Ep.150 The CIO Team Captain's Unwavering Passion for Victory

Joe Toste [00:00:00]:
Hey, what's up, everybody?

Joe Toste [00:00:00]:
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 lead ears are seen today. And to make sure you never miss an episode, head over to Spotify and Apple podcasts. Hit that follow button and leave a quick rating. Just tap the number of stars that you think this show deserves.

Joe Toste [00:00:34]:
So I'm going to kick this off. So today we have Sindhu Menon, CIO for Harris County. Sindhu, welcome to the public sector show by tech tables.

Sindhu Menon [00:00:41]:
Thank you. Thank you, Joe. Excited to be here. And thank you for all, everyone who's here for staying back. It's 05:00 p.m. So I appreciate you all being here.

Joe Toste [00:00:50]:
Let's kick off with a shout out to Rob Lloyd. This all started because he tagged you on LinkedIn and said you'd be fantastic to interview. And actually, I threw a live podcast event at Raleigh last year, and there was a story. For those of you who know Rob Maine, who's he just recently, not too long ago, retired, so he's the former state CISO for North Carolina. And him and Jim Weaver came on the podcast and it was like, pretty funny because Rob loves to tell two truths and a lie. Rob, it's like pretty funny. If you don't know him, you're just like, whatever. But he loves to tell two truths and lies.

Joe Toste [00:01:25]:
So I was like, this is going to be my kind of like opener. And so I kick off. And then for context, this is a barbecue showdown between Texas and North Carolina. And we had bibs on of Mandy Crawford and Jim Weaver and blindfolds. And so there's photos online you can see. But we love to have fun, so we set the tone. And Mandy really likes Matthew McConaughey, so she had a Matthew McConaughey blindfold on her. And for the blind kind of taste testing.

Joe Toste [00:01:52]:
And the Jim Weaver loves Derek Jeter a lot. So he's got Derek Jeter on his blindfold. They're both wearing these bibs and they're going to test out North Carolina versus Texas barbecue. And it was pretty funny. I was like, jim, it's going to be okay. And just quickly transition. And then I speak at task and everyone's asking me about the barbecue showdown, and I'm like, no. And Mandy's in the room.

Joe Toste [00:02:15]:
She's going to talk about, so. But Mandy won. She was very gracious. It was a ton of fun, and we got some good laughs. But during the two truths and a lie, what was really great is. So you're a pescatarian, right. And so one of the kind of trails Jim loves the Yankees, and I threw a twist ball was like, sindhu loves Texas barbecue. And right as I was trying to figure out, they'd get it.

Joe Toste [00:02:38]:
And Jim and Rob are like, that's a lie. We know she would not eat barbecue. So it was a pretty funny time. And that was, like, a good moment because you were the CIO for the city of Raleigh. Right. And so it was cool to see all these people in the room who actually cared about then. And then Houston's. Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:02:56]:
And then we took her back. So very happy. So let's kick off our podcast episode with what kind of you're most passionate about this intersection between broadband accessibility and affordability? Can you tell us what motivates that passion? Now a quick word from one of our brand partners. Nagarro is a leading provider of digital government services, partnering with state, local, and federal clients on some of their most strategic technology projects. Nagarro offers expertise in digital services, legacy modernization, case management, data and AI service desks, cybersecurity and more. Check out nagaro.com. That's nagarro.com.

Sindhu Menon [00:03:34]:
Absolutely. And I think it started quite some time ago. I have been looking into that particular field, especially the gap that exists for nearly four years now. And broadband at some point used to be, it's a nice to have capability at home. Now it has changed. The pandemic has increased the awareness that there is a gap, and we need to address that gap. The interesting aspect is there is no one model. Through all the years that I've worked on this particular topic, I haven't found any model or been able to identify that one model fits all.

Sindhu Menon [00:04:10]:
This is one of those challenges which requires us to think outside the box many times. There are several fundings available through various forms, so there is a desire from various levels of the government to address this. However, there hasn't been a solution that has been found. It's a global issue, but hitting it back to home, bringing it back home. We have at the county, we have a lot of unincorporated areas, and whether it is at the city of Houston or we are talking about the unincorporated area, this problem exists. And this problem requires us to work together from a public to public to private and private to private. All of these partnerships are required for us to address this. I have John Spears here from my team, and John has done a great job of bringing the collaboration together, not just regionally, but also from a state level as well as from a national level to discuss the various options that could be explored in order to address this issue.

Sindhu Menon [00:05:15]:
So to answer your question, this is a topic that's very close to my heart.

Joe Toste [00:05:20]:
Yeah, no, I really appreciate that. And this is what I call. This is like the cheap podcast episode, because I actually pulled the transcript from the first one that was never released. I have what Sindhu said, has anyone ever done this where they read something from somebody, it's like kind of meta, like, okay, but what she said, and I love what you just said right now, and I want to just increase what you just said. But you said broadband is now a necessity for every household, from education to economic development. Broadband is required for a basic quality of life. Though the issue of digital divide has existed for a very long time, the pandemic raised a higher awareness on the divide and its impacts in the community. You just said this.

Joe Toste [00:06:01]:
You worked very closely on the access, affordability, and availability model for a very long time, and hence why it's close to your heart. So I'm just reading that because I'm trying to hammer home just how much you care about that and wanted people to really understand the passion behind why you do what you do there.

Sindhu Menon [00:06:17]:
Well, just so you're aware, I've changed some of those answers.

Joe Toste [00:06:20]:
I won't read everything. I was just going for the passion part. On our podcast intro call, you mentioned that you like to contribute to the CIO community from a leadership perspective. What are your top two to three leadership lessons that you would like to share with the audience and community today?

Sindhu Menon [00:06:36]:
And I've changed the answer for that. I wasn't going to read the answer well. So I think as a leader, I believe that leadership exists at various levels. Right. From my personal philosophy, I think as a leader, it is a responsibility to ensure that the employees have a safe workplace, a workplace where they feel they're empowered to make the changes, work on the changes. And I think someone spoke about failing, trying and failing. So building that environment where you nurture their skills and help them grow. So that's one thing.

Sindhu Menon [00:07:12]:
The second one that I think about that I personally believe is as a leader, I'm constantly learning and growing. So being open to your talking to the team, talking to the peers, and also learning from other leaders in the region, I think, constantly requires you to grow and build that environment where you're able to provide that leadership to your team.

Joe Toste [00:07:37]:
Yeah, no, I really like that. And I love what you said about leadership resonating at different levels. Everyone can be a leader, right? And that just goes back to what I love about pride, taking pride in your work. And that's leadership right there. And so I guess for the camera afterwards, who I'm pointing to is Dr. Chris Mitchell. So we have that on the mic. Let's just kind of work life balance.

Joe Toste [00:07:59]:
This is not a new problem or unique to Harris county, but when it comes to competing against private sector flexibility, what solutions are you leveraging to keep or even gain talent in Harris county? We heard that donuts and Gatorade earlier from Daryl potentially could keep your employees, but he'd love to hear from you.

Sindhu Menon [00:08:19]:
Well, again, goes back to the prior answer that I had provided on the leadership. Providing an environment where the employee feels that or the team member feels that they have ownership of the solutions that are being put in front of them. And the kind of roles that they are offered matches their career goals. And also to ensure there are appreciation goes a long way. We in public sector probably cannot match the private sector in terms of compensation, but work life balance. At Harris county, we have a hybrid work schedule, and we are consciously making decisions to promote that work life balance. Because if you have the employees committed to, or you provide an environment where the employee feels that they are empowered to take care of their family along with the work responsibilities, you find that they are bought into the position more and you get double or better output from them. And they stayed longer.

Joe Toste [00:09:19]:
Yeah, I feel like it's like a multiplier effect where it's not just like simply two plus two equals four, but when you can care about them, we'll call it two times whatever it gets you to ten or 20 or whatever it is. Right. That effect. And I really like that. So now for the best part, I want you to brag. And what excites you about Harris county kind of present and future? Any projects up your sleeve that you're dying to share with the techtables audience today?

Sindhu Menon [00:09:45]:
So that's a difficult question. There's no one or two here because we are going through at the county, we are going through a transformation process. So there are several projects that are in motion and are being planned which would lead towards this transformation. Some of them that comes on top of my head, and I have the team members here. We have right from infrastructure, when I came in one year ago. One of the tasks that was assigned to me was to stabilize our infrastructure. We are in the process of building that infrastructure. Stability.

Sindhu Menon [00:10:20]:
The second thing was working on application modernization. That project is also ongoing. And we have broadband where we have made significant progress in the last one year in terms of developing our state, in terms of our scope for broadband. And then data intelligence is another field where we are venturing quite a bit. And then there are transformations happening from an HR process perspective, from our procurement perspective. So you name it, we have it. It's a great transformation happening at the county at this time. And I'm excited to be here at that time.

Joe Toste [00:10:55]:
Yeah, no, I know it was a loss for Raleigh. It's a word on the street. And we're actually going to have Mark Wittenberg. He's going to come on, and he said, you left a fantastic team. So it's always great to hear that from someone who comes in. And honestly, he was like, my job is pretty easy because. And I talked to him on the phone, he's like, joe, my job is super easy because Sindhu left me a really great. Should.

Joe Toste [00:11:21]:
Mark should send you, like, uber eats. He should send you Uber eats or something. So we got the CIO community, and a big fan of yours is Rob Lloyd. So I still have these questions that Rob's like, hey, did you ever do that interview with Sindhu? I'm like, yeah, hold on, I got you. We're going to do this live. So he asked four fantastic questions. So this is like the Rob Lloyd segment. For those of you who don't know, Rob Lloyd was the CIO for the city of San Jose.

Joe Toste [00:11:44]:
He got promoted. He's now the deputy city manager for the city of San Jose. He's just a great human and incredibly smart. He hired his replacement. And so that episode with Rob and Khalid actually is on techtables plus. And what was cool about it is I actually was reading the Wall Street Journal online, and I actually spit coffee out of my computer, and I had to wipe it down. And the reason why is the Wall Street Journal announced that the city of San Jose was looking for a CIO. They just hired a new CIO.

Joe Toste [00:12:16]:
And the new CIO was Khalid Tokvic. Well, I literally went to a Dodger game with him and Ted Ross, who's the CIO in the city of LA. And I was like, khalid? You didn't tell me. Yeah, I can't tell you that kind of stuff. So it was super cool. And the. The two of them are teaming up to do a great transformation in San Jose. So that's just kind of the context of Rob.

Joe Toste [00:12:36]:
And so the first question that Rob really wanted to ask you was, how do you build an organization to be resident centric and adaptive? Future proof. You've had the mission of turnarounds in it departments. And then my kind of plug is, are you like, the turnaround expert? Did they call you in?

Sindhu Menon [00:12:53]:
Well, to some extent, yeah. Rob is superb. Okay. I haven't worked with him, but through the various forums that I participate, I've got to know Rob, and he's just awesome to go back and validate what you just said. So the question is complicated. At the same time, it's simple enough. The best way to build a resident centric organization is to stay connected to them. Right? So our platforms, that, our citizen engagement platforms, those provide a great insight into the needs of the region.

Sindhu Menon [00:13:34]:
And I also stay very well connected with my peer cios to see what's going on in the other counties. What are some of the things that they have seen? Having a positive impact on it, and also very closely engaged with our vendor community. So our vendor partners work in different areas for different counties, and they have use cases that we don't have to reinvent the wheel. We can use those use cases across the board. So those are some of the things which I use. And then again, you asked me earlier what keeps me excited about coming back to Harris county and working for them every day. It's the people. Right? The team members that I work with, the leadership that I work with, the department directors that I work with, they all have a lot of vision in how to build that resident based services.

Sindhu Menon [00:14:25]:
Right? So staying connected to them, helping deliver to their vision and the leadership of Harris county, that's how I think. There's no one formula, but all of it.

Joe Toste [00:14:36]:
Yeah. Number two, that Rob and Rob's. I got four questions. Rob, you should just come here. Number two, moving from the east coast back to Houston, what are some of the similarities and differences with the local governments are focused on? He's curious around connectivity, equity effectiveness, and how kind of those rank differently.

Sindhu Menon [00:14:56]:
That's a great question because my experience, again, working in different cities in Texas and also going to Raleigh and coming back here, I haven't seen much difference in the need. It goes back to the broadband question there. Right. So the ranking, I don't believe there's a difference in ranking, but at the same time, the needs might be different across the board. Like example, I'll give you with the city of Raleigh, city of Raleigh, is one of the very well connected cities, but there still are pockets which have this digital divide, and then there is a need for digital literacy around there. So all of these are common fact. If coming to Harris County, I think it's a similar need out here. The digital literacy programs, the connectivity issues, the broadband issues, all of them, I've seen them similarly ranked across, irrespective of the region.

Sindhu Menon [00:15:51]:
And in talking to the other cios also, I've felt the same way, that irrespective of the region, these exist as top issues.

Joe Toste [00:16:00]:
Yeah. The third question that Rob was loving to ask you and actually talked to him quite a bit about this. I really like this the best cios have a pattern of lifting others up as they rise. How have you invested in your team members to prepare them to lead now and in the future? Key skills and abilities that you're investing in?

Sindhu Menon [00:16:19]:
That's a great question.

Joe Toste [00:16:20]:
Again, they're all from Rob. This is not from me. Rob asked just great questions. Yeah. I told him he should be the podcaster, and he laughed.

Sindhu Menon [00:16:27]:
So it goes back to the leadership, right. How do you build your pipeline where if I'm not there, there is a workforce that's there to take up that key leadership position and move the organization forward. So a couple of things we do is training and then also constantly checking with our team members about their career goals. Right. And ensuring we are aligning those career goals with the path that we are building for them. That's one. Also giving them opportunity to network and meet with others, opening up those opportunities, and again, not restricting their growth in terms of the bureaucracy.

Joe Toste [00:17:05]:
Love that. And I promise, because I can take my phone out and show you. I did not ask this question, but Rob's, who are the two to three cios that you would love to hear on techtables next?

Sindhu Menon [00:17:16]:
Another great question. So I see Lisa is here. So I would say that Lisa is already covered. So I would say Charles Thompson, he's the CIO of Port of Houston. And then Lisa Cunningham, she is at, I think, La Metro. Both of them are awesome. You would love having them. And the podcast.

Joe Toste [00:17:37]:
Love it. And I sent out one of the things we do for techtables plus is I love to be able to try and surface questions from the community so I can kind of crowdsource all this stuff. And so one of the folks, Stephen Gooch from Brooksource, asks, are there any smart city integrations in play for the suburban areas outside of downtown?

Sindhu Menon [00:17:59]:
Yeah, that is tricky question, because there's nothing that says we do only certain things for the suburbs and versus certain things are for the city. So we have smart city projects that span across the county as a whole. Some of them include the air quality monitoring systems, and then we also have the flood gauge monitoring system. So those are two examples that stand out. And then we are in the process of building the smart county objectives, and then that's a part of the transformation process that I was talking about. So there are a few things that we do internally for us, as in the security cameras and the data that comes out of those, and then security camera, as in the internal security cameras. Right. The data center, our facilities, and all that.

Sindhu Menon [00:18:48]:
And then we also have the smart building initiatives, some of those which are more internal facing and from a community perspective, we have the two examples that I gave earlier.

Joe Toste [00:18:59]:
Yeah, no, that's fantastic. And if you're a CIO and you're like, really into smart city and really want to, there's a guy, he's the CIO for the city of Coral Gables. He came on the podcast. He's been on podcast twice now. Ramundo, Rodolfo, absolutely fantastic. That city is constantly innovating on smart city technology. They win numerous awards from Gartner and a few others. And so if you ever want to be connected or see what he's doing, a lot of great work.

Joe Toste [00:19:28]:
And so you can just shoot me an email. Yeah. Okay, great. Let's open this up to the audience. Q A. Who has not asked a question yet as we're going to wrap this out with Harris county.

Sindhu Menon [00:19:42]:
So what does the partnership with the city of Houston look like and maybe an example of, like a joint initiative that you have worked together and delivered successfully? Great question there. I see Director Kent here, and I also see Dr. Mitchell here. So we have the regional, the big events. Just recently since I've been here, I'm going to talk about those projects. So in the regional sense, we have worked on large events and the process of getting those information across from both city as well as the county, and providing one common platform so that folks could see what large events are happening. And also our public safety team can look at one particular event list and plan the events accordingly. So it's a regional again, that was needed.

Sindhu Menon [00:20:35]:
So we did that last year, and then now we are in the process of discussions around broadband and building that partnership again. I go back to that broadband earlier. It has to be at all the levels. So we are in the process of building that another future initiative, which we are probably going to develop is the cyber in the cyberspace having the collaboration there so that again, together we are more safe going towards that and secure? Yeah.

Chris Winnek, Executive Officer, 71st Theater Information Operations Group & Cyber Operations Chief at the Texas Military Department [00:21:03]:
Chris Winnick, Texas military Department. So I asked your Houston counterparts the same question. So I want to hear it from the county's perspective. Similar to partnerships, but talking about continuity of operations in this region. Harris county and Houston are almost geographically just. That's probably not exactly true, but it's close to being true. But not just that, but all of the industry you mentioned, doctor, about, you have one of the largest ports. You have all these different private entities and collectives that work together for things.

Chris Winnek, Executive Officer, 71st Theater Information Operations Group & Cyber Operations Chief at the Texas Military Department [00:21:36]:
Can you describe the ongoing dialogue that you have to continue to innovate and look forward and look around corners to lean forward on these things? I understand the initiatives you both mentioned, the broadband initiative, but what about when something's going wrong? Incident response or some sort of natural or man made disaster?

Sindhu Menon [00:21:57]:
Thank you for asking that question. Through our office of Emergency Management, there are processes in place where the regional communication for the natural disasters. I think we are very strong on the natural disaster, especially as a result of Harvey and the lessons learned through that and the maturity process through that, we have built a real strong partnership between the city and county around the emergency management for natural disasters. Now, cyber is another space where we are going to explore further and build that kind of a partnership. I don't know if I answered your question.

Joe Toste [00:22:33]:
Any last questions?

Chris Newport, Accenture [00:22:34]:
You're still relatively new at the county, and you have an ambitious agenda across the county and within your own portfolio. Could you talk about your approach to investing in your employees, a sense of agency so that they feel they have not only your sponsorship, but how do you ask them to think about the boundaries within which they have the right, and your expectation that if they see something, they should address it, whether it's in the domain of customer service or a process revision.

Sindhu Menon [00:23:10]:
Thank you for asking that question, Chris. I have three of my team members here, so basically to go back and address, actually, five of my team members. Great. Awesome. So going back to addressing the question directly, I talked about the appreciation. Right. So we encourage, when we have those interviews, we try to understand where the employee is coming from. I'm talking about the last one year that I've been here.

Sindhu Menon [00:23:38]:
Okay. We try to understand what are the goals that the employee has when they come into the organization. And then we try to build the roadmap based upon that. So as an example, we have several of our team members who have expressed interest in developing their career as cybersecurity professionals. Right. So what kind of training do they need? I've asked the leaders who report to me to basically come back and give me their training plans. And how does it support their goals? That's one way. And the other one is, like I mentioned earlier, the employees are encouraged to think outside the box.

Sindhu Menon [00:24:18]:
So challenge them and have them take ownership of the solutions that they're building. And it's not always me telling them, it's more or any of the leaders telling them. It's encouraging them to come to us and provide us with what their thoughts are in building a solution so they have a buy in into the process. The other things we are doing is initially the opening up, creating transparency across the board and making it a safe environment for folks to come and ask questions, irrespective of the ranks. Example, I have team members who come and ask me, why are you asking me to do this? I didn't get an email from you, so why should I do this? So I have all of those conversations and everything is okay. There's no such thing as you can't ask this question because a person is at this level. So creating that kind of a safe environment where people are feeling that it's work, family, and they don't have to worry about any questions being asked or any of the situation that would put them in trouble. So creating that kind of an environment, creating training opportunities, creating appreciation pipeline, and then ensuring that the goals match, their personal goals match with what we are investing in them.

Sindhu Menon [00:25:35]:
So those are some of the things which we have done. Again, going back to the work life balance, ensuring we provide them a hybrid environment and also opening up the doors where they can have conversations at all levels with the customers, our customer departments. And also I've constantly encouraged that build the bridge with the vendor partner because I think that vendor partner is a critical aspect, that partnership aspect of it is critical because our vendor partners bring a lot of wealth of knowledge to us which we may not be exposed to. So that's how we are investing in our.

Joe Toste [00:26:10]:
Before we wrap up, is the any question that I should have asked you, but I didn't.

Sindhu Menon [00:26:15]:
I think it's 06:00 p.m. Nearly 528. So yeah, I think you have asked.

Joe Toste [00:26:23]:
All of that's all the questions. Awesome. Well, thank you for coming on the podcast, Andrew.

Sindhu Menon [00:26:27]:
Thank you.

Joe Toste [00:26:28]:
Hey, what's up, everybody?

Joe Toste [00:26:29]:
This is Joe Toffee from techtables.com and you're listening to the public sector show five 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 and Apple Podcasts. Hit that follow button and leave a quick rating. Just tap the number of stars that you think this show deserves.