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462- How Do We Get to Right? w/Christopher Childs · You've Been Heard

• 0:00
  Speaker A: So I would say the thing that has the talent that I have acquired that makes me the most successful and it has nothing to do with my technical ability, it has nothing to do with leadership ability. But what I've learned is when you truly understand and have the ability to listen more than you speak and meet people where they are, so many things, so many doors will open and you can get so much complete.
• 0:39
  Speaker B: Alrighty, Mr. Childs. Chris Childs. Welcome everyone. Listening to you've been heard. We've got Chris Childs, chief Information officer, director for Director of Information Technology from Evans Army Community Hospital on the, on the show today. So welcome, sir. Why don't you give, give our listeners just a brief introduction. Whatever you want to talk about, however you want to introduce yourself is, is absolutely fine with us.
• 1:04
  Speaker A: I mean, what can I say? Let's hear.
• 1:06
  Speaker B: So I mean, you play baseball or something? First of all, I, I can see your background right now. Let me tell you a little bit about your background. Okay. So I had, when I worked at a Cisco startup, we had a team name. Our team name was Lights Out. That was the Muhammad Ali poster in the background on the wall. I mean it's a great poster.
• 1:26
  Speaker A: Yeah. So obviously just call me Chris, you know, but CIO Evans ever Community Hospital joined, joined the army back in, in the 2004, going into 2005. Long backstory there. We won't get into that. You know, fast forward, that's a good story.
• 1:43
  Speaker B: Talk about whatever you want because probably some great stories there from the army and you're not the first person we have for some reason being in IT and technology and being in the army or Marines or Navy is like 50% of the people that have been on the show. That might be an exaggeration, but it's a lot. And I don't know if it's because you learn discipline from being in the army and you deal with a lot of fires and things under pressure. And it, I mean we never have fires and you never have to deal with anything under pressure.
• 2:10
  Speaker A: No, not at all. Never.
• 2:13
  Speaker B: So I mean. But no, but let's go back. Tell us like, how did you get from the army? Or how'd you get into the army to begin with? That. That's always a good story. Were you recruited? Did you join the Army? Were you always wanting to be in the Army? Was it a family thing or how'd that happen?
• 2:25
  Speaker A: Well, so a little bit of all of that. So let's, if you, if we round the clock after coming out of high school. So I Honestly, played sports, played baseball. I was highly recruited coming out of high school. I actually signed. I was drafted in, you know, the 12th, millionth, 12th million round of the MLB draft.
• 2:49
  Speaker B: Sweet.
• 2:51
  Speaker A: Played two years of, you know, semi pro ball, so single a ball. I got hurt, had a bunch of surgeries. Basically around that time, that's when it kind of came to the decision that I would never. Well, I. I wouldn't be able to play at the elite level that I needed to play. So just.
• 3:12
  Speaker B: What was the injury again?
• 3:15
  Speaker A: Completely tore my rotator cuff off. The. Tore the tendon right off the bone and, you know, had to reattach it. You know, take some.
• 3:23
  Speaker B: How'd that happen? So was it pitching or was it like a typical injury?
• 3:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, so I pitched. So several. Several things were contributing factors to that. So one of was just kind of overuse. The other one was, you know, being young, lifting in the gym and just not knowing how. Yeah, terrible. Trying to lift heavy with terrible form.
• 3:48
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 3:50
  Speaker A: You know, and this was way before, way before I signed where I didn't really have any formal coaching. So, yes, I played in different leagues and all star leagues, but, you know, I didn't come from a background where I could. My mom couldn't afford any additional help for me, so I was just. I was one of those, like, raw talent guys who, you know, just kind of went out there and just kind of did it. And. And I always look back like, man, if I would have just had a little bit of instruction under my belt, who knows what could have happened? But, yeah, so a lot of poor decisions from an athletic standpoint, and it's just more or less a you don't know what you don't know scenario. It.
• 4:33
  Speaker B: It's a great metaphor. So what is that? Can they even fix the. Is that like a Tommy John surgery or something? Is that like the. Is that like the rotator cuff thing? I don't really know. I know there's Tommy John's surgery.
• 4:42
  Speaker A: No, Tommy John's more the elbow.
• 4:44
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 4:45
  Speaker A: The rotator. So I've had about three or four surgeries on it. You know, they reattach the tendon and. But I still get. So, like, even when I go to bed now, like, I still get very sore in my shoulder, waking up every morning.
• 4:58
  Speaker B: I know because I tore my rotator cuff. I tore my supraspinatus a couple years ago, two, three years ago, and it was miserable pain. So much pain that you're. I remember praying, like, if this lasts my entire life, like this, this would be Unlivable, like so much pain from like a rotator cuff. It's just one of those ones where they say you're like howling at the moon like a wolf, like type of pain. And. But there's a lot, everything that you said there I think is some great metaphors into it as well, which is like, if I just had a little bit of help and a little bit of coaching, I could have gone a lot farther. Like, how many other people are left behind like that. And poor decisions. Our life is a series of decisions, poor and good ones, that add up to, hey, here we are. So you're not doing too bad. You're not doing too bad if you, if you are where you at, you know, so we had to make some, we had to make some good decisions along the way and hopefully those decisions that we make in it, I mean, there's a lot of decision paths that we can make in it. Obviously that can be poor, bad, or you don't know what you don't know. And then you end up here, here we are in it. So I wanted to ask, there's a new question I want to ask people. And I know we have kind of like, you know, a list of things that we could talk about, you know, from your career. We can get to that. We could talk about whatever you want. We can talk about things that people don't talk about. That might be a question in itself, but I want to ask everyone from now on in the show because I really want people to walk. Everyone has something like special or a special talent or something they've done that they're really, really good at. And I wanted to ask you, if you had to share with the audience one thing, one talent or something that you've learned, it could be something really, really simple from a communication standpoint, but just has such a massive impact on your career or on your day to day life as an IT leader. If I was to ask you to share your best thing, whatever that is, that just makes your life simpler, better, faster, whatever it is, what is that one thing?
• 6:59
  Speaker A: So I'm gonna kind of, it's, it's one thing, but I'm gonna kind of mesh a few things into the one thing.
• 7:05
  Speaker B: It's usually how it works.
• 7:07
  Speaker A: So I would say the thing that has the, the talent that I have acquired, that makes me the most successful. And it has nothing to do with my technical ability, it has nothing to do with, with leadership ability. But what I've learned is when you truly understand and have the ability to listen more Than you speak and meet people where they are. So many things, so many doors will open, and you can get so much complete.
• 7:42
  Speaker B: And please, just speak up a little bit more because you're coming in a little bit quiet, and this is, like, so important. Listen more and meet people where they are. The listening more is definitely a theme that comes up a lot. But the meeting people where they are. Right. Everyone can say, I can be a better listener. I can be a more active listener. I can listen without putting my autobiography on someone else. What does that really mean to you, though? And how is it a skill? Like, how do you meet people where they are? How is it a skill? Can it be learned? And what are. Like, this, the way of doing it? So the mesh, I guess.
• 8:18
  Speaker A: Yeah. So, sure. Because anything can be learned. Right? But just because you learn it doesn't mean you retain it. I think meeting people where you are comes with experience. Like, you have to. You can't learn that. You have to experience that. If that makes sense. Like, I'll use the example. Let's just say you. We won't make up anything specific, but let's just say we or have. You and I are having a private conversation, and between audible and visual cues, like, I can see, even though we are just having a normal conversation, if I am paying attention, like, I can just see, like, hey, there's something on his mind. Or the things that he is saying is he's kind of giving me cues to like, hey, something's up, something's not right. Or maybe there's something that's pressing on me that I really don't want to mention because I would rather have this conversation or whatever the case may be.
• 9:15
  Speaker B: Maybe he seems distracted.
• 9:16
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 9:17
  Speaker B: Or you can just tell that there's something he's leaving out.
• 9:19
  Speaker A: Yes. Yes. And so when I say you have to experience that, sometimes we fall into the trap of. We always want to give our advice from our perspective. But I don't take life as a, you know, one size fits all. So, like, hey, I did this, so you should be able to do this. That's really not the case. Everybody. I think everybody's journey is unique. And so when I say you have to. To experience that, that's when it rolls back into that. Listening more to more than you speak. And where I can, like, stop. Pause and stop the conversation and say, you know, and not everybody's forthcoming. But if you decide to be forthcoming and say, like, hey, are. Are you all right? Like, do you want to have a different conversation than the one we are having right now.
• 10:08
  Speaker B: I love it. So, so pause the. The bullet point there is like, well, yeah. Are you all right? That could be said in many different contexts with the right tone and body language. Would you like to have a different conversation than we're having right now? Actually, I love the way that you put that. I really love the way you put that. Or do you not want to be having this conversation right now? Yeah, because I'm supposed to get out of here to my kids baseball game. I don't want to be here. Actually. I'm quitting tomorrow. You don't know this yet, so I don't care. But. No, but what do you mean by that? And what have you seen happen when you say you have to have those conversations in order to experience it? What do you mean?
• 10:54
  Speaker A: I guess in short, it's really. I really try to put. I really focus on trying to. And it's not easy because you can't always do it. But trying to put myself, like, if I were, if I were in this person's shoes, you know, what would be a reasonable expectation? Or, you know, just the old trope of, hey, remove yourself from the conversation and just listen. Like, don't respond with what Chris thinks, just respond. And like, I don't know. And so that is, that is a skill in itself. Like, I, I would urge everybody to take a. Have a conversation and it could be with a friend or family. Just have a conversation with and make a conscious effort to not respond as you, but just respond. Does that make sense?
• 11:44
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think Zig Ziglar put it great. Back in the day, I'm an old school Zig Ziglar fan. If anyone listens to him now, he's like an old dude from like, I don't know if he's from Alabama or wherever he's from. He's got an accent. But he said we need to learn to respond versus reaction. When you give someone like, you know, some medication, they might have a reaction to it right when we need to, where the doctor would then need to respond and make changes or something. When we respond to someone, we're responding to like what they said in our understanding of it and helping them hopefully solve a problem or, or help them fix something. When we react, we're reacting based on our emotions or whatever. Or like you said, having that argument in your head prior to them even responding. Sometimes we're thinking about what we're going to say to the person and we're not even listening to them because we're thinking about what they said already, and we may already have an answer for the problem. And we are failing to recognize that we might not even need to fix the problem. We might just need to listen to what they're saying.
• 12:51
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 12:51
  Speaker B: That it shouldn't even be a problem to begin with.
• 12:53
  Speaker A: Yeah. So that's. That's. That's. That's the other key skill set. When I talk about that, listening more than you speak.
• 12:59
  Speaker B: I think what you're getting at, though, and I think this is the thing, because I'm really trying to get to the bottom of what takes someone from the 97% bucket of IT leaders that are operational leaders that are trusted to keep the lights blinking. We're not blinking or whatever. It's, you know, I mean, it's like, how do we take that person to the top 3%, which are people that are actually trusted business leaders.
• 13:29
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 13:30
  Speaker B: And I think you hit the. I think you hit the nail on the head. You may just not know or you may have not verbalized it in my. And I think what you said was, is you can't. Like, it's kind of learned by doing and learned by having it happen to you. And I think having those. I think it's having the tough conversations might be. That might be the answer. It's because how often are people willing to be in really uncomfortable situations having tough conversations and then not knowing how to even respond?
• 14:04
  Speaker A: Yes, well, so to go speak directly to what you just said of how do we take the 97% and put them in it. Put them in the 3% hide. And this is just, you know, the opinions of Christopher Child belong to him and him only.
• 14:21
  Speaker B: There's an. There's a disclaimer on that.
• 14:22
  Speaker A: There's a disclaimer. There's a disclaimer on this.
• 14:27
  Speaker B: Don't worry. This does not belong to the army or, you know, these are my thoughts
• 14:31
  Speaker A: and my thoughts alone. No, I think sometimes, especially professionally and specifically in the IT world, where it is easy to become a master technician, and in becoming a master technician, you also become a master isolationist, because when you are mastering one skill and that skill only, it only requires you to be good at that thing. And so it's easy to shut people off and say, hey, you know, I'm not interested in doing that. You know, I'm, you know, I'm this cis p leader, and I'm this master of cybersecurity, and I'm on the. I'm on this red hat team, and my job is to do this, and I am the best at doing this. But then when you say, okay, well take what you know and lead and mentor and teach this group of people on how to effectively do that, but not only effectively do the thing, but how do we grow and develop them so they can do other things? So one thing that I preach to my staff often when we have meetings or trainings or whatever the case may be, especially my, my branch chiefs, my lead, my, my branch chiefs, I always tell them specifically because we're in the healthcare, I say, you know, a couple things that we always need to keep in mind is one, do not, do not use it in the nail and the nail and hammer mindset of here's a, a, a problem, that's a nail and it is the hammer. Let me go bang on it to see if it works, don't approach things from that manner because that typically is always going to lead, lead to failure. And then the other thing that we talk about, as I say, keep in mind that we have to understand and figure out how to use it as a force multiplier and a healthcare enabler, because that's what we are just here for. And we're not here to just be, you know, utility guys. We're not here just to make sure your Internet is running. We're not here to just make sure you can get on outlook. We are not here to make sure though. I mean, so yes, we are here to make sure all those things are happening, but that's just viewing it as a utility. And so what I really, really stress to them the most is we have to be in the business of healthcare and not the healthcare business. That's when we are most successful and when.
• 17:13
  Speaker B: Explain that. Okay, so you know, we're not just like the IT department that happens to be in healthcare. We are in the business of, we
• 17:20
  Speaker A: are in the business, although we are not physicians, we are, we are in the business of delivering safe, quality healthcare in a great experience.
• 17:31
  Speaker B: So let me ask you this. Since I come from a family of doctors and people that work in hospitals and nurses and RNs and anesthesiologists and I very, very well understand the pecking order of the hospital and the smartest men in the room that are oftentimes the doctors, I mean, it's changed, it's changed over time. And like, you know, the advance in hospitals and how they make money and insurance, all that thing is a whole nother complicated thing. I want to ask you just to push on that a little bit further. So we're not in the business of what are we're not in the business of healthcare.
• 18:03
  Speaker A: We're not in the health.
• 18:05
  Speaker B: We're not in the healthcare business. We're in the business.
• 18:06
  Speaker A: We're not in the healthcare business. We are in the business of healthcare.
• 18:10
  Speaker B: So what's more important from you, from a purely peel back the onion, politics aside, all of that stuff, just talking frankly with all the other people that are in healthcare right now, from an IT perspective, should you be in the business of serving the providers or serving the patients first? I'm just curious, because the providers serve the patients or is it. Or is it all these different subsets of groups that are difficult for us to provide for anyways? Cause you have to provide for the nurses and sometimes they don't like the. I know we're not supposed to call it the cow. There's something on wireless wheel the thing. They wheel around. They.
• 18:49
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. The wild. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:51
  Speaker B: Like it could be. That could be a problem. It could be all kinds of issues, right? So just dig into that a little bit more. How do you then make sure that you're serving what's really important to you?
• 19:01
  Speaker A: So to me, to serve. I don't know if there's a correct answers answer or an industry answer. So again, this is just my answer. It's not that the providers and the nurses and the employees of said organization is not that they don't matter, but I also look at it as they don't matter at the end of the day is so rewind the clock. Rewind the clock. 60, 70, 80 years. All of the new widgets and gadgets and healthcare was still being delivered without all of the things that we have now. So it was less about the person and more about the thing. And so I take it from that standpoint, explain that
• 19:48
  Speaker B: what was the thing? Because I have an idea in my head right now. I'm thinking World War II. Just so you know what I'm thinking as you're speaking, I'm thinking World War II back in the day. Thinking World War II back in the day. Legs getting blown off, people getting like their arm cut off with a saw. I'm into like a World War II mode the last couple months, right? And I'm thinking my, my, my grandfather was a doctor, a pediatrician. He was born. So he saw the dawn of like penicillin, okay? And I'm thinking when they started making penicillin, like it was this great thing. We had it, it could actually cure people, but they couldn't make it fast enough. Like the first guy that was treated with penicillin actually died from the infection because he didn't have it. They didn't have enough to give him care. What that historical fact is. But I guess my point is, like, would. How did the health care and how would you have made a massive difference being in the Army, World War II? We have a technology now I'm just like, is. Is there a parallel there?
• 20:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, again, because it is an. It is a force multiplier and an enabler, and that's. That's what we strive it to be. But even if you. If you take all of that away, if you take all your gadgets away, you still need capable people. So the thing. The thing.
• 21:01
  Speaker B: Thank you.
• 21:02
  Speaker A: The thing is being capable, and that's what I strive on, is you have to be capable before I give you the thing. Which is why, for me, one thing that I harp on a lot in, you know, when we have executive level meetings is downtime procedures like, do not use my department as the crutch for whatever's going on. What happens in a contestant environment? If. If the circuit is cut, if the line is cut, if we go dark, are you still able? Because, you know, because sometimes it's funny, right? Like, if we'll have a. A, we'll have scheduled downtime maintenance and you will communicate this for weeks and weeks on end. Maintenance window will happen and everybody freaks out because nothing's working. It's like, well, what are your downtime procedures like? I told you this was coming. It's unavoidable. I can't kind of do maintenance on something. I have to. I have to.
• 22:02
  Speaker B: Why is there no respect there sometimes? No, but really, that's like a level of how much do we respect it? And I think in the health care space, it can be more isolated than any other than many of the other businesses.
• 22:13
  Speaker A: Well, that's what so. And I know specifically in the health care industry, I want to talk to this where doctors, providers, nurses, everybody else, it's. It is. No, your. Your CIO is no different than your facilities man. Your facility chief of. You are here to keep the utilities running.
• 22:34
  Speaker B: Yeah. So it's why you guys get tickets to go fix the H VAC unit. Yes, but that's what happens in it.
• 22:42
  Speaker A: Yeah. So when you.
• 22:43
  Speaker B: The hand. We joked that someone one time had a ticket for the. The men's hand dryer in the bathroom being down.
• 22:50
  Speaker A: Yeah. And so I've often had throughout my career, specifically in the army, where I've had to tell my leadership, because they will call me Text me, message me about their computer isn't working, their phone isn't working, something isn't working. And I had to say, you know, sir, ma', am, whoever the, whoever I'm speaking to, like, hey, I am not the help desk. I am your chief information officer. Like they, you trust me and they pay me a lot of money to make decisions at a higher level than just now. Do I have the ability to troubleshoot whatever it is that you have going on? Sure, absolutely. But I also have a branch chief who is the customer support IT supervisor, where that is his whole lot in life is it customer support and to go and troubleshoot and fix all the things. And so if you get into the habit of just treating your IT leaders as just help desk technicians, then you have, you're completely cutting your legs from underneath you because you're misusing a skill that's going to enhance your business.
• 24:03
  Speaker B: It's back to having the tough conversations again. You have to have that tough conversation.
• 24:09
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 24:10
  Speaker B: And it could go wrong. Let's face it, it could go bad, it could go good. In your case, it sounds like it went good. We made the right decision.
• 24:17
  Speaker A: Well, I always live by, you know, choices and trade offs. I mean the worst, you know, but
• 24:23
  Speaker B: like you said, you're not going to get good at those if you don't have them. Do you think there's a lot of IT leaders out there that don't grow their don't go from that 97% in the top 3% because they're afraid of failure or I guess in the IT space we would call it imposter syndrome. Are they afraid to have those confrontational conversations where they have to deal with pushback and they don't know how to overcome that pushback or deal with it successfully? They might be avoiding those conversations to begin with. And then if they don't avoid it, now that you're in the tough conversation, you don't know what to do now that you're in the tough conversation. Now that you're in this tough conversation, you just get shot down. And because you're not this business like gorilla, I don't know, like, you know, guy that's been dealing with having these conversations all the time, like most of the C suite probably has. You're probably not used to being able to respond, not react, be able to respond in a way that is effective. So this is my hypothesis, this is my hypothesis that I think IT leaders need to be in more hardcore business confrontational situations, AKA sales. I think they need to learn to sell themselves better. And selling isn't selling something like, there has to be a dollars of cents, but it might be selling their position. Like you just said, I'm the cto. I'm not the guy that you drive by and say, hey, can you fix my email? Or back in the day, it was clean off my rollerball. You have to be able to sell the value of your position every day. And the more that you sell, the value of that position are able to. I'm not saying be confrontational, but be able to maybe overcome the objections of business leadership for their own benefit.
• 26:16
  Speaker A: Okay, so there's. There's a. A lot to unpack here. So I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm gonna do it this way.
• 26:22
  Speaker B: I did just get diagnosed with ADHD today. I thought I took my test, I took my test, and I was like, you know, I'm 50 years old. You know, what's the chances? This lady's like, yeah, on a scale of 0 to 100, you got 97. It's like, okay, I guess it makes sense that I have a podcast.
• 26:36
  Speaker A: So what. I'll. What I'll say here, I'll. I'll kind of touch on a few things here. So I think in the IT field itself, I think we do a wonderful job. And this is. Regardless of the industry, and this is just my general opinion, you know, I'm leaving.
• 26:55
  Speaker B: Disclaimer again.
• 26:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, here's my. Here's my disclaimer.
• 26:58
  Speaker B: You know, I need your Muhammad Ali statement where you're like, yeah, if they even dream about beating me, they better wake up and apologize. Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, come on, what is this whole, like, you know, disclaimer? Come on, you played baseball. You got to knock this one out. Now I'm just giving you a hard time anyways.
• 27:16
  Speaker A: Teach you a lesson about who you picking on. No, but I will say this, but I'm. But I'm open to conversation and dialogue back, you know, to any colleagues that may happen to watch this. I'm always open to feedback. But this is what I will say in my, you know, 45 plus years of life. What I've noticed in the IT industry itself. So doesn't matter what industry you place it in, just IT people in general. We do an amazing job at recruiting and presenting the technical opportunities to come into this field and be very successful, grow your skills and put yourself in a position where you can take care of yourself for a very long time. And a lot of that conversation is very, very operationally. Tactically, technically led, it's come be this, come do this. And, you know, like, even now, I watch commercials and I saw a commercial about, you know, becoming a cybersecurity professional. And like, you can. You can make six figures doing this one thing, right? And so. Which is good, right? It's a pillar. That's not bad. So what. What I'm saying is it's. It's not a bad thing, but the way our industry is set up, it's when you are recruited into it or when you find something or you see that commercial that draws your interest, it's about that one specific technical. And to circle back to your point is I often don't see where IT leaders. Well, let me take that back. Where IT technicians are put in positions to develop and understand leadership, because there's some overlap, but. But they're two different things. And what I have learned in some of the conversations that I had, you know, not. Not to name drop, but I had a. A mentor, a mentoring conversation with Mr. Chris Ross, who's the former CIO of Mayo Clinic. And we were kind of in a very side conversation, and he was just explaining to me, he was like, hey, what. Sometimes what I need more than a great technician is I. I need someone who understands the business and can lead very well. He said he was telling me that I can teach a leader about it. It's very hard to teach it about leadership if you've never experienced that. And I. So to kind of full circle, the conversation here is where we have to put ourselves in better positions to where we are taking ourselves out of our technical role and truly honing in on our leadership and business acumen versus, you know, how well do you understand layer one, layer two, layer three, you know, of security, or how well do you understand, you know, what ports do, what, blah, blah, you know, that technical skill. I think that's the gap sometimes is where do you. Where in your career track or on your career map do you pull yourself out of your technical expertise in. Sometimes it takes coming out of the IT industry and going. Taking a leadership position or being like the lead IT project manager, supervisor, whatever the case may be, right. You're pulling yourself out of that technical role and throwing yourself into a leadership position where you are forced to talk to the C suite or forced to talk to someone who needs to talk to the C suite, where you're learning to speak a completely different language of not just where I'm sitting here talking to another IT colleague and, you know, we're discussing, you Know, it's fun, exciting.
• 31:11
  Speaker B: It's like whatever fun is that.
• 31:13
  Speaker A: Yeah, we're, we're, we're talking about VLANs and, and this and that and that.
• 31:17
  Speaker B: You know, all the jargon, four hundreds
• 31:19
  Speaker A: and yeah, yeah, we're talking all the jargon to each other, but we don't sit down with like the CFO or the CEO. And how do we turn that jargon into captivating business discussion that they actually want to hear about.
• 31:36
  Speaker B: I love it. Nailed it. Nailed it. So, I mean, that's it. That's like the heart of the. I mean, that's the heart of the show.
• 31:46
  Speaker A: Right?
• 31:47
  Speaker B: And back to your part. If you had just been given a little bit of help back in the baseball career, how do we give people a little bit of help in this, in this particular piece? Right? So. Because I, I mean, I volunteer locally in the community and I get. Kids ask me all the time and I'm like, hey, what do I do with this? What I do with this? Should I apply for this job? Should you hear now that I'm out of college? And one thing dawned on me the other day that I, that was because I was like, oh, should I take this class? I go get this certification? Kind of your point. Do I, Should I go into cybersecurity? Should I go back to school for this? And I'm like, no, that's going to put you in debt. I. The one thing that dawned the day is I think that if people could learn to communicate very, very well with charisma and ask the right questions like you said, and listen, but like, with charisma, like really become that person that just people love talking with and sharing information with, I think that's a big, massive difference. And I think people can learn that.
• 32:46
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
• 32:47
  Speaker B: From the youth standpoint. Now, from your standpoint, I want to ask you, when your mentor said, I need someone that understands the business more. Healthcare is very complicated. There's a lot of moving parts. What can you, what can you, I guess, give to us or listen to us from, like, even it's a simple business concept or something. What's the most. How can you simplify? I don't know if you can, what, give us some business lesson or something that, that you might know that other people don't know when it comes to making correlations in the business.
• 33:21
  Speaker A: And it, I guess if we're going to specifically talk on healthcare again, I look at it from safe quality, the frameworks that I always make decisions from. Okay, is it delivering? Is it, is it Assisting with the delivering of safe quality care. And then is it increasing or enhancing the patient experience? Those are my two pillars of where my mindset starts.
• 33:48
  Speaker B: Great.
• 33:49
  Speaker A: Because without, because with. So unfortunately people will always get sick, ill, hurt or whatever. So there, there will always be business. But again, without people there's no bit, there is no business. So I can provide all of the doctors with all of the things that they like and that will make their, enhance their skills. But if nobody's getting hurt now, we're just spending money on stuff. And so there is a whole new
• 34:18
  Speaker B: business on preventative care, by the way. Yeah, yeah, that's like a big thing now.
• 34:23
  Speaker A: But again, preventative, preventative care still is contingent on, you know, somebody may get hurt.
• 34:31
  Speaker B: Yeah. So if everybody orthopedic loves baseball players and like, you know.
• 34:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, if everybody is, if everybody is healthy and in tip top shape and you have no penis people, then you know, we just have, we just have things. But those are, but those are, those are my two things. And I, I don't, I don't think there's a wrong answer. But for me those are the two, those are the two platforms that I start with is that you know, safe quality care and then improving the patient experience. Great.
• 35:03
  Speaker B: But I think from a generalist standpoint, like if you're teaching it leadership to someone in general, if you don't have a framework, make one up and know what that framework, how that framework applies to understanding what you deliver as a business. In healthcare, we deliver safe quality care, hopefully. And we wanna have a good patient experience so that you know, when they come to us, there's good, that's why there's something called like bedside manner and all these different things. And you know, and we don't want hospitals overloaded and then people slip through the system and they don't get the care that they need. Cause those two go hand in hand. But if you don't have a framework, I mean we could make one up. We could just pick any industry. I don't know, what other industries have you worked in or has it always been healthcare?
• 35:46
  Speaker A: No, it's always been healthcare.
• 35:47
  Speaker B: Okay, so I guess we could pick one from the, I guess from the army. What if you're doing it in the army or if we are doing it and you know, you're familiar with sports and stuff? I don't know, we could make up another framework.
• 35:59
  Speaker A: Yeah, you can, yeah, you could, you could build, I think that's highly important is to, you know, what is your, what is the platform that you that you are going to start your mind set from that's going to help drive and enhance the business. So that's why I said like regardless of what industry is, what is the framework or the platform that you, that you begin your mindset that's going to drive those business decisions. So whether it's oil, finance, education, healthcare, you know, whatever.
• 36:29
  Speaker B: Manufacturing.
• 36:31
  Speaker A: Manufacturing, yeah, manufacturing, construction, you know, doesn't matter.
• 36:35
  Speaker B: How do we deliver this XYZ product better, faster, more efficiently and get it in the hands of consumers? You know, with, Yes. I don't know, with Amazon it was like, you know, a one click button experience to buy and how do we get it? I mean that's still mind blowing to me. Still mind blowing to me. Amazon is just, it's absolutely mind blowing to me.
• 36:52
  Speaker A: Who would thought, you know, reduce the number of clicks.
• 36:56
  Speaker B: Simplicity. The first time someone put an iPhone in my hand I'm like, what do you mean one button? I'm used to a BlackBerry with a thousand buttons.
• 37:04
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 37:07
  Speaker B: Okay. So from a personal leadership standpoint though, how about your frameworks in general? So like as an it, I think our own personal frameworks as IT leaders in general are very important. And if I asked you, if I ask and I have asked this before, kind of like the values of like most IT leaders, most of them are kind of going to come up with curiosity. Most of them are going to say you always got to be curious. I think most IT leaders are going to agree with that one. But from a leadership communication standpoint and in moving it up the, into the top 3% or closing that gap from 97% just being operational leaders and 3% actually being business leaders also we want, I would rather have that be like 50% of the IT leaders are, have, you know, good business knowledge from a, I guess from like an unbreakable values standpoint or from a,
• 38:03
  Speaker A: I don't know
• 38:03
  Speaker B: if moral character is the right. Right word but like a character, an aspect of character when it comes to a good IT leader. What are some of your like top characteristics and values that are important to you as an IT leader?
• 38:18
  Speaker A: So I would take off the adjective of it and I would just say leader.
• 38:25
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 38:27
  Speaker A: Just because I don't want to put a hat on a hat. Right. Because if you can, if you can lead, then you can lead. Like I said you can. I was, what I was taught is you can learn the business, but if you don't know how to lead, it doesn't matter. And so my personal, I call my four pillars of leadership it's Compassion, passion, standards, discipline. Those are my four, those are my four pillars.
• 38:55
  Speaker B: Compassion, passion, standards, discipline.
• 38:57
  Speaker A: Yes. And I take that framework and I weave it and intertwine it into how I lead, develop, mentor my IT professionals, you know, and I try to apply that in every aspect of everything that we do, you know, and I show up every day as you know, how do I have more compassion? How do I show people that I have passion and how do I draw that passion out of them? How do we create standards and standards not only within our own section of how we conduct business, but standardizing processes? Standardizing whatever the, whatever the thing is, you know, because sometimes I like, sometimes you come across what I like to call Frankenstein it or everybody had a good idea and all these good ideas are patched together and then when some of those patches begin to break, there is no way to fix this because nothing was ever standardized. And then, because when you. Again, my belief is when you don't standardize things, you take away the ability for scalability because it isn't standardized. So how do we, how do we standardize things? How do, how do we build a consistent standard within ourselves and within the organization? And then the discipline, how do we show up every day? Because I tell people all the time, I don't expect you to come to work and be best friends, but I expect you to be respectful, I expect you to be polite and I expect you to be professional. And I expect, I expect us to be able to have conversations in order to move the needle forward, to get the thing done that we are trying to do. So that's. Those are my daily approaches to things. Use.
• 40:42
  Speaker B: I was going to ask you and you answered it yourself and it's actually kind of, it's mind blowing a little bit. It's actually really good. And that is because most people don't put scalability that you wouldn't think scalability comes from standards and discipline, but it absolutely does. Because how can you scale if you're changing all the time? How can you scale if people aren't executing on the basics? And once you're executing on the basics and you have standards in place, then you layer another one on top and you keep layering and layering and layering. And then that to me is how, how you build success. It's the same thing, I think in a lot of, like, if you look at a lot of very successful sales organizations or marketing departments or something like this, like you're not going to see a mark. If you want to see a failed marketing department, they have no brand. They have no brand assets. They're not following anything. Everyone's kind of just winging it, doing their own thing that they think is going to. If you look at a sales organization that doesn't have any standards, they don't have a model, they don't have, you know, scripts they follow, they don't. It's kind of like people winging it, trying to drink from the fire hose.
• 41:51
  Speaker A: Very lost. Very lost of identity. Like, what is. What is our identity as a department, as a section, as a business, as, you know, as an industry? What is our identity?
• 42:03
  Speaker B: I mean, I just really love that you linked those two together. The. How do you get people to have passion, though? Sometimes that's kind of like,
• 42:14
  Speaker A: I think, because passion comes in different forms, but I think when people see you excite, so it's very. It's a very easy trope to fall into. The. Oh, I gotta go to work today. Oh, I have this business meeting or oh, I have this meeting or oh, I have this conference or I have this zoom call or what was podcast. Yeah, I gotta put. I have to put this present. You know, we have to present this. You know, we, we have to do a bca, you know, to the, the C suite this week about xyz. A lot of what we do can trap you into those woe is me tropes. And people see that. And I, I don't say this in a negative way, but when you are at that executive leadership level, a lot of your employees, they look at you as that parental figure where no different than your kids, they are looking for you to inspire them in some way. And so how do you draw passion out of people is you show them how passionate you are. And when you figure out how to do that. And it's hard to be passionate about everything, right? But for me, just it. And it's not necessarily it, but the ability. I am passionate about ability. The ability to be asked to solve a problem. And sometimes for me, solving a problem doesn't even involve it. But I have the opportunity for us to sit down, for us to conversate. Let's plan, let's throw ideas. So, you know, we, we started what I call within the department, which now kind of spreads over the entire organization as we develop the innovation board. And this is what, where anyone from the organization, you come in and this is your place to throw the spaghetti on the wall. And you have all of the SMEs around the room, whether it's safety, whether it's facilities, whether it's Logistics department, whether it's the IT department, all the things, all the, you know, the contracting branch, the resource management branch, everybody's in the room and you come in, you know, Phil comes in and says, hey, I want to build the Eiffel Tower. And we sit down and say okay, how do we do that? Well, what if we do this? Or what if we do this? What if we do this? Has anybody thought about this? Like you get excited about that conversation to put all of your ideas in that bowl and the objective is not to come out with a hundred percent solution in that meeting. It's to put you on the right, is to put everyone on the right path of a decision of. Here is the basics of what we're trying to do. Here are some of the cans and cannots and you know, are we actually. Is this something? Well, for me what I always say is, is there opportunity for ROI and can we, and can we scale this in any way? And if we, if we can't do those things, we probably need to rethink what we're trying to do here. But just being able to do that
• 45:27
  Speaker B: because how often do you have the board. The idea board?
• 45:32
  Speaker A: Yeah. So the Innovation board happens bi monthly and sometimes we have presenters, sometimes we don't, but it's there.
• 45:40
  Speaker B: Anyone can come or who usually shows up.
• 45:43
  Speaker A: Anybody, anyone comes. So usually we have providers that. We have providers come, we have non physicians that come from the administrative departments, you know. Cause so most recently the common thing at the Innovation board is we'll have. So like our, our HR department came in a month or so ago and they were really looking like, hey, how do we build or get a dashboard that can help us track our hiring actions and where they are in the system and kind of figure out where are our bottlenecks and what can we do to impact those. And so we're sitting down there, you know, I've, I've got my, you know, I've got my.
• 46:21
  Speaker B: Like have you heard of Claude code?
• 46:23
  Speaker A: Like yeah, yeah. So you know, so we're, we're down
• 46:27
  Speaker B: go vibe code it. You're, you're a check solved.
• 46:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, and, and so that's the thing, right? When you're, when you're pulling passion out of the people and you know, like okay, let me go grab some of my guys from the apps team or, or you know, some of my guys that specialize in power platforms because they are going to be excited about this conversation. And so it's like, hey, you know Elias, I need you to come to The Innovation Board, because HR is coming and they're going to present this and this is going to be your opportunity to tell them all the cool things that they can do with Power BI or the Cloud, like all the. Or any whatever. Right. Name a thing that falls within data management and within the. The apps team. And like, here's your chance to talk them through it and explain the possibility. The art of. The art of possible. What is the art?
• 47:21
  Speaker B: Brilliant. Just like Microsoft guys like to say. The art of possible. I think they coined that.
• 47:26
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 47:26
  Speaker B: And it just spread across the industry. No, it's. It's brilliant. I mean, it was. Who else has done that in the past? The Walt Disney. He had the. He had the. He had the wall where everyone could write on it or something. And like, so many ideas for. For them came out of that. But it's brilliant for. And many reasons. And you might not know why, because I've. I've done a few podcasts in my time and I've talked to enough IT guys and one of their biggest complaints is we just wish that we were brought to the table sooner. Like, we wish that they would bring it to the table before making a decision and giving us a new. I don't know. Hey, you guys are going amazing charts today. Can you implement this for us? It. They want to be brought to the table, why did that happen? That didn't happen.
• 48:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, no, no. So I was gonna tell you it's so before. That was gonna be my very next point. And so me personally, in the. The. The psyops portion behind it is because there was a period. There's a period of time where it wasn't being brought to the table for decisions.
• 48:30
  Speaker B: There's multiple psyops. I can think of many other reasons how this. How this kills it too. Yeah.
• 48:35
  Speaker A: So I told my. I told myself, how do I put myself at the table instead of being asked to come to the table? So I pitched to my boss, our coo, and I'm like, hey, sir, this is what we need. And pitched it in the way of like, hey, you know, technology is advancing. Everybody wants to do these things. I talked about the broken processes. I talked about the Frankenstein it. I talked about how there is no standard of deployment when it comes to things. Like, people just often buy things and you put stuff on top of stuff on top of of stuff. And so I pitched it and sewed it as, hey, I'm solving this problem. But really what it was, was my. Was my gateway to say, now you have to go through It. In order to get to the boardroom, the brief, your thing.
• 49:26
  Speaker B: Trojan horse. Trojan horse. You know what else you solved that you may have also known that you're solving at the same time, because I saw what you were doing. You are also still being the department of no without having to say no. It can safe. Can safely be the department of no because everyone's put it up in there. Yeah. Throw the idea you want to say no to them, Right. Like, can we do this? No. Throw it up on the board. Yeah, put it up on the board.
• 49:54
  Speaker A: That's the great thing, though, because in the innovation board, I can tell you no. And nobody thinks twice about it because.
• 50:01
  Speaker B: Because you listened.
• 50:02
  Speaker A: You come in, you're coming in. And the business rules of coming in is like, hey, this is a conversation about how do we get to. Right. And so here's the other part of that, because I know often I heard this a lot while, you know, in the military, everybody always says, well, how do we get the yes? How do we get the yes? Sometimes getting the yes is the worst thing you could possibly do. So I always reverse that and say, how do we get to write? Because when we get to write, that essentially is getting to yes, but we're getting there smartly.
• 50:39
  Speaker B: How do we get to write? Sometimes you do an entire episode and the title comes at the end. That's it. Like, that right there is gold. That's platinum. That's the platinum rule. It's not. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's not how we get to yes. Yes could be wrong. How do we get to Right. We don't know yet. We don't know yet.
• 51:04
  Speaker A: We have no clue. Actually.
• 51:06
  Speaker B: We're hoping you'll give us the answer.
• 51:11
  Speaker A: Somebody, please.
• 51:14
  Speaker B: What have you guys been playing around with lately that's really, really working? You know, we're trying to get around this shadow IT thing. Shadow AI so we have this room where you can play with everything. We want you to kind of figure out who's doing some stuff that really, really works. It's genius. And it's.
• 51:28
  Speaker A: It's.
• 51:28
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It. It knocks out. It takes care of multiple things at one time. It not being the department of no. Communicating with people, everyone being listened to, everyone feeling special. And then you find some people that you might actually guerrilla recruit to your IT department because they might actually really be good with it. And you didn't even know they existed out there. Yeah, they're just causing security problems, I guess.
• 51:49
  Speaker A: I guess for me, what I love the most coming out of the innovation board is when I get. When I see people get excited about their idea or they come in with one. They come in with, hey, I want to. I want to buy. And I'll use. I'll use this metaphor here. They come in with, hey, I have 30 grand. I want to buy a Honda Civic. And we get in there and we start the conversation and we're going back and forth and we're tossing ideas and everybody's throwing out, like, to see everyone put their own innovative thoughts or their own, you know, they put their own stamp or their own coat of paint onto the idea, and then the next thing you know, we've bought a Honda Civic, but it is souped up to the point where now we're in an episode of Tokyo Drift. So our Civic has. Has grown and expanded and enhanced in such a significant way. So, like, to see. To see the, like, hey, I'm just. So no different than the. When we talked about the HR dashboard. Right. It started with. And it's still. We're still working in now, but the original conversation was, how do we. How do we get better visibility on our hiring actions and reduce the number of bottlenecks? It evolved into not only hiring actions, but payroll, employee accountability awards, evaluations, like a lot of those HR metrics. It evolved into so much because it started with this one idea and everybody, Everybody was actively contributing, and it scaled and expanded to something much more that, you know, like, it was. Again, as I said, for me, it was great. It was exciting. And that's where we kind of. I'm going to come full circle here. That's where I say, this is how I get people passionate, is when they see me passionate.
• 53:48
  Speaker B: If you didn't make the link, I was going to. I was going to come back to the pillars, to the second pillar. Yeah. And the board itself is a compassionate act. It's you being compassionate by giving them the space to come forward and for you to compassionately say no to many projects and allow them to give you many great ideas. That's me being sarcastic, of course. Which is a B is a behavioral detailer. Yeah. I read on page 43 of the Starbucks manual, like, you know, 20 years ago that whatever it is, what would you. Sarcasm is a behavioral derailer on your employees.
• 54:22
  Speaker A: No, but there's no. You never. You never steal any idea. You just tactfully acquire.
• 54:27
  Speaker B: Exactly. Very nice. This is beautiful. I do want to ask you the only thing that we haven't really talked about here, and I think it's going to be A lot easier because of your board, because now you've got everyone loving you. They're coming to the bi monthly things. By the way, you did say you had to sell it. So it does need to learn how to sell and communicate. They need to learn how to have these tough conversations. They need to find very creative ways to provide a solution to their problem of not being brought to the table enough. And I think you've done it. You've sold it with the innovation board, which is awesome. How do you sell standardization when there's no immediate roi? You bring them to the innovation board so well, though.
• 55:12
  Speaker A: Sticks and carrots, right? How. Okay, how do you sell standardization is sometimes. Do you remember in the scene, the scene in Dark Knight where Bruce Wayne is talking to Alfred and he's going over. He's going through the story about. Alfred's telling Batman the story about the person in the village that was going through and was doing all these terrible things, murdering all these people. And he. This person was just an absolute menace to this village. And finally. And this kind of. It kind of culminated. So this is when the Joker finally was on this killing spree. And like, when Batman realized he, in order to catch the Joker, he's going to have to become someone else. And that realization came when Alfred. Because he asked Alfred, well, how did they catch the person? And Alfred said, sometimes you just gotta let the forest burn. And to your point, sometimes, how do I sell standardization is when I go and say, hey, if we do. If we piece this together and this together, there's the possibility that, yes, it can work out, but the. The more, like, the more probability is that this is going to happen or this is going to turn into a broken process or this is going to do X, Y, Z. And there are points in my career where sometimes how I sell standardization is if you let enough of the fire burn and then you go back to your boss and say, hey, I told you we should standardize this. And this is. But it's not just a go back to your boss and give them an I told you so. This was, hey, sir, ma'. Am. I foreseen this coming. This was a discussion that we had in last quarter's board meeting. This is why I wanted to standardize. I still want to standardize. This is how we can do it. And this is why it's going to be beneficial. Because not only now do I have the historical data of why the thing broke and what it cost us when it did break. So here is the ROI that you're going to get. It may not be immediate, but here's the ROI over the long period of time based over the, based off of the revenue that we just lost on why standardization is important.
• 57:35
  Speaker B: It's kind of like the preventative maintenance argument. Like you can drive a car a million miles. There's a, there's a ton of people that are part of the Million Mile Club. They just change their oil like all the time. But to be more specific, can you give me like a really, I mean, what. The Batman metaphor was perfect because people love metaphors and love analogies. So I liked more of the like killing hundreds of people metaphor and this, you know, absolute everyone's dying and it's just terrible. There's like poison gas or whatever it is. It's not that it's a great metaphor in kind of like this real life scenario. Can you give me a specific example of where standardization was? The slow death with an ROI on it. I don't know how specific it can be, but maybe there's some, like, some, some good examples of where most people it's, it's hard to see and hard to measure. So we have to have some different like kind of metrics that we're measuring. And it may be, you may have a creative way of that you do that. Like you've had this very creative way with the innovation board and your four pillars. And in your four pillars we, you know, we've got standards of discipline. So there's gotta be some ways that we're measuring something or something that we're able to show to make these, to make the sale.
• 58:57
  Speaker A: Trying to think of a very specific thing here,
• 59:02
  Speaker B: like where is the standardization paid off? Where there didn't, where there wasn't one before. Was there, you know, some kind of thing that was just kind of, I don't know, we kind of just lived with it for this long and then we put the standardization process in place and we noticed.
• 59:16
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I, I would say specifically a slow, A very slow painful ROI was when we went one. As we moved away from the Am I on provider scheduling contract, you know, where we were paying for this contract for, you know, the on call hospitalists and everybody. So this on call scheduling feature that we were paying for live people like
• 59:42
  Speaker B: a third party scheduler. Is that what it was?
• 59:44
  Speaker A: Or.
• 59:45
  Speaker B: Okay, okay, gotcha.
• 59:47
  Speaker A: So we were paying for that. But the caveat with that was it's. It's one of those systems that it does work great and it does a lot of great things, but it's a, it is a 100% garbage in, garbage out system. So we can buy all the licenses we want, we can issue as many accounts as we want, we can have as many, as many account managers within each specific department as we want. But if no one's efficiently managing those things, which I know, again, for providers, nurses, you know, on call surgeons or whoever the case may be, put a, you know, put a hat on whoever you want to be in charge of it. There's a million and two things going on that are more important than managing this IT tool over here.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker B: I can think of many examples now that you're, now that you're doing this.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. And the IT department doesn't manage it because we don't control your on call schedule. So, you know, what sense does it make for us to be to have inputs into who's on call and who's not on call? The only thing that we do is we just issue you the license.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker B: And so, so let me make sure I understand this correctly. Is it, is it a scheduling thing for on call doctors and stuff and after hours calls? Where did it break?
• 1:01:00
  Speaker A: So it's a, it's a site and an app. It kind of manages your schedule for you. So like if you or I, if you and I were, were on call one evening and I was on call and you were coming on call and you were curious on like heck, who am I taking over for today? You know, you can get on your phone and get on the, Am I on, get on the am I on? App and say Chris is working. Chris is working tonight. Let me give, shoot him a call. And you know, kind of you call
• 1:01:27
  Speaker B: Chris and he's not working because he didn't update his schedule.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker A: Yes. Okay, I got you the schedule.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker B: Very clear.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker A: The schedule says I'm on call, but nobody has upset.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker B: It's a human management piece. Okay, gotcha.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker B: So where was the standardization?
• 1:01:41
  Speaker A: So the standardization came in. So there's an, there's another, there's another system that we use so the Vocera messaging badges. And so these messaging badges do a litany of things to where, you know, it. They, to put it simply, without going into a tech call of what Vocera does what. But what it really does, it builds an interconnected web of communication throughout the hospital via this badge, whether it's, you know, using the hey Vocera feature. So it's, it's kind of like Siri, where you go, hey, Siri, call, call Phil.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker B: Or Chris is in the, Chris is in the cafeteria right now having a sandwich.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker B: Like he Just knows like something like that, like maybe. Okay, gotcha. Yeah.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker A: You know, so this, this badge creates a, you know, interconnective web of flattened communication and kind of shared understanding. And it's centrally managed by, you know, not only my clinical information systems teams, but also one of my workflow analysts from my informatics team. So you don't have 86 individuals doing inputs. You have one centralized place where all of the inputs go into. And you have someone who gets paid to totally get every day and manage those things.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker B: And so said, where's the roi?
• 1:03:09
  Speaker A: So the.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker B: It's a slow drip. It's a slow drip.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker A: Slow. The slow drip. So the slow drip is because the Vocera badges themselves and the licenses for the badges are absolutely expensive. You know, they're good for them. There are, you know, almost 2,000 employees within our hospital. And where I went to is just the standardized badge all over the. Across the entire hospital. So even as a jumping off point, if I want to purchase just a thousand badges, you know, that's well over, that's well over a million dollars when you factor in the badge, the license, you know, the equipment, the chargers, all
• 1:03:51
  Speaker B: rollout training, blah, blah, blah. I lost mine. Where is it? I don't know, like, whatever.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker A: So the very slow ROI is we're going to spend a lot of money up front. We're going to spend a lot of time in change management and culture change. But in the long run, we have gotten ri. We will be able to get. Get rid of at least four or five contracts that are supporting contracts that do whatever. Right. Whether it's the am I on call system, you know, whether it's, you know, whatever. Name a contract that I get it
• 1:04:31
  Speaker B: supports totally get it.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker A: So now we're chopping off. So we've chopped off five contracts. And over time, as we build this out now, this Vocera program has taken ownership of about 12 functions versus paying
• 1:04:47
  Speaker B: for five different unifying.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker B: And then the question is though, are people just going to be saying, oh my gosh, this is so much better.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker A: That depends.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker B: I know where so and so is. I know where this is. Like, are we missing like, you know, I mean, like, were we missing like, were we missing like, is an on call doc going to get to a patient's room faster because they know he's on call. I mean, my daughter was in the hospital a couple weeks ago because her, she had a crazy reaction to like having her wisdom teeth removed and like this insane like thing happened. And they're worried about her getting like locked up. But like in, you know, there's the doctor now all of a sudden in a room in this emergency thing, is it helping that type of stuff? Like where does the true. To your frameworks. To your frameworks. Where's the patient experience and where's the safe quality care?
• 1:05:38
  Speaker A: So less about, well, less about the patient experience with this because this is very specific to the employees, but the safe quality care. And it's a double edged sword. Right. Because with you wearing a Vocera badge, I can.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker A: I, I know where you are at all times because every time you walk past a wap, it pings. You know what IP you're pulling from.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker B: Sweet.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker A: I know where you. I know where you are. And so if someone is looking. So again, if you are on call and there's an emerg, like I can find you and I can answer my question perfectly. Yeah. So that's good.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker B: To be honest. I, you know, bravo. Like, good job. Because to me, that type of sale is very difficult for an IT leader to make. I mean, millions of dollars for a badge in hopes that we'll know where everyone is and that there will be an ROI on it. I'm not really hopes. I'm sure you did. Did proof of concept and all kinds of stuff and you guys tested it and you had like your cheerleaders walking around wearing the badges and now they're gonna be like, yeah, the badges are awesome.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker A: My favorite, that's my favorite thing is when you, you know, when you get the buy in from a lot of the Cause we have a lot of very tech savvy clinicians. And so like I have my little pool of people that are my, my IT clinic.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, the cheerleaders. The cheerleaders, yeah.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker A: My clinical champions that I always go to. Like, hey, I've got.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker B: How dare you say anything about Chris. Yeah, you know, we need, we need to see about whether you should be working here anymore. Are you. How do you get here? How do you have a job here?
• 1:07:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I need you to go out there with this thing and tell everybody how great it is. Yeah.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker B: And mean it.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker A: Absolutely mean it.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker B: I mean, bravo. That's actually, that's a really, really, really great case study. It really is. I mean, it really is awesome. Because that's. That to me is where it really, I want to say, like fills the need. That's. That was my old nickname. Fill the need. I really want to say, I mean that that's not an easy decision. I mean, obviously someone. Obviously there's a vendor out there that had to be involved and we could go into like how did you choose the vendors? We go into a whole nother two hour long podcast on vendors and how you manage vendors and all that. For another time we would it. It has been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. I could actually speak with you a lot longer. I really love the, the four pillars. The compassion, passion, standards and the discipline and the really the creative ways that you've. That you've led the organization and I I guess listened to your people and under. Under and responded. Responded to the need versus just kind of reacting to the typical fires and problems that, that its put out. So bravo. Thank you very much.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker B: Any, any, any final words of wisdom? Sports metaphors or.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker A: No, no, no, no sports. They say if I'm going to give words to this everyone, if you ask me words of wisdom. Right Things I can leave my, my IT colleagues here. I, I would say when you what is the legacy that you're going to leave behind and, and not just with your family or you know, when you leave leave this earth but like in your organization. Because the, the end goal is for us to continue. Like I don't want to be CIO at Evans forever. Right. I eventually me at least the way I approach life is I eventually want to groom and shape someone to take my place so I can go and do something better. Like who is the next CIO at Evans Army Community Hospital. Right. That is, that is always my thing is the grooming, grooming my replacement. And so with that, when leadership changed, ideas always change, processes always change. But what is the legacy? What is the lasting legacy that you're going to leave behind? And for me, I think if I can leave behind the of hey, when Chris was here, it was family first, people always and continued mission success. That is the legacy that I always want to leave behind. It's not necessarily a laundry list of accomplishments or, or things or projects or of that nature. You know, it's just who was he as a person. And that's my words of wisdom. That's my words of wisdom that if I could pass on to anybody like I, I can tell you will applaud your accomplishments, but they respect more of your legacy.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker B: That's what it's all about.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker A: Chris Childs, you've been heard free sentences.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir.