First Person Meets… Paul Preiss: Follow your passions

Matt Egan Hello, hello, hello, welcome to First Person The show where we meet the most interesting people in it and we learn from them what makes them tick by focusing only on their firsts.

I'm your host, Matt Egan, asking you to enjoy, like and subscribe wherever you find us, and if you are an interesting person in it, let us know you might be our next first person. The next voice you hear will be today's guest. He is Paul Preiss.

Paul is, I can tell you, definitely one of the most interesting people in it. He is currently the CEO and founder of the IASA, the not for profit professional association for all business technology architects.

It's built and run by architects, for architects, and I'm pretty certain knowing Paul, that we're going to touch on that at some point during this conversation. But Paul, welcome. Thanks for joining us. And first up, what's the first thing people should know about you?

Paul Preiss The first thing that people should know about me is that that's a great question, that I am an unbelievably passionate person about everything I do, whether it's cooking, whether it's travel, whether it's Isa, whether it's architecture, or whether it's just a conversation about what makes technology businesses take anything I get very, very invested in anything I do, and I think that probably resonates through Every part of my life.

Matt Egan Well, that's that can't be a bad thing, right? And it's certainly been my experience of knowing you that that if we're going to do something, we're going to do it with great passion. That sets us up nicely.

I hope for a good conversation section one of first person I like to call First things first, and this is where we get to know about our guests by understanding some of their first times.

So Paul, please tell me about your first job in this industry, your first job in it.

Paul Preiss So I know very weird first as many architects, as many of us do in our field, and I've had some wonderful conversations about that myself. It's one of the benefits of my job, is I get to hear people's story all the time.

My first job was an assistant project manager at a place called human code, which was a UI design Shop in Austin, Texas. I just finished my Japanese degree, which was an interesting choice.

It was actually just a sort of, you know, it was kind of a calling kind of thing. I or magical set of numbers lined up.

I, I had been, I was, actually, I was, in fact, before that, the first student in the University of Texas is liberal arts department to ever receive a grant for a technology project. So I actually, as a senior in college, I actually put together a team.

I went to my Japanese professor, and I said, I want to do a multimedia project. And so I put together a team of students got money from the university and built kind of a, it was a university award winning multimedia CD, exploration of Japanese culture, uh huh.

And human code saw this and said, Wow, we've got to have this kid. So I never considered an IT career.

It wasn't something I was, I was, I love technology, but as a consumer, then human code hired me to build, help them build their business to business practice, consultative practice, if you will.

And I kind of ended up working for, directly for the VP, and building out the, you know, multiple projects there, taught myself to code while I was there, and learned all things consultative and technology oriented up to a certain point.

And that led through the just the many, many follow on roles. So it was a stroke of oddity that that led to it, yeah, one of my passions is what happened. I got obsessed with this CD, and I was going to create this experience.

And I, you know, I just do whatever it takes to get to that thing.

Matt Egan Yeah, it's so interesting, because so many of the interesting people you meet in this industry, like have a similar origin story, right?

That they didn't necessarily think, Oh, my, my career path is going to be, I'm going to work in it, and I'm going to become an architect. In your case, in fact, maybe that didn't even exist, right?

So would you say that was kind of the first time that you thought, Ah, this is the industry for me. Paul Preiss Oh.

Yeah. So, you know, the my first statement is about my every, every one of my first comes from a following that line of passion and bump into something else that creates that level of passion or higher and literally.

So I took my Japanese degree and my work at human code over to Dell, as it took that to Dell Japan, where I then got my first Chief Architect title.

But I I had wanted to live in Japan since I was 12, right, and read James Pavel famous novel on on Japanese culture, Shogun, right? And so to me, that guiding star is everything, and everything else just goes by the wayside, yeah?

And that is that how I, how I got there, but it is very, like a lot of people in our businesses, it's just driven by an inner vision,

Matt Egan yeah, for sure. And, and I think also sometimes it's that first time you think I'm good at this, you know, or like, I'm adding value, you know. And was that something, I guess, at human code?

Maybe you've you found your feet in that sense, you know, or was that later on, but like, you really felt like you were, you were able to add value.

Paul Preiss So I have the, I think, I think a lot of architects suffer from, and a lot of IT leaders suffer from the, you know, deep fear that you're not good at things, yeah, right, that you can't know it all.

There is so much to know in our field. I've always considered myself more of an adventure and an explorer than anything else. And so for me, it's never about what I what I do. Well, it's what, it's what I'm what am I experiencing, growing and accomplishing next.

So it's much more about a and it's always that guiding direction, and less about I knew that I love to work, right? And I love my work, and I love the way that technology creates deep like, you know, obviously we build the modern cathedrals, yeah, right.

And that, that passion, that drive, when you think about that building, drive of I'm going to make something beautiful for someone, I think that is even more important me than the self recognition in it.

I much more feel like I have to see this vision come to life, and that's just, that's just and everything else, and just take a second, second seat to that back seat to that that's

Matt Egan really interesting, and also something that I think you hear from successful people, often but, and you kind of touched on this, but there was some changes there, right?

You've got you, you've found your feet, a human code, you've gone to Dell at a certain point, and within Dell, your roles change. What was the what was, and maybe there wasn't. But was there a first promotion or a first job?

Uh, change, job, role change that, you know, was prompted by something, maybe chasing that passion, but like, really felt like, you know, it was, it was the right thing, right? Like, like, what like, we're finding our group.

Paul Preiss That job in Japan set me on to the greatest adventure I would consider of my professional life. The I when I got to Japan, I was a development manager, and it was about getting to Japan.

But what happened is, is I got absorbed in Dell's mission and goals and achievements, not in their not in their IT department, but actually in their marketing and sales. So back in 1999 I was already effectively owning an online store, before Amazon, before people were doing right?

So I had a customer facing technology that I was effectively responsible for, and I had and that's when the passion and drive took over.

I was going to make an online experience for our customers that fundamentally altered the way that Dell sold computers and and that was a fun that was just a completely different job than anybody in it ever had right at that time. Back then, it was an enabler.

This was front of the house, direct sales to customers. And so what the change was, is I both almost got fired and got the best promotion of my life, because I built the new online store for Dell Japan.

And it was horrible because I did not know quality attributes and all these things that great architects have to know, right? But, and so it was.

It was a terrible release because it was so unstable, yeah, we stabilized it over a couple of weeks, and I was just this, you know, in an inch, an inch, and sleeping under the desk, the whole war story, right? Yeah. And then we got it stabilized.

But it was such a. Powerful engine that I was able to personally champion a business case for the development of what would today be considered an AI recommendation engine, right? It would be Amazon recommendations, Netflix recommendations. Well, that didn't exist.

So we used fuzzy logic and all these great things, and it cost us next to nothing to do the project because of the structure of the system, and that the basically the VP of Marketing, the effective general manager of Dell, walked over to my desk and said, What job do you want?

And I said, Yeah, Chief Architect 27 and had no idea what I was doing, right? So it was hair on fire, you know, 100 hour weeks, you know, at least, you know, I ate, drank, slept, you know, believed in Dell technology, yeah.

So that, that transformation from dev manager to front of the house, technology, Chief Architect, driving customer behavior was the quintessential moment of my career. I think, outside of founding Isa,

Matt Egan that's and there's so much in that, Paul, it's really interesting, right? So I mean your story there, I think the story of almost every kind of successful online, certainly online e commerce situation from that period would probably be something right, because nobody knew right.

We were all kind of stumbling into this, I think about my own career in terms of purely from a journalistic perspective. I used to run the website as a side show, as a hobby kind of thing. And then here, you know, 25 years later, right? That's why.

But I think also, like, you know, you know, there are echoes there, to your point about Amazon, Netflix, like that. Building the thing gave you the architecture from which other things could be built, right? But that wasn't the goal in the first place.

We were trying to get a store up, right?

But you ended up developing infrastructure that could and then the other thing that's super interesting there is one of the in fact, the last question I'll ask you in the first section is about that the first great boss, or the first mentor, or the first person in your career who really helps kind of shape where you are.

And I don't know the VP in this story sounds like they're pretty smart, because they recognized something that you know somebody else might have fired you in that situation, whereas it sounds very

Paul Preiss intelligent man, but he had absolutely nothing on a gentleman. But no, I shouldn't say it that way. They were both wonderful, but my true mentor was was a CTO, and who is now currently the chief architect of the Mayo Clinic, is a guy named Steve Damon.

Steve is an ex, well, is a theoretical physicist by training and preference, but a CTO because, well, you don't make, you didn't make much money in theoretical physics. But the fascinating things about Steve are just he is effectively a hobby farmer.

Lives, lived out on a farm with no power at one point, running water, yeah, like and would go into work to do a CTOs job in his in his overalls. You know he he was to put Steven in perspective, he is just brilliant, tough as nails and brilliant.

So working with him and a gentleman by the name of Chris Ross, who's the CIO of Mayo Clinic, I learned real architecture working with the two of them, right in the sense that it was deeply, deeply.

We were very much into the fundamental theory of architecture back then and figuring out how to make great architectures work. And that was a very intense process, because they have minds that are

Matt Egan huge, yeah, yeah, global, global quality minds. I mean, one of the reasons why we do this show is, you know what? There are such a number of really interesting people in it, and Steve and your other colleagues definitely sound like that. So this is amazing, Paul.

I really appreciate it. What an interesting story. But it can't all be good stuff, right? So we're going to move to section two now, which we call first fails, because we're not only here for the good stuff.

And actually, when I think about my own professional life, I've learned a lot more from my mistakes, you've already spoken about this than I have from my success. So would you say, I mean, one of our questions is the first big mistake.

Maybe that was some of the mistakes you made in the setting up of that online online store.

But, you know, is there anything else you can think of that that maybe keeps you awake at night or or maybe actually led on to better things through kind of making the error kind of thing,

Paul Preiss so that, I mean, it's such a it's such an important.

Point, because failure is the systemic management of failure is how we innovate, right the there's a wonderful gentleman out of out of Ireland, who I, who I interviewed, who talks a lot about how humans learn, and that failure is how we learn, right?

Doing It Wrong With guidance is the number one way you teach doctors. It's how you teach professionals around the world. You give them safe environments to do miniature failures until they get it right.

Innovation is all driven based off of the 99 Ways to not build a light bulb. You know, I think failure is a is a hard thing for me.

In that sense, I fail quite often, quite regularly, because I'm constantly trying to do something no one's ever done before and so so the store that I said was my first, that was my first true career failure, meaning I was exposed to being fired.

You know, when you work 100 hour weeks and you have great successes and things like that, you're just not used to that concept. Yes, and it made me realize how little I knew right about what I was doing, how little I really understood rigor.

So I went to work for Steve with the idea, with the word rigor in mind, right? So, what is rigor? How can I be a great architect and actually know what I'm doing and repeat success? Isa has been a constant, screaming failure in a million every day, right?

I like to say, you know, we get called the best kept secret in in architecture all the time because we we don't know how to market, right? How do you market as a nonprofit? How do you, you know?

How do you build communities of architects who sometimes like to be around each other, but we're called an argument for a reason, you know, so, so, yeah, so I didn't know anything about being an architect when I became one.

I didn't know anything about being a, you know, a company, a CEO when I became one. I didn't know anything about being a community leader when I became one.

So, I mean, I could list the failures, but what happens out of that is, you build resilience, and Success takes a lot more resilience than failure does. In my opinion, yes, failure is easy compared to success.

Matt Egan Yeah, although, I mean, I think the point I would put to that is, you know, one does meet from time to time, people who have never experienced or acknowledged failure and and that is, that is something that's lacking in there, you know, like, you cannot fully, professionally develop or personally develop until you've experienced and acknowledged and you articulated that beautifully.

Like, but you learn so much more from from because one of the things you learn, and this is a question we like to ask as well, but I think, you know, you may have covered off it to a certain extent, but it's like the first time you realize that something you thought you knew may be wrong, kind of thing.

That's kind of a key moment. Like, can you think of anything like that in your sort of professional life?

Paul Preiss So, so, so again, because of exploration. So you go into an exploration as prepared as you can be, and then you realize there was no way to be prepared. I kind of liken it to when I became a father, right?

You know, you have your marriage, right? It's you go in trying to be you go in prepared for all the wrong things, yes, right?

When you look back once you get used to exploration, if you want to innovate, truly innovate, there's a, there was a great scene in in, I think it's Oh, the movie about the president. And it was not a movie. It was the series, a West Wing, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Leo says, you know, you gotta admire Sam. He failed spectacularly, but he failed at full speed. You know, there was like a SAM sized hole in the wall when he got done.

You know, it was like, and I feel like that is me right in that, and that, that is what I encourage in people, is, yeah, if you're going to innovate, innovate hard. Go at it.

Create the culture that you need to create new ideas and realize that 95% of those ideas are going to fail.

Okay, so, but, but when I, when I think about failure, and what I've done like, what I've learned is, so, for example, we still don't know how to do communities of real professionals in it, right? We have no idea how to professionalize in it, none.

We have a skill shortage that is so large when I think of the actual comparison of the skills we needed in to do the things that are in the headlines. You. Yeah, and yet we have no concept of that, right? We have jobs. We have roles.

But you know that garage programmer concept, right? That that's not how you create an engineer in the world, right? You can't be a structural engineer because you built a couple of Lego things in your garage, right? You have to actually fundamentally prepare people.

So like this is a huge area that I've been exploring for decades and trying to understand the dynamics of the IT fields and how they work together. What is an engineer? What is an architect? What is a project manager? Where are the limits of their roles?

What do they need to know to be prepared? How do they deal with AI? How do we experiment with new technology? We literally have none of the institutions that I'm aware of, and there's so much there's just so much benefit that we get in other fields from those.

So I consider those to be my experimental playground, right? That's the stuff that gets me excited.

MIT is, what would it look like to actually run AI experiments from a business perspective, business technology perspective, so that we could, instead of, instead of having 90% failed business cases, we could have 95 90% failed experiments and 10% holy cow, big wins, right? Yeah, yeah.

Matt Egan That's definitely how it feels. Where we are right now.

Date stamping it in May 2025, around AI actually, is, is like people have felt their way towards something approaching what you're talking about, but are probably not taking full advantage of it, because we don't have that rigor around it, right?

Like, like, it's kind of like like, it's kind of like, we're going to write off all the projects from 24 we learned something, but it has to be ROI now.

And I do feel like, like, what you're talking about in terms of that rigor and structure around experimentation and failure is is just super important and lacking. And I wish you well, Paul, in completing your life's work and bringing that rigor to that process.

Paul Preiss Well, I think it's partnerships like this, in our in our and and these kind of episodes and these kinds of questions that we have for IT leaders out there, right?

I think that's the exciting conversation is, is, what does a mature what does it maturity look like for technologists, right? How do we want to shape the future? Because everybody does, it needs ROI.

Everybody needs to get return on their investments, and that's just as true in healthcare research as it is in in technology research. And so what the institutions of the future are going to look like, I think, are quite interesting.

As we as a species adapt, you know, I talk a lot about this. It's just, you see, these adaptations occur with humanity as as our technological advances occur, right? You know, everything from farming through industrial revolutions are not they're not clean transformations.

People talk about them like they're they were wonderful times. But there were just, you know, the Industrial Revolution was very hard on the species, right? So the technology revolution is, is got just as many ups as got downs.

And it's got the, you know, we are learning, as a group of humans, how we want to treat this thing. Do we want it to be completely wild west, kind of the way it is. Now. Do we want to have controlled experimentation in certain areas, you know?

Do we want to have, you know, degree programs and licenses for professionals? What, you know? Where does that, that final point, right? And I think this is really cool, because this actually directly affects the bottom line of every company.

And I think it's really a great story, because when you do it well, you win, right? Yeah, you win. You get huge rewards from effective technology innovation in a shipping company, in a you know, a retailer in a hospital,

Matt Egan well, and the alternative is also true, right? If you don't do it well, the chances are you won't exist, thrive and survive.

And to your point, like you know, our professional lives have coincided with an industrial revolution, and no one knows where the Industrial Revolution ends during the Industrial Revolution, right?

Like, like, there is a Charles Dickens out there who's writing our stories right now, but like, who's still being read in 100 200 years, is, it's going to be super interesting to know.

Paul Preiss You know, I think that really great. Our backwards looking view should be teaching us a little bit a little bit better, I think, right? I mean, we've spent billions of dollars on a micro services kind of thing, you know.

And I don't want to talk about the tech. It's not important what the tech is. It's that for a decade, we just spent huge numbers of dollars on on what we call transformation. And now we hit a point, and every.

He looks back and goes, oh, you know, maybe that wasn't the best, yeah, I could have spent on building cathedrals, right? Like,

Matt Egan yeah, no, for sure, it's always the way.

And again, it's like, it's why, as hard as it is, sometimes I do, often feel like, what an amazing time it is to sort of be alive and to work, but even, like, having that backwards projection, because history doesn't repeat itself, really, but patterns of behavior within history definitely do repeat themselves.

They just get faster. So, yeah, okay, thank you, Paul. I mean, like, I feel like we could really go on for hours and hours, as we often do when you and I speak, but I want to get to our section that we call quick fire firsts.

This is where we want to get to know you beyond the professional veneer. We want to find out about the real person. And to do that, I have actually commissioned my own team of architects to build a random question generator.

All you have to do, Paul is choose a number from between one and 13.

Paul Preiss One and 13. I'm going 13.

Matt Egan Okay, um, what was the first time you earned any kind of money? Tell us about that

Paul Preiss first time I earned any kind of money. I Hmm. I mean, I can tell you, the one that stood out for me that popped into my head is really that was fourth grade.

I was a lackluster student at best, because it was deeply uninterested in education without practical application, and my mom said she would give me 50 bucks if I got straight A's.

Matt Egan Oh, there you go. Little bit of bribery.

Paul Preiss 50 bucks to a fourth grader was a ridiculous amount of money. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so I got straight A's,

Matt Egan and that tells us something about motivation and incentives. I think

Paul Preiss she asked me what I would need to get to get straight A's. And I said, 50 bucks.

And she said, Okay, and so I got straight A now, you realize at the end what she told me, you realize at the end you didn't really work that hard at this? And I went, Yeah, I know, but

Matt Egan hard enough. I mean, I have to say the mistake your mother made there was asking the open question, right? Like, if I'm framing that towards my kids, I'm going to start low and negotiate up, kind of thing. But okay, okay, let's do one more.

Give me one more number between one and 13, and it can't be 13, so let's say a number between one seven.

Ah, tell me about and this is interesting for you, Paul, specifically tell me about the first place you would go right now if money was no object, Paul Preiss Antarctica.

Matt Egan Yeah,

Paul Preiss okay, through Argentina. There's a little boat that leaves out of Argentina.

So I would go through Argentina, I would spend some time there, and then I would take the boat down to Antarctica, spend, I think it's a Wednesday, I think it's a 10 to 20 day trip, and come back Argentina. And is that Ellen, for a little bit,

Matt Egan is that something you've done before, something you've wanted, because you're a very well traveled person, so

Paul Preiss it's, it's the only continent I haven't been to. Oh, there you go. So okay, it's if I had, if I, if I couldn't do that one, then I would probably take a two month tour of Africa.

Matt Egan Yeah, yeah. They both sound like extremely interesting and rewarding experiences, and I am saying that as someone who spends their life sitting in this shed speaking to interesting people, so maybe I should get out and get myself down to, okay, brilliant.

So let's move on to Section four, which is our first and final thoughts. Okay, the first question I want to ask you here is, what's the first piece of advice you would give to someone who's just starting out right now? Paul Preiss Rigor?

Learn. Rigor. Yeah. I don't care if you're an engineer or project manager or people, we are, we, we, we talk about the sort of dumbing down effect that we're worried about.

I don't think that's going to be an issue, because the when things go wrong in this level of a connected world, it will be at a level that we will need 10s of 1000s of more people who know the depth, right?

So all great learning comes from understanding, or at least deeply understanding, how to do things well, right? So learn the rigor of your trait, whether you're a project manager. Yeah, an architect, IT manager.

Understand what a benefit is, understand what a requirement is, understand what a pattern is, apply them.

Learn how they connect together, learn how that that they impact each other, and then learn that again, to the degree at which you can master your topic area, you know, I see a lot of people say, learn the new language of, you know, of professionalism is learning, and that's true.

That's been true historically. That's not, that's not a new concept. I completely agree. But we have fewer and fewer people focusing on depth and rigor, yeah, and so that, to me, those people will never be look for a job.

They will never look to succeed, because when you understand how things work together, you are always essential

Matt Egan and well. And I think you know, it's interesting. Your fourth grade story like this is one of many ways where I think you're probably better than me, Paul, because that took me until my final year of college, right?

But like is the moment where you know, you realize actually, the value is in the rigor of the learning, right? It's not even about the the results in the end. And I was, I was studying drama, English, literature, right?

It wasn't about rigor in the sense of understanding how things work, but it was, but it was do the work, even if no one's watching.

Because, like, in the end, like anybody who succeeds in anything, whatever you're doing, DIY around the house, parenting to your point, like, I feel like, without coming all overall kind of high performance podcast, right? I feel like that there is reward in the rigor.

And actually, anybody who ever achieves anything, they've put the rigor into whatever that thing is. So that's that. I think that's really good advice.

Paul Preiss Yeah, I think you nailed it. You also said, you said that the same reason that athletes train, they're not competing against other athletes, they're competing against themselves.

Matt Egan Oh, yeah, totally Yeah, which is why I no longer play much golf, because I keep losing that's a whole different story.

Paul Preiss Andplay golf with me, I will make you feel great about yourself.

Matt Egan That's what we're looking for. What's the first thing Paul, that you would want people to know about our industry from outside that they might not know.

Paul Preiss It's time to take it very, very seriously as a business. It is time to realize that, hey, we don't understand that. And you know, you geeks need to just go figure that out while we go off on our merry operation sales.

You know, you know, is done. Society has to understand how to deal with tech, and it has to take it its technical professionals quite seriously, right? It is.

It is absolutely time for the world to stop giving technology of PaaS, like it's the cool new gadget, because everything we do depends on it now,

Matt Egan yeah, yeah. One of the things we say with CIOs, or CIOs often kind of repeat back is, you know, it's not that there's a business strategy and IT strategy, there's a strategy, and they're essentially the same thing, right at this point, yeah, brilliant.

Okay, Paul, my only non first question is my final question. Like, like, Have you got any final thoughts for our viewers and listeners today?

Paul Preiss Just first, I just want to thank you for having me on the program. This was absolutely fun, like, one of the funnest interviews I've ever done, and, and I'm very, very impressed with the work that you're doing, and Foundry and in the magazines and the podcasts.

I love the program. The second thing is, you know, this is my message to the world, is you need professional IT people, you need to start seriously considering how you create really talented technologists and not just the cheapest ones, right?

That's what I've been after for a very long time. And I would be remiss if I didn't say it out there, and I don't. I don't I don't mean just more business. I mean all businesses. Yeah,

Matt Egan yeah, no, hard agree here. And many, many thanks, Paul. This has been a great conversation. So my, my, thanks to Paul price, and thanks for all of you watching or listening to first person the show where we meet the most interesting people in it.

I hope you agree Paul is one of those, and learn from them what makes them tick by focusing only on their first and I feel like today we've learned an awful lot through that I am your host, Matt Egan asking you to enjoy, like and subscribe wherever you find us.

And again, if you are an interesting person in it, do let us know, because you might be our next First Person. Thank you, Paul and goodbye.