Featuring
Connect with Mandy Crawford: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-crawford-dir/
Connect with Kevin Gilbertson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kgilbertson/
In this episode Mandy Crawford, CIO, of the State of Texas, and Kevin Gilbertson, CIO, of the State of Montana discuss the challenges of public sector leadership, emphasizing the importance of relationship building with legislators, motivating teams through a shared passion for service, avoiding pitfalls like promoting subject matter experts without leadership training, and collaborating across states to share information and leadership development opportunities.
Timestamps:
00:00 People are the answer to technological problems.
03:17 Leveraging relationships with industry and legislative members.
09:33 Build trust, align team, invest in members.
11:48 Regular meetings with employees for mutual growth.
15:05 Alignment critical for public and private sectors.
17:47 Balancing priorities in public sector roles is challenging.
21:35 Understanding constituent interests, trust, and communication tactics.
26:17 New legislator seeks to understand and advocate.
28:20 Public service in Montana fulfills personal mission.
32:19 Networking and learning from other leaders.
35:48 "Joe Toste discusses public sector tech leadership."
Quotes:
The Power of People in Technology: "I mean, I think for us, and it's going right back to people. And the people is the answer to all of this."
— Mandy Crawford [00:02:21 → 00:02:28]
Leveraging Relationships for Organizational Success: "And I know some of the other folks here today have talked about that. And it's not just relationships with industry, but relationships with the business deciders at the agencies, as well as state leadership. And so I think that that is a crucial thing that sometimes is missing, or maybe not as developed in sub-technology organizations, is understanding how to translate technology for business, and even more importantly, translate it for the money people, the appropriators, the people that you need to be able to support your mission and the endeavors that you want to do to help take technology to really drive that transformation and drive that change."
— Mandy Crawford [00:03:33 → 00:04:12]
The Pitfalls of Promoting Experts to Managers: "And all of a sudden, you're good at your job and you become a manager and you no longer get to do the thing that you really loved or were good at, and all of a sudden, you're just a manager with no training."
— Mandy Crawford [00:08:46 → 00:08:55]
Building Effective Teams: "I've got to have that trust there. So certainly building good teams, and then once you have the team there, you've got to make sure that your team is aligned with you on your vision for building up the future of the agency."
— Mandy Crawford [00:09:35 → 00:09:48]
The Importance of Employee Engagement: "one of the things that I make a priority is to meet with all of my employees, not just my direct reports. And we do it on a rotating basis over the year, because I want to just keep these conversations fresh, and I want to know what they're seeing, and I ask them questions about what do we do well, what can we do better?"
— Mandy Crawford [00:11:51 → 00:12:10]
Managing Priorities in Public Sector Work: "The thing that's the hardest to juggle is those priorities that are placed upon you by outside sources, and they become your number one priority. And so you may have been going on track with something else, but then there's something, because it's the nature of public sector work and things like that, and it could be from an agency that really needs you right now because of something that's going on. It could be because of a legislative priority or a priority of the governor that all of a sudden that becomes your new priority."
— Mandy Crawford [00:18:18 → 00:18:45]
Building Effective Political Relationships: "You got to say what you mean, do what you say, or all of those different things."
— Mandy Crawford [00:22:43 → 00:22:49]
Advocacy in State Technology: "I also see, and my agency sees that a big part of our role is to be advocates for you all. And we want to have the solutions that you all need to be able to do your jobs."
— Mandy Crawford [00:24:55 → 00:25:06]
Driving Force Behind Technological Missions: "It's about mission, and it's knowing that it's a fight worth having even on the worst days, that there are some fights that are just worth it. And I really do believe in our mission and our vision of helping Texans and using technology to be able to do that and supporting our customer agencies."
— Mandy Crawford [00:29:28 → 00:29:50]
Cross-Sector Collaboration: "Because I've grown up in government, and so there's a certain way that I look at things. So one just sort of the fresh look and the fresh take on the way to do things I think is certainly very valuable."
— Mandy Crawford [00:31:39 → 00:31:49]
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