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Transcript 

0:05
Good Day to everybody. This is Bill Stark. And I'm one of the cofounders of LeaderGov along with my partner, Tim Fenbert. And it's our joy and pleasure to serve local government leaders all around the country, to help them be better at what they do in terms of leading people and leading teams, and leading big projects and making a difference in the community. And we really love what we do, we actually say, we would do it for free if we could, but baby needs new shoes, so can't do it for free right now. We really, really love serving the local government marketplace. And today's podcast is on the topic of innovation. And having a growth, mindset, innovation, and growth mindset. These are two areas that in our experience, we've we've been challenged, we've had to work and really, sometimes stretch local governments to sort of get out of the box of thinking, if you will, largely because local governments have so many regulations and so many things they have to do forms and regulations. And so we know that it's hard for local governments to innovate, and think outside the box sometimes. But we want to have a growth mindset. And that's what this podcast is about today. We've got a great guest, a very good friend of LeaderGov Nadia Hansen. Nadia is with salesforce.com. I'm gonna let her tell you and a little bit what she does within the salesforce.com universe. But she has a 20 plus year background, and working with local government agencies primarily in the area of IT services, if you worked briefly in Arizona and the City of Henderson, but she served lots of local governments even was head of it at Clark County, which is Las Vegas for a number of years there. And so Nadia, we're so glad to have you. Thank you for being with us today. Yeah,

2:00
thank you for having me, Bill and LeaderGov very excited about our session today. Yeah, share,

2:05
if you don't mind just a couple of minutes kind of your background in local government, and maybe what you're doing today at Salesforce, we'd love to hear about that as well. Sure,

2:14
thanks. So Nadia Hanson, I'm a digital transformation executive at Salesforce. And what that really means is I along with a bunch of stellar folks, we help governments reimagine services. So prior to joining Salesforce, I had the privilege of serving as the Chief Information Officer for Clark County, which like Bill mentioned, is in Las Vegas, Nevada, serving 2.4 million people, 10,000 employees, 42 million visitors who visit this beautiful city, which I still reside in. So very happy to be here. And then I've just been in the public sector space, specifically local government for about 15 to 20 years. And honestly, just so exciting to see that I still get to play a big part, being on the vendor side of the house being on the dark side, as sometimes we call it, but still having my foot in public sector because that's all I know. So excited for our conversation today.

3:09
Yeah, I just want to jump right in and really, really get into the meat of this because this this innovation topic is so important. You know, in your work in local government over many years, I would just be curious, from your perspective, what were some of the barriers to innovation, that you saw some of the barriers to having this sort of growth mindset that sometimes kind of got in the way of innovation in local government,

3:34
you don't want it the biggest hurdles to overcome is yes, mindset is a big thing, but also sponsorship, right to having sponsorship from leadership to be able to do some of the innovative things that you are looking to do. You know, as government entities, we're often very cautious. We're often very risk averse to change, maybe partially because of budget constraints, partially because of the competencies or the skill set that we have in the organization. Perhaps it's a little bit about visibility, and not wanting to end up in the newspaper. And really a lot of especially on the IT side of the house, what I've seen is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it attitude. So it's not uncommon to see a bit of resistance to new ideas, which can definitely slow down the innovation train. But we'll talk about some of the strategies to overcome that and how you go about it and navigate. Yeah,

4:28
yeah. And I know that being a Salesforce Of course, that's, that's a platform that's a big technology platform that has a lot of opportunities to transform processes and so forth. And I think, you know, not to make this a commercial, but I think there are platforms like yours. We want to hear about it. We want to talk about some of these ways that local governments can, can break down some of those walls so So tell me, in your experience, again, a couple of ways where you've seen successful innovation and what what did that look like and How do you? How do you get there? What are some ideas from your perspective.

5:03
So you know, I'll share a little bit more of a Salesforce on Salesforce story, which I really liked sharing. And then I'll go jump back into the county setting on some of the things that we had done and we were experimenting with. So you know, I came from local government and I went from a public sector to the private sector, and things are run very differently in the private sector. So change is common on a daily basis, you just have to accept it. You know, one of the things that we do as an example of innovation is we don't actually send out emails, the emails only happen if you're working externally with somebody. So we have something what we use Slack, so you will hear slack or teams. So essentially a collaboration tool where everything is done inside of a collaboration tool. So anybody who's new, who's onboarding to the project, or anybody who's new to the organization, we maintain threads. So you can go back years and see what the conversations were about, rather than having to go and ask people, because we're such a large company where 80,000 people were diverse across across the globe, that becomes impossible, how do you maintain that culture, and I feel like Salesforce is doing it perfectly well, or as best as they can to really manage that and, and making sure that people are hearing the conversations, here's what's on top of leadership minds, you're not in a silo. So that's something I wanted to share, which I find very interesting. And I would love to take that back at some point back into the public sector. So now for some of the different tactics. So one of the things that were employed at the county was brainstorming sessions, we were doing that at the leadership level. So I would have my leadership team together. And we would come up with here's like, the burning issue of the day, or here's the strategic priority that we need to accomplish. So really creating a safe space, where ideas are welcome. Right. And that I think that's super important to not shut down people is to say maybe right, now's not the time to implement it, but definitely hearing about it. I think that helps foster that culture of innovation. Another one would be around, pushing back on the status quo. So you know, status quo was essential, like, sometimes we go, like, why should we just keep doing what we're doing? But I think it really comes back to leadership and asking, why are we doing things that we're doing? Or why not? Are we doing it? So what are those barriers and really helping understand it is important, I want to lean on training, I think training is so underrated. So Bill, this is going to be a plug for you, I sought you out right back in the day, when I was leading the IT organization, I was looking for somebody who can come in and help develop our leaders who are going to be the future of the organization. So I think helping people on the training side, whether it's soft skills, or hard skills is extremely important. And you really need to focus on that as part of your culture of innovation. Because a lot of the people you have to remember, especially in the public sector, they've been grown and raised in public sector, they need an outside perspective to be like, oh, cool like this is, these are things that work maybe in an outside entity that may or may not work for us. So let's let's look at some of the lessons learned outside of our entity. So I think that's important. And then third, last, but not the least partnerships with vendors who are in this space. I cannot stress it enough. Collaborating with tech startups collaborating with universities collaborating with vendors, like especially if you're looking at artificial intelligence, or you're thinking like, how does this work, pick on people who are doing this on a day to day basis before you got mentor yourself, ask other people, because asking for help is not a bad thing. It's actually helping you grow. So and that would even include other departments within the entity to help bring in those fresh ideas to help bring in those fresh perspectives really breaking down to size silos that can stifle innovation. So those are just some of the tactics on top of my mind.

8:57
Yeah, love it. I want to go back to what you said the very beginning, which you talked about sponsorships, or having a sponsor? Could you elaborate on that a little bit in the value of that in terms of doing something new innovating making change?

9:11
Yes. So you know, it's, I always think of government as the Think of it as the Titanic, it doesn't sink for sure. It's never going to sink, but it's a big ship to steer. And in order to steer it in the right direction, you really need sponsorship at a higher level. So whether that's from your management, whether it's from the city, county manager's office, whether it's from your board of supervisors, commissioners, so you need that high level strategic play in place in order to be able to do it, because what ends up happening if ideas are stemming from perhaps like level that is not at the leadership level. Those can be stifled. So it really needs to come from top down. And I feel like sponsorship is really important to be able to move it forward. So that's an app But sometimes that we forget about because that includes change management that includes organized organizational change all of these little things, nuances that we forget about that is part of the culture. Yeah.

10:11
Okay, so and then you mentioned slack, I want to go back on Slack real quick. You mentioned it as I guess an example of a tool that fosters innovation or more collaboration, because it seems like when you create these channels, right, all the communication goes to this one channel in Slack. It's not a bunch of emails, you got to weed through and find what Bob said, what LaShawn said, it's in one topical area, right? And it kind of helps maintain knowledge, right? Past files past conversations, could you elaborate on that a little bit, and how local governments might be able to use that tool a little bit more.

10:49
So as an example, I see one of the biggest plays being, let's say, there's communication or announcements coming from the city, county manager's office, and instead of emailing it out to 10,000 people, or however many people are in your organization, there is information in there that outside entities also need to know. So if you had a collaboration tool, which allowed you to spread that message, and then you asked for feedbacks, feedback could be in the form of a reaction, right? And sometimes at emails, you don't get the feedback back. You don't know if people are reading it. Do you even understand it? So one of the things that we've employed is we do reactions, right? Yes, I understand it. Yes. There's a thank you. Yes, maybe there's a heart. So it's like more? How do I say this in a human form? How would we react to somebody who's talking to us, and that way, it allows for feedback back and forth, you can put it as a thread. And now anybody who's onboarding, knows about your strategic vision, knows about your priorities, knows about all the events that are being hosted, knows about perhaps the planning agenda, or zoning agenda, or the Board of County Commissioners agenda. So all of that has been maintained in one tool where anybody can go in and take a look at it, rather than having to access 90 million portals that were already used to or try to access. Yeah.

12:04
And I liked this other thing you said, you mentioned brainstorming meetings. Yes. You know, it's almost like every once a month on Thursday, the third Thursday, we're going to sit in a room for two hours and take our biggest problem and take it apart and put it back together. I love that it's not a free thing. But it's almost free, is getting people the right people in the room from different disciplines, maybe different departments, and innovating and thinking and collaborating. I just love that idea. Because we don't really set time aside to do that kind of thing, do we? We

12:33
were too busy. I mean, reality is we're too busy running and putting out fires, right? So I think this needs to be very strategic in terms of how can we have a quick huddle, it doesn't have to be two hours, maybe it's a 15 minute huddle. We sit together, it's a standing meeting. And I literally mean a standing meeting where you're standing. So it's uncomfortable. So you can actually get through it quickly. Right. But it's like an immediate, here's something that's been bothersome or frustration or a pain point. Can we make this better? Yes, we can. Okay, how can we do this, get the input from the right people, and you move on with it. So I think that it's a little bit more, it allows for democratization within the organization. And it's not always coming top down. It's actually buy in from the people who are going to be using it or employing that process. Yeah.

13:19
And the last thing I want to go back and touch on is this idea of partnerships with industry. And I love the idea of even universities, I spoke a local government recently who was going to tap their local university, their research department to come do some research into the community that they lived in, around some things they wanted to do. I thought, Wow, what a great. And I don't know if it was a, it was given to them for free. Maybe they paid something, but it was probably grad students, it was probably discounted. And you're using local talent. And boy, you're just opening your eyes up to such a new variety of voices. I love that. Could you just elaborate on that just for a second? Sure.

14:00
You know, I will tell you something. I know in government, one of the biggest issues other aside from technology modernization is around building the talent pipeline. How do we ensure that people actually want to come and work for a local government? Like what's exciting about us? All we do is mundane stuff everyday. Well, how can you make it sexy, right? That's what I call it, like you have to make government attractive. And it's not by salaries. It's not by pension, because I think the newer generation actually does not care about it. They care about mission and purpose and how am I going to drive and make an impact on the community. So that comes with training, and that comes with employing the right people. So having a partnership with your university system, or college, university or even a partner kind of like Salesforce, we provide free training. A lot of people including myself, before I joined Salesforce, I had no idea that there was a platform called trailhead, which allows for completely free training to upskill your employees so you can log in now there's courses on emotional Intel diligence, how do I become a better public speaker? All the way to how do I migrate to the cloud? Or like, how do I implement an LLM? We can get super technical, or we can just keep it towards soft skills. But it really starts with having these kinds of partnerships that allow you to expand because you're never going to get enough resources. And you're never going to get enough budget to be able to do that.

15:21
Yeah, yeah. Well, this has been really good. This is a lot of a lot of good detail. Packed in a in a punch, I appreciate it, I want to just review what I think you said, and feel free to fill in a blank if I missed it, the number one, get sponsorship, around your innovation, go up the ladder, get folks bought in and get them behind it. It's reduces risk, and it probably helps, you know, be ensure that it gets across the finish line. So sponsorship, you reference slack will be just a communication platform, an innovative change sort of oriented platform that allows for better collaboration, better innovation. You mentioned brainstorming meetings, which I think are great ideas, and they don't have to be two hours. That's a really good point you brought up, you said developing people, help your leaders think big help them think outside the box. We do a workshop on on strategic goal setting which is different than, you know, everyday goal setting, right? So teaching people those skills. And then lastly, you talked about partnering with vendors, with technology vendors, with with other vendors, with universities, to again bring in new voices, new ideas, I really, really like that sort of list that you came up with. I think it's very practical and some things there that people can do next week. So thank you for sharing that anything you would add, as we kind of wrap up to this whole idea of encouraging people to be innovative to think outside the box to have a growth, mindset, any final thoughts?

16:57
I think the only thing I would say, and this is something also I learned being in the private sector is all ideas are good ideas. It's about prioritization and how you implement them. But keeping the door open to allow people to have that feeling of safety, like I'm not going to be recommended, or you're not going to ignore me. I think that's really important. And I think this is why a lot of the big tech firms like I classify Salesforce is one of the leading technology firms, we're able to do that because there's so much, there's so many voices that count towards what the final product is going to look like. Right? And I think that's important to have that feeling like yes, whatever I contribute is going to be a value because I'm doing the job. So I know the job very well. And I know how to how to make it better. So kind of keeping that mindset and having an open mindset, I think from a leadership perspective is extremely important.

17:53
I would love to hear partially selfishly, but for our listeners, we have city managers, Mayor's Council, City Council counties, on our on our podcast, can you do share with us two, three or four areas that salesforce.com touches? What what are the areas that you affect? Like? Is it database management? Is it project me? And what what do y'all do that's practical for 40 50,000 population city.

18:24
So you know, it's funny, you ask that bill, because when I joined, Salesforce actually didn't know anything about them, other than they are a constituent relationship management company. And that's all I knew. So I will put it in my contacts, things that I wish I knew. So one of the things that a platform provides, it's completely different than what you get like a commercial off the shelf is what we call it. So this is pre configured predefined solutions for whatever industry vertical you might be, whether it's health and human services, whether it's the county manager's city manager's office, whether it's licensing, permitting, inspections, grants management, economic development, whatever that might be, there's a pre configured solution that allows you to do 60 to 70% of what you might want to do. But then every city county municipality has unique needs, and those need to be configured. So that would be something that set up based on your unique needs. Now, this is something that a lot of technology providers can do, because they give you here's what you got, you have what you have, and you don't throw a fit, right. That's how normally projects work. But this is what differentiates Salesforce is that you're able to tweak the system to your needs. But you're already getting a prebuilt template to start doing that. And the second thing is around self service. So we are big on self service because that's what we do in house as well as externally for our customers. And we provide collaboration. So slack was acquired by Salesforce, that's a collaboration tool. Mule soft was acquired by Salesforce integrate system. So let's say you have 90 systems that you're trying to pull data From, it allows you to pull all of that data together. So you will have a perfect view of what that personalized experience for resident could look like. And then last but not the least, how are you going to view all that data, and that's through Tableau, which is a data visualization tool. So those are three acquisitions that Salesforce made recently, in the last five years or so that really allows you to have a full C 360 view is what we call the customer C 360. Right. So I know that when my frequent flyer comes in, and they're coming in and saying about the same thing with same potholes, same graffiti, same issue over and over again, I know that I'm not creating a new ticket for the same person, I can actually follow that thread through and now they had a problem, you know, around this area, it was a different district. And I can see it by geo geography, I can see it by zip code, I can see it by district really provides you a comprehensive view of your resident, and how can you cater to them? So that's what Salesforce does in a nutshell.

21:03
Yeah. Yeah, thank you for that, that's, that's really good to hear. Because there aren't a lot of ERP type platforms, you know, data analysis platforms out there that I didn't know, you will have facilitated permitting, for example, inside your plant, I just had no idea. So there are a lot of things that cities and counties can take advantage of in a very practical terms of service delivery, that salesforce.com can can facilitate. And I just like you, I kind of thought of Salesforce as a CRM, yes.

21:37
And nobody actually knows about it. So we hold a lot of workshops, they're free, by the way, innovation days, you'll probably see something called Innovation Day show up. And that's where we have all of our customers come in. So you can do like a lot of peer networking, and really learn about different use cases, because it's going to be applied to any use case.

21:55
Yeah, so they can check you out on LinkedIn, I guess, for fun, absolutely. force.com

22:00
platform. Yes, absolutely. Please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, happy to have a conversation, and won't be a sales pitch because I'm on the sales side. But I'll just share some of the things that I've learned and hopefully it helps you.

22:13
Yeah, you're you're an evangelist for innovation. I am definitely sure that you're that I know, you have a fancier title than that. But since we're talking about innovation, I thought I would put a plug in for that. Hey, thank you for taking a few minutes and talking to us today. I love your perspective. You know, you've got this government background, yet, you've got this sort of big picture technology background, I just knew that technology, but then an era of innovation and a growth mindset that you were gonna be able to really share some good ideas with us based on your experience. So thank you so much for being with us. Hope you have a wonderful rest of the day.

22:49
Thank you, Bill. Great seeing you and thank you for having me.

22:53
Yes, if you enjoyed this podcast, let us know get back to a say hi to us. If you've got another topic that you'd like for us to cover. Please let us know we're here to serve you and we hope you have a wonderful day. Take care