#193: Strategic HR Evolution: Building Culture-Driven IT Organizations with Will Smith, Chief of Staff at the City of Seattle IT

#193: Will Smith, Chief of Staff at City of Seattle IT
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[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 TechTables. This podcast features human centric stories from public sector CIOs, 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, Apple podcast, hit that follow button and leave a quick rating, just tap the number of stars that you think the show deserves.

Joe Toste: Today I'm as excited we have Will Smith, Chief of Staff for the City of Seattle IT. Will, welcome to the Public Sector Show by TechTables. 

Will Smith: Thank you Joe, happy to be here, thank you for having me. 

Joe Toste: I think you're the flyest person in Seattle. No. Seriously, look at that, right? 

Will Smith: Far from it, that's my family. 

Joe Toste: So for those who don't know you, quick intro.

Will Smith: Chief of Staff for the City of Seattle IT, as you said, been with the city for Six [00:01:00] years. Started off my career with the city as Senior HR Manager and was promoted to Director of HR. And then about a year and a half ago, two years ago promoted to Chief of Staff. Had majority of my professional career in human resources, so I have 20 plus years in HR.

Will Smith: I think what makes my career interesting and what I've valued the most is that I've had, Every position within HR. So I've been a recruiter. I've been a benefits specialist. I've been a retirement specialist to have the opportunity to be an HR manager in several places. And I've taken a lot from those experiences and has shaped how I see not only life, but how HR leaders should operate in any organization.

Joe Toste: So this is pretty interesting. I want to unpack the where you are today all those past experiences have really shaped, being able to touch the different parts of the organization I [00:02:00] imagine has had to be like really powerful for you. 

Will Smith: It was and it has been it's made me into a better leader.

Will Smith: It allows me to see a perspective from the shoes of individuals that were in the roles that I was. in before and helps you make the decisions. How would it show up in their life and how would they perform in a way that best puts them in the best possible light? I've learned a lot from the failures as well.

Will Smith: I think often people like to discuss the things in which they've won in, but I think the failures and things that I haven't performed the best in has also shaped how I show up today. 

Joe Toste: So before we get to today's episode premise, give us a little bit of background on, on Will.

Joe Toste: Help, help us understand you a little bit better. 

Will Smith: Yeah, it's some people may consider me complex. I love life. I love life. I value people. I love my family. I come [00:03:00] from a pretty big family. I was sharing with Rob a few days ago that my grandmother and grandfather they had 12 kids and they were born in Little Rock, Arkansas in a two bedroom, in a two bedroom home.

Will Smith: And so my family comes from humble beginnings. And as my mom and a couple of my other aunts and uncles When they got to an age where they could fend for themselves, they started to migrate to Seattle. And once they gained employment here in Seattle, they started sending back for their brothers and sisters.

Will Smith: And building a structure, and then eventually bringing my grandfather and grandmother to Seattle. Back to Seattle where they ultimately passed rest in peace. But I am I'm a family guy. I have a 25 year old son. He plays professional basketball in Greece. And watching him [00:04:00] grow into the young man that he is today was.

Will Smith: Something that also kept me motivated. I'm a big on education. I have a bachelor's in information technology. And then I have my master's from Tulane Law School in labor and employment law. And I'm currently working on my doctorate in organizational industrial psychology. Basically, studying the framework of how organizations work from a people side, from a psychological perspective, but also systems.

Will Smith: TechTables. 

Joe Toste: Okay, wow, you just dropped so much there, because you and, or Rob texted me the title of the, for the premise of this episode. But now having even more context of why this is even happening, because this makes sense, right? So the nickname we had for you, I think it was maybe Rob, was like, hey, we call Will the Mayor, right?

Joe Toste: Which is a funny joke. When you finish your doctorate, I'm going to call you the professor. You can go from the mayor to the [00:05:00] professor. Okay, so let's go a little bit deeper on this. So you get, how much more time do you have left on your doctorate? What's that looking like? 

Will Smith: That's interesting. I was just talking to my board chair about that a couple of days ago.

Will Smith: And it depends on how much time I put into my research. 20 to 25 hours a week is what is said you should work every day. in order to complete your dissertation. So if I use that calculation, I should be done by this time next year. But that is dependent upon my population of study. That's dependent upon the what they call the quality assurance folks that say, okay, your dissertation is good enough to be published.

Will Smith: If they're okay with that. So there's other factors outside of me getting the work done. However if all goes well, I would say about a year to two months or so. 

Joe Toste: Okay. What was texted to me was how tech organizations can design a workforce of the future on, on the people side. So going to what you're studying [00:06:00] right now, people, systems, organizations these are all very complex, right?

Joe Toste: The moment that you start getting humans involved, things become real, right? Curious, what are some of the things that have attracted you? Like, why are you so interested that you're like, Hey, I decided I'm going to spend 25 hours a week outside of work pursuing this? 

Will Smith: Because I, I feel that anything in life in organizations, if you can understand the why, it can be solved.

Will Smith: And sometimes understanding that why takes a little bit more time than others. But you have to have the patience in order to understand it fully. In regards to organizations, there are complex things, and particularly in tech, when you're working in tech organizations, at least the experiences that I've had from an HR lens, the people side, I think often there's this idea that [00:07:00] HR folks may not know or understand the tech side of the business.

Will Smith: Maybe not as well as the subject matter experts, but I think it's imperative for HR leaders. Regardless of what role you play in the organization, you have to understand the business. You have to be able to understand the business that you support. And so in order to do that, you have to ask a lot of questions.

Will Smith: Spend time with those leaders. You have to read. You have to educate yourself. to see how that applies to your business. And so that's why this particular topic is important because understanding the people side of it comes first. Then it's also understanding the mindset part of the work that we are doing right now.

Will Smith: And what some of my personal research is connected to is around the understanding of growth and fixed mindset. Growth and fixed mindset is a term that was coined by a philosopher by the name of Carol Dweck. She's a professor at Stanford [00:08:00] University. And her study early on was centered around how do children learn?

Will Smith: And her thought was that if you put kids In any environment that you can almost shape how they are going to learn and what they can pick up. If you allow an individual or person or child to say, I can't do this, then you're having a fixed mindset about that particular thing. Then there's a number of different things that can prevent them from learning.

Will Smith: The same thing happens in organizations. You, if you tell yourself this cannot be fixed, then you have a high chance of it not being fixed. But if you enter it, The mindset that it can be fixed, you're going to find a way to get it fixed. And so that's the premise of creating or diving towards a culture that you can change and an organization that you can support is understanding the mindset.

Joe Toste: Okay. So there, there's a lot there that is really good. So I love [00:09:00] the growth and fixed mindset. Super important. Actually there was a guy I introduced you and Rob to, Gary Brantley, at the time when he was the CIO for the city of Atlanta he inherited a team, and one of the things that he told me on the podcast was that they had a big ransomware attack, and one of the things he explained to me was that hey, Joe, A lot of these, they are great people here in the organization.

Joe Toste: They don't know what winning looks like. And so I thought about it and it's funny coaching high school basketball. There's so many similarities until you know what winning looks like. You might settle for mediocrity. And when you go into different environments, sometimes it can feel like, Hey, this person's rubbing me the wrong way.

Joe Toste: But the person might just have a different experience where they're, I'm gonna use basketball, pushing the ball up the court. And we see this with the kind of JV varsity team. They run the same place. It's just that varsity pushes the ball so much faster. And I thought that was such an [00:10:00] interesting dynamic of just trying to get the whole team.

Joe Toste: To buy in because then you get into some kids are like Hey, on the JV team, this is how we did it. Welcome to varsity. Or this welcome to college. Welcome to welcome to Greece. There's just a different level every time. And yeah, I think deconstructing that mindset and then understanding understanding people, their why, like that was there, there are some stuff where it's just intangible You can't teach or coach like this post this person's hungry, right?

Joe Toste: Like they're motivated But you can't understand you know where they come from and maybe you can move Someone into a different seat to try and help them be successful. 

Will Smith: Yeah, sometimes you're in the wrong spot Yeah, and it doesn't mean that you don't have the necessary skills to be successful It's maybe that particular thing that You may need to build your skill set up and that you're more better suited in another spot for that period of [00:11:00] time.

Joe Toste: Yep, 

Will Smith: so absolutely. I understand that completely. 

Joe Toste: Yeah. No, I really yeah, there's there's a lot and I love what you said about like the HR leaders going across from it's not you're not just doing HR Like you got to understand the business side and then you can understand how executive leadership views the whole, right?

Will Smith: So so one of the things that I spearheaded at Seattle IT is changing our model from the idea of human resources. Yes, we are human resources. However, we are business partners to the organization. And we transformed the naming of our HR team to HRBPs. Human Resources Business Partners. And each of those business partners are responsible for aligning themselves with the business that they are assigned to.

Will Smith: So for instance, we had Greg Smith here, our CISO [00:12:00] earlier, and he has a dedicated human resources business partner. The responsibility of that, of Greg's HRBP, is to understand Greg's business with the idea of possibly understanding it as well as he does. That's the goal. So you can be able to have those strategic conversations with your director.

Will Smith: You can give them ideas on how something might be moved or shaped in order to fit the bigger picture. So you become more valuable, not only to the person that you're supporting in terms of your HR business, but the organization as a whole. Because if we're all doing it we're also saving the organization money.

Joe Toste: Yeah, I like that. The HR business partners. Yeah, that's a great, that's a great term. Also, I like it because they get out of the traditional, like when I think of HR, it's like paperwork. Sure. And you're like, it's yeah, a hundred percent. And so you get into that human aspect.

Will Smith: Yeah, and it's not that. It's, that's a piece of it. The evolution of HR, right? It was, [00:13:00] Known at one point as the personnel office, and then they got creative and, started using terminology of human resources. And then the concept of the human resources business partner came to play.

Will Smith: Now they're talking about human capital, and I'm not a huge fan of that terminology for a few reasons. But, again, it's The field of HR is evolving, and people understand that it's a lot more than just processing quote unquote paperwork. 

Joe Toste: Okay, so this gives us a good foundation. Now, let's think about the future.

Joe Toste: You've been moving up in the city of Seattle. Now the Chief of Staff for the City of Seattle IT. Where, what's your vision for this organization? Yeah, so In light of Mr. Rob Lloyd coming in a hot, whatever, he's been here like a hot month, right? 

Will Smith: But it's important for my seat to be aligned with the CTO.

Will Smith: But I also have to sit in a spot where [00:14:00] I'm neutral. Because I have to be able to give guidance and support to Rob in a way That he can hear it, but also have his initiatives met not only for his personal initiatives, but also initiatives of the city that I'm sure the mayor has given him, right?

Will Smith: So understanding and being aligned with that, but also pushing forward what it is that the organization is set to do. So we have some, I have some bigger goals, but we have some smaller goals right now. Right now we are culture driven, okay? So when we talk about creating our workforce. Part of that, a huge part of that, is establishing our culture.

Will Smith: And in our organization, in Seattle IT, we've had different leaders in Rob's current seat that he's in. So understanding people, that could cause some trauma. That could cause a level of how long is Rob going to be in this seat? So 

Joe Toste: This guy from California just moved here. [00:15:00] 

Will Smith: Who is he?

Will Smith: All of those things. And you have to understand the emotional state and psychological space of a person. We like to talk about psychological safety a lot in our organization. And that is key. Being intentional about how you're going to create your culture is very important. Last year, actually two years ago We really started to focus on our culture.

Will Smith: We identified a vendor that we worked with and we worked with them for about a year and a half. And we created a whole bunch of different systems as to how we were going to move the work forward. One of the, they did a lot of great work with us. One of the things that they left that we took a hold of was creating a from to state.

Will Smith: And basically what that means is how What is our future state? How do we get to the future state? For instance, we said we want to [00:16:00] go from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. We said we want to go from unclear direction to Clear direction with the ability to make decisions. So we have a future state in mind, but also knowing where we are at currently.

Will Smith: And a part of that intentionality in terms of culture building is, it's just not one person carrying that message. Everyone in the organization needs to carry that message. And it starts from the top. So leadership not only has to share the message, but we also have to walk it. That's important. So being intentional is key in creating a workforce that, for the future that you're looking to create.

Joe Toste: Yeah, I think anytime I've seen this every basketball season, there is, there's gonna be conflict, right? Egos are gonna butt [00:17:00] heads just other dynamics, people are just not reading each other it's the old time where a kid makes a pass and it's like you're supposed to be going back door, you're not there.

Joe Toste: You don't know the play, what's going on? Yeah, so people can get frustrated. How do you go about handling conflict in the city of Seattle? 

Will Smith: Yeah, 

Joe Toste: I think it's Or organizations at large. 

Will Smith: Yeah, I think it's It can be tough sometimes, depending on what the conflict is. I think people have personal views that they have with a particular issue.

Will Smith: They want to make sure that their agenda is shared. I think the key for me and my team is being able to put and identify your biases. People are naturally biased. And if you can identify those biases. You are able to say, okay, I can enter into a conversation with a clear mindset to fairly get through it.

Will Smith: Now [00:18:00] maybe some of the outcomes of the resolutions may not be to your liking at the time, but sometimes you have to be able to lose in the temporary to win in a bigger picture scheme of things. So It's less about winning and losing, but establishing a strong relationship. And if you're more focused on establishing strong relationships, the times when you don't get your way, it's not going to matter.

Will Smith: Because you're more connected and more, and you respect that relationship that you have with that person more than anything. And that's my mindset. It's like marriage. 

Joe Toste: I'm not married, but I get it. The premise being is that I might not a hundred percent agree with everything, you're gonna look at the larger picture and what's more important.

Joe Toste: A hundred percent. So maybe it's not like marriage in the sense of, I'm like, I love you, you, you get the point. So as you think about Rob just came in. And addressing the changes within the organization. The mayor obviously has [00:19:00] his his game plan that he's running.

Joe Toste: Since he played football, I can use all the sports analogies I want. Right now, as you look to the end of this year, to the end of next year for someone in your role what are some of the most important priorities that you're looking for to make this organization win? 

Will Smith: Definitely.

Will Smith: I want our people to feel empowered. We are embarking on a lot of different changes in our organization. I want our people to be able to see themselves in those changes. I want them to be able to see where they fit. I want them to see how their work is valued and how they are respected as people.

Will Smith: So it is our job as a leadership team to make sure that message is carried forward. And so as we continue, down this journey, again, Rob is still fairly new. With any leader, he's going to want to change some things probably, right? How do we support that? How do we get Are people ready [00:20:00] to be change ready?

Will Smith: So that's effective communication. That's allowing space for them to disagree. That's being able to tell them the truth about things, even though it may upset, upset them in some spaces, depending on what it is. 

Joe Toste: What did Rob say that Mayor Harrell what was it? You just said on the last podcast, Rob, about you step on the scale and you don't like the 

Will Smith: Yeah.

Will Smith: That's absolutely right. Give you a very real example. We are transitioning to three days in the office. It may be a shock to many in our organization, there are people in our organization that we're coming, we're still going to work five days a week. So we have to be intentional and understand the landscape of our organization that although it may impact some, but it doesn't impact all the same, but having a great space for all perspectives to be heard.

Will Smith: Now we not, we may not be able to give them everything that they want all the [00:21:00] time, but we do owe it to them to be open and to be clear about the changes that we are looking to make. 

Joe Toste: And leadership at the top is going to make those changes and and then, communicating it in a way and 

Will Smith: Communication is key.

Will Smith: Communication is key and being clear about what those changes are so people can see for themselves. Where do they fit in this situation? So we owe it to our employees to do that. 

Joe Toste: I love it. This has been, it's been a fantastic conversation. Hey, Rob, you think I should start like an HR TechTables podcast?

Joe Toste: What do you think about that? 

Rob Lloyd: I think there's three themes with people. It's intergenerational. You have a digital workforce and digital public. How IT helps organizations work in that context, heading forward. Finding your people, finding your information, working together, collaborating. It's a whole new context, and that's a whole body of work for the next three, four years.

Joe Toste: This has been an awesome conversation. I'm looking forward to seeing you [00:22:00] again early next month. Yeah, we're excited 

Will Smith: about that. 

Joe Toste: Seattle Learning Conference honestly, this won't be out by the time that happens, but but if you want to tell the camera a little pitch about the Seattle Learning Conference, this is your baby.

Will Smith: Yeah, it's something that we have really grown to love in Seattle IT. We call it the Seattle IT Learning Conference. We started it maybe four years ago Predecessor of Rob's there it was his idea. He said, we'll go ahead and make this happen. Okay. And we created it to what it is now.

Will Smith: And so this year it's going to be two days, September 9th and 10th, where we have the idea of the conference is to bring employees together. Provide them a space where they're able to break down silos. They get to see their colleagues that they may not see on a daily, but also learn about particular things that we're talking about in that particular time.

Will Smith: So we are talking about transforming and creating our workforce in a way that is inclusive to everyone. So we have some speakers coming from New [00:23:00] York, and we have someone coming from the state of Oregon. So it's going to be very exciting. Hopefully the mayor comes and gives an opening.

Will Smith: We'll have some food for people to eat on. So it's it's gonna be a good event. It's a little bit of learning. It's a little bit building some co collaboration with your colleagues. And just fun. Just fun. Fun and learning. 

Joe Toste: Fun and learning. And you got this guy from California coming, I heard.

Will Smith: Yeah this guy named Joe, I don't know heard he's a good guy. He, we're gonna be podcasters out, so that's exciting. 

Joe Toste: He's a 35 year old smiley male, is that what it was? Something like that? With glasses, that's right. Yeah, he asked 

Will Smith: some really good questions, so he's, he might be okay. 

Joe Toste: I'm looking forward to it.

Joe Toste: Thank you for coming on the Public Sector Show by TechTables. 

Will Smith: Thank you, sir. 

Joe Toste: Thank you, sir. Thank you for 

Will Smith: the time.

Hey, what's up everybody. This is Joe Toste from techtables. com. And you're listening to the Public Sector Show by TechTables. This podcast features human centric stories from public sector CIOs, CISOs, and technology [00:24:00] 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, Apple podcast, hit that follow button and leave a quick rating, just tap the number of stars that you think the show deserves.