Episodes
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EP 78 - New Years Resolutions
The start of a New Year is a time when people make resolutions to make changes or improvements in their life. While I'm mildly successful in following through with these resolutions, I do think about a restart or a new beginning each new year. On my list each year, the usual ones like lose…
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EP 77 - An Era Has Passed
It was June of 1986. At that point in my career, I had gratefully worked in the industry for ten years. And I remember thinking to myself that I had found my calling, and I could see myself retiring from this industry. My phone rang. I picked it up, and I immediately recognized the voice on the...
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EP 76 - An Important Message For NISC Employees
Vern: More than 44 years ago, when I started my career, I never imagined that someday I would have the opportunity to sit in the CEO’s chair. I was a wet behind the ears, idealistic, naive newbie to the industries. I knew very little about the Utility and Telecommunication and even less about the...
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EP 75 - Perseverance, Determination, & Relationships
For the past 50 years, NISC marketing and industry personnel have been driving down I-94 through Montana. About 150 miles from the North Dakota border is a small town by the name of Forsyth. A rugged Montana town sustained by local farming and ranching. It's a part of Montana where miles upon…
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EP 74 - Grateful for the Leadership Team
The year was 1992 and I was given the opportunity by our board of directors to be NCDC CEO. I was young, inexperienced, and frankly very naive. As I was sitting in Ray Clouse's office on his last day as CEO. He gave me one final piece of sage advice. "Dosch" he said "this is a damn lonely job." I...
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EP 73 - Red Letter Day - Gratitude for Employees
During our 50 year history, we have experienced and successfully navigated through an amazing transformation of the telecommunications industry as they went from plain old telephone service to delivering robust broadband. In the utility industry, we have watched and assisted in the transmission...
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EP 72 - A Decision on VP of Member & Industry Position
At NISC, we have always taken succession planning very seriously. Each January, the Vice President group and I update a comprehensive matrix that identifies at least three possible candidates for every team lead manager senior manager vice president and the CEO of NISC. The succession matrix is...
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EP 71 - A Conversation With Jim Collins
For those of you who have been at NISC for a while, you have heard me talk about Jim Collins and the book Good to Great. I first read this book in 2001 the year that it was published and I must say that of all the business books and all the authors I have read, in my career, This one made a...
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EP 70 - Expanding the NISC Solution
NISC is an organization that is dedicated to delivering enterprise technology solutions to our member-owners. These mission-critical components are essential for our member-owners to operate their business in the most efficient manner, improving their customer experience and maintaining their...
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EP 69 - Only the Paranoid Survive
Over the years, no doubt, you've heard me use the phrase "only the paranoid survive". It's a popular quote that has been credited to Andy Grove, the first CEO of Intel. But what you may not know is that is only part of the quote the entire quote is "success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds...
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EP 68 - Annual Meeting Musings
A couple of weeks ago the vice president group and I spent several days with our Board of Directors for our quarterly board meeting and also our annual strategic planning session. We left those meetings exhausted but encouraged grateful and determined. I can't tell you how thankful I am to have...
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EP 67 - State of the Cooperative
State of the Cooperative - January 2019 Introduction 2018 was a year of success and milestones for our cooperative. It was also a year of celebration as we recognized our 50th Anniversary. Preparations for this event included an extensive effort to digitize and catalog photos, videos and other...
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EP 66 - The Gift of Job Security
The other day I was walking through the cafeteria and bumped into an employee that I have long admired. I describe this employee as hardworking, engaged, always grateful. He's an interesting success story. He came to NISC without a degree and began in a very entry level position and without…
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EP 65 - Stability in a Time of Rapid Change
Recently I received a note from Mary Ellen who drew my attention to a post that we did back in the days when we actually did blog posts rather than these audio BlogCasts as we do today. It warmed my heart to read this blog that was first posted in September of 2013. Much has changed since that...
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EP 64 - No Ego
Over the years we have made a point, as a Vice President group, to periodically select a book that is required reading by the entire group and then discussed what we've learned from the book and try to figure out how it would apply to improve NISC. Some of the great books we've read over the…
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EP 63 - How the Mighty Fall: A Case Study
Thomas Edison was born in 1847 and died in 1931. He truly was an American inventor and a businessman. He was often described as America's greatest inventor. His inventions included the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the long-lasting practical electric light bulb which had a widespread...
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EP 62 - MIC General Session Experience
My career at NISC has provided many amazing experiences and opportunities and for those milestones, I am very grateful. But at the top of my list, without exception, is the opportunity to represent our organization during the general session of our Member Information Conference. It's hard for me…
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EP 61 - Gratitude vs Entitlement
There seems to be a constant stream of articles and news stories regarding the current workforce and their sense of entitlement. Rather than appreciating the opportunity to have a job, like our parents and grandparents did, it is said that employees today act as if it is their right to have...
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EP 60 - Hard is Soft and Soft is Hard
Most of you know that I have a passion for reading and over the years I have learned a great deal from authors like Tom Peters, Jim Collins, and Simon Sinek. From my years here at NISC and what I have learned from my readings I would summarize my entire wisdom, of my career, with the following...
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EP 59 - Only the Paranoid Survive
One of the most important and impactful quotes I have come across in my career is “only the paranoid survive” a statement by the Andy Grove the first CEO of the Intel Corporation, arguably one of the most successful and impactful technology companies in history. We have used this quote many times...
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EP 58 - It's a Red Letter Day Thanks to You!
As I was driving through our city this morning, I saw a billboard announcing that a particular hospital in our city was the very best hospital in the state. A little further down the road was an eating establishment advertising that they, and only they, were the home of the world's best…
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EP 57 - Laser-Focused on iVUE Connect
For the last several years we have followed a strategic planning process where we identify between seven and 10 major strategic initiatives. These are projects or goals for our organization to be accomplished within the next fiscal year. It's been a very good process and one that we've been able…
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EP 56 - The Blessings of a Long Career
Every grade school kid has a vision of making it to the pros. And every parent with what they believe is a prodigy child firmly believes that that is a distinct possibility. But the facts would indicate otherwise. Of all high school seniors only .03 percent will eventually have the opportunity to...
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EP 55 - Relationships And Trust
I must admit the older I get, the more and more I have come to realize that there is so much more that I need to learn about appropriately and effectively managing an organization. Much of what I have learned about leadership is from great examples of leaders in my own life starting with my…
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EP 54 - Lessons Learned From Disney Experience
I normally do not like to bore you with aspects of my personal life, but last week I experienced a trip to Disney World with all five grandchildren. Some of you with the blessings of grandchildren in your life will understand the magic, no pun intended of this type of trip, and others will...
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EP 53 - Hitting Refresh at NISC
Recently I picked up a new book by Satya Nadella. Hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. He is the current CEO of Microsoft and the name of his book is "Hit Refresh." I found his book to be very fascinating and although the scope of Microsoft is much different and broader than NISC, there are many...
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EP 52 - An Uncommon 50 Year Partnership
You have heard me say many times that ours’s is a relationship business. Yes, we are a technology company and our products are comprised of the intellectual property of our software and technology that our enterprise solutions deliver to the market. Every company I know has a mission statement or…
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EP 51 - Introducing the Strategy Committee
Almost 10 years ago we made one of the most important organizational shifts in our history. It was the formation of NISC's Operations Committee or OC as it has come to be known. The purpose of this internal committee was to establish a cross-divisional representation, which was tasked with…
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EP 50 - 50 Years - Grateful For YOUR Accomplishments
Our fiftieth BlogCast on our fiftieth anniversary. This is such an amazing coincidence that we would be delivering our fiftieth BlogCast on the eve of NISC's fiftieth anniversary. I do believe that sometimes things happen for a reason. Well this has been quite a week. It began with our travels to...
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EP 49 - Acceleration Strategy - Impact on Products
VERN: Welcome. This is the tenth in a series of podcasts that we've been doing for our employees. My name is Vern Dosch and with me today is David Bonnett, the Vice President of Product within NISC. This is a relatively new discipline that we have in our organization, very much defined by David…
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EP 48 - Acceleration Strategy - Impact on Our Strategies
VERN: Hello and welcome to the ninth in a series of podcasts that we are doing for the employees of NISC. The main purpose of these podcasts is to help our employees understand a pretty significant piece of strategy that has been implemented and approved, and now we're tasked with carrying it out...
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EP 46 - Acceleration Strategy - Impact on Members
VERN: Hello, this is Vern Dosch, and this is the seventh in a series of blogcasts that we're doing to help our employees understand what the acceleration strategy means for the respective divisions within NISC. I've had a chance, Jasper, to talk to six of the other Vice Presidents, and we…
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EP 47 - Acceleration Strategy - Impact on RD&Q
VERN: Hello and welcome. This is Vern Dosch, and this is the eighth in a series of podcasts that we're doing for our employees. The topic is the acceleration plan that has been put in place that has been approved by our Board of Directors. Literally this plan will affect every single NISC…
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EP 45 - Acceleration Strategy - Impact on Cybersecurity
VERN: Hello and welcome to the sixth in a series of podcasts that we're doing to help our employees understand the impact of what we're referring to as the acceleration strategy. And with me today I have Jeff Nelson. Jeff has kind of a wide variety of responsibilities as a Vice President within...
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EP 44 - Acceleration Strategy - Impact on Employees
VERN: Hello. This is Vern Dosch and welcome to the fifth in a series of podcasts talking about the acceleration strategy here at NISC. You know, Kari, thinking about it from the standpoint of an employee, you hear the last couple podcasts talking about how this acceleration strategy affects...
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EP 43 - Acceleration Strategy - Impact on Implementations
VERN: Welcome. This is Vern, and this is the fourth in a series of podcasts that we're doing to try to help our employees understand the ramifications and the strategy associated with what we're referring to as acceleration. You know, Ed, I'm so pleased to be with you today. We had an opportunity...
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EP 42 - Acceleration Strategy - Impact on Support
VERN: Well welcome to this third in a series of podcasts that relate specifically to what we're referring to as the Acceleration Program here at NISC. With me is Doug Remboldt. Doug heads up all of the support areas of the service areas within NISC, whether it's accounting, billing, engineering…
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EP 41 - Acceleration Strategy - Financial Impact
VERN: Well welcome. With me today is Tracy Porter, CFO. Longtime CFO, can I say that Tracy? TRACY: Yes you can. VERN: Twenty-five years, is that right? TRACY: Just hit 25. VERN: Just hit 25 years, that's a milestone. And so Tracy we're doing a series of podcasts and the first one we released to…
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EP 40 - Moving From Defense to Offense
During the second week in January we had a quarterly board meeting as well as two days of strategic planning with our board of directors and our vice president group. Our strategic planning session is always very intense with a series of presentations delivered by our vice presidents on topics…
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EP 39 - Life Changing Resolutions for 2018
It’s New Year's Eve. And time once again for our traditional New Year's resolutions. And at a time when so much of our attention here at NISC is focused on coaching, leadership, deadlines, marketing wins, our bottom line, recruiting and onboarding new employees, development schedules, our…
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EP 38 - Christmas Greeting from Vern
CEO Vern Dosch talks about the past year and pauses to give thanks over this Christmas season as we head into our 50th year. If you would like to receive these BlogCasts on your mobile device, you can subscribe using podcast software on your phone with the URL: http://niscmedia.libsyn.com/rss.…
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EP 37 - Culture Matters - Lessons Learned from Uber
CEO Vern Dosch talks about how how Uber's recent actions has caused shaken the foundation of their culture and potentially the loyalty of its customer base.
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EP 36 - A Lasting Legacy
CEO Vern Dosch talks about the impact that Brian Wolf is still having in our organization to this day. If you would like to receive these BlogCasts on your mobile device, you can subscribe using podcast software on your phone with the URL: http://niscmedia.libsyn.com/rss. New episodes will...
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EP 35 - The Art of Celebration
CEO Vern Dosch talks about all of the reasons we have to celebrate, especially the launch of our new iVUE Connect Phase II at our first member site! If you would like to receive these BlogCasts on your mobile device, you can subscribe using podcast software on your phone with the URL:...
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EP 34 - It's a Red Letter Day
CEO Vern Dosch talks about all of the recent events and milestones that make this day a Red Letter Day! If you would like to receive these BlogCasts on your mobile device, you can subscribe using podcast software on your phone with the URL: http://niscmedia.libsyn.com/rss. New episodes will...
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EP 33 - NISC Fire Fighters
CEO Vern Dosch talks about the individuals ("Fire Fighters") who have stepped up in times of crisis here at NISC and how the rest of our employees can support and sustain that effort in the future. If you would like to receive these BlogCasts on your mobile device, you can subscribe using podcast...
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EP 32 - A Culture of Gratitude
CEO Vern Dosch thanks employees for a strong and successful year, and emphasizes the value in continuing to raise the bar for the benefit of our Members. If you would like to receive these BlogCasts on your mobile device, you can subscribe using podcast software on your phone with the URL:...
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EP 30 - The True Meaning of Labor Day
CEO Vern Dosch reflects on what Labor Day means to him and to our employees here at NISC. If you would like to receive these BlogCasts on your mobile device, you can subscribe using podcast software on your phone with the URL: http://niscmedia.libsyn.com/rss. New episodes will automatically be...
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EP 29 - Life On the Other Side
CEO Vern Dosch reflects back on the former employees that recently attended our first annual Alumni Luncheons and the impact that their loyalty and hard work has made on the environment and culture we know as employees today at NISC. If you would like to receive these BlogCasts on your mobile...
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EP 28 - Winning the Cybersecurity Battle
CEO Vern Dosch talks about the role that each of us play here at NISC when it comes to winning the ongoing battle in the world of cyber security. If you would like to receive these BlogCasts on your mobile device, you can subscribe using podcast software on your phone with the URL:...