Tech Titans: Go From Burnt Out to Fired Up with Justin Fanelli, Department of Navy CTO

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:00) Today, we're bringing you our most timeless advice from our last conversation with Justin Fanelli, Department of Navy CTO. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:14) All right, so walk me through this. You guys are hungry, you're driven, but it's government, and it's like you don't usually associate hungry and driven with government. You guys are out there working 14 hours a day, crushing it. What are you doing exactly?

(Justin Fanelli at 00:00:26) Yeah, so I probably can't brag about the actual amount of time we're working because we do time cards. But here's the deal. This is not your granddaddy's government. We're trying to—I think several years ago now, we recognized that, like most organizations, if they're successful, they're digital organizations. That's why I started listening to this podcast. But like, if you're doing things the old way, you're not just ineffective. Like, you're hurting your user base. You're letting people down. And so the idea of—there are ebbs and flows in cycles of opportunities in the tech space and then overall with what's happening in the world. Like, we want to go smart and fast, and I believe the government can do that, and we've seen that recently. And as long as that's the case, I want to be here serving with people who are doing exactly that. It's more exciting than it was 25 years ago, I'll tell you that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:30) But when I turn on like C-SPAN and stuff, it just looks like a retirement home. But when I'm talking to you, I've got like a lot of energy. It sounds like you guys are moving and shaking. You say it's not your granddaddy's government, but when we look at our representatives, isn't it skewed towards our granddaddy's government?

(Justin Fanelli at 00:01:45) So the executive branch, in general, like regardless of administration, you'll find patriots in there. So there are people who have been beaten down by the system that exists, but there are mavericks and get-it-dones, and just like people like your dad who were in a uniform and joined for the right reason. Early career people who just want to serve and be a part of something bigger—that was our last batch of hires. And they're in there, and they're looking at friends who are doing other things. And like, when they go back for reunions or catch-ups, like they're comparing notes, and we're getting more applications than we used to.

(Justin Fanelli at 00:02:26) So I think there is some of that. On the upper end, an interesting trend is—I mean, there's a lot of people, right? This is the largest, if not employer in the country, spender in the country across federal government. The idea of doing that efficiently and then seeing the difference you're making—I see more people who are activated on the later end of their careers. We're seeing more people who've crushed it, people who've had success in tech or other places say, "Hey, how can I help? Are you trying to angle on the government? Are you trying to get over?" No, I'd really just want to give back. Like, I'm at that point in my life. Like, how do I help? And so, just to that point, I think we have like a lot of pockets of goodness.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:09) Do you interact with some other heads in other divisions, or are you just focused on Navy?

(Justin Fanelli at 00:03:14) No, totally. I love that question. So the government is massive. Not all things are created equal, and like there are just brilliant people all over, but you don't always know how to find them. And so LinkedIn has been helpful to that point. But in general, if you spend enough time, like there's a gravitational pull. And so I—if I spend too much time thinking about one problem or in one place or with one set of people, I find myself anchoring. I don't even realize it. And so the answer to your question is, today I had lunch with health and human services, the FCC, the Army, the Air Force, and a bunch of other people. When the world is at its best, when it feels smaller, and we can chunk some of these things off, and we can figure out, "Hey, we think these problems are very specific to us," and sometimes they are, and most of the times they aren't, right? And it's just like a framing thing. So if you can take this big group of people and this big world and these big, huge problems and chunk them, like then they're actually solvable.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:26) And so how did you end up in this role as CTO of the Navy?

(Justin Fanelli at 00:04:30) Yeah, so I have two jobs, like all of us, right? So I think the meandering path is I just kept trying things that sounded interesting. Like, the long answer is electrical engineer, was in Air Force ROTC, wanted to serve, registered for commissioning. I got medically DQ'd, and I was like, "Oh no, I want to be around and in uniform." I get to choose my own clothes, but I got to sit around people who were in the Navy, and like, looked at a bunch of other industry jobs and just wasn't as motivated at that time by those. And then I did a command and control job and then an intelligence community job and then a health care job and then a business systems job. And so through all of those, it wasn't intentional. I just—electrical engineering and computer science and kind of riding that wave, and then private sector stuff. I started doing—I guess the funny story is I think I complained about my computer enough that they asked me to help fix computers across the Department of Navy. And so that was in a long title, but a tech director for Program Executive Office Digital. So the short version of that is like director, technical director of IT services, along with the executive. And then the CTO for Department of Navy fleeted up to CIO, and so I started doing both.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:03) What is a typical like day like for you as the Navy CTO?

(Justin Fanelli at 00:06:09) So, but then Department of Navy. So Navy and Marine Corps. I'd say there are no typical days. They're mostly productive and long, but fairly rangey. And so from the IT side of things, meeting with folks who are working on cloud, whether they're internal or external, working with folks who are in the weeds on cyber. And that includes the cloud folks. That includes kind of like end user devices. That includes CYBERCOM and some other agencies who are doing like nitty-gritty stuff. The short answer is a lot of meetings, but and then maybe work afterwards. But the longer answer is, at the intersections of connecting the dots on the future of zero trust and progressing a handful of positively disruptive pilots day by day, and then looking at policy that's coming from different places and saying, "Hey, can we make use of that? Can we turn that into go energy within the department?" And then meeting with users or super users to figure out, "Hey, are the problems that we're addressing the same problems that they have now, or have those moved past us?" So I could give you the full list, but it's a lot of contact, correlation, and then adapting our kind of daily plan and then our quarterly campaign plan.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:46) Does your culture have that sort of direct communication feel? Like in the private sector, you'll find a lot of like feelings, for lack of a better term. But like, you know, people will sidestep, and then I noticed that when I interact with my military friends, they're like very direct. And I prefer direct communication largely because that's what I got growing up, right? And I was like, I need clarity. I need it clear so we can execute. And do you find that in your job? Because I mean, you are in the civilian, but do you still have that direct communication?

(Justin Fanelli at 00:08:24) Yeah. So from a Bayesian perspective, it's never 100%. I'll tell you, first and foremost, like I fuel off of that. Whether it's good news or bad news, whether it's getting or giving, if it's direct, it's efficient, and we can translate that into data and then translate that into action. So bias towards action, love it. Not every conversation is that. The cool thing is the more context you have—so framing is a superpower within the government because there's just a lot. Like there's no shortage of kind of like context and opportunity. And so like we have—there are direct people. You know who the direct people are. And then where there's a more nuanced message, you can normally calculate. I've gotten better at calculating that and then also context switching. So the short answer is, like, I'd say it's probably the best concentration of direct people. And then when you need to figure something out, maybe it's intentionally obfuscated, and maybe it's just that they don't know the answer, and we can dig in. I think we've—my team is really good at that. So what I'll do, I'll just like share a personal—like if I come out of a meeting and I'm like, "I don't know exactly what happened there," I'll bounce that off. We have a daily scrum, just 15 minutes of, "Hey, what do you think about this? What am I missing? Like, give me some blind spots." And these are people—and this is super interesting from a cross-functional perspective. We have some—an Army guy, a Navy retired captain, a guy who worked for the FBI. A guy—so like they can 360 me really well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:01) Now when I was a kid, I would tell you, if you talk to 18-year-old Joel, I'd say mandatory service is nonsense. Not doing it. It's not for me. But if you talk to, you know, 36-year-old Joel with three kids, I'm like, we should make everybody do that in the United States. It would give them discipline, a sense of community, a tie to their country, and it would give them the opportunity to experience commercial problems at scale. What are your—I know you're the CTO of Navy, but from a—let's take it personal. What are your personal thoughts on mandatory service?

(Justin Fanelli at 00:10:32) The idea of serving—I think, like, going to your 18-year-old self, like the idea of serving isn't attractive to everyone until you're doing it. And so like when you're in there, I don't know, it comes down to how we learn, right? They say the majority of people are visual learners. Like I think the majority of people are contact learners, right? I can watch someone learn something and not learn much. I can do it, even if I don't want to do it. And I mean, like, who liked working out until you got good at it, right? And so, and like now you're like, "Oh, I love work." You didn't start like working out. Like you started liking like sitting on the couch. And so like that activation energy, I mean, I think you can—there's almost like no greater honor to me than being in the military. And so like I think there is something in the United States to volunteering and saying, like, "Hey, I am calling into that service," and then like in a different way from a civilian perspective. Like it still feels like service. And so if you're getting after that, and just like signing up isn't enough, like you have to lean in. I don't know about all the mechanisms for like if people are made to do something and they're not leaning in, but like the—I love when people are choosing to do something because then you're choosing to do it every day and like getting after it and getting after it. Do I think everyone would benefit? I mean, this is like a ridiculous comment, but like I think if everyone even like waited tables, like if you had like any sort of service experiment, my friends who left college and had never had a job got punched in the face in their first job, right? And so like if you're not getting after something that's humbling you on a regular basis, if that feedback cycle isn't coming at you, then we're just not learning as quickly as we should. And to this point, Marines and just like anyone who has that entrepreneurial spirit, they probably got it either from their parents or the cycles to say, "Oh, you know what? The connection between doing something and getting outcomes just got closer together." That's what winning feels like.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:53) Well, I like you, Justin. You're my people, man. Like when I talk to you, I'm like, wow, how many people are like Justin in our military? I want more Justins out there.

(Justin Fanelli at 00:13:03) There are some awesome people. And like, my team is—you know, we were talking about how much we work. My team, they work so freaking hard that like when outside organizations or outside people are like, "How are you doing? Like, the most common question—are you holding up?" I'm not holding up. Like my people have me inspired. I am fired up, right? Like I've found that this is like super anecdotal, but like whenever I talk to people who are burned out anywhere, it's not because they're working more than other people. Like they—I just think they don't feel that—I mean, it happens, right? Like there are people who work too much. But if you're not feeling like you're connected to a tribe and you can see the difference you're making, you're more likely to get burned out. There's a correlation to that that I've seen is much stronger than the number of hours. I know 60-hour a week people who are loving life, and I know 30-hour a week people who are burned out, right? It's not the amount of time. It's like, do you see the difference you're making, and are you part of something that you really care about and making it better? There's more data than there's ever been before, right? And it's like it's the same for like intentions. And so if we are aimed at one thing, like how else would we filter out everything that doesn't matter as much? So like by you prioritizing your life in the form of actions, like yeah. And then like when something is out of line, you're more likely to notice it. So it increases observability, and that's a technical discussion, right? Like just like on our networks. If we're looking for something, we know how to find it. This is how we look at anomalous threats. This is how we look at anomalous behavior. This is how we look at like something that's holding us back from our ultimate objective. So I'm with that, man.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:59) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.