Gary W. Wright

Three stories that describe my Executive Core Qualifications of leading change, leading people, results drive, my business acumen and building coalitions and communication.

Never to have another IT Complaint was an expectation by a Physician in Chief of a large medical center where I started as a new Technology Director.

How do I, as a leader of Information Technologists, achieve such a lofty requirement? Goals obviously are just that, goals. We do strive to achieve goals. This goal was coming from the leader of the Medical Center and I knew she was very serious. Consequently, I knew first, I must treat this goal as real.

To embark on this objective, I began by evaluating current processes and culture in the IT space. As I walked the halls of the Medical Center and observed the technologists, one aspect was apparent. Appearance and attitude. Process was defined by IT, so I knew process was not the problem. Appearance and attitude, in my assessment, were however.

I observed an atmosphere of blue jeans and t-shirts. The attitude I observed was frowns and an apparent culture of, “I really don’t like working here!” Hardly anyone smiled while working with the Business Partner. I began to see what the Physician in Chief really intended by her statement. here was a perception that IT was not professional and most importantly, not perceived as competent.

To change perception, a leader must affect a change in culture. Easy to do, however, not so easy to achieve. A key to my success and the success of IT at this medical center depended on a change in culture. Technologists technical abilities were obviously superior.

After two weeks of observation, I developed a phased approach to change. First, I enlisted the help of the two IT Operations Managers. I explained my thoughts and observations and asked for ideas. One of the managers responded with an established dress code policy that was already in place with IT. Changing appearance was an easy win. Changing attitude would be the next challenge.

I asked each Operations Manager to allow me to address their respective staff. At the initial meeting, I asked each and every staff member to accept a personal challenge to improve their service by doing one very important thing, “Smile”. As one might expect, I received a room full of disbelief.

I learned through years of leading people that you don’t ask someone to do something with a good reason. I began to relate a story. I asked the room, “how many of you have been in a doctors office, emergency room or some other medical facility and noticed that no one ever smiled? Did you feel safe and secure about receiving medical care?” As I watched heads begin to nod “no”, I finished the story. “We all have a personal obligation to reducing fear in our community and patients. The patient sitting in that waiting room does not know we are technicians. They see the medical center badge we wear and think that we represent the medical center. If we don’t smile and help them feel safe and secure, we are not doing our job.” I shared with them that while I was going through my employee screening and physical, that I experienced this fear in a similar medical facility. The facility was dirty and nobody smiled. I really didn’t feel safe there.

I began to see that each and every one of them was beginning to understand. Over the next six months I began to receive emails from staff and managers all over the medical center with compliments about how personal and pleasant the IT staff are. The Nursing Director asked me one day how did I turn that around? I asked her, have you noticed a change in their appearance and their demeanor? She said, as a matter of fact, yes. I shared with her that I asked them to do only two things, dress professional and smile.

Perception changed rapidly and I even began to receive compliments from Executive staff. The Area Manager and Senior Vice President adopted my program for the rest of the Medical Center. Service improvement surveys began to improve over the course of a year.

All my staff are rewarded and developed with personal integrity. Their sites are on the organizations goals and strategic direction. They are all committed to that end.

Sometimes, a technologist can loose site of who or what they truly support. Our focus must be on service always. Service with a smile.

A move with No Problems

My experience over the years has guided me that I have to know where I’m going before I know how I’ll get there. This philosophy is no different when considering expectations.

Santa Clara medical center expectations are driven by leaders. After twelve long years of meticulous planning, an aging building needed to be replaced. Six short months after my arrival in Santa Clara, I was faced with a monumental task of leading the placement of over 3000 Information Technology devices, including PC’s, printers and other collateral devices in a new 530,000 square foot Medical Office building. Coupled with a task and expectation to move approximately 3000 personnel over the course of four weekends.

We were required to ensure that three to five departments would be able to move, beginning on Friday afternoon at 4pm and be able to resume clinics by 10am the following Monday. Subsequently, the requirement included being able to sit down at their new workstation and have no errors.

I realized that the requirement of having no errors was a difficult task to accomplish. My thought was that we would need a team of technologists that would be strategically placed in each department to help each person adapt and go to work successfully.

I assembled a team of technicians, IT Leadership, implementation project managers, telephony experts and application subject matter experts to be on-site during each weekend. The team included for the first time ever, a Help Desk Analyst from our National Help Desk. My thought was that the National Help Desk would be overwhelmed with calls and subsequently contribute to a slow response to customers needs.

We located technicians in close proximity to the local Help Desk with runners assigned to each department area to quickly and rapidly address needs. Finally, I deployed application specialists for clinical applications at a ratio of two for each department with a button that read, “IT Support. Ask Me, I Know”. Customers could raise their hands if they had a problem and have help immediately.

I held motivation sessions each day with the assembled team each Friday before the move began. I reminded each and every person how much I personally appreciated their commitment to excellence. (I also fed them good barbeque also.) In the Friday sessions, teamwork was developed. Each area complimented each other. There was a high spirit of camaraderie.

There were obviously errors throughout each weekend, however, at 10am on Monday morning, departments were able to open clinics and receive patients. There was a great deal of satisfaction with the IT team from the Executive staff. Proof that teamwork and customer service contributes to a high degree of satisfaction.

Bringing teams together, building commitment, personal accountability and personal rewards was key to the success. The commitment and personal accountability started with me. Personal example is contagious.

Finally, I asked them all to smile even in the worst of times.

I lead with seven guiding principles: 1) Deliver good service. 2) Be proactive especially in the best AND worst of times. 3) Transparency is liberating. Share with the business partner. 4) Communicate or “they” will make it up. 5) Listening to the business partner is magic. 6) SMILE!!!!! Finally, 7) Misery is Optional

Help Desk on a Post-It

One of my rather comical stories involves a Help Desk Process. This was challenging for two reasons. First, change was not well received by a technical staff that was accustomed to the status quo for such a long time and two, a limited budget.

As I began evaluating processes at the Defense Media Center as Technical Service Manager, one of the first areas of concern was the Help Desk process.

I typically interview employees to analyze and discover processes and potential inefficiencies. As I interviewed the Help Desk Technician, he shared with me that he takes a call from a user, annotates the complaint/issue on a Post-It, transposes the information into a local database and then hands the Post-it to one of the IT staff. Perhaps efficient to him, however, I was receiving complaints about how long trouble calls were taking to resolve or calls not ever being resolved. There was also no priority matrix assigned to requests to establish the urgency of the request based on criticality of a particular system.

As I developed my analysis, an obvious solution would have been an off-the-shelf software solution, i.e., Remedy. Since the user base was rather small, approximately three hundred users, an expensive software solution was not cost affective.

I consulted with the two software programmers about the possibility of using our existing Microsoft Outlook/Exchange network so a user could literally email a request, the request would then auto assign to a technician by priority matrix and subsequently tracked by the existing SQL database. The database would of course need improvements.

The solution was a hybrid solution using web-based XML/SQL and Outlook/Exchange. The programmers developed a web front end for the user to enter their problem/issue with dual categories. A user could also call in and the Help Desk analyst would use the same web portal to enter the call. There was also an interface to the existing asset management tools to capture serial number and machine demographics. The “ticket” would then assign a priority based on need of repair and system criticality. System criticality was based on a newly develop Service Level Agreement negotiated by Defense Media Center management. Finally, tickets were assigned to server administrators and/or desktop technicians automatically by an email notification and/or database queue.

The entire project was accomplished in two short months, and saved the Center over $10,000.

I mentioned change. The Help Desk technician had a difficult time understanding why his system needed change. To help him understand, I engaged him in the development process and surveys of the user community. Since, he was a part of the development team, he felt like he was a stakeholder and adopted the changed readily. I also developed a process flow chart to show him his existing process compared to an automated process. He quickly realized that the automated process would allow him to focus on customer service rather than on the process itself. The idea started with me, however, system delivery was accomplished by feedback from the entire IT team and Service Level Agreements established with the business community.

Again, this demonstrates my ability to develop cohesive teams that work together towards a common good or outcome. Change is managed by involvement in the process.

Self Evaluation

Strengths & weaknesses. Likes & dislikes.

My strengths are definitely in my leadership ability. I have that innate ability to bring folks together for a common good. I can help the group see and appreciate what “we are all here for.” I would also say I have very good personal organizational skills as well as team organizational skills. Sometimes, I think my mind works like a Gantt chart. I can easily visualize what needs to be done and develop tasks to accomplish that end with necessary follow-up.

Weaknesses. If I were to point to one single weakness, I would say patience. What do I mean by that? I have realized over the past year that I need to slow down, step back, look and especially listen. Twenty years in the Marines developed a since of rapid look, listen and execute. I have come to realize that I’m not in a war. I have the time in most cases, to slow down, step back, look and listen before making a decision or comment. I suppose this is really growth. I also am learning how to voice match. My voice can sometimes be interpreted as loud and perhaps terse. I’m learning how to listen to myself and change my tone to match the audience.

Issues that are IMPORTANT TO ME

As I walk through the hallways of business, I see frowns. I make it my personal objective to turn a frown in to a smile. A frown to me means fear. As a patient is approaching the Women’s Imaging department, I see fear. If I don’t smile and greet that patient, I’m not delivering what we owe them – that we really care.

IT must have the same outlook on our business. People in our environments fear the data system. If we smile and greet them with confidence that fear is reduced or even eliminated.

Short term and long term career goals

Long term is to build an IT organization that delivers high reliability. Again, this deals with fear. To eliminate fear, we need to build an organization that the community can count on. This is an environment that when the user turns on that PC, they are able to log in once and get the applications or tools to do their jobs and not have to worry about whether the application will go out or not.

How I can leverage my skills into my next position, in order to fulfill my objectives.

Empathy. I think I have a different perspective than most in IT. I bring to a Chief Technical Officer position the perspective of the person at the other end of the PC. Practically everything we do in IT affects that person in some way. We all have to keep our focus on “them”. I think in many IT organizations, that focus becomes complacent. I can, through my personal leadership skills, return focus to the end user. I have a strong vision that would contribute to any IT team.