Pro Football into Information Technology Services | Stephen Hutchinson [32] - Transferable Skills

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Transferable skills, Skills, Skills from Cackle Media.
This is transferable skills. I'm Noah, Michigan.
Today's guest is Stephen Hutchinson, or Hutch as he's
called, who shares his skills journey from Pro Football player
into information technology services and management.
He's a giant amongst men and while he claims to not be that
tall, if his character, generosity and sensitivity said

(00:24):
anything, then it is that he's got a gigantic heart.
So I hope you enjoy this wonderful conversation with
Steven. Steven, it's great to have you
here on the show. You started your career as a
professional athlete. Was that obvious?
I'm a genic Gen. X kid born and bred from London,
England, northwest, proud as hell.

(00:46):
And I went to a school in northwest London having an
interest in in electronics, in game consoles, computers.
And that time in schools, IT wassomething was new.
Some people embraced it, some people didn't.
So that that's something that I had a keen interest in.

(01:06):
But at the same time, I played for the soccer team, I played
for the rugby team, I played thebasketball team, I ran track and
a lot, a lot. I have to say a lot of brothers
that that I rolled with, they weall pretty much did the same
things. I want to be clear, I wasn't the
fastest, I wasn't the strongest.I was consistent with what I was
trying to achieve. And I did this across 2 schools.

(01:30):
So to answer to your question, I, I didn't see the pathway that
I was going down. School in the UK does not have
that. How can I say that sporting
network and infrastructure like how the US does like how Canada
does? Especially in Gen.
X Back then times no. It was purely academics and

(01:52):
sports was a second or third down the line.
Me coming from a West Indian background as well in a family
where very disciplined. My father was a disciplinarian.
I think I've got some of one oneor two of my skills and traits
from him. It's definitely disciplined.
My father always used to say it studies 1st and that's it.
And we don't want these schools exploiting you young kids.

(02:15):
So they didn't have, my parents didn't have the vision.
Well, my father and my mother didn't have the vision of that.
So it was purely us taking that path down the academic route.
And so, yeah, I, I did not see what was coming.
And if I was, I was 16 at the time, 1516 at the time.

(02:36):
And I was getting to that point in my, in my junior career,
which I thought I was coming to be a man at age 18.
But when I was 16, I was kind oflost in a way because even
though I, I had that flavour in my mouth, technology and IT and

(02:57):
stuff, I did not know how I was going to get there.
I didn't know how I was going tojump to the next step.
So how did I get, how did I get myself into this sport that is
not a national sport, doesn't come close to soccer, rugby or
cricket in this country? Athletics.
It was my best friend, 5 foot four, 100 lbs, fully wet in kit,

(03:21):
right? A man named Simon Paris, a real
close friend of mine up until today, we've had our
relationship tight for 40 years and he played flag maker
football and he goes Hutch. So it's even Hutchinson, AKA
Hunch is my name in the footballfield.
He goes hustler. Then I want to be playing record
football, man. I'm tearing it up.
I'm not Simon, man. You're like 5 foot 4.

(03:41):
How are you going to do this, though?
I went down there, went down to the field, and lo and behold, my
man was absolutely tearing up. They couldn't catch him,
couldn't tackle him. And I said, yeah, I want some of
this, man. I really want some of this.
And I fell into it like that evening when I went home on

(04:04):
Channel 4 channel. At the time there was only 5
terrestrial channels in the UK. He had BBC One, BBC Two, ITV,
Channel 4, Channel 5. Channel 4 was the only station
that broadcasted American football.
And at 6/6, 7:00 in the evening,now I was just having my dinner
and I saw this sport come up. I thought what was this?
And it was American football. And I saw this guy running the

(04:28):
rock and he was running the rock.
Oh, he was smooth. He was smooth.
And his kit was blue and yellow.I'll never forget it.
And it had horns on it, man. And he wore #29 now you know who
I'm talking about, right? Eric Dickerson, LA Rams at the
time, right? And I saw this guy run in the
rock and I said, oh, my day, I want to be him.

(04:48):
I don't know how I'm going to doit, but I want to be him.
And that is where it really started from.
That's incredible. Your father, a strong
disciplinarian and somebody who was trying to instill the sense
of responsibility into you, focusing academics first,
studies first. But also was there room for the
pursuit of athletics and competitive sports so long as

(05:11):
you were also being responsible academically?
Was there? Was there still the support for
that at home too? I'd have to say no because I I
didn't get the support, I didn'tget the family support.
That how you would do if you were a student in the States
that was a high school and an outstanding athlete.
The family support that May would support to that school.

(05:32):
It's a completely different makeup in the UK.
Is that different because of just the family dynamic that
you're raised in or do you thinkthat is systemic throughout UK?
Most families are just wired that way differently than here.
I'm curious like if how much of that would played into from your
family dynamics versus just the environment of where you grew?

(05:52):
Up I I have to say the second definitely I have to say at that
time, living in the West Indie community, a tight W indie
community in northwest London, our parents always instilled
education. Anything else is 0 this.
So is the thought that if you spend any time on other things
like athletics, then that's justtime you could have been
spending on academics? It's just time waste.

(06:14):
It was just time waste. Yeah.
You know what didn't help? And my sister's going to kill me
for this. My my sister, she's two or three
years older than me. She's an absolute A grade
student, a grade student. And she's absolutely been
pivotal in my life back then when in my academic career, he
said. Sees me following her footsteps

(06:35):
from the academia perspective was a a tough thing to do.
Big shoes to fill. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Love her to bits, but yes. And the thing about it, she did
athletics, too, but she'd faded away and she just felt with her
academic, then she got to where she got to.
But I didn't have that support for my father and my mother
loved sports. But again, they were both kind

(06:56):
of like singing from the same hymn sheet.
Yeah, yeah. But a lot of people there's,
there's tradition being conservative and thinking about
what are realistic options that will support your family in the
future. I think our job as adults,
whether you're a parent or a mentor, a boss, is that we want

(07:17):
to do our best to try to guide that next generation.
You're being told, let's just think about what's going to
provide the most security for you and opportunity for you in
the future. It's, you know, the dreamers,
the dreamers out there, the artists, they, they, they battle
those same conversations growingup.
But probably doesn't matter where you're raised for that

(07:38):
kind of thing, for the art, the musician, the painter, the
sculptor, somebody who is drivenpassionately for something
inside. It's not a clear career path
that that has security. Yeah, I see we're going with
that. I mean that Gen.
X generation sport was not deemed as a career path at all,

(08:02):
not really at all. In in soccer there there was
less than 10% in the premiershipplaying the game of people of
colour. You looked at the National
Football squad, there was like two or three.
If they're and the racial abuse that they got back then, I'd tip
my hat and give those guys theirflowers because it was tough
back then. So having those negative vibes

(08:25):
around kind of sport wasn't really attractive at the time.
After I started playing fact football, I was very fortunate
to, to play amateur football like in in Division Three,
because at the time American football was was believe it or
not, was such a buzz in the UK in the late 90s.

(08:50):
See what I'm talking about man, I'm not talking about in the in
the late 80s, early 90s, there was like over 500 teams in the
UK from the top Division One, division two, Division Three,
yeah, Division Three. And we're.
Talking about American football.We're talking about American
football. Wow.
I had no idea that there was that much interest in the UK.

(09:12):
There was huge interest in the late 80s, early 90s Huge.
You could go to games like the Crystal Palace, the stadium, a
famous stadium in London, SE London, and you'd be seeing the
two like two or three top teams playing there.
Like have 5 or 6000 fans at the game paying and having music on
the sidelines. It wasn't the absolute scene,

(09:35):
American football scene that you'd see like at a college
game. Wow, it was it was huge then.
And did. So if it was huge back then when
you first saw your friend playing flag football and then
we're interested in it, did you already know all the rules?
How did you how what was that like learning the game,
understanding it from it's not like you were raised from a very
young age and slowly learning certain plays and rules, but

(09:58):
older. Now your your brain is mostly
developed, I assume by that age and you've got to learn a whole
sport from start soup to nuts. American football, learning
American football, I, once I gotthe hang of it, took me about
about a month or two understand all of the rules.
But once I understood the rules,I fell in love, man.

(10:19):
Because that is chess on a gridiron.
You're playing chess on a gridiron, man.
That's what you're doing. So much strategy around the
game. It just blew my mind in
comparison to playing like soccer or, or like running track
or anything like that. That kind of drew me into it.
I've always been around impact sports anyway, so the impact was

(10:43):
just something that just electrified me, man.
It's I just felt like the more Igot a hit the cricket, the
stronger I got, I think so that attraction was there.
But learning the game, the stop start when you when you've got
fresh eyes on the game for the first time, people running on
the field, people running off the field, you're seeing the
stop start. You're seeing these zebras
running all over the field and down the side.
Like what is going on easy? You can easily just turn over

(11:05):
and move on. Yeah, because it because it
looks so confusing. But once you understand the
game, it's like beautiful. It's like fine wine.
The first junior team that I I played in was the same team I,
my friend Simon introduced me to.
We were called the London Acorn Lasers and it was 1 coach,
right? There's one coach I always give
disguise flowers. It was 1 coach.

(11:26):
She was about 50 players. We were all aged between 16 and
18 in. There was like £3000 worth of
testosterone just flying around that pitch every practice, OK,
It was 1 coach who took the offence, he took the defence, he
took special teams, he took every unit through QBs and Roger
Sieves. He took the running backs, he
took the Titans in alignment, hetook the defensive.

(11:48):
He did all of this by himself, OK.
And he got us to the national championships in in that back in
88 and we lost. That was the first time we lost.
But just going through that journey, it helps me understand
the game. I assume, correct me if I'm
wrong, you're not playing full contact football today, correct?
Correct. Do you miss it?

(12:11):
There's nothing out there now. I'll take my glass up and tell
you it There's nothing out therethat can replace you playing on
the field. I don't care what any of these
players say, any of these coaches say, there's nothing out
there that can replace laying ona grid eye.
Yeah, I remember at one point when I was in my 30s, I had this

(12:31):
realization that once you are nolonger a child and you're not a
professional athlete, where do we as adults get to yell?
Where do we get to scream and let out that adrenaline and that
testosterone? And you can try to expel it
through certain activities, likeyou can play ball at Bass

(12:52):
basketball, pick a ball in the in a league or in the park.
You can run, you can go running.That's exhausting.
You could do some other taxing, physically taxing chores and
activities, but when do you get to expel real or manufactured
anger, that sense of adrenaline that is building up, and then
just scream at the top of your lungs and get it out of your

(13:14):
system? And there's something that's
very cathartic, that's very satisfying about that aggression
coming out in a healthy way. You can't shove somebody in as
an adult in the real world, evenplayfully so I'm wondering if
you feel that there is an outletthat's missing from your life
today or once you retired from competitive sports.

(13:38):
That's a really good question, and it's something that I know a
lot of athletes struggle with, regardless of what sport it is.
OK. It's about when the lights are
switched off, when the audience goes home, when those lights
dim, when the curtains close andyou are no longer in the
public's eye. That is like night and day.

(14:01):
And I was very fortunate to playin NFL Europe for five years.
I didn't play in the NFL in the USI still went through some of
that myself. And it's about what am I going
to find to fill that void of playing the sport.
You are like on a conveyor belt of disciplined things that you

(14:23):
do day in, day out for years. And you have to an extent you
have people telling you where togo and what time to be there and
going from that to it. Not being there and having to
fend for yourself in the big wide world, in the in, in
industry, in, in environments can be scary for people that

(14:47):
aren't ready for that. Yeah, that aren't ready for that
at all. I was very fortunate because
yes, I did graduate. Yes, I did go through
university. Yes, I did graduate with a
degree. I was very fortunate.
I didn't realize how it helped me 10 years, 15 years later,
because I graduated whilst I wasplaying football.

(15:09):
But that void that you're talking about trying to fill is
such a huge gap if you don't have those advisors around you
to show you how to take that next step.
Yeah, there's many people that I, I know in, in, in soccer that
have it's just as cutthroat as it is in the NFL that you play

(15:30):
football for all life. You get to an Academy in a
premiership team and you play till you're 16, hoping to sign
that big deal on your 16 to get onto the scene, the team and you
get caught and it's OK. Where do I go from here sort of
thing. OK, I'll play 7 Pro Football.
OK, I'll play 7 Pro Football andI'll go and get a job in the big
wide world. OK.
What do my academics look like? They better look good.

(15:51):
Because if they don't, you're going to struggle with getting a
role, getting a job. Does it help with regards to who
you know sometimes not about what you know.
Hell yeah it does. It does.
It's about networking and building up your network.
And it's about who you know. That really helps.
But just winding my neck back into part of your question, you

(16:14):
have to find a void. That bit about you, you gave
that example of that non athletethat has all this testosterone
and wants to, needs to get it out because we're all human.
We we need to have these outlets.
And my answer to that is you have to find something, man.

(16:34):
You have to find something whereyou can channel it because it's
not good you keeping it in. You're only hurting yourself
internally and mentally. What was that transition like
for you? What what was your outlet?
My outlet was one of the prerequisites that got me

(16:54):
through my football career and that was training, that was
going to the gym, that was lifting, that was running.
I still kept that stuff up and Iwas very fortunate because I got
it embedded into my life. So it was a light ritual with
something that I still do today.When I finished playing Pro

(17:17):
Football and I I gave back to the British American football
community, I went back to my team.
That helped propel me into the shop window of NFL Europe.
It was called a war league then,but then it changed NFL Europe.
I went back there and on the sidelines.
My first two or three years I was a player coach because I
thought I could stand in the sideline and coach.

(17:37):
It just didn't happen. It got to the point where I just
had to put my kit on and do it myself thing.
That's how it and that. You're also leading by example,
and you're demonstrating. It correct, correct.
And that's how I think I transitioned away from playing
on the field. But it was a lot of frustrating
in Italy at first because I just, I just assumed, why can't

(17:59):
these guys see what I'm seeing? Why can't they see that this
practice isn't running on time? We're not running to the line,
we're not running to our next drills.
There's a there's a work ethic there that they weren't meeting
your standards of expectations. Do you think that's a maturity
thing? Do you think it's generationally
or do you think that's just individually they just weren't
wired the same way? It was a environmental thing,

(18:21):
100%. It was just the the whole the
mindset of how you practice and how you play from an amateur
level was just was just different.
To the pros, it was just different.
You want to give your all in in everything you do in sports.
Good enough just isn't. You have to strive for a work

(18:43):
ethic and a performance that is beyond good enough that is above
average. You have to excel.
You have to exceed expectations in order to survive, in order to
win. And when you think about, when
you think about winners, you think about teams that are
championship teams, think about tennis players that are
Wimbledon champions, you think about track athletes that are

(19:07):
the fastest in the world, that is the top.
That is what to me is what's good enough, and that is what
people are striving for. Getting to the top is one thing.
Maintaining that is another. Totally.
And the examples that you gave, there's something that stands

(19:29):
out to me that those are primarily individual sports as
opposed to team sports. I'm the only one out here.
And so if I come in second placeor further back, there's only
one person that's responsible for that versus A-Team.
But if you don't have a strong leader or the leader themselves
is just not demanding it of the rest of the team, the whole team

(19:50):
will suffer. But in an individualized sport,
you didn't. You didn't place first.
There's nobody else to blame or nobody else's responsibility
other than me improving my own performance.
We're part of the mechanics, need improving them.
Correct. When you're talking about team
sports, you do look out for thatleader, that coach, the coaches
look for that leader and that team to lead.
If you are in an individual sport, you are accountable.

(20:11):
You are responsible and accountable for your success.
There's so many different pointsof failure and we're just
talking about. That's something that I talk
about in, in my career today, I'm not just jumping ahead, but
points of failure in IT service management is something that we
always are striving to, to mitigate.
And how can I say minimise? Because in IT, when you have

(20:35):
failures, you have disgruntled customers, you have slow
delivery and it just. Goes on.
What are the skills that you believe helped you be successful
that may stand out for maybe theperson standing on the line just
adjacent to you, next to you? What makes you different?
It it has to be my discipline. The first thing that comes to

(20:57):
mind was how disciplined I was, how consistent I had to be
against my counterparts. Now I want you to look at this
picture, OK? I'm a guy that played in the UK
and was fortunate enough to playin NFL Europe.
Didn't go down the collegiate route, didn't go to a Power 4

(21:19):
Power 5 school, didn't go to a high school, didn't really play
in any football camps. I just signed and I go into NFL
Europe. Just really summarising now.
And I remember when I first got when I first got to changing
rooms and I got kicked out. I was like, wow, man, everything
is spit so perfect. They there's guys there that are
fitting out my shoulder pads andthey're putting my helmet on and

(21:40):
they're pumping it up for me. This was like heaven, man.
It was absolutely beautiful. And I remember I was on the I
was on the on the bench and one of the physios came to take my
ankle and he goes, what do you want?
I had no clue what he was talking about.
He goes, do you want socks? Do you want half?
Do you want full? What do you want?
And I said to him, I have to, I have to be candid.
I said, look, I have no idea what you're talking about.

(22:02):
Players started laughing at me. And so he goes, all right,
Hutch, I'm going to hook you up.So you hook me up, go onto the
sidelines now. And what I saw on the sidelines,
at first, it shook me, man. I'm sure.
Because I had never, I've never been around so many athletes so
big. Quick, the QB was 65.

(22:23):
There's three QBs. The shortest one was 6-2.
The tallest one was 65. Brad Johnson, who later went on
to win the Super Bowl for Tampa Bay, Buckingham.
And you had the off the offensive lineman.
Those guys were like two 8300 + 6, three to 6/6 these units and
which were just huge. I'm, I'm used to being on a team

(22:44):
where I'm like one of the tallest.
I was one of the shortest on thefield.
So what, what differentiated me from that, It was confidence.
That was the first thing. It was confidence.
Were you intimidated when you were on the sidelines there?
That for those first few. Times when I first walked out
onto that pitch, yeah. Because there were guys that I

(23:06):
saw on this team that I was watching six months ago, or
there's a couple of other players on this field which had
just come out of College in the and got drafted by an NFL team
and then they were sent to NFL Europe.
So that side of it was like, yeah, wow, this is huge.
I felt like let me get my pen and paper out and get some

(23:26):
autographs. Oh my God, yeah.
Yeah, it that's, that's how it felt.
I there was 9 running backs. Well, because I was a running
back, there was 9 running backs on the depth chart.
I was #9. Yeah, OK.
Yeah. But you're you know what,
though? You made it.
It's like what people say. What do you call the person who
graduated bottom of their class from medical school?
Doctor. It's the same thing.

(23:47):
You're doctor you. Same thing for you.
You're running back. You made the team.
Yeah, you made it. And you there, you made it
through hard work and work ethicand grit.
You're right there, right next to those people you saw on the
telly before you saw them drafted.
You were watching them. And now you're one of them.
I was hungry that I think I was so hungry to succeed in that

(24:09):
space. OK?
I think that's what differentiated me from my peers
in that running back group. I was hungry to learn.
I was hungry to run through the reps, run the hills, do the
scout team, pick it up as quickly as possible because this
was a dream that I had to fulfill.

(24:30):
And also there was pressure as well for me to succeed from
where I was coming from, becausefrom where I was coming from,
everyone thought, yeah, Hutch isgoing to be this star.
He's going to flourish. He's going to he's going to
deliver service like how he was doing in the UK and in Europe.
Yeah. No, bro, I was a big, I'd like

(24:53):
to say this. I have the big fish in a small
pond in Europe. When I came to NFL Europe, I was
like a tadpole in an ocean. That's what it felt like.
Yeah, and these people, all yourteam mates who you had known
about, heard about, that made the team, they had already
proven themselves. They've proven themselves
through, like you said, high school, university draft.

(25:15):
But this is not something that you're you had a background in
and you're signed, you walk on. Who are you proving this to?
You're there to prove something,but to whom?
First and foremost is to prove it to myself that I can do this.
Yeah, I can do this. I've got the rules.
I'm strong enough, I'm quick enough, I've done the
measurables, I've passed the test.

(25:36):
I just now need to mentally get the playbook in my head, drop my
shoulders, relax and start getting it done.
And that took about a good two to three weeks.
It took me about it took about three to four days to get up to
speed with how quickly those guys practiced being in specific

(25:59):
places on the field at specific times.
It was very disciplined and I loved it.
I loved it. Your father watching you.
No, at this time, no. He was following me, but he
wasn't watching me. He was very proud.
At this point in my life, though, I have to say he was

(26:20):
very proud of my achievements because at that time I'd
graduated and I was playing professional American football.
So he was very, he was proud of me and he told me that.
And satisfied you, satisfied hisexpectations on your own.
Yes, I did. I did.
When I left school, I didn't do very well academically at all.

(26:42):
And he ripped me a new one. They usually he usually I I used
to get hit when I was a kid. It was just that's how it was.
It's just simple as that. Nothing to hide.
I've got nothing. I've got no animosity about it.
I'm cool with it, but that's howit was back in the day.
You got sacked and he ripped me when he, when I got my school

(27:04):
results and he saw my school results, he ripped me.
He ripped me a new one. I promised myself, you know
what, I'm going to pick back up my academics and I'm going to
graduate and I'm going to make you proud.
And I did. He was proud of me.
He was proud of me there. The fact that I was playing this
sport, this different sport, like being an ambassador of
England in the US, playing the game.

(27:24):
He was evils, Yeah. It's like we're all trying to
live our dreams while also satisfying the expectations of
our parents, our teachers, anybody else?
I don't know. Everybody's got their own
demons, maybe. Sorry, I'm laughing to myself
because my dad was like Thanos, man.
That's how he was. That's how my dad was to me.
He was huge. Yeah.

(27:46):
Just this athlete that never lifted the weight in his life,
never ran track. He was just athlete and he was,
he was just like a yeah. And Marvel, do you tell him?
Missed opportunity. Natural athlete.
He didn't pursue his destiny. No, I never told him that.
No, I know. Not worth the challenge, I

(28:06):
think. I think we're all trying to
satisfy living up to someone's expectations, and often times
it's our own. Yeah, we want to prove something
to ourselves, even just that we can do it.
A lot of people take up new sports or physical activities or
academic achievements or accolades just because they were
either doubted or told they can't, or because they like

(28:28):
setting tall goals. Hard to achieve goals for
themselves. And it doesn't matter why you're
doing, as long as you're doing it for the right reasons and you
feel satisfied, fulfilled, and proud when you're done and
you've accomplished it. Self achievement, that's what
you're talking about. Self achievement, goal setting
and hitting those goals. I'm talking about myself.
That's how I used. That's how I used to be.

(28:49):
I used to be really goal driven about trying to get into that
goal, hitting that goal and thenlooking for the next thing.
I think as I've gotten older in my life, I've slowed down on
that because the goals that I wanted to hit, I hit them.
Now for me, the goals that I personally wanted to hit might
not be have the same value to someone else, but they are my

(29:11):
goal. You see what I'm saying?
They are my goal and they mean alot to me.
One of them was graduating, one of them was playing Pro
Football. One of them was in my
professional academic career is managing and leading.
I'm hitting these goals. Do I have any more goals?
I think I do because I'm a father and it's about trying to
give back to the younger generation and my children the

(29:33):
same sort of things that that I did.
What are the things that you're taking from your childhood and
then adding your own skills or discipline or philosophy around
it? The discipline that I'll call it
a strength. The discipline, strength,
consistent consistency, the teamwork, patients, those sort
of things I have carried on through to to parenting my

(29:57):
children to the point where theyget to that age where you stop
parenting and you start advising.
It's a great way to put. It Yeah, my I'm very fortunate
to have four children that do not bring trouble to our door.
They are very humble with their what they're doing and they
leave. They do leave by example, so I'd

(30:18):
be a very privileged in that space.
You can't ask for anything more as a parent.
Amazing. Yeah.
Tell me about the transition outof professional sports into the
more traditional typical work workplace.
After I'd graduated, I was in a position where I could literally
put the degree on the shelf and concentrate on football.

(30:39):
I was very fortunate at that time in my career that I was
working for a an American company that sold tech solutions
based in the UK and they gave methe sabbatical time to go and
play football. So I was very lucky to have that
transitional piece of finishing my professional football career

(30:59):
and working in IT. So I was lucky.
Very. I was very lucky, yeah.
Don't get me wrong, I had to putmyself in those positions to get
that done, but that's what happened for me.
So that bit where of that, that scenario of the you're standing
in the middle of the football field, the lights go off, people

(31:21):
walk away, the curtains close. I mentally only had that bit of
trying to transition away from the game into something else.
I had something else to jump onto because I'd already started
building that career whilst I was playing football.
That's amazing. Yeah.
I think there's probably a lot of people who have a existential

(31:42):
crisis. What is my purpose here if it no
longer is sports? This is all I've been thinking
about virtually my entire life, and I've been praised and
celebrated. You describe it, your friends,
your family, they saw you as an obvious athlete, that this is
who you are. But then you graduate and you're
on the sidelines with the pros and you're just like everyone

(32:02):
else and you're just getting started to.
The same thing happens in academics too, where children,
students going through primary school, through high school, who
are gifted, highly intelligent. Maybe it comes naturally.
Maybe there's a combination of intelligence and work ethic too.
And they're praised for their intellect and their grades and
they're always confirmed and reassured that they will go to

(32:25):
the best schools and they are sosmart.
They're constantly told that. And then they get to that
premier school and everyone is at least as smart as them and
they're no longer special in that way.
They're no longer unique. And it's, it's got to be
humbling. It is humbling, Yeah.
I've been through that side of things.
Yeah. Especially, like I said, when I
first stepped out onto the field.

(32:46):
And there was a humbling part ofthat, too, when I first got my
first IT role as I was a bench engineer working for an Apple
solutions service provider. And it was like, OK, I've got
this degree here and it does notcorrelate at all to this role
because the thing that I studiedfor isn't in this job that I'm

(33:08):
doing. Do I have the the common sense,
the aptitude? Do I have the can I pick this
up? Yes, I can.
But I think one of the main big differences is when I was an
athlete, the things that I practised over and over again
repetitively, I did those thingson the field, academic clear

(33:28):
school in university, things that I was taught over and over
again to pass these exams, to dothe electronics, to do the math,
to do the business study, to go and do this job.
Harvard didn't 20% correlated. That was it.
Yeah, a lot of people. People talk to us all the time

(33:50):
going through school and there'sthe practical application of
what you learned and often timesthey're setting you up for
here's a general understanding of the skills you will need,
disciplines, the subject matter.But you get into the real world
and there's a big difference. A lot of times you get into
those jobs and this isn't at allwhat I thought it was.
And you are someone that knows how to how to pivot.

(34:11):
He knows how to train for the job you have, not the one you
thought you were going to be getting.
There's a difference, right? In sports, you're training for
the actual literal practical application of this.
We're running this route, this, and you literally do that.
You have to be able to, if an audible is called, you have to
know the playbook, but you also have to know how to give read an
option. And in the real world, that's

(34:31):
somewhat similar. You have to be able to react to
the changes in the organization that come fairly frequently.
And looking at it from the otherway as well, in my role, I put
on the hiring manager hat and I sit through CVS and I interview
people and I look at what's on there CV and I have to work out,
can this person pick up this role within three to six months

(34:53):
from what they've put down on paper?
And then they they come in in inan interview and they do their
sales pitch and I ask them theirquestion and I have to make a
decision from maybe A2 pronged approach, maybe three-step
interview process. Is this person going to fit the
role for one of my jobs in my team?

(35:13):
When you see somebody going through a combine or a walk on
draft or training or somebody's walking onto a field and you're
literally evaluating their athleticism, there are objective
measures. There are metrics there.
What's your process for looking at ACV and being able to discern
the ones that look more appetizing than others?

(35:35):
If not just for the background experience, are there other ways
that you can look at CV and qualify a candidate for the not
so obvious data? By looking at ones and zeros and
an alphabet on a white sheet with black ink.
It that it is tough. You unfortunately have to use

(35:55):
that template of the layout, theexperience on the paper.
Does it line up? Yeah.
With regards to what they're saying, how tuned is the CV to
the role that I'm offering you? And I take out the bits that
tell me that this person has actually spent the time and

(36:17):
looked at the JD. So I looked at the job
description and tried to mirror it onto the bit of paper that
I'm looking at or online. And do you like to see that, do
you like when somebody has takenthe extra effort to curate it
towards the job description or do you see that as they're
pandering to to you? 100% because what it tells me is

(36:39):
that they've actually taken the time, they've taken the time to
look at the jade, look at the CVand try and tailor it to get in
front of me because once they get.
They've taken those extra steps.Yes, because once they get in
front of me, I'll be able to work out within the 1st 5 to 10
minutes if this person is anything close.
Thoughts on paper and there is another point on the

(37:00):
prerequisite part of this process is a football analogy.
How hungry are you? If that applicant is reaching
out to me on e-mail, that applicant is trying to call me
on my office phone in parallel asking the questions.
Have you received my CV? All those pieces do make a

(37:22):
difference into me have wanting to have that person in front of
me to evaluate them to see if they are strong enough to do the
role. Yeah, I like that a lot.
When somebody has demonstrated that they want it, that they're
for it. They're not just passively
waiting for you to follow up with them or they're just not.
It's not that they're just applying because they saw the

(37:42):
position and maybe they get an offer or maybe not, but they'll
just, they'll roll the dice and see.
But if they're following up, it means that they are serious and
they're interested because you want someone that's as
interested in the job as you arein the right person for that
role. There's a bit of consistency,
persistency in them trying to get in front of you.
And that's how that shows me. There's a bit of fire, there's a
bit of hunger. They want to get in front of me

(38:03):
because they want this job. You're in a leadership role now,
hiring managing teams and individuals.
How did you gain your philosophyaround leadership?
I stumbled across it Noah to be honest, and it it took me.
So I've been into ITITSM for thelast 12 years, last 1215 years

(38:25):
IT service management. Prior to that I was an SMEI was
technical. And I think once I started the
management side of things, that's when I thought to
correlate. Some of this stuff is the same
type of stuff, but in a different way with regards to
American football, with regards to me having to be impatient,

(38:46):
having to being disciplined, having to be consistent, the
teamwork, the camaraderie, the network building, the
relationships. All these things constitute to
leading OK. And I, like I said, I stumbled
on it about 10 years ago and I leaned into it and it really
helped me understand the landscape of what I was doing.

(39:08):
Because it's like a game EP whenyou are like in the industry and
you are working, there's like a language you got to learn.
There's a game you got to play. And in in this leadership, it's
the game that you've got to play.
And some of those tools I got when I was younger playing
football, some of that stuff waslearnt when I was playing Pro

(39:30):
Football, especially the discipline and the patience and
the respect for others and things like that.
And listening today as I lead myteam, one of the best things
that I do is listen to what theybring to the table.
Because a good, to me, a good leader doesn't always have the
answers. You don't always have the

(39:50):
answers. It's having a good team around
you that we can lean into and you're confident enough to have
those conversations with them and lead with sometimes some of
their ideas because what that does that brings buy in to your
team. Absolutely.
I think that's one of the hardest things that I struggle
with is talking too much, which is maybe not surprising for

(40:14):
somebody that has a podcast. I talk a lot and I've been
working for, I don't know, a number of years, 567 years.
I'm trying to minimize my talking in meetings because what
I'm essentially doing is not just making the assumption for
everyone else present possibly that my information or what my
opinion it matters more, which it doesn't.
But that you run the risk as a leader.

(40:35):
If when you say something that that the others around you that
look up to, you might assume that's the decision that's being
made in the direction we're going in.
And you're not creating space for others to actually interject
with their perspective and theirthoughts.
And many times their ideas will be better often times because
there's more opinions there, there's more combined knowledge

(40:57):
and skills. So if you step back for a second
and say what is my responsibility in this
conversation? It's to hear and understand.
It's to ask the right questions to support and give guidance
when it's needed or asked for a.100% it's to me, it's managing
the conversation, it's putting the topics out there, putting
the problem that we've got that's out there and sitting

(41:19):
back and listening to what the solutions that they bring to the
table. Now I've got my solution and if
no one hasn't got something better than what I've got, we're
going to go with what I've got. But yeah, there's six or seven
heads, SMEs in front of me here that are technical, that they're
technically rich, OK. And we've got a problem or a

(41:40):
project that we've got to run. I need to know how are we going
to do it? OK, I know how we're going to do
it, but I want to know from yourperspective, how are we going to
run it? Those guys are going to be do
the operational piece. I want to make sure that they
are as comfortable as possible as they can be doing the work.
Yeah, because that way I will get the best result on that job.

(42:03):
And you're supporting individuals growing into their
positions and becoming leaders themselves.
It's about showing these guys, this is the playbook, OK?
This is how we're going to get, this is how we're going to March
down the field in this time using these plays right now, I
need you guys to tell me what's the best formations you think
that we need to use here to drive the ball down the field.

(42:25):
Let's have those discussions. Yeah.
You feel me? That's what it is.
Yeah, I love that you use a lot of sports analogies and a lot of
the philosophy is rooted in yourprofessional sports background.
It's the reason it's probably used most often as analogies in
life is because it is so applicable and it is one of

(42:48):
those things that outsiders, they feel they understand, they
don't have to have played the sport in order to understand the
analogy or the responsibility associated with it.
It's because even as a fan, you get it, you understand it, and
somebody who's coming from that background first hand has just
all that more authority behind it.
One 100%. And I think also a good leader

(43:11):
is a very good communicator. Forget about all these buzzwords
and all these acronyms. If you talk simple words so
people understand, it just helpsyou get from first base to
second base. I saw this on LinkedIn about
leaders with the presenting and they're using these acronyms and
they're using these busy, busy words.

(43:33):
And the, the expectation is you're trying to capture.
You're supposed to be trying to capture your audience, right?
Yeah, I think you're running a risk that if you're running a
risk, assuming that your audience understands these
words, OK. And so my approach is really
just simplicity, low level wordsfrom a technical perspective,

(43:59):
knowing your audience, reading your room and having those
conversations. And I think that that works.
That really does work for me. I'm going to use that term by
the way. Busy words that a lot.
It literally is living the what you're saying what you're
describing. Don't use a word like
superfluous or elevated. Just go with simple because

(44:22):
simple is more understood and relatable and gets to the point
faster. And don't try to always sound
professional, just be professional.
Busy words is great. I'm going to apply that into my
own life. Part part of my role is, Oh my,
some of my team's role is technical customer service.
So we are customer facing. One of the parameters to our

(44:43):
roles is communicating to the business.
The businesses are not technical, they don't really
care. They want it to work OK, so.
They just want. It to work, they just want it to
work. OK, so you talking at the lowest
level, the simplest simplicity, very simple, clear, precise

(45:06):
communication just helps that conversation rolled much more
smoother than if you were saying, have you tried this
technically? We tried that.
Technically, have you restarted?Do you know how much RAM you're
using? Do you know why is your cache
on? Why is the cache on your
processor full? Do you understand what's going
on here? Why don't you try turning it off
and turning? It back to the network, which

(45:26):
you really can't talk to the Wi-Fi and the Wi-Fi is saturated
because it doesn't make no sensetalking like that, does it?
Yeah, right. You get your drift.
Believe me, I'm on board. I'm not just, I'm not just
catching the drift. I'm riding.
I'm surfing the wave. You have you've got a podcast.
She will do what's it called, It's she will do.
It's called Ballers in the middle.

(45:46):
It's myself and a colleague of mine who's taking the same
pathway as me as a British American football player that's
play pro American football. We're all about raising the
awareness of British American football in the UK and trying to
elevate those pillars, the five pillars of American football.
It's men's football, it's women's football, it's flag

(46:09):
football, which is the latest craze at the moment, wheelchair
football and American football in our universities.
And it's really just about raising the awareness about
that. We've been told that there's
just over 8 million people across England, not the UK,

(46:29):
England that have touched or embraced something around
American football. Those statistics come from the
NFL, OK? And we want to tap into that to
raise awareness of the grassrootcommunity, amateur football, so
people can tap into that and go to their local communities and

(46:50):
support the teams. Because in my opinion, the
British American Football Association are just, I don't
feel they're doing a good enoughjob to promote British American
football. So this is something that we
feel that we want to try and do to give people a platform to
speak, to talk for us to shine alight on what's going on in in

(47:14):
England and in the UK. And just trying, like I said,
just trying to raise that awareness.
Yeah, they're just scratching the surface.
In some ways, it's similar to how soccer is the number one
sport in the world. In fact, if there's no better
example of stubborn Americanism,it's that everyone calls it
football and we call it soccer. I'm aware of that.

(47:37):
I'm not naive, but in the way that the US has started in the
last 20 years embracing more worldwide soccer here, and it's
the fandom is building. It's slow, but it's building.
The same thing with NFL. I like that they do one or two
games a season now in London. I think that's a great exposure

(47:59):
opportunity. And the way that you're
describing the huge following that just England are fans of
American football, scratching the surface, scratching the
surface. Such an opportunity to expand
and to manage it better and promote it better and to give an
opportunity to so many fans to now maybe even play it.
Yeah, the NFL don't get dismissed in that.

(48:21):
The NFL have been trying for years to get the marketing right
and in my opinion, they got the marketing right in 2007.
Prior to that they used to do American Bowl Games in London.
So every year you get, you'd have exhibition Games in London,
you'd have them, in Tokyo, you'dhave them, in Brazil, you'd have
them. But it never really picked up

(48:42):
the such. But I think at the ending of NFL
Europe, because NFL Europe ceased in 2007, that's when the
NFLS need thought about, right? We need a substitute.
What's the substitute going to be?
So they put their feelers out bysaying we'll play a regular
season game in London and that we thought that's crazy.

(49:04):
How's that going to happen? How's that going to work in 2?
From 2007 to date it's completely sold out 85,080
thousand every game. Ball is in the middle.
I'm going to link it below. Also, the YouTube where you can
see I love visual podcast, a bigfan of that.

(49:25):
Also your Insta account. Love the content that you're
putting out there. Lovely conversations.
I think everybody should go check it out.
This has been a enriching, fulfilling and extremely
exciting conversation for me. And I just want to say, Steven,
thank you so much for being here, for sharing your journey
with us, with me, with our audience, and being part of this

(49:45):
community. No, thank you.
Thank you for reaching out because you were the catalyst
around this. You reached out to me.
I would have never known that this platform existed, and it's
an absolute unique platform. So kudos to you when I give my
flowers to you. Thank you that that means a lot.
I want to thank Steven for beingour guest today and to all you

(50:05):
for listening and joining us on this episode here.
Remember, the skills you've gained can take you anywhere.
Until next time, keep exploring those transferable skills.

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Pro Football into Information Technology Services | Stephen Hutchinson [32]

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