff that had nothing to do in many cases with work.

43:32

Tom Clancy came and spoke,

43:37

and it was weird because I hated him. I loved this books, but I didn't like him

43:42

give this really, really kind of.

43:45

I was like a nationalistic kind of speech. Well, sat around afterwards at lunch and talked and talked and talked,

43:54

and I know it affected our work in a positive way just having the ability to see that John's parts of your brain that you hadn't really thought about or don't interact with your team on, you know? So innovation comes from and is very dependent on morning and the last rule here before we, you know, we're gonna

44:14

go over and talk. Teoh invite Leaf to share some of his thoughts in a minute.

44:17

This is my own one. A lot of the other stuff is based on

44:22

research, you know? So these charts all come from the work of others. I don't make it in that stuff, but this one I do is from me.

44:30

And that's that. I think that there's two kinds of

44:32

things that residue in your brain from learning.

44:37

One is positive.

44:37

One's next.

44:39

So when you learn something, you find out you discover something some people translate that lets he was negative Anything into Oh, what? We were referred to his regret.

44:51

I don't think regret is actionable.

44:53

What are you gonna do, right? No crime were still milky, Did something stupid.

45:00

That's regret is the wrong thing In sight is the right thing.

45:05

I remember again.

45:07

Don't tell anybody. I'm telling you guys this wrong there, Hopefully under Chatham Astral. One time

45:12

we have a place I was working.

45:15

There was, ah, gentleman that I really admired great scientists

45:21

And it was his last week at work. He was retiring, and we're on a very important conference bridge

45:27

with a lot of important executives. And I happened to be in the room with the scientist I really admired. I'm sad to see him go,

45:35

and we were talking during the thing, and I was telling him how much I wanted to stay in touch. He told me he's going to write a book

45:42

and I said, Oh my gosh, could I be a reviewer? We're going back and forth And then we realized

45:47

that

45:49

somebody pretty important was calling on us and we weren't paying attention.

45:53

Now

45:54

it wasn't good like, but afterwards is that regret?

46:01

Where is it? Inside

46:04

The insight was that probably should have said, Dude, let's talk afterwards. Better listen here. I know that now. I'm glad I went through it, so I regret that hell no, Like I was a nice moment. We had together. In fact, when we shut it off the

46:17

video thing, we both laughed and thought it was grating. Not getting a lot of trouble, but who cares? I'm talking about it now. So insight is what you want

46:28

positive inside. Even if you screwed up something, you did something. Get trouble. Hell with it. Do you regret it? No. It should be insight that you you know, you learn from things and becomes actionable. You could go forward.

46:40

So I hope those rules are things that you apply. Now I'm gonna invite Leaf. I assume you can hear me. Hear you. You with me. Leave?

46:49

Absolutely. Hey, thanks for I have learned you and I have been working together. It's got to be a couple of years, not two years now. Yeah, you're a suspicious. You give me a lot of really wonderful tips all the time about

47:04

how people learn. So first up, before we get to any of like, your insight stuff share with folks a little bit about yourself. You have an interesting background and I'm sure a lot of them No, you just through the work in and around cyber. But you tell them about yourself.

47:17

Yeah, Thanks. Eso Come leave Jackson. I leave the content Community teams here a Tsai Berry. I've got a background, really in education and also have an MBA from the University of Chicago S O. Um, I used to work in inner city charter schools and designed environments for people to learn and those

47:37

and just so excited that

47:38

I'm ableto to support the development here.

47:43

Awesome stuff. And I mentioned you. I was talking to your son a little while ago. She, uh you're a new dad, and you got to just tell everybody how many kids Yarkas takes a lot of guts. How many eso I've got three little boys, all under the age of five. That's very exciting. So when you add up your whole family in your last name's Jackson, what were you inevitably, at this point?

48:02

Absolutely. There's Ah, there's a reason my middle son's name is Michael.

48:07

So for huge tax. So Jackson Five. Well, listen, I know you have a lot of insight and some even Cem personal belief in theories and concepts around learning. When people ask you,

48:22

you know what is it? You guys do it Cyber. What do you focus on? I know the word learning is in that mission statement. What do you guys all about? How does it relate to some of the topics we just talked about?

48:32

Yeah, absolutely. I think my favorite subject is learning. I think Einstein once said that

48:38

I do not teach anyone. I only provide the environment in which they can learn. And that's really what we do here, right? We re provide the environment free to learn for super cybersecurity Professionals said. That's what we develop. Um, I really loved how you mentioned also that either win or you learn.

48:59

And that's a That's a model that we have here, too,

49:00

like you. Either you either succeed or you learn.

49:05

Yeah, it's true. No question about the online experience. What's been your, uh, that's a question I get frequently. People say you and I are friends and they'll know Hey, of working with Cyber Hey, hadn't sub online experience working with Cove it? We've all sort of learned very quickly. Don't get that question as much as I used to, but what's

49:23

what's been your experience in sort of building and growing

49:27

community

49:29

around? Ah, a lot of people who are located physically very separate and and using their computers to interact. How have you guys has that gone over the year?

49:38

Yeah, absolutely. And so I mean, we have amazing community of about 12,000 people in our in our consumer product and they all our information specials all growing and learning

49:49

inside the space.

49:51

We feel like learning is never alone on. And so that's what a lot of people say on our side is like. They never feel like they're learning alone.

49:59

And that's by design, right? So we can we actually Kochar instructors to speak to you like you're feeling in the room

50:06

and to share their experiences? You really feel like even though it's asynchronous, it's they are speaking to you

50:13

condition as you mentioned, like learning it. Learning needs to be tailored.

50:16

Uh, interesting stat. Eso Do you know how long the average person searches on Netflix today?

50:22

I'm afraid to hear this.

50:25

Is it an hour? It's about 18 minutes. But my wife, that's that's already quite a bit of time.

50:32

So if you most by that by you know, 100 million people, uh, it's about 50 lifetimes are spent just a day on searching. Um, and we have the largest and fastest growing catalogue and cyber,

50:46

and so it could be complicated. Teoh navigate. And that's why we have just an amazing team support you in that searching. So you're not wasting your entire life looking for the right thing. Eso that were effective curriculums for folks. Um, customer success manager. And we also have

51:02

a, um, a curriculum engineer on the team toe. Help you

51:07

design your your learning America.

51:09

Now let's talk about the lifelong thing, because I know that something you believe in because would you agree that

51:16

it's completely outdated at this point? To think that you go get a degree

51:22

and that's kind of it like that. I know that time. My mom and dad, my mom was a teacher. My dad was also a professor while he was working for the Army.

51:32

Um, so they still think of learning as this thing you do when you go to a college, and then when you're done,

51:39

Hey, you know, get a job and support your family. What you talking about learning?

51:44

But talk me a little bit about that, cause I think that's part of the whole ethos of what you guys air about. And I believe in that you love to hear it in your words. But this idea of lifelong

51:54

the absolute

51:57

I think the average professional

52:00

changes their career 6 to 7 times during their lifetime. It's become much more of, ah, of a spiral rather than, ah, ladder, so to speak. Over time.

52:08

I was fortunate when when I went to the University of Virginia,

52:13

Uh, the Jefferson taught us that, you know, you're never seen your knowledge, and that's one of the things that he said, Um and so you had fourth years. We didn't have seniors, right? So the idea was you would always progress.

52:27

I'm so taught us that

52:30

lifelong learning is just a part of your life. You know,

52:32

you guys find that cybersecurity professionals. I'm sort of flipping through the questions here. There's a lot of really interesting points. People making curious

52:44

the cyber security People learn a little differently than like if you were teaching,

52:50

you know, to a bunch of

52:52

artists or something, are you know, cartoonists or I mean that

52:57

I would imagine there's something very common in the way

53:01

people who do, you know, cyber scary like Are they more visual? Are they more analytical? Are they more this for the moment. Eyes there. Is it possible to draw some sort of

53:13

common conclusion? Worries that that everybody really is totally different. What do you guys usually see in your day to day work? You deal with so many different students? Varner's

53:21

Yeah, we nearly have three million people on our site. It's a lot, a lot of people. What do you find? I mean, and the reason is because we we tailor toe multiple learning styles, right? So we look across the all the learning styles that you could potentially have.

53:37

And

53:39

I think the best way for people to learn

53:43

is, um is to teach. To be honest, that's fine. That's Feinman said, that that's called the finally method. You gotta be able to teach it to understand that

53:53

eso wave designed an environment where we actually progress practitioners up Teoh teaching and we teach them how to teach

54:00

on. And that's why you see, some of the best practitioners in the world are site actually teaching, and only only with us

54:07

is because, um because

54:09

we can teach them how to teach. Right?

54:14

What do you do? You teach somebody out of teach? I mean, I like,

54:17

uh, for me,

54:21

I

54:22

they let me give you just a little background. I used to be terrified

54:27

to not only teach but also dis speak

54:30

like I. I used to

54:31

be so terrified

54:34

that what I would do is I going into a room in front of a mirror

54:38

and literally before a speech, lecture or even course

54:44

I would do the whole thing into a mirror a couple of times at in real time, like, I mean, because I was so terrified that I would get in there would note I was doing. And for May I would say teaching waas

54:55

preparation and repent repetition. I'm guessing you're not teaching people to do that, but I had a very hard time learning how to those grad student being asked to teach. Of course, I was terrified to do what the How do you teach somebody to teach? That's a fascinating question.

55:13

Yeah, there's definitely a science around. Teaching is definitely a profession. I mean, first, you have to know the subject super Well, yeah, but and then and then what we have is we have got an ecosystem of creators that work with you.

55:24

So we got teaching assistants. And the main idea is that

55:30

we wanna we want to take your superpower, whatever it is. So it could be telling stories, showing visualizations doing labs, whatever it is. And we want to harness that superpower to reach, reach a broader audience.

55:42

And so what we do is we got professionals that actually coach you on how to teach online

55:49

and deliver on our underclassmen. Would you think of that whole polio concept of teaching is leading someone to discover and to guess. What would you think of that?

56:00

Yeah. I mean, that's the only way to learn right is toe. Try something new.

56:06

Potentially you don't get it right, Right. And then you learn it later.

56:09

Yeah, it's hard like you and I and everybody worked in places where

56:15

failure

56:16

is okay as long as it's not a big failure. A little one, like I've grew up catholic, And we all learned that when you went into the confessionals, the Catholic, you had a few things you told the priest during convey a few good things that were not too bad.

56:34

Failure in business is often like that. It's OK to have a few little simple failure is not a big IOU.

56:39

A couple of times I didn't I wasn't a spectaculars. I could have been. I was just great instead of not speak because all these things but all of us know that you don't grow unless you have some spectacular failures. Absolutely. When you learn

56:54

and it's hard because you can't write on your performance, you know, goal sheet that you fell out for the company.

57:01

You know, I'm gonna try these really, really hard things because if you do that, you fail. You don't get a bonus, right? So it's like the deck is stacked against people learning from failure. That's been my observation. I think it's terrible. I fix it.

57:16

Yeah, of course. Is

57:20

Yeah. And And what's cool about our learning environment is obviously it's

57:24

there no actions taken against you for trying out a You're tryingto trying to learn and map or whatever it is, right? So certainly use it. A Zaha

57:37

a za learning playground for yourself, right? Well, what What is your own personal style for learning or you Are you a video guy? Are you a book guy? Are you a face to face what What? How do you in just information? Uh, I think for me, it's, uh I always like putting myself in the environment to learn.

57:55

I don't think it's

57:58

you can learn without putting yourself in the environment. So, for example, like

58:02

worked in inner city charter schools. And so, by being in that environment I learned

58:07

lived in Egypt, right? Eso living in that environment I learned. And now I'm a parent, and I'm certainly learning. Uh, every day

58:17

you learn, not Teoh. Have any sleep during the night and day, right? Well, listen, on behalf of the really wonderful group of people here that are listening and participating, um, I want to thank you. First fall for putting this together. You're sort of one of the

58:35

parents of this course. You and I have been friends for a long time. I really do enjoy am that we do this together.

58:40

And thanks for Sansom inside. Now people really look into what you guys do. I think it's a nice opportunity.

58:49

Teoh have a partner. You guys nice partners. People try to learn, thrilled through a long career. It's It's a nice set up.

58:55

Appreciate you taking some time to share?

58:59

No, thank you. Add and appreciate all you do for us. So listen, I hope everybody has a really happy and healthy holiday and we'll be back. I think we're back. Same time next week as I checked. So we'll be back in a week

59:14

with session number. Whatever in that session were up there. We're getting close to the