In this episode, Jamie sits down with Jon Rogers, Director of Strategic Workforce Planning at the Indiana Department of Child Services, to unpack what it really means to build the future of public sector work, from the inside out. Jon shares his unconventional journey from high school teacher to CIA officer to government tech leader, and how that unique perspective fueled a bold new model for hiring and retention in state government. His mission is to replace outdated degree requirements with real skills, real people, and real results. If you're rethinking how we recruit, reskill, and retain talent, this episode is a masterclass in what’s possible when you start with people first.
Government isn’t broken because of bad tech. It’s broken because it was never built for the talent we need now.
In this episode, Jamie sits down with Jon Rogers, Director of Strategic Workforce Planning at the Indiana Department of Child Services, to unpack what it really means to build the future of public sector work, from the inside out.
Jon shares his unconventional journey from high school teacher to CIA officer to government tech leader, and how that unique perspective fueled a bold new model for hiring and retention in state government. His mission is to replace outdated degree requirements with real skills, real people, and real results.
They dive into:
If you're rethinking how we recruit, reskill, and retain talent, this episode is a masterclass in what’s possible when you start with people first.
About Jon
Jon Rogers is the Director of Strategic Workforce Planning, Indiana Department of Child Services. Previously, he was the Director of Strategic Workforce Planning for the Indiana Office of Technology (IOT), which provides consolidated IT services in support of Indiana’s executive branch. Jon joined IOT in 2018 and became the agency’s inaugural Strategic Workforce Planning staffer under former CIO Tracy Barnes. In his current role, he developed and administered a nationally recognized work-based learning program – State Earn and Learn (SEAL) IT – which reskills adults from other jobs and occupations into information technology and security. Since 2020, SEAL IT has graduated forty-eight adults (a graduation rate of over 84 percent) into positions supporting the State of Indiana. While doing so, Jon led the agency’s efforts to move into skills-based hiring, removing degree requirements from job postings, and he was a member of Indiana’s delegation to the National Governors’ Association Community of Practice in Skills-Based Hiring (2024-25). SEAL IT and IOT’s Strategic Workforce Planning team received a State IT Innovation of the Year award from StateScoop in consecutive years (2022-23), an HR Impact award in Talent & Recruitment from the Indianapolis Business Journal, a National Association of State Chief Information Officers State IT Recognition Award for Enterprise IT Management Initiatives (2023), a StateScoop 50 award for state leadership (2024), and the Indiana Chamber of Commerce/Institute for Workforce Excellence Impact Award for Innovative Program of the Year (2024). Before joining IOT, Jon worked in federal positions with the Office of United States Senator John Warner (Ret.) and the Central Intelligence Agency, where he was a finalist for D/CIA mentor of the year. He earned an MBA and M.Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin, a BA in Government from The College of William & Mary in Virginia, and a Senior Certified Professional credential from the Society for Human Resource Management.
Guest Quote
“ When finding the right people in a workplace, don't go for the skills first. Go for the human. Go for the human pick. Pick a good human.”
Time Stamps
00:00 Episode Start
02:21 Jon's background and career journey
07:19 Breaking down transferable skills and workforce development
18:35 Why soft skills are the hardest skills in tech
34:56 Entering the golden age of public sector software
51:05 Rethinking recruitment and retention
59:18 Recognizing hidden talents and fostering a strong culture
01:11:10 The Roundup
Sponsor
Ever To Conquer is brought to you by RedLeif, a digital agency focused on accelerating the modernization and security of public sector data. Visit RedLeif.io to learn more.
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[00:00:00] Jamie Grant: 25% of Harvard MBAs are unemployed. And I think the days of I need a consultant with a pedigree is dying quickly. And I think what's rising quickly is you can't coach want to or hustle. You can't teach experience. You can't teach overcoming adversity.
[00:00:25] Jon Rogers: We were losing potentially 70%. Of skilled and available applicants just by having a degree on the job posting seven zero.
Why would we shut the door to a group of really great people who actually want the jobs?
[00:00:50] Jamie Grant: All right, y'all. Welcome back to another episode of Ever to Conquer. I am super excited today, uh, we have our first public sector executive episode, and this one was intentional, uh, a good friend, uh, but also a topic that I'm really passionate about and I think if we're gonna kick off the conversation, um, about how to transform public sector technology.
It starts with the people and there's nobody in the country. Uh, that I would rather have kickoff that conversation for us than the one and only Jon Rogers, who, uh, is the director of Strategic Workforce Planning, uh, currently at the Indiana Office of Technology. Jon, it's great to have you today, brother.
[00:01:33] Jon Rogers: Hey, Jamie. This is an honor. Uh, those are very, very kind words. It's a, it's a far nicer introduction than, than I need, and people are gonna actually think that they're saying something important now, it's. Other than just listening to you. I mean, it's, uh,
[00:01:47] Jamie Grant: I like to say that every time I get a flattering intro, when I go speak somewhere, that somehow they knew my mom and my mom wrote my intro.
'cause I'm like, that is, I love it. Like, only my mom could write that about her youngest child. But it's true in this case.
[00:01:59] Jon Rogers: I love it. I love it. Well, my, my grandmother will appreciate it.
[00:02:01] Jamie Grant: Good,
[00:02:03] Jon Rogers: good.
[00:02:03] Jamie Grant: But it's, but it's true. Right? So why don't you just kick off a little bit, tell folks kind of your background.
You've, you've got a really cool background. You've got a really diverse background. And if you maybe start with what you're, what you've been doing at IOT, kind of high level, um, and, and what brought you there.
[00:02:21] Jon Rogers: Yeah, no problem. So, uh, right now, again, director of Strategic Workforce here for the Indiana Office of Technology.
This is an HR adjacent function. We are very collaborative between our agency and Indiana's state personnel department. Uh, really on everything that is recruitment, hiring, retention, uh, culture. Workforce initiatives, all the good things that help support tech jobs here for Indianapolis, for the state of Indiana, for our executive branch.
So I've been with IO OT now since, uh, summer of 2018. Wow. So coming up on, on seven years. And that's, uh, the duration of my state time. Coincidentally also, although as you mentioned, uh, switching agencies, uh, going over to get a, a larger workforce, uh, as it happens, uh, in just a matter of a couple of days.
So this is a very interesting way to, to close a chapter, if you will, on, on these initiatives. But we, uh, have been doing some really interesting things to try and get more people a chance in information technology to, uh, get more talent in the door here at the state of Indiana. And what we've found is that I.
Purely traditional, uh, post and hire recruitment was, was not working for us. So we, we've, uh, made the efforts to move into skills-based hiring, which is to say removing degree requirements from job postings to every extent possible and also work-based learning. And that has been quite literally taking folks from any sector of the economy.
They could be, uh, factory workers, truck drivers, uh, Amazon drivers, doesn't matter what they're doing. Uh, have some great mechanics and re-skilling them over the course of 12 months into careers, information, technology and security. So. Whereas in 2019, uh, somebody would've been running the Weber Grill here in the C Circle City Mall.
Uh, that person today is the vulnerability manager who's been eliminating literally millions upon billions of vulnerabilities in our security profile, uh, here within, uh, the, in the, in the office technology. And I'm incredibly proud of what we've been able to do in finding wonderful, wonderful people and over the course of about 12 months, re-skilling them immense opportunities that are incredibly meaningful for our agency, for the government, for our citizens.
Yeah. Uh, more broadly. Um, but.
[00:05:00] Jamie Grant: To double click on that real quick, just to make sure. Yeah, please. Because I, I have, uh, we, we will talk about the story of how we met, uh, sure. But I wanna make sure I'm tracking. Is that a real story of a person that was running a Weber grill at mm-hmm. A hardware store, I think you said, and, and
[00:05:18] Jon Rogers: the Cir Circle City Mall.
Yeah. And so a mall restaurant to a vulnerability manager. Real story
[00:05:24] Jamie Grant: in 12 months or less. Yes. So, big shout out. I'm not gonna hijack it, but Fidel, uh, the story we talked about there that we, we had kind of a similar situation where it was talk, talk to me about, um, and I know we'll take a deeper dive, um, actually, we'll, we'll come back to that in a second.
Give folks a little bit of your background in the public sector before you. Got to iot because you have this really, you know, like these cliches are so easy in the industry where, you know, some thought leader, you know, Gartner puts out, or, or, uh, in healthcare we used to always say, uh, in the healthcare technology space, as soon as JAMA or the American, like e either the New England Journal or JAMA put something out, it was like, oh my gosh.
Now that's the gospel. You said skills-based learning and work skills based
[00:06:14] Jon Rogers: That Skills-based hiring, work-based learning.
[00:06:16] Jamie Grant: Yeah. How would you define those? For my mom who doesn't know anything about that, like, what does that actually mean for somebody that says, because I think the, the, the, the setup here for the question, I think I, I've yet to meet A-C-I-O-A ciso, an agency head who says, man, I just have an abundance of resources.
I have too much talent. There's way too much, right? Like, everybody's trying to figure out like, how do I get the, the, the waters coming over the boat and it's like, we need sailors that can bail the water outta the boat. And yet there's all this talent around that can be kind of uplifted. Repurposed, right.
So how do you, for folks that are listening saying, all right, I really want to develop a program because I can't compete with pay mm-hmm. In the private sector, but I don't think the private sector can compete with you on opportunity.
[00:07:08] Jon Rogers: I agree with that.
[00:07:09] Jamie Grant: And so what does, what do those terms mean to you for somebody that's listening and going, all right, like, how do I build a workforce similar to what Jon's done in Indiana?
[00:07:19] Jon Rogers: Yeah. So, uh, Jamie, love to unpack and, uh, let me start with the notion of transferable skills. So I'm gonna kind of go back to the, the genesis of the question with, uh, my own background and over the course of my career. Adjacent to the public sector and fully in the public sector. And I say that because I started as a high school teacher and I moved from teaching high school into, uh, administrative and legislative work with United States Senator Jon Warner of Virginia, who's retired and now passed sadly, um, incredible, incredible folks left.
Um, once Senator Warner retired, I left and went back to school, and then I joined the Central Intelligence Agency. So, uh, in a very small nutshell there, uh, by my two cores, were working on national security classification policy, and then later on workforce. And I bring that into to play because, uh, you know, obviously at the Central Intelligence Agency, you're not drawing upon.
Uh, I don't know other spy agencies, for example, to get your experience. Uh, you have to, so it's not like we're saying, oh, how nice that you were, you know, serving in the Connecticut, uh, int intelligence state. Like, I, I can't even really, I'm shopping the joke.
[00:08:43] Jamie Grant: So one might actually say that if you have experience at another spy agency, you perhaps should not be working at the CIAY.
[00:08:50] Jon Rogers: Yeah. Also, yeah, you're exactly right. It's a bit of a natural barrier, right? It's a disqualifier. Yeah. And, and maybe you would admit that on your resume, right? Yeah. A lot of, a lot of things. A lot of things. So, um, what, what I learned from, from workforce there, uh, or rather had reinforced, was that what you're looking for are folks who have these sort of acumen behaviors, psychological skills, the ability to do things like critical thinking, incredible critical thinking, strong communication skills.
Um, folks who are very determined and very resilient for a public sector career, and you wanna find them from areas where they've demonstrated that. For example, uh, in the, uh, in the trade craft for information management, you're looking for people who are able to, uh, do things that are adjacent to information and data management.
Maybe they've been librarians, for example. Yeah. Who have experience with taxonomies and assignments and understanding how systems fit with each other. And maybe that's a person you want to do data management, for example. Um, I won't go down the rabbit hole of all the others, but it's, it's very reinforcing that it's not just necessarily you're hiring a mechanic to be a mechanic.
Sometimes you wanna find really good mechanics to go do other things that you know that they can do. Not because what you're working on as a car, but rather the system, the process, the tool that you're working on. Works just like that car. And if you can think through how to diagnose one thing and do triage and do, uh, you know, sort of next step thinking across that a challenge, then odds are very good.
If you did it with a car, you can do it with a computer. Um, so I mean, again, another true story. Uh, one of my really great, uh, uh, sorry, one of my really great, uh, apprentices here for St. Indiana is now a Linux administrator in a senior capacity with a small agency here, and he was a mechanic. Um, now the guy is a wizard when it comes to information technology certifications, uh, to the point where he was actually taking cer, it's first and only time that this has happened.
He was taking certifications on the consecutive weeks. And it's like one of these kinds of folks where you're like, Hey, real quick, what you're, uh, uh, like that's above and beyond. But, um, you know, he could apply the, the sort of systems thinking from being an auto mechanic into the world of information technology, which is, which is wonderful.
So transferable skills lean on heavily, which gets me to skills-based hiring. Not everything nowadays requires a four year degree. Thank you. Um, I mean, just quite simple, uh,
[00:11:40] Jamie Grant: or a minimum amount of experience. That was the one that chopped me hard, and I know you and I align on that. Uh, that, that really pissed me off when I got to see how Tallahassee's a tough place to recruit for a lot of reasons.
It's not Indianapolis, it's not Austin, it's not Nashville or Atlanta, some of these other capitals. And it was amazing how much I would see a proposed, I would see these first job postings come to me and I was like, where the heck do you think you're gonna find? Yeah, that. I'm not sure that's right.
There's two people on earth that meet those qualifications and we're sitting there saying, Hey, come work for us. The pay sucks, but at least the hours are really long and you're making it even harder. That's good by saying you have to have 20 years or 15 years experience. Um, so, so sorry to interrupt you, but I I love where you're going on the, the four year degree and the, uh, kind of spoiling a little bit.
Some stuff we talked about.
[00:12:33] Jon Rogers: Yeah. No, no, no. I mean, a hundred percent, like it's, it is, it's one of these things where you want people who can do the job, don't put barriers up. Mm-hmm. Like for example, uh, you need to have 10 years of experience to come in at an entry level, uh, for anything in it, like no, no, no, no, no.
Or the, Hey, you have to have had a bachelor's degree in informatics information technology. Yeah. Et cetera, et cetera. No, right. You don't need to do that route. Are, are there very talented people coming out of those paths? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Do I want them to also think about the state of Indiana and the Indiana Office of Technology as an employer of choice?
Yeah, absolutely. If somebody's out there with a PhD in informatics and they wanna come work here because they want to help us with, you know, some kind of complex challenge in the cybersecurity environment, yeah. I want 'em here, but I also wanna make sure I have it closed to the door. Yeah. To somebody who maybe has a year of associates work at one of our outstanding community colleges and big shout out here at Ivy Tech Community College in their network.
Phenomenal here in Indiana. Maybe somebody has some credits or maybe they don't, maybe they got started in computing, building things and tinkering at home, and they're just really good at it. Why would I say, Hey, Jim? I know that you're really good at this, with this skill, but by the way, you don't have this credential that I didn't actually need for you to have to take this job.
So, by the way, that's your, that's your barrier. Yeah. I'm gonna shut the door to Jim. Absolutely not. Right. And so if we can find the ways to continue to recruit and find the, the folks who have gone that gr that route, great. But also open the door to folks who, and especially among marginalized communities, you know, may have had less access to educational opportunities, may have had, uh, maybe they came to computing late and they've been doing courses at night while they're working a regular job, which many of my apprentices have.
Yeah. Folks who have gone down that path and they have the skill and they want to come, contribute that to the state of Indiana. Why would that turn 'em away? One of the great data points that we were seeing on our side was that we were losing potentially 70%. Of, of skilled and available applicants just by having a degree on the, on the job posting.
7 0, 7 0. Yeah. So, uh, data, uh, shout out to, uh, skillful Indiana and their extensive research on that. And, uh, now the Institute for Workforce Excellence here with the Indiana Chamber of Commerce. They've done some really wonderful stuff to, to, to back that all up to show like, Hey, we are, we, why would we, why would we shut the door to a group of really great people who actually want the jobs?
[00:15:31] Jamie Grant: Jon, I think you just touched on something that I hadn't thought about yet, because we, um, and I know we're gonna get into some of this, but on this point specifically, there's lots of talk about how AI is gonna take jobs, which I think is crazy. There's never been an invention or innovation in the history of society that led to less jobs.
It changed jobs. It displaced some or pivoted them. But it's really interesting when to hear you talk about where you just went. Um mm-hmm. The ability for somebody to get an education without a four year degree has never been easier. Um, agree. I was talking to my Uber driver in Richmond the other day and he was like, you know, what do you do?
And I said, I work in the technology space and just kind of talking through and he is like, oh, I kind of want to go that route, but I'm saving up for school and you know. Mm-hmm. But, and I was like, dude, YouTube and Grok, like, they're almost free. Yeah. Ba basically, right? You can. And so I started walking him through some of the prompts of like, Hey, look, if you go spend a weekend and say, Hey, build me a curriculum, and that is in no way to displace the traditional academic environment because I love a hundred percent.
We love the both and construct of like, it's not this or that. It is both. Mm-hmm. And, um, but I can't help but think listening to you talk about the program you've built. And the, the initiatives you built actually creating opportunity that didn't exist before where mm-hmm. Somebody has the ability to develop those skills far more quickly than they could a year ago, three years ago, five years ago.
Um, which I just think is, is really kind of interesting where I think, I mean we've talked about it, uh, on another episode briefly, but there was a study recently where like 25% of Harvard MBAs are unemployed and working. Sure. Right. And I think the days of I need a consultant with a pedigree to come in and study and tell me is dying quickly.
I. And I think what's rising quickly is you can't coach want to, or hustle. You can't teach experience. You can't teach overcoming adversity. You can't. You can develop critical thinking, but either people have, right? Like all those things you're talking about that I think actually in this kind of revolution that's happening right now, technologically really delivering opportunity when you talk about some of the marginalized communities or people that didn't have the, the resources or the exposure before.
Mm-hmm. Who may be really talented, really driven, really hungry, that just need to be given an opportunity and then put in a situation Yeah. Where they can be developed and succeed. I, I think there's something really cool about the intersection of kind of your work around the people and then what some of the tools that are showing up today actually enable.
[00:18:36] Jon Rogers: Yeah. And if you don't mind, um, no, I'm gonna, I do mind. Uh, well man, this has been fun. Uh, a really lovely program. Um, again, shout out to Tepo Chico. Um, so our chief, I thank you. That's, and that's good. The can turn is really what, what you need to,
[00:18:54] Jamie Grant: it's our unofficial sponsor. They pay us nothing, but it is the, uh, the most refreshing drink to get me through today.
Tangerine
[00:19:00] Jon Rogers: flavor. Very, very delicious. So our chief IT Operating Officer is fond of saying, um, I've heard him in a couple of settings now, when with folks have asked, you know, Hey, uh, what's the, what's the certification? What's the thing? If you had to go back right now, what class would you, would you take?
And I know that they're wanting him to say something like, uh, an AI or a security based something, but his answer's always public speaking.
[00:19:27] Jamie Grant: That's interesting.
[00:19:27] Jon Rogers: And, and you sort of watch heads go, oh. And absolutely right because the, the hard skills, in my opinion, in the IT space are not the actual technologist skills.
It's translating the wonders of information security and information technology into language that people who are non-technical practitioners, whether they're executive, whether they're workers, whatever the case is, it's demystifying and translating that language into something that they can actually use to get their job done better every day.
So if you can communicate better and you're comfortable with audiences, not just that you're the best coder, if I know that I can give you a, a fairly ambiguous and complex challenge and have you come back and not only have it solved, but then explain it to me. Uh, to, you know, steal Denzel Washington from what Philadelphia like, talk to me like I'm a 4-year-old.
Yeah. Explain it to me like I'm a 4-year-old. Yeah. Like exactly that. Um, that's, that's the hard part. So when folks talk about soft skills here in this industry, I'm like, take several seats. No, no, no. Like, go back and let's rethink what we really mean is soft and hard. Um,
[00:20:40] Jamie Grant: which I I actually, it's funny to hear you talk about that.
One of the things we run into, 'cause I, I think you're right. I, I would add to something that I didn't realize, um, until after my three year tour of, uh, boy was at a grind. We, we joke about it. You saw some of it, right? Like Yeah. But after those three years on the inside, um, a a lot of that was like in the chair.
I was like, gosh, we, we, my team would hear it all the time. We suck at communication. That starts with me. We gotta get better. Sure. Um. What I've noticed now that we're on the outside and kind of living, not kind of living in the intersection of what we like to think of as the buy side and the sell side.
If you think of an industry where the, the government, the public sector entity needs help transforming more than ever, right? The amount of legacy tech, the amount of just mm-hmm. Opportunities to create a more efficient experience internally for the employee, externally for the citizen and constituent.
Mm-hmm. I notice, and, and I notice this, the companies are maybe even who I'm most frustrated with, that we, we deal with because they, they show up and the, the sales engineer or the technical talent wants to tell everybody how it works, rather than communicating what it does. Like, sure. Give the benefit.
And I, and I think right, what I keep seeing over and over and over is very few shops are actually really, truly under-resourced to a point that they can't operate. Mm-hmm. They just start with the assumption they need more people, they need more money, they need more software before starting with the how can I handle what I have?
And, and if we, if we can start getting people in this industry to quit thinking about like the tech side versus the business side or this language versus that language, and get to a place where the soft skills, which I think are so important for the, the people you're talking about. And I think, I think that's really cool to hear your leadership focusing on that.
And then also saying like, Hey, look, they don't wanna know how it works. They don't want a user manual. They won't want to click through demo. They want to see a scorecard. And how it impacts their job. Like why Right. Is that other person on the other side of the table? Right. And that connectivity or depth to understand it's not the public speaking only from the perspective of am I comfortable public speaking?
Am I stretching and, and getting to me like a a to, to an uncomfortable place to grow. It's also what does my audience care about and how do I deliver that? Mm-hmm. And I think that's one area that our industry, especially in the public sector, because you have the language of the legislature, it's what I think when you, you talked about the, the, the kind of, the transferability.
I think your experience in the legislative policy world is a super, so far understated experience that equipped you to operate in the agency. And I think your experience was a lot like mine going from legislative to executive. Those are two foreign worlds, and people do not understand how foreign they are.
They, they think government is just kind of a monolith.
[00:23:50] Jon Rogers: Well, and let's, let's, let's take that even like, uh, 25% further because like you're, you're nailing it a hundred percent and great example, transferable skills. Yes. You're absolutely right. I mean, one of the things that I learned as a legislative staffer was that you have to be able to speak policy.
Mm-hmm. And law to business folks or, uh, advocates or citizens in a way that they can understand and they don't. Your average citizen doesn't care that amendment three to S3 42 related to changing the US code in this paragraph. And Ann shall become May and they don't care. What they care about is, Hey, do I have the benefits that I need?
Hey, is my, uh, kid who's a soldier getting the support they need? Hey, is my spouse who's and Veterans Affairs, are they getting the service they need? They don't care about what that. Um, what the sausage was, they just care about the outcome. Yeah. And you're a hundred percent correct. Um, so one of the things, and I'll hook them here for the University of Texas, one of the things that I specifically went back when I had the opportunity to go back to school was to do in the MBA and a, a public affairs program together to just further underscore that speak, speak the language of one to another and vice versa.
And it directly plays to technical, non-technical speak here within the, the public sector.
[00:25:17] Jamie Grant: Yeah.
[00:25:18] Jon Rogers: Uh, government IT space, which then kind of pulls me back to your AI point. So from the outside, if you're looking at ai, it probably seems very magic bullet. Like, here's this thing and it's gonna eliminate the need for maybe all these workers and, uh, you know, look, magic solution and I can still go get my driver's license and.
Uh, pay my energy bill and I, not one person is needed. Okay. Notionally needed. Um, however, you know, as we know, shortsighted, because for every innovation in the AI space, we have to consider the, are we or making sure that in setting up that solution, that we're doing it without bias. Have we built the system?
Have we given the AI enough intelligence and the right intelligence to really produce the right informed choices? Mm-hmm. And until that's perfect, like rockstar Perfect. And is also able to adapt to the, the nature of human nature on empathy and, uh, considering privilege and all the other good things, well then AI is really no more to us than I.
Like Microsoft Word, it's nice and it helps me to do something a little faster. Maybe it may give me some insights and some efficiency that I didn't have previously sitting on a typewriter.
[00:26:44] Jamie Grant: Yeah.
[00:26:45] Jon Rogers: However, not a magic bullet. And then on top of that, it's gotta further be curated, secured, like all the good things around it, that, that requires the human element of information technology.
So for, I mean, I think it's, it's like anything else that's, that's hit the zeitgeist and modern consciousness going all the way back to the radio, um, you know, radio, tv, internet, all these things. At some point somebody has said like, whoa, not today, Satan. And then there's a whole other group of people who are like, no, this is like actually cool.
Let's find out what that is. Now we're revisiting that again today with ai. What, what is it really? And what can it really do for us? And what are the cool things we can do, but we're gonna need people. To develop that.
[00:27:35] Jamie Grant: It couldn't agree more. Um, the term shotgun, like we say, we're riding shotgun in an Uber that literally comes from horse and buggy days.
Right. The car didn't displace the need for a driver. There's more rides there, right? So, so the distinction, bank tellers is one of my favorites. The bank teller union was like, not today, Satan. Yeah. And there's more bank tellers today than there were when they started protesting ATMs that were gonna displace 'em, right?
Yeah. And now if you took the customer experience back to wait in a line to walk up and deal with somebody to get cash, we would revolt as customers. Mm-hmm. And also true, there are more bank tellers today in America than there were at the advent of the ATM. So I think everything you're saying is spot on.
I think where we can really get people going, um, when we talk about workforce in the public sector. I was blown away at how many awesome, talented people I inherited when I took the job, right? Because I'd never worked in government. You don't know what you're getting. You hear all the cliches and stereotypes and we built an awesome team recruiting, but we also were augmenting a lot of awesome talent that was already there.
And I think when I made the distinction between the overwhelming majority of teammates I inherited that were great public servants on a mission and some folks that probably needed to be promoted to customer or constituent. Mm-hmm. The ones that needed to be promoted out of our organization, um, were just there for themselves.
That overwhelming majority that re they really just wanted to be given the opportunity to go fast, to carry out the mission they signed up for and to do more outcomes based work. Right. To, to go home at the end of the day and say, I might not get a commission in this job. I might not, I. Be able to get promoted all the time or get a dividend or have our issues or all of these things that we can do in the, in the commercial market.
But they could go home and say, you know, to their husband, their wife, their kids, man, we deployed the largest starlink deployment ever outside Ukraine in a week because of the work I get to do at the Florida Digital Service. Or, man, we stood up this thing called the CoLab. Uh, Jen Cook was kind of our equivalent to, to Jon Rogers a little bit.
We've talked about, call her the queen of the CoLab because I, I just, I basically in an all hands was like, got we, we inherited a septic stained office with exposed wiring. We go on this whole thing to try and create an environment that the team would want to be. Yeah. And then, you know, the CoLab concept, which was, was we went a little bit more external facing, where you went external, internal facing, uh, which we, we try, we both tried to do both.
Sure. Our primary focus was we can bring world class training, education talent to Tallahassee at no cost to the government, the taxpayer or the company presenting. No sales allowed, just come in and help our people get better, faster, smarter. Yeah. And Jen like answered the call and she, she had an existing job.
She's like, I'll get the CoLab going. And, and so she rightfully earned the title Queen of the CoLab, but, but she was an example of somebody who did kind of exactly what you're describing to go like, Hey guys, it doesn't have to be the same way. And then once you started getting the workforce. And those individuals to go, Hey, things are gonna change a little bit.
This is gonna be a little bit scary. I'm here. You can trust me. I need you to see the vision of where we're going. But at the end of the day, you're gonna get to do more of what you wanna do and less of the administrative BS manual stuff that's holding you back so that instead of serving seven customers a day or 70 customers a day, you can serve 700 or 7,000 or unlimited Right.
At scale of a digital application.
[00:31:09] Jon Rogers: Yeah. And that's, that's an an amazing thing. And I think where we, it, it's kind of wonderful that you have something that, that has seen, I think, uh, you know, coming up in tracking with the dawn of all this, right? It's, we've had that moment of it needing demystification.
Mm-hmm. Like it's not the dark bar. It's kind of, kind of thing. And we keep the closer and closer to the. Sort of, uh, you know, low code, no code, not, not programming dependent that we can have more people to be able to put their hands on and actually play around and access things. I mean, odds are very good that people are out, um, doing some things in, in apps and in customer facing platforms that they don't even realize that what they're doing is like, really, you know, low-code, no-code it, right?
Yeah. So I think the ability to find even more of those opportunities to democratize and leverage tech, the, the best possible way and get folks not, not away from the human experience of government, like I, and by the way, mom's a bank teller, so nice ing. Um,
[00:32:21] Jamie Grant: I'd like to say we're that good on the research, but I did not know that.
[00:32:24] Jon Rogers: It's, it's a good job, Paige. That's really what it meant.
[00:32:28] Jamie Grant: That's more like it.
[00:32:28] Jon Rogers: So shout out Paige. Uh, I, um, you know, it's not so much about I, I want to use an ATM because I don't like to go into a bank and it's not so much about like, I'm using an a TM because I, uh, you know, want to stay away from a human experience.
Yeah. There, there's gonna be plenty of that. Like that. I, I, in fact, really want that human experience. I want to see somebody in the face who knows, who might ask about my kid. Yeah. Even like, I know in my mom's experience, she has a lot of frequent, or had a lot of frequent flyers Yeah. And heard her teller line and there were folks who could have done their transaction any number of ways, but they, that human part was very important.
The ATM merely gives them an ability that if they need that Yeah. Transaction, and they don't happen to be in the space, that they can use something else to get the cash or check the balance that they. The same way that tech, that ai, that anything else, it's not about removing the human part. Mm-hmm. In fact, it's just about, uh, situating that in certain scenarios you can use something else to do the thing you need to do.
You're still gonna go back to the bank, you're still going to want to go into the aisle of target, you're still gonna wanna talk to your cashier. Those sorts of things for most of us. But if we have the ability to do those things when we need them at a convenient point, we absolutely should provide those things.
I love that people. Probably most folks don't want to go into their motor vehicle branch. Um, like, just as a general rule, but I, I know, I love, it's a stereotype for a
[00:34:01] Jamie Grant: reason, right? Like, we literally use the DMV as like why government digital services suck as a cliche, despite the fact there's some real serious modernization happening across the country in some of those offices.
[00:34:13] Jon Rogers: Yeah. And here in, in Indiana, like we've got loads of wonderful folks who thank God, who work here for the BMV, but at the same time, we have done some really wonderful things in the digital space mm-hmm. To give people the convenience of kiosks and, uh, through the website, through apps to be able to go like, Hey, just right now, I'm thinking like, oh my God, I gotta, I just got this letter.
I gotta renew my driver's license. I, I, but I, by the way, I have two kids in a daytime job. Like, oh, can I go to an app? Can I do a thing that's like right here, right now while I'm thinking about it? Great. It doesn't mean that, oh, I don't, I wanna now burn down all those other BMV branches. It just means that here in this moment, I was able to do a thing.
That I also can do in another forum with, with humans. So, you know, yeah, go ahead.
[00:34:58] Jamie Grant: No, sorry. I thought you, I I I love where you're going and to, to, to bring a couple of those things together. And this is where I think the policy side is so important. It's not just the communication. Uh, 'cause I think you're right about that.
We, we like to talk about like, the stakeholder islands in pubs sec. Like, I think the reason that the industry is so inefficient compared the vertical is so inefficient. Same company that has a robust, efficient, um, go to market strategy and commercial markets that picks up customers very quickly. Mm-hmm.
Looks like draconian cavemen that are discovering fire as soon as they get into pubs sec. Right, right. And at the same time, I, you know, I, it took me two or three year, two years I think, just to get the ride share legislation agenda in a very self-proclaimed conservative state that loves to say I'm for business until the taxi cabs, the mafia, and everybody else are coming after you.
And like, you want to talk about some fun stuff like grow up in Tampa where your family's been for a hundred years, and then try and take on the taxi cab drivers and, uh Right. That was some interesting times. But I say that to say those islands are all technical. Mm-hmm. Um, the, the, the rideshare legislation, um, short-term vacation rentals taken on the hotels mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. And specialty license tags. It was actually the hardest thing I ever signed up for. It was like a running joke in Florida. Took like six years. We finally got it done. It was crazy. But in that situation. The reason that we couldn't let a constituent in Florida just order the specialty tag they wanted and have it show up at their doorstep is because the tax collectors get a small transaction fee if you come in the office.
Mm-hmm. Versus if it's digital. So when we talk through those stakeholder islands of a CIO, A governor, a speaker of the house, a president of the Senate, a leg, a senator, a house member, staff, a distributor, a var, like they all speak different technical language, they're all technical. You as a legislative staffer, were technical in the domain of that public policy area in the exact same way that an engineer at a company showing up to talk to you about cybersecurity is highly technical in a different ecosystem.
And I feel like to, to kind of your point. We're giving people, there's less gap I think in the, the, these islands. Like it's getting better and better and better as people get educated exposure, have access to. Mm-hmm. And I think we're at this inflection point I wanna take you here. 'cause you had a, you have a, you have an interesting timeline on the inside.
Kind of similar, different, but similar to mine. You had pre COVID and then COVID. I, right. I jumped straight. I, I came in post PPE, pa, COVID and Pro-Vaccine. Gotcha. So I jumped right into the emergency operations center for the first like six, nine months, whatever it was. Um, statement first that I think we aligned to, and then I want to have you kind of touch on quickly here.
Um, I'm, I believe that we are in the very beginning of the golden age of software in the public sector. Like I think we're just scratching the surface. Are we ready? And why are more people not talking about the people part as the top of that funnel? Mm-hmm. Rather than having the technology at the top of the funnel.
Like why aren't more governor's offices finding a Jon Rogers to say, if I really do wanna modernize government, I need to have people at the top of the funnel and figure out how I do the, the, the, the gap analysis, the strategic analysis, the solution design, actually know how to write the purchasing document.
Actually know how to manage this thing we bought so that we, we get SaaS instead of like shelfware almost that we, we use a fraction of, right. How do you see your role and where things are going when it comes to, okay, wait a minute. We don't necessarily need to build everything ground up anymore. Mm-hmm.
We don't necessarily need to be completely dependent on system integrators. Mm-hmm. We can put the system integrators in a place where they're maybe no longer billing us for time and materials, maybe billing us on outcomes. A lot more productivity that takes a zero off of the dollar amount of these historic boondoggles.
But I think the, the major unlock to making all of that potential reality is the work you are doing by putting. People as kind of a sandwich around the technology to say like, how do we persistently recruit? And then how do we get the technology? And then how do we have the people that are able to maximize and extract all of the value outta that software.
[00:40:04] Jon Rogers: So I'm not sure if I'm going to stop me if I'm not going down the right path,
[00:40:09] Jamie Grant: but there is no wrong path here on the ever to conquer is the beauty thing. Like I think it's all that Topo Chico.
[00:40:16] Jon Rogers: So good focus. I, I, you know, I think part of the issue is that, I know part of the issue is that technological solutions integrated in the government.
It, it's still sort of a, well now we have X, therefore all of Y will work perfectly. Yeah. Um, what is the, what's the magic bullet of the thing that's gonna make our jobs more effective? And it's, it's a very, like, well, we found it and we bought it, and now we're great. Yeah, no, hold on. You know, not unlike the hydraulic press or anything else in technology, since the advent of time, we have to have really wonderful people to solution out the, then we have to have really wonderful people to determine if the thing that we want to do can work in a, in a way that is gonna be meaningful.
And then another group of folks who have to determine, Hey, wait a minute. You know, do we, do we have the resources? Are we able to afford and budget for that, that thing. And then, by the way, what is that solution that we want to invest in? And then how do we make sure that when we've integrated that in fact it's going to continue to do the thing that we want to do.
Yeah. And by the way, because it's technology. Flash forward six months, and maybe that thing is doing exactly what we needed, but the tech has evolved in a way that all of a sudden something else would be radically better. And we don't have the flexibility typically to just say for better, for worse. Oh, hey, wait a minute.
Let's pivot, let's pivot, let's pivot, let's pivot. It's more of a, because again, stakeholders, everybody has a voice into that. Wait a minute, we just helped you purchase X. What do you mean you need something else now, right? That thing was supposed to work. Well, it does work. But look what we could do, you know, turning this dial or making this adaptation or, and the list goes on, right?
It's such a dynamic trade craft. It's such a dynamic and reversible area of service delivery that unless you have the ability to be very nimble and pivot, and similarly with the skills of your employees. You don't just want people going to school right now to learn mainframe Yeah. Learn servers, stop.
You want people to be very flexible and able to understand all the nuances of their technology, from the security to the implementation, to the long-term delivery of what the thing is supposed to do. And you want somebody that, you know, if, if today your cloud provider is Amazon and AWS, but then tomorrow you decide, hey, you want to shift to, to Google or go Azure.
You don't wanna have the people who are responsible for your AWS be like, well, I don't know. No, no, no. You wanna find solutions and people who have that agility to go across different things and do that when you need it, and then, you know, come back to the environment, which makes it very difficult for us to innovate.
Yeah. Quickly,
[00:43:34] Jamie Grant: I, I think there's a, there's a couple things I wanna touch on. Real quick there. 'cause I think you, you, you really hit on something there. I, I think, um, and our, our dear friend, a joke, she's a sister from another mister that introduced us, uh, Mandy Crawford used to mm-hmm. Really lead on this nationally in the CIO room, I want partners, not vendors.
And that's kind of become another cliche as it's been distilled down. So like, when we get back to what it really means, I, I like to think like the characteristics or how I think of what vendor behavior looks like versus partner behavior. Vendor behavior wants a transaction that creates lock-in, right?
Mm-hmm. They are trying to take advantage of all of those things you just described to say, Hey, look, software is a transaction. It's a transaction that's gonna have a, you know, 1, 2, 3, 5 year cost on it. Mm-hmm. They're incentivized, quite frankly, on that playbook to go tell the governor's office. This'll automagically solve all your problems.
Right. And not care about the people and not deliver. Right. And I had a lot of vendors, um, and some really disappointing ones that I thought were partners that ended up to be the s sneakiest of vendors that never delivered a fraction of what they were supposed to deliver, but they knew they could kind of run the clock out on me because I was very public that this was not a career move for me.
Um mm-hmm. You know, so, so like that's the vendor side. The partner side I think, looks at it much more and says, here's the outcomes we can deliver and we want to earn the renewal. Mm-hmm. And I think, going back to the top for a second, as long as this community continues talking about how things work mm-hmm.
And as long as we continue failing mm-hmm. To explain how we like the, the one, how I think that's missing sometimes is explaining the purchase. Um, or the strategy and the design. We don't necessarily need to explain all of it, but, but I think we're doing a really poor job of talking too much about how the technology works, not spending any effort on why the purchase strategy and design matters so much that then if the people are at the end of the waterfall, this thing was almost poured in wet cement at the beginning when it comes to like situated for success or failure, then it becomes very difficult in that environment you're talking about where we're like, we don't get to have a, a break, things go fast mentality in the public sector for lots of reasons.
Right. And so that design piece I think gets like really, um, really interesting. All right. I want to shift real quick Sure. To recruiting. Um, I want to touch on that, and then we're gonna land with our, our little roundup where we have some fun, kind of humanizing, um, uh, our, our guests. Um, one of the things I've said, and we talked about this, that, uh, infamous day in Austin, Texas, uh, for, all right, so real quick for everybody, for everybody that's listening,
[00:46:42] Jon Rogers: the sum up is you're very graceful.
That's right. Is that a
[00:46:46] Jamie Grant: So, so, uh, Mandy Crawford has, uh, an, an information security forum that the Texas Department of Information Resources puts on. She asked Jon and I to come out there. We haven't met. We're gonna be on a panel, uh, I think like 10 o'clock that morning, something like that. And, uh, uh, we're supposed to go on stage and I was staying at, I think, an Embassy Suites, uh, right there, uh, on uh, what's the, uh, the, the, the head, the um.
Yeah, the Yeti office, I think the Yeti office right there in downtown Austin.
[00:47:19] Jon Rogers: Oh yeah, yeah. Right on Ver it was, yeah. Okay. It was
[00:47:21] Jamie Grant: sprinkling and, uh, just misting a little bit. I am in my, you know, jeans, blazer buttoned down. I have my little backpack on. I'm like, I'm not gonna take an Uber. I love scooting.
It's fun. And so I grabbed a scooter right outside there, and if anybody else struggles with the blue dot, sometimes on maps sending us the wrong way, it sends me across the bridge on Congress, like towards downtown. I'm like, wait, now it's telling me to make a u-turn. Now I'm kind of running a minute behind.
I was gonna get there early, but whatever. So I turn around and I'm booking it and uh, I saw a two and a seven on the scooter at one point coming down that hill, and it's now picking up a little bit on the rain. I'm like, I'll be okay. And, uh, I come down the hill, I pass the Yeti office. Uh, I'm an all gas no brakes kind of guy.
And I look right, look left, see that I can go, I'm looking at traffic. And then the next thing I remember, uh, I am in the third lane of traffic with my feet facing the direction that my face was supposed to be facing. And I look up in the quintessential escalating with like the extra pearl, uh, paint job that costs more money from Cadillac, has her big Uber and Lyft buttons lit up.
And she's just looking at me with like this condescension of like, shouldn't have ridden a scooter, should have taken an Uber little boy. And so I showed up. I showed up at, it's now pouring. I showed up at the information security forum to walk up to the check-in desk looking like a cat that had been dunked in a bathtub.
And I go to check in and the lady's like, can we help you? And I was like, I'm one of your speakers. And she laughed. Uh, and so I had asphalt all over me. Got it cleaned up enough. Jon and I met, but it, uh, we have begged, nobody could do it. I gave Mandy, we called on Sison, Chris Stewart, everybody we knew car, like everybody we're like, you can have open license to use the footage.
'cause there was a traffic cam there. We've never been able to get the footage. And it's one of like my big regrets. 'cause I still to this day don't know if I flipped or super. I don't know what I did. Uh, but my, my older siblings gave me so much practice tripping and falling by shoving me that I somehow broke nothing.
Uh, and, and it worked. But
[00:49:37] Jon Rogers: congratulations,
[00:49:38] Jamie Grant: we met that day. Uh, that's the chuckle of the infamous day. We met that day on stage and. One of, one of the things, I think I said that day, but I've been very vocal, we have to stop talking about recruit and retain as if it's one thing, like our people are chattel or like recruiting is not, you know, every day unrestricted free agency.
Walk me through kind of your mindset. 'cause I, I always felt like it's my job to create a culture that people wanted to be in. Mm-hmm. Um, and then if they had the opportunity to go somewhere else with an opportunity, like I, I thought if people aren't trying to hire my team mm-hmm. That's a real problem.
Like that's, that's an indictment. If people are not trying to hire away from me that, that's saying I'm not doing a good job recruiting. Yeah. And so I wanted my team and, and had a couple examples where I wanted people to come in and say, Hey, I've got this opportunity. And I would kind of tell 'em like, I'm happy to dust off the recovering lawyer skills and negotiate your deal for you.
Like make that company negotiate with me on your behalf, but I want you to be able to walk in to the executive that's responsible for this organization. Freely able to talk about, I have this opportunity, I don't know if it makes sense, talk to me about it. So I tried very hard to show them, like mm-hmm.
You, I don't own you, you are not chattel. Um, right. What, let's, let's touch on real quick, um, kind of your philosophy around that and some of the stuff you've done about how to effectively recruit and then sometimes letting the little birdie fly out of the nest. Sometimes promoting them, sometimes, you know, what, what that looks like for you.
[00:51:08] Jon Rogers: Yeah. Let me stick for a second with the letting folks go. Uh, option, which one of the things when we, so for our work-based lending program, which is State Earn and Learn or seal, and, uh, we we're, we're the first state agency here in Indiana to trial this, this very wonderful methodology that our colleagues in the Department of Workforce Development have.
With work based learning, um, that I won't get too far into the weeds, but essentially we are registered apprenticeship without the registration. We're just focused on the apprenticeship stuff. It also means we have less money for it, but Noted. So, um, one of the things that we've always done with our seal is, uh, not to have any kind of non, uh, sorry.
A, uh, uh, continuing service agreement. There we go.
[00:52:00] Jamie Grant: Yep.
[00:52:00] Jon Rogers: Uh, we, we don't require our folks to say anything on paper or verbally. Oh, yes. By the way, if I go through your program, I'll stay with you for the next 36 months or anything like that. I love that. I love that. Sorry. No, no, it's okay. It's um, I, well, me too.
Uh, so, and one of the reasons that, that that's the case is because, well, one, I don't personally like having to do in service agreements. I've worked under them before. It didn't make me feel great, even when it was presented in a completely humane way.
[00:52:32] Jamie Grant: Even if I wanted to be there, I felt like I was in a cage.
[00:52:35] Jon Rogers: Yeah, yeah. That's right. That's exactly right. Um, so one of the things that we've done is to, to not have those CSAs because we wanna make sure that our folks, that in the event that, that out in our wonderful tech economy here in Indianapolis, at the state of that, if somebody's recruited off of our program, and I'll, I'll sort of, uh, uh, sanitize a, a real world example.
We had somebody who was in our program, incredible individual, and she had done a, a, about a decade or more working for a grocery store. And, um, which honestly total sense because she's fantastic at customer service. She has a great demeanor. She's incredibly bright. There's, uh, we were fortunate to have her, the program.
She was, um, about to graduate and was speaking with a, a former, uh, with a friend that she went to high school with. And she, as she told me, she was like, you know, we were just chatting, catching up. I hadn't seen him in a minute. And I, as he was asking the normal, Hey, what are you do, what are you up to now?
And she was telling him like, yeah, left the grocery store and I'm, I'm doing this now. And she didn't realize, she said, uh, about 75% of the way through, like, I didn't realize it, but, but it'd come a job interview.
[00:53:55] Jamie Grant: Mm-hmm.
[00:53:55] Jon Rogers: And in fact, he had a local, small business and needed a systems admin senior. Yeah. And she came back and she said, Hey, I, I want to graduate.
I want to go into iot, but like. This has come up and it's really appealing and I'm really conflicted about it. And I, I told her the same thing I have and would tell anybody else the same scenario. You go take that job and you succeed in that job. And whenever somebody asks you, Hey, what? Hey, how did you get into it?
You'd be like, oh yeah. By the way, it was that program at the Indian Office of Technology.
[00:54:38] Jamie Grant: Yeah.
[00:54:38] Jon Rogers: There's no better brand advocacy than somebody who has gone through, succeeded and then wants to tell somebody else. That's how I got here. That's a win for us. That's a win every single time. Even if that person is not working here at the Indiana Office of Technology.
'cause that story will spread.
[00:54:58] Jamie Grant: Dude, I, I and
[00:54:58] Jon Rogers: o others hopefully will want to do the same things that we are doing here with our people. And then to put one, one more extra slide on them, Jamie, the that, I mean, this is a real point of pride for me. Is that she was conflicted about making the leap, not because she didn't have confidence in herself, but because she really wanted to work for us.
And if we create cultures in the workplace, and if we have workplaces that celebrate the differences among people, and if we have workplaces that encourage lots of different people to come into our jobs and not people who are just in one single mold every single time, insert your halos of choice, favorite schools, favorite degrees, whatever.
If we have diverse pathways for people to get into our agency and then we back that up with a culture that embraces them as individuals and encourages them to grow and develop, then by God they'll choose to stay here. Yeah, it is, it's, it's, it's mind boggling to me to hear all the discussion of. You know, insert generation of choice.
Gen Z, millennials, they're gonna leave. They're not gonna stay. They're not gonna stay. Well, the reason they're not staying is they're, they're undercompensated and some of them are working two jobs just to make rent. So if they have an opportunity for good work and they can get paid a little bit more, you can't really fault 'em for doing that.
And two, if you have created an an environment that they wanna stay in, they're gonna say they actually like being happy at work. And if you have a workplace where they're happy at work and they're happy contributing, and in our case, they're also giving back to the public good, they're helping citizens here in Indiana, my god, they might actually, you turn around and they've been here for 15 years, who do?
There's, we need to get past the notion of people are leaving, people are leaving, and better understand what are their motivations for leaving, what could we do differently? And before they leave. Are we taking the time to understand that? Are we talking to them, having to exit interviews? Are we talking to them and saying like, and trying to compete where we can, like, Hey, by the way, I see you're about to leave, to go to, you know, company X.
Are they giving you opportunities to, to do this certification or this certification? We would be glad to do that if that makes a difference for your choice. Who knew? And one of the things, so to your point, uh, not recovering lawyer, just recovering a workforce person, I don't know, whatever, um, care about the people, that's all matters.
Uh, we had somebody who was leaving, moving totally outta the state into a different tech job. And like, and I tell him the same thing. I tell everybody else, I want that thing to work for you, but the second that it doesn't, or if you ever want to come back, I want you to know that the door is open for you.
We would love to have you back. And I told him, is your, and he was having a little bit of a. Crisis of consciousness, like, I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing. I don't know if this job is right. I said, well, look, take these questions to the new employer and I'm gonna take my, like that. I'm your, I work with you hat off for a second.
[00:58:16] Jamie Grant: Yep.
[00:58:17] Jon Rogers: Ask your employer, where do you, where do you see me in three years? Yeah. What are you gonna do to help me with continuous learning? Are you gonna provide me with things like tuition reimbursement? What is your internal development program? How do I know that I'm succeeding in your structure? Like, take these questions back to your recruiter and if they can answer them, well awesome.
You go, that is great, congratulations. But if they can't, I just want you to think very seriously about your path. Yeah. And then, and then make an informed choice. And I've had folks, I've, since I've done this drill a few times, I've, I've lost some folks and I'm proud of them. But I've also had a couple people to come back and say.
Hey, thank you for that because I was about to leave for just money and then when I drilled in a little bit more, they didn't, I'm gonna paraphrase. They didn't care as much as what I'm getting here. I'm gonna stick around. Great. Thank you.
[00:59:19] Jamie Grant: Man. There's so many good things there. I think recruiting is a flywheel.
Uh, and it, it has lot like it. If you do it right, it creates a flywheel, I should say. Right. So the people that have worked for you before mm-hmm. Um, I think it's really interesting when you look at CEOs, co-founders, leaders at an executive level, how often are they working with the same people over and over and over again?
Like, how often does the band get back together? Um, is is kind of an interesting thing. So if I'm looking to work for somebody, like do they have a team that follows them? Um, which I think you see some people in the political space have a team that goes wherever that elected goes, uh, and then they build.
It's not, you know, but you see some other people who have no team and it's like, ooh, that's kind of indicative if the people that were with you at the beginning aren't there two, I, I think you're exactly right, that like the greatest thing for our brand is somebody else speaking on behalf of it. Right. A, a former consumer of Jon's program or Jon's leadership going out and saying, this is how it changed my life is exponentially more effective than Jon telling them, I'm gonna change your life.
Right. Uh, my program's gonna change your life. Um, we, we, we had a guy, uh, and I mentioned him earlier, Fidel Lewis, uh, who's still, um, one of my all time favorite, uh, hires ever in my life, but he was the security guard outside the emergency operations center during COVID. And I was just raised that you, you say, Hey, to the sergeant in arms, guys that are holding the door.
When you're a legislator or a chairman, you talk to the security guard that's letting you in and outta the EOC 50 times a day when you're going 24 hours a day. And I noticed that Fidel was just like, like savant of an artist, like just drawing this stuff that I was like. Dude, show me what you're, it, it became like a thing for me while I'm moving a million miles an hour.
It was like a ten second reprieve to go like, here's this really nice guy and what is he drawn today? It's amazing. And, and then he would split time between the EOC, uh, which was adjacent to our office building and the front desk in our actual office building. I walked by one day, I said, Hey, what are you working on today?
What are you drawing? He goes, I'm actually writing today. I was like, what are you writing? And he goes, well, I write short stories to go with my drawings. And, and I was like, do, do you know how to do that on a computer? 'cause upstairs we suck at communication. And he's like, well, I'm, I'm, no. And I said, if I, if I gave you the equipment and taught you, would you be interested in learning?
He was like, yeah. And so I went to our head of people and culture and I told ap, I was like, go hire Fidel. Here's the role, here's the thing. Get him. And it took a couple months and, and this one always kind of gets me because he was kind of ducking her for a little while and I finally kind of in my playful way, it was like, if you do not get him hired this month, I am gonna lose my proverbial stuff.
And so she goes down and gets the bottom of it and she comes back up and, and she was almost tearing up saying it. And she goes, I finally got him to explain to me. He said, um, you know, based on some, some things that have happened in my life, I have a bad credit score. So I figured I didn't want to get my hope up.
Um, and I didn't wanna go that far. And, and she looked at me, she said, oh, honey, I've been through some stuff too. If I can get through the background check, you're gonna be fine. Comes and works for us. Turns out in that period of time, he had actually bought a tablet and paid for a Coursera license to start teaching himself.
Big shout out to Coursera. I think folks know we don't do paid sponsorships on this show, but they actually reimbursed him later for his, which was, which I thought was really cool. Um, he spent a few months for us, but he really started getting exposure to cybersecurity. And there was a cybersecurity conference in Tallahassee and the keynote was doing puzzles and riddles.
And so it's like a hundred or something, 200 people, uh, on stage. And a team of our FLDS folks were in the middle table. Jeremy Rogers, the state system was like a table away from me 'cause I had just done kind of the keynote upbringing. And then it goes to the keynote like presenter who's a real keynote and he's doing these like crazy riddles and engaging with the audience.
And like the first hand that's going up every time is Fidel's and he is getting 'em right. And like the rest of the room, all these executives and technology people are like scratching their head fidel's, solving like 80% of 'em before anybody else. And Jeremy's looking at me and he's like. That guy. And, and then Fidel like, like, that guy's brilliant.
And then Fidel had just, he, he had shown drive and I, I had a big heart for him 'cause of the story. And I said, what do you wanna do? He's like, well, I'm taking some cybersecurity stuff. He is now, uh, doing cybersecurity work at an agency five years ago. Right? What? So just so to your point, um, I think all those stories start to come together where we had people who got the offers to go work at the, I could list off the companies where I said, look, I, I just can't even, I, I, as your friend or advisor, I can't tell you.
Turn that down. What is interesting is almost to a t all of them have said, the money's great, but I miss the culture we had at the digital service. The money's awesome, but I miss our team. I don't have the same freedom to grow. I'm much more constrained. I'm much more confined. And there is that trade.
That happens, right? Where, where that stuff is is there. But I do think I used to think of it, uh, and I'm, I'm no fan of, uh, Jon Cal Kalari, um, welcome to the SEC uh, in Austin by the way. But like, uh, Jon Kalari not my favorite coach, but the one and done model if you recruit off of it, right? So our ability, in your role to develop programs or my prior role to recruit people on a tour of service, to say, Hey, look, I'm not asking you to commit three years for me.
Just come in, do a tour of service. Think about the place when you're leaving succession plan. But then when they go off to whatever company, I can recruit off of that. Now when I'm talking to somebody else saying, Hey look, come in, do a tour of service. These are real tangible examples of how it can work out.
Go talk to them. Don't get my thoughts on it. Kind of have that reference call. The same way that we were growing a Fidel or somebody that was working a Weber, we Weber grill at a mall. That is now doing technology work. So I just think the summation of all that work you're doing is kind of individual agnostic.
It's technology agnostic, but the impact is both generational and immediate. And I think that's the really cool thing about getting it right.
[01:06:05] Jon Rogers: Yeah. And, you know, let's, let's, let's stick with the technology agnostic. It really is. It's, it's find great people, give 'em a shot and a great number. I'll even go so far as to say probably 99 and a half percent of our cases where somebody comes into our program, both the folks who succeed and the folks who, who may not, it's really about their psychological safety.
Mm-hmm. Because odds are high that for the folks who are coming into seal it, they're coming from a workplace that. I mean, let's start in the best case. Didn't give them a chance to grow. Yeah. In the worst case. And the more likely is they were demoralized, they were treated like a number, they were there to work a shift.
And when the shift was done, whoever they were working for didn't have a second thought about them other than to say, Hey, can you come back in? Because somebody just canceled on the double Yep. They're, they're just chattel. Yep. And, and that, that's the case sadly, in a number of workplaces and especially ones that are, uh, more likely to have folks who are younger and starting their careers and are trying to get their bearings as adults, and instead they're entering workplaces that are not supportive, but just this to grossly understate.
So at the very least what we are saying is, Hey, we believe in you as a person. We believe in your human skills, and we believe that you good human. Could do really great work with us. How about you come here. How about we teach you some really useful things that you can use that will help us, but it's also gonna build your career.
And if you'll come, help us out with that. And especially here in the public sector where, yeah, can't compete on salaries. But what if we give you a workplace where you show up and you like the people you're around and you like the people you work for and you like the work that we do. And we're also gonna give you a chance to learn more of it.
Or if you like learn something different Yeah. And change something up. And we embrace you and we're glad to have you here. I'm very fond of saying to all of our apprenticing classes, we are grateful to have your time and your talent here. Not come into the program. You're gonna do these things, we're gonna turn you into this and that.
Not at all. Matter of fact, to the best of my knowledge, I don't believe I've ever even said this will change your life. Because all I'm doing is to give them an opportunity. They'll change their lives themselves. They will do it through their hard work. Yeah, that's right. Through their efforts and their character.
And that, that has stayed true for the duration of, of our time on the program. That if you find those really wonderful human beings who want to do their best and contribute, all you have to do is open that door for them and they're gonna go in and they'll run through walls for you and they're gonna do amazing things.
And without cynicism and with a lot of that transferrable skill and that background, they've all been in situations where they've had to deescalate customers or, you know, explain something that somebody didn't really want to hear. Well, by golly, where do we need that? But in technology, so. Let's, let's seize on the skills you have.
Let's, let's build you up and, and hopefully like if we create the right culture, the right environment, you're, you know, you're gonna be the one that in 30 years is gonna be earning that, you know, state recognition or what have you.
[01:09:48] Jamie Grant: It it's the, um, and I, I would love to have you back, especially as you, you transition.
I know we, yeah. Um, there, the, there's a portion of what we were gonna get into that I, I, I think the COVID experience lit the fire and created this powdered keg around people either already knowing or learning the hard way that community and depth is in the wiring of the human soul. And so it's so easy for us to get lost in return to work policy or seats and, you know, office set up and all these things.
Those are ways. Or those are like tools to help build community in depth. But I think, you know, I don't know a lot of COVID, uh, like Zoom Bible studies or book clubs or poker clubs or happy hours that continued on once everybody had the option to then again, engage in person, right? Like yeah, right. We, we are just wired.
Even the biggest introvert is wired to want maybe less or differently a level of connection and depth and culture and, and mission. And so I love the way you said that, like, our job isn't to change lives. 'cause we can't, our job is to invest in our people, create opportunity for them, empower them, support them.
Mm-hmm. And watch them change their lives. So I would love to have you come, come back, uh, always an invitation for you to come back. Let's land on the, the lightning round. I know we're okay over the roundup we call it. Um, so these are kind of fun. You haven't seen these, um.
[01:11:21] Jon Rogers: I, I can, I'll, I'll affirm. I, I, I know nothing.
I, I've seen nothing.
[01:11:26] Jamie Grant: So some are kind of, you know, work related or, or productivity related, and then some are fun. But what's the one piece of advice, Jon, that has changed your career the most, or the one piece of advice you hang on to the most? And who do you give credit for that?
[01:11:38] Jon Rogers: Uh, my granddad, fire fire department for 39 years, fire chief for the last 14 of that, um, sadly, has, has passed and didn't get to see me grow this program.
But he told me when I asked him early in, in my time of managing people in public sector, I was like, Hey, like, how do you, what, what do you, what do you lean on? What do you do? What's the thing that that really helps you? And he said, leave while they still want you around. Don't wait until they're trying to run you off.
And, uh, I've, I've, I've retained that one. That's a real, that's a real thing. Leave on high notes. You know, that's a real thing. It, it is. But uh, you know, and from that, not even though I joke, but like, uh, you know, just seeing his example in the, in the public sector was my inspiration for getting here in the first place.
[01:12:29] Jamie Grant: I think when I look at my tenure, that's, you know, I kind of went in like, worst thing that happens is I get fired and I get a big improvement in, in quality of life. What I don't think I realized till later is, and, and I, um, I, I put it in my resignation letter, but like, innovation and disruption requires friction, and the public sector does not like friction.
So to a public sector leader that's taken the job, there's this, I. Uh, we would call it ecosystem management is kind of a big bubble, uh, macro umbrella theme, but like, how fast can I go and how much friction is too much friction, right? And there's no mathematical formula for that. Um, I, I think I, I definitely leaned into, I don't care if it's too fast.
I think if I could go backwards in time, I would've stepped back a hair and said, maybe I can accelerate overall momentum by eliminating some of this friction. Um, you know, but, but at the end of the day, you move the cheese and the mice get mad, and disruption and innovation takes money outta some people's pockets that like it the way it is, that don't want the status quo to change.
And so mm-hmm. You know, how do you look at it, uh, and make sure that, that you leave on a high note. I didn't necessarily, and I don't know where I am on this. I don't necessarily care. I didn't necessarily care if I left on a high note. I left. I I wanted to, I cared that I left saying I gave everything for my team.
Absolutely. And whatever note I left on, who cares? Um, a hundred percent. But I, I think that mentality probably also created extra friction that I could have avoided at times.
[01:14:02] Jon Rogers: Well, and, and I think too that like sometimes it's not even just, Hey, I could still move fast, which I'm with you. I'd have same thing.
Yeah. Going in that sort of mental time machine, uh, the one thing I put on myself is, Hey, maybe sometimes where I was going fast and even was right, had the right intentions, maybe the way I explained it or the, maybe the way that my message came across had more noise. Than message. And so learning forward, how can I do that better?
Still moving past
[01:14:32] Jamie Grant: dude one, Aaron Isaac was somebody I did a lot of work with. She was my kind of crisis communications director when we were going through just a crazy legislative session of stuff. Uh, and my team was like, Hey, we need somebody that's like really experiencing national news and all these kind of things, um, around some, some constitutional amendments.
And she looked at me one day and she said, your problem is you still can't decide whether you wanna be right or be heard. Oh, I was like, both. Why are you limiting me? You know, but, but, but it's a, mm-hmm. It's a piece of advice that has shaped me so much and so many times in that CIO job, I would get so frustrated.
With the, the bureaucracy and just the people who didn't understand what needed to happen and what, and I was so focused on being right and oftentimes wasn't heard. And I think that's one of the things that, uh, it's, it's hard to, to do, but I, I love where you're, you're kind of going on that which kind of chuckles, uh, make makes me chuckle because I, I do have a tendency to care about being right more than being heard.
And it's like, wait a minute, what if we just focused on being heard? Alright. Do you have a, uh, a, a, a hack, a practice, a productivity tactic that is like a cheat code for Jon Rogers, that with everything you got going on, there's kind of this one framework or practice or hack a tool, something that really helps you lock in and, and optimize your time.
[01:15:53] Jon Rogers: Uh, yes, absolutely. And their names are Lucy Langford and my Gomez. And those are my two wonderful teammates. Because they are themselves, well, well, they're far better humans and professionals than I'm. So, uh, for those of you listening and want to dive in on LinkedIn, you need to poach 'em away fast. But they're, they're incredible humans.
They're incredibly skilled at what they do in our workforce. Trade craft, in the development of training and employee development and all the good things, and their work and their capability helps me to focus on other things. And I, I've learned in my career, there's no use in gatekeeping. Well, I do that.
Why micromanage people? Yeah. Find really good people. Put them in the lanes they need to be in, give them meaningful opportunities to do good work and then let them do that work and get out of the way. Yeah. You know, we operate on a no surprises sort of approach. Like, you know, if something's gonna really hit the fan, like, let me know.
'cause I wanna know what sort I'm falling
[01:16:56] Jamie Grant: on,
[01:16:56] Jon Rogers: which I'll always do. They get all the credit. That's great. I'm, I'll take the, the bullets. Uh, but, but getting rid of gatekeeping in the workplace, letting your talent actually use their talent, not getting in their way all the time. Like, that's, man, that's an easy answer
[01:17:13] Jamie Grant: to, to your point, Jon, I love that we would, we would say to our team, um, bad news, uh, ages, like red wine.
It's just that the red wine's been open the whole time. It's not getting better, it's getting worse. And I think as leaders, we either. Encourage bad news to travel fast and accurately, or we kind of encourage disinformation or we discourage the information we need to do our job. It, it's almost binary. I also love that your answer, it's so on brand, um, because I think great teams are exactly what you just, they're a meritocracy that's diverse and that diversity requires me to find people that do the things that they're great at, that I suck at.
It's, it's the, um, if I, if I could only afford one tutor for a kid that was struggling in one class and excelling, they had an a plus off the charts in one class and they had a C minus in another class, but I can only afford to tutor 'em in one. I'm tutoring 'em in the A, like invest in what they're great at, get 'em through the thing they struggle with, but like, build that team with a plus players that are offsetting your C minus skills and talents.
I, I love that is so on brandand that your cheat code as people All right. Something you do to totally unplug. Like if you're just getting away and you're like, I gotta shut my brain off. I wanna shut my brain off. I want to just be, what? That thing, or where is that place
[01:18:32] Jon Rogers: that's Lego with my kids? That's unequivocally they're building what this is not just, uh, get data with this.
This is not just parent by, I mean they're, they're four and seven and they're building sets that are beyond those ages. And I'm incredibly proud just watching them build because their creative joy in things and not just following the instructions, but like, oh, but what if this was this? I, that's, that's a godsend.
I, I, I've got no better answer than that.
[01:19:02] Jamie Grant: What, what if, hear me out. What if the age ranges on a Lego box are the equivalent of the job requirement? Ah, uh, on a position description that are artificially holding children down.
[01:19:16] Jon Rogers: That's the full circle right there.
[01:19:19] Jamie Grant: Right. That's why. Is it four to seven who decided?
[01:19:22] Jon Rogers: Exactly. Exactly. Uh, yeah. Let's go back to at one point, weren't they? It wasn't it the, uh, the ages were like, something like zero to 99. I don't know. But like, why are we holding, why Let go is good. That's good. That's good, right?
[01:19:37] Jamie Grant: Like,
[01:19:38] Jon Rogers: let '
[01:19:39] Jamie Grant: em grow. We gotta steal it
[01:19:39] Jon Rogers: and put it, take it, put it on the road. Put it on the road.
Uh,
[01:19:43] Jamie Grant: one, uh, one book and or one band that you're convinced the world needs to know about.
[01:19:51] Jon Rogers: Well, I mean, so that's, I mean, I'm, I'm gonna say Radiohead, it's far as like a fan because Okay. But I, I mean, I can, it's not like I'm picking one out of mystery for that. I just, and that's more of a, not because it's Radiohead and I really enjoyed it, but that there, the musical creativity is there.
And I was actually using the same example, the, the of all things, uh, talked to my 7-year-old about how she was expressing as something as a negative, like, oh, that's. That's awful. And I said, well, no, that's not awful. It's just something that you don't enjoy.
[01:20:22] Jamie Grant: Yeah.
[01:20:22] Jon Rogers: But somebody else might. And sometimes we have to respect that things are very creative and unique.
They might not be your thing, but that thing is actually quite good. And that, that means like, that's definitely, that's Radiohead for sure. Like you can very much not like them or very much enjoy them, but, but regardless they are musically creative. Uh, with those, I think as we get
[01:20:44] Jamie Grant: older, we appreciate the talents, right?
Because we start to realize how hard things are and it's like, look, that might not be my flavor of music are sport, whatever it is. But man, that's impressive. Um, yeah. And I think as kids we're just so wired. Like we want, I saw something, uh, a while back that really stuck with me that, uh, either metaphorically or literally children want things or gifts.
Uh, adolescents want experiences. Mm-hmm. Adults want community and relationship. Pretty solid. And, and I think like when we go through that journey, we kind of get to a place where it's like, man, I, I don't necessarily, that's not my version of music, uh, or art or sport, but, but I do, I do appreciate how hard it is to do that.
Mm-hmm. Where maybe as a kid, it's like, I don't like the thing, I want a different thing. Yeah. Um, all right. This is a pick them. Okay. Either what's the wildest thing you've ever done to try and impress somebody and did it work okay. Or what is your hottest, most controversial take that you're convinced shouldn't be a hot take at all?
[01:21:52] Jon Rogers: Oh. Oh, that's a brutal kick. Okay. Well, this, um, okay. Yeah, that would, I'm, I'm gonna take the first one, and I think this is the, I'm, I may be taking the layup on this one, but that was the, um. And I don't know if this is necessarily a try to impress because it was just the facts, but, um, getting into a job here in the Indian Office of Technology in our, as it happened to start in our com, in our security team, I was running our risk and compliance program and, uh, you know, coming off of the central intelligence agency.
So I definitely was interviewing with a couple folks who had, they were just like, Hey, where again, like, yeah, that one. In fact, I had to do, uh, a couple of my interviews, like had to sort of, uh, leave work, find a place, be able to use cell phones and all that kind of jazz. Like, I went through the full, uh, mystery box for, for actually getting online with these folks.
And so it was again, kinda like, like, but really where against again, that one. Like, that's, that's the one like. But you wanna do, like, you're coming to wait. What? Indianapolis though? I'm like, I, I know, I know. And this family, and it's important. Okay, cool. But we have to work it again like this. Yeah, I know. I know, I know.
And, uh, you know, God bless him. Our, our chief Information security officer at the time, uh, lovely fellow, uh, fantastic. Incredibly bright. But, uh, I, I'm, I'm fairly certain that he, he definitely loved my former employer and it also allowed him, uh, forever to say, yeah, I, I pulled somebody from there. I, I poached from this is, you know,
[01:23:33] Jamie Grant: talk about Yeah.
That's a first round draft pick. You can, you can brag about. I love it. All right. If your office played a walkup song when you walked in the office
[01:23:44] Jon Rogers: mm-hmm.
[01:23:45] Jamie Grant: And you got to pick that walkup song before you took the plate every day.
[01:23:48] Jon Rogers: Okay. Careful, careful caveat there. I'd say you get to pick
[01:23:52] Jamie Grant: it. What's your walkup song if you get to pick it?
[01:23:56] Jon Rogers: Uh, so I would say okay, goes invincible, uh, which I also used to use for, for softball, uh, back at the University of Texas. That's awesome. Okay. Okay. Uh, when, when we had a little bit of fun with that and had some, had some wallons, uh, because I'd say it probably plays and has more energy than Radiohead creep.
Okay. Uh, as one enters room, probably sending a different vibe, say, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be really curious to see what they would come on and say. I'd be curious to know what the staff answer is though. I might, I might have to put that one out in the teams chat and, uh, and say top 10 things. I just gotta ask this with Jamie.
Grant, if you had had to, had to call the shot on this, what would you all say? I love, I data, I would
[01:24:42] Jamie Grant: love to know what they, that's a, that's actually a great question for us to, to maybe rotate around. All right. Last one,
[01:24:49] Jon Rogers: Dan. I'm sorry. No, go ahead. No, no. I'm, I'm gonna pause this because shame on me. But this is a good question, transition sort of an item.
Um, we have multiple musicians here in my program. Uh, one of whom Ben Eilers is a part of, not one, but two different bands. One, the solo project, uh, funeral language, and, uh, best Noodles in Town, which terrific band name. Uh, he's incredibly musically gifted. We're very fortunate to have him here at the Indian Office of Tech, office of Technology, working on low-code, no-code as it happened.
And, uh, and CRM. Uh, so let me just shout out to the world. Vin EERs, the Band Funeral Language. Uh, come for the music. Stay for the screaming. It is, it rocks hard. That's alright. So, but yes. Uh,
[01:25:36] Jamie Grant: no. That, listen, I, we could not let you leave without bragging on your team. Thank you. Um, alright. Thank you. Last one.
Here's how we land the Roundup. Yeah. First. You get to answer the question that the last guest left for you, and then you get to leave a question for the next guest. You have no idea who that next guest is. Uh, the one you get to answer, uh, is from a, a longtime friend, Cameron Doty, who, uh, I love this question, but he said, what is the one?
He said he uses this at dinner parties all the time. Okay. And he said it just helps it, it says so much about people. What is the one thing that you think you know for sure? No, sorry. What is the one thing you know for sure that you think we don't know?
Like if there's one thing you know is fact that you don't think the rest of us listening today know what is that one thing?
[01:26:39] Jon Rogers: Wow. Okay. Here's where I struggle with the question. Like. I think that you know a lot more than I do. So, no, I just don different and I think, I think most people know a lot more. I do, dude, you worked than I do at the CIA,
[01:26:53] Jamie Grant: that like, let's, let's put the disclaimer. You have a whole bucket of things you're not allowed to say on the show.
So if we take Yeah,
[01:26:59] Jon Rogers: yeah, yeah. This podcast could take a real turn. You want, you wanna see how we stall the production on the podcast? I'll answer your question. Insert record. Scratch, like, yeah. All of a sudden this is on a list. So pro Tip Riverside
[01:27:14] Jamie Grant: is not in
[01:27:14] Jon Rogers: fact
[01:27:14] Jamie Grant: a
[01:27:14] Jon Rogers: skiff. Thank you. Thank you. No, people were harmed in the, in the answering this question.
Uh, so wow. Um,
that, that when, when doing work well, when finding the right people in a workplace, don't, don't go for the skills first. Go for the human. Yeah. Be human. Pick, pick a good human. You know what I would
[01:27:43] Jamie Grant: say, you know what I would say? I, I, I, I think people know that. I don't think people know how to do that.
[01:27:53] Jon Rogers: And that's fair.
And that's the beauty of what, and that's very fair. Yeah.
[01:27:55] Jamie Grant: I think that's very fair. I think what, you know, that I have not come across anybody else that knows as well is how to take a tagline of invest in people and what can so many times be a warm and fuzzy cliche or a marketing line and turn it into real opportunity for people
[01:28:19] Jon Rogers: fair.
I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, no, I think that I,
[01:28:22] Jamie Grant: I think you know that in a way that I've not come across anybody, uh, in the public sector that knows how to do it and navigate all of the, the, the more I there. All right. So I, I appreciate that. What is, and, and we're gonna put, and I know we talked about it, uh, kind of in the prep, um, for folks that wanna find you, we'll, we'll touch base on that in a second, because I think there's lots of public sector executives that can learn from your playbook, uh, uh, and, and how you did it.
Um, all right. What's the one question you wanna leave for the next guest? It can be anything. Uh, okay. Subject to some threshold. We, we call this an unfiltered ish podcast subject to a threshold of appropriateness. Uh, it can be anything you want to ask.
[01:29:00] Jon Rogers: Touche. I just deleted my first three answers. That's, that's fine.
Or questions rather. So, uh, yeah, that we, that really bears a deep dive of, I just said some threshold of appropriateness. I know. It's like the
[01:29:14] Jamie Grant: obscenity standard. You know it when you
[01:29:15] Jon Rogers: see it. I, well, fair, but I'm like, I have like Frank Willard, Fred Willard from Anchorman, like playing my brain around. I'm like thinking.
Anyway, so if you haven't seen Anchorman folks, by the way, see his, his sides of those phone calls, scenes. Sorry,
[01:29:30] Jamie Grant: by the way, if I've got the actor right, Fred Willard, just the sports guy. Bald.
[01:29:34] Jon Rogers: Yeah. Uh, no. Oh no. He's, um, good head of hair. Um, kind of a, like a real square face. Incredibly, um, in the movie, best in Show.
He's the color guy. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I got
[01:29:47] Jamie Grant: it wrong. Okay, so I thought you just did like the most beautiful, so, so, Cameron Doty that I just mentioned, left you a question. His brother Chris Doty, uh, was one of the guys who started a band called The Dirty Governors. Oh, okay. It's a fascinating story of how it started.
They actually went on to, to do really well. Uh, but they cut their first music video on YouTube and they had, uh, they had a number of celebrities that had, like, they just happened to know, like Paramore and the guy from Anchorman, the Sportscaster. Uh, and so on the last episode with Cam, when Cam was talking about musicians, he wasn't gonna highlight his brother's band.
Mm-hmm. And I was like, man, we gotta, we gotta mention the govs. But yeah. Uh, from, from a duty brother to anchorman you, you, uh, connected dots in a way that, uh, one could not have otherwise done. I
[01:30:33] Jon Rogers: and David Ner, by the way, if you ever see him or hear him on a podcast or on getting interviewed, he's a lovely human being.
So shout out to shout out to your guy David Ner the Baldhead. Okay, thank you. I could not
[01:30:43] Jamie Grant: remember his name, but he, I've heard nothing but great things and he makes a phenomenally, uh, funny appearance in that music video
[01:30:51] Jon Rogers: on, on this week's episode. Jon plays IMDB for you, so that's good. It's about to say,
[01:30:57] Jamie Grant: that was your answer to the last question, you know, if you're IMDB, you got lots of stuff, I mean,
[01:31:01] Jon Rogers: okay.
Alright. Alright. Fair, fair. Um, okay, so I'd be curious to know if, and I'm not even trying to make this, this is not a, um, this is not a, a of this moment topical question. Mm-hmm. I'm not trying to load this up in the obvious way, but having been somebody, uh, that, that worked in the intelligence community and many of our intelligence community members, I often them have to brief the president of the United States and other folks.
Um. So I would be curious to know, um, if someone had the opportunity to brief a president of the United States president or vice President of the United States of America, and you've, you've gotten the chance to, to say the thing that you're in there to say.
[01:31:48] Jamie Grant: Mm-hmm.
[01:31:49] Jon Rogers: But you're given the opportunity to ask one question or make one comment on the state of affairs.
What do you say? What do you ask and why?
[01:31:59] Jamie Grant: I love that because it's timeless, right? Like I, I appreciate the caveat in the sense that like we, yeah, I'm not, we obviously live to totally tracking. We say it all the time, like, um, we, we live in public sector technology, which naturally means this, like orbit of politics is around us.
Mm-hmm. And it's something we have to. Be really understanding. It is a technical thing that mm-hmm. Is, is happening. Um, that that also is unpredictable and all those things. So we, we kind of can't get away from it. Um, you know, but it's an interesting thing for me as somebody that was a, an elected member of the legislature and a chairman and has a very public voting record of, of a philosophy I believe in trying very hard.
So I, I love the caveat that you're, you're saying, right? Where, where people, I think I, I feel like up, I feel like we are turning a corner of the divisiveness in this country a little bit. I hope. I hope so. Uh, be, because I think like the, the, the tribal, uh, grumpy old, grumpy old men like screaming, you know, from porch one to porch two on, on just the teams that can be so like if the red team's for it, then I hate it or I like it if the blue team's for it, I hate it, or I like it.
Mm-hmm. I think that's a fascinating, I, I think the question of, if you were to get too brief. The Oval Office and a president sitting behind the Roosevelt desk. Mm-hmm. And you had to brief on a thing, but you got to ask one question or give one comment. Mm-hmm. On, on any topic you want in that one minute, what would you say?
[01:33:32] Jon Rogers: And feel free if it helps somebody out, pick some other president from any point in time in human history. You just happen to be in the Oval Office at a time. And I will, I'm gonna take liberty and go back very slightly to your hot take question because this is a, um, since, since we are, uh, broadcasting, so to speak, I think the generation of individuals, uh, who are right now under the age of 30 will actually wind up being the country's greatest generation
[01:34:00] Jamie Grant: dude, we have to jam out on that when you come back.
So, because it's
[01:34:05] Jon Rogers: the, these folks have so much and they're dealing with so much and genuinely with no disrespect intended. To those who have fought, served, gone through so much in the United States, um, over the course of the 19 hundreds.
[01:34:21] Jamie Grant: Yeah.
[01:34:21] Jon Rogers: Of which loads.
[01:34:23] Jamie Grant: Yeah.
[01:34:24] Jon Rogers: The folks who today are under the age of 30, the things that they will deal with, the challenges that they will face with the resources that they will have, will make them absolutely our greatest generation.
[01:34:36] Jamie Grant: I think that is a, that's a brilliant answer to that question. I'm glad you took that liberty and I think, um, I even notice it, uh, it, it's, I've talked about this in different contexts. Um, I've noticed it in the hiring world, the dating world, the friendship world. Yeah. There is this, uh, I'm 42. The, the, that, that group right behind me is.
What I would say created a little bit of the stereotype sometimes of the millennial that was entitled, that wanted it, that didn't really understand, like, go get it. Sure. And I've noticed like even in small groups, there's a number of guys that are 26, 27, 28, pushing 30, um, that are exponentially more driven, reliable, hungry, accountable, like all these elements than some of these folks that have six, seven years work experience.
I was talking to a good friend of mine who, um, does a lot of hiring at a large corporation and she was saying like, we're just skipping some of the mid thirties. Like we, we've learned that some of these mid and late twenties and there's something just like my age group was that there's like a three to five year bracket where we grew up our meaningful years, had computers.
Uh, some have said like the Oregon Trail generation because in kindergarten we were playing the Oregon Trail. We were on a computer. I had to learn how to type and. And use a computer, but I didn't, the, the iPhone didn't exist either. And so, right. There's, I think these societal and cultural things that really do kind of shape generations.
Um, and I think there's two things. I think that that thirties bracket kind of went through something a, a series of somethings differently than the 20 somethings did. Mm-hmm. The opportunity that's shown up for those 20 somethings. And then when we have leaders like you saying like, Hey, I want to go find the right talent, the right drive, the right character, high integrity, those things are more I important to me than a degree or a certification or even an experience sometimes, but to create those blended teams and nobody in the country, in the public sector has done and is doing more of that than you.
So, um,
[01:36:51] Jon Rogers: well
[01:36:51] Jamie Grant: that's
[01:36:51] Jon Rogers: very kind. I appreciate that a lot. I.
[01:36:53] Jamie Grant: Well, dude, uh, we're gonna put some information in the show notes if people wanna find you. I know that's changing a little bit. You tease that at the top, so, so we'll make sure people know how to find you. Um, guys, if you're listening, folks, if you're listening to this and, um, you're interested in replicating success in a playbook, um, from somebody who has not just talked about investing in people and creating opportunity, but actually done it, um, Jon has graciously offered obviously his time today to give a little bit of, uh, exposure to it.
I know we could go for hours digging deep, and I seriously would love to have you back when you want to. But Jon, thank you so much for taking the time today and coming to be with us.
[01:37:32] Jon Rogers: It's an thank you so much.
[01:37:34] Jamie Grant: Brother, we'll talk to you.