As organizations grow, leaders start becoming responsible for things that they never personally proved and often don't even know even exist.

We went through transformations through it where unbeknownst to the cio, somebody said, hey, you know what?

It'd be great to have these cameras that were connected to the security systems.

Well, are they secure?

Barry Mains, CEO of Forscal, has led inside environments tied to hospitals, critical infrastructure, and national security, even the Mars Rover.

Places where small mistakes don't stay small.

It just happens because the network doesn't lie.

It really doesn't.

And in this conversation, you'll discover what leaders mistakenly become responsible for without agreeing to it.

It quietly breaks as teams get bigger and why working harder can start to backfire.

That doesn't work.

That doesn't scale.

Right.

The year I teach leadership, if leadership.

Feels heavier than it used to, there's probably something growing that more effort can't help.

Let's dig in.

Welcome back to Lead the Team.

I'm your host, Ben Fanning.

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You find typically 30 to 50% more devices on their network than their CIO ever knew existed.

And frankly, that's terrifying.

Why are the smartest tech leaders in the world so darn blind to what's actually plugged in to their own walls?

It's hard.

That's why, you know, we went through for, you know, kind of transformations through it where traditional devices were smart, and then all of a sudden, unbeknownst to the cio, we bought a new television that happens to be smart, and somebody plugged it into the network.

Well, is it really secure?

Or somebody said, hey, you know what?

It'd be great to have these cameras that were connected to the security system.

Well, are they secure?

And did somebody go to the CIO of a very large Fortune 500 and ask, hey, we just put these in to test?

No, it just happens.

And so there's a lot of rogue devices and a lot of rogue initiatives that in some sense, you want your employees to be able to do, to be nimble and move quickly.

But on the other hand, you got to be able to put the trust but verify it.

And so we get caught between the.

Two of those, the target hack back in the day happened through an H VAC system.

And we've seen casinos get hacked through smart fish tank thermometers.

And you specialize in securing these weird, unmanaged devices.

What is the most ridiculous or innocent looking device you've ever seen a hacker used to take down a massive company?

Oh, wow.

There's a lot of them.

And, you know, it's.

It's because we made the traditional devices a lot harder to hack.

People went after the untraditional devices.

And so, yeah, the fish tank was a really good one.

I think we had a. I think one that was really crazy was they have these in a hospital.

They have PLCs that control the open the doors, you know, the automatic doors.

And in the operating room, you know, to go into the restroom.

Because some of these operating operations take a long time.

They have these automated doors that open back and forth to go into the restroom that are attached to the surgery center.

And somebody hacked through one of those doors into the restroom.

That thought was very innocent, but it allowed a pretty massive breach at a major hospital here in the U.S. oh, man.

Unbelievable.

I mean, this is too.

It's like, you know, never mind the ethics of hacking, if there are ethics behind that, but that just seems terrible.

How much worse is this going to get before it gets better?

I might modify the word worse, I would say.

Or worst, I would say harder, more complicated.

And I think if you look at some of the secular trends with quantum computing and agentic AI, it just puts skills into the hands of the bad actors that they just don't have now and some pretty powerful skills.

So.

And then you throw in a little bit of spice of crowdsourcing, which means where the bad actors are working together on a specific thing which they didn't do before.

It's pretty popular now, the last 10, nine or 10 months from what we see, it just gets more complicated to be able to say, hey, how do I keep up?

And so, yeah, it's going to get more complicated, more difficult, harder, whatever word you want to use.

But it's not, it's not over.

What's the one thing that leaders need to keep in mind?

Yeah, so I think go back to the basics.

Things start with, do you know what's on your network?

Yes.

A great question earlier, which is, hey, hey, 30, you know, is it true?

30% of, you know, the devices are not recognized.

So the first thing, understand what you have on the network, because the network doesn't lie.

It really doesn't.

And the Second thing is, containment is the new control.

So if you can see something, put a little wrapper around it, earmarket, so someone could look at it.

Do that fast, just get those two things started.

I think that's a really good step in the right direction because a lot of companies don't have that.

Is there an audit tool that will tell people what's on their network?

Or they just have to walk around, rock around their offices and say, yeah.

I mean, I don't know.

There's an advertisement for forescout, but forescout can provide that functionality and we do that day in, day out for the largest public and private entities on the planet.

All right, that's a good starting point too, then.

Well, let's talk about your leadership on this.

So you're known for saying you can't manage your way to greatness, but you can hire, you can't manage.

I'm going to say this again.

You're known for this leadership philosophy.

I've seen that.

You can't manage your way to greatness, but you can hire your way to greatness.

When, when was a point where this really paid off for you in applying this?

Yeah.

Cause I, I, if I add to that, that where I kind of come up with that phrase is I think you manage things, you lead people.

And so if you go look at an individual and you say to yourself, okay, well, you can't tell them.

You can tell them the what you want or what the goal is.

You can say when you want it.

But if you've got to tell them the how and you got to tell them how to manage it, that doesn't work, that doesn't scale.

Right.

You're at teach leadership.

And so, you know, we always talk about this whole notion about moving from insight to execution and what that means.

It's all about clarity and making sure that people are moving fast but not hurrying.

And I think that if we look at, you know, the greatest leaders and you ask them, hey, so how do you, you know, kind of how you set your day up or tell me about a situation that happened that you learned and what'd you put in place to make sure it didn't happen again?

And how did you implement that?

You start to kind of get themes around, hey, I spent time with the team, we game boarded.

What was the pro problem?

We implemented, you know, this whole notion of pre mortem.

Yes, you can do postmortem, but how about pre mortem?

What could go wrong and work as a team to get better?

Hey, we look at and say, hey, what skills do I need as a leader to manage better?

I can't know everything, so I'm going to hire people that are better than me, right?

You start to get things.

Like I, you know, I heard a one of a person I interviewed about two years ago said, you know, I don't need to be the smartest person in the room.

I just need to be the best listener.

And you start to hear those themes about, hey, let's strip down the fact that I have an ego, everyone does, but maybe check that at the door, perhaps.

And it's about learning, it's about moving quickly from insight to execution.

It's about being, you know, hey, we can make a mistake.

Doesn't mean you're a bad person, a bad leader, a bad executive.

But man, if you try and cover up that mistake, you know, or not change because you think it's going to make you look bad, good lord.

Then you're in a position where it's not about the hiring, it's about the hiring, not about the managing.

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When you talk about this idea of was it move fast but don't hurry?

How do you explain that to someone?

And like, where do you see, like, how do you, how do you describe it to someone?

And what's been the, what's been the benefit of it?

Yeah, so great example.

Like in software, right, you gotta balance how fast you're going to try and get a defect, a release a new version out with how much do you go and test it now?

Easy.

You could not test it and you'd move really fast.

But it would feel to your customers like you're hurrying because you would have a lot of defects.

And you know, I explained that to people.

I said, hey, what does a customer feel?

Customer is going to say, did you even test this?

Are you hurrying when you do this?

Versus saying, hey, let's apply a little smarts here and there's some algorithms.

You could say, hey, if we got code coverage for testing, you know, 80% or 80 to 90%.

You know, there's some best practices versus having a lot less.

It shows up to your customers like you're hurry, like you're not taking the right decisions to do the right things.

You talk a lot about your personal operating cadence and I know this is, I know this is pretty well known probably within your team, but share us a little, share with us a little bit about that and how that's been.

Like, where have you seen that as an instrumental part of your career?

You know, I think it's always good to be, you know, organized and thinking about, you know, if you're going to put together a playbook, you know, how do you put it together as an individual for me, what worked best?

And I kind of have my, I say my operating system but you know, it's Barry's operating system and I, I, it's by day.

So Monday is really about alignment.

So I look at dashboards, have my staff meeting, we do quick check ins to make sure that hey, you know, what's working, what's not.

Do you need help?

There's oftentimes, you know, some quick initiatives we're working on.

So it's a way to say, hey, I need some help here.

Hey, this didn't work right?

Or hey, this person didn't show up for the meeting or whatever, right?

So do that quick thing on Monday.

That's really about alignment.

Then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is really about crate capture deliver value with customers.

So I spend Ben 50 to 55% of my business of my time with customers, partners and prospects.

And I always tell my, my team, you got to spend time where the money changes hands because if you don't, you know, you oftentimes get the what's real, what people really care about.

Like we should care about what we think, but we create value for our customers and our partners.

We should really listen to them also and probably use them as a higher weight.

So really the Wednesday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is about customers, it's about decisions and outcomes.

So I work a lot on, you know, what decisions we have to make pursuant to kind of maybe our okrs or hey, I saw something and so what decision are we going to make or what outcome do we look for?

And then Friday is really a lot about reflection.

You know, I spend time kind of what worked during the week I spent a lot of time on, you know, what slowed us down.

You know, I was thinking about talk, you know, and I check in with people.

So I'll do random check ins, you know, hey, what's going on?

Just a Quick check in.

Hey, I heard this.

What do you think?

And you know, I also look for what's slowing us down because sometimes inadvertently, you create meetings or you create, you know, like the bad cholesterol you inject into the corporate veins and all of a sudden they fall over.

There's too much LDL in here.

Yeah, exactly.

How do you make sure?

Hdl.

So it's really about reflection on Friday.

How so?

A couple things about that.

How regimented are you on those days?

Do you like 90% of the time, 95% of the time you're hitting that those days as is or is the nature of the work.

Just not as hard to keep that framework.

I think you're really good if you can do it.

60, 65%.

Okay.

Because you're gonna have days that you're traveling, flight gets canceled, something happens, it just happens.

Or hey, someone said, hey, I need a customer to meet on Friday.

Well, that's Friday.

Right?

So I think if you're, if you're pretty, if you take a step back and you look at.

And I have look at it, it's 60%.

You know, sometimes earlier in the quarter, it's higher because you're doing planning and stuff and as things get going and you're looking at cranking through customer meetings or partners or what have you.

You know, sometimes customers are always first, so that can throw a wrench into, you know that cadence pretty well.

Does your team and broader employee group, do they know about this framework and do they.

Do you encourage them to use something similar so the whole company sort of in this synchronized way or they just kind of do their own method?

Yeah, I struggle with this a bit.

I mean, I think if you asked them what I do and how I am, they probably give you adjectives to describe what I do and when I do it.

That would line up here.

But I don't because I also want to be cognitive to.

There might be a better way of doing things.

So, yes, we have OKRs in the way we do them.

Yes, we have a staff meeting on Mondays.

Yes, I go out and see customers, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

Yes, I have, you know, check ins and stuff on Fridays.

But I don't go mandate.

I don't show my team, hey, this is how you should do it.

We talk a lot about OKRs and measurement and the outcomes.

I let them go figure out the outcomes because, you know, sometimes I model things and I say, hey, you know, that's a better way of doing this.

We used to do MBOs.

We do OKRs.

Now there's a reason.

So, you know, you learn if you shared this framework with them and by the way, they might be listening to this, they're like, oh, that's all Barry does this week.

Do you feel like is your sense or your intuition?

Well, if they hear how I do it, they're going to think that's the way they're supposed to do it.

Like they're going to try to follow the leader, so to speak, or that's not a concern.

Yeah, sometimes I think, you know, I want people to use it potentially as a, you know, blueprint, but not, hey, sometimes different things work for different people.

Different jobs have different things.

I mean, you know, some customers, some of the roles, they don't spend a lot of time with customers, you know, they just don't.

So, you know, it may not work for them because a lot of the, you know, go to market role, the customer facing roles, it's a little bit easier.

But I think, you know, doing different things, like, you know, structural things, like, I think that, you know, our engineering leader or our, you know, CTO engineering leader spends a lot of time with customers and we talk a lot about, you know, how to do it.

So, you know, I think the adherence to that model needs to be crafted for your role too.

So, you know, there's some nuggets in there for sure, but you need to craft it to your role.

Yeah, the way I think about that is you hit a lot of key points that everyone needs in their work week in some variety.

But like everyone needs an alignment day or at least some alignment time.

Yeah, everyone needs some reflection time and someone needs to be spending.

You need to be spending time with your customer at some point to a varying degree.

And to find a way to do that, I mean, I guess success leaves clues.

Some wise person said.

And I think this is a strong framework now sort of moving along here.

You had a really cool gig at Windstream and Wind river, sorry, Wind River.

We're talking Mars Rover.

And you've led companies where software controls things that physically move planes, robots.

Mentioned the Mars Rover there.

How does that failure is not an option mindset.

How does it change when you're leading a SaaS company?

So completely different world from that standpoint.

Really interesting question because if I go back to my days at Wind river and you're right.

Mars Rover, the Joint strike fighter, the X14, X15 Apache helicopters, 747 plus.

That's really exciting.

Yeah, missile guidance systems, you know, automated, you know, mechanical robots, industrial robots, all these kinds of things where, you know, you have safety critical.

And safety critical is basically security for things that could harm, you know, people and, or machines, right?

That's what safety critical means.

So these devices that could harm you if they don't work, right?

So the criticality or, hey, we got to get this right, is, you know, kind of ratcheted up.

And I see that same, you know, concern and rigor happening in certain segments within, you know, tech.

Cybersecurity is one of them.

So forescout, right, we protect the DoD, we protect very large banks, the largest banks in the world.

We protect utilities, we protect hospitals.

And so you can imagine that there's a lot of stuff that can happen if all of a sudden you shut off the power and the lights to a hospital, for example, yeah, they have backup, but you could go and turn the backup off.

So, you know, I do feel that, that learning about, hey, when you get a check engine light equivalent with an Apache helicopter and they call your support organization, that's a problem, right?

And so that mindset about pre mortems, the mindset about, hey, let's talk about what could fail and then go back and do a double check, let's have these meetings where we talk about what's working, what's not at multiple levels, and there's no ego.

Put them on the board, prioritize and fix them.

And we start to get into a rhythm of it's about winning.

It's not about protecting who I am or, you know, my team, or, oh, wait, who made the least amount of mistakes or I'll have vanity metrics here.

It's about winning and it's about protecting and the, the consequences, just as in Wind river, because they were very high, the consequences of not us not getting things right are really high.

So being able to talk to people and say, hey, you're not doing this for you, you're doing this for the people.

We're protecting the individuals, we're protecting the teams, we're protecting the infrastructure.

And so we gotta have a little bit different mindset.

And when people start to think about that, they give ideas like, hey, you know what, we should change this routine here.

Or hey, let's.

We have a model now.

When things go bad, we have a name for it and we roll that model out, boot snap to grid.

Here's how the emails work, here's how this stuff works.

And you know, it, it feels very much like what we did at Wind River.

So I do feel like you have to adopt those things or you Will not be successful in these vertical markets.

Yeah, it's like, it's almost like a battlefield mindset.

Like you've got to think three or four steps ahead and have that plan for when things go wrong.

And I'm trying to imagine you guys sitting around in a, in a boardroom for this Mars rover.

Now for people, how long did that Mars rover take to get there?

Like how.

What was it like?

Multiple years.

Right.

Versions.

But it's like anywhere from a little over a year to a little less than a year, depending on how fast it goes.

A year.

Yeah.

And the updates are over the air.

So when you want to fix something or an update, you send it over the air.

Unbelievable.

Yeah.

So, I mean, you had to really.

I mean, I'm just trying to imagine sending updates to Mars with.

What was that like?

Did you say, oh, there's a.

Do we have a security patch thing we need to send?

Yeah, no, it was not on security stuff really for there.

It was like, you know, hey, you know, what sort of changes would be the algorithm for the battery charging system.

Okay.

So that we can make it more efficient.

Got it.

Okay.

So we could run longer, potentially.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Right.

So, you know, it was really more.

Was a lot simpler.

I do feel like, you know, for a helicopter or a missile guidance system, that, that becomes a lot more complicated.

And, you know, maybe the sense of urgency, like you don't have to wait for days to have the upgrade happen.

I mean, you're, you're saying you, you better fix this quickly or this could happen quickly.

Right.

I mean, I think it's a latency is there, but still, you know, it's.

Doing latency to Mars.

What's the latency?

Oh, man, that is so cool.

All right, so moving along here, I could spend all day talking about that, but you got a really interesting part of your story was how you came to Forrest Scott.

Right.

You looked at them from the outside as an investor first.

What was it.

What was the thing that you saw in the data that made you say, hey, I need to go run this myself?

Well, I think there are a couple of things I was asked to, so.

Well, that's always nice.

Yeah, that's always nice.

But, you know, I think then it was.

I always sort of think that, and we do this in tech a lot, is that we have a solution, looking for a problem.

And that wasn't the case in forescout.

There were these secular trends that were happening.

And maybe my experience, and I will say 100% my experience at Wind river helped because I knew some of these devices because we built them.

There were some security gaps and some vulnerabilities just built into the complicated ecosystem on how these devices were built and manufactured.

And so, you know, I had this hunch that that's going to become a big opportunity for the bad actors to come in and take advantage of.

I knew how they operated.

I understand, you know, how they were connected.

I understood the security in and around, how the connectivity happened, and understood that the east, west or the ability to go laterally within an organization is possible because of how we're all connected.

Then there was the organizational issue.

I saw, hey, OT and systems, your campus systems are separate from it.

And so anytime you have a division a time, you're not thinking like that.

You can't move as fast as bad actors.

And then I kind of saw this whole notion of people thought I was crazy back then, so I can say it now, so I don't sound like I don't know what I'm talking about, but this whole notion of being able to repatriate workloads on Prem and you needed to be cloud, you had to be both.

And we're looking at quantum computing.

You're going to be doing a lot of that on Prem or a colo.

It's too expensive if you're just using cloud and coming back right, the cost associated.

So, you know, if you look at that, you have to have a solution like forescout, that's ambidextrous cloud and on Prem, both workloads, same console, same platform, and you have the ability to go look at all the devices, solve this problem about visibility.

Because I thought, well, if you didn't know about all those other devices, 30% didn't know about them, you know, we could give you that capability for, for Scout, could.

And so, you know, I had this hunch, you know, better lucky than good.

And, you know, I think given my experience, you know, I thought, hey, we could go this way.

And, you know, it turns out we're making some great traction, having some terrific wins.

And, you know, the company is in with the team here doing a great job.

Well, the interesting twist on that to me is it wasn't like, oh, I saw four Scout and I thought they had a great solution, which, which what you're telling me is, dude, I saw they had a lot more problem.

There were a lot of other problems coming that they could solve.

Like, you almost saw the bigger problems at stake before you went right to the solution.

You're like, hey, four Scouts uniquely, uniquely positioned perhaps to go solve those things.

And I think a lot of leaders are so solution minded sometimes if they took a step back and they're like, hey, what are the other problems going on in the world?

Using your experience, tapping into what you're reading, listen to the right podcast, you might, you know, you might have a broader worldview in terms of what those problems are going to be.

That's right, Ben.

Very insightful.

And I think that goes to my point.

You asked earlier about moving fast but not hurrying.

Yes.

Sometimes you try and move fast and go to the solution.

You miss maybe what you know might be out there because you know, as CEOs.

Yep.

There's operational CEOs.

But companies are paid to continually catch lightning in a bottle.

And you don't catch lightning in a bottle.

And you know, if you're not looking around the corner or spending time with customers and seeing some of those things that this could happen.

This is happening now here, but boy, it's going to happen everywhere.

You just don't.

You miss that that filter gets, you know that you put on filters out that and you're working on, okay, how do I move from here to here?

What's my, you know, ARR today which I look at.

But if you, it's kind of like that whole notion of if you work too much in the business.

Yeah.

You don't get enough time to work on the business, on the business.

And those are very different things.

And you'll have too many people working in the business versus working on the business.

And I think, you know, I always tell leaders that spend time working on the business.

You spent too much time in the business.

Now you have to.

Yes, but you're going to miss stuff.

So it sounds like that's a non negotiable for you having time to work on the business.

Where do you, what do you do with your schedule and your week to make sure that you're dedicating time to do that?

Well, that a lot of that happens with the customers and sort of the decision making or the, you know, kind of the, the outcomes a little bit that you focus on during the kind of middle part of the week.

Um, I work at it.

I said my, my natural inclination is to, you know, kind of get stuff done and work through that, you know, and I have to focus myself on.

Okay.

If I don't, you know, kind of carve out some time, you're like, where did the day go?

And you didn't finish this stuff.

And so, you know, I think Some of the org changes, right?

You hire people that could go do some of that stuff that you might be able to do too, but it takes you away from moving, are working on the business.

I think you have to be mindful of, you know, where in what you do and how that might affect or not affect your ability to work on the business.

And I think once you start to do that, you'll make the changes.

I mean, if you don't, you know, you better have a great strategy person and someone who's going to go be able to do that or great strategy people and that you're just, you know, kind of working sort of in the business and that's possible.

You have CEOs that do that.

But, you know, if you don't have people to do the other piece, you know, you're going to be cooked.

Do you ever.

Do you have certain things you do where people might look at Barry and be like, Barry's not working.

Like, you're not, like you're not working, but you really are.

Like, I'm thinking about the person that's running or they're like meditating or they're just sitting in their office staring out the window or like you're talking to somebody that's running an elevator or like, are there, Are there?

I'm just curious.

Anything like that.

Yeah, there's, there's a couple things that happened.

One is travel, because when you travel, people go where is and what is he doing?

Right?

I mean, they, you know, I can't get a hold of him not sending emails.

Is he out hanging out doing fun things, whatever.

Right, there's that, right?

Because people don't know, right?

Your EA knows.

Because know my ea, she knows exactly where I'm going to be and stuff like that.

But people are like, whoa, he's traveling again.

What's he doing?

And so there's that.

And then I think the other piece is when you block time on your calendar and it's, you're not traveling, people think what is he doing?

You know, you know, like, is he working?

What, what's happening?

Right?

And always tell my team, which I always think it's sort of a.

People have to block their calendar for the right reasons.

So, you know, it's not me taking a half day playing golf or going skiing, you know, which I think in, in you have to mix a work life balance.

But you know, for me, I, I like to try and, you know, block my calendar and like, take some time.

Like, you know, if I have a sales kickoff presentation to do.

Hey, let me block some time and talk to the right people, write out a, a, an agenda, put that together, take some time.

You block the calendar.

Right.

And people are like, what is he doing?

Two hours there.

I love that.

I think it's, it's important for leaders to reimagine that time, you know, and make sure that we have a framework.

You're trying to look like a leader.

You want to be a good role model.

But yeah, it's like, how do you.

The stuff that people don't see leaders do that really requires to be a great leader.

And they don't get it if they think it's just being in front of your computer all the time or running around, feeling stressed out, running a bunch of meetings.

Might be missing out on something.

Yeah, exactly.

Right?

Yeah.

Thanks for sharing with you, Barry.

This has been a blast today.

What's your parting thought for our listeners?

You know, I think move fast, but don't hurry.

And I think that, you know, we talked a lot about that.

It's top of mind right now because we just had a leadership off site last week.

Some of the areas where we aren't doing as well, I think we're not being as thoughtful.

And then the areas we're doing really well, I think we're applying the right amount of smarts and thoughtfulness to things and moving at the right speed.

So it's kind of getting that dampening oscillation correct.

So that's what I'd leave.

Thanks, Barry.

Thank you.

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