Ep.98 The Art of IT Leadership: Strategies for Empowering Teams and Driving Change with Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear & Bradley Pristelski, CIO at CommonSpirit (S.W.)

Joe Toste [00:00:34]:
Two new guests coming on tech table. So I'm really excited about this. We have Justin Fair, who's the CIO of the city of Goodyear. And I'll be completely honest. About a year ago, if you would ask me where Goodyear was, I had no clue in Arizona where Goodyear, but I had some relatives that moved to Goodyear, and I actually did road trip out there maybe three months ago, four months ago, I stayed with my aunt, and so I got to cruise around Goodyear. And then it just happened to be, I don't know, how do you find tech tables? By the way, I was mean to.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:01:00]:
Ask you this just online through the connections, just happened to see the podcast and started listening to it, and you've had some good talks.

Joe Toste [00:01:07]:
Thank you. I appreciate that. And I'm digging into my pocket because maybe it's a theme. I've got a city of Goodyear coin. Okay. This is legit. Rich promised me he's going to get me one from Maricopa county.

Bradley Pristelski, CIO at CommonSpirit (S.W.) [00:01:20]:
What?

Joe Toste [00:01:21]:
I know once I collect enough coins on my bookshelf, when I do the virtual recordings, I'm just going to stand them up so you see different pieces, but I'll have all of the coins there. So I've got this one dir one. And then a gal by the name of Ruth Hughes gave me her 113th secretary of state one in Texas. This will be coin number three, which I'm excited about. And we've got Bradley Prestelski, who's the CIO at common spirit, a southwest division. So super excited to have you. And we actually met at a cybersecurity and eggs breakfast. I don't know, super random.

Joe Toste [00:01:52]:
Three months ago, four months ago. I can't even remember when it happened. But you were there and, yeah, I just remembered you and we had a good conversation and you gave me your business card. And it was one of those where putting this live podcast event together, and I was like, man, where's that guy's business card? He wants to come to this. And I found it. Because you're not on LinkedIn or Twitter. Yeah, you're like hard to find.

Bradley Pristelski, CIO at CommonSpirit (S.W.) [00:02:13]:
I'm in a digital presence.

Joe Toste [00:02:15]:
Today's podcast give ownership to create buy in. And the reason why I really like that title was because I think you both manage teams. You both have managed teams for a while now, which is really great. And there's a real business people and kind of operations side to managing. And so in order to be highly effective, you really need that ownership and that buy in with your team. Justin, I'm going to start with you. I quickly want to get a little bit of your background, and the reason why I paired you two together is because you actually used to work in Lubbock, Texas. And so you've got a lot of technical and infrastructure experience from Yuma Medical center and UMC medical Health.

Joe Toste [00:02:53]:
Maybe you just talk about that and then we'll kick off the next question.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:02:56]:
Yeah, sounds good. Yes. So out of college, I worked for a software and hardware company for years, and then I moved from Texas out here to Arizona, and I worked for Yuma Regional Medical center, getting into the technical role working in the data center, moved up there. When I left there, I was the ISO for the hospital there and went back to Texas to be near family in Lubbock with the health system there. And that's really where I got my roots with really, the hardware, the technology, the infrastructure, and also the security side of things. So a little bit on that challenge coin is that is actually a challenge coin that I got. If you flip on the backside, it's got the Cali dragon on it. And that is what we use for internal competition.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:03:35]:
So as we do department education and those things, Tim gives out chocolate bitcoins and swedish fish, we give out challenge coins. And so just to help promote that security awareness. And I got that from the health system space as well. And that's what's kind of got me here. And then as I transitioned. I've been with the city of Goodyear for almost two years now, and it's been a fun journey. I can honestly say I didn't know what I was getting into. Going from healthcare it almost 15 years in healthcare, it moving into public government.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:04:06]:
You hear stories, but you don't really know what you're getting into. But I'll say it's been great. And Goodyear moving to Goodyear, it's like, where's Goodyear? I know where Yuma was. That's my wife and her family are from. But everything else was just Phoenix. And then as we came out and looked, and Goodyear is known as one of the last places you see when you're driving from Phoenix to LA. But it is now one of the top ten fastest growing cities in the US. And that, in and of itself, introduces its own challenges with growth.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:04:32]:
And some of the conversations today have been around speed and the speed of government and those things. And when you're one of the top ten fastest growing cities, you have to be speedy in what you do.

Joe Toste [00:04:41]:
Yeah, we drove here from Santa Barbara and Goodyear is that whatever you take, I forget what it is, if it's the ten or whatever. But basically when we leave, we stop in Goodyear to get gas because it jumps from 450 to 650 right now in California. So it is no joke. I was curious around you were working the cyber side. You had mentioned to me about the electronic plan reviews and like it infrastructure. How has that kind of decade of medical it experience influenced you as a city CIO now, as I mentioned, going.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:05:15]:
From healthcare it into municipality, I didn't know what I was getting into. And I think it took about six months for me to really understand. The healthcare side really prepared me for it. And there are really a lot of similarities in terms of technology. Is technology within healthcare it. We spent years trying to consolidate through automation of systems, stand up electronic health records, drive those technologies to not only support the business from the clinician's workflow perspective, keep the data secure, but also how do we engage the patient from the patient perspective, how do we take that consumerization of technology and healthcare outwards then with that thing that happened in 2020, it even drove it even more so from the speed to have to roll out telemedicine and accessibility of health care virtually, that really pushed that level of technology in the health system space is an area that lacked. Now, fast forward, moving into the city side. On the city side, come in.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:06:12]:
It's very similar problems. We've got internal business systems, whereas on the health system side, you may be trying to integrate 85 different systems that manage patient data. On the city side, 85 different systems, trying to manage resident data, citizen data, and so integration of systems, the data aspect, the security aspect, very similar. Whenever, as you implement the newer technologies that are consumer facing, you've got the citizen facing as well as development facing. So Arizona growing as fast as it is, there is a huge impact on. And it comes down to how fast can we develop. And all of that comes through now it's electronic. We've got plans that are electronic, that need to be reviewed, electronic, approved.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:06:51]:
All of our inspections that occur, those occur electronic. And it's not. I'm bringing in this paper set of plans and I'm going to set it down. We're going to mark it up. It is all electronic now. And so it's how you engage the development community to help promote the growth and then also engage the citizens from smart cities technologies, accessibility of broadband and access is huge right now with the federal dollars coming down, trying to understand how that ties in back to the healthcare aspect and promoting that from a telemedicine perspective, if you don't have access to good, reliable Internet, you're going to struggle with telemedicine medicine as a service. And so in helping, what can we do as a public municipality to promote that competition from an accessibility perspective, what can we do from a policy perspective to maybe change the way that we think in terms of how we engage our service providers, our Internet service providers, to help ensure that our citizens have access to broadband? That's a huge conversation that we've been working through lately.

Joe Toste [00:07:48]:
Love it. And Bradley, what are some of the similarities and differences that you're seeing right now in common Sphere on the southwest division side?

Bradley Pristelski, CIO at CommonSpirit (S.W.) [00:07:56]:
So very similar in that regard, Joe. And in the sense that we want to try and simplify yet amplify our capability. Right. So consolidating systems, applications, rationalization, all the things that you would want to do to it, more seamless for our end users, whether it's our clinicians, our patients, our employees, even right. From the tools that they use, we have a strong focus in that regard. But we're also looking further ahead in the sense of how do we more digital our tools and connect those for our users in a meaningful way that's not only seamless, but removes the fragmentation that happens. We want it to be as frictionless as possible for the tools that they use to do their jobs day in and day out. So that's really where our focus has been there.

Joe Toste [00:08:36]:
Awesome. That's great. And Justin, you've got a lot of projects. I think you said there's a ton of projects in flight. We won't go over the specifics of all of the projects you have, but I love what you said about turning Goodyear it from a mom and pop shop into an enterprise shop. So I was curious what excites you most about that challenge?

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:08:54]:
The challenge, it really is. It's fun coming into an environment in a weird way, that's fun. But it is great to see an organization grow and mature and think of it as your child or your baby. You love to see the team grow. You love to see the maturity grow. And as I came in again, Goodyear is growing at a pace that has not been seen in their history in terms of employee staffing as well as residential counts. And so we have to grow, and with that, we have to mature from that small city fill, from a management perspective to more of an IT enterprise shop type of perspective. So that's what I refer to, growing from a mom and pop shop to an enterprise it shop.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:09:40]:
And that's what's exciting, we've got a lot of initiatives in play. We've got to do the basic blocking and tackling. We've got to make sure that we're following our basic processes, we're making sure that we've got a good cybersecurity framework, that we're measuring, that we're managing, that we're doing the basics, but from an innovative perspective, what are the next things we need to be looking at? And that's drawn from the healthcare space. Healthcare was huge on data and analytics and helping to make informed decisions with the use of data. And I see that, at least in my experience here, that has not been a collective strategy within Goodyear coming in. So over the last year, we've had a very specific focus on establishing a data program, data management program, and how do we build that program so that we can again take that and ensure that we are making the best use of resources through the use of data, that we're making informed decisions. So deployment of analytics, deployments of those operational dashboards, performance measures. So we've got within our city strategic plan, their specific goals around smart city, having a smart city master plan, which I'm championing, as well as second to that is a performance measurement dashboard, which our city manager's office is championing.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:10:49]:
And so those allow us to take those and we're not coming and just implementing a technology solution, but we're saying, here's the strategic objectives, here's the solutions to get there to accomplish those business goals. So those are some big ones on our radar. Continued collaboration, that's what's really exciting and I think, as you see. And back to how did I get tied in with tech tables? It's through the collaboration of the Arizona group. We've got a very strong collaboration at the county, state and local levels, and that's something that we continue to promote. A lot of times you don't hear about that in the government side, and I see it too, in some cases. But I think we've got a good group of CIOs in areas led by good, strong leadership up through the state. And it's how can we, because we can't do it alone.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:11:29]:
It's how can we lean on each other, partner with one another to help move those initiatives forward, whether it's data security, broadband accessibility, all the way through to basic, typical, traditional it you think of in terms of systems management, citizen engagement, those things.

Joe Toste [00:11:44]:
Yeah, that's great. Bradley, what excites you with common spirit? Is it building a better EMR system or is it simplifying patient payments or cybersecurity or more digital experiences? What are you looking at that excites you?

Bradley Pristelski, CIO at CommonSpirit (S.W.) [00:11:57]:
Yeah, I think as I look at it, in the history of common spirit, we're only about three years old when you really think about it. We came together two separate ministries that were Catholic based. Dignity Health, which was based here out of San Francisco, had presence here in Arizona and Nevada, merged then with catholic health initiatives, which was headquartered out of Denver, and now we cross 26 states. So as you think about that. So I have seven other peers that help do this role across our nation. And when we think about where we're headed, not only as a ministry, but as an organization that is still coming together, the things that we focus on are, first, do we have the right talent at bay to drive us forward in a meaningful way that we can then take care of our clinicians? Can we provide our clinicians the very best experience as a caregiver to treat our patients in such a meaningful way, that provides that seamless interaction, that is frictionless for them to come in as they leave our acute settings, as they may present in our ambulatory settings, can we help them at home? It's all of those things that we think about. Do we have the right people to focus on that? Secondly, we focus then on our excellence. And excellence comes in many forms.

Bradley Pristelski, CIO at CommonSpirit (S.W.) [00:13:06]:
Here in the state of Arizona, we have Barrow Neurological Institute, right? It's world renowned for what they do in the neurospace. We also have Norton Thoracic Institute. Right? So the number one lung transport, transplant rather group in the country. And we partner with those groups in a way to understand their use case. We really understand from a technology standpoint what that true clinical or business driver is. And from there, we build the technology to present excellence across that use case. And then lastly, I would say our future. What do we look forward to in our future that is going to be meaningful? How can we be the very best catholic based healthcare system in the nation? And we do all we can around people, around tools around you name it, to try and advance our capabilities in that regard?

Joe Toste [00:13:51]:
That's great. Justin. I know you're a big fan of Jocko and echelon fronts. Have you heard of muster? Their conference? Okay. Have you gone to a muster?

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:13:59]:
Not yet.

Joe Toste [00:14:00]:
So I've gone to muster in Las Vegas, and it is amazing. If you ever want to go, we can make the dates work. We should go together. I would go again. It is the best leadership probably on the planet. So for those who are not familiar by the way, Jaco Willinek is a former SEAL team leader, just decorated commander, led during the battle of so in Iraq. And actually to plug my own, I've got my own personal podcast just to plug that. It's called the study.

Joe Toste [00:14:30]:
And I actually interviewed Jacob's lead sniper. I know you listen to it. You love that episode, right? Yeah. It's got the most downloads of any podcast episode I've ever done, ever. It was a good one. Yeah. It's pretty hard to beat when you've got a guy. His arms are huge.

Joe Toste [00:14:45]:
His name is JP. And just the level of intensity and focus and commitment, and JP was an awesome guy. You posted an article online from echelon front. How do you create buy in? Right. It's give your team ownership. Empower them, give them that ownership. I was curious what spoke to you in that article that you're trying to apply to the city of Goodyear right now.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:15:07]:
Yes. Huge Jocko fan. And it's interesting. There's really three things, and I'll break down each of those three. The first one is you start with the y, and Doug mentioned Simon Sinek. I'm also a huge Simon Sinek fan, and those two don't really necessarily go synonymous with each other. But Jocko in Simon Sinek, that would be a podcast combo. But it starts with the why.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:15:29]:
And then second to that, it is really empowering them with the goals, establishing what that goal is, what the mission is. And the. The third is empowering them to go do it. And so starting with the why, I mean, is the core foundation of anything we do in healthcare. The why is in a lot of times, very simple. You are there to take care of the patient, you are there to support the clinician. On city government side within Goodyear, it's to support our business units, but it's to support the development community, which directly has an impact on economic development. It's to support the residents, which I'm one of.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:16:04]:
So if I can't access our city services, I'm like, what is going on? But it's that accessibility as a citizen, because as a citizen now, it's so much more critical to be connected in terms of be connected and engaged in offerings at the city, also just your neighborhood, what's going on within the environment. So coming back to the why, tying it back to the why is the first thing. And that's the first step. The second thing I mentioned is setting that goal. You've established the why, but now what's the goal? What are we trying to accomplish, and then it's, okay, team, the why, what the goal is now, I want you to go create the strategy. That's one thing jocko really hits very strongly on is empowering your team through that ownership. And I think we all see it and we can call it different things, but if the team is not bought into what you're doing, into the mission, into the plan, they're not going to be all in. And in order to truly get that buy in in a lot of cases, and it's not that authoritarian approach of, you must get this done.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:17:04]:
It's, here's the mission, here's the goal show, are we going to accomplish that? And for me, that's when I step out and I say, okay, team, tell me how you're going to get there. And that's how you create that buy in, is you put that ownership and allow the to take that ownership. And I think that's so crucial. And it's tough coming from. You'd mentioned I'm an infrastructure guy by background, working in the data center, and I'm used to being the technical guy. And so growing from a technical guy that is responsible for coming up with the technical solutions to stepping back and now leading those technical teams, I have to just sit and bite my tongue and let the team do that. And that's been one of the hardest lessons that I've had to learn is that. But it's also the most valuable now because it's not my role to go design technical solutions.

Justin Fair, CIO, City of Goodyear [00:17:49]:
It's the experts that I have in the room that I purposely recruited to be in the room to come up with that strategy, come up with that plan, and that's how we as a team move forward. And that's where, being two years at Goodyear, I've really seen that. And we're going through extreme ownership as a book, as a team, and really taking it, digesting it, and talking through those and how we can apply those lessons learned, how we can grow as a team, implementing the laws of combat and those things, because it's so true. Just those principles. Yeah, we could go on for a long time, but those are some of the main ways. But really it comes down to ownership and empowering them through letting them create the strategy, create the solution, and let them own it.

Joe Toste [00:18:24]:
I'm definitely going to dive more in over dinner. Love to hear more about how you're using the four laws of combat, and we'll definitely catch up more over dinner. Bradley, giving owners is really important, and I was curious, part of that there's a growing process. How are you growing leaders at common spirit?

Bradley Pristelski, CIO at CommonSpirit (S.W.) [00:18:39]:
So my direct team is only 15, but we matrix across hundreds.

Joe Toste [00:18:42]:
So your direct 15, how are you growing those leaders that are directly within your circle?

Bradley Pristelski, CIO at CommonSpirit (S.W.) [00:18:47]:
I think it's important even before answering that question is just demonstrate some of the background that I've had as well. I know we went through that quickly in the beginning, but just like many Arizonans, I'm a transplant here myself. I've been here 16 years. And of those 16 years I've been with common spirit in the legacy, dignity, health before that, catholic healthcare, west before that. And I've been five years now as a CIO. But before that, I, midwestern roots, grew up in Wisconsin, had a love and affinity for the Green Bay packers. And those that know the Green Bay packers know Vince Lombardi, and they know that as a coach, he was very spiritual, he was motivating, he was the strategist on the field, and he relished in that fact. And growing up as well, Bart Starr was one of my heroes, and Bart starr in this case was the operator on the field, right? He was the quarterback.

Bradley Pristelski, CIO at CommonSpirit (S.W.) [00:19:32]:
He was that man making things happen on the playing field. And it was that special relationship of why the Green Bay packers won the first ever Super bowl in that regard and showed success after that. From there, my tenure. I took my very first flight on an airplane to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to go to school at the Air Force Academy. I wanted to be a pilot. What better way than to get on a plane and feel that for myself and go be a pilot? Learned quick enough that I wasn't pilot qualified. I had asthma growing up, of all things, but I was physically fit. I even played football there under Fisher de Barry and now a hall of Fame coach for the NCAA.

Bradley Pristelski, CIO at CommonSpirit (S.W.) [00:20:08]:
But what I learned through that experience is that diversity matters, for one. And you have to pivot, and you have to pivot smartly. And you can only do that to the best of your ability if you can rely on others as part of the journey along the way. And so really back to relationship. So how I would answer ownership and how do you grow your people? It really starts with the relationship that you have with them as their leader. And I like to really dig into my team members, not only my team members, but those that are in the periphery. So my business and clinical leaders, strong relationships with those individuals. And I'll say today that I'm not a CIO because I'm the strongest technologist out there.

Bradley Pristelski, CIO at CommonSpirit (S.W.) [00:20:46]:
I'm a CIO because I have the ability to grow and maintain very strong relationships, and I know how to connect those dots. But what I would always focus on is what would motivate, and I think, Justin, you hit on this earlier as well, is how do you truly motivate those individuals to take on that ownership? What drives them, what motivates them, what is intrinsically valuable for them to grab onto. And it really starts with their own authenticity. I heard earlier about being genuine. Authenticity is that same thing. It showcases your credibility and your willingness to dive in and roll your sleeves up and take it on. So that's the journey we talk about. How do you best have the relationship for this project, for example, or how do you work with this vendor or this partner across the aisle to get to the job done to the very best extent possible? So again, I think relationships matter.

Bradley Pristelski, CIO at CommonSpirit (S.W.) [00:21:36]:
We've heard that all the time. But relationships as it pertains to owners is vital.

Joe Toste [00:21:41]:
I love that. Relationships as it pertains to ownership. That is fantastic. I appreciate the both of you coming on tech tables and picking up this conversation over dinner. Thank you guys. Appreciate it.