[00:00]Maya Pomroy: Welcome to Owl Have You Know, a podcast from Rice Business. This episode is part of our Up Next series, where faculty, researchers, and alumni weigh in on the trends currently shaping the world of business.

I'm your host, Maya Pomroy. Today, we're sitting down with Jon Miles, assistant clinical professor of organizational behavior at Rice Business, where he also co-advises the Virani Undergraduate School of Business. Welcome to the program, Jon.

[00:30]Jon Miles: All right. Thank you.

[00:31]Maya Pomroy: And congratulations on your newest award. You were just given one of the highest awards from the Virani School, Teacher of the Year. Congratulations.

[00:40]Jon Miles: Yeah, thank you very much. The undergraduates voted on it. That always, for me, makes it feel more special when the students actually chose me, as opposed to it being something where the faculty chose it or something like that. So, it made me very happy.

[00:52]Maya Pomroy: Well, I am not surprised that the students chose you. You are a legend at Rice Business.

[00:58]Jon Miles: Oh, I don't know about that.

[01:00]Maya Pomroy: Well, I do. And what's fascinating to me about your story is that your path to education and teaching is anything but linear.

You started out chasing a quiet life in IT, a computer science degree from Kansas State University, multiple years in the industry, only to discover that a future without human connection was, you know, pretty miserable.

That realization sent you through an MBA program, eventually a Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Michigan State, where you did find the one thing that you've been looking for all along, which is teaching. There's also ownership of a comic book store, kind of, layered in there that we'll get into as well.

[01:46]Jon Miles: Sure.

[01:47]Maya Pomroy: So, since joining Rice Business in 2018, you have definitely built a reputation for classrooms that are anything but passive. Your courses include an undergraduate curriculum on professionalism and ethics that are designed around interaction, shared experience, and the kind of learning that sticks for a lifetime.

And while your heart is in the classroom, your research is incredibly compelling. You have done studies that increasingly are defined by technology and the constant competition for our attention. So, we're going to get to all of that today.

[02:22]Jon Miles: Wonderful.

[02:23]Maya Pomroy: But first and foremost, I want to know, how did you grow up?

[02:30]Jon Miles: So, I grew up, you know, I was in a middle-class, upper-middle-class family. My father's a civil engineer. My mother had a series of jobs, a bookkeeper, a real estate agent, a secretary, all these different things. But growing up in a family with two parents and two kids, my sister is two years younger than I am, and it was an interesting grow-up period.

You know, I, fairly open with my students about my own background, and I tell them about, you know, how I feel and everything like that. My father was not always the best person, but I have great love for the man. It has influenced how I see the world.

But the other thing about it is I grew up in a home where we had everything we needed. Family was very good at providing. We had no problems there. I, you know, went to some fairly good public schools and was very happy with that portion of life, is that I got the education that really helped me get where I needed to go.

And I love the fact that I have my dad and my mom both, because my dad is the classic, he's a civil engineer, he's a math and science guy. He really wanted me to go into engineering. That was what he wanted. But it meant that, for instance, when he was trying to help me do my math homework, he didn't like the way we were doing it, and so he'd teach me this different way to do things or whatever. And so, I got to learn how to do it in two different ways, which meant I had a little more of an understanding of how math worked. But then my mother, you know, she wanted to be a social worker.

And so, in her case, you know, I learned a lot about compassion. I learned a lot about, you know, love. I learned a ton about the idea of, like, she loved writing, she loved, you know, the idea of expressing things in that way. And so, I learned how to write, basically, a lot from her. I learned about what was a good story or not a good story, or a good way to present ideas and a not good way.

And so, I felt like I got a really good, sort of, background that helped me. And it's funny because now I talk to people when I teach, I am using the material or the information that my mom would give me about how to present yourself, and how to talk to people, and how to treat people much more. And so, that's been really nice.

[04:34]Maya Pomroy: Wow, that makes perfect sense now, why this is the path that you're on, because it shaped you from childhood. But you did do what your dad wanted you to do because you started off in IT. So, tell me about that.

[04:49]Jon Miles: Well, and more like the rest of my life, interestingly. It's even a more complicated story than that. So, I started at Kansas State in journalism for all of two weeks. I was wanting to do print journalism. That was what I really enjoyed. And I sat in a large class, the Intro to Journalism class, which is, sort of, the first one you take to get into this process, and this was 1992.

And so, it was at a time when, you know, we were starting to realize that print journalism was moving somewhere else. The internet hadn't really come into its own yet. But one of the things I love about the faculty there is one, the faculty member who taught that class, it's a lecture hall, 400 people in it, and he, on day two of the class, said, "Okay, raise your hand if you're a journalism major." And, you know, a bunch of us raised our hand, probably 200 of the 400.

"All right, how many of you want to do print journalism?" And it was probably 100 of us. And he said, "Well, look around, because when you graduate, there'll be three jobs. Are you one of the top three of the people who have their hands up right now? If you're not, you're not working in journalism, or you're going to have to do something else."

And it really shocked us. I finished out that class, and I finished up my semester with the classes I had chosen. And I went and changed to electrical engineering.

And I was in electrical engineering up through my junior year and then lost basically a year of classes because at that point I realized I don't want to do this anymore. And the reason I went that long was because of my father. I really wanted to make him happy. I really wanted to get an engineering degree. I thought that was going to be, you know, something that would, you know, benefit me greatly. And I was just… kept running into these classes like circuit theory, electromagnetic theory, that were just not what was interesting to me at all about this, and the software classes.

[06:33]Maya Pomroy: Yeah. Sorry. That wouldn't be interesting to me as well.

[06:34]Jon Miles: Yeah. There are many engineers, I'm sure, who are watching this that think it's amazing, and that's why they're engineers. But I am not.

And so, I wanted to do the software side, but I had no desire to be a programmer, and so I didn't know what I was going to do. And I was fighting in this idea, like, "Oh, computer science isn't engineering really, and will my dad care? Will he like..." you know. But interestingly, it was '95 or '96 in that time when this happened, we were starting to realize that software was kind of where things were going.

And when I switched to computer science, he was actually perfectly okay with it. I was much more worried about what he was going to say than what he actually did.

[07:11]Maya Pomroy: Well, I was going to say, how did that conversation go?

[07:14]Jon Miles: Perfectly fine. He's like, "Well, yeah, I think the jobs are about the same. I think the money you're making is probably going to be about the same. The prestige is about the same. So, fine. No big problem."

And so, I switched to computer science. But it was so late that I had all these classes like differential equations, EM theory, and so on that did not qualify for computer science. And I knew I was going to have an extra year anyway. I started doing the, "Okay, every semester I'm going to take one class that is interesting to me."

[07:40]Maya Pomroy: Oh, I love that.

[07:41]Jon Miles: Whether it counts for anything or not, I'm going to take one class that I thought would be fun, right? And I ended up taking classes in history. I took classes in literature, theater, oh, philosophy. I loved, like, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion. Those classes were amazing, and learned a ton of cool stuff that had nothing to do with computer science, and graduated with 167 credit hours with one major, no extra degrees or anything like this, with a bunch of classes that didn't count for anything, but I really enjoyed and taught me a lot.

And so, it was actually fun for me, but it did mean that I took seven and a half years to graduate with my degree. So, I know that there were times in there that my parents were very concerned about the fact that I was going to stay in college forever. And I came out in the computer science world with an understanding that what I wanted to do was more systems-based side. And so, I was a systems administrator and a database administrator more than a programmer.

[08:42]Maya Pomroy: So, like me, you were a professional student. I can relate to that as well.

[08:47]Jon Miles: Oh, yeah.

[08:47]Maya Pomroy: But it does create this opportunity to really dive into areas that you would have never, if you had just stayed in that straight line and just done those classes, then it would be such a one-dimensional experience.

And I'm sure that the people that you met in, you know, the philosophy classes and in the theater classes and all of those were completely different than anybody else that you'd ever met before or would ever meet in civil engineering, or if you were to just stick with that one major, right?

[09:18]Jon Miles: And I tell my students now, the classes that I lean the most on from my undergrad now are the theater classes I took because it's how do I present to a class and get them enthusiastic and excited about something, even if I'm not necessarily enthusiastic or excited? How can I portray that in a way to get people up and wanting to talk about things, and really wanting to be a part of the class?

And so, I use the theater classes much more than I certainly do my computer science classes.

[09:48]Maya Pomroy: So, after you graduated, when was that moment that you really thought, "You know what? I think that I want to teach"?

[09:57]Jon Miles: Right. Interestingly, it wasn't until I went into my MBA. So, well, it was in computer field, the IT field. I worked a series of jobs, and I ended up in a job for a company called The IDEA Center. And what they do is essentially student ratings of teaching. And so, it was very academic-adjacent in many ways. I would meet with a lot of professors to talk to them about what our systems could do for them, things like that.

And so, I got to be around professors — and professors who were concerned about their ratings of teaching. But I got to see how we rated teaching and what things that the students thought were important, and quite honestly, develop a few tricks on how you, we know that you could actually improve your scores in some way by doing particular behaviors, such as giving the students feedback opportunities and then changes to the course based on their feedback, for instance.

And so, I was really interested in that, but I just, my role was system administrator, database administrator, project manager, and it just wasn't for me. I really wanted to spend more time with people. And so, I went to get my MBA, thinking I was going to be a, you know, I'll be a tech manager. That's what I'll do. I'm good at talking “techie,” and I'm good at talking “manager speak,” and so I'll be the interface between. That was what I thought.

But while I was getting my MBA, I got smart and realized that, "Oh, I'm paying for this myself. That doesn't seem like a really good idea. Let me go see if they've got opportunities for, like, GRA, GTA positions or something so I can offset the costs."

[11:27]Maya Pomroy: What are GRA and GTA positions?

[11:29]Jon Miles: Oh, yeah, graduate research assistant or graduate teaching assistant. And so, as I'm getting my master's, I'm essentially going in there to say, "Hey, you know, can I teach a class or help you with research projects or something like that and be on the payroll?" Which was nice, if you can do it.

What I ended up hearing is that in the business school, they don't have that. They generally teach with the professors teaching, and the graduate students, the GRAs, are all either Ph.D. students… At Kansas State, they don't have a Ph.D. program, so instead of Ph.D. students, they're often undergrads who are interested in going into that field. And so, their MBAs weren't really used in that way.

But they said the stats department needed somebody, and they have a...

[12:07]Maya Pomroy: Great. Here I am.

[12:09]Jon Miles: Yeah. They have a BUS stats class for the undergrads, and they always had more sections of it than they had Ph.D. stats students to teach it. And I had A's in my stats class, both in my undergrad and my master's. And so, I was like, "Okay, well, let me go see."

And got hired to do that, got given very little prep for how to deal with the classroom.

[12:29]Maya Pomroy: How many students were in your first class?

[12:30]Jon Miles: 40, Generally, it was a pretty steady state at 40 because the classes would fill up, and that's, kind of, the maximum they wanted for that class. And so, they put us in rooms where there were 40. And yeah, it was interesting because I'm teaching stats, so the students come in scared to death.

[12:44]Maya Pomroy: Yes, I was scared to death when I had to take stats three separate times for three separate degrees.

[12:49]Jon Miles: Yeah, exactly. Nobody really wanted to take stats, and they all were worried that it was going to be really hard. And so, I set myself on this plan of, "Let me try to break this down to the essential elements and get them through it." And it meant that I'd had them doing some things that were basically like I would give them these worksheets that were basically step by step, "How do you do a correlation between two groups of numbers by hand?" And then, "Okay, now let's look at how we would do this in MATLAB," and, you know, that kind of thing.

And so, we went through this process, and I feel like I had that moment that most professors have where a student gets it, and you can actually see on their face the light bulb go on, where they're like, "Oh, if I do it this way, it actually works."

And that was absolutely addicting. Most teachers will tell you that they're waiting for that moment, and when that happens, it's the best. But I also had the other best experience about being a professor, which was I helped a student with their resume and with interviewing, and they got a job.

And so, I had this student come back and go, "I got a job, and it's because of you." And I'm like, "No, it's because of you, but I was able to help you with the process so that you could do it." And that's also just addictive.

And so, I went to talk to my favorite instructor, who happened to be teaching the organizational behavior class in my MBA, and I said, "I like your class the best. I think you're my favorite instructor." It was a guy named Dr. Bill Turnley. And I told Bill Turnley, "I would really like to do what you do. How do I do this?"

And he walked me through the process of going to get a Ph.D., and he had to reveal to me the harsh truth, which was, "Well, you can be a college professor, but it means a five-year commitment to a Ph.D. program because that's what it takes."

And so, I chose to do that because it was such a strong pull for me at that point. This is the career I want. I think in the back of my mind, I was also, you know, I've talked to my students about this as well. I think that part of it was I wanted to show my family, "Look how smart I am. Look that I can do this thing. It'll be prestigious," et cetera, et cetera, and, sort of, prove my intellectual ability in some ways. And so, it also seemed like a challenge that I could take on.

[15:02]Maya Pomroy: Yeah. So, the organizational behavior part, that is something that right now, in this day and age, is really interesting to watch just because there's so many different variables.

[15:15]Jon Miles: Oh, yeah.

[15:15]Maya Pomroy: Statistical variables, that, sort of, play into, you know, the way that people behave, the organizations that are successful, the ones that fail, and the power and the influence part as well of, you know, who's leading it and if they give the people that they work with, the agency, right, to be able to make those sorts of decisions.

But, you know, one of the things that you teach, and I took this class from you, and it was one of my favorites, is about power and influence.

[15:45]Jon Miles: Oh, nice.

[15:46]Maya Pomroy: And so, tell me about that class and why you feel that it's really a requirement for anybody that wants to understand organizational behavior.

[15:56]Jon Miles: Right. First of all, I have to give credit to Jeffrey Pfeffer at Stanford, who is the, sort of, old guard Paths to Power class. He's been teaching at the MBA program at Stanford for decades. It is the classic, you know, version of this.

And then over years I've, sort of, made it more my own or more, sort of, tailored to the students I have. But the idea of the class was I need you to understand why you've been up until now in your career, if you're really good at your job, you've been getting promotions and raises and things have been moving for you, and now suddenly you're finding this problem where people are getting promoted above you that you think you're a better worker than. Why is that happening?

And it's because you're not playing the game. You're not doing the things that are necessary to actually show people in the business who you are. So, the managing up portion was a big part of it, but the other reason I wanted to do it was the managing down portion. And that is, when you're managing people, how do you get it to where they will be the kind of team that will, you know, run through a brick wall for you, that really want to work for you because they like your leadership?

And that's an area of power that I don't think most people think about off the bat, but it is really important. And so, that's why in the class we look at two different books. We look at Pfeffer's book, which is more Machiavellian. It's more about, sort of, how do I impress the people above me? How do I, you know, rise in the organization? How do I move forward?

And then we look at Dr. Keltner's book out of Cal. His idea is, "How do I gain power in an environment that has no hierarchy at all?" And it applies very well to how I deal with subordinates, how I deal with my peers in a way that I can show power by essentially showing that I have the best intentions and that I am in, I'm actually doing things to make things better for everyone. He calls it the greater good.

And so, that's the idea I like, is that power has multiple dimensions, and I want students to come out of it with a power style that uses both.

[17:56]Maya Pomroy: So, what do you think is the biggest misconception people have about what it means to be influential in work?

[18:02]Jon Miles: So, the hardest part I have with the class… Not the hardest part, but the thing that I think actually gives me the most benefit from a student standpoint, what the students love, is we start the class off with a, "You are holding yourself back from this." And we talk pretty frankly about, "Do you feel like it is icky to try and influence people? Do you feel like it's icky to..." And I talk about this, like, "to manipulate people?"

[18:29]Maya Pomroy: I'm sure you do. Is that the word you use?

[18:32]Jon Miles: Yes, I use that to see, you know, to start this off. And I say, "I've been manipulating you since the first day you stepped into this class because I want you to be excited about this subject. I want you to..." You know, that doesn't mean that my manipulation is bad, but I'm guessing that when I call it manipulation, you have a little bit of a negative connotation.

[18:49]Maya Pomroy: A negative connotation. Yeah.

[18:52]Jon Miles: And so, I have to, kind of, walk them through this, and we talk about things like, "Would you tell your CEO if you had an opportunity, you're, you know, in an elevator together or something, would you tell your CEO about something that you'd done so that your CEO knows something about what you've accomplished?"

And a lot of people are like, "No, I wouldn’t, I'd feel so awful doing that." And it's like, well, what's the consequences of this? And we talk about, “How can you do this?” But the idea is you are probably not doing the things you need to do to gain power, and you're probably doing it because you feel there's a morality to it or something like that. But it's not actually immoral, you know?

[19:29]Maya Pomroy: Well, there's so many talented people that struggle to advocate for themselves, right?

[19:35]Jon Miles: Yeah.

[19:35]Maya Pomroy: Where you don't want to feel icky, and you don't want to feel like you're trying to, you know, push your own agenda.

[19:42]Jon Miles: Exactly. And one of the things I think is interesting about that is I've taught this class so many times now. And I find it interesting that in the eight years I've been teaching it here at Rice, I don't think I've ever had a class that wasn't the majority of people in the class, when I talk about the things that hold them back from power, will raise their hands and say, "Yeah, at least one of those affects me."

And, you know, things like, we call it the “Just-World Hypothesis,” the idea of like, "Oh, well, you know, merit exists, and if I do a really good job, I will rise in the organization because people will notice." And we talk about the fact that our research is pretty clear that that's not true. We have years of research on this that says your boss doesn't have any idea what you do, and your boss's boss certainly doesn't.

And so, this idea of you have to advocate for yourself even though it doesn't feel great to you. And then we talk about, “How can you do this in a way that isn't against your principles?”

And interestingly, what I find is most people stop short of their principles. So, it's not that they're worried about this being immoral. It's that this feels gross because it's getting close to my line that I won't want to do something. But it's not there yet. You know, I'm not thinking that this is bad. Like me, talking about what I've done on a project isn't bad. I'm not saying that the other people didn't do anything or anything else, and it… But it feels icky. So, how do we get to a point where you can do this and feel uncomfortable but be willing to deal with the discomfort?

[21:07]Maya Pomroy: So, how do you do that?

[21:10]Jon Miles: Well, you've got to take the class. You’ve taken the class! You and Brian both?

[21:13]Maya Pomroy: I did take the class, and I do know, and I still have all my notes.

[21:17]Jon Miles: But no, but I will say that one of the things that's most important is actually understanding where your lines are and being willing to push yourself to the line. Being willing to say, "I'm not going to be dishonest." Okay, great. You're not going to be dishonest. Great. But that doesn't mean I can't tell, you know, someone, "Hey, on the last project, I did this," because it's true. I'm not being dishonest, but that feels icky.

Okay. Well, if that feels icky, what can you do that will allow you to push that far? Maybe it's, "Hey, this person on the team did this, and this person on the team did this, and then I did this." Great.

[21:51]Maya Pomroy: Right. Make yourself last.

[21:54]Jon Miles: Yeah. But the idea there is then at least you're willing to make that statement so that you're getting across your advocation for yourself.

And then, okay, now that we've got that, now we can talk about if that felt less icky, but you're willing to do it, that's way better than not saying it in the first place.

[22:12]Maya Pomroy: Right. Which sort of parlays back into ethics, which is another class that you teach.

[22:18]Jon Miles: Yeah.

[22:19]Maya Pomroy: So, could you tell me about the professionalism and ethics class and why you feel that it is just so, you know, vital, especially in today's world?

[22:30]Jon Miles: Right. And here at Rice, interestingly, I'm now not teaching this class because I have too many other ones on the undergrad side that I'm doing. But we do still teach for every cohort that's coming through, you take what's called a CSR and Ethics class.

And what the class is designed around is this idea, or when I teach it anyway, the class is designed around this idea that I can't change your moral framework. You're too old now. You know, if I got you at age six, maybe I could make some work on building a moral framework that will work for you. But at this point, you've built it already.

But I can tell you what factors will make you break your own moral framework. So, I can walk you through, "Hey, if you feel like everybody else is doing it, you will be more likely to do something that is against your own moral framework because you think, 'Well, everyone else is doing it, so it's okay,' right?"

The other thing you'll see is things like conflict of interest certainly is one of those, but there's some interesting ones that we don't think about. Like, if I feel like this is benefiting others, I'm often willing to cut corners and do unethical things and feel okay about it because I'm doing it for the right reasons, except that you're still being unethical.

[23:41]Maya Pomroy: Right.

[23:41]Jon Miles: And you're still breaking your own ethical framework. You wouldn't do this in another situation because it's against your ethics, but now you're willing to do it.

And what I'm hoping to do, and I looked into it, and our research was pretty clear that ethics classes, especially in the MBA, don't have much of an effect because we used to teach them as like, "Here's deontological ethics, here's utilitarian ethics," that kind of thing. And unfortunately, you know, all those people at Enron had MBAs and had gone through an ethics class, and yet still did these things.

And so, what I was hoping to do, and I have no idea if it worked better. I did get some feedback from students that said it, you know, they thought about it while they were in their career, and it kind of helped them out in some ways. But it's the idea that instead of us talking to you about, “Here's what's ethical and not ethical,” let's talk about, "Hey, when you're making a decision, and you're tempted to do something unethical, I want you to know why, why you're tempted.” And it's not because this is the right decision. It's because of these other factors.

Like, "Hey, you have this framework. Now, because you have this framework, I don't want you to break this framework. I want you to live with the morals that you've decided are proper for you, and I know that you'll do it if I put you in these situations. And so, let's talk about how we don't put ourselves in these situations, or if we do, we understand the situation we're in and the effect it'll have on my behavior."

[25:05]Maya Pomroy: So, now let's talk about AI.

[25:06]Jon Miles: Yes.

[25:07]Maya Pomroy: Because AI just, sort of, just, like, throws all that out the window, and it is dominating conversations right now, and there's AI-related layoffs and actual business impacts that companies are seeing. So, tell me your thoughts about AI and the benefits, and also, you know, the pitfalls, and what we really need to be focused on. Because, you know, you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

[25:34]Jon Miles: Yeah. So, this is actually following a very predictable pattern. It's the predictable pattern we saw when virtual teams became popular, and this was before COVID, when virtual teams became popular with companies, especially because they were offshoring something or whatever. What we find is companies try to reap the benefits of the technology before they actually see results from that technology.

And so, for AI, for instance, there have been a couple of different research reports that have come out that something like 95% of companies have seen zero ROI increase due to AI at this point. What they're using AI for isn't actually producing better profits for them, and the fact that they're firing people doesn't actually help them with the bottom line or whatever.

What I'm guessing will happen, as a prediction based on what has happened with other technological advances in the workplace, is they will eventually realize that AI on its own isn't the competitive advantage it's supposed to be. It's employees who understand how to use AI to do more of what they're doing that are a competitive advantage.

And so, firing employees often isn't the right track. What instead you should be doing is training your employees in AI, making sure they understand it, finding the ones that are really good at using AI to improve their normal capabilities, and then making sure that those are the ones that you're, sort of, working with and trying to use the most.

And unfortunately, what we're seeing is a lot of companies who think, "Oh, because AI makes it possible for one person to do three people's job, that means I can fire two people." And that's really not true at this point. The AI won't make that up. And we have some examples of where it's gone ugly, and I'm waiting. There will be a terrible scandal coming up, I guarantee it.

Some company is going to do something with AI that will blow up in their face because they don't have enough people to follow up on what AI is doing, and they won't follow up. And what will happen is AI will do something wrong, and it will be wrong enough that it will actually affect the company's bottom line in a terrible way.

And that's when companies will start to realize that we actually have to have enough people to ride herd on the AI to make sure it's doing what it wants. And we've got some examples now that are impressive in the law field. AI is, kind of, built for contracts, for instance, and for legal opinions. A lot of them are formula-based, and AI understands formulas very well, or the large language models we have understand formulas very well.

And so, what ends up happening is we have these lawyers who are getting, you know, put before the bar because they use AI to create, you know, a docket or a brief or something like that. And then what will happen is they don't go through it, and they realize that it's actually citing cases that don't exist. There is a rash of lawyers who are going to lose their certification. They're going to lose their bar qualifications because of this, because they put out a brief that was obviously AI. But because it's got fake things in it, that is an integrity breach based on what they're supposed to do, and you can lose your license for that.

And so, there are going to be lawyers who can never practice again because they weren't following up on the AI they were using.

[28:55]Maya Pomroy: So, do you think that it's just going to take that kind of systemic failure for people to, sort of, take a step back and say, "Maybe this isn't the best use of this technology"?

[29:08]Jon Miles: I can see two different scenarios that could work. So, one of them is there will be a big systemic failure, and that will result in a lot of companies rethinking what they're doing. And I think that's likely to happen. The other that could be, and that's a more optimistic result, is some company will figure out how to use AI properly and will start really outperforming their competitors, and then we'll start to see how they did it, and, you know, the inevitable several years later, the rest of the industry will copy them.

And generally, what we see is the best way to use AI is to have people who are good at it who work through it. I mean, and we have people who are consulting on AI and showing companies how to do it the right way. We have, you know, some people here from Rice that are working for those firms, and they are at least the vanguard of that.

And I'm hoping that that's what happens instead of the, you know, systemic failure that I'm expecting. But I'm guessing one company's going to take it in the teeth, and when that happens, then we'll see other companies step up.

[30:09]Maya Pomroy: So, for all of your students, the baby MBAs and the baby Viranis, and then you got, like, the old people like me, when students leave your classroom, you know, what do you hope stays with them five, 10, 15, 20 years down the line?

[30:25]Jon Miles: So, I tell my students this, and I, you know, I don't know if this bothers them or not, but I tell my students that what I want more than anything is I want them to be decent managers. And I say that because we have a lot of information on when we, you know, teach leadership and studying leadership, and that it's basically 50/50.

So, 50% of what you're accomplishing as a leader is something I can train you in and make you better at it, and it's mainly things about structure and how to set this and how to treat your employees and things like that. And 50% comes from you, your charisma, your natural leadership ability, whatever you want to call it.

And so, what I told my students is, "I'm not here to make you into great leaders. Some of you will be great leaders because you have that natural piece, and I'm going to teach you this, and if you follow and do this information, you'll become a great leader. But I guarantee you, if you just follow what I say, you won't be a bad manager. You won't be a bad leader."

And I've had enough bad leaders over the years that my crusade is to get rid of them, to try and, try and teach people so that we don't have them. And I'm hoping that the people who come out of here with Rice MBAs, and even our Rice undergrad degrees, have the understanding of how to be a manager that does the right things. If they just follow what I talk about in class, they're going to be so much better, and it's going to benefit their careers. So, that's one of the things I'm looking for.

And then the second piece I'm looking for is I want them to understand that their workers are people, which I know that sounds strange, but it's amazing, you know, when I ask questions in class, how often they ignore the idea that each of these people have their own goals, their own values, their own beliefs, their own things they're trying to figure out.

And so, what ends up happening is these people are stuck. These people that they're trying to lead, they're basically being forced to do something rather than asked to do something, rather than led to do something, and that causes issues.

[32:18]Maya Pomroy: Let's go back to some things that would surprise your students about you and, you know, sort of, your leadership style and things that you've done in the past. So, let's talk about your comic book store.

[32:30]Jon Miles: Yeah.

[32:30]Maya Pomroy: Because that was, sort of, in between. What made you want to go be an entrepreneur and start a new business? Because you've definitely got that expertise as well, and you're teaching, you know, entrepreneurs.

[32:42]Jon Miles: You know, I always think this is weird because I was a comic bookstore employee while I was in college, in my undergrad. I wasn't a comic book person, but I was a role-playing games, tabletop games, card games person. I played all these different things.

I was your classic nerd. That is absolutely true. And I worked at a comic book shop there in Manhattan, Kansas, for many years that also had all these games, and I really loved it. I met some of my lifelong friends there, but I actually spent a lot of time there. I really loved the fact that we provided this space for people like me to come and do these things. And you build, kind of, this family of people who are all interested in the same kind of games and that sort of thing.

And what ended up happening was they had to close, and it was after I had left and then come back to Manhattan, Kansas. I was working full-time and actually had signed up for the MBA program, a professional MBA, an evening MBA program at Kansas State. And while I was doing that, my friend, one of my business partners that I worked with on this, who had worked with other comic book stores in the past, he came to me, and we talked about it, and he said basically, "We need to have a comic book store in this town. We need a place like this available for people."

This one's closing. There was one other in town that we didn't particularly like. We didn't like the mood and the feel of it, and so we're like, "Maybe we should do it. We should just start one."

Now, I will say I dropped out of my MBA. I took one class and then dropped out basically because I was like, "Okay, I need to concentrate on this business." And then we proceeded to make every mistake you can possibly make as retail. We overdid our inventory. We were grossly undercapitalized. I think we started with something like $20,000 for a retail store. We made all the mistakes on our triple net leases, where we messed things up on there.

[34:38]Maya Pomroy: Those are great, aren't they?

[34:41]Jon Miles: Oh, yeah. And we did everything wrong you can do. But, but I'm confident and happy of the fact that we never made the same mistake twice. And so, we learned a lot from this. I was a part of it for seven years. Then I left.

But I built this huge group of friends that I still interact with, that I still love. Every time I go back to Manhattan, Kansas, I meet these people I haven't talked to in a couple of years, and we hang out, and everything's great again. I built a tremendous understanding of retail business, specifically as it's related to things like the person side of this. How do I get people excited about things?

And I, you know, I joke about this, but it's absolutely true. In the movie High Fidelity, it's a record store, and this owner of the record store comes up and talks to one of his employees and says, "I will now sell five copies of this record." And then he puts it on a turntable and plays it through the whole store, and you hear it playing, you see people, kind of, jiving to it, and someone will come over and go, "Hey, what's that?" And he says, "Oh, it's this record here, and, you know, it's fantastic. I recommend it greatly." And they'll buy it, and, like, he sells five copies of it.

I would do the exact same thing with board games. I'd have 20 people in the store, and I'd say, "Hey, I got a board game that is going to take us 20 minutes to play, and it needs five players. Five of you want to come play this board game just so you can try it out?" And they'd come play it, and they'd have a great time, and three or four people would stand around watching us play, and they'd have a great time. And then we'd sell five copies.

And so, being able to understand how to grasp and build enthusiasm and get people excited about something and get them to then buy was a huge deal for me, and learning that was really important. But when I decided to go back to my MBA, I would run the store during the days, and then when it was time for me to do my MBA classes, which was around 3:00 p.m. most evenings, I would go into campus and do my MBA. And what ended up happening there was I got to see in the MBA, "Oh, that's what we did wrong." We'd learn all these things. You go to accounting class, and they're like, "You need to do this." Oh, that's where we messed up.

And so, it was actually interesting. I got to learn all the lessons again in the MBA and learn why everything that we'd done hadn't worked. And so, I highly recommend the idea of starting this.

I mean, I tell people, you know, I've never had children, but I know exactly what it's like to have a child because when you start a business, every minute of every day that I wasn't at my full-time job, which I was also working while we started the business, was spent either in the store or working on something for the store or thinking about the store or trying to figure out what we were going to do with the store.

And so, it was like, because we were so undercapitalized, we did it out of the sweat of our backs, and we did it out of, like, as much ingenuity as we could throw into it. And so, I spent all of my time there. And it was fun to build this, but boy, it was tough. So, I learned a lot.

[37:28]Maya Pomroy: Yeah. No, I had an educational toy and bookstore, and I was very naive. I'd never even had a worked in a retail store in my life, and then I proceeded to have a, had a two-year-old and had another baby in the middle of it during fourth quarter, which is when you make all your money. So, that's the rub, is that you don't know what it is that you don't know unless you have that experience.

So, final thoughts. What do you hope for the future of Rice Business and the growth, you know, of the Virani School, and where you want Rice Business to go, and what part do you want to play, in addition to what you have already done, to make this school so successful?

[38:04]Jon Miles: Well, I am really interested in growing the undergrad program because I think it's really great. One of the things I tell my students is they're lucky, and I don't know how long this will be true, but what I would want from us as we move forward is that we maintain what we're doing now, which is the classes we are teaching in the undergrad program are identical in many ways to the classes we teach in the MBA program and are taught by the same instructor that teaches at the MBA level.

And what that means is when you take investments from Kevin Crotty at the undergrad level, that's the same class he teaches at the MBA level using the same materials, and he's the one that teaches it. And there aren't many programs out there that that's true. Most of them, they're very separate, that you get the young professors teaching the undergrad classes, and then the older professors will teach an MBA class, and the ones who've been around a while, and it's not the same class, and it's not the same way they're teaching it.

And I love that we have built this program in that way, and I hope that we can maintain doing that because we could provide our undergrads with a tremendous ability to get a great education and one that they're not going to get an undergrad program elsewhere from people who really know what they're talking about and are good at teaching it.

[39:19]Maya Pomroy: Yeah.

[39:19]Jon Miles: I am excited about the new building, and I'd love to see, kind of, what it will help us do from a standpoint of building community. I'm super excited about the fact that the undergrads and the grad students will mix in the new building in many places.

And so, the servery we'll have down there, where there's a coffee shop, Audrey's, and all the different food, it's for everybody. And we're hoping that they'll, sort of, cross-pollinate, and so that they'll talk to each other.

And so, what I want from our program is for us to basically build an understanding that this is Rice Business. And yes, you could be in the Virani School on the undergrad side or the Jones School on the graduate side, but I'm hoping that over the years, what will happen is they will start talking to each other. And if we start seeing that, that'll be tremendous because I think that there's a lot that they can share with each other that will help.

And I think the new building will really generate that environment where we can do that. And so, you know, as someone who understands social identity processes and everything else, it's going to be requiring us to do some work on our side to make it happen because, naturally, you're going to hang with your people and not hang with other people. But if we can work a little bit to make that happen, I think that is the greatest thing I could see coming out of this new undergrad program, is having an undergrad program that actually interacts with the MBAs. No place I've ever been has that been true, and I'd love to see it true here.

[40:41]Maya Pomroy: Well, you know what? If anybody can do it and the first to do it, it will be Rice Business, and you've got all the right brilliant minds all right there together.

It has been a pleasure to talk with you, Professor Miles, and thank you for taking time out of your day. And again, congrats on your award.

[40:58]Jon Miles: Thank you very much.

[40:59]Maya Pomroy: Very well deserved, and we need to catch back up, you know, in a year or so and say, "Okay, so what's happening now?"

[41:06]Jon Miles: No, absolutely. This has been wonderful. Thank you for having me up here. It was great talking to you, Maya. It's always good to see you again, so anytime you want to chat, just reach out.

[41:18]Maya Pomroy: Thanks for listening. This has been Owl Have You Know, a production of Rice Business. You can find more information about our guests, hosts, and announcements on our website, business.rice.edu. Please subscribe and leave a rating wherever you find your favorite podcasts. We'd love to hear what you think. The hosts of Owl Have You Know are myself, Maya Pomroy, and Brian Jackson.

[00:00]Brian Jackson: Welcome to Owl Have You Know, a podcast from Rice Business. This episode is part of our Flight Path series, where guests share their career journeys and stories of the Rice connections that got them where they are.

Today’s episode features David Aldrich, a Rice Business alum from the Professional MBA class of 2015. David serves on the Rice Business Alumni Association Board and is a practice lead at EPAM Systems, a management consulting firm where David focuses on energy. David’s path is anything but linear. He studied philosophy, started his career in sales and marketing at Houston startups, and then used his MBA to pivot into consulting.

Today, David has worked across industries, from energy to consumer sectors, helping organizations think more clearly about growth, operations, and strategy.

David also brings a unique perspective shaped by growing up abroad and spending time in international environments before building his career in Houston. In this conversation, we talk about that journey, what it really takes to be good at consulting, and some of the lessons David has learned from working with clients across different sectors.

We also get into how AI is showing up in his work today and where it’s actually creating value versus just hype. Well, David, first, I just want to thank you for joining me.

[01:16]David Aldrich: No, absolutely. It’s my pleasure, Brian. Really looking forward to it. Huge fan of the show.

[01:21]Brian Jackson: You’re one of the board members where I’ve gotten to, one, I met you, and we became fast friends, and then we were able to now serve on the Alumni Association Board together. When we first met, it was a Rice alumni event. I think it was the wine event, and we quickly realized that we have actually a lot in common.

One, we both have partners who are dentists. Your wife, Jasmine, is a dentist. My partner, Trace. Second, we both lived in Jakarta, Indonesia, and we attended Jakarta Intercultural School. And if I say Naga, Naga, Naga, you’re going to say...

[01:52]David Aldrich: Oi, Oi, Oi.

[01:55]Brian Jackson: So, the one question I always seem to get is, you know, looking back, how was growing up as an expat and becoming a third culture kid, how has it shaped who you are today?

[02:07]David Aldrich: I think it’s been probably the most impactful on my life. And when I think about growing up, from like zero to 18, those years in Indonesia and Jakarta are responsible for a lot of my worldview and a lot of my trajectory. I’m really thankful for that time I got to spend as an expat in Jakarta, and there’s a couple things that I think were really incredible.

One, just the age of being there when I was nine to about 15, right? Going from elementary school through middle school in Jakarta. And the second piece was what you mentioned, being an international school where, you know, Americans only made up about, I think, 30% of the demographic population of the school when I was there, from like 1992 to 1998. You were, kind of, a minority in this big mix of international students.

So, your friends were British kids, they were Korean kids, they were Filipino kids, they were Singaporean, they were from South Africa, they were from, you know, Qatar, they were from Australia. They were from all over the world. And getting exposed to just completely different cultures, completely different backgrounds, experiences, even mindsets, right, and how people think and play and collaborate and work together, really opened my eyes as to what’s possible, what’s out there, and, kind of, shaped a lot of my decisions from when I was even looking at where to go to school right after coming back to Houston for high school. It just completely shaped the way I thought about what I should do with myself and with my life.

[03:41]Brian Jackson: And so, when you came back to Houston, and then you’re thinking about college, because, what, you were freshman year, so, you know, sophomore, junior. How did you decide Colgate? Like, this is the right fit for you?

[03:52]David Aldrich: Well, the first decision I made was I wasn’t going to go anywhere in Texas after spending four years at Stratford High School. Shout out Stratford High School, SHS, is an amazing school, go Spartans. But I just saw a lot of my friends were going to, you know, UT, or Texas Tech, or A&M, or other private schools in Texas.

And I didn’t want to go to a school where I knew, you know, 20 or 30 people that I just spent the past four years with. I wanted to go somewhere where I didn’t really know anybody, and I wanted to go someplace that I hadn’t really been before and experience a different part of the United States.

And so, when I was applying to schools, I found out about Colgate, and which was about as far northeast as you could possibly go, in like the middle of nowhere, central New York. But I was also looking at schools in California. I was looking at schools on the East Coast. I was looking at schools, kind of, everywhere except Texas.

[04:45]Brian Jackson: And so, you were saying, you know, picking a place where there weren’t going to be Texans or high school classmates, it’s like you wanted to challenge your way of thinking and be challenged of who you are and continually learn. Is that why you fell into philosophy?

[05:01]David Aldrich: The reason I picked philosophy, I think a little bit of that, but also I wanted to be an attorney when I was in high school. So, I was a debate kid. One of the things that I did was debate, and I really wanted to go into law. And I thought, "Okay, what should best prepare me for a legal career and going to law school? Let’s study philosophy, and let’s study classical studies." So, I was taking a lot of Latin classes, classical studies classes, and philosophy classes while I was at Colgate.

[05:31]Brian Jackson: So, I mean, you wrapped up college and then somehow you end up in Houston. What brought you down to Houston?

[05:37]David Aldrich: So, my family had actually already left. So, when I was in college, my parents moved to Colorado, and then after that, they moved to South Africa. So, I wasn’t going back to where they were living at the moment.

By the time I got to senior year in college, I had decided I no longer wanted to be an attorney, so I wasn’t going to go to law school. So, now I was graduating, and I had a philosophy degree, and I decided I did not want to go to law school. So, I did what anyone does with a philosophy degree that does not go to law school. And I think that’s, you go into sales, right?

So, I found some opportunities in Houston for, kind of, sales-related roles, and I had grandparents that still lived in Houston, and so that was, kind of, my support network when I first got out of college and came back down to Houston.

[06:25]Brian Jackson: So, you’re working in sales roles, you inevitably get into the startup world, right? What were you working on, and what was that experience like?

[06:34]David Aldrich: Yeah. So, I was really fortunate. I knew I wanted to get into the digital space because this was back in, you know, 2010. Facebook had become a thing during, I think, when I was in college. And so, I saw the future of, you know, a lot of jobs were going to be in this digital space and world.

And so, at the time, it didn’t seem like there was a giant startup culture in Houston, but there was a pretty interesting startup company, tech company based out of Houston called FlightAware, which was a flight-tracking company, bootstrap startup. And I actually saw a position for, I think the title at the time was like Aviation Marketing Specialist. But that was a fancy word of saying, like, you’re going to be working in sales for our company.

I saw this job posting on Craigslist, if you can believe, I was, like, looking at Craigslist job postings back in, like, 2010, and I saw this opportunity. So, I started working there, and my job was basically to help them monetize the website. I mean, the company was essentially all software engineers and developers and a very small kind of commercial team, which was run by the COO, and I was reporting, kind of, directly into him, helping monetize all the advertising space we had on the website.

Also sell some of the other data products that FlightAware created, some other, kind of, bespoke products they offered into the aviation industry, but mostly around monetizing the site. So, that’s how I, kind of, got my start, like cold calling media planners who, like, worked for, you know, advertising agencies in New York and San Francisco and Detroit and Chicago, trying to convince them to place their advertising dollars for their clients on our website, flightaware.com.

[08:12]Brian Jackson: So, what did this whole period teach you? And I mean, you’ve carried it on to a management consulting career, what did, you know, working in a bootstrap startup, what has that translated into what you’re doing now?

[08:22]David Aldrich: Well, that time at FlightAware, and then also the time I spent at Rigzone and more of these kind of sales-focused positions, really taught me how to talk to people, develop relationships with people, find what’s going to be valuable for them long term, find solutions that are going to be win-win for both of us.

That, kind of, interacting with people on a daily basis and finding a common ground and where you can both provide value and wins together is something that I still do on a daily basis in consulting, right? So, I think a lot of that early time period, in, kind of, more, you know, cold-calling sales mode, prepared me for, you know, consulting later on, because consulting is also an interesting industry.

When you start, your focus is delivering, right? Your focus is, someone is telling you what to do on a project, and you’ve just got to deliver very well for, you know, your project lead and the client. As you progress in your career through consulting, now it becomes, it’s sales again, right? You’re responsible for managing relationships with clients, identifying opportunities that can add value to them, and, you know, you can deliver for, thereby selling your professional services. And it’s really back into mostly a sales job of trying to either respond to RFPs or, you know, finding opportunities and pitching them to clients.

[09:42]Brian Jackson: So, your MBA, what part did it play? Did it help you pivot into consulting, or was it a part of the grand pivot?

[09:49]David Aldrich: I mean, it was singularly responsible for how I was able to change my career from sales-focused roles into consulting, because at that time, in 2012, when I was applying to Rice to start in 2013, I mean, I had been in sales at that point for five to six years of, like, straight kind of sales-focused roles. And honestly, I was getting a little bit bored of the work that I was doing.

It was great, I was having fun, but it was having the exact same conversations. You could only sell advertising space for so long and talk about the size of, like, a banner that, you know, in a package or whatever, before you’re just selling the exact same thing again and again and again. And the conversations do get old.

While I was at Rigzone, I, kind of, got to do two things that opened my eyes up to what consulting could be. So, we implemented a new ad-serving system, which sounds really boring and awful, but it was an interesting change of pace for me, doing a kind of technology implementation project. We acquired another company and then had to come up with a new pricing catalog, sales strategy, had to roll that out to all these new salespeople that got, kind of, added to our company.

So, a lot of working on new process, working with people, training, transformation, so that was really exciting, too. And I realized I’d like to do more of these types of things versus continue to just sell the same thing again and again and again. But I knew that it would be very difficult for me to start just applying from where I was as, you know, a sales manager at an energy technology company, to go into a consulting shop. You really needed an MBA to do that. And so, Rice was the perfect avenue for me to make that pivot, to get my MBA, but then also position myself for consulting.

[11:36]Brian Jackson: Yeah, so the three letters definitely help in applying, but I’m curious, like, what specifically at Rice helped you actually prepare for the transition itself?

[11:46]David Aldrich: I mean, the whole reason I chose Rice was because I couldn’t make the economics work to quit my day job, right, and go and be a full-time student. I was married at the time, I had one kid, we had another kid coming on the way. So, I was like, "We can’t shut down this current revenue stream, we’re going to keep this going." So, I was looking for professional programs, and at the time, I think the two best programs that were available in Houston were, in my opinion, were, like, University of Texas’ program and Rice’s MBA.

And then when you compare those two options, it was like no question, Rice was the superior program in my mind, one, because you actually got to take classes on campus. You had access to the same classes that full-time students took as a, you know, evening professional student if you could make the schedule work. So, I took classes that were like full-time classes because I was able to come down during lunch on a Tuesday and a Thursday and make it work with my work schedule and take advantage of those classes.

I think, also, being able to take advantage of the clubs, right? The consulting club that does tremendous work at Rice University to prepare students for, you know, summer internships with consulting companies, but also for the case interviews and preparing for, you know, consulting interviews are pretty intense. Maybe they’re not as bad as private equity or some iBanking interviews, but they’re definitely not typically fun experiences to go through unless you’ve really, really prepped hard and know how to execute in them. And Rice does a great job of that.

So, having access to all those tools, all the professors, all the space, the people, the student population as a professional student at, kind of, Rice Business was the game-changer for me. 

[13:33]Brian Jackson: Yeah, no, I mean that access is so important. I think being involved in the student clubs, you’re absolutely right, that’s a differentiator. If you were to give advice to a first-year MBA who wants to break into consulting, what would you tell them?

[13:48]David Aldrich: I think my advice to students that want to go into consulting is you need to get really good at the AI piece, right? Study right now and get proficient with tools like Anthropic, tools like, you know, ChatGPT’s Codex, tools like, you know, Gemini’s Nano Banana, and, like, PaperBanana, the new one that they just announced. You have to be proficient in this space and be certified in this space, too. Like, Claude just announced a certification program. You can go get certified as, like, an Anthropic Claude architect. It’s free. You can do it.

Like, these are things that I think you need to have on your resume to position yourself for value, regardless of what strategy you take. If you want to go into strategy consulting or Big Four or technology, having those new skills on how to create agent capabilities for clients is going to be the table stakes to separating yourself from, I think, other people who are also looking to go into consulting.

[14:45]Brian Jackson: Yeah, that’s great advice. I’m going to transition a little here to talk about EPAM.

[14:50]David Aldrich: Sure.

[14:50]Brian Jackson: So, you’ve been at EPAM now for over six years, and like all of my friends in management consulting, I don’t really know what that means or what you do. So, what is it that you actually do on a day-to-day? What’s your focus?

[15:05]David Aldrich: Well, it’s changed a little bit. I started in 2019 as a senior manager. I’ve been working my way up to a principal, and then I just recently stepped into a managing principal role, and I run our energy management consulting practice.

So, a lot of my day-to-day is both talking to clients, but then also managing our pool of consultants and positioning them for projects and making sure that they’re being successful in the opportunities that they’re pitching to clients and the work that they’re delivering for clients as well.

What does that actually look like in reality? I think the best way to explain it, maybe to give you an idea, right? So, a year ago, we were working with an oil field services client, and the CEO was talking about how they wanted to expand what they’re doing in the digital space. Like, they have discrete software products, and they wanted to create transversal use cases so they could do something and solve problems for clients by leveraging the power of multiple pieces of their, kind of, software applications that are currently discrete and not integrated and, kind of, for very different purposes.

So, from there, we went, "Okay, let us help you organize those workshops to go find out what these transversal use cases are. So, that was phase one. Let’s bring everyone from across this global company into one room for a couple of days, people who are product managers for their different, discrete software solutions that this company owns, and let’s put them in the same room. Many of these people hadn’t even met each other or weren’t aware of the capabilities of some of the other, you know, software products this company produces. Let’s align on use cases. We found some, we had some great ideas. Okay, now let’s help you go validate that."

So, then we did basically a market assessment where we created mockups and UI designs for what this new software product could do. We validated that with the company’s own customers, like we worked with their commercial teams to set up time with their users and customers today.

We also went out and found people through our own network that were potential customers for our client. We validated it with, like, kind of, a market scan and looked at what other competing products are out there that could potentially compete with this new solution in the space. We did, kind of, pricing assessments, so we looked at, kind of, market size, what is even the total addressable market? Like, how much revenue could you hope to generate with a product like this? How would you price it?

How much is actually serviceable and addressable? Like, how much more revenue could you capture in year one versus year five? And then we presented that all back to, kind of, the leadership and said, "Okay, we think there really is something here. Here’s how we would price it, here’s how we would build it. Customers say they do want it, and they want these features."

And then we got to go build, like, the beta version of that product for them, which we highlighted at their annual meeting. And now we’re, like, in the process of making it real for customers. So, kind of full-cycle consulting, but also EPAM's focus is very much on product design, software engineering, going to make something real in the digital world, whether that's an application, whether that's a platform, whether that's a mobile app. That's, kind of, the space that we play in.

[18:05]Brian Jackson: Yeah, so from inception on that example you gave to, you know, final product, that’s a long time. It’s a two-year, three-year project?

[18:16]David Aldrich: So, this project, we’re about 12 months in from when we, kind of, first started the initial workshops. Taking this back to AI, what we’re able to do now in terms of mockup designs and potential solutions for customers, like, I no longer need a UX/UI design team to create a mockup of something that we want to deliver for a client. I can do that on my own with Claude Code or Codex and do something pretty good just using the new AI tools.

Now, I still definitely need the UI/UX teams to make this thing real, but of course, they’re also using AI-native, kind of, software engineering tools as well to speed this process up.

[18:53]Brian Jackson: How receptive are your clients when you bring in AI to projects? I mean, how, I guess, one, the question really is, like, how well do they understand it, and how much do they trust the output?

[19:05]David Aldrich: So, it’s becoming much more commonplace. Like every proposal that I’m seeing now, or even requests for proposals for clients, they’re asking us, how would you deliver this? Especially if it’s a software-related project where we’re building something digital, they’re asking us, how would you use AI to accelerate this work?

The energy industry, where I’m working, is, I think, a little bit slower to adopt versus, you know, the technology industry. Even the financial services insurance industry, consumer retail, for sure, is adopting this much quicker. But we’re seeing that our clients already, that they’re using their own development teams, are using, like, GitHub Copilot, or they’re implementing Claude Code, or they’re using the AI-powered kind of tools within Databricks.

They’re using the tools out there themselves, and they’re expecting their consulting partners and implementation partners to also use those same tools and speed up the velocity. Now, I will say, you can’t just give people access to these tools and be like, "Yay, it’s all going to work. It’s going to be great." There is definite governance that needs to be set up so you can train these agents and large language models on, you know, your own code libraries, your coding standards, the languages you use, you know, your CI/CD pipeline, how you deploy code, how you write test cases, how you test the code.

But you can have agents do like 90, 95% of that work. But it does need to be set up, and it does need strong governance to make sure what you’re building is actually what you want to build, right? And it’s secured from cybersecurity threats. You’re not adding new technical debt. You’re not mixing, kind of, languages that you shouldn’t be using. You’re building it for scale, and you’re following your organization’s, kind of, standards for how you build software.

[20:52]Brian Jackson: So, if I’m an energy executive who’s not an AI adopter, what am I missing?

[20:58]David Aldrich: You’re missing potentially so much productivity from your teams. Like, I’m thinking about anyone who’s still working in spreadsheets, anyone who’s still manually creating kind of PowerPoints, anyone who’s still, you know, manually creating the day-to-day things that all companies run on is missing out if you’re not asking your employees to become proficient and start adopting AI software.

Now, at the same time, there’s an interesting question that’s going on right now, which is, "Okay, we all know what the cost of large language models and tokens and agents, we all know what that costs right now, but we also have never known a technology company to, kind of, keep prices the same for the next five, 10 years. Like, everyone knows, and you’ve already seen that from like ChatGPT to Claude, like, there’s the free version now, there’s the premium version, now there’s like the max version that you pay for." It’s not going to stay this price. It’s going to get more expensive. Energy is going to become more expensive, right, to power all of this.

There is a question of how much do you completely start re-architecting your workflows to rely on agents if there’s some projections that show the cost for support, like the cost per ticket resolution, is projected to be, by, this is, someone was posting this on LinkedIn the other day, as projected to be $3 in 2030 by using agents. And $3 per ticket resolution is pretty close to what we pay for humans in offshore managed services locations to resolve tickets.

So, at what point is it going to become more expensive than actual humans? Again, I don’t think you should stop AI adoption because of that potential, but I think it’s important to understand that there’s things that you can do right now to enhance productivity by using these tool sets. There’s other things that require, I think, a little bit more due diligence, and is it the right decision to completely re-architect the way we work with agents? Because what’s good for Anthropic and how they code might not be the best thing for your company long term.

[23:07]Brian Jackson: Yeah, that’s so interesting. So, I guess having stepped into a new leadership role in energy, how has that position changed your perspective of the work that you’re doing and how the team operates and interacts with clients?

[23:22]David Aldrich: I will say that I am extremely fortunate at EPAM to be working for Clark Varner, who’s also a Jones School alumni. He was a Rice MBA. I’ve been working with him for over 10 years now.

So, he was at North Highland, which was the first firm I started working for after Rice, after I got my MBA. And then he’s at EPAM, where I’m working right now. And so, when I started as a senior manager here at EPAM, he led our energy, kind of, consulting practice here in Houston. And then he basically took on a new role, a new leadership role, and he now leads our entire energy business unit because, obviously, we do a lot more than just consulting, we do software engineering, we do product development, we do product design. We have, you know, account management professionals who run and manage specific energy accounts for us.

And so, Clark looks after all of that work. I say all this to give context that I’m not doing this by myself. There’s a team of people that I have grown up with, both at my time in North Highland and now at EPAM, that are also in really senior leadership roles that I work closely with every single day.

So, when you ask, how does it change my perspective on managing a team and being in a leadership position, I think the perspective doesn’t change that much is that, number one, is you’ve got to look out for your people, right? People need to be in an environment where they feel safe, where they feel supported, where they feel they can come with questions, with concerns, where they can go get guidance that’s, you know, judgment-free. That’s what I’m hoping to provide and give everyone that space where they can thrive and do their best work and really enjoy, as much as possible, the day-in and day-out work that they’re doing for clients and for EPAM.

[25:04]Brian Jackson: That’s great. I mean, that psychological safety of being able to, kind of, check your ego at the door and just say, "Hey, I have no idea. How would you do this?" tends to create some of the best responses, I feel like, and actually creates opportunity to solve things. So, I mean, I’m sure you’ve seen good consultants, and you’ve seen bad consultants. What separates a good consultant?

[25:26]David Aldrich: Yeah, I think a good consultant is not afraid to ask questions, to push clients, and, kind of, challenge thinking. I think there’s an art to being able to do that without offending and pissing clients off, and understanding when you have the opportunity to, kind of, push hard to get clients thinking in a different way.

I think the other key part is being able to be hungry for any opportunity and not scared to learn any new topic, right? Because the nature of consulting is that you’re being thrown into a bunch of different businesses, and no matter how much you’ve worked in a specific industry or at, like, businesses, there’s always going to be something new that they’re doing, whether it’s from a technology that they’re using, a process that they’re following, the nomenclature that they’re using.

So, you always got to be hungry and excited to learn more, and never, kind of, turned off and scared about having to, you know, master a new subject where you know nothing about it. So, always being hungry to learn quickly and adapt. And I think always coming with potential solutions versus constant questions.

So, questions are great when you’re trying to understand what’s the context, but we need to move very quickly to offering a point of view on what you need to be doing. And so, I always tell new consultants that are starting, "What are the best behaviors you can develop?" When you spot an opportunity, you know, for where you can add value or we can add value for our client, don’t just come to your manager or your principal or the project lead or client lead and say, "Hey, I think there’s an opportunity here." It’s, "Hey, I think there’s an opportunity here, and here’s how we propose we go solve it. And here’s the approach that I think we should take, and here’s how I would think we... This is the team size I think we would need to do it, and here’s the timeline." Like, come with a fully baked plan. That’s the behavior that we love to see from a great consultant.

[27:08]Brian Jackson: Yeah. Has there been a time where you’ve brought forth a fully baked plan, and the instant reaction was no? Like, "David, no. This doesn’t make sense."

[27:17]David Aldrich: All the time, yes. That definitely does happen. It’s something you also have to get used to is rejection, right? There’s no way in consulting that when you spot an opportunity and a way to add value, that you’re going to have, you know, 100% batting average. It’s just not going to happen.

You’re going to pitch a bunch of things, and you might think it is, of course, the best solution out there. You would be crazy if you picked any other vendor or any other SI or consultancy to go do this work. And, of course, that happens all the time, they pick someone else. So, you just have to be comfortable, right, and rejection, not take it personal, and you keep going, right? Look for the next opportunity.

[27:56]Brian Jackson: With EPAM's operations being global, you know, how has the conflict in Ukraine impacted you in your work?

[28:04]David Aldrich: Yeah, that continuing conflict has been the biggest shock our company has ever experienced in its 30-year history. So, for people that may not be aware, EPAM is 30 years old. We’re about 65,000 people. We started as a company that was providing technology solutions mainly from Europe, in locations like Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, because we had highly skilled software development professionals that were based there that were still really cost-competitive with other kind of offshore delivery centers around the world that other consulting companies were using.

And we found the talent there was really second to none, and again, the economics made a lot of sense to our clients. And so, we, kind of, built our company around these delivery centers in Eastern Europe. And so, by the time we got to 2022, we were a, you know, 55,000-60,000-person company, and we had 30,000 people in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.

And then the conflict started, and we immediately, of course, shut down all of the work that we were doing with companies in Russia. And then we made the decision very quickly to say, "Okay, if you want to work for EPAM, you cannot be in Russia, you have to leave Russia." And, of course, we had many employees that wanted to also leave conflict zones in Ukraine. And we also had people who wanted to leave Belarus as well.

And so, during 2022, 2023, EPAM was relocating like 5,000, 6,000 employees and their families, like, constantly. So, there was a mass move of people across the globe to get people into environments where they felt safe and were able to thrive, and their families were able to thrive.

And it’s still happening today, right? I think people tune out the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but that’s still an active war that’s happening. And we still have 9,000 professionals operating in Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, all across Ukraine, delivering every day for our clients. And it’s amazing the resiliency of some of my colleagues that are, you know, again, like going through ballistic missile drills, warning sirens on a frequent basis, having to deal with power outages, gas outages constantly.

I mean, they’re real heroes, right, of EPAM, and still coming to work with fantastic, positive attitudes, ready to excite, delight customers, go build something new, continuing to learn. So, it’s one of the reasons I’m really proud to work at EPAM, is not only how our company has responded, but just the culture and the community we have built around our colleagues and what we do for our clients every day.

[30:42]Brian Jackson: I think of it, and, you know, you were saying they still show up, they’re excited to be there and deliver product, like, one, how almost, like, empowering that is to your own spirit, to sit there with folks and to be like, "Okay, if they can do it, I can do it. We’re going to do it as a team." And then secondary, I think of, is it hard, though, to be on team calls and have your, you know, colleagues and friends in areas that are dangerous and have danger around them? You know, how do you, kind of, manage those feelings?

[31:13]David Aldrich: I’ll tell you, it’s not easy. I’ll be extremely frank. I was doing a project, this was back in 2022, one of our developers on our team, his name’s Andre, fantastic guy. He was based in Kharkiv, and if you don’t know where that is, it’s, kind of, on the eastern side of Ukraine, very close to the border with Russia.

And so, during the start of the invasion, Russia was coming really close into Kharkiv, they were throwing shells, they were throwing mortars into the city. EPAM was doing its best to try to evacuate as many people as we could, like, basically sending buses into the city. But you couldn’t safely go walk around the city.

And so, where his apartment block was, he could not get to where the buses were picking people up. And, you know, he has a small family, he had two small daughters. So, their first solution was to go sleep in the, kind of, subway stations, right, to protect them from mortar fire, shell fire. But it was middle of winter, it’s freezing down there, so people were getting sick, that’s not a solution. So, they went back to their apartment.

The train station wasn’t running on schedule, so that was also not an option. Because I was trying to brainstorm this through, like, you know, "Andre, we’ve got to get you, we’ve got to get you out of here. We’ve got to get you safe. What can we do?" He was saying, "No, we can’t use the train station. There’s like 10,000 people there just waiting for the next train. It’s not safe."

He was finally able to get a car rental with a friend, but there was not enough space in the car for both him, his wife, and his two kids, just his wife and his kids. So, he puts his wife and kids in the car, he sends them towards Zaporizhzhia, which was safe at the time, and he walks out of the city, like 20, 25 kilometers, until he gets to a point where it’s safe enough for him to be picked up.

And so, each day I was asking, like, "Andre, are you going to be safe? Are you going to be okay? What’s going on?" That, you know, takes a mental toll on you because you’re just worried sick for these people that you come to know and work with on a daily basis. So yeah, it’s mentally taxing, but you just got to remember that that mental struggle from my end is nothing compared to, you know, what my colleagues are going through. And it just makes you super thankful to be working with amazing people and in a community that, kind of, EPAM created, community and culture that EPAM created.

[33:27]Brian Jackson: It’s great to be on a team and to support a team like that, David. I’m going to pivot a little, because I know some of the stuff you do outside of work, but I’m curious if there’s something outside of work that’s made you better at your job.

[33:39]David Aldrich: I think being involved with kids’ school sports stuff gives you a lot of, let’s say, a lot of patience. It teaches you patience in ways that you weren’t expecting, that you can take to clients.

But I’ll also say, I’ll be very honest, I tell everyone on our team, like, "Listen, there’s a reason you get paid time off. You should take it, and you shouldn’t be working during that time." I’m always a bad example. I do tend to, like, check my phone and check my computer when I’m supposed to be off. But I tell people, "Please don’t follow my awful example. You should take time off."

And I think that is really important. I purposely try to take the time off that I’m given by, you know, EPAM each year and go travel, go experience something completely different, and share it with my kids as well, right? And I think that has always refreshed me, made me excited to come back to work.

Traveling and being someplace new, foreign, uncomfortable, it sparks, again, that creative thinking. It gets your brain moving, and it creates ideas that, I’m often coming back to work excited and thinking about something new I want to try after being on vacation, and especially being on vacation in someplace completely random and new that I’d never been before.

Now, I’m not saying I don’t like to also just go somewhere like a beach resort pool where someone can just bring me, you know, margaritas or piña coladas, I enjoy that, too, but I think you need to balance both.

[35:06]Brian Jackson: I tend to be on that type of vacation. One other thing that you do, you stay really involved with Rice, especially Rice Business. At what point did you shift from Rice just being your school to really, I think, becoming your community?

[35:21]David Aldrich: You know, I think my grandfather, you know, he taught me that. And it was something that Shawn Sullivan, the CEO at FlightAware, who is a big Colgate supporter, told me as well, that, like, "Listen, if you enjoyed your experience at your alma mater, you should give back. You should always give back as much as you can." And the experience that I had both at Colgate and at Rice was life-changing for me, career-changing in terms of my MBA. And so, I’ve always wanted to give back financially as much as I can and support students who also want to go to that school, right? Be a class ambassador for Rice, try to keep my class involved and aware of what’s going on at school, try to bring them back to campus, promote reunion, and try to get a big turnout as much as possible.

And then now, you know, finding new ways to serve the alumni community and do more to encourage alumni to come back, engage, and participate with Rice. We can continue to grow, I think, this amazing alumni network that we have, which is now like 10,000 people who’ve matriculated and graduated through the Rice Business MBA program.

[36:24]Brian Jackson: Yeah, and one of the things, I mean, the Alumni Association Board is all about how do we reengage and get people to stay in touch and connected to Rice Business. One of the things we’ve been working on together was the alumni breakfast series. I’d love you to just talk about it and share why we thought that that was a value add and a new connection point for alumni.

[36:46]David Aldrich: Yeah, absolutely. So, it’s one of the things that I have been super excited about since joining the board, is this new series. We realized that getting to events on campus can be difficult, given the size of Houston and the sprawl and the fact that we have people coming from, if they want to come to events, they’ve got to be coming from Katy, West Houston, they’re coming from Sugar Land, Richmond, Southwest Houston, they’re coming from, you know, Spring, The Woodlands, they’re coming from Humble, Atascocita, they're coming from everywhere.

And it’s not easy sometimes to leave work at like 4:30 just so you can be on campus at 6:00 for an event that starts. And so, we thought about what programming options can we offer so that we’re not only having programming that is available to alumni and students after work, but before work, right? Or during the early morning part of work.

So, you can come in, you can have breakfast, you can have coffee, you can engage with Rice and then make it back to work. And then everyone’s busy after work as well with, you know, family activities, et cetera, so we can leave that open. So, we wanted to be able to provide both options to our alumni and students, and even the broader Houston community, to come and engage in whichever way works best for you.

If it works best for you to come and participate in a really interesting panel after work’s done and stop by the campus after, then great. If it’s better for you to come during the morning and break bread and have coffee with alumni and colleagues and friends, then let’s do that as well and make that available to our alumni community.

[38:17]Brian Jackson: That’s great, and that was absolutely the purpose.

David, this has been such a unique episode, and I really have appreciated your time, and we get to draw on some of these shared commonalities we have. And I’ve always really enjoyed your service on the board and working together, so thank you.

[38:34]David Aldrich: No, thank you so much. It’s been my pleasure. I love the work that you’re doing on this podcast. I think it’s extremely valuable to not only our alumni, but just Houston in general, and students and everyone, kind of, to see the trajectories and career paths that are available to them and some of the amazing work that our alumni are doing, both here in Houston and Texas across the globe.

I think you’re doing a fantastic job. I’m so happy to be on here. I feel honored to be invited to the Owl Have You Know podcast, and I hope it’s not the last time we have a conversation like this.

[39:04]Brian Jackson: No, no, it won’t be. Well, thanks again, David.

[39:07]David Aldrich: No, thank you, Brian.

[39:14]Brian Jackson: Thanks for listening. This has been Owl Have You Know, a production of Rice Business. You can find more information about our guests, hosts, and announcements on our website, business.rice.edu. Please subscribe and leave a rating wherever you find your favorite podcast. We'd love to hear what you think. The hosts of Owl Have You Know are myself, Brian Jackson, and Maya Pomroy.