Meet the Team: Ryan Flud
Reading Time: 5 minutes
Ryan Flud
VP of Project Management
Years at Telcion: 18
What are your main responsibilities at Telcion?
My main responsibility is the project management group that we have here and dealing with all of the projects, whether it be on the cabling side or on the technical side—managing all of the commitments that we have for delivery of our services.
What was your first job?
My first job was delivering newspapers for The Modesto Bee. I guess you could call that a job. That was the first thing I was being paid to do, and that was a wonderful job that got me up at about 4:30 or 5am every morning, 365 days a year, for 3 years. Get up, get the newspapers off the porch, fold them, put them in the bags, throw it on the bike, and go deliver your route every morning.
What energizes you at work?
Solving problems. I actually get bored when things work out exactly like they’re supposed to and it’s the same thing over and over. You work to create a process to get things that didn’t work smoothly to actually start working smoothly. So you work through that, and you’ve got all these stages to get through it, and once it starts working smoothly, then when those things come up you end up doing it and it’s the same thing over and over again. And that’s where the interest starts going away, you know? So when things are challenged, that holds more interest because it’s not the normal. It’s not the expected. And it forces you to be creative in your problem solving and your solutions that you come up with.
If you could snap your fingers and become an expert in something, what would it be?
It actually wouldn’t have anything to do with work here. It would be fabrication—making things. Everybody who knows what I enjoy doing in my spare time and that’s building just about anything. Wood or metal fabrication or building some one-off something or another just to create. So I enjoy doing that. And if I could wish, on that end of it, it would be an expert in the process of fabrication, which is a very deep topic. And that could go in many different directions, but that’s what it would be.
What’s the best advice you were ever given? Who was it from?
This is a tough one. I have a lot of moments like that where that’s great advice, I’ve used it lifelong in my career, and trying to pick one was difficult. But one of the first ones that jumps to my mind is one that’s been with me since I think I was 18. It was my first career job that was before I got into technology. This was the owner of the company, and I remember going into his office—me at 18 thinking I should just waltz into the president’s office and tell him something that I observed that was wrong that we needed to do something about. And his response to me—and I’ve never forgotten it—was, “Okay, what’s the solution?” And my response to that was, “I don’t have one.” And that was his point. He knew I didn’t have one, and he looked at me and said, “You know, I have 50 people around here that will tell me what’s wrong with something, but I have very few that will tell me what to do about it.”
So that stuck with me that if you’re going to identify problems, you need to identify solutions. Or at least make some effort to find some solution. Simply giving somebody a problem isn’t all that helpful.
What would we most likely find you doing on the weekend?
Well if it’s not building something, it’s just being with my family. And I’ve always done that—I don’t tend to do things without them. So if I’m going somewhere, they’re with me. If I’m not going somewhere, they’re generally with me, so you know, that’s usually what I’m doing, just being with family. Whether it’s doing a day trip, or staying at home, or having people over and getting together as a family, that’s usually what I’m doing.
What advice would you give to your teenage self?
When I finally made the decision—and I guess I still made it when I was a teenager but I wish I’d made this decision earlier in my teens—and that is to not coast. When I was in my early teens, I did what little I had to do to get by. Whatever the minimal thing was in school to get by. It was so simple to just get by. I chose to do the bare minimum, which basically to me felt like doing nothing. And so I didn’t ever have to do anything and it was simple. That set me back in my growth. I didn’t know that at the time. It just ended up being something that I did and by the time I was out of high school then it was, okay now you’ve got to go actually do something with your life, so you better get to work.
What’s something you’ve done, but will never do again?
That would be night diving—scuba diving, at night. I did that once so I could say that I had done it and I wasn’t afraid to do it (though I was terrified to do it). But jumping in the water when all the divers that were already down and their flashlight beams are the only thing that you can see in the black of the night. Because, I mean, you’re in the middle of the ocean. Jumping in there, it is as black as anything you’ve ever seen and all you can see is wherever your flashlight beam touches. And dropping into the water and going 60 feet down was amazing and terrifying at the same time.
What book are you reading now?
I am currently reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. As the name implies, it’s about habits and building good habits. And the primary thing is making small changes to get you great results. You’re not making monumental shifts or very difficult habits to produce, but you’re making slight changes that continuously improve with time, and that’ll build into big change. It’s actually a really good book.
Thank you, Ryan!