Introduction
This week I’m joined by Lisa Davis, the Chief Information Officer at Blue Shield of California.
Lisa joined Blue Shield two weeks before California instituted their ‘stay at home’ requirements due to the pandemic. She goes into her game plan for remote work, the future of work and the more complicated return to work. Lisa shares her perspective on what authentic leadership means and why it is important. She goes further into sharing her take on transformation and the importance of women in leadership.
Speaker Profiles
Lisa Davis Twitter: https://twitter.com/lisam_davis
Lisa Davis LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mako254/
Blue Shield of California: https://www.blueshieldca.com/
Audio File
Featured Hashtags
#CIO #Leadership #WFH #FutureOfWork #Healthcare #DigitalTransformation #CIOitk
Podcast Transcript
Tim Crawford 0:02
The companies are looking for new ways to transform their business to remain relevant and differentiated within their industry. Technology now plays a central role in this transformation. Hello, and welcome to the CIO in the Know podcast, where I take a provocative but pragmatic look at the intersection of business and technology. I’m your host Tim Crawford, a CIO and strategic advisor at Avoa. This week, I’m joined by Lisa Davis, the Chief Information Officer at Blue Shield of California. Lisa joined Blue Shield two weeks before California instituted their stay at home requirements due to the pandemic. She goes into her game plan for remote work, the future of work, and the more complicated return to work. Lisa shares her perspective on what authentic leadership means and why it is important. She goes further into sharing her take on transformation and the importance of women in leadership. Lisa, welcome to the program.
Lisa Davis 1:03
Thank you, Tim. Happy to be here.
Tim Crawford 1:06
Lisa, you’re the Chief Information Officer at Blue Shield of California, and it’s great to have you on the program today. To get us started, why don’t we have folks understand a little bit about who Lisa Davis is, the company that you’re currently working for, and your role as CIO.
Lisa Davis 1:24
Yeah, thank you, Tim. You know, I’ve been in technology my entire career, working in many different industries. I spent the first 26 years of my career growing up in the Department of Defense, went over to academia as the CIO for Georgetown University, and recently spent five years at Intel, both on the IT side, and then had the pleasure of running a PNL in our data center group. The last five months I made a transition into healthcare, really driven by the fact that I believe technology is a great enabler of solving our greatest challenges, and certainly business challenges, and really want it to have an impact and bring technology to help transform healthcare. So, I’ve been now with Blue Shield of California for five months. You know, my friends say way to join a healthcare company in the middle of a pandemic. Yeah, I think the universe set that up, and I was supposed to be here, so I’d like to believe that. And Blue Shield of California is a nonprofit based out of Oakland, California. We have about 7000 employees, about 20 billion in revenue. And what I love about this company is, frankly, our vision and ultimately transforming, improving the healthcare experience, not only for providers, but ultimately with our 4 million members, and with healthcare in general. So, that’s a really exciting mission that we have that brought me here to this company.
Tim Crawford 2:54
Now, that’s great, and what a great place for you to be, but what an interesting time to be joining a company like Blue Shield of California in the middle of a pandemic, as you said, so we’ve had the opportunity to work together a number of times over the years. What’s top of mind for you these days?
Lisa Davis 3:13
You know, Tim, top of mind for me joining one a new organization, I was actually with Blue Shield only for two weeks before we essentially mobilized our entire workforce to work from home. What’s top of mind for me is one, and I think foremost, is the health and well-being of our employees. We are living in interesting times through this COVID crisis, and one of the things that I always say to our employees is, one, make sure you’re taking care of yourself, second, make sure you’re taking care of your families, and then third, what you can contribute back to the mission of Blue Shield California, and I think that’s really important for leaders today to make sure that we’re putting our employees front and center, their well-being, and viewing them more holistically as to what, what, and how we are all managing through this pandemic that we are in. That’s definitely top of mind, you know. And then follow up with that, and joining a new organization is, and the reason I came to Blue Shield, is ultimately driving this healthcare transformation, and the role of the technology organization in doing so. So we are in the process of really shifting our entire operating model, moving it from a service provider role to an integrated business partnership role, which, you know, as you and I have discussed many times, is critical for success of digital transformation overall, and then moving the organization into a portfolio or product model to ultimately support our lines of business and our key horizontal functions, so that in itself is really. A huge mindset shift, cultural shift within the company that I’m currently leading and driving.
Tim Crawford 5:07
That’s incredible. It’s quite a shift, though, for all of us, and we’re all dealing with the virus and the economic crisis. It’s having an impact for each of us in different ways. How do you see that playing out from a future standpoint, over the next 612 18 months, compared with what you might have decided to do as you were going through the interview process to join the organization, maybe six plus months ago.
Lisa Davis 5:34
I think first it all, it has caused all of us in leadership to rethink telework. We’ve been very successful in working from home. I mean, the data shows that our productivity has increased, our net promoter scores have increased as a company, and people are managing and, frankly, excelling with working at home. So, you know, we, I think, constantly, as we continue to be in this current situation, how do we ultimately improve that experience for our employees? What additional collaboration tools do they need? How do we continue to modernize that so that we can create the best experience for them as we continue to work in this return to work, continue to work and work from home, you know. Returning to work is, I think, 100 times more complicated than leaving in the first place. And as a company, we have a task force designed to look at that, that’s representative of all functions within the organization. Unfortunately, the recent increase in infections has caused us to put a pilot that we were looking to kick off in September on hold, which is a great learning opportunity when it comes to our employees and what it’s going to take to keep them healthy and safe, and that is always our number one concern at Blue Shield, keeping our employees safe and healthy. I think data becomes even a more critical component of what we think about in data collection around just the health and wellbeing of our employees as this pandemic continues to exist within our environment. Looking at holistic health, we have a lot of key initiatives around what we call healthcare reimagined. Frankly, as you and I’ve talked about a lot of these initiatives that might have been on the table for 21 and 22 we’re accelerating. Oh,
Tim Crawford 7:29
wow,
Lisa Davis 7:30
we’re trying to accelerate transformation within the company versus stall, so that we ultimately can impact that experience for our providers and members, and that is needed more than ever. If we think about what our providers have gone through, hospitals and our doctors’ offices around, certainly the state of California, and then across the US, and the experience that you and I, as members, not going in for routine checkups, delaying surgeries, trying to find time with a doctor, where you’re not terrified that if I go into the doctor’s office, I’m going to catch COVID,
Tim Crawford 8:06
right?
Lisa Davis 8:07
So lots of things, I think. First of all, tremendous learning in this work from home scenario, applying those learnings as we make decisions on the future work, decisions on ultimately telework and remote employees or contingent workforce decisions on how we continue to leverage data within our company to help us make the right decisions, and then ultimately driving innovation and accelerating the transformation of healthcare work that we’re embarking on.
Tim Crawford 8:39
Now that’s great, and the thing that that I really kind of take away from this is how you’re pointing out the opportunities that this is bringing. You know, a lot of us are focused on the risks and the concerns that the virus crisis and the economic crisis are kind of putting front and center, and I’m sure you’re not ignoring that, but at the same time you’re looking for ways to accelerate those opportunities as much as possible.
Lisa Davis 9:04
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I have a mantra of where can we drive opportunity out of crisis. I mean, we all need to deal with the pandemic, and we are, but within that, where are there opportunities to improve the experience, accelerate our transformation, embark on our vision of where we want to get to, and we can still do all of those things, even though we are now all doing it working from home.
Tim Crawford 9:33
Yeah, and I want to kind of tap into something else, you said around leadership just a minute ago, and something you’ve talked about in the past is this concept of authentic leadership. What do you mean by that?
Lisa Davis 9:46
You know, authentic leadership to me, Tim, is you show up as who you are, not someone else. You bring your full self to that leadership role. You show vulnerability. Where you are open and transparent with your teams and your organizations, and you are true to yourself and your core values, and you represent those core values and the decisions that you make. How you lead the organization, and to me, my core values are kind of my true north that help me make decisions every day, and you know, through this pandemic and our employees working from home, I think it’s even more important to show up and be real. Hey, we’re all struggling with this, it’s just not you or someone else. How can I help you? What’s going on? Opening up even more lines of communication. I think communication, you know, I’ve always believed you can never over communicate, but now in this pandemic, it’s really critical. Turn your videos on, you know, see the person that you’re engaging with, ask how instead of diving into a meeting to talk about whether the task was completed or not. Take a minute to say, How are you doing? Is everything going okay at home? How’s the family doing? I just think that type of leadership during these critical times is more important than ever.
Tim Crawford 11:23
Yeah, and I see this more and more, where the first few minutes of each conversation starts out with how are you doing, how is your family doing, what’s new in your life, how are things going?
Lisa Davis 11:35
Yeah, what are you struggling with? How can I help you? And you know, and I think there’s lots of ways to increase that communication, you know. One of the things we do, a weekly all managers call at Blue Shield, sharing information on COVID on key initiatives through the company, taking employees’ questions. You know, I host coffee chats where I say, ‘Ask me anything, and just open up the dialog of communication to see how people are feeling, how people are doing is really important,
Tim Crawford 12:08
and I love that. But let me push back on something, though, because I could just imagine some folks that might be listening to this and say, okay, I love that, I wish that my organization, my culture within within my group were such that I could be transparent, I could be forthcoming, I could be vulnerable, and so they might hesitate to open up about those things. What would be your suggestion to them?
Lisa Davis 12:36
Well, it’s certainly true that the culture of organizations are different, you know. I would even say the culture at Intel is very different than the culture of Blue Shield of California. Although we did put people front and center, I think leaders are all very different. This is why you and I have talked about what does it mean to be an authentic leader, and how do you engage and connect with people within your organization and company, and it’s just not the IT organization, frankly. As a senior leader, your role is to provide that support throughout the entire company. So, for folks that don’t have it, I think you know, starting with starting one on one with your immediate supervisor or manager. First of all, holding it in, certainly, if you’re struggling, isn’t going to serve anyone good. You’re often ultimately not going to bring your best to the workplace. You have other things that are on your mind, and whether it’s comfortable or not, sharing that, maybe it’s with an HR person, if it’s not with your direct supervisor, if it’s.. if your supervisor isn’t, you’re not comfortable in doing it, maybe there’s a skip level that you can go to, but I think it’s what’s most important is that you share it, certainly if you’re struggling, and I think once you bring your views or concerns to the table, I mean, in fact, you’re essentially helping almost reverse coaching that leader as to what you need to be more productive to be ultimately a better employee for the company, and if that’s with solving issues at home, sobbing issues of how you’re struggling, maybe working from home, maybe you don’t have the right tools or capabilities, or there’s other, and we, and we’ve seen there is a whole plethora of issues that’s right that our employees are dealing with during this pandemic, so you know, I would encourage you start somewhere, and there must be someone within that organization, maybe it’s not in your direct chain, maybe it’s with HR, maybe it’s with employee assistant, maybe it’s with a skip level that you begin to have that dialog, and then I think you ultimately have to ask yourself a question at the end of the day, the company that you work with, that you’re working for, should be aligned to the core values and who. You are, and what you expect, and if that alignment isn’t there, then I think you should ask yourself, is this ultimately where I should be? I think Tim, you and I talked about life’s too short, that’s right, why be miserable, right? And there’s lots of job opportunities, even during this pandemic, you know. I’ll just put a plug in, I’m hiring, I’m hiring a lot of people, so you know, a lot of folks think everything’s on hold and hiring isn’t taking place. Nope, that’s the furthest from the truth. I’ve got hundreds of positions I’m hiring for, even within my own organizations.
Tim Crawford 15:33
Wow, that’s great.
Lisa Davis 15:33
So find a place where you’re fit, where you feel that you feel that you can really blossom and connect with who you are as an individual and aligned to the vision and the values of that company.
Tim Crawford 15:44
Yeah, that’s great. And you know it aligns with something you just said a few minutes ago, which is when you start that conversation with someone, you’re asking them how they are individually, and then ensuring that they are their family is okay, and then what they can contribute to the organization in that order,
Lisa Davis 16:02
and that order,
Tim Crawford 16:04
and that’s incredibly important, because if the individual is not wholesome and their family unit is not well, it’s going to be really hard for them to contribute, especially right now, as we’re all working from home.
Lisa Davis 16:17
Absolutely, you know, I think back to, you know, we think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. What is foundational in terms of what I need to be at my best?
Tim Crawford 16:28
Yeah,
Lisa Davis 16:29
how do I be at my best? How you know, one of the things I think about every day, and I wake up, I think I wake up today with more gratitude than I ever have of what my family is safe and healthy, and I’m really reflective on that of taking care of me and my family and supporting the organization, and that should be foundational.
Tim Crawford 16:52
Yep,
Lisa Davis 16:53
and then you think about right, if we think about that hierarchy of needs of to reach my peak potential, what ultimately is I’m looking for, and can that come, can the company I’m working for ultimately support me in what I believe my peak potential
Tim Crawford 17:09
is. Yeah, and you know, I’ve even seen that personally in our conversations, just in the last six months. I, you know, I’ve known you for a period of time before, and just in the last six months, I can see that in the private conversations that you and I have, and so I would just amplify that. When you think about how things have changed for you, I mean, you joined the organization right before this work from home restriction came about here in California. How has it really kind of changed transformation in your mind for the company, and just who you are, and how you’re transforming your culture, your organization. What are some of those aspects that have evolved?
Lisa Davis 17:50
Think what has evolved is, you know, first of all, joining a new company, you know, you’re always ramping in that first year, learning the company, learning the culture, learning your organization, getting to know your peers and your employees, building relationships. So, interesting dynamic now, when you’re doing that all virtually, and I think it takes more of a leader to be front and center in that communication with the team and the organization, and to be creative as to how we are communicating that you can reach people when you’re driving transformational change, we all know transformational change is difficult, and you know the saying goes, it’s not that technology is hard, you know culture eats strategy for breakfast, so the culture is front and center, and for me, I think it starts with building relationships, having the team get to know who I am, what my vision is, what we’re trying to accomplish, understanding the opportunities within the organization, areas that we need to continue to modernize or drive to, and ultimately laying out a strategy and plan of how we’re going to do that as we operate in this pandemic. You know, one of the things I do as a way of communicating, Tim, is I do a weekly video vlog with my team, and I post it on Yammer, and I’m just sharing my thoughts of how the week went, where we’re currently at in our operating model work. What’s coming up next, and to keep my team moving with me in this journey, and you know, going back to how can I continue to do that.
Tim Crawford 19:36
Yeah,
Lisa Davis 19:37
so throughout the company, not only are we transforming, as I share to this new operating model of it as a strategic business partner, moving to portfolios and product teams, so that we have customer-facing teams supporting and aligning our key lines of business, but the business itself and all the initiatives that we have under what we call Healthcare Reimagine. And we’re accelerating those, so not only I’m kind of pivoting the Titanic, because you know the end of the day, you got to keep the trains on the tracks, you still got to deliver operational excellence, and I’m a firm believer that if you can’t do the basics, that you’re not welcome at the table to talk about innovation and transformation, so you got to deliver on operational excellence. You got to have execution. You got to show results, and at the same time learning the business of healthcare, understanding what these initiatives are doing, and then how does technology support from a foundational element, but also a critical component, whether it’s data and analytics, artificial intelligence, and to ultimately create the vision and change that we’re driving to within healthcare.
Tim Crawford 20:49
Yeah, and that’s just so important for so many different reasons, but at the same time, you know, it takes a village. It takes a village to bring this together. It’s not just about Lisa and Lisa’s organization, it takes folks outside of your organization. It even takes folks outside of your company to kind of come together, but one of the things that, and as I shift gears, I kind of think about this, it takes a village concept. One of the things of many that I know you’re passionate about is women in leadership positions, and I know in past roles you’ve done a lot of work in this space. Maybe you can take a minute and talk about that, and talk about your perspective on women as leaders, especially during this time.
Lisa Davis 21:31
I am passionate about, and, and you know, and we’ve made great progress, but as you and I know, Tim, there’s still considerable work to be done to see women and C level positions, certainly as CEOs, the numbers are actually decreasing as women and CIOs and CEOs versus going the other way. So, there, there still is a lot of work to do, and you know, even at my time at Georgetown University, and you know, in leading the executive women’s group at Intel, and now being involved in healthcare. I think one of the things that makes me happy is I actually do see more women in healthcare, and one of the things I’m extremely proud of, of Blue Shield, is our diversity efforts, where 50% of our executives are women at Blue Shield of California. Love that,
Tim Crawford 22:20
that’s awesome.
Lisa Davis 22:21
Hasn’t, haven’t necessarily seen that right. Certainly didn’t see that in Department of Defense, or in high tech, or in academia. So, there’s more work to do, and it starts with our girls at a younger age of role modeling, encouraging, encouraging them to take STEM fields, preparing that, building their confidence in doing that, and when we talk about female leadership, you know, many people will say, well, women are more empathetic, so they’re better as leaders during this, you know, if we use this pandemic, but you know, I got to say that I think that’s a generalization. Okay, I’ve had a lot of great, great men bosses that are just as empathetic as leaders, and I’ve had some women bosses that probably didn’t have a bone of empathy that you know they had. So, I think it’s, you know, it’s kind of a generalization, or women more in turn, I think, as being mothers, or, you know, the roles that we play in our families, whether or not I’m a mom or not, they certainly don’t want to say that only if I’m my mom, you know, am I empathetic, but the roles that we play, you know, whether it’s, you know, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, taking care of elderly parents, I think there is, you know, who we are as compassionate human beings. If you are authentic and can bring that to the workplace, and I think it’s really needed and welcome, but that’s not saying that men can’t do that too. So, I think there’s an opportunity for both men and women, and both men and women need to be part of the story of allowing creating opportunities for women to continue to advance in the workforce.
Tim Crawford 24:09
Yeah, I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. You know, the challenge is with men. I mean, men need to think about what hurdles we inadvertently put up, or maybe some are overtly putting up hurdles that are preventing those young ladies from coming up through the rank and file and and getting into leadership roles within the organization. I would love to see more women in leadership roles, not just in tech, but in leadership roles more broadly,
Lisa Davis 24:37
in general. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think we all grow up with unconscious bias. I don’t think you know. Sometimes we do it on purpose. We have this unconscious bias based on how we were raised, where we were raised, what our core beliefs are. I think one of the things that’s terrific is one, you know, educating what is our unconscious biases. You know, I didn’t even know I was. Doing x. Thank you for pointing that out. Simple things as having diversity on hiring panels, because we know the data says you hire people that are more like you. That’s another unconscious bias. Yeah, so diversity in hiring panels really engaging with our young girls. You know, what are the key fields of the future, it’s okay, you can be cool and still be a math major, or you know, you know, having this own conversation with my 17 year old daughter, who’s going to be a senior, senior this year. So, there’s a lot of work to be done. I think first and foremost, it’s about authentic leadership, and I think it’s possible, and I’ve seen it both in men and women, and that ultimately I think what makes the difference within the organization.
Tim Crawford 25:47
Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more, and kind of to that same point, as your 17 year old, I have a 12 year old daughter, and her favorite subject is science, and I’m like, yes,
Lisa Davis 25:58
awesome, yeah, is
Tim Crawford 25:59
we kind of think about that empathy, though. You know, that empathy exudes in our leadership style, right? Not just in the charisma, but in how we think about how we treat other people. As we think about leadership, you think about the future of work, how that’s evolving. We’ve talked, I know, in the past about return to work. What’s your take on how this is going to evolve, and how return to work, what that’s going to look like in the future?
Lisa Davis 26:27
I think ultimately remote work will continue to increase. I would say there’s been a bias that you know, remote work or telework, if you’re not seen, you’re not heard, you’re not as productive. I think we’ve blown that off the canvas there into those beliefs. So, I think we’ll see an increase in remote work. I think we’ll see an increase in thinking about end user experience collaboration tools. How do we recreate as best as we can that experience to engage with coworkers, engage with our employees, engage with our partners and suppliers as we continue to move forward, so I think that’s a real exciting area of how, how we can do that. I think you’re going to see expanded data collection, I mean, we know that data is always front and center, and we’ve talked about data being at the center of helping make business decisions and drive differentiated outcomes. I think data is going to be even more so at the center as we think about the well-being of our employees, decisions that we often ultimately need to make. I think one of the things to think about is, you know, we’ve been designing our organizations, and even with the use of technology, Tim, you know, we talk about automation and removing manual processes and machine learning, etc. but it’s not just designing for efficiency, it’s designing for resiliency today, and I think that resiliency, as we think about our supply chains and the lessons learned through this pandemic, the resiliency of our employees. I think there’s going to be a new effort of kind of this humanizing of our employees as people versus just workers. You know, it’s a really interesting dynamic now, as we’ve talked about, you know, as I talk about our priorities. How are you taking care of yourself? How are you doing with your family? And then what can you contribute back to the mission of Blue Shield, or the mission of the company that’s going to become front and center? I think I, and I love that pivot,
Tim Crawford 28:37
that’s great
Lisa Davis 28:38
thinking about our employee workforce, and that standpoint, kind of the humanization of our workforce, and what that means, because we were kind of on this trend with this whole machine learning, artificial intelligence of, you know, you can have lots of dialog of, you know, technology replacing jobs, so it’s an interesting pivot now with we’re certainly seeing an acceleration of transformation capabilities, not that manual work processes aren’t being removed, but now there’s a humanization element tied to it that I think didn’t exist quite before. As we think about our workforce capital strategy. How do we help continue to develop and grow in our employees and ultimately develop them for the skills of the future that we need within the organization? So, there’s those are just some of that, some of the things that I’m thinking about will change as we continue to work through this.
Tim Crawford 29:38
No, that’s great. And so, as we kind of wrap on the episode, you know, it was like to ask this question, and I think for you it takes a more personal note, which is, you’ve been a CIO a number of times, I’ve had the opportunity to work very closely with you in the past. What excites you most now about the role of the CIO and serving as a CIO again?
Lisa Davis 29:59
Well. I say to my team, I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to be in technology. We’ve been saying that, though. You know, as we talk about digital transformation, and you and I have had these dialogs, even when I was at Intel, about the role of technology within this era, this digital era that we’re operating in. You know, disrupt or be disrupted,
Tim Crawford 30:20
that’s right,
Lisa Davis 30:21
and the use of technologies, data and analytics, machine learning, ultimately artificial intelligence are no longer differentiators, but they’re imperatives to ultimately survive in this market, and it doesn’t matter what sector you’re in, whether you’re in healthcare, whether you’re in high tech, whether in your manufacturing, it’s applicable across all sectors. I think what’s most exciting for me of the role of CIO is in the healthcare sector, the opportunity for change and impact, the ability to partner with my business colleagues, you know, I learned something new every day as I work with our chief medical officer and folks that have been in this industry for so long. That’s what excites me, is that growth mindset and learning, bringing my expertise and knowledge and my teams regarding technology tools and applying that to ultimately transform the healthcare experience. I don’t think there’s nothing more important, and even, you know, the pandemic has accelerated the need for that to happen. So, love what I’m doing. I’m excited about what the future brings, and the impact that technology, myself and my organization, with our partners, certainly a Blue Shield of what we’re doing together.
Tim Crawford 31:51
That’s great, Lisa Davis. We’re going to leave it right there. That was a great place to end again. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and insights and perspective. It’s always a pleasure chatting with you,
Lisa Davis 32:03
Tim. Always a pleasure. Yes, I’m glad we got the opportunity to do this, and I look forward to chatting again soon.
Tim Crawford 32:10
Thank you. For more information on the CIO in the Know podcast, visit us online at CIO in the know.com You can also find us on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts, please subscribe, and thank you for listening. Thank.
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