23. The Search for Buried Talent with Tom Andriola

What would happen if you didn’t write an organizational chart? Tom Andriola joins the HiPERleadership podcast to share his strategies for overcoming the limitations of traditional org charts and uncovering existing talent within your organization. 

Most organizations tend to have buried talent. Too often, in the search to fill roles, we overlook our best candidates to achieve the goal. As the current Vice Chancellor, Information, Technology and Data; Chief Data Officer of UC Irvine and UCI Health, Tom has a track record of recruiting talent internally by finding people and bringing them into projects that they are passionate about. Whether they’re buried under management structures or put on initiatives that don't align with their strengths, Tom points to the ways leaders can craft a compelling vision that will draw out great talent.

Transcript

David Morris  00:09

Welcome to the HiPERleadership podcast. I am your host David Morris, CEO and founder of HiPER Solutions. At HiPER Solutions, our mission is to inspire and enable high performance leaders to deliver positive change. Leaders today are faced with unprecedented change. And yet even the best leaders have had to toss out their standard playbook and think outside the box. Our intent with the HiPERleadership podcast is to share best practices so that you, our listeners can gain some actionable and practical approaches to your next big bet endeavor. In today's episode, our guest Tom Andriola, the Vice Chancellor of Information Technology and D ata at the University of California Irvine, prior to UC Irvine at the UC office of the President, where he served as the Vice President and CIO for the UC system, and the CIO for UC Health. Among his accomplishments, Tom has created an organizational and technology platform to support the collaboration of 8,000 IT professionals across the UC's campuses, medical centers, and launched the IT Leadership Academy to develop the future technology leaders. And developed UC Health's big data strategy, which led to the creation of UC wide clinical data warehouse with 16 million patients represented for the purposes of improving patient care and supporting research. Really a phenomenal background. Hey, Tom, it's great to have you on the show today.

Tom Andriola  01:38

Thanks, David. Pleasure to be here today.

David Morris  01:40

Yeah, a lot of fun getting to know you over the years through multiple chapters of yours. I want to start out today in 2004. And when you are tapped on the shoulder to go drive that change initiative.

Tom Andriola  01:51

Yeah, thank you. I was with Philips healthcare at the time. And you know, we were struggling with several acquisitions. And the board put a mandate in front of the organization, which was to reach a certain EBIT a target. And they gave us six quarters to do it. And, you know, our strategy had been built upon really doing post-merger integration and standardizing the globe on a set of processes in an IT platform. And the...the project was really struggling. I was in the US at the time. I was tapped on the shoulder, asked if I would take over the program, which required for me to pick up and move myself, my family to Europe. Which, you know, I was really excited for the challenge and for the adventure. And the seminal moment for me, because I had been a successful CIO, you know, up and up in my career and an IT leader. But more in the context of running a - essentially an American organization. And here I was dropped into Europe, you know, with a very, very clear goal. A very, very clear timeline. A lot of challenges to kind of fix the holes in the - in the ship, and then get ready for a major journey. But I was taking over a very different type of team. A very multinational team, right? A very kind of culturally different team. And I remember coming in and trying to get my head around the issues, while also trying to understand the - kind of the talent that I had in the organization. It was just it was very different. They interacted with me very different. And I had a seminal moment when I realized that as, as Dorothy said, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, where we had to get by an internal audit to close the book on all the issues that the organization had been having. We worked really hard over three months. A real, real kind of grind for three months to really work through the issues and demonstrate to the auditors that we had fixed the issues. We were ready for taking on the challenge that initially had been put on the table. And you know, in an American style, we tend to celebrate those events and do kind of a big celebration, like a seminal moment of breaking away from our past. And I kind of orchestrated one of those town halls. Put a glass of champagne in everybody's hand like we would tend to do in America. And I had this dramatic ripping of the audit report and throwing the papers in the air and saying we will not be defined by our past. Right, you know, so so very American-esk. And the reaction from the group was just nothing. That I think is when I realized that my leadership style needed to adapt to what I was working with today. I couldn't just rely on what had always worked for me. I had to evolve. And not and not just tweak. That I had to learn some new skills. And over the next four years in that role, I would say that the growth for me as a leader was from being a good solid leader in an American context to really understanding what was meant to be a global leader. And to understand the world and cultures and there's not good and bad ways. They're - they're just different from the way that maybe I grew up and the way that I learned how to do things. And so that transformation was for me one of those seminal moments as a leader. Yes, we achieve the goal over those four years. We've put about $220 million dollars of cost synergy on the bottom line. We hit our 14% EBIT a target that the board had set out for us. But for me, it was really kind of a - it was a step function change in terms of my capabilities as a leader, that I recognize the changes that have created in me. But also the organization I think saw some things in me that maybe they didn't before. And so the next challenge I got after that was a complete departure. Right? This was kind of an internal process executive kind of process transformation leader. And after that, I went on to take over acquisitions and become a general manager of the software businesses.

David Morris  05:25

So although your approach had to change. That - that traditional, quote, unquote, American approach wasn't going to work. The goal you had in mind, did that shift at all? The actual mission at hand, the actual goal, you know, in terms of the efficiencies, you're looking to bring in, or cost savings yada report. Did any of that change, or was just the approach that changed?

Tom Andriola  05:45

Not particularly the case the approach that changed. I think, what I realized was in understanding what resources I had available, and what tools I needed to use or develop, to be able to get from where I was to the goals that we had. Whatever the finish line was, that I needed to go back to basics and really kind of step back and put some of my preconceived notions and assumptions aside and see the situation for what it is. See the team for what it is. See the environment for what it is. And that was a fundamental learning for me that became, I would say, kind of a stylistic difference from the way that I approached all jobs after that. So when I became a general manager, it was not assuming that what it worked in that last job was going to work for taking over the acquisitions and taking this business global. I learned to step back and realize the organization's different. The situation is different. The timeline is different, right? And -and then after that when I was running emerging markets, right? Really sitting down and saying I need to understand China. I need to understand India. I need to understand Latin and South America as markets before I figure out what the strategy is. It really really stylistically changed into a really stop, pause, assess in a very holistic way before determining how do I put together a playbook for this particular assignment that builds upon things I have learned, but also recognizing there are things that I was going to have to develop along the way.

David Morris  07:06

In that first instance where you realize after the champagne that was not going to work, that approach, how did you retool? How did you sort of figure it out your course correction?

Tom Andriola  07:16

I think it was about starting to ask questions again. There was a premise of they were sending me to Europe because as an experienced manager had done things like this before, right? So I knew I had the requisite knowledge. So I could drop in, hit the ground running and go. And there certainly were things from my past that helped me to do that. But to blindly accept that I've done this before I can do this again. And I can just use the same playbook, I think is naive. Because in every situation there are nuances that force a level of adaption. And for me, that adaption turned out to be quite large in this particular case. Because there were just new approaches, new understandings, new accommodations in terms of the way that I ran teams, facilitated or - organizational communication. I just had to do very differently than I had in the past because I was dealing with a very different set of people.

David Morris  08:06

And in that case, I mean, to achieve that goal, still in record time, and again, quantifiably, what was it ? How much was saved?

Tom Andriola  08:13

Yeah, it's like 200 plus million dollars saved to the bottom line. We had a 14% EBIT a target that the board gave us six quarters to hit. And so it was a significant amount. And again, it all had to do with getting to the synergy that was across the world with umpteen different ways of the way processes were working the way you know, the technology platforms that they were using. It was basically that global process template and standardization of IT platforms to run a global business. That was the challenge.

David Morris  08:40

Okay and to get that 200 million plus in efficiency as you adjusted your playbook, what was the key actually with a group brainstorming session? What actually led to it?

Tom Andriola  08:52

It - it was building the organization. It was building an organization to operate at a global level. Which ended up being a three tier organization that had kind of a central back office unit, a process expertise that could go out and engage and consult with the business, and then a forward deployable capability into the regions that could quote unquote, drive and standardize process. And so that we could actually get to the synergy.

David Morris  08:53

Do you think that approach would have emerged if you just use your original style, like if everyone agreed and say they were excited back with the champagne and everything? Or did that idea emerge through your new approach - through the group and arriv - like, do you have the idea already in mind when you showed up on this three tier thing? Or did that?

Tom Andriola  09:34

No, it evolved. It evolved as I started to listen and learn and understand that the challenge on a global level was much different than I had ever experienced in previous experiences. Right? So the solution had to match the size of the challenge and the complexity of the challenge. Which was part of the growth that I had to make. It's not at all an internal thing, right? There's a lot - also were a lot of organizational and external resources and benchmarks to be able look at this say okay, I don't have the answer pulling it out of my experience base. But there's a lot of other resources for you to tap into, to help figure out what it needs to be. And also how to get it into place. Because again, I mean, we're fixing to ship we're building new pieces to the ship while we're in journey. The three month hiatus to get past the audit was the only pause we had. After that it was full steam ahead. And at any given time, you know, we had 40 different projects running across the world to implement this global template. Finance, supply chain, customer service processes. You know, we were covering almost every part other than the sales process. Every part of the business, we were essentially implementing a global template and doing it concurrently across different regions of the world.

David Morris  10:45

You know, as I've watched your career, Tom, and I've seen you at the UC system, and now down at UC Irvine. There's a lot going on under the hood with you. You know, you talk very quickly, but there's a lot of thinking, there's a lot of dot-connecting. And I find it amazing that in each of these instances, there's been a lasting impact. You know, a lot of game changers go in, they make something happen that gets undone afterwards. And so what I'm intrigued by you is kind of these approaches you've developed that really ensure a lasting impact. And it seems to be the inclusiveness. How you involve everyone. Love to sort of unpack that a little bit.

Tom Andriola  11:21

Yeah, David, I would say that I embody the the first part of that statement. Which was, you know, I was always someone who's very ambitious, wanting a tough assignment wanting to prove myself. And when you take that type of view, you tend to drive very hard to get across the goal line. And then you look for the next goal line to go after. I believe that is I've continued in my career. Gained a little bit more perspective on the world and the way organizations work. And that there's more to it than that, there's more opportunity than that. And you know, coming to the University of California. An institution. Not a company, an institution that's written into the Charter. The Constitution for the State of California that's been around for 150 plus years, will likely be around for 150 more. You start to think in terms of that lasting impact. Leaving a legacy that you're a part of something larger. You have a role to play and what is your contribution into the greatness of this institution. And something that you can say I was a part of something. I left this - I left it a little better for the person who is coming after me. And so that's become a - a much more front mind part of how I think about things. And - and you mentioned at University of California, my first role, which was at the Office of the President, which is kind of like a - we call the system wide role. But it's kind of almost like a corporate function in - in a organization and a private sector sense. I really thought about what was my ability to look across the IT function in those 8000 plus professionals and make a lasting impact given every day they were coming hard to get their particular job done. And so the things that I could do to create a lasting impact that I'm glad to say that continue to live beyond my moving on to my next opportunity. The sense of community. How do you connect those 8000 people in a meaningful way so that they can find each other, learn from each other, leverage expertise, and experience from one another so that we can implement solutions faster around the mission for the university? We built the Leadership Academy, which came out of the concept of everyone was complaining that they don't have enough talent to really build an academy that has been not only a talent development platform for us, but a succession planning mechanism that had never existed before. And quite honestly doesn't really exist in any other function of the university. And so we now have this mechanism in place that people are really excited to get their applications in and be a part of. Where essentially they come learn the leadership skills that all leaders need to be successful in their career. So each individual gets something out of it. But the institution gains because the leaders of tomorrow who are gonna drive the institution to the next level of greatness, are being home grown. And then kind of lined up to take on key positions. This is something corporations do. I learned this at Philips when I saw that nothing like this existed. And the benefit of having something like this, I just filled a need. What's cool about it is I've moved on, yet the program - the academy continues. We're in cohort number five now. I was actually just with cohort number five because I'm still acting as one of the lecturers from the standpoint of kind of a practitioner. And so I talk about leadership, I talk about change management, talk about soft skills with the cohort. But you know, we now have 160 people who have been through a common experience. More than half of them have already moved into their next career position within the university. Which means we are growing and elevating our own talent to new levels of contribution. And it has kind of this, how do I get into that program? How do I find that program is a way for me to grow to my career here? And this is something Phillips taught me how to do. And I just got an opportunity to kind of pull out that piece of paper and design it around something that would work for the University of California.

David Morris  15:09

I hear this all the time, you know, here at the end of 2021, labor shortages everywhere. And what I like about this is that it solves the problem. And again, it solves the problem even after you've left the organization.

Tom Andriola  15:23

It is right? And - and you know, in those things like labor shortages or things that the group are talking about from the standpoint of technologies is a potential solution. It's not a silver bullet but you know how do we think about the technologies that are available to us now to deal with labor shortages? Right? How do we change the ratios of the number of students that can be served per individual, right? In a particular role by the better use of technology. And so the group is not only well versed in technology. What we really trained them how to do is how to go out and position the opportunity to technology. How to create the coalition of business and technology partnership to get these projects rolling off the starting line. How to actually design and implement things successfully. And how to get them to stick and create lasting value for the organization. Those are part of the competencies that we're building into IT professionals. And what's interesting is that those IT professionals, some of them are taking non-IT jobs as part of their next career steps. And then we have non-IT people who are technology savvy, who are joining the Leadership Academy because they want to build more of these short skills to be more effective as change agents of their own environment. The cohort we have this time - four medically trained professionals who are joining an IT Leadership Academy, not because they're IT professionals, but because they see technology as a way to impact patient care. And they want to get the knowledge and skills out of the academy that can make them more effective in their roles. It's really become again, something that not only has sustained, but continues to evolve and get a little bit more valuable every time we do it.

David Morris  16:54

So when you hear a leader, Tom, mention to you that you know they have plenty of budget right now. They have a 1000 person organization, but they have you know, 300 open headcount, and therefore they just can't get stuff done. What does that mean? Is it an excuse that you should be able to do more with less people? Is this just they're not recruiting for the right place and again, to your point, you can move people from other functions and train them? I just feel like I'm hearing this a lot these days. And people say, well, I just can't get stuff done, because I can't hire the people. Have you been hearing that for years, I mean what does this mean -

Tom Andriola  17:25

I mean sure, you know, I've been hearing it for 25 years. There's always just a natural mismatch between what's hot and the talent that's available to do it. I mean, go back through any era that we want to talk about in the technology realm, where I come out of. It was the internet, E-business, mobile technologies, the cloud. Now it's digital transformation. I mean, there's always this mismatch. Like AI and machine learning. So there's always going to be this mismatch. I - you know, I just don't buy into the argument. Here's what I buy into. I buy into that, essentially, at the end of the day, we should be most professionals as free agents. I like Daniel Pink's methodology about purpose, autonomy, and mastery. And tapping into that. I have this joke I run with my organization, which is I refuse to draw an organizational chart because I find it too limiting. Because it gets into that there's only 1000 people who could get involved in this. Versus finding people who are passionate about it. And this is why we have medical professionals and people out of the, you know, admissions process who come and join our initiatives. Not because they're part of my organization. They're bound into something that they're passionate about that is tied to the mission of the University of California at Irvine now. And so to me, the entire employee base is an opportunity to bring. It's about finding those people and connecting into something that they really want to contribute into. If you take that type of mentality, you don't see the same type of constraints of someone who says, you know, I have 25 open positions in my organization, and I can't seem to find the people. And when I find that people our salaries aren't aggressive enough to recruit them away from Microsoft, and Google, and Facebook. You're never going to win that battle. So stop trying. Change the game. I learned that as a business leader. When you're competing in the marketplace and your competitors are better at the game than you are, find ways to change the way the game is played. And that's what I do. Some people say that's kind of a unique perspective. I just try to find successful, effective strategies. This is effective. Change the game. You won't hear me talk about, we can't find talent. Recruiting talent to me is finding people who want to contribute into an effort. And when you can do that, I don't care where they're from. I don't care if they're connected to me on organizational chart. They're not because you're not gonna find an organizational chart on me. I'm going to go find people who want to contribute into something we want to do. My job is to make that vision very compelling. And people say I want to be a part of that Tom. And that's what I spent a lot of my time doing as a leader.

David Morris  19:43

Yeah, that's something you have real locus of control over. So would you say in that example, if you came into a role and you thought you were short by 25 people, would you just find the 25 from other places and retrain them? Or do you think it's sometimes an excuse for not making the most of your current talent?

Tom Andriola  19:58

Yeah, it's a little bit of everything. It's a little bit of how do you get more out of the team that you've got by identifying all organizations tend to have talent that's buried. Buried under poor management, you know, middle management. Put on the wrong initiatives. So there's always the ability to upscale something of which that you're inheriting. Second is you just go to the marketplace and you try to complement what your organization has with seating it with some expertise from the outside. Expertise or perspectives from the outside, right? Because sometimes you want not just expertise, but different thinking to come into the team. The third is, and this is actually the one that I think most people overlook too quickly, and underestimate the power of. Is getting - especially when you're in IT field - getting, what we're starting to call out the business technologists that are sitting in the business functions to be part of your cohort. And giving them you know, not only license but really kind of including them and listening to them with more intent, then the quote unquote, traditional IT team. And how do you draw them in and get them to drive things? I mean, analytics is a great place where this is happening right now. There's so much analytics talents that's out in the business if I could use that term. But - and if a Chief Information Officer only thinks the analytics can be delivered by his or her team, they are missing the equation. They're missing the game. The game is how do you elicit the talent and passion and vision and intimacy around what analytics can do for the business by recruiting them to be part of the effort and even leading the effort? And how do you then manage the dynamics of your being led by your customer rather than servicing your customer? So I mean, there's - there's a lot of organizational kind of thinking here. That's why I think part of the strategy is really about organizational strategy. How to leverage the capabilities of the organization. Not just what's under you in a organizational context, but that the whole organization has at its disposal. You got to figure out how to tap into that. That's what great leaders do they think as enterprise players. They think about the entire enterprise, which means where's the talent in the enterprise? And how do I figure out how to get it to connect and be a part of what I'm trying to get done here?

David Morris  20:15

Tremendous and just really an ultimate example of inclusiveness and understanding people for talent rather than any of these titles. I think it's really tremendous. I'd like to conclude with putting yourself in the shoes of CEO or you're the governor, even president of the country. And all of a sudden you need to recruit, you know, a game changing leader like yourself who can come in and do that. Can immerse in an organization. Can shift talent around. Could really make something happen. But particularly this talent piece of it. I'm just wondering if you were interviewing this candidate, Tom. You're trying to hire somebody to go do this. What are some things you would look for in that interview to make sure who you're hiring has the ability to do a lot of what you just described?

Tom Andriola  21:59

Yeah, no, this is - this is one, where usually a huge departures from a lot of my colleagues, right? Who look for the experience. We need to hire people who have experience in doing this. I look less at the specifics of the experience, and really look for how much experience can they demonstrate success and articulate adaptability. You mentioned we're going through unprecedented change. One of the aspects of change is the fact that the playbook of yesterday doesn't work particularly well for the challenge of today. One of the key things that I look for in terms of bringing people into the organization is have they demonstrated that they're adaptable? How do they see adaptability? And what are the skills that they've developed that allow them to parachute into new territory, figure out the terrain, and the natives. And figure out how to be successful at whatever the goal is? That's paramount in today's - sure there's context. It's hard to take someone from financial services and drop them into health care. Granted there's context that is really, really challenging to overcome. But not impossible. I always like to say talent figures it out. Talent figures out how to be successful in different environments. That's a definition of talent for me. And so that adaptability is something that rates really high on my rubric when I'm sitting down and say looking at candidates for who's coming into key positions. Is do we think that they can adapt to the culture of the environment that we're going to bring them into? The challenges, the lingo? Ability to connect with key leaders? That adaptability is paramount for me.

David Morris  22:40

Is there a particular interview question you like to use? Or how you might reference check that person for it?

Tom Andriola  23:32

It's hard to do in kind of group interviews, right? Because they tend to be kind of pat answers. But I really like to get people to talk about, you know, like experiences like you made me talk about right? Really kind of dig it back about well what what did you do? How did you adapt to that? What was the thing that challenged you the most right? Really get them to kind of articulate that. But also is - is you - we tend to do a job for key positions here where they interview with a lot of different people. And so you get 30 or 40 people who have a sense of this person. And part of that is also getting a sense of how does this person interact with different types of people at different levels because they have to adapt into an environment and be able to be authentic. Today's leaders need to be very authentic. They need to be approachable. They need to show empathy on a regular basis. And they ha - need to be very emotionally intelligent. High EQ. And so, I really look in terms of over the interview cycle that we have, with going for key positions, has the person really demonstrated, you know, kind of a depth around that - those types of things.

David Morris  24:54

Very timely and it's very applicable to different industries. It's great to reconnect today, Tom. Thank you.

Tom Andriola  25:22

Thank you for having me, David.

David Morris  25:25

And to our listeners, thank you for your continued support and feedback. Be sure to subscribe to the HiPERleadership podcast on your favorite platform so you are the first to know of new episodes with exciting guests. And if you are tasked with leading a big change initiative, visit our website at hipersolutions.com To learn more about how our playbook can increase the likelihood of success while de-risking the change initiative.