The Art of the Possible with Mike Cole, Civilian CTO at GDIT

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:03) Hello, my friends. Today, Joel is talking to Mike, the Civilian CTO at GDIT, and they discuss how running digital twin simulations on business processes can help you streamline your organization, why it's okay to not always be the smartest person in the room, and how having diversity, equality, and equity is a competitive advantage.

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:27) All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:35) Here we go. This is the Modern CTO Podcast. So I'm curious, you mentioned GDIT. The first question I have is we are talking internally, we call it Gitit. I don't know what you guys call it over there. How do you say your name over there?

(Mike at 00:00:59) Gitit, right? I mean, it's just the way because you gotta remember it's General Dynamics Information Technology, right? And it's a shorter name for that, right? It makes it a little bit easier to say when we're writing proposals and for our customers to follow it. But you think about what GD is, General Dynamics, right? I mean, General Dynamics is a global aerospace and defense company. I mean, we have over 100,000 employees, you know, $37,900,000,000 in revenue last year. I mean, we're a big company. And then GDIT is the federal integrator side of that, right? So you talk about the cool stuff that you get to do. My job is cool because GDIT focuses on bringing the art of the possible to our customers, right? And when you look at us in comparison to the larger company, we're 28,000 employees across 30 countries. So I mean, we're also a very large system integrator that is just helping the government deliver on their mission-critical needs, right, through information technology. So it's pretty cool. I enjoy my job probably almost as much as you enjoy your job.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:01) Do you get to, is it just the US, or do you work with our friendly countries and things like that?

(Mike at 00:02:06) There are parts of our company that do that, right? I mean, we've got, like I said, we're in 30 countries across the globe, right? So I mean, we're doing a lot of stuff, and we've got some foreign-branded companies, right, that are GD companies that are over there. Because within GDIT, within the federal civilian division that I work for, we're the ones who process half of the world's visas that come to the US.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:31) Oh, that's cool.

(Mike at 00:02:31) We do a ton of stuff that way, right? So I mean, it's pretty cool what we get to do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:35) That's kind of an odd name, federal civilian.

(Mike at 00:02:38) Yeah, yeah. It's kind of, well, you think about when you think about a system integrator, people immediately go to defense contractor, right? So we've got a huge defense division. We've also got an intelligence and homeland security division. And then everything else is federal civilian, right? So you've got Commerce, you know, you've got Government Accountability Office, you've got the Postal Service, right? I mean, we do all of this work across different agencies that are not defense or intel or homeland security.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:06) I followed this guy on LinkedIn. This might be off-topic, but—

(Mike at 00:03:08) Yeah, it's okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:09) His name is Nicholas Chaillan or something. He was the chief software officer of the Air Force. And he recently stepped down, and he had done an interview on one of the major news networks. I don't remember, I just saw the clip on LinkedIn, and he was talking about how the reason why he was stepping down from this position was because the government side of things was lagging behind in concepts like security concepts, DevOps-type concepts. And he's put together all these proposals, and different branches of the government are recreating the same thing from scratch, like what people do with CMSs and things like that back in the day. And so he was really frustrated, and so that's why he stepped down. And I'm curious, do you guys help with that? Because you're outside of the government and you're a contractor, do you have different requirements, or do you face the same issues that he was complaining about, like the red tape and process and stuff?

(Mike at 00:04:07) Yeah, it's kind of interesting when you think about that, right? What he's dealing with is slightly different than we deal with, right? Because he's gotta get the contracts out to have companies like us come in and help them, right? But there's still a lot of organizational change management that has to happen within any organization that's trying to change how they do business, right? And you think about how long has the federal government been in business, right? I mean, you talked about being an entrepreneur and being able to start up a new company pretty effectively, right? So you weren't trying to change how your organization ran, but you are doing some cool stuff. And that's the position we're in, right? We bring these new art of the possible ideas to our customers, and then they have to contract in a way that we can deliver that solution, right? And we're seeing some interesting changes in our customers, right? I mean, the pandemic was the largest forcing function, in my opinion, to change in the federal government, right? My dad, just like your dad, worked in federal government for a while, right? My dad used to always have a staff that he worked with, you know, other auditors that he worked with, and he had to see them to manage them, right? And the federal government operated that way for a long time. But, you know, March 2020, everybody went home. And now they've kind of broken that management necessity of management by sight to management by outcome, right? And that's helping us help them deliver new innovative solutions.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:32) I like that. A federal employee that's like federal but civilian, that would be like a postal worker or like a congressperson. Like, what that means is, like, they're federal, but they're not military. Is that what civilian means?

(Mike at 00:05:45) Yeah, they're not wearing uniforms, right, all the time. That's one way to look at it, right? Is they're not wearing a uniform. When you think about civil service, right, that's what my dad was at the second half of his career, right? First part of his career, he did 26 years active duty Air Force, retired as a captain. The second 20 years, he was what's called a government servant, right? GS. He retired as a GS-14, and he was a civil servant at that point, right? So he's not wearing his uniform anymore, but he's doing the exact same job that he did when he was active duty, which is interesting. So there's a lot of that in there, right? So civilian relates to those that don't wear a uniform even though they're still working within the federal government space.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:25) So what's your day-to-day like being the, so your title is CTO of the Civilian Division of GDIT?

(Mike at 00:06:33) That is correct, right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:35) And so what are the responsibilities? What do you get to do?

(Mike at 00:06:39) So there's a lot of cool things I get to do, and then there's a lot of administrative stuff I get to do, right? I mean, I think that, you know, as we move up the chain, we don't do as much hands-on keyboard. We do a lot more people management, right? But my staff, the people that work for me, I have about 46 solution architects that work for me right now, right? And that's what they get to do. They get to develop solutions to answer the government's needs, right? So when the government puts out a request for proposal, right, an RFP, our job is to look at that, figure out what the government is really asking for, what are their pain points, what are their challenges, and then in a lot of cases identify the technologies that either already exist or that are not out there that we need to help them develop to solve those concerns and those questions that they have, right? So that's kind of where we're at. So it's pretty cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:31) Yeah. So you get to do a lot of research, understanding, and then responding to these requested proposals.

(Mike at 00:07:37) Correct.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:38) Nice.

(Mike at 00:07:38) Yeah. And it's not, we don't wait for the RFP to come out, right? We're already talking to our customers. We're already thinking years ahead. Okay, what do you gotta do? What do you need? What do you need tomorrow, right? Because if I focus on today, how can I bring the art of the possible, right? I can answer your mail, but three years from now, you're gonna need something completely different than you do today. So our job is to figure out what do they need, not only today, but to make sure that they're ready for what's coming next.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:08) And then what does your team look like? Because I mean, you've got 20, 30 thousand, I have it here in the notes somewhere. Like 20 in your division, there's like 20-something thousand employees, 6,000 engineers. For you to interface, you have, there's obviously layers in order to interface and run everything. What is your direct reports look like? What type of responsibilities do they have?

(Mike at 00:08:28) Yeah. So, you know, we have, I think within the federal civilian portion, we're probably at, you know, we're in the single-digit thousands, right? We're not at the 20,000. The company is 28,000. My solution architects, right, they are engaging across our entire division, which is broken into five sectors, right? So we really compartmentalize down a little bit because in our space, it's not just a singular mission, right? I've got health mission. I've got education mission. I've got state and local government within our portfolio as well. So my solution architects are engaging with our account teams who are engaging with the customer on a regular basis, right? So if you've got a state and local entity that says, "Hey, I wanna do 5G infrastructure in our city," right, they reach into my team, and we provide them with a 5G guy who's gonna go in and meet with the customer, and they're gonna geek out on the technology, right? And we're gonna get to know what that customer wants and how do we effectively provide them an optimized 5G experience is one example of how my guys would engage.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:34) That's pretty cool.

(Mike at 00:09:35) Yeah. They have a lot of fun, right? And they work hard, they play hard.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:41) How did you even come about meeting the people and getting involved with this organization?

(Mike at 00:09:46) With GDIT itself?

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:48) Yeah.

(Mike at 00:09:49) So I've been in federal contracting now for almost 20 years, right? I mean, so I mean, it's kind of the way it's been. I got into federal contracting in 1999, right? So over 20 years, I guess, if you do the math, which I'm a tech guy. I don't do math. I have calculators to do that. But so I mean, I was just like you. I started out as a developer, right? I mean, I really, I was writing code for some of our customers, and through there I moved into becoming more of a program business analyst, helping to do the interpretation from the customer to the coders, and then moved into management. And then it just kept moving into different roles, so I have a pretty varied background. So that when the opportunity to become a solution architect, the guy that gets to put all the pieces together was presented, I took it, right? And I was at a previous company, and I joined a company called CSRA at the time, which was later acquired by GDIT. So GDIT acquired us a few years ago. So in total time, I've been with GDIT for a little over five years now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:49) Okay, all right. I wanna know about one of the things my team brought up to me. They were talking about digital twin processing, and I have no idea what that is, and I'm excited to learn about it.

(Mike at 00:11:01) Yeah, yeah. Digital twin is pretty cool. I'm pretty excited about it. It's something I've been looking at for a while, right? Every organization deals with process, right? I mean, doesn't matter what you do. You've got a Visio diagram somewhere that shows how forms and data and information travels through your organization, right? And if you think about it, there's blocks, there's circles, and then there's arrows, right? There's a lot that happens in that little arrow, right? So digital twin for process is something that we've come across as a term that's coming out of Europe right now and starting to make its way into the US. But it's this use of automation and AI and machine learning to evaluate your process and then create a simulation environment so that you can play with your process and see where you can optimize, right? So if you think about the manufacturing world, they've been using digital twins forever, right? You think about Boeing when they create a jet engine, right? Or when Gulfstream is creating a new airplane and they wanna make sure it's the most aerodynamic thing they can. Well, it costs a lot of money to build a full-size prototype, right? So they will model these in CAD and they'll model them and run simulations against them to say, "Okay, if we tweak this little piece here, if we tweak that piece there, what does it do?" And the computer then says it does this or it does that, right? So the same thing is now in the processing world. So I can get that model of the process and say, "Okay, here's your choke point. It's taking 10 minutes to do this process and it should really only take five minutes." Or in other cases, if you're a human and all you're doing is opening up a file and clicking approve within 30 seconds or within 10 seconds, do we really need to have a human do that process? It's a really good place to put a robotic process automation bot, right, an RPA bot in there to automate that away because the bot can look at all the information that's coming, make the decision, and say, "Yeah, that can be approved," or "No, that needs somebody to look at it." So in effect, I'm taking the robot out of the human and allowing the human to do the things that they enjoy doing, right? Nobody enjoys opening up a form and clicking approve 20 or 30 times a day, right? So digital twin for process allows us to identify where that's happening and then just effectively put in optimizations, whether it's a bot or even deeper AI to help solve those problems.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:29) I'm sure there's someone that enjoys the forms, but it's definitely not somebody I wanna hang out with.

(Mike at 00:13:35) Right. Well, I mean, it's just, yeah. I mean, I think we all gotta start somewhere, right? And I think when you think about that role, the problem is those aren't usually entry-level employees that are doing that, right? It's a guy that's been doing the job for 10 or 15 years, and it has just become a part of the process because they're not willing to make the change and bring in those technologies, right? So I mean, we're working with some pretty cool companies in this space, right? So you've got BusinessOptics and BeInformed are two of the ones that I've worked with just recently just to create this idea that we're starting to go to our customers and talk about because there's a lot of interesting use cases for this digital twin for process concept.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:15) How do you get an edge? Like, everyone has a certain number of things that they can focus on. We all have a limit. I know what things that I'll focus on that help me get an edge or have more success. What are the things that you focus on that help with your success?

(Mike at 00:14:28) You know, I think for me, because of the type of work that me and my team do, right, I mean, government proposals are not scheduled, right? They're dynamic. They're complex and usually come out at the holidays, right? I mean, the government is very good at, "Hey, I got that off my plate. I can now enjoy my holiday," right? So then our team picks it up and we work, right? And the SAs, you know, solution architects and myself, you know, we do a lot of hours to submit those proposals. I think what I find is successful for me is that it's not something that I can do, right? I only can touch so many proposals personally a day. It's the people, right? And that's my management style.

(Mike at 00:15:12) Right? People first. And if you take care of the people, they know how to do their job. Right? And as long as I focus on that, as long as I remember that it doesn't matter what I can do as long as I've got the right people doing the right jobs, treat them like the adults that they are, then we get a lot done. I mean, my team submits basically one and a half proposals a day, Monday through Friday.

(Mike at 00:15:35) That's the number. Right? So that is a lot of work that gets accomplished in a single year for us. So, I mean, gotta take care of those people. It's not something I can do myself.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:46) It's, for me, it was humbling to realize, you know, as I was growing, how little I can actually do.

(Mike at 00:15:52) Yeah. Right. Right. Right. That's exactly. And there's so much stuff that I am not able to do myself.

(Mike at 00:15:59) So I have to prioritize. Right? Where do I insert my position, my experience, you know, to give us the best chance to win that proposal. Right? And we run proposals that run anywhere from $500,000 to billions of dollars.

(Mike at 00:16:16) Right? So it's where do I effectively insert myself has been one of the hardest things to learn, because I want to touch everything. Right? I'm not a control freak, but I just enjoy it so much that I want to touch everything. And understanding that I can't and making that step back has been pretty critical, especially working from home in this pandemic where it's super easy to work, you know, twenty hours a day if you're not careful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:39) Yeah. And I also have found that it's dynamic. So at different points in your growth or the cycle of the business, you have to insert yourself at different places. So like, when we were growing our first product line, I was falling into the trap of, like, I was staying with all the customers at one level and I wasn't engaging with the people that were paying us 10 times more. And then I realized, okay, I need to adjust how I look at this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:02) And then I get up there and we're creating a new product line, and now I have to go help at the very bottom to get this new product line going. So I have found that people will always ask you, like, what's the secret? What do you do? And I'm like, I don't know. Just be really curious and have a good work ethic.

(Mike at 00:17:17) Yeah. Right. Right. I mean, that's really, I mean, it's roll up your sleeves and get dirty with your team. Right?

(Mike at 00:17:24) I mean, yeah, I mean, I don't write proposals every day anymore. Right? It's not my job. I've got so many other things that I deal with. Right?

(Mike at 00:17:31) The administrative side and some of the things that I don't want to burden the other guys with. Right? There's no need to force some of that stuff down. So just knowing that I'm the one that has to just go, okay, let me just help you a little bit, get you started, train them, mentor, and move on.

(Mike at 00:17:48) That's an effective way to go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:51) I have a question. It just popped in my head. When you know, the RFPs, are there certain RFPs that can only be seen by people with a clearance?

(Mike at 00:18:00) There are. There are. And we have very, very few of those in my group. Right? Because most of the work in our portfolio, the federal civilian side of the house, does not require classified responses.

(Mike at 00:18:15) Over in Intel, over 70% of their proposals are classified. And we have very specific rooms, right, SCIFs, that we use, right, that are compartmentalized areas within the building with no windows and has limited access to where they respond to those proposals, and you have to have a clearance to work on those proposals. And then depending on the agency is the level of clearance required to work those proposals.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:39) I've got a couple of friends that, one specifically comes to mind, that works on teams that build guidance systems.

(Mike at 00:18:47) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:48) And he was telling me about, like, there's multiple layers of entry. You put all your stuff in, you go through scans, and you're in this, like, essentially air-gapped environment, and you do your work, and then you leave. And I was like, that is so, it's so cool. It's like a movie, right?

(Mike at 00:19:02) It's cool until you have to do it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:04) Right. Yeah.

(Mike at 00:19:06) I mean, I've worked in those environments in my past to where, you know, you show up to work and you take your phone out of your pocket, you put it in a lockbox, and then you wand into the room that you're going to work in and you do your job and then you come out. Right? You are completely isolated from the environment, even the external environment. Right?

(Mike at 00:19:25) I mean, like, some of those don't even have TVs. You have no idea what's going on in the outside world for the eight to twelve hours that you're in that building.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:33) Yeah. And see, it's always, like, exciting when you see the tip of the iceberg, like, the cool action moment. Right. And there's been thousands of hours leading up to it. And then you don't actually… It's almost like we love the illusion of not understanding the work and just seeing the byproduct. Because when I heard I was getting to talk with you, I was like, oh, it's so awesome. He's doing all of this stuff with this top secret technology all day and everything like that. And, you know, then it's always fun to, like, you know, learn about what you do and how you do it and really, like, drill down into it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:06) I'm curious. How do you answer the question when they ask you, what is a CTO?

(Mike at 00:20:11) So, you know, it's interesting. I said, well, you know, in traditional space. Right? Outside, it is somebody who is looking at how does technology help a company. Right?

(Mike at 00:20:21) So they're looking at strategies to use technology to reduce cost savings so they can make more margin, things along that mindset. Right? But in my role, it is looking at how does technology help the government become more efficient, more effective, and be able to continue the operation of government no matter the situation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:43) No, I was thinking about when COVID happened. Florida. I was in Florida. And they had… I've got a couple of people that I've done some work for in the government. So, like, I talk with them when things like this happen.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:00) And there was all these news articles about people filing for unemployment and the servers being down. And I was like, how has this been? It was like for weeks. Right. And they were slow and it was down. And so I was like messaging people, and I was like, dude, how is this possible?

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:15) I found out all these systems were like super archaic, like built way back in the day and they have had the same company maintaining it, and they've never rewritten it to be modern. So when they got this… it's only done well enough to handle the normal load. So when something like this happens out of nowhere, they were just completely hammered.

(Mike at 00:21:39) Yeah. I mean, I think that's one of the great things about what we do. Right? I mean, there's a lot of people in our space, right, in our industry that look at a contract as the revenue for their organization. Right?

(Mike at 00:21:51) This is how they, this is how we make our money is on contracts. Right? There's no hiding that fact. But it's also our job, and GDIT does a really good job of this, is looking at what we're doing for our customer today and saying, how do we make you more effective? How do we make you more ready?

(Mike at 00:22:07) Right? Term I've been using, through working with Forrester, is future fit. Right? How do we make the government future fit in the sense that I may need to diminish my employee size on the contract. Right?

(Mike at 00:22:19) I may need to say, okay, we're going to downsize our team because we're going to bring in this automation. We're going to use this cloud environment. We're going to make things more effective so that we can control our cost and pass some of that onto the government. Right?

(Mike at 00:22:35) It's not about us becoming more effective to increase our margin. Right? Because we have a set margin with the government a lot of times. So it's really about us being more effective so that the government can use their money more efficiently.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:50) I like that.

(Mike at 00:22:52) And I mean, that's what we're trying to do. Right? And, I mean, you're right. And that's what we're talking about earlier with the retired general. Right?

(Mike at 00:22:59) Is that the government sometimes is also okay with it's working. Why break it? Why take the risk? Right? And there are a lot of agencies out there where that is important.

(Mike at 00:23:10) Right? I don't want to risk exposing health records. Right? No doubt about it. Right?

(Mike at 00:23:16) So let's be smart. And sometimes you have to spend a little bit more to build the new system in parallel to get the efficiencies two years from now. Right? And, hopefully, the return on investment is high for them, and they're willing to do that. But getting that change agent within the government who's willing to take that risk to spend that little bit of money to get something in the future is the harder part right now.

(Mike at 00:23:40) Right? And we're starting to see that. Right? That's where the pandemic was the catalyst for that, because when we all got that call that second week in March to go home, so did the government. And they had to use their old systems to continue operations, and it didn't go effective for everybody, like you were just talking about.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:01) Yeah. No, I'm trying. I was just starting to… Even simple things, like it takes a little bit to wrap your mind around. And from what it seems, I'm going to make a statement. You can tell me how wrong I am.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:10) It seems like you guys are like a modern development shop that works with the government. And you put teams and things together, and you provide services and build code for the RFPs.

(Mike at 00:24:25) We do a little bit of that. Right? I mean, that is a small part. Right? We also do the entire infrastructure.

(Mike at 00:24:31) Right? So think about the entire data centers, your networks, the applications that run on the networks, the help desks. Right? The service centers. You know, we do all of that.

(Mike at 00:24:41) Right? So it's not just…

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:42) Like, if I needed in my RFP, like, if it required a private data center, like, GDIT would… Absolutely. Would, like, get the land, build the building. Like, you guys do that type of stuff.

(Mike at 00:24:51) If it's the right contract, absolutely. Right? Or what we do is we partner with vendors. Right? There are a lot of companies out there that that's all they do, right, that do data center management.

(Mike at 00:25:01) And some of them will team up with and create private data centers within their larger infrastructure. So we do a lot of that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:09) Yeah. Well, that's just being smart. Right?

(Mike at 00:25:11) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's effective teaming. Right? It's like, you know, if I'm going to build a car and I don't want to build tires, I'm going to go talk to Firestone or Goodyear to get the tires put on the car.

(Mike at 00:25:22) Right? Why should I create that if there's already a really good version of it out there?

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:27) Oh, yeah. And I would much rather have the government, like, pay a private company to sort of, you know, quarterback the whole thing than them pull all the vendors together themselves.

(Mike at 00:25:37) Right. Right. And that's our job. Right? That's the integrator piece of our job.

(Mike at 00:25:41) Right? If you think about when we talk about systems integrators. Right? It's our job is to integrate not only the technology, but the subcontractors that work with us. Right?

(Mike at 00:25:51) Because one of the things that we also do a pretty good job of is promoting small business. Right? We're a big business. Right? There are some vehicles we can't even bid on, but there are others where we bring a lot of small business partners to help grow their business and also help the government support those small businesses as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:10) There's a question I wanted to ask. Hold on one second. Okay. So one of them is about Twitter. So for some reason, it's been a disproportionate news story.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:20) I think everyone's talking about Jack Dorsey stepping down from Twitter CEO. And then the CTO is now taking the CEO's place. And I got a request for interview. Somebody's like, hey, can I interview you and ask you about what it's like going from CTO to CEO since you did that role and then founded a company? And I was like, yeah, okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:42) But I'm curious from your perspective, what would the difference be? If you're at a company the size of Twitter, right? And you have the CTO and the CEO. A lot of the principles of understanding how people work… I mean, you're leading this large organization. Where do you think the differences are?

(Mike at 00:26:59) So as the technology guy, right, you're focused on how does technology help us achieve our mission, right, our business goals and objectives. Right? I think it's a difference because you're looking at it and then you're going, hey, I need to do X. What is my budget to do X?

(Mike at 00:27:20) Or in the CEO role, you're, like, going, you're establishing that budget. Right? You're taking input from the CTO and saying, okay, we need to do this. But if I take everything he's asking for, because he's chasing the shiny objects—that's what us technologists do. Right?

(Mike at 00:27:35) We want to go out there and get the cool stuff. He's like, if I do all of that, how does that impact my margin? How do I stay operational if my margin gets too low? Right? How do I make sure that I'm keeping my top talent, right, by offering the compensation and the salary packages?

(Mike at 00:27:51) Right? There's just so much more, I think, that goes into a CEO role than the CTO role. Right? I mean, I'm given a budget, and that's what I work within. Where I'm the CEO, you're establishing the budgets, not just for the technology, but for your HR, for your marketing, for everything else.

(Mike at 00:28:06) And, you know, I think as a CTO, I'm just taking advantage of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:10) That's true. You're one of the… specific skills is, like, even if you're a CTO and you manage a P&L, right, for your department, as a CEO, you're having to learn how to coach multiple division heads on how to manage their P&L, which is probably something that you haven't had to do as a CTO before. Right.

(Mike at 00:28:27) And I made that decision a few years ago. Right? I had that choice of, like, do I stay as the solution architect, or do I move into a P&L role? Right? I mean, I was having this conversation with somebody earlier.

(Mike at 00:28:38) That P&L role has got a lot more responsibility. Right? I mean, granted, we have to win the proposals that we write. That's our job. And if we fail at our job, the company doesn't grow.

(Mike at 00:28:50) But the account teams, the P&L, are responsible for the relationships with the government entities that provide the information to my guys to write those effective proposals. I think there's a lot more stress and pressure on them than necessarily falls onto my team.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:08) For the last, like, twenty minutes or so here, I want to talk about culture. So we're working on a book, like our second book. And one of the chapters that we're working on over the next couple weeks is culture. And so I wanted to get your take on, like, what is it? How do you define culture?

(Mike at 00:29:28) Wow. That's a good question. Right? And, you know, it's like, as I'm sitting here talking, I'm listening to myself too. And I keep using a word that is not part of our culture.

(Mike at 00:29:36) Right? I keep saying my guys. Right? I don't have a team of guys. I have a diverse team of individuals who all contribute.

(Mike at 00:29:44) Right? So when I think about culture, I think about in our organization, our culture is collaboration. Right? Because there's no way you can respond to as many proposals we do without the team being highly collaborative. Right?

(Mike at 00:30:00) And that means taking input from anywhere. Right? And knowing that everybody's opinion, everybody's contribution has the same value. It may not be right for your proposal, but you can't dismiss it right off the bat because of who it came from. Right?

(Mike at 00:30:16) So it's all about collaboration. So when I think about culture, I think it's my responsibility to make sure that we are promoting what we want our organization to look like and act like and perform, you know, and how they perform. Right? So it's collaborate, be diverse in your thinking. Right?

# Episode 423: The Art of the Possible with Mike Cole, Civilian CTO at GDIT

(Mike at 00:30:36)
Because you have to be. I mean, it's not even about what's coming out of the current presidential administration or what's going on in public arenas. Right? It just makes business sense.

(Mike at 00:30:48)
And it's something that we've always looked at in our organization. It's always been about everybody has equality and equity in delivering that message. So we want to make sure that that's a key part of what we're doing. And then the work hard, play hard mentality. Right? You're going to work really hard while you're writing the proposal, but then you're going to unwind, and then you're going to get back and you've got to do it again. Right?

(Mike at 00:31:03)
And I don't lead from the back. Right? I want to make sure that we're leading from the front and that the leaders on my team are doing the same thing. Because if they're not doing it, how are their staff going to do it? So I mean, I think that's how I look at it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:26)
I don't know if—

(Mike at 00:31:26)
That answers your question by definition, but that's kind of how I look at it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:30)
I like that you brought up the guys thing because it's like language, right? And obviously people want change and we want to be inclusive of people. But at the same time, changing how you speak is not something that's super easy. So what I've done to sort of make it easy for myself is I just assume they're talking about guys and girls when people say guys. And as far as I just think that everybody should give everybody some room.

(Mike at 00:32:06)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm 52 years old. Right? I've been doing this for a while, and I've been out in public for a while doing different things. Right? And you're right. Things just come naturally because of what you're used to saying. Right? I think in our roles as leaders in an organization, it's our responsibility to look at what we're saying and pick up on when we're not saying it right. We need to act with our friends the same way we do in public, because if you don't, it's going to come out. Right? And you have to believe it. I think that's the other thing.

(Mike at 00:32:42)
I think there's a lot of people out there that are just going through the motions, right, because it's what they have to do. I think if you can internalize it and believe it and it becomes your process and part of who you are, then it becomes real to everybody around you. And that's what makes a leader, right, is that your passions come through and your staff and your employees and the people that you engage with see it in you and they're willing to follow you because they're like, "Yeah, this guy knows where he's going and where he wants to go," not just that he's here doing a job.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:15)
I have found there's two types of people. There's people that make an effort and they're good people and they care and they clearly don't want to be offensive, but, you know, they're not going to go on an apology tour, but they're just going to—you know, they have a good spirit. And then there's the people who are just intentionally not using it because they don't like it and they're just trying to cause conflict. I think that we put a lot of effort on the specific words and not a lot of effort on the character of the person and the spirit of the conversation.

(Mike at 00:33:43)
Yeah, I think that's an interesting statement. Right? And I think what I really like—so, you know, being with GDIT as we've gone through this over the last few years. Right? I mean, diversity and inclusion is a big part of our industry because it's a big part of the current presidential administration. Right? And it would be really easy for a company like GDIT to say, "Yeah, we got a program," right, and just checkmark it, right, and move it on. But I engage on a regular basis with our director of DNI. Right? And those are great conversations because it is about making change and making sure that we as an organization are making it a priority, which is cool.

(Mike at 00:34:23)
Right? Because my wife is Puerto Rican. Right? So I mean, I have a diverse family of my own. Right? And it's interesting because I'm from a family that was born and raised in Maine, you know, probably one of the least diverse states in that sense back in the day. Right? So it's interesting to see that, and it's a passion for me because I've got three girls and a boy. They've got a mix, you know, Puerto Rican descent. Right? So I mean, it is important to me to see my company that I work for making it a priority that we do a ton of stuff. I mean, we just held the Women in Technology Conference. I mean, that's a big deal because women are underrepresented in STEM. Right?

(Mike at 00:35:06)
And the fact that GDIT is reaching out there and saying, "Hey, we're going to hold an entire conference to promote this," was pretty cool. It's just awesome to see us doing that type of stuff. Seeing our company take an initiative to do that has been exciting to watch.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:18)
I was thinking a lot about that, and this is definitely off topic. But I was trying to think about, like, you've got all these—specifically, let's say women in tech, or let's say a woman scientist. And she's experiencing somebody being disrespectful based off of her gender. Right? And I mean, I was trying to trace that back to the root. Maybe if she had a dad that would just go down there and punch him in the face. Because I'll tell you what, I have a daughter and a son, and if anybody was intentionally discriminating against my son for being a boy or my daughter for being a girl, I would go down there and talk to them about it. And I think if we had some strong dads out there, I think that's something our nation could use. Because I said, man, so many people, I had this idea and I started asking around and there's so many people that didn't have strong father figures growing up. And I got lucky because I had a great dad growing up. And so I think that we need to bring back the strong male dad.

(Mike at 00:36:24)
I think what's interesting is there's a slight difference maybe on what you said and the way I would approach it. Right? It's not the dad going in and having the conversation with the person who is discriminating against the daughter or the son. It's the dad educating their own kids. That's not acceptable. Right? Because you're probably not going to change that individual because they don't have the right past experiences, but I can influence and change my own children. Right? And that's something that we talk about on a regular basis.

(Mike at 00:37:02)
My family is like, when my son talks back to my wife, right, it's like, that is not acceptable in my house. Right? We don't talk back to our wives that way. We don't talk back to our moms that way, and certainly not to other women that way. Right? And making sure that they realize that they have to take ownership of how they act and how they treat others is pretty important. Right? So I mean, I think that's the one pivot I would say. Right? It's like, absolutely, if somebody's picking on my kids, I'm going to step in. Right? But also taking that moment to educate my child on why that is not acceptable after the fact.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:30)
Yeah. You are much more wise than me. That's exactly it.

(Mike at 00:37:33)
It's the difference in age. We'll go with that. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:35)
Of course. It's experience and experience plays a huge role. That's why I've structured my life to be around experienced people so I could pick up and learn from them. And, back to culture, can you—

(Mike at 00:37:46)
Yes. Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:47)
All right. So here are a couple questions. I'm just going to read three or four questions and you can choose which one you want to respond to or multiple, whatever you want to do. How do you create culture? How do you get teams and staff to buy into it? How do you maintain it? Why is it important?

(Mike at 00:38:05)
So you have to do it with intent. Right? You can't just come in and say, "Well, I want the culture be this," and then just move on. Right? It takes effort to create a culture, and it takes even more effort to maintain it. Right? So you don't have to come in and say what our culture is going to be—like, I talked about collaboration earlier. Right? It's not like I stand in front of the team and I say, "Our goal is to be the most collaborative team in the industry." Right? No. I exemplify it. Right? I do it. Right?

(Mike at 00:38:37)
I show them this is how we do it. "Oh, we got a question. Let's reach across to the other parts of our company to do that. Oh, they need a resource. Let me provide that resource to them to help defense or intel with a bid." Right? And as long as I'm showing it, they'll see it. I don't have to overemphasize the words because I think if you start to say, "This is our objective, this is our mission," you may have some people who don't agree with it. And if they don't agree with it—nobody likes change, right?

(Mike at 00:39:10)
So now you're going to have some hard ones where you may see people leave your organization because you've said something. But if I'm treating everybody equally, if I'm working with everybody the same, if I'm touching base with most of my employees as often as I can, right, whether it's in an all-hands or one-off meetings, then they see what I am trying to get them to do. And I think they're more apt to start doing it because they're like, "Oh, I saw Mike do that. Let me do the same thing."

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:38)
Have there been big shifts in culture between the different federal contracting companies you work with, or is it similar across all of them?

(Mike at 00:39:47)
So, you know, I will say I'm not a person who leaves a company just because I'm chasing financial gain. Right? So I don't want to say why I would leave a company, but, you know, if you think about it, I left the company a few years ago. I didn't leave CSRA. It was acquired by GDIT. And I think what is cool is that we brought our culture with us into GDIT, and we've been able to maintain that. And I'm pretty lucky. The guy who was the CTO before me is now our chief growth officer.

(Mike at 00:40:22)
So him and I—he was a mentor of mine—him and I talk every day. Right? And his approach and his culture, pretty similar to mine, which is probably why we work so well together. Right? So I haven't had to do a whole lot of cultural realignment in my new role. You know, I mean, I've been in this role for about two years now. So I haven't had to do a lot of cultural realignment, which has been a lot easier because I think if you acquire a culture that's similar to yours, there's less change and less impact.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:51)
I see you as an experienced peer. I want to go back to the Twitter thing real quick because we're coming up on time. With the CTO at Twitter becoming the CEO and CEO leaving, I don't think you've been a CEO before, correct?

(Mike at 00:41:03)
I have never been a CEO, no.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:04)
But as a peer to another CTO, and obviously at the level that you're playing at, which is huge with tens of thousands of employees—what would be the one thing that you would pretend you're going to give him advice, the CTO? And we don't have to put this in there, but what's the one thing that you would share with him as he makes this transition? If you guys were buddies and you were hanging out together and fishing or something, he's like, "Hey, what's the one piece of advice you'd give me going from CTO of Twitter to CEO?"

(Mike at 00:41:34)
Remember one thing: you're not always the smartest person in the room and it's okay. Right? I mean, I think that's what for me, that's what I've learned in my job. Right? It's like, I'm not always the best solution architect on a proposal. There are people who have done this job longer and have won more. And you have to recognize that. Right? And it's okay if they work for you. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room to be a success.

(Mike at 00:42:01)
You have to understand what makes each of those people bring their best to their job every day. And if you let them do their best every day and you give them credit, you will be a success.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:17)
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.