Is just believing in your people and their ability to learn, grow, and prosper enough to unleash their passion? And how do you empower such a passionate bunch, so they become intentional and thoughtful in their actions and start painting outside the lines to drive meaningful impact?
Contributors

• • Kevin Jones, Chief Information Officer, Indiana Department of Child Services
  • Lewis Stockford, Head of Information Technology (CIO), Centerplate

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Transcript

Sanjog Aul [00:00:22]:

Hello, and welcome to this segment on CTN. To learn more, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. And the topic for today is From Passion to Impact  . So what we are trying to do today is to have to get a lot of things done. And we want a bunch of people who are full of passion and energy to help execute on it. And when we talk about passion, should we just assume that if we give them the breathing room, allow them to learn, grow, and prosper, would that unleash their passion? Or is there something else which we may be missing? And that’s why many companies report that they don’t have a passionate bunch. But if you are able to kindle that passion in people, how do you channelize it? And make sure that they try to do things which are thoughtful and they’re aligned to the vision and they start painting outside the lines, become innovative and eventually help drive meaningful impact. To discuss that, we have two esteemed guests here. So I’ll start with Kevin Jones. He’s the CIO of Indiana Department of Child Services. Hey, Kevin. How are you?

Kevin Jones [00:01:35]:

I’m doing well, sir. How are you?

Sanjog Aul [00:01:38]:

Very good. Very good. Thank you. And we also have Lewis Stockford who’s the CIO with Centerplate. Hey, Lewis. How are you doing?

Lewis Stockford [00:01:45]:

Good. How are you doing?

Sanjog Aul [00:01:47]:

Very good, sir. Very good. So we will get started with you, Kevin. So as I said about the passion part. So if we are working on too many things and you see people also working hard, should it be construed as passion or they are just working under fear or under the burden of a deadline? How do you differentiate, especially in today’s day and age?

Kevin Jones [00:02:19]:

I think it can be complicated. I work in an environment, IT specifically, where in many cases, a lot of our employees or a lot of the individuals we collaborate with may not be emotional and they may not be extroverted. And passion tends to connote an emotional connection. One of the things I’ve learned to do is to really look at things outside of just how they act in the energy. I look at the output. So I start to take more of a perspective of the quality because so many times, there are individuals who are super introverted and quiet, but they put so much into the work. And I think that’s where we have to differentiate and look at, sometimes deadlines require you to move faster where you don’t get to put the effort and the quality that you would want to because of your passion for what you’re doing. So I start to really look at the quality and look at the opportunity cost. Look at what is it that I get by allowing this individual to put all of themselves into the work and maybe even slip a deadline to get a better product. So I start to really look at the quality versus hitting deadlines to see if an individual is really passionate and believes in what they’re doing, and I get that feedback from that space.

Sanjog Aul [00:03:35]:

So, Lewis, based on Kevin’s response here, someone who works very hard and puts — when we since we are looking outside in, we are saying this person is putting, clocking a lot of hours, perhaps. And they are producing results. May or may not meet the deadline, but it is a superior product. Should we construe this as passion or work ethic?

Lewis Stockford [00:04:06]:

Yeah. I mean, I agree with Kevin’s points. I think what you’ve just described there for me is more work effort than it is passion. I think you can work hard on something, miss some deadlines and not be passionate about it. So with my teams, I try to give them a balance of that, just doing day-to-day work as well as maybe some feedback on some projects that they’d like to work on or participate in. We have a lot of projects available. So there’s lots of choice there for them to figure out what interests them exactly. You still have to do your day job, but here’s some things that’ll make it more interesting and it’s something that you’re interested in.

Sanjog Aul [00:04:55]:

So, Kevin, if I were to have someone work, as we discussed about work ethic or the way you define, like, the person is really putting the time, that’s work ethic and that’s table stakes. Right? That you would expect from a person. Passion, they should bring. I mean, that’s our wish, but essentially, it comes back to the kind of environment we are creating for them. So one is to say, hey, we would love for you to do what you want to do so that we can help you stay passionate or become passionate. But when it comes to the way we allocate task and the kind of deadlines we accept from the management or the kind of environment we create, the passion is usually the output of all of that. So where do you think — and let’s start with your organization, and then we can look at the outside work — what are you doing to make sure they have the breathing room for them to be able to think outside of the next task they need to complete, for them to even start thinking what do I want to do? Otherwise, they come to the office with a lot of tasks spent. Where is the passion then?

Kevin Jones [00:06:08]:

So for me, I look at, and me as the CIO, I have to take the time to actually learn my individuals. We classify them as human resources, but I have to focus on the human aspect before I focus on the resource. One of the things I require from all of my team members is we do a 1-year, 3-year, 5-year plan. It’s a personal plan, not one for within the business, but one that’s personal and personal growth, so we take that 1-year and make sure that the alignment with the 3-year lines up with the 5-year and then we take those goals and we find alignment for those goals within the organization. As a CIO, I provide the content, but within it I allow my team to have flexibility in those areas and then I manage what we look at from a perspective of KPIs and the KTPs. As long as I’m getting the appropriate output at the appropriate time and I’m able to see the growth that we need, I can give a little flexibility which allows the individuals to go and take that 1-year, 3-year, 5-year plan that they know at the end of each one of those intervals they’ve grown based on their desire and not necessarily mine. But I wrap my vision and my achievable goals around their desire and then I find gaps. So when you do find gaps, I bring in and hire people around the gaps that I have. So I start with who I have, build their plans, and build my context around their desires and goals, and then I fill individuals in those open areas where I don’t have the resources who want to do that and that allows me to still achieve my goals, some in many cases faster and the quality is much higher because it’s built around individuals, people, process, technology. The individuals are the solution and not necessarily the technology and the process because the technology is there. So allowing them to build my individual people as my solution knowing that the outputs get the results from the technology has been successful for me.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:24]:

So, Lewis, if you are trying to bring people and building an environment, and to basically get them to do the job and ask for Kevin, delivering the results that we need to deliver. When you’re looking at it, are you looking at it from the agenda or rather the goals or the performance criteria that’s been set for you so that if they deliver to what you want to see them deliver, you will get the other boys and you will get the promotion? Or is it that your performance criteria is not just delivering the results your organization has stepped up and said, not only, Lewis, you’re supposed to help deliver results, but we will also measure how well have you developed your people and how passionately they work.

Lewis Stockford [00:09:18]:

Yeah. So, I try and take a personal approach with my team. So just kind of work with them, try and develop some trust between them and myself, and kind of just work with that. I think there’s no silver bullet here. Everyone’s different. They’ve got different styles, different ways that they react to these kinds of conversations. So you kind of have to take it on a one-off basis to develop that trust and personal relationship. Then I found they’re more open to opening up to you and kind of work with you on what their goals are, especially within technology teams. They’re heads-down kind of guys, and they like to kind of just sit in a dark corner and work a lot of the time. They don’t want to necessarily talk about how their career is going and that kind of thing. But I think once you develop that trust, you can give them feedback about what they want and then you can act on that. I tend to take a very common-sense approach to it. So they want to work on this kind of technology and this kind of technology. I just try and make that happen. And of course, also evaluate, are they ready to do that, and then do that. I’m not concerned about what my leadership is gonna think about me and my performance there. I’m really focused, at that point, for that particular conversation with the employee, on their career. I’m not focused on mine.

Sanjog Aul [00:10:57]:

Do you think if the organization was doing that, the leaders would become more intentional about balancing what needs to be delivered versus the evolution or evolving their people and developing their people and also instilling passion in them. What would make you do as a leader, and you means you, that community of you, which is CIOs, so that they become intentional about it because many are not.

Lewis Stockford [00:11:34]:

Yeah. I mean a lot of this goes back to maybe the maturity of the organization, right. Not every organization is at the same maturity level, and so you’re gonna get different responses to the same questions. So my organization, for example, kind of medium maturity level. We’re kind of getting to a point now where we’re starting to understand this connection between our employees being happy and performance. So we’re kind of starting to go down this road a bit more at the senior executive level. At my level, I’ve always been the same. I’ve always tried to figure out what makes my team tick a little bit and what they want out of coming to work. Right? They come to work. They do work. We pay them. We’re trying to make it a little different than that and elicit some passion. Not every individual is the same. Not everyone comes into a job passionate as Kevin mentioned before. You got different folks out there, and you got people with different emotional intelligence levels. So I think you have to know your team and know who’s ready to go to those different levels. Those who aren’t ready to go to the next level, you can try and help get them there, but you can’t really force them to go to that next level. So you have to provide opportunities for the people that will take advantage of it, and maybe for the others, just try and help them get there.

Sanjog Aul [00:13:16]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back. And Kevin, this question when we come back will be for you, is about just thinking about ROI for a second. If you were to look at an environment, a utopic environment, let’s call it utopic, where everyone is passionate, genuinely passionate, what would it do to the work environment? What would it do to the collaboration and the results that the team delivers compared to when they’re not fully there? If the delta, the difference between not being there and truly there, if that was huge enough and it was presented in the right fashion, would it allow you to make the business case to develop the breathing room, to do less in a given day? Yes, you will do overall more, but do less in a given day so that people get a chance to come out of that workload where they’re up to their eyeballs and rekindle their passion and live a good journey in their profession and personal lives as well. Can this ROI be quantified and articulated so that we can start making a significant difference in the way we give the professional life to the worker who comes in. And as a result, we will have genuine passion that will come out as a result. Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back and explore.

Sanjog Aul [00:15:51]:

Welcome back. So, Kevin, we always talk about ROI. So if you were to create an ROI case, or ROI justification for allowing an environment where the collaboration and the result and the overall passion level of people would go significantly high compared to where it is today, which should automatically result in innovation, better productivity, and better overall outcome, would that be the recipe for you and other leaders to be able to fundamentally rethink and reset the environments we have today and reap the benefits?

Kevin Jones [00:16:34]:

So the way I would approach that question is one, even in a utopic environment, the challenge will always be how the overall organization embraces change. I, being a service in the industry to my organization, I’m really in response to the needs of the business. As long as the needs of the business can be structured in a way that you can roadmap, prepare, and plan, that is absolutely a possibility. One of the things I’ve noticed in my organization is that there are times where we can roadmap. We do have a long-term roadmap, but the issue we have is just like with COVID-19, the situation we’re in now, so much of our operational processes were put on hold. Planning for the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns like COVID-19 puts us in a situation where it’s not always we’re not always capable of being able to just say, hey. This is how we’re gonna do it and we’re gonna put it around this time. And I think if your organization has a good clean structure around change and we recently implemented lean as how we manage change and then you’ve developed a corporate culture around continuous improvement, which will allow them to understand that the minimum viable product is what we start with and then we continuously improve over time, that will then definitely enable you to be able to take the perspective of I’m going to just give a set and not necessarily worry about deadlines per se, but worry about the output and the quality of the output. I would love to do that, and I think it is worth having that discussion in many cases, but I think there’s a balance. Part of your time you can do that and you can give individuals time to chase some of the passionate projects that they’re passionate about like has already been stated earlier and be able to say that, hey. This is your time for passionate projects, but this is your time for day-to-day business. So I think there’s a balance there and it is worth having that discussion. We do that on our end. We’ve seen efficacy where we’ve gotten deliverables. We’ve had projects that we were able to take a project where it was originally planned and scoped for about a 6- to 9-month deliverable. I gave it to one passionate individual, Tim, by himself, who was able to deliver that in 90 days and roll it out to 4,000 users that impact 2,000,000 of our clients. For me, I’ve seen deliverables where you give it to a passionate situation and it gets done immediately. But they also know the balance is sometimes you have to work on the day-to-day grind and make sure that we’re going to still be able to deliver what the business is requiring us and at the same time you get an opportunity for the passion. So I think it’s a give and take and it’s a reward in our environment.

Sanjog Aul [00:19:41]:

Lewis, would you think based on—thanks so much, Kevin, for your response. And Lewis, I would like to ask you, should we look at us as IT department as subservient or should we step up and lead the charge and say maybe I can lead by example by building a subculture where you allow the passion to truly unleash the capabilities of individuals and teams which builds the results and which in turn you take back as an ROI-based business case and win it and become the poster child for the company and which in turn allows it to percolate throughout the organization and suddenly you have fundamentally led the transformation versus waiting for someone else in the organization or the organization itself to transform first before you can start even thinking about this passion thing we are talking here.

Lewis Stockford [00:20:41]:

Yeah. I mean, I agree. That’s the approach I think we’ve been going down. We’re not waiting on things to happen. We’re trying to get things done. I don’t think I would use the word subservient, but I think we’re definitely client-focused and we want to make our customers happy. We do that in whatever way we can. We don’t wait for something to come from the top and say, hey, go do this. We’re trying to motivate our employees to get those things done. There are different levels of employees out there. You’re gonna have some people who are passionate at different levels than others. There’s a saying, like, if you wanna get something done, you go to a busy person or a passionate person. So if I have something to do, I may have to go to a person that’s super busy, someone more passionate, and then maybe move things around so I don’t overwhelm that person. I think we’re driving forward. We’re trying to drive a change in the organization from a technology perspective, the way we do things. A lot of people are gonna use these tools to generate their own passions in other departments. I agree with what you said and I think that’s kind of the road we’re going down.

Sanjog Aul [00:22:19]:

So question for you, Lewis. What is truly holding you or other leaders back from becoming intentional and actually start focusing? And even if you’re trying to focus and trying to unleash the passion, what holds you back today? If we inventory that, then at least we will know what challenges we are facing so we can try cracking those problems.

Lewis Stockford [00:22:43]:

Getting buy-in from leadership on investments is always challenging. Not every CIO reports to the CFO, but I do. Sometimes it’s challenging getting that investment for training, education, conferences, and different things that might elicit some of that passion and open someone’s mind. If you don’t have the money, sometimes you have to get creative and do it different ways. I tend to lean on my partners a lot, my technology partners, to get some training in different sessions with them at low or no cost and just work with what I’ve got. Getting the buy-in from your executive leadership team and the board is important to be able to motivate these employees. Technology teams are expensive. There’s another saying, whatever I train people and they leave. And then what happens if you don’t train them and they stay? Then you end up with unpassionate and unproductive employees. There’s a balance between training and retention. I think I can train any of my teams and if they leave, that’s great for them. That means I’ve done a good job. I’m not focused on that, but I do understand an investment’s been made. I try and get the employee to work with me and say, hey, we’re making an investment in you. We want to get our return on that investment, but obviously we’re giving you something you want to drive your passion so you can do the things you want as well. There’s a balanced approach for sure.

Sanjog Aul [00:24:34]:

So Kevin, based on Lewis’s response, would you say when, say, a CFO or any executive management doesn’t buy your pitch to invest in people, into training, in their mentoring, whatever else that you want to do for them, would you say that is shame on the management or is it our shortcoming of being able to tell the right story, create the right use case and ROI?

Kevin Jones [00:25:06]:

I think the challenge becomes the audience that you’re dealing with. Lewis mentioned one of the organizations that have challenges. In many cases when it comes to investment, it is a challenge when the CIO reports to the CFO. When the CIO doesn’t have room or is not completely at the table where they can make their own decisions, it becomes a challenge. You have to get in a situation like that to really understand the limitations you may have in trying to communicate the cost-benefit analysis of investing in a particular resource to train them so that they can walk out the door and you lose your investment. When you’re dealing with a financial group who understands investments, their return on investment is the limitation. I would decouple the discussion from return on investment to continuous improvement and the long-term benefits of a continuous improvement environment. When we implemented lean in our organization, it allowed us to decouple from the individual resources that are on hand to creating a culture where when you come in the door you’re already equipped with continuous improvement tools and training is a part of that and continuous growth is a part of that, knowing that you’re increasing the baseline of your organization’s knowledge base and that even when an individual leaves you’re not held hostage to that tribal knowledge walking out the door because you created a baseline where that knowledge is shared and it’s just a part of your culture. So technically, that’s the argument you could make in that situation, but it’s not just as simple as not making the right argument. It’s also having the right audience in the room to make the argument to justify getting that. Top-down leadership is always a challenge for CIOs regardless of the situation. I was fortunate to have buy-in and show efficacy early with some of the investments we did make that investing in a continuous improvement model for our organization made a lot of sense long term. One benefit being reduction of our staff turnover. At one point we had 50% turnover in our staff and I’m talking about 5,000 employees, and I was able to implement something as simple as virtual reality. We now interview every one of our candidates that comes into our organization and they go through a virtual reality simulation, real-life actors where they actually go in and simulate and we get to look at them and understand their ability to respond, what tools they are coming in the door with, as well as they get an opportunity to experience the work. In many cases, candidates elect themselves to leave or not even take the job once they have an immersed experience of what the job entails. We score those individuals to really get an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, and we’re able to put them in the right place so that we can actually get the maximum benefit out of that. That investment was significant and without that use case we would have never made it. It had been proposed multiple times but I identified a use case that allowed us to be able to show what we can do with that and we’ve reduced our staff turnover by 18%. Now when we propose those types of things, yes, the answer is yes. We don’t get much pushback anymore at this point because we showed how continuous improvement can help us. But it is tough to get investment when dealing with a fiscal situation. So I think it’s partially argument, but it’s also audience.

Sanjog Aul [00:29:15]:

Let’s take a quick break listeners. We’ll be right back. So, Lewis, when we come back, let’s talk about how we are treating our people so that they are seen as humans while, of course, they are humans. We all know that, but we call them human resource. A resource means you got to fully utilize a resource, but then if a person is also having issues at home, which very well can happen, people have personal lives, it can impact what they do at work. So what do we do to keep a watch on what they are dealing with? And, of course, they will not reveal everything to you. But what do we do so that on the personal side and on the professional side, we look at them human first and actually not as a resource. A resource is something which you try to fully consume and get the most value of, like utilitarian model. How can we treat our people as humans so that they can, if they have passion in them or if you want to unleash passion in them, that at least becomes a possibility. What are we doing? What are we not doing? How can we get better? Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:31:30]:

Welcome back. So, Lewis, let’s look at an employee who works, of course, 8 to 10 hours at work, and sometimes they take work home. But they have personal lives too, and they have other reasons why they are coming to work and living the life they want to. How can we positively impact all areas of an individual’s life and not think about them at all as a resource, but instead as a human who you want to make so good and help them become so good that the output or the outcome will naturally come and benefit you versus thinking company first or customer first and your employee second or third? What holds you back or what holds us all leaders back from doing so?

Lewis Stockford [00:32:24]:

Well, I think it’s you gotta know your employees. You gotta have those regular conversations and help them, treat them as people, to develop that trust. Your coworkers are like your extended family to me. You have to have that relationship with them. You have to understand them, but then you also have to let them communicate with you. I don’t think it makes sense to try to banjo them and get information out of them. You have to be available when they need you. If they knock on the door and your door’s closed and they can’t get to see you, that’s not useful. So you have to have an open-door kind of policy towards them. You have to have that conversation and trust at a certain level. You’re not gonna know everything about them. But in cases where they have issues at home that are affecting their work, you just have to be available and say, okay, how can I help? As anyone would do. Be authentic about it and if they have some kind of personal issue that’s affecting their life, and they need time or some other kind of flexibility, you need to consider that and try to be as flexible as possible without being rigid and saying no. If they need to take time off to go to doctors or see family, my approach has generally been that yes, you’re paid to do a job and we still want to get that job done, but outside of that, I’m almost 100% flexible to help that employee work out their home issues and also get the job done. If they really can’t come into work and do that, they can take sick days or vacation days or work out some other arrangement with me, comp time and other things. So I think it’s being flexible, but there’s no one answer. Especially with COVID-19 now, we’re having to be much more flexible than ever before.

Sanjog Aul [00:35:01]:

Sure. So, Kevin, based on Lewis’s response, would you think that if we gave them the permission and allowed flexibility, does that get translated in the employee’s mind as care?

Kevin Jones [00:35:24]:

I would say that it is 100% depending on the employee. There are employees that would absolutely embrace that as care, and those individuals who are passionate and disciplined and are really focused on the work absolutely take advantage of that opportunity to put more and pour more into the organization. There are also individuals who may take advantage of that. So I think that’s the balance and that’s where, as a CIO, we balance the act of justifying working from home and less time on hours given for the same salary to individuals who don’t quite understand the benefits of having someone be more efficient. There are numbers that look at coefficient of an employee where over time the productivity of an individual employee drops based on the total amount of hours that that employee is putting into work. When we show that trend and it’s real, we’re able to justify that. But I do think that given more hours, some employees will take advantage of that from a perspective of benevolence, and then there are those who take advantage from a net malevolence. Then we have to do the balancing act for that.

Sanjog Aul [00:36:51]:

So, Lewis, when you look at the way you did what you did in terms of giving them flexibility and you allowed, or you gave them the permission to do whatever they want, but whenever they want, but as long as the results come. Has that been good enough to kindle their passion, or did you do something more or different, which helped you get them to go that extra mile and they volunteered to do it?

Lewis Stockford [00:37:25]:

Yeah. I think this is just one of the ways that we develop trust and work with employees to get to a better place in our relationship. We’re flexible when they need us to be. I don’t think I went out to all my employees and said you can do whatever you want. I took more of a case-by-case approach. They still need to either come to me or one of my managers and have that conversation. But I think it just develops trust. Now they know they can come to us and we’ll help them solve their issues rather than being rigid. That’s one of the tools to develop trust. When you have trust between two individuals, you can get a lot more accomplished. That’s the approach I’m taking, but it’s really just one of the tools that we use to develop trust between employer and employee.

Sanjog Aul [00:38:27]:

So what’s your checks and balances which allows you to ensure that the way you would have handled that employee, your manager is doing the same?

Lewis Stockford [00:38:39]:

We just talk through it. If there’s some special circumstance happening, we don’t have a big team, so we can kind of talk through it and understand it. I understand in larger organizations that may not be as clear-cut, but if you have a process in place of discussions, you can kind of map that out to more employees. At this time, I basically get feedback from managers on those conversations and they present a solution and then I review it with them, make sure that it is not outside of common sense or what we think is normal, and we’re not impacting the business. The business is still paying that salary for that person, and we want to make sure we get their value out of their investment. On the other side, we want to make sure the employee is there and that trust is still there and we can help them through whatever they’re going through. 

Sanjog Aul [00:39:52]:

So Kevin, whenever we look at passionate individuals or you see them in action and collaborating with others, conflicts will surface because both parties are passionate. But organizational culture typically has been to remove or reduce the conflicts, which in a way could be sending a message to those individuals that I cannot be me. I cannot express my opinion or it will be seen differently. So when they don’t express their opinion, when they don’t speak their mind, there is a direct loss related to innovation and new ideas and collaboration, effective collaboration, which would hurt the company. So how do you deal with conflict management so that it does not stifle passion?

Kevin Jones [00:40:53]:

My teams, if you ever spoke to any of my employees, they would laugh about this question because I love confrontation and confrontation from the perspective of constructively dealing with conflict. I require us to get in the room. We have regular meetings with my teams and my leadership. When we get in the room there is no title when we walk through that door, and I encourage them to challenge my ideas in many cases so that we get the best idea. I don’t feel like I always have the answer. Even if I’m right, you can challenge it because if what I think doesn’t stand up to the criticism of one of my employees or members of my teams, then it’s not the right answer. So my team understands that is how we deal with it. We confront the issue. We get together as a group of all stakeholders in that particular scenario in the room having this discussion and may the best idea win. I don’t care about my job, my responsibility from the perspective of my career. I know where I am. I know who I am. I know what I’ve accomplished. I focus on getting the best ideas and looking at my employees as my children, lack of a better term. I feel like I’m at the kingmaker perspective where I want to make kings and queens out of these individuals. I want to train my replacement all the time. I’m looking for individuals who can step up and confront the issues that they would in my position and deal with getting a solution and apply benevolence, apply the sense that you have an idea and I respect your idea. We come into a place where we confront the issues respectfully, apply empathy, and look at everyone’s perspective and come up with a solution.

Sanjog Aul [00:42:59]:

Now that said, Lewis, when you look at the approach that you are taking to get the passion kindled and maintained, is there something specific you’re doing to make sure that that passion doesn’t get dissipated or is not misused, and instead gets channelized into getting some meaningful results and an impact?

Lewis Stockford [00:43:34]:

Yeah. Maybe some of the ways that we do our meetings here. When we have to do some kind of engineering or meeting work around a specific solution, I like the teams to have an introductory goal to lay out what the business requirements are, what the guardrails are, and things like that. Then I send the team off and I trust the team to go off by themselves and have a discussion engineer-to-engineer without any leadership in the room and then come back with their ideas. It elicits a different result than if I’m sitting in the room giving direction. I’m trying to abstract myself from that layer, let them engineer, and then come back and we have that discussion about whether their solutions or set of solutions resolve the business need. I found that works pretty well. We do have some project management in the room to hold things together. They understand that you trust them. You’re putting a little faith in the engineering process and you’re also not telling them how you want it. You’re letting them say here’s the business problem, go solve for it, come back with a few options and then we’ll go from there. We’ll look at those options and consider cost, risk, and other variables that are more business related, which is where I focus on just will I be able to sell this to the CFO, is there ROI, those kinds of things. 

Sanjog Aul [00:45:38]:

Let’s take quick break, listeners, we’ll go right back and I’d like to build upon Lewis’s response. So Kevin, when I come to you based on what Lewis mentioned — during the meetings you also if you want to go geek, you go geek and join the gang and work with them. But one is to see demonstration of passion during the meetings. Another is when one person is putting their heads down and actually working on things. The way they are tackling things, the way they are interpreting things, the way they are challenging things could be happening when they are actually doing their job. What could you do so that at that time, there is less dissipation and more channelizing of the energy? Please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back and explore.

Sanjog Aul [00:47:17]:

Welcome back. So, Kevin, Lewis mentioned that of course a very good way of channelizing their energies is to get to their level, talk to them, get them to speak their mind during the meetings and any conversations we have, try to steer them in one direction. But then there’s a lot of work that’s actually getting done when they are by themselves or maybe talking among their peers to get certain things done. At that time, there’s a lot of potential for dissipation of that energy. How do you prevent that?

Kevin Jones [00:47:50]:

One of the things we’ve done is implement something very similar to Lewis. Even though I asked them to challenge, I know they don’t always. When I’m in the room, whatever I say is what’s going to actually end up being what they do, which is not the objective. So I have removed myself from the day-to-day. I provide the overall context. I’ll provide the architectural vision and roadmap. But what we’ve done is implemented Scrum and agile methodologies to execute our work. Our scrum masters are subject matter experts and developers and engineers and not necessarily the project managers. We do have project management resources that manage the triple constraint: time, cost, and quality of the project. But we allow these groups to go in and do their work. By leveraging Scrum, our general environment is at a 2- to 4-week interval in which we can review. That allows me to go back and look at the work after 2 weeks or 4 weeks to see are we heading in the direction that I would like to go? Do they need some level of course correction? Then I can provide guidance and direction to my managers, and they can provide it to their teams. It allows me to stay away from the scenario and still guide the work and not allow it to go too far down the path where it’s a huge issue to correct. They embraced it. In the first month we implemented that methodology, the team was able to deliver 4 solutions for the first time in the history of the organization in one month, and each one of those solutions was slated to be a 6- to 9-month deliverable. They were able to deliver that because the people who do the work got out of the way. The solution was better than what the business expected because they had the right people in the room available at all times, and they delivered that solution, and they were passionate about it. They were passionate because we allowed them to take ownership of that. The team took ownership of their solution. The best thing you can do for technologists is to allow them to take ownership and let their creativity live and breathe in the solution without someone like me stifling it and telling them exactly how to do it. I completely echo Lewis.

Sanjog Aul [00:50:29]:

Now that said, when we talk about people, of course, HR gets involved and I know traditionally HR is always there with a good intent and they want to help and they want to introduce strategies. If you’re trying to work on the passion while what you do during the work that you deal with them you’re doing, like the mentoring, the caring, etcetera, but what can be done at an organizational level? What can HR and other departments who are somehow connected to helping people, hiring people and grooming them and overall employee welfare related, investments and strategies related development effort? What help or support should they provide for us to be able to get where everyone is passionate and channelizing that passion into outcomes? So, Lewis, this question is for you.

Lewis Stockford [00:51:21]:

From an HR perspective, it’s good to have a good relationship with HR leaders and folks so you can understand each of the different areas, issues, and problems we’re trying to solve for. Then they can come back and give us guidance and some tools. Once they hear what our problems are, they can say, we’ve got these three problems. Here are some tools that will help solve those problems. I tend to talk to an HR representative on a weekly basis just to understand what our internal policies are versus what I’m doing. If I feel like I’m going outside of it, I’m going to have a conversation with HR and make sure I’m aligned with the company’s HR policies and goals and strategy. As a leader of my team, I may still make decisions, but I at least have the conversation with HR and hopefully come to an agreement about how we’re going to handle different situations. When it comes to driving passion, a lot of that is just the trust between me and my other leaders and the team themselves. My team knows I have their back when they need it. Sometimes they want to have a conversation with HR about their personal things, and sometimes they want HR to work through me as well. Whatever their preference is, we go with that model.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:22]:

Kevin, one last question for you. When we have spoken about different elements of what brings passion and how do you channelize energies, but sometimes the fixing needs to be done in the leader themselves and some shifts. If you were to send a message to all and evaluate yourself as a leader, what would you do new, more, or different with respect to your leadership mindset and management approach so that you at least know that you’re doing your best to kindle or rekindle passion and then to channelize their energies into some meaningful impact?

Kevin Jones [00:54:03]:

I personally would — we’re going through a complete organizational people, process, technology transformation. The one thing I would love to do more, and I had more time earlier on and was able to spend a bunch of quality time doing staff development with my teams. Now that technology is driving the transformation for the other 6,000 users that we have, 20,000 external vendors and clients who work with us, and then 2,000,000 individuals who are subject to us, that part of the job has taken so much more of me. So I would say more time developing my people, less time focus on technology solutions would be what I would want to do.

Sanjog Aul [00:54:50]:

Thank you both Kevin and Lewis for sharing your insights on how leaders can unleash passion in people and help channelize it to drive impact through meaningful outcomes. Thanks so much again.

Lewis Stockford [00:55:02]:

Thank you.

Sanjog Aul [00:55:03]:

And listeners, please like us on Facebook, search for CTN CIO Talk Network, and be sure to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Thank you again for listening to this segment on CTN. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week. Take care, and God bless.