ep.165 Cultivating Community, Struggling with Bureaucracy, and The Last Act with Jamie Grant fmr. Florida State CIO, at Florida Digital Service

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:00:00]:
You cannot innovate or disrupt or modernize or transform without some tension and some friction and some push on the status quo. And it is, to me, I think, one of the things that would fix the public sector so fast, where everybody wants to see government do better, faster, cheaper, regardless of what their ideology or party or any other demographic breakdown like, we all think it should be better, faster and cheaper.

Joe Toste [00:00:23]:
Hey, what's up, everybody? This is Joe 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.

Joe Toste [00:00:49]:
And to make sure you never miss.

Joe Toste [00:00:50]:
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Joe Toste [00:00:57]:
Today we've got Jamie Grant, CIO for the state of Florida, has been on three times. What do you want to talk about?

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:01:03]:
Whatever you want to talk about. You met our team today. I've honestly been more excited. I was hoping you and I didn't even do this so that today was literally just the people at the digital service that don't get the exposure. But I also selfishly want to spend a little time.

Joe Toste [00:01:15]:
Okay, what did I say before? What did I say? They're like, ah, Jamie's busy. I was like, he's been on three times. I'd rather take Jen than Jamie.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:01:22]:
You're smart. Smart.

Joe Toste [00:01:25]:
I love getting to meet the team.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:01:26]:
Cool.

Joe Toste [00:01:27]:
I love is, I love meeting people. I love hearing stories. The team is fantastic. Such humility. It's great. Everyone is talking about how much they care about the team and the mission between Keith and Brad and just walking around the office and virtually. It was funny. I think I've talked to Hannah so many.

Joe Toste [00:01:48]:
So you're alive in.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:01:50]:
Yeah, yeah.

Joe Toste [00:01:51]:
So it's so cool to just meet the team dynamic and I'm glad we were able to make this happen.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:01:55]:
Same.

Joe Toste [00:01:55]:
We've covered a lot. We did the Jordan Rayner Tony LinkedIn live episode, we did you and Jeremy in Orlando and the you came or one of the two came on first and then we did you and yeah, we've got maybe 6 hours of content.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:02:10]:
We should do a lot more.

Joe Toste [00:02:11]:
We should do so much more.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:02:13]:
If Jordan watches this, I think that we should figure out a way to do something with Jordan and Tony on the regular, especially when I'm out of the public sector, because I can be me a little bit. But, man, I think what's really cool is that I get to get on the road every now and then to talk about what the team has done. The thing that made me excited for you to be here is that they don't really get to travel. Like, public sector doesn't socialize outside of public sector for the most part. And it's not normal for people to be traveling to conferences or trade shows and thought leadership type stuff. And so I think two things happen as a result. One, our team doesn't get socialized with the rest of the world. So if you're a member of the Florida digital service, all you really know is what you hear, see online or hear in Tallahassee.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:02:51]:
You have no idea that there's, like, this other world out there where people have perspective on what's happened here in Florida. And then two, when I get out and I get to talk about what we've done, they don't really get the credit and people don't. They're like the nameless, faceless people behind. And I might mention them by name, but people are like, okay, cool. It's totally different when Jen gets to tell her story of literally taking a challenge of somebody filling the collab for an event into building an entire national thought leadership education training, building her own team in less than 18 months. To me, I think it's the ability for people to come in and get to humanize the digital service, which to me is really important, but maybe even more importantly, them getting to tell their story, them getting to get socialized with what's out there.

Joe Toste [00:03:31]:
Okay, so Brad and I hit on this in the last episode, and it was so powerful. So we were talking about empathy and getting out of the office, going to the agencies, going to wherever, and I didn't actually think about that. It's not normal. They're not going out and traveling. And I travel multiple times a even I've now lost the perspective some part.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:03:51]:
So I'm probably going to get killed for this later. But Hannah, there's just, like, proof that nobody's perfect. And you know how awesome she is. But when we first started working together, coming from a background where I've traveled a ton for work, right, and you and I know where every sky club is and how to hack this away while we're traveling and all those other things, Hannah's never really so like, when she started booking my travel, there was no thought of the logistics of some things. And I was like, okay, let's walk. And I had to just remember she doesn't have that experience. And it is, to me, I think one of the things that would fix the public sector so fast, where everybody wants to see government do better, faster, cheaper, regardless of what their ideology or party or any other demographic breakdown, we all think it should be better, faster and cheaper. And until we socialize and get people to understand what that looks like, I think it's really hard.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:04:41]:
So just making community happen, I think, is the first step to really breaking down a lot of the ignorance and naivete around how we actually get better, faster, cheaper.

Joe Toste [00:04:53]:
I love that. And the Sky Club piece is funny with Hannah because there's been times where, I don't know, maybe it was like six months ago or something, four months ago, and you called me one morning and it was like, I think 630 in the morning, but you just took a shot of maybe this guy's at the airport. And I was at LA. I'm at the airport. I am awake at 630.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:05:11]:
If you've lived on the road, you've lived on the road.

Joe Toste [00:05:13]:
Yeah. Favorite sky club in the US.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:05:17]:
I'm down on everything, Atlanta, except the f terminal right now.

Joe Toste [00:05:21]:
Okay.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:05:21]:
The one in, one out thing. Like Delta and I are going to fight this whole, like, we got to figure something out. I think airports actually have to figure something out because the commercial real estate cost to have the restaurant now colliding into everybody in the airport, apparently sky club just starts to make a real estate crisis at some point, I think. But Seattle's got a really good one. Okay. And Atlanta, the f terminal.

Joe Toste [00:05:45]:
Have you been to the new one in terminal three at LAX?

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:05:47]:
No, I hate LAX.

Joe Toste [00:05:48]:
Okay.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:05:49]:
I know you have to deal with it, but I was at LAX the other day, an hour before my flight, in the line to check my bags, and the flight was gone before I got to the desk to say, here's my bags. And coming from Tampa, the world's greatest airport, undisputed major Tampa, Hillsborough county, have messed up a lot of things from a planning perspective, the crowning jewel, the one thing we have that nobody can compete with is the greatest hockey club in the world and the greatest.

Joe Toste [00:06:15]:
I love pF Chang's. And they've got a fantastic pf Chang's at the Tampa airport, which is could.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:06:21]:
I'll tell you how great the Tampa airport is. You could check your bags, go on a trip, come back, eat at PF changs, get your bags, get to your car before you could check in at LAX.

Joe Toste [00:06:29]:
I have to fly out of LAX out of necessity. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's brutal. So I posted, hey, got up at 330, drove down, and someone asked me here in the office, hey, how long is that drive? And I'm like, 330 in the morning.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:06:42]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:06:42]:
Hour and 25 minutes. 03:00 p.m. In the afternoon. It's a four hour drive. It's brutal. Yeah, I know. You got lessons, I think more or less like reflections. You're coming up.

Joe Toste [00:06:51]:
You've got. Is it a week?

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:06:52]:
Yeah. Seven days.

Joe Toste [00:06:53]:
You've got seven days left in the chair.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:06:55]:
Yeah. It's funny, we've had this conversation a little bit offline, like friends, mentors. Super bittersweet. Insanely bittersweet. It's been interesting to see the reaction. Everybody in the world apparently thinks that I have something lined up, and I think one, I don't. Right. I have committed to taking some time to think clearly.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:07:12]:
I feel like I've been in a three year fight with bureaucracy every single day, and I just don't think that's the kind of headspace to be in to make really significant life changes. I'm not buying anything big, selling anything big, getting into a relationship, I don't think I'm getting out of a relationship. I don't think I'm getting out of it. I think times like this, it's really important to just step away, breathe, decompress, get around people that will tell you the truth. And I found it really interesting that everybody just assumed, oh, you must have people say, congratulations. Congratulations, man. This is walking away from something I've invested a decade of my life in from a policy perspective. And now operationally, I think there's four teammates here that we didn't hire.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:07:53]:
Right? So at this point, the entire organization is made up of about 95% new faces we went out and recruited. I want to pull the numbers at some point, but more than 80% of our people were recruited by somebody who works here. So every time we have a vacancy, somebody goes, ooh, I know somebody. And I just think that's been really cool to watch from a culture perspective and a people perspective, because I think everybody, especially in the tech space, pays attention to, like, all right, what cool stuff have you done? What was the secret? How did Florida go from laughing stock to a leader? And the answer is really simple. High character people who will buy into the mission of what's so cliche, Joe in the coaching world. But do you care about the name on the front of the chest or the back? And I think here we have a ton of people who care about the digital service way more than they care about their title and those kind of things. And so I think it was a very intentional effort to build a high character, mission driven, customer obsessed organization in the public sector. I think we've done that.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:08:49]:
And I think for me, as I walk away, the team heard me say for a long time, and they're like, that's morbid. They're like, can you change that? And they say, what if you won the lottery? And I'm like, well, you could still find me. I'd be alive. I got to be allowed to die in a plane crash. I got to be irrelevant. This place needs to be just fine with me gone. And the reality is we have recruited intentionally, two and three and four levels deep, of people who just say, send me, I'll fix the problem. And to marry those two people keep saying congratulations, and I want to just punch them because, yeah, I'm excited about what's next.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:09:20]:
I know it's time. It's been a grueling grind for three years, but I'm going to cry like a schoolgirl when I leave this team, and you're never going to get this team back together. You think about every end of the season speech that we give in the locker rooms or that we heard in the locker rooms, take a look around, because this is the last time this entire group will be together. There'll be marriages, there'll be divorces, there'll be moves, there'll be all those other things. And I'm probably going to wake up in eight days and go, man, I'm really trying to soak it up. I'm really trying to be intentional to spend time with the team. I'm really trying to be intentional about giving them the freedom to say, look, it's yours now. It is yours, and go make it better than it was.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:09:55]:
And if we just pass it off to every generation better than we received it, I think we're going to see some really cool stuff out of the Florida digital service for the next decade to come.

Joe Toste [00:10:03]:
Just the amount of time that we've got to spend in the last couple of days has been awesome. What you just said, I want to cry like a baby.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:10:10]:
Don't get awkward on camera.

Joe Toste [00:10:12]:
I'm just going to ball my eyes out. The end of last season was the end of year four, so that was the first kind of full cycle coaching.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:10:21]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:10:22]:
So the kids who were the whole life when they were freshmen and I specifically joined the varsity team. Normally I've coached the JB team, but I want to join the varsity team because they all played for me. And it's the last game of the season and all the coaches are trying to hold it together. And I love these kids so much. I used to work out with them when they were freshmen on the shooting machine 2 hours after practice, putting in another 2 hours. Love these kids. And last game of the season, and I'm not ready for it to end yet. And I'm like, come on.

Joe Toste [00:10:59]:
I just want. Just give me like overtime. We get like double overtime.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:11:03]:
And I'm like, yeah, that's awesome.

Joe Toste [00:11:05]:
And we won. And just the energy and rushing the chord, but then afterwards, it's just all tears. You've got the seniors embracing kind of the juniors and sophomores that are on the team, and there's just something really powerful about that. Now, of course, it was funny as the JV guys a year that are playing on the Jv team are like, hey, remember you coached me, too? You coming back next year, right? I'm like, I'll come back one more year.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:11:31]:
There's something. Every locker room is different, and I don't care whether it's a business unit, a team locker room, an organization, everyone's different. I think when you look to your point, you know you've got something special when you're not ready for it to end. And I think sometimes it's almost like there's three options. There's. Man, this has been a rough let. I'm ready for the offseason and to get to the next one. Then there's the transactional.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:11:52]:
Ok, this is how it's supposed to be. And then there's the really special. Oh, my gosh, I don't know if I'll ever get this again. And my tenure at the Florida Digital Service, for all of the fights with bureaucracy and the onslaught of administrative hurdles and all of those things, this has been one of the most special opportunities of my life because of the people that are here. And I think as somebody who's never had kids, who's coached a lot of Family members and teams just volunteering, I think this is the first time as an Executive that I've comprehended the notion of Parents being more proud of their kids than their own successes. So that's why I go back to I love us hanging out and spending time, but with a finite period of time. I want you to get with as much of the team as you can, because these people have done unbelievable work, especially in the bureaucratic space where I can't give them equity, I can't give them dividends, I can't give them commissions. If they could have equity in the turnaround that's happened here, they'd be retired when they're done.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:12:49]:
And instead the just get the same paycheck and they show up and they just keep doing it, and they just keep doing it and they just keep doing it. And I think that when you think about how to build special, it starts with people. And when you look at this team, and I said it in my resignation letter, their refusal to quit is awe inspiring because you've now been out here in the Southwood complex where there's 11 billion jobs that are all, there are 20 different agencies around here. They can go find more comfortable, they can go find more pay, and they keep signing up for here. And I think that's just a testament to the mission and their belief as a team and as individuals.

Joe Toste [00:13:27]:
Okay, so I agree on everything you said earlier. Looking for high character people. What are some hiring traits? Let's unpack. High character people.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:13:38]:
I think everything in life comes back to, do I trust you? Do I trust that you're able to do what I need you to do? And do I trust that you're willing to do what you're capable of doing? I have to trust your intent, the integrity.

Joe Toste [00:13:50]:
Yeah.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:13:51]:
And I also have to trust the ability if I'm building a team. I don't think you can teach character integrity. I think you can reinforce lessons. I think you can teach lessons, but I think there are people that you can close businesses with a hand, close business with a handshake or not. It's binary. And how much are you willing to say? My logo was on it. I said I'd do it. And we've run into that with vendor partners where it's like their own paper said, this is what we're getting.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:14:16]:
But the purchase Order didn't. Sorry. And I'm like, I just want to be clear. That's your logo. Here's this sheet of paper, here's this follow up that said, we get this and you're saying the purchase order didn't have it, so you didn't technically pay for it. Like, where I come from, I'm delivering that. My company is delivering that with roses for your spouse. We're doing everything we can to say I'm sorry.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:14:37]:
And so you file that away and you go, look, those are people that when they tell you they're going to be there, you have to triple check it. You have to get the lawyers involved and say, hey, are they really going to be there? And then there's people that when the bullets fly or the fire starts, they just go running because they said they'd be there. And I'll segue for 1 second to make a comment to the last question, the come back. But I think that's one of the things I love about transitioning out of these things. It was the same thing when we lost the company. It's the same thing when I left office. And it'll be the same thing here. You get to find out who your real friends are.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:15:09]:
And that's just something I cherish in life. Because when you're in a role like this and you have the budget and you have the perception of influence that we have, or actual whatever it is, and everybody's your friend. When you leave, this phone stops in seven days, right. The volume on this phone. And so I just think that's an amazing opportunity to remind yourself like who you can really count on and who's a real friend. So when I think high character, it's hey, can I trust you to go back to it? And that's the same thing with partners who we hire, et cetera. And the most important thing is do I trust your character? Because I can coach you. I can teach you.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:15:44]:
We've got some amazing stories. One's behind the camera right now helping Fidel, who's now I could go down the list of people that if you said, hey, you have to have two years experience and you have to have this and you have to have this and you have to have this, they'd never be here because they'd be like ineligible to work here. If I compared their work product to the work product of people who check all the Bs boxes to get in the door. I'll bet on this team all day, every day, over and over. And we can teach skills, we can give opportunity. You can't teach character. I hire three types of people and there's a wild card forth. The first most attractive thing in a candidate is they played team sports.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:16:21]:
There's nothing that team sports and it's no knock. I got a bunch of golfers in the family and cool. It's a different grind. It's a mental game. There's things that come out of it. But business and life is a team sport. And so I look at it through my life. I was the best player in some leagues.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:16:35]:
I was barely good enough to make some teams. So there were some hockey teams where I was just lucky to go kill a penalty. There were other teams where I had to carry us if we were going to be competitive. Those are two really different lessons. When you have to learn how to shoulder the whole team and to do that the right way and to get guys to pick up their level of play, that's different than when you just have one job, go kill that penalty. There's no glory in it. There's no credit in it. The girls aren't coming up after the game.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:17:01]:
But you did that job for the team, and that mattered. And so I think team sports just teaches you so much that it's hard to learn. Military, active or veteran, that's a different kind of team sport. And the. The third is kids with siblings. In each of those scenarios, you had to learn to support people. To your left, your right, up the chain, down the chain. You had to learn how to win, how to lose.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:17:23]:
And I just think there's a lot of lessons you learn through life in those three lenses. So those are the three. But team sport is by far the best indicator I've ever found of humility, honesty, self awareness. Because scoreboards don't lie.

Joe Toste [00:17:38]:
That's right. Okay. So I love that about team sports. Which brings up, it's funny, the larger challenge that we hear a lot about.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:17:46]:
Welcome to team shirt Friday at the digital service. By the way, I appreciate the tech.

Joe Toste [00:17:49]:
Table shirt that we're on brand.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:17:50]:
We have team shirt Friday every Friday.

Joe Toste [00:17:52]:
I love this. Love this.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:17:53]:
And we're honest about it enough that there are, in fact, some Alabama shirts that show up from time to time. And those folks do not get fired. They get judged, but they don't get fired.

Joe Toste [00:18:02]:
They don't get fired. I love that. Workforce challenges. This is such a hot topic, but I don't know, maybe it's a little simplistic. I think it's a lot easier than people make it out to be only because I look online at what a lot of folks, public and private, put out for job requirements, and I'm like, no one has those qualifications. There are even in the public sector, because I'm very curious. I won't mention, I'm not going to throw another state under, but they're looking for a media person. I was like, I run a media company.

Joe Toste [00:18:30]:
I wonder if I could get a job.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:18:31]:
Do you qualify?

Joe Toste [00:18:32]:
Yeah. Do I qualify? I do not qualify. I don't have a master's degree.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:18:35]:
Do you know that? And I took bullets for this when we were doing all the reforms to create the digital service. And I was really coming at it from a vantage point of, I'm so fed up with state technology not working it. The job requirement of the state CIO at the time was ten years executive experience, which meant that if you owned a plumbing company, you were qualified to be the state CIO. If you had four exits of a software company and nine years of experience, you were not qualified to be the CIO of the state of Florida. So then they're looking around, they're like, why can't we hire anybody? I'm like, the job sucks and the pay sucks, so we can work on that over there. But number one, you've taken the total addressable market of talent, and you're like, looking for somebody who owns a lawn care company for ten years, looking for a pay raise, rather than saying, hey, what's relevant experience? And the other thing I'd say is, give me people that worked SolarWinds for six months. They probably had more experience in incident response and just in cybersecurity in general, and architectural work and response and recovery and all these different things in six months than somebody else did for three years in an organization was doing nothing. So time is not indicative and a credential is not indicative of capabilities and experience.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:19:38]:
And so I think you're spot on. But I laugh. Like, literally, you could have owned a plumbing company and been eligible to be the CIO of the state, but if you built a software company and had less than ten years of experience in the executive space, you were ineligible.

Joe Toste [00:19:50]:
That's crazy. That's a whole other podcast. So you said this earlier, you get to find out who your friends. This is my favorite piece, and I always love hearing stories of when people have had to make a call. That's very uncomfortable and it really costs you a lot. And my favorite example is when I was trying to marry a woman who already had a daughter, and I took a lot of heat for that. Now, some people are like, well, why would you take so much heat for that? You take a lot of heat for that from friends, from community. Hey, I think your life should go this way.

Joe Toste [00:20:21]:
And you're like, no, my life's going to go this way.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:20:23]:
That's right.

Joe Toste [00:20:23]:
Yeah, but it's tough. There's of folks who are not willing to make that call, and then you find out exactly right who your real friends are. And I was telling Jordan about this, I was like, jamie's going to find out who his real friends are in July 4 or something.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:20:39]:
That's right.

Joe Toste [00:20:39]:
Yeah. He'll be at a barbecue, and when you no longer have the title and they're like, hey, you know what? There's no more value. And, jamie, we talk about this all the time, where society is getting it so wrong, where they just value people for what they can extract out of you.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:20:53]:
That's right.

Joe Toste [00:20:54]:
And I had this conversation with the vendor yesterday, what can we extract out of you? And I'm like, we're just not going to work together anymore.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:21:00]:
Right?

Joe Toste [00:21:00]:
That's how this is going to go.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:21:01]:
Yeah. So a couple of things. I'd say, number one, you got to see it. Jordan and Tony and I hadn't been together in ten years. Those are real friends.

Joe Toste [00:21:07]:
Yeah.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:21:08]:
I think that's one of the things that you can see it, you can sense it, and you know it. Two, I've had friends and mentors tell me not so much, but I've had people give the advice because I take them out of the mentor category when this is happening. But it's, man, you give away too much for free. Do you know what you could charge for this or for that? I've often thought to myself, like, sure, would I like to see my bank account add some zeros. Yeah. But I can't fathom going through life looking at everybody almost like a first person shooter game where the target is, okay, what can I monetize there? What can I monetize there? What can I monetize there? I just think when you build equity in the brand and trust, people want to do business with you in a way that the net works out and it's sustainable. So the transactional, what can I get out of this? Flies in the face of trust, which is why I always come back to trust. Do I trust your intentions and do I trust your ability? And when people betray it, listen to them.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:22:02]:
That doesn't mean one and done. But when people show you who they are, they will tell you, crazy. Will raise their hand and go, I'm crazy. If you just give them enough time, selfish. Will raise their hand and go, it's about me. If you just give them enough time.

Joe Toste [00:22:16]:
Yeah.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:22:17]:
And I fail at this every day, but if we'll just listen and perceive, like, we pick up so much stuff. So I don't know how people go through it. That transactional, I think that's a miserable existence. And I think you're spot on, though. Surround yourself, it comes back high character people. Surround yourself with people you want to be with, and you'll be fine.

Joe Toste [00:22:33]:
I love it. Look, we're going to kick you off because we want to get more team members on good. But this has been a ton of fun, and I know we'll have you back on, I should say guarantee coming back on.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:22:43]:
I was about to say, I am super freaking excited for that big sky. The mountain west is my favorite place on earth. It is literally where I am in my happy place. And so when you reached out and said, big sky live event, I was in. Then when I found out, Kevin, I was like, super in. And then you just kept building out the roster, and I'm like, okay, so we get to get this group of people in Montana for a few days. And the irony of this a little bit is that I've often talked about our journey at Caresync and had we finished off the exit, that you would find me in a ranch in Montana. And there's some serendipity about taking that month of July and really trying to decompress the two things that I've always said, you'll find me on a ranch in Montana.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:23:31]:
And two, I said that when I finished this job, and I don't think this is going to play out right now. It's probably next year. A buddy of mine that's retiring, both of us have the goal to go hike the Patagonia with a fly rod. And that was one candidate for what do I do after and decompress. And then Montana came up and I was like, ranch in Montana? There we go. Super excited about that.

Joe Toste [00:23:49]:
I can't offer you a ranch. No, I can offer you an Airbnb.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:23:53]:
It's like a ranch. No, look, it's cool to get around community, and I think that's something that go back to what we're talking about with the team here is like getting them socialized into that community. We had a number of CIOs here yesterday and information security managers. How many of you have reached out to another state to say, how did you do this? How did you do that? How many of you have asked, can you swap source code? How many of you have talked about? And they're like deer in headlights a little bit. They're like, we talked to this systems integrator or this that said, they built this there. And I'm like, okay. So then they came and said they were going to charge you full freight to rebuild it again. And we thought that was a good idea.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:24:28]:
And so there's just the community, the ability to go, hey, I got a problem. How can you help me solve it? And I think that's going to be ultimate litmus test of my time at the digital service is two things. How soon can I walk in and people have no idea who I am? And two, look at where this draft class is in five years. And I guarantee you that there's going to be some logos, some companies, some projects, because we have built a team that people are going to keep trying to hire. And I look at it and go look like you get a recruiting class every year and what'd you do with it? And it's really easy to get caught up in stars and ratings. But where are they in five years? And I'm so excited to watch this team and these individuals over the next five years with the exposure and the experience they got here, because one of the secrets to keeping the team a little bit is the lack of socialization. It's not intentional, but we got a lot of people here who have no idea what they're worth in the real world. And so I'm just super excited to see folks move on, build the bench, succession plan, the tourist service mentality that we have to come in, make a difference.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:25:36]:
But I think you're going to see a bunch of these folks working together in different places again because they're going to want to work together again.

Joe Toste [00:25:42]:
I love it. We're going to wrap this big sky, Montana. We still have some tickets for sale July 20 to the 22nd. Thank you, Kevin Gilberson. Kevin's been on to a live event, and I'm from California. And so I was like, I don't know what city to do it in. And he's not in Helena. Come to Big sky.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:25:59]:
Yeah, I'll tell you a plug that one of the things that opened my eyes and Kevin, Pat Snow, Jeff Klein's, there's some folks in small states that if I walked in the governor's office, I'm like, hey, you should see what South Dakota is doing. SD Gov is like a model. People are like, yeah, but it's South Dakota. It's been so cool to see how sure Mandy in Texas, phenomenal talent, great partner, great friend. We do a ton of work together, friend for life at this point. But the same is true with Jeff and Pat and Kevin and those guys that you get to meet. And you're like, man, some of these small states punch way above their weight. And there's some other big states that could learn a lot from what folks like Kevin and Pat and Jeff and Craig and North Dakota, like North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana is doing some really cool stuff in this space and not getting enough attention.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:26:41]:
So for me, yeah, I love Montana. I love supporting the community, but I'm also selfishly trying to figure out, like, hey, what can I learn from Kevin.

Joe Toste [00:26:48]:
While I'm out there?

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:26:49]:
And there's a handful of cios around the country that truly make me feel better, faster, smarter. And Kevin's one of those guys, so I'm looking forward to it.

Joe Toste [00:26:55]:
I love it. He's coming on three times, so I don't know if he knows that quite yet. Hey, Kevin, I know you listen to the podcast, Kevin. You're coming on three times, one with Jamie Grant, one with John Rogers, and one with John's.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:27:06]:
Another great one, man. Yeah, John's another great one. They're doing some really cool stuff in Indiana. And, yeah, Mandy gets credit for hooking me and John up at ISF or whatever their acronym, their security form. Yeah, John and I did some stuff out there, and we're like, man, let's jam out on some stuff. Because he's an anticipator. He's a like, there is this, and this is something we can. Later.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:27:23]:
I know we got to wrap because I'm going to get in trouble. You're going to get in trouble, and I want you to spend time with the team. You cannot innovate or disrupt or modernize or transform without some tension and some friction and some push on the status quo. And I think where you watch the relationships, Kevin, Pat, Jeff, Mandy, John Jr. Like, you go down the list of some of these people that you look at, and you're like, man, I'm jealous of how they're doing that. They all have one thing in common. If I go into the Nasio member room or the NASTD member room or one of your events or any of these other things, the groups that kind of migrate together are the folks that are pushing the boundaries on the status quo. And it was really obvious.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:28:02]:
John and I had never met until we got on stage. Like, we shook hands for the first time on stage for kind of a keynote panel there. And it was just awesome to watch.

Joe Toste [00:28:08]:
Hannah's walking in right now, like, about to shut this.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:28:10]:
I told you we had to wrap it up.

Joe Toste [00:28:12]:
Okay, we're going to wrap it down. I'm just going to say, hey, I've got.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:28:13]:
It's Joe's fault.

Joe Toste [00:28:14]:
He went, I've got lots of love for. I got to give. Shout out to Mandy and to mean, there's so many fun.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:28:20]:
There's others. But that list right there is just a group of people that do some really awesome work love it. I'm sure we're leaving somebody out. Yes, but that'll be your fault because you're the host. I'm just the guest.

Joe Toste [00:28:30]:
I'm going to stitch this post production. Thanks for coming on the pod.

Jamie Grant, CIO, State of Florida [00:28:33]:
Thanks buddy.

Joe Toste [00:28:33]:
Hey, what's up everybody? This is Joe Topsy from techtables.com and you're listening to the public sector show by techtables. This podcast features human centric stories from public sectors, 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.