Episode 89 | Using AI and Data Science to Differentiate Companies’ Capabilities with Oleg Chernyshev

Oleg Chernyshev  00:00

Our goal as chief officers to create the environment and condition to let people bring themselves into the project and bring their ideas and motivated work into the project. Only this will lead to a success, no matter how structured you are, what processes you have. But the people is actually the most important thing you should care of.

Voiceover  00:03

Welcome to the “Lead at the Top of Your Game” podcast, where we equip you to more effectively lead your seat at any employer, business, or industry in which you choose to play. Each week, we help you sharpen your leadership acumen by cracking open the playbooks of dynamic leaders who are doing big things in their professional endeavors. And now, your host, leadership tactics, and organizational development expert, Karan Ferrell-Rhodes.

Karan Rhodes  00:37

Well, welcome back to the podcast everyone. And thanks for joining another episode designed to help you better lead at the top of your game. Now, as you know, for season three, each month we’re featuring leaders who have fascinating roles in a particular profession or industry. And today’s episode is part of our special series featuring chief technology officers and VP level leaders who lead expansive technology teams. And now enjoy the show. Hello, my dear audience members and superstars, you know who you are. Thank you so much for joining another episode of the Lead at the Top of Your Game podcast, we are so honored to have on today’s show Oleg Chernyshev. And I probably murdered his name, but he is so gracious to let me at least get it out. But he is the Chief Technology Officer at use tech, which is a global corporation for the manufacturing, agricultural and oil and gas industries. Oleg has a unique expertise in AI and data science. I know I did not do us tech justice. So I’m gonna let him in just a moment go deeper, because they are doing some fantastic things. But another great thing is that he comes to us today from Serbia. This is our first time having a guest from Serbia. So I’m just tickled pink over that. And I can’t wait to delve into his perspectives on how to spearhead AI and lead high impact teams to deliver really innovative solutions for their clients and to really drive growth. So welcome to the podcast, Oleg.

Oleg Chernyshev  02:12

Thank you. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. I’m really, really excited to share our experience and expertise. What we did, yeah, we Usetech is a company who provide complex software based solutions, as already mentioned in different industries in manufacturing, in agriculture, oil and gas, retail bank in other industries, and our solutions, as we all know and as our current markets dictates based on the all modern technologies, it’s of course, it’s artificial intelligence everywhere. And we try to implement the solutions in most of our cases for our clients. I’m in Serbia right now, with my family, I have three kids, and really happy to work for Usetech for our company and to bring these technologies to our clients.

Karan Rhodes  03:13

That’s fantastic. We’re so happy to have you. And before we get even deeper into Usetech, what do you and your family love to do in Serbia or during your downtime if there’s any ever downtime because in most CTS they’ll have a lot of downtime, but we’d love to hear a little bit about what you all like to do for fun.

Oleg Chernyshev  03:35

Yeah, I mean, time with my family. We like to travel so we travel a lot across the world and a lot recently we trying to explore the Serbia it’s small country, but it’s nice country so you can travel you can experience different things in nature in even in mountains. It’s beautiful country, I enjoy it.

Karan Rhodes  03:58

Oh, wonderful.

Oleg Chernyshev  03:59

Personally, I also love sport, and I’m playing squash. You know, this is a really interesting game. So I started playing like eight years ago and actually I’m originally from Russia and I am kind of semi professional squash player. My ranking in Russia is 65 in was in the in the best time I played.

Karan Rhodes  04:24

Ah! That’s amazing

Oleg Chernyshev  04:25

I love this game. It’s very interesting. I recommend everybody to try it.

Karan Rhodes  04:30

Okay, I’m gonna go ahead and get tried to get your autograph now, because if you’re that high, right, you’re gonna be a superstar. That’s amazing. Well, thanks so much for sharing like that. So let’s get back to talk a bit more about User tech. And first of all, we just want to thank you because this is part of our series is speaking to Chief Technology Officers and being a Chief Technology Officer officer for such a high growth company right now. What are some of the Top challenges that you’re facing right now, or maybe either challenges or trends in the market that you’re, you and your teams are having to attack,

Oleg Chernyshev  05:10

there’s a lot of challenges, right? Because there are a lot of innovations coming. And you have to always kind of be prepared to be open for the innovations and to collect all the new technologies and new things which are coming to adopt it quickly, especially for this, like a large language models like this GPT, which everywhere right now, but you have to be very quick to adopt and to usually kind of start using it not to be afraid of it, and use it effectively in your work because it gives you competitive advantages, very high competitive advantages. But the biggest challenge actually, is to have a good team, and to lead your team to explore and propose the ideas, because any assets, we have any company, it’s actually the main assets, it’s our team, our people, because the expertise in their brains, right, so they produce a solution and our goal as chief officers to create the environment and condition to let people bring themselves into the project and bring their ideas and motivated work into the project. Only this will lead to a success, no matter how structured you are, what processes you have. But the people is actually the most important thing you should care of.

Karan Rhodes  06:42

I love that. And I totally agree. Because your team and your people and their expertise is what’s going to drive the company success. And yours to you know, quite selfishly, as a C suite leader. And I’m curious about talent, because I know in the States, we’re at a record low of unemployment. So it’s really hard to find especially skilled talent in the tech space on those unique aspects that are that you need. How do you is your is a use Tech’s group across the world? You have team members across the world? Or how do you find top talent that is at the cutting edge that that does help drive that innovation, key to your success?

Oleg Chernyshev  07:27

Yes. Is really kind of a huge problem, not only to find, but also to keep people within the company, right. So this is a special threat strategy, you should elaborate and most big players on the market do it. And we have actually the our own product, who can do this motivation, tracking, monitoring, to see what people like to do. Or maybe they have some issues in the project so they can rotate within your company. And that keeps them motivated. And they keep them inside the company and keeping people inside the company. We keep the knowledge within the company. But answering your question, yeah, this is difficult to find people in the market, right? So we do try different approaches. Yes, we are trying to extend our community. And to have the referrals to get the experience people write that people kind of explaining what we are doing in the company through the network, not only by the advertisement, and so on. And we also trying to get the students to train them and to prepare for the real products for the real life. And that Elsa give them the opportunity to grow within the company. Yes, as we originally as a company, we came from the Russia and Russia have a lot of kind of big brain resources. So we are we are hiring a lot in Russia. And we hire a lot outside of Russia as well, keeping the balance between the kind of the the skills of the people and the cost which we can bring to the clients projects. So we have this kind of balancing approach to get the proper resources in the proper time and keeping the knowledge within the company. But this is a real kind of all companies are fighting now for the resources. So this is really booming market, especially in artificial intelligence area. It’s not easy to kind of to find and prepare people. So that’s why we trying to create the environment where people stay with us for a long time. And we have I think our company’s 16 or 17 years already on the market. And we have kind of core which is for more than 10 years with us. And we are proud of it. Yeah.

Karan Rhodes  09:44

Well, congratulations to you all because that’s longevity, especially in the tech area. That has been my passion for years, though. Yeah. So that says a lot about the environment you all are creating. So let’s get into the business of East tech. So who is you Your target markets? Can you state those again? Like, who are your ideal clients that you serve? Is it enterprise level meaning Small, Medium Business, where’s your niche and audience?

Oleg Chernyshev  10:12

we work with different clients. But of course, ideal clients is kind of enterprise level clients with, with the kind of scientific intensive knowledge required, for instance, oil and gas, right. So we have like experience to apply heavily scientific models for the oil exploration. So we can create like a 3d maps of where the oil is, and where you should dig for the oil and get the maximum value from it. So like, yeah, we have a patterns for these. Yeah, and we have the people who actually get these patterns. So we can apply solutions, which no other companies have. So our target to provide kind of very customized, very specific solution for the client, not only software development, now software development, everybody can do. But we are creating the for the turnkey solution, like from start to the end, not to gathering all the all the requirements, understanding the client needs, development, everything, testing, deploying, and then getting the result, the value for the client. So this can but we also do this more projects as well, if we see that this is a kind of opportunity for us to elaborate, or to maybe to discover some ideas, some new technologies, and so on. So we are kind of very, very dynamic company. And we are kind of doing a wide range of projects,

Karan Rhodes  11:47

it sounds like it because I can imagine how, especially if you focus on differentiating yourself with the unique value that you know, you can get patents on. That’s what nobody else can provide, I guess a lot of what you do is kind of go and listen to those problems that the customer has, dude, maybe it’s some sort of customization. And then if you’re able to solve the problem, it seems like something that you could, I don’t say repeat, but you could go deep into that market, because you could offer something that the others can’t. Exactly, exactly. Is that how you all think about it,

Oleg Chernyshev  12:23

This is how it works, this is how it works. Yea, you create a project. And then you share this expertise across the market. And then other companies also think, oh, okay, we can use it as well. So this is our strategy, how we can collaborate and how we can develop the markets for ourself and proposes solutions.

Karan Rhodes  12:43

Fascinating. What’s another example of a project that you are working on that you can tell that’s not super secret.

Oleg Chernyshev  12:52

I have several projects, which are under NDA and I cannot share much. Yeah, but others projects, for instance,

Karan Rhodes  13:00

Well past projects then. I’m open to help them understand a little bit more.

Oleg Chernyshev  13:05

I can share some something from different industry, for instance, like a bike rental system. In one city, we created the this software and the platform, which can track the bikes rental, when the people using the mobile phone data using the GPS, you can see which bike around you. So you can take this bike you can write and then you can leave it where you want. And then the system actually tracks everything. And then what we do, actually, because it’s quite a sophisticated system, but it’s simple to implement. But what we do, we actually analyze the patterns of behavior of the people, because they write usually from one place to another place. And then you have to reallocate the bikes to different places like because they’re all will be collected in someone place. Yeah, and nobody will, will take it. And we apply these artificial intelligence and machine learning and prediction, how you should allocate the bikes by the machines by the cars, yeah, to bring them to the location where people can take them because we know where the people live, where they work, and how they actually do, how they behave, what they use the bikes for. And this actually brings a lot of value for the for the company who provide these bikes to increase the revenues not to let people use these bikes. So this is another type of industry and other type of solutions, which we are trying to apply all our knowledge not only to create the kind of mobile applications to find the bike here, but also to optimize the whole process of these companies.

Karan Rhodes  14:50

Interesting. So where are most of your clients located? Are they all over the world? Are they mostly in Europe or Asia or Are you know where your area of focus?

Oleg Chernyshev  15:03

For different countries. So worldwide? Most of us were Russian, originally Russian company, many of our clients are in Russia, of course. Yeah. And we use them as a sample of what we did. We did some big project for the electronic government, for instance, all workflow, all the interfaces, all UI UX approaches, and everything was done by us. So, but we also work who have many clients outside of Russia, internationally, I think even in U.S. we have several clients. Yeah. So it’s, it’s kind of, we all consider ourself as International.

Karan Rhodes  15:46

So anyone who’s interested in learning more, they could go directly to you all and have conversations. I’m curious, I held a an executive huddle. I call it huddle. Like it’s just an informal meeting, talking to executives a few weeks back, trying to see what was the top of mind for them. And what was interesting, of course, one of the biggest topics was aI really trying to understand how it’s impacting their industries, both now. And in the future, like how to stay on top of it. And to be honest with you, there were varying levels of understanding the technology. So I’m curious as a CTO who your company lives and breathes and thrives in this area? How do you help educate clients that aren’t as knowledgeable and experts as you have value of considering bringing some of your solutions to their organizations? Or do you all just wait until you find someone that’s already bought in, and then target them, because there’s an educational component I’m seeing out there in the market,

Oleg Chernyshev  16:52

It’s difficult to educate the some, but already many clients already come to this situation, when they see the how the artificial intelligence, different type of artificial intelligence can help them around the business. What we do, usually, we do kind of piloting, or kind of presenting what the artificial intelligence can do for them on some small projects. We did it recently for kind of last year, presenting some approaches, what we see beneficial for them. And we just hear, wow, wow, it’s not possible. And that’s really when they see me as such a pilot on kind of their data or near their data, and how they can benefit. I think this is the best way to kind of to educate. But of course, it requires some investments, right from you to prepare this pilot, to create the picture for them. But this is what we are also trying to do try to invest in the right clients in the right industries, to prepare the view, and actually, as you say, correctly, educate the clients that they should already start thinking ahead, starting to understand that the organization companies who will bring the artificial intelligence into their tools, it is still a tool. It’s not the magic it is to you should proper use it. But you have to start using it. I think this is the best way to actually to let them see how they can use it.

18:36

Oh, I love them. And for you. Oh, like because I know there’s a lot of responsibility on your shoulders as well in your role. I mean, what keeps you up at night about you your role in leading from elite technical perspective, or use tech?

Oleg Chernyshev  18:53

I’m a fan of technology. We actually own an age of kind of RF real revolutionising the industry is yeah, yes, this generative AI like GPT and all these large language models. It’s actually it’s like, I don’t know, inventing the electricity, right. So, we are in a new age. And we are we should bring it we should discover it. And this is an era which we should understand it get deeper and deeper and this action uranium this project when you see how can I earn benefits out of it. So these things makes me proud. And this is what keeps me wake up after in the morning. Okay, we do next project. Okay, come on. Let’s go.

Karan Rhodes  19:44

You’re on. Are you nervous about keeping AI under control? I know there’s a lot of talk in the world about it advancing faster than we’re ready for it to. What do you think? What are your thoughts on that?

Oleg Chernyshev  19:58

it’s not on that level yet? It is a tool.

Karan Rhodes  20:01

Yeah. But are you afraid of it getting to be that way?

Oleg Chernyshev  20:04

Is still hard to go still far too sound when some when we could be afraid of it? Because it’s already very smart. Very smart.

Karan Rhodes  20:12

Yeah, very.aran

Oleg Chernyshev  20:13

Still, you have to use it correctly, I mean, to understand how it works to make the good result, because it’s still it is still a tool. It’s like a hammer, right? So you should use hammer correctly, hammer is very effective tool. But if you don’t use it in the right way, it will kind of break something. But it’s still not not so smart. It is smart. It’s a I would say, even smarter than regular person, even someone Yeah, it’s good because it can analyze lots of data, it’s really creating good responses, good analytics, and so on. But it’s still a tool. So you should proper use it. Usually you can effectively use but someone in the future. Yes, there could.

Karan Rhodes  21:01

Might have to worry about it, huh?

Oleg Chernyshev  21:03

But I think it’s kind of very near, it still takes some time. But this progression is progression. And this is a really good thing, how we use it and improve the efficiency and actually finally makes lives of the people better. So this will lead to this. I love that.

Karan Rhodes  21:22

So like, because you have such probably a diverse organization, how do you approach leading your teams, your tech teams to get work done effectively keep them motivated, hopefully keep them with the company, what’s kind of your general approach to executive leadership,

Oleg Chernyshev  21:40

We let people speak, and we let people generate the ideas, they all are very smart. And they kind of not always they do but they not always help us to execute the tasks right. So they should propose ideas, they should be, they should understand they will be the people will listen to them to their ideas, and they will adapt their ideas, and then what I can say, sometimes it creates a really good solutions when you listen to people, not only to kind of senior, but in junior one as well, they are smart, they have the information, they kind of get this information from external sources. And this is a culture where you create when the people can speak, when they equally participate in the project. And they see the results of what they are kind of proposing. And creating this culture is very important. Because otherwise well the people not motivated, they doing this the their tasks, not quality level, as you would expect. So this is a very important thing. And all the CTO person or CO person should take care a lot, grading this structure to see how people, if they overload it, how they actually compensate it or how they get the benefit of it, and so on and so forth. So this is the kind of people should be kind of a partner, not like a people who doing the work. And if you create this structure, then it will bring the best, the best value for finally, for our clients,

Karan Rhodes  23:24

I’m just gonna give you a virtual high five on that, because everything you said I have seen be very successful. So it sounds like you’re right on track. And in listening to you talk about that. Now, it makes me really understand which of the tactics that I wrote about in my book kind of resonated with you. And as you know, we always love to ask our guests, which ones kind of popped in for you it was leading with strategic decision making, which for my audience, listeners, if you don’t know, it’s just what it is. It’s all about making good decisions yourself or leading good decision making processes with a team or whoever you’re collaborating with. And if you create an environment, like where ideas are welcomed, yes, then that creates a pool of innovation for you in the team to kind of sort through and see Gosh, which are these would be fantastic to add to our operations or do to make our company and teams even better. So that makes a ton of sense as Karan’s perspective from what I picked up, but I love to hear from you directly. Why strategic decision making is really important in any leadership role.

Oleg Chernyshev  24:35

Yes, sometimes you should do some strong strategic decisions in how your company will, will grow or we’ll go into into the future. But as I said, making this decision, you should take into account kind of all what people can say and bring to you because sometimes you don’t see kind of all the possibilities. And while you’re when you see all the ideas, you can make proper strategic decisions. And you can count on these new ideas, new areas and new technology solutions. I had a lot of things like that when some person proposed the idea and all come on, how do you consider this option? And then yes, then you have to make the decision. Yeah. So this is kind of the situation you always will be in some.

Karan Rhodes  25:30

Well, I can talk to you all day. But I think we’re running short on time. But I gotta ask one last question that view. So like, what does it take for you, as a leader to lead at the top of your game

Oleg Chernyshev  25:41

I want, I want to make the world better, I want to make our clients to operate in the most efficient way. So I want to bring them all the knowledge that we have, to their hands, to make it better, to make it optimal. And to deliver the high quality solutions, and actually, to make life of the people of their clients better, and to deliver the products what they have, I think this is the most important idea what we all actually doing.

Karan Rhodes  26:17

That’s so important. And for you personally, what do you do to put yourself because you know, all of our, our listeners are very driven to want to be better leaders? Is it anything that you do personally, to help you be in a situation to help the world in the way you want to? Meaning? Like, how do you stay on top of the latest and greatest and technology? And how do you keep your strength up? Because you know, now you can’t work 24 hours a day? So how do you stay? I guess very knowledgeable, and both physically and mentally prepared.

Oleg Chernyshev  26:54

Difficult is yeah, of course, you have to balance between the work and life is I personally trying to follow kind of all possible sources in use. And not only follow, but also test the ideas which are appearing on the market. I tested even myself and I see some ID Good idea. Let’s try it. Let’s play with it. And then you start the blade. Oh, good idea. So let’s bring it to the team. So yes, you know, all these Twitter, LinkedIn, all the sources, you read the you follow your friends, your kind of partners or others, other people in your network, and you have all this all this information came in. So that’s why it’s a little bit difficult to have a balance between work and life. So you kind of you’re always on top, always reading, always testing, checking what can be done better in technology space.

Karan Rhodes  27:59

I’m guilty, too. It’s hard for me as well to cry as they juggle it all. But I just tried to prioritize what needs to be prioritized at the moment. Sometimes it’s family, sometimes it’s business. And we just do the best we can, right?

Oleg Chernyshev  28:13

We have to care about our families as well. So this is also very important.

Karan Rhodes  28:17

Absoluytely. Well, we’ll have information in our show notes about use tech and where to learn more about the company. But I want to give you an opportunity to also share where the audience can find you all and see about the great work that you all are doing.

Oleg Chernyshev  28:34

We have our website. And so everybody, I can just type your stack. And yeah, we everywhere in LinkedIn, in social networks. And we have all the portfolio in our new website. Actually, it’s good, good way to see what we do. Excellent. Contact us and we elaborate on any projects, anything you would think would be valuable for your for clients. Yeah,

Karan Rhodes  29:01

Sounds fantastic. So audience members, if you’re ever curious, just go look and submit probably an inquiry and see exactly what these tech can do. Sure. If they cannot help you. They have a network that maybe they can refer you but it sounds like they’re so innovative. They’ll probably figure something out for you. Is that right Oleg?

Oleg Chernyshev  29:20

Yes.

Karan Rhodes  29:23

Well, thanks so much. Oh life for being a guest on our podcast today. It was such an honor to meet you and learn about these texts and what you all are doing.

Oleg Chernyshev  29:31

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Karan Rhodes  29:33

Awesome. And thank you to our listeners for joining this fantastic episode. Please be sure to like and share with a friend because by doing so that helps us extend our reach, and to help others to also lead at the top of their game. Thanks so much and see you next week. Bye. And that’s our show for today. Thank you for listening to the lead at the top of your game podcast, where we help you lead your seat at any employer, business, or industry in which you choose to play. You can check out the show notes, additional episodes, and bonus resources, and also submit guest recommendations on our website at leadyourgamepodcast.com. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn by searching for the name Karan Rhodes with Karan being spelled K a r a n. And if you like the show, the greatest gift you can give would be to subscribe and leave a rating on your podcast platform of choice. This podcast has been a production of Shockingly Different Leadership, a global consultancy which helps organizations execute their people, talent development, and organizational effectiveness initiatives on an on-demand, project, or contract basis. Huge thanks to our production and editing team for a job well done. Goodbye for now.