#178: Joe Toste – Behind the Mic: Insights from My First 100 CIO & Tech Leader Interviews [TASSCC 2022 Special Re-Release]

Joe Toste [00:00:00]:
Hey, what's up everybody? This is Joe Toste from techtables.com and you're listening to the public sector show by tech tables. This podcast features human centric stories from public sector, CIO's, cisos and technology leaders across federal, state, city, county and higher education. You'll gain valuable insights into current issues and challenges faced by top leaders through interviews, speaking engagements, live podcast tour events. We offer you a behind the mic look at the opportunities top leaders are seeing today and to make sure you never miss an episode, head over to Spotify and Apple podcasts and hit that follow button and leave a quick rating. Just tap the number of stars that you think this show deserves. My name is Joe Tosti. This is a presentation titled behind the Mic Insights for my 1st 100 CIO and tech leader interviews hosted on the Tech Tables podcast. So who am I? I know a lot of you know who I am, but just really quick.

Joe Toste [00:00:48]:
Married, two kids, coach high school basketball, live in Santa Barbara, California, and living my best life interviewing technology leaders from across the US. And real quick, can we just. If you can all just turn around and say hi, there's a bunch of people on the remote. Can we just. Hey, yeah. Thank you. Okay, so this is my family real quick. This is my beautiful wife, Jamie.

Joe Toste [00:01:15]:
She actually works with me behind the scenes. Everything that you like, she does. Everything that I mess up on, that's on me. She actually created that sheet, by the way. I just said, hey, I got this 40,000 foot vision of let's give a handout. And then that's what she came up with. That's my daughter Annabelle. She's really great.

Joe Toste [00:01:30]:
My son Jack, we have a ton of fun. And then Jack's twice only because I love handlebar coffee. So my offer is, if anyone comes to Santa Barbara, I will take you to handlebar coffee. That's my offer for anyone. I also coach high school basketball. This is a ton of fun. This is a huge part, especially this last season, coached high school JB basketball and then I joined the varsity team as an assistant coach. I get a lot of lessons, a lot of leadership lessons that I to share with the CIO's when they're leading their teams.

Joe Toste [00:01:59]:
Also some more fun kids. I know they're, they cracked me up. I told them I'd throw them in the presentation. They love tech tables gear. It's like their favorite thing. So they're constantly like, coach, give us gear. So I said, hey, I'm going to throw you in the presentation today. The conference theme when the mission is critical.

Joe Toste [00:02:15]:
There is no impossible. That, like, really resonates with me because part of I think I'm actually less involved, even though I coach as a head coach for the JV team of the basketball front. But there's such a human aspect to walking alongside high school kids and getting the team to work together. That's really powerful. When the mission is critical, there's no impossible. And there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff that everyone has in their lives. Same thing with these kids. I always love gleaning lessons from them throughout the season.

Joe Toste [00:02:43]:
If you're like me, I take notes. On a virtual podcast, you'll often see me. I've got a notebook. I'm taking notes. And on the tech table's website, I created task 2022 tab. Extra special bonuses. There's a couple photos, but that sheet is downloadable as a PDF, which is a ton of fun. And what else we got here? That's right, there's this one.

Joe Toste [00:03:02]:
So we're calling it the quotables. Come on, tech tables. The quotables. Also, one of the most requested things that I've received is, hey, Joe, it's impossible to find a what episodes? These episodes start stacking up. And what I did was I hooked up the RSS feed. So anytime I publish a podcast episode into airtable, this will update automatically. So that is in that link. So you'll be able to find any episode.

Joe Toste [00:03:31]:
And I even tagged them because everyone's been asking me, Joe, you have to interview Dan Teqsar. And I don't know why everyone. I don't know if they just found out Dan Texar was the CIO, but everyone's been coming to me. I said, okay, I'm listening to them. And I'm like, I interviewed him 40 episodes ago. Love, Dan and Tracy Cotton. But wait, there's more, right? More fun. So I released three podcast episodes.

Joe Toste [00:03:55]:
Episode 108, the digital deep dive with Christian Ettel, director of enterprise solution services Cloud and AI. He might have the longest title of anyone that I've interviewed in the state of Texas. And Sean Rogers, who's the digital and data officer at Texas OAG. And then 109 with Wendy Barron, who's the CIO for the Texas DMV. And our podcast was so good, she didn't need a title. I just put her first name as a title. And then episode 110, the psychology of teamwork and building a mature it organization with Bill Zelensky, CIO at the city of Dallas. Ton of fun.

Joe Toste [00:04:29]:
Okay, so who won the BBQ competition between Texas and North Carolina. So how many know about this? Can I get a show? How many know about this? Half of you, maybe? Okay, so people have been asking me all week who won the BBQ competition. So I think for those of you who don't know, let me just pull it back for a second. Y'all know that North Carolina threw down and said that their barbecue was better than Texas. Okay, so that's how it starts. So here's how it's going right now. Last week, I was in Raleigh and throwing a live podcast event. And this is me feeding Mandy and Jim.

Joe Toste [00:05:00]:
They were blindfolded. And one comment that Mandy had made to me was that she liked Matthew McConaughey. So before I left, I took some kids to a high school camp. Before I left, I said, hey, Jamie, can you make these masks? And I come back and this is what she comes up with. So she's got a printout. McConaughey. Now, I like Matthew McConaughey, too. I think he's fantastic.

Joe Toste [00:05:20]:
You see him on billboards in Austin, right? And then Jim Weaver, he actually has Jeter on his license plate. He has a iheart, Derek Jeter, which I think he's sleeping with this thing every night right now. Cause he's just over the moon happy. Now, you wanna know who won, right? Okay, so Texas won. I will see Jim Weaver at the end of this month in Seattle, and I think I owe him a dinner. Okay, so here's our. We got hugs. It's like a lifetime movie, right? It's like Kumbaya.

Joe Toste [00:05:47]:
Everyone's coming together. Absolutely fantastic. We had a ton of fun, more focusing. Jim's still happy. I didn't get killed. Manny's alive. We brought her back to Texas. She's fantastic.

Joe Toste [00:05:58]:
Okay, so we've got five major themes. Mission driven communication and collaboration, business acumen, workforce challenges, and innovative problem solving. So for most of the 100 episodes. So now we're at 110. But for basically the first 100 or so, those are recorded during the pandemic. Right. So, not surprisingly, when I look back, these were, I think, really the top five themes that we gleaned from over 100 episodes. If we had to distill them down for this presentation, for the 42 minutes I have left, these are the five major themes we came up with.

Joe Toste [00:06:32]:
Okay, so mission driven. So I love this quote. I've learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget to how you made them feel. Maya Angelou. And what their teams feel about public service, but also bringing attention to the end user. Right. And your neighbor, your person who's walking their dog.

Joe Toste [00:06:56]:
Just everyone that lives in your community, in your city. Right. The barista who knows your coffee order and the coffee card out there right after this. Mine's that bourbon caramel latte, right? Yeah. I've heard story after story about a lot of you are burning the candle on both ends, and you can't see behind all of the deadlines and the to do list. And there are moments where it's just. It's tough. And this just comes down to really, in the essence of caring.

Joe Toste [00:07:23]:
And when you care about the mission above all else, you're really able to start to keep your why and you're able to keep pushing on, and things are hard. And that mission driven heart towards working towards a greater purpose than yourself, I know it really resonates with a lot of you. I host the podcast for Tech tables, but I feel just as much in kind of the public sector, and I can't think of anyone better to kick off this presentation today than our local CIO that we have here in the city of San Antonio, Craig Hopkins. I don't know if Craig's in here. He's a really busy guy. But the time that I had with Craig was fantastic. And one of my favorite quotes, he said, when I joined the Coast Guard, I got this sense of something bigger than myself. I think the military does that for a lot of people, and some corporate cultures do that as well.

Joe Toste [00:08:14]:
But being taught that I was a part of a team, that there's a greater purpose in what we were there doing every day mattered. Actually, I would have the opportunity to even save lives, which I did have the opportunity in my career to go forward. But that being something, just being bigger than myself, servant leadership is huge humility, meaning you're bringing everybody else up and that no one else is better than you having a greater purpose than yourself. There was a moment with Craig that he told, and that was when he was in the Navy, and when he was there, someone actually died, and his captain brought him back. And although it wasn't technically his fault, he said, it's your fault. You have to take ownership of your team. And Craig talks about the details and how much of a defining moment that was right after that. And we talk about empowering your team.

Joe Toste [00:09:10]:
We talk about culture, and there's just a lot of really great leadership lessons, and we broke it into two parts. So, episode 38, team of teams. New rules of engagement for a complex world is actually based on a book, a military book and then episode 48, why mission driven leaders are the most successful. Mandy Crawford, if you with this slide, because that's one slide. And as you can see, she's been on quite a number of times, right. How do you distill this down? Seeing the tremendous mission and potential for government to be a positive force in people's lives, the things we could do, and also the tremendous talent that the state has working for me, that's when it became about leadership and wanting to really connect and be a part of a great team. There's a couple things I really pulled out. There's mission, there's the potential.

Joe Toste [00:09:58]:
Seeing the potential and people right. And being a positive force, looking for talent, connecting, being part of a team. There's so many really great pieces in that one quote. And I think across all of my interviews with CIO's, these are the qualities that power your purpose and keep you on mission. Now, I feel like I could pass the mic around and to others in this room who would share the insights because Mandy a lot better than I do. I just see her. I'm the podcast guy. But when you work with somebody, you really get to know that person.

Joe Toste [00:10:33]:
I got another podcast idea, insights from Manny Crawford through her peers and team's words. That was the next pod. And the reason why I love it is because she shows up. She's present. She's in the room right now. And I've talked to many of you who are in her circle, and you will tell me things about her. That's how I know when other people are talking about their leaders. I love to hear that.

Joe Toste [00:10:56]:
What's the point? The point is I've heard story after story about how powerful it is when your team can say that you feel known. Creative strategies emerge because people are not afraid to share new ideas with you or try and fail to know. You will help them work through it for perhaps an even better solution for both the individual and the team. So I would really encourage you to go listen to all the other episodes. There's a lot of fantastic lessons that she has, but I will end with this. Last week in Raleigh, we had the Raleigh live podcast tour barbecue competition. My wife was not able to come, so my wife travels with me. The kids come.

Joe Toste [00:11:37]:
She was not able to come because she had spine surgery. And Mandy, bless her heart, so great, jumped in with her friend Shelly, and they're cutting up the Texas barbecue. But she made a comment. She said, I'm the all in one CIO, and I love that. And I didn't take this photo, one of the camera guys did. But I love being able, when you're willing to jump in, doesn't matter the task. It was just a great example of leadership. Moving on, Nadia Hansen, she came to a live podcast event in Austin last year in September at Austin city limits.

Joe Toste [00:12:07]:
And the opening that I heard from a lot of folks, and I'll actually throw all this week, was that topic. Understand what their customers expect government to do and the services that they want to provide like they do in the private sector. Nadia says, I started my career at a tech startup. One of the fundamental things as a part of a tech startup is being obsessed with your customers. We're in this Amazon Uber Airbnb world where our consumers expect government to operate exactly the same way. So why should we be any different? Jeff Bezos, who was the CEO of Amazon, anytime there was a meeting at Amazon, in his shareholder letter, he wrote there would be an empty chair to remind them to be obsessive about the consumer, about the customer. What does the end user, in our case, the citizen. Right.

Joe Toste [00:12:56]:
What does the citizen truly care about? Not the politics. Nothing. Anything else. What is the citizen? What services does the citizen? What do they want? And so having an empty chair there is, and I was actually something that Nadia and I were both talking about offline. And it's just such a great reminder of who we're serving, is whoever's going to fill that empty chair episode. Let me actually back up. That was episode 63 of culture of doers. For those of you taking notes, episode 72, cyber Warfare in the public sector.

Joe Toste [00:13:29]:
If you control the data, you have all the power. A few top insights from Chris Winneco's commander and CIA, Texas military department. Chris just hopped up on stage at my live event last September. I was like, you want to record? Yeah. So he just walks up on the stage, full suit, and it was totally amazing. It was great. So we covered Chris's unique perspective on cyber warfare and the importance of coordinating across state and national agencies combat the ever of evolving cybersecurity challenges. And then he just threw this out where he was like, hey, as I'm just a typical military Cio, and I just got back from overseas and there were bullets flying everywhere.

Joe Toste [00:14:07]:
And then I was actually just going to handle cybersecurity. And I paused and I looked at him like, no CIO in the United States has bullets flying over them. And then you're trying to figure out your cybersecurity posture. Okay, JP Dunell, US Navy Seal we recorded an episode. Now you're like, he's not a CIO. He's not a CIO. But I met JP, and he had such a great story. I said, you got to come on the podcast.

Joe Toste [00:14:28]:
And of course, hey, you should come on tech tables. They're like, I don't do tech. I'm like, no, but your leadership lessons are so good, they can be applied anywhere. So JP says the most important one goes back to putting the team first, and that's humility. Humility is the number one characteristic of a great leader. Your title doesn't make you a leader. Your ability to influence those around you to believe in themselves, to believe in the mission, that's what makes you a leader. You don't have to have a title to be a leader within your organization, your team, your church, your family, whatever.

Joe Toste [00:15:01]:
You just have to be able to help those people around you believe in themselves, understand the mission, believe the mission, accomplish the mission. That's what makes you a great leader. And he backed this up by serving during the battle of Ramadi in Iraq with Jocko Willick, which is detailed in extreme ownership. For those of you who like military history, Stacy Mill, episode 31 are the possible. Stacy's fantastic. How an agile mindset transforms your team's approach to leadership. She actually moved on from the state of Kansas, and she moved, I think, to Nashville. That is big because so many people get set with, here's where we are, here's what's working for us, and this is what we're gonna do right here.

Joe Toste [00:15:40]:
And what they don't see is the bigger picture of the art of the possible. Just by the way, I love that. The art of the possible. I love it so much. And I talk a lot about with my team about that. And if you could do the exact way you wanted to do it, how would you do it? And that's so big. It's actually asking those questions back and having that agile mindset and that what got us here today may not be the best for us in the future. And some context, one of the things she'll ask her team that I love doing is how questions.

Joe Toste [00:16:11]:
Instead of saying, hey, we can't do this or anything like that, how could we go get this done? How could we make this happen? If there are no barriers, how can we go do this? And other topics that Stacey and I covered. Move to a modern digital infrastructure. Secure, scalable. Why it leadership misses out on how important it is to invest in their teams and people. That's one of the biggest common themes with tech tables is the people part right. It's not just technology. The people part. Stacey's vision for delivering a world class digital government for the state of Kansas was Stacey's big.

Joe Toste [00:16:43]:
She's actually huge on cybersecurity. So she's got some really great stuff. She's got what she calls her e four strategy. She talks more about art of the possible and just really great. She was a great contributor to the state of Kansas and transformed during the early stages of COVID and getting them off the ground. So that was theme one, mission driven theme two, communication and collaboration. Rob Lloyd. This is one of my favorite people, Rob Lloyd.

Joe Toste [00:17:04]:
He's awesome. He is the city manager now. He's a former CIO for the city of San Jose. His episode 67, the Govtech Strategy, creative partnerships that affect real change. And so I've got actually two quotes from Rob. And so this one's actually not actually his quote, but it's a quote from a Silicon Valley partner that they gave to him, and he loves it and uses it. So if you have a superstar, they can make a team 20 x more effective. But if you have a team that really perseveres together, 2000 X.

Joe Toste [00:17:38]:
And one of the reasons why I love this quote so much is great teams are what, how winning happens. You see this. I'm huge in sports. I use a lot of sports analogies. And when you can get a team to work together, it's a beautiful thing, right? When the team can start to work as one, it's a beautiful team. It's a beautiful thing. And I see this all the time with my high schoolers because. Cause I start off every season as a JB coach.

Joe Toste [00:18:03]:
And when you're a JB coach, at the end of the season, guess what? You lose all your best players to varsity. So every year you get new 00:10. You just lose every game because they look at you, go through practice, you go through preseason, you tell them what they need to do. You're coaching them, and they don't really get it. And then at this point now, you just realize, okay, it's gonna take time. They're not clicking, it's not working. You keep going, you keep practicing, and then somehow, end of the season, middle of the season, it clicks. And then you just start winning.

Joe Toste [00:18:31]:
Every game doesn't happen like every season, but the last couple of seasons, that's just how it's worked out, where the team, when they buy in, they can start to win. The other quote that I have, that I really is, Rob, I've always been in public sector because I believe in the work that we do and the impact that we can have. I actually challenge colleagues from the private sector, as everyone knows, to do at least two years of service, either military or local government. But all we need to have is a state. We all need to have a stake in our communities and their success. And I love that. Cause a lot of you have been in the public sector, and I would love for you to challenge your private sector or the vendors, if they're not serving, to have them serve in some function or capacity. When people talk to me about broadband and the impact at the first level, but when you go to a high school and you're in the locker room with these kids and they have iPads, and if the iPad doesn't have cellular service, when a lot of these kids are poor, half my team is poor.

Joe Toste [00:19:31]:
Some of these kids are living in a motel six this year. And so when they go and I'm trying to work with them on getting their homework done so that they can pass their classes, so that they're on the court. And even though I live in Santa Barbara and it is a really nice city, there are still parts of Santa Barbara, like in everywhere of the country, where kids should not be. And times I've had to go drive, pick up these kids because if they're not at practice, they're doing something they shouldn't be doing. And that's the reality. And when I hear access to stuff like broadband or tablets or things like that, I get that on a deep level because I see these kids who are 14, 1516, and some got the fastest Wi Fi at their house. That's half the team. Other half, it's a different story.

Joe Toste [00:20:13]:
It's important that when you serve, and we actually, one of the things we just moved from in Santa Barbara, we moved to another location. And so I've been walking a lot more. And so one of the things I noticed is, especially when I'm walking with my kids, you start to the high school guys, is when you can walk in their steps, you get this kind of empathy, right? You can start to see the lens that they're looking through. Story highlight Stephanie Dedman episode 91 power of invitation nurturing relationships with a team of 1200 Stephanie is the CIO for the state of Tennessee. And she's also. This whole barbecue competition thing is really expanding. So 2023, we're going to be in Nashville. She wants to have a barbecue competition with whom? I have zero clue.

Joe Toste [00:20:52]:
She didn't tell me. Could just be Memphis versus Nashville. I don't know, but story highlight. Stephanie had a fantastic. During the pandemic, she and actually her assistant Addy, came up with this. There was like this kind of virtual water cooler talk. So everyone goes home, and Stephanie's thinking to herself, we still have to communicate and talk with people. How's it going to work? So Addy comes up with coffee and conversations, and so they run with it.

Joe Toste [00:21:15]:
So what is coffee and conversations? Coffee and conversations is Stephanie's way of taking the 1200 people and saying, hey, every week we're going to meet. And not all 1200, but 15 of you. We're going to meet and we're going to talk. We're going to have conversations. We're going to drink coffee. It could have been tea in conversations, but it was coffee in conversations. And this is where actually, a lot of really great ideas came from for Stephanie and the state of Tennessee. And the next slide I have is the power of invitation.

Joe Toste [00:21:47]:
And the reason why I love this is from the coffee and conversations comes this power of invitation. So the other idea that came out of that was they had been considering their move to the cloud and decommissioning one of their data centers. And in the coffee and conversations that they had, inviting all of the team in, they were starting to ask some of their team members, has anyone decommissioned a data center who has that expertise? Was there. And turned out three other people at a different job had done this. And so they started to be able to leverage this. And so they would, they started creating some roundtables. They started bringing in all of their team members. And then they had another really great one where they came up with their strategy for RPA, robotic process automation.

Joe Toste [00:22:27]:
And so they just hit a number of really key insights for the state of Tennessee as far as their strategy. So we cover everything from cybersecurity to their cloud to, you name it. Stephanie and I, we covered it. The roundtables, the copying conversations. I know a few of you folks in here actually do this, too. You meet with your teams, you may not call it that, but you meet with your teams, and it's a way to figure out, hey, how can we close the gap where we're at right now? So, Gary Brantley, he's the former CIO for the city of Atlanta. He is my first public sector tech tables. Episode 18, art and organizational transformation.

Joe Toste [00:23:04]:
Fun fact, he actually wrote a book called the Art of organizational transformation, which is really great. And the whole thesis, and why I really love the book is it's all about people. At the end of the day, it's all about people. And so we talk about the importance of transforming people and not just technology. And one of the things that I really appreciated about Gary is he is really honest. So he was telling me, hey, Joe, look at the time. There was a huge cyber incident in Atlanta. And so they bring Gary in, and one of the things that Gary was starting to show them is, hey, this is what a winning culture and organization looks like.

Joe Toste [00:23:41]:
And if you haven't been a part of a winning culture or organization, it's really hard to go out and replicate that. And so Gary came in, and he was able to not just bring in new talent, but invest in the talent that was already bringing out the best in people. Another principle that Gary had shared with me that I really liked is what he calls the five, five, five. And so when he came in, he said, okay, so what can we do in five days? What can we do in five weeks, and what can we do in five months? And it really starts to shake people, their team members, out of, hey, there's just a blocker here and a blocker there and a blocker there. And it was really great because he took his team. He said anything that they thought took five months, they didn't find. And many of you did that with COVID There's a great tweet. I don't have it here.

Joe Toste [00:24:25]:
But it was like, who's responsible for your digital transformation on Twitter? It's like a Twitter poll, and it's like, the CEO, the CIO, the CFO, or Covid, right? And it's 99% Covid. Right. We don't want to have another Covid to move quickly, to move fast. And I know it's human nature for us because we understand people. Like, sometimes if we're not on the fire, it's hard for us to move and break out of those old mindsets, but we want to be able to keep innovating and keep moving the ball forward. Gary and I, we had a great session. He's also a big sports fan. I think that's why we hit it off and connected.

Joe Toste [00:25:00]:
Bill Zelensky. This episode came out today. Episode 110, psychology of teamwork and building a mature it organization. Bill's absolutely fantastic. He actually has a background in coaching, so he also coaches. So if there are any other coaches out here, come tell me. I love it. I love swapping war stories with kids and that whole thing.

Joe Toste [00:25:17]:
So he says, I do. In the business of our day to day lives, we sometimes become the tasks that we perform, and we lose sight of who we're serving at the end of the day or the purpose for that. And Bill spent 20 years on the federal side. He was the CIO for the Social Security Administration. He worked at the GSA and then moved to Dallas. And it was on my episode, too, with Shawna. OAG is getting out into the field and seeing who's consuming your services. And I love the stories that I get to hear from so many of you when you go into the field with whatever your domain is or vertical or expertise, you're going out there and seeing.

Joe Toste [00:25:57]:
Okay, hey, how is this mom consuming the child welfare system? Is she able to get her check on time? There's so many stories out there. So I love that Bill was able to bring this up so that we don't want to get lost in the day to day, but we definitely want to be able to keep the big picture of who we are serving. Ok, story. Highlight. Tim Roemer, the meme king. Who knows Tim Roemer? Anyone know Tim Roemer? Okay, he's from Arizona. Yeah. Oh, so Tim.

Joe Toste [00:26:26]:
So he is. He's really funny, by the way. He is hilarious. So what he does for his team to motivate them with, like, positive reinforcement in quick hitters during cybersecurity training is he will actually create memes about himself, which is. You're like cyber security memes. I don't understand. He's trying to get the team engaged. How many of you sent out a cybersecurity training? How many of you.

Joe Toste [00:26:50]:
Yeah, we set out to do you look and see, hey, how many people are, like, actually doing it? Come on. Okay, so, yeah, so what he does, not only he creates memes, but he loves to mess with his team. It's like one of my favorite joys. And Tim will send. He's constantly trying his own staff, trying to see, are they going to click on this? Are they going to do this right? If they end up passing and they don't click on it? He passes out swedish fish, candy, chocolate, bitcoin candies, which I think are great. And he's just got a cyber security. I think we all heard the russian talk from Morgan, just like doom and gloom. And I loved it.

Joe Toste [00:27:27]:
It was a great, there's a great seriousness to it, actually was at drinks with Morgan. He's actually come on the podcast and we had a fantastic conversation. He's a really smart guy, but bringing a little bit of levity to your team, to your staff so that they're engaged and people are engaged with chocolate, little bitcoins and swedish fish. And if you send a meme around of yourself, people are probably going to chuckle, laugh, and you can start to have that engagement around the cybersecurity for the end users that so many of you are actually evangelizing. Tim has been on three times. I know. I have episode 100 here. Also, Nancy was on, but Nancy, don't worry.

Joe Toste [00:28:03]:
I see you in the back. You got your own slide. Don't worry. I didn't forget about you. I don't have the other episodes, but you can find them on tech tables. With Tim, we cover everything from national security, nation states, coming after local government training, working with vendor protecting. As far as we talk about FICO scores and how he uses those. Not like FicO, like, not an actual credit score, but how he actually goes and communicates the cybersecurity posture and where they're at, and then translates that to the legislative team in Arizona and keeps them updated, which I thought was a really great way of taking a very complex issue of, hey, where are we at and how do we measure this to go get more funding for cybersecurity? And how do you make sense for that? So that was really great.

Joe Toste [00:28:47]:
And then we talked about also cyber as a physical problem. Right? Examples of the gas pipeline. And it's not just a digital one. So a lot of really great stuff. I won't cover everything, but I think one last one is that at the end of the day, humans, we are the weakest link. Tim, on the podcast, I think maybe on the first one, had mentioned he's the weakest link. I am the weakest link. We're all the weakest link in the cyberspace.

Joe Toste [00:29:12]:
See, Nancy, I told you, you got your own slide. Okay? Nancy says. And then it became, no, this is what we prepared for. This is where the rubber meets the road, and we're gonna do this. And the reason Mike voted is she also loves Ted Lasso. And so she said, when I see impossible, I think I'm possible. And I absolutely love that. And I don't know if Nancy remembers that, but it's on video, Nancy.

Joe Toste [00:29:32]:
So it's really. Yeah, this is a really great podcast. You're gonna be able to get episode 100. You'll be able to get Nancy's perspective from everything that she's doing here in the state of Texas, which is really great. And there's a lot of really great stories there. And I am vastly running out of time right now. Okay. So I'm going to start picking up the pace a little bit quicker.

Joe Toste [00:29:52]:
Darrell Tompkins, really awesome and I love this. So it's a player's game. Players can go where they want. But if you can't touch their heart and someone can't figure that out, hey, this is the impact you're going to have. People just gravitate towards you and they gravitate towards your organization. Touching someone's heart, I love that. I think that's probably another big theme of tech table is hearing from CIO's how they can get their teams to work is by touching their heart, right? Not just their minds. Another quote I had to throw in is customer service and relationships are critical pillars to success for any operation, especially it.

Joe Toste [00:30:26]:
And with Darrell, what's really great is he actually worked at the Doubletree and we talked a little bit about, hey, how did that experience working at the Doubletree and serving make you a better CIO today? Theme three business Acumen episode 106 from networking admin to CIO of Texas HSS, this is probably the most famous quote that everyone after the event said, and keep your say to do ratio high. Actually, I probably shouldn't just put that that. Just end quote. So if you're going to say you're going to do something, do it right, keep that ratio high. So as you say go, you get, the higher you go up the ladder, it becomes even more difficult because that's where all kinds, there's all kinds of challenges, but people remember that. So just keep your safety ratio high. I love that it builds trust with your team, it builds trust with. If you're at an agency, builds trust with other agencies and in the community, end of the day, you can keep your safety ratio high.

Joe Toste [00:31:18]:
Good things are going to happen. Okay. Episode 93 Government complacency breeds mediocrity Todd Ryan, CIO at Hillsborough County Sheriff's office there's a fantastic episode with Todd on moving from new leadership came in from the sheriff level. New sheriff was elected in Hillsboro and enabled Todd to really transform, break down any rules that were stopping him. And one quick example of this is people on his team were trained for so long, they would ask him for every little detail. And so he said, no, stop asking me for all these little details. Hey, I need to go replace this hardware switch or I need to go do this over here, guys. But you're working.

Joe Toste [00:31:55]:
I don't want to know. I just want to know that you're working. I don't need to know all the minutia details. I am empowering you to go out. And he's been radically transforming the Hillsborough county sheriff's office. And he's a strong guy. So if you work, I don't have been in a sheriff's office, but you gotta be a strong, you gotta be a strong character. So fun fact.

Joe Toste [00:32:13]:
When Jamie Grant, who's the CIO for the state of Florida, was speaking at an event early on when he became CIO, Todd actually called him out and he's like, hey, pretty boy, I know you got this flowy hair and you look nice. You got this new job, but I want to know. And he starts drilling Jamie with all these questions. Todd was actually really impressed. Jamie just wasn't a guy who had flowy hair, but was actually looking to transform the state of Florida. And I'm very excited. I will be in Florida, in Tallahassee for another live podcast event on Friday, October 14. The state of Florida, by the way, is very competitive now.

Joe Toste [00:32:46]:
They know they're behind the state of Texas. They told me, they said, hey, you know what? You've done these events at these, like, forget that. We want you in our brand new Florida Cybersecurity digital Center and we want to stick it to Texas because we're coming. And I was like, oh, spicy. So states are really competitive. I'm just the pod. I'm just going to interview you. Okay? But really looking forward to that.

Joe Toste [00:33:05]:
It's going to be a ton of fun. Another Florida podcast I have is with Mike G. Lombardo. He's an entrepreneur and member of the House of Florida representatives. This is a fantastic one. We actually, again, on this theme of outcome based leadership, he actually got all of the cybersecurity money that's flowing through to the state of Florida right now because they are radically trying to move quickly and transform everything. So Mike and I have a fantastic conversation around cybersecurity. His background, serving in Iraq, transitioning back to life, and actually how he cares about people who are on his staff and on his team and how he gets things done in Florida and how he cares for a lot of those people there.

Joe Toste [00:33:40]:
We also talk about Florida Cybersecurity Council and House Bill 70 55. That was all the cybersecurity money and transformation that's happening there in the state of Florida. At this point, I'm just going to highlight so I can hit all these themes. Theme four, workforce challenges. When I talk about the stories and the successes in delivering better services to residents, the constituents, that also energizes me to be able to see, hey, I'm helping steward tax dollars that I'm paying, and everyone else here in the state is paying to benefit what's going on. And Junior is big on actually going out. We've gone out a couple times. He actually, fun fact, we went to breakfast.

Joe Toste [00:34:16]:
It was me, my daughter in junior. So I've got some time to get to know him. And he's constantly looking at the services that the entire state is providing and asking himself, hey, how can we make this better? And I love that he is constantly thinking that way. Arizona recently released their digital license. I'm actually going to interview Junior again on August 22 on the digital driver's license front. That's the service I want in the state of California. I don't know if anyone knows anyone in California, but as a millennial vendors, take care of your CIO's. This is probably one of my favorite backdoor behind the mic.

Joe Toste [00:34:50]:
And by the way, we have. This is Kevin Gilbertson, episode 105, how great leaders and inspire action. And Kevin's on right now because I'm live on Twitter spaces right now. He's listening. So, Kevin, this one's for you. And you could hold me accountable. So my wife and I, we went to go pick up Kevin from his hotel room, and it's my wife and my toddlers passed out in the back sleeping. And this was at my last live event.

Joe Toste [00:35:11]:
He came down to Austin. It was great. And one of the things that he had mentioned to us in the car was that he uses tech tables to vet who is serious about either working on his team or with vendors. If they haven't listened to his interviews and done their homework, showing that they're motivated enough to put in the time and prepare well, he knows that they're not going to be a fit for the state of Montana. And I love that. So he had a quote at the end of our podcast, and he said, vendors, take care of your CIO's because we're texting each other. And I love that because I'm like, he's picking up the phone, texting. I know the community.

Joe Toste [00:35:49]:
Everyone's always texting everybody. And I love this quote. I told my wife, wife Jamie, I said, did you hear what Kevin just said in the car? Yeah. I said, take note of that. People talk to people, and people love working with people that other people like working with. And this is a fantastic college. We cover a lot of content. I am running out of time, so I'm going to keep Corey Wilburn again, I love this quote.

Joe Toste [00:36:09]:
Episode 107, how to develop multiply leaders and then same thing with Retta. Loved, loved that she was on that podcast. They both used to work with each other. I would encourage you to go listen to that podcast. Team five innovate innovative problem solving. Episode 95, experimental learning and hidden gems with Vanessa Keenan. She's here. Go talk to her.

Joe Toste [00:36:27]:
She's got one of the best personalities. I love her. She's absolutely fantastic. The work she's doing with kids really resonates with me. And I love that. Ed toner, Cio for the state of Nebraska. Blue Collar CIO, episode 88. Fantastic episode and I love the work that Ed is doing.

Joe Toste [00:36:42]:
And so story highlight. Krishna and Shawna, their episode for Krishna. He covers a lot for the state of Texas. AI cloud, Coe's RPa, you name it. We've got three episodes right there. You can go find those. Ted Ross, CIO for the city of Los Angeles. Love, Ted.

Joe Toste [00:36:58]:
Been to a Dodger game with him. He's a ton of fun. And we talked about planning for the 2028 Olympics. So he released the procurement portal in LA and managing all of that and he's done a fantastic job. Samuel Navarro at the center. He's now at the center of excellence at the GSA. And so episode 29, we talked about 5g latency network slicing. Totally fantastic.

Joe Toste [00:37:18]:
We will be in DC next year during my daughter's 8th grade Washington DC trip at the Samsung Innovation center, throwing a live podcast tour with a bunch of federal CIO's. And I'm going to try and bring in any state and local people that want to come. And Justin Fair, episode 98, give ownership to create buy in. Really great. I would read the quote. Justin's becoming a really great friend. Shawna Rogers again, digital deep dive. Here's her quote and their podcast.

Joe Toste [00:37:44]:
Lynn Furland Scott from Milwaukee County. Lynn's fantastic. We will go to Milwaukee. It was going to happen this year. Couldn't. The day just didn't work. But in 2023, I'm going to go to Milwaukee. He also served in the military and lessons he has and then how he's applying that to Milwaukee county right now.

Joe Toste [00:37:59]:
Okay, so closing. So one of the greatest treats of seeing the purpose of tech tables and how it's evolved over the last 110 episodes. So this started out in Las Vegas in January 2020 as a side project. And fun fact, I didn't have a name for tech tables. It wasn't called tech tables when I was interviewed. If you go listen to the first four episodes, they go, what's the name of your podcast? So I didn't have a name. Someone else gave me the name. They're like, we should call it tech tables.

Joe Toste [00:38:22]:
I was like, that's a great name. So I didn't have a name. Like, all of these conversations, it started to transform. And, like, to see it transform was, like, really special. And I was looking at community, and I was hearing what you guys care about, and then I said, okay, I'm just gonna go interview what you care about. And I just kept doing that, and I keep doing that. And I think a big piece is that caring heart and that allows that people want to come on, share their stories. And I love hearing your stories.

Joe Toste [00:38:53]:
And there's so many stories on the podcast and behind the mic, off the camera, what I hear, and I love being a part of the conversations, and I just love being able to connect people and share podcast episodes. And one of the other things I realized that whether you're in the private sector or in the public sector, all the stories that you share and bring to you as a person that make you uniquely you, and you need to know that you're uniquely ready to serve right now as you are. And all the stories and experiences that are on tech tables are worth their weight in gold. And people are learning. And I get to hear it. I don't know if you hear it, but there's a lot of really great work being done in the public sector. That's absolutely fantastic. And if you know of anyone who wants to share their story, I would encourage you to send them my way.

Joe Toste [00:39:36]:
I would love to have them on tech tables. And it's been truly my honor to have these conversations and look forward to connecting this amazing Texas Tass community. I think it's probably the best community event across all 50 states. I know. I'm not saying that just because I'm in Texas. I'm not saying that just because I'm in Texas. But I've been to other events and task is by far the best event. So every year I look forward to it.

Joe Toste [00:40:01]:
Questions and as a reminder from people at home, you can send it through the chat and I can read them off for my phone. Corey Wilburn. Joe, what is the one thing, if you boiled it down to one common theme from the government it leader that you think you hear repeated the most and you just had to pick one thing, what do you think that is? People first. All right, I'm going. Coffee, car. So thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Joe Toste [00:40:26]:
Hey, what's up, everybody? This is Joe Tossy from techtables.com, and you're listening to the public sector show buy tech tables. This podcast features human centric stories from public sector CIO's, cisos and technology leaders across federal, state, city, county and higher education. You'll gain valuable insights into current issues and challenges faced by top leaders through interviews, speaking engagement, live podcast tour events. We offer you a behind the mic look at the opportunities top leaders are seeing today and to make sure you never miss an episode, head over to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and hit that follow button and leave a quick rating. Just tap the number of stars that you think this show deserves.