Joe Toste:
Today, we have Eric Prosser, who is the AD of IT at Santa Clara County Housing Authority. Eric, welcome to TechTables.
Eric Prosser:
Thanks for having me, Joe. Totally excited about this.
Joe Toste:
Yeah, I'm really excited. We actually got to connect in person, which was fantastic, at the Public Sector Network Conference in Sacramento this past week.
Eric Prosser:
Absolutely.
Joe Toste:
It was a ton of fun. Super grateful for the folks who threw that at the Public Sector Network. And for those of you who don't know, Public Sector Network is a global network of public sector professionals and they share best practices through social learning and community engagement. Eric was actually a speaker there, which was fantastic. And I actually missed Eric's talk as I went to go FaceTime with my wife because I had been on the road. Hopefully they'll have that recorded and I'll be able to catch that back sometime soon. Yeah. Do you have anything, Eric?
Eric Prosser:
I was going to say you didn't miss anything. It was all good though. It was a panel of us so we had several questions and, of course, in those venues, you can only scratch the surface as you dive into things.
Joe Toste:
Yeah, I always feel bad for the speakers. You've got three or four up there. You've got 30 minutes. It's just always so hard to do justice to whatever topic you're trying to cover, but I'm glad we got you on TechTables, so we'll go a little bit deeper today.
Eric Prosser:
Yeah, absolutely.
Joe Toste:
So before we jump in today's episode, this podcast is sponsored by Nagarro Public Sector. Nagarro Public Sector excels at helping senior technology leaders in digital disruption from cloud to AI to big data to digital product engineering and system integration work across platforms. To learn more about Nagarro Public Sector, just check out nagarro.com.
Joe Toste:
Okay, Eric. So the Santa Clara County Housing Authority leads an important mission in helping folks in the community find permanent housing. I'm curious first from a people side and then from a technology side, what attracted you to the housing authority?
Eric Prosser:
So I actually heard about this through a friend of mine, and they had come in and they did an assessment with the IT folks who were there and they were implementing a strategic plan that came out of that. So I think I was tapped to come and help them because they needed an interim director to come in and help the team get up and running and make sure that the things that they set forth that they would be able to go execute those things. And so that was how I came into the agency.
Eric Prosser:
But it's interesting. There were a couple of things that when I arrived. They had some technology that needed to be updated. They had some things that just were outstanding, and so we had to execute those. Cybersecurity is a big thing. When you walk into a venue, you do a very quick assessment of, okay, where actually are things? And so that was a big area that we jumped on. One of the things that I saw were some skillset issues, and so I wanted to build those skillsets so I sent staff to some training. Every summer, there's this big venue called Black Hat and DEFCON. I'm not sure who pays attention to that stuff, but that was one of the things that I look at, is, hey, if you want to know what's going on, you need to be attending that. So I made sure staff is participating in that.
Eric Prosser:
And then on the human side, I would say that the team needed some leadership from the aspect of you need to empower your employees. And so one of the things that really came to me was I trust people up front. So when I walked in, my staff, I trust that they know what they're doing, and I wanted to make sure that they had all the power that they needed to continue doing their jobs and rolling that forward. And so making sure that they had that.
Eric Prosser:
And then basically the next thing, if you talk about the human capital or how does technology play with this whole housing authority thing because if you think about IT, as technologists, we get focused in our little niche of, oh, we need to make sure that the lights are on and the lights blink and all this computer stuff. And we talk computer, cybersecurity and all this other stuff and that's all good, but then it's like, why are we there? So some of this is, what I instill into my team, is when they look at staff, it's not just that I'm making sure computer functions, but it's actually these are their tools. And so if you think of these tools, when you hand it to somebody, it just works. So the late Steve Jobs would say, "We want it to just work."
Eric Prosser:
And so that's the philosophy I have, is I want to put tools in front of our staff so when they do their job, they don't have to be an IT person. I need them to actually focus on what their forte is, which is providing people housing or the capability of getting into housing, and so we need to make sure their tools function. And then if there's a way that my team can then do creative things to help them in that process, we're beginning to take more of a strategic role and providing housing for folks who are in need. And so that is that blend of it's not just technology, but a lot of times, we have to think, what are we here for and what are we doing as an agency and bringing that mission forward.
Eric Prosser:
So those are the things that came to when I first walked in and that's what drove me with the housing authority. And a funny story is my dad actually was the controller of a housing authority in the Central Valley of California. So that was years ago and he has since passed away, but it was very full circle where all of a sudden, I'm working at a housing authority and I was like, "Wait. I remember when my dad used to talk about the old IBM system that did all their finances and some old school stuff," but funny how that story came about and now I'm at a housing authority.
Joe Toste:
Yeah. Taking after your father's footsteps. So you mentioned cybersecurity and skillset. Where on the technology front right now do you see the landscape? Obviously, I know cybersecurity is important for every agency right now. I'm just curious if there's a few other areas that you're focused on, whether that's cloud or specific digital services that you're deploying at the housing authority or ideas for the future on the technology side.
Eric Prosser:
Yeah. If you just focus on the technology side, I see three areas. It's going to be data, networking and application. If we really look at infrastructure and our traditional government space, the private sector is light years ahead of us in some of these areas. Some of the private sector is not. But in the government space, I think the tendency is to say, "I control it. I'm going to do it. I have to have it in my data center." And a lot of my peers, that's where they are. I sit back and go, "That's not where technology is moving." And so we need to think about networking as a primary function of a team because you're going to have a combination of people. You're going to have people that like to come into a building, people that like to work at home, and then the combo of people who do both. And so a network has to exist in order to make that function. So that's one piece that a team needs to be made up of.
Eric Prosser:
The other part is applications. So we're the experts a lot of times in the applications, and there's a blend of different things out in the industry where you have IT responsible for some of that subject matter expertise in the applications. Sometimes that's a blend over into the department space that they're the subject matter experts. And so that combination and figuring that dynamic out, it's a key part of how applications function and how you support them. And so then it comes down to was it software as a service that exists in the cloud that you're supporting or is it something that you're doing on-prem? Again, that a philosophical adjustment. A lot of software companies are moving to the cloud so you're not really going to get the option. You'll move to a subscription service versus posting that stuff on your site.
Eric Prosser:
And then the last one is data, data being, and we talked about this at the conference, and so data is a huge one and it's one that we a lot of time and still to this day, I've been in this industry way too long to say that we've mastered data because a lot of times, we collect data and then we don't do anything with it. And so we just do all this unnecessary work but we're not producing anything. And so that's been a big space that I see a lot of us really utilizing, what are we collecting? We can create all these dashboards and everything, but again, if we're not looking at the dashboards or that data that we produce those dashboards with, if it's not being utilized, then why did we create it?
Eric Prosser:
So we really need to understand what is it that we're trying to accomplish, how does that data knowledge in that dashboard or whatever means that we're providing it, how does that work for us to get us to the next step? How is that making us make better decisions? And then the IT team needs to make sure that we're a part of that and making sure that happens and ask the hard question. A lot of times, we just don't. We just go, oh, okay, we'll collect that. Instead of saying, why are we collecting it? What are we doing with that data? And how is that going to benefit us as we move forward? So those are the three areas that I've seen things.
Joe Toste:
Yeah. I like that. There are two pieces I was curious about. The first one, the model between SaaS, on-prem, hybrid. Where is your philosophy? Where do you fall? Do you have a cloud first strategy or are you seeing it more as a hybrid model?
Eric Prosser:
I come from more of a hybrid model because I think you need to do what's right for you. It depends on where you are and what your agency is doing. I think in the government sector, there are some limitations to being able to do certain things, so you might end up in a hybrid environment. If you can go all cloud and that is the right thing to do for whoever it is that you're doing it for, I'm a hundred percent on board. I don't have a problem with it because technically, if you really think of how the technology functions, whether it's in the cloud or on-prem, it's not really any different. It's a matter of who owns the equipment to keep it updated. If you can pay somebody else, they give you the key.
Eric Prosser:
So for instance, let's just use AWS, Azure, whoever. They provide that means. They actually hand you the keys to maintain and monitor and do all the things that you do with the equipment that you now are renting, if you will, and it's your data center. So you're the one that's controlling all of that. They're basically washing their hands and saying, "Once you have the keys and the password, we don't have any access to it anymore." And so I think from that standpoint, you're just picking a platform.
Joe Toste:
Yeah. And then the other thing that I picked up on was you're obviously ingesting, and I think a lot of agencies ingest, a lot of data. And are you partnering with anyone in the private sector to make sense of that data or is it just going into a giant repository and be like, someday I'll figure this out?
Eric Prosser:
Today, it's the latter. But I think as we look at data right now, especially with our housing authority, we have some new leadership that just recently came in, and data is a huge thing for us. And so we're trying to figure out what do we do with that data and how can we affect the people that we're serving. And so some of that is beginning to create this opportunity for us. For example, if we look at the data and see how are the kids doing in the places that we're supporting and that we're providing housing to, those kids, and being at their schools, what are some of the demographics at those schools for those kids and how are they performing? Are there opportunities for them? Is there a way that we can get in there and how can we as an agency support them and help to make change at that foundational level? Yeah. Their parents are in housing and maybe that's being helped in that space, but these kids are up and coming and how can we get on the ground floor with them and help them with technology?
Eric Prosser:
And some of that data drives us of what to focus on because we ... and that's data that we don't necessarily own. So we have to build those partnerships, and we haven't yet, but that's what we're initially beginning to do.
Eric Prosser:
There's another company out of San Francisco that we're in touch with that actually provides internet access. I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head right now, but the company actually is working by providing free access to the internet, and we'll be working with them hopefully in the South Bay and doing some of that with some of our agencies and the places that we're building and so forth.
Joe Toste:
Yeah, that's great. And then back on the people side, there was something you said that is not talked about enough but it's allowing your employees to have that creativity, which I really like how you said that and giving them the tools and not having them actually having to be IT. Or they're spending time asking for what their admin password is to install a program or all these things where I think normally in startup culture, it's show time. And I think bringing that, there's focusing on the most important work I think is what really separates agencies that do really great work. They're not focused on admin, just stuff that weighs you down that isn't core to the mission of the agency. So I really liked how you brought up the creativity aspect.
Eric Prosser:
It's interesting because if you look at when you walk into a team, and especially in the IT space and I know I'm generalizing a lot of things when I say this, is that when we walk into teams, a lot of times, your staff will be like, "I want to create job security. And my job security is that I move this block from this spot to this spot. And I repeat that over and over again." And so if we're doing administrative things manually and I'm thinking that's actually providing job security for my role, I look at IT as a leader of that's really lame because you're focusing on something that's totally repeatable, automated, automatable, that's a word in the dictionary, it is today.
Eric Prosser:
If you can automate things, if you can, I call it being a lazy admin, your goal is to be a lazy admin because you don't want to have to get up at 2:00 in the morning to go run something or to execute something. You want it to do it at 2:00 in the morning when you're sleeping. And then when you wake up, you look at all the results and then you execute what you need to do next.
Eric Prosser:
And so if I can automate things and eliminate a lot of the repetitive type stuff, so then I can go focus on more of the creative things that are what I call the hard stuff. Then you can actually go do and bring value that otherwise would be missed out on because if I'm focused on the minutia of getting stuff done, I'm not getting to do that creative side. And so the example being is that what if we had some data that said, "Gosh. If we got out and we did some volunteer work in some of the classrooms, in some of the schools that exist in these areas that we're supporting, that gives my team the ability to have a team event. We can do some team building. We're affecting the people that are directly recipients of the services that we're providing. We're using the data that helped us to understand what we need to focus on. And now we're actually participating and doing something fun that is directly affecting a person in what they're doing going forward in life."
Eric Prosser:
And so now I'm not just focused on the blinky light. I don't need the blinky lights to tell me what to do. It should just work, and I should make those repeatable things as much as automated as I can get it.
Joe Toste:
Yeah. When you say repeatable and automated, are you referring to RPA? Are there other technologies that you're thinking about? How are you processing that?
Eric Prosser:
So to be honest with you, I'm looking at the simple stuff. If you deploy machines to staff because people are going to need a computer to do their work, so the ideal thing is you work with your vendor. You create an opportunity to where when that device gets delivered, they can open it up. They log in and it configures itself because you've built the behind the scenes stuff to function and make that experience easy for an end user. That way, I'm not sitting ... because the old days would be that I get the device. I have to open it up. I have to go create my image. I have to build all the things on that image. And then I hand it over to the person and they sign in and then I configure some more stuff, and then there's a printer that I forgot to do.
Eric Prosser:
There's so much repeatable things that could be automated that if we just spend a bit more time on the creative side of fixing all of that, and then when I hand it to you and you open that up, your experience is ... bam. There's no worried about what printer I'm going to print to and how this is set up and all that. It's just done.
Joe Toste:
Yeah. This is actually a really important conversation because I've worked at some software companies in the past. And you see firsthand, and my wife, she was actually a teacher at Santa Barbara City College, and one of the things I saw when she was teaching was like, and it was pretty funny where they would give her, oh, we have Wi-Fi at ouer house, but they gave her a hotspot specifically to use and she's teaching on Zoom. And the system, so I think system plus automation allows your employees to unleashed their creativity, but the system was terrible because the system was like, log in then you got to do this VPN. You got to talk to somebody. You got to chat. You got to get approval. And just really layers and layers of I guess I'll just call it fat that weighs down people.
Joe Toste:
And when she's, "Hey, I have to work on a hotspot," or something like that, I'm like, "What are you talking about? We have Wi-Fi, and here's my iPhone right here. You want a hotspot here? Here it is. We are in a great situation. We've got great internet and the school was setting up all of these roadblocks. And I think the best leaders now, especially ones who have had that I think that private sector experience, come in and are checking stuff up. Obviously, the pandemic came in and people didn't have a choice because they had to ... what the forcing function, it just really cut out the you've got no option. You are working at your house. So now you just have to figure out how to make it happen, and you got to get online and you've got to get ... So I love that.
Joe Toste:
I think creating those simple systems that eliminate the stuff that is not important is really critical. I'm a business owner, small business owner. I have to eliminate all of the unnecessary. I cannot work on ... Yeah, you just got to cut it out. There's nothing left in you. I think folks have to be able to set up those systems. I've got systems. I leverage automation, and agencies are leveraging automation in a really great way, and then that allows us to have these creative podcasts where we're having an awesome conversation and maybe there's another agency in another city who's, "Okay. So I need to maybe think about what systems I have in place right now that if I fix this system, I might actually retain my employees because they can be more creative and they have that opportunity." So really important conversation.
Eric Prosser:
You bring up some good points. So if you think about it for your wife at home, she goes home, she takes a device. And then if it's a pain in the neck to connect, just to get connected, that experience alone just puts a sour taste in your mouth and the experience is not positive. And so I look at it from the stance of so there's a skillset issue with your staff. So obviously, staff are going to have to be boned up on how this automation stuff works, how to build the behind the scenes stuff. So again, there's a creativity, this is the hard stuff. You have to spend time getting that experience and you have to dive into these tools.
Eric Prosser:
And I got to tell you. Hiring these people are not easy because a lot of times, people don't necessarily have the skills. They have them in various different areas, but sometimes it's just getting in there, diving in and figuring out, how can I make this faster, better, easier, because your Microsofts or whoever are not necessarily going to be there to hold your hand. And a lot of these consulting companies, even though they say they have all the experience, they have just scratching the surface experience to where they'll get you so far and then they're like, "Oh," and they struggle with it too.
Eric Prosser:
And so sometimes, I found even my own teams being more advanced than some of people that we're hiring. And so it's just like, oh. You build that. You have to create the automation behind the scenes and then that makes the experience on the other end better, but you got to spend that time. And that's the thing that you have to enable employees to have to be able to go play in that environment and experiment with it so they can make that happen.
Joe Toste:
Yeah. I love what you said about experience and what you said about faster, cheaper, better. Oh, I said cheaper. You said faster, better, easier. And then I was going to throw in cheaper. I had a team lead, who had always said that to me when I worked at ... Off camera, we were talking I think maybe before, but I used to work at Yardi Systems way back in the day. I had a ton of fun there learning, but I had a team lead who constantly was on me about the experience part for the customers, which is great.
Joe Toste:
So you mentioned on our podcast intro call about moving from cleaning up legacy software and systems to deploying current technology. I was just curious what technology deployments are important, I think, just on the macro. It doesn't have to be specifically to Santa Clara, but just with your experience on macro, what are the most important technologies for the housing authority?
Eric Prosser:
It's interesting because I think, and there's a struggle across the nation, I'm with a group of CIOs across the nation with all the different housing authorities, and we struggle with one of the vendors that you mentioned, is which vendor is the best one to use? They all have their issues. They all have their forte. It's a matter of what's going to work for us best and what's going to fit in our environment. It's interesting. When I say clean up, some of that comes down to, as we were talking before, some of it is spending some time behind the scenes cleaning up how we're actually going about doing the job that we're doing, and are we spending so much time in that minutia that if we spend maybe a couple of days focused on how can we eliminate that and make it easier even for us to support it, we should focus on that.
Eric Prosser:
The other areas that I see, and this was even mentioned at the conference, is that I think one of the top five things that they saw for 2022, which was wireless or I think it was Wi-Fi 6 or something that they mentioned. I too see that wireless, it's going to be big. It's bigger than what it is today. So for example, I'm looking at if I have to expand into a different building and I need to push employees over into a different building, to get that up and running, you could say, "Gosh. I want to get fiber over there so I have to plan ahead." The vendors sometimes take a month before you can actually get the fiber lit up in that building, depending on how things are laid out. And once you get things up and running and then you can light it up and then you got to run the wires and then you have to do all this different stuff, where nowadays I can take technology, I can put some very few things in the closet. I can run some APs and I can do gigabit to the desktop through the wireless.
Eric Prosser:
And so if I can accomplish that, I don't have to run a bunch of wires anymore. Now I just need to make sure that my config for the laptops that are out there or even desktops, and desktops can be wireless as well, you just push that policy out to them and they can consume that. And then that machine just connects automatically and you're good to go.
Eric Prosser:
So those are some things that I look at that when you walk in aren't necessarily planned out or they're not necessarily laid out well or they don't have a plan at all. And so cleaning up some of that, there's the data side of it. And by the way, here's an interesting part of data. I know a lot of people still use drives they're connecting to and storing their files. But I got to tell you, I don't know if you've seen drives, but drives are usually a mess. They're just like a file cabinet. The stuff gets thrown in there and it's really old. Nobody cleans it out. It sits there and I back up terabytes of it.
Eric Prosser:
And so here I am, backing all these terabytes that we don't even need to keep, but yet nobody has any time to go through there and clean all that stuff out. A lot of that needs cleaning. I think there are some really good opportunities for us to use tools that can help us in that space that we just don't focus on. And we need to sometimes just spend a little bit of attention on it to get people to migrate into that view and change how things are kept, created and purged over time.
Joe Toste:
On episode 19 of the TechTables podcast, I actually had, I think it was the second public sector CIO, Brian Benn, CIO at the Atlanta Housing Authority. Shout out to Brian. He actually messaged me. He wants to come back on TechTables. He said, "Joe, I need to do round two with you." He spoke about his vision for the public housing authority in Atlanta. And Eric, I was just curious. What's your vision for the Santa Clara Housing?
Eric Prosser:
With the new leadership that we have, I think the desire is to really begin to look at how can we get more people and serve more people with what we have? And as I look at that from a technology perspective, my goal is to make sure that all the foundation that we have can actually build that momentum. And if my team can help in making that happen, that's what we're going to do. So I believe some of that is going to be data driven, and that data drive will be back to what you were asking earlier, is building the partnerships with private entities, with other agencies, and even looking at some of the things like schools and so forth. We're going to be building those relationships.
Eric Prosser:
And then creating means of collecting that data that we can get our hands on, and looking and massaging that data into meaningful solutions that we can then turn around and say, okay, we're going to focus on this because this is what the data is telling us. And then that would help us as an agency to be able to serve the focus that we do in the Silicon Valley. So over 50% of the people that we serve are the elderly and disabled, so you got to think about that population, especially in the Bay. The Bay is super expensive to live. And so a lot of the retired community unity or the disabled community, they don't have the kind of funds that would support living in this area. And so with that happening, that's why we serve so many people that we serve. And so how can we help to foster that and to build upon what we already are doing going forward?
Eric Prosser:
From a technology perspective, I want to be the leader. I want other agencies to look at what we're doing and say, "I want to do that." And we can assist them and help them to go forward and do what we're already doing. And if we can lead that effort to make that happen, we're in the Silicon valley, we should be leading. And if we're not leading, my question is why not? That's at least my drive to it.
Joe Toste:
Oh, I love that. Now, a question I have in my head that I'm thinking about right now is what does leading or being number one in the housing authority look like across the US? You don't have to answer that. It's just something I'm thinking about. And then the demographics are interesting that you said that 50% are elderly and that brings a different challenge. I remember my grandfather. He failed an iPad class. I was telling him. I was like, "Hey, I know you recovered from your stroke and you can't see as well, but your mind is still sharp and you're really bright. You got a PhD from NYU. You just failed an iPad class." He'd just chuckle at me. Oh, Joseph. And I would sit with him and I'd teach him how to FaceTime. But yeah, that's interesting. That's for another podcast, but that's an interesting challenge going back to not just technology but people and the demographics of those people and what that looks like.
Joe Toste:
So I'm launching a new series called the TechTables Sweet Talk Series. These are small intimate conversations that are happening live across the US, starting Thursday, April 21st in Phoenix. Really excited about that with Arizona State CIO, J.R. Sloan, Arizona Department of Education CIO, Elizabeth Neeley, CSO for the state of Arizona, or ex CSO I should say, Doug Lange, who's now the director of IT at Choice Hotel Group, city of Goodyear CIO, Justin Fair, and a CISO for the state of Arizona, Tim Roemer, and Bradley, who's a CIO at CommonSpirit Health, the southwest division throughout the United States, plus two other special CIOs with only four or five of vendors in the audience. It is a live podcast event, 12 people total, presidential suite recordings. It is going to be a blast.
Joe Toste:
Also, I confirmed audience favorite, Mandy Crawford, CIO at the state of Texas, Shauna Rogers, chief digital officer at the Texas Attorney General's Office, another one of my favorites, Corey Wilburn CIO at the Texas Texas General Land Office. And that's going to be on Wednesday, May 18th in Austin, Texas.
Joe Toste:
And on July 22nd, I'll be heading to Raleigh, North Carolina for the TechTables Sweet Talk Series Grillin' and Chillin' with Jim Weaver, who's the North Carolina state CIO. That's actually going to be ... If you want to hear from Jim, you can check out episode 80. I just released that this past Tuesday. It was a fantastic episode. Shout out to Jim. And Mandy will also be in Raleigh 2 plus 10 other CIOs. It's going to be a blast. If you want to learn more, you can head to events.techtables.com. Again, that's events.techtables.com.
Joe Toste:
And my wife came on TechTables, Eric. Can you believe my wife came on TechTables? She interviewed me, episode 78, where I gave all the details about the TechTables Sweet Talk Series while we launched it and the CIOs who are asking me for it. And if you're interested in having the TechTables Sweet Talk Series come to a city near you, email me, [email protected]
Joe Toste:
All right. Let's get back to the show. Apart from any vision isn't just technology but people too. This is a theme I think we were hitting on, Eric. Dynamic teams are what drives successful technology transformations, not the way around. What are two to three things CIOs can do better today to lead dynamic teams?
Eric Prosser:
So the things that pop into my mind are, and this comes from some private sector back in the day for me, is enabling and empowering employees. And what I mean by that is you need to be able to enable your team at the lowest levels. And so as you dive into what people are doing, if they're enabled to make decisions so they can have ownership and that they can then drive that to an end result, that's going to give them, gosh, they're going to be proud of what they do. They can carry something all the way through and be able to tout that at the very end. And so having that empowerment just is a very key thing in helping employees to feel as though they're a part, they're producing and they're contributing to various different things.
Eric Prosser:
The other side of that is allowing them to fail along. It's actually okay to fail. And if you look at things, sometimes we have to make decisions. So if we take ownership for something and we're driving it forward and something stumbles along the way, you're fixing it as you go and so you're picking that up, you're changing stuff, you're adjusting. And the end result is that you're going to be successful at the other end. So failures drive to success. Everybody should know in the tech space, there are so many different failures that drove some of the technology that you and I use today that it was because of those failures of how it's successful today. If we're okay with failing along the way, that should be something in leadership space, so we need to be able to do that.
Eric Prosser:
And then let teams be themselves. As I've dealt with my own team in letting them bubble up the stuff that they're really good at doing and then pushing them down those areas. I had a leader at Intel who drove into me and he called it the butterfly effect. And if you think of a butterfly as you're looking at a picture, it's got four large sections of their wings, and then the head is really small. And so if your space that you have that's not so great is the head and then your wings are the bigger areas that you have major fortes in, you want to focus on the employee in those winged areas because when you focus on the area that they're really good at doing, they're going to expand those areas massively with very little effort. But if you focus on the head, which they're not so great at, and you put 80% of your effort in there, you're going to probably get a 5% gain or something. It's not going to grow very much.
Eric Prosser:
And so if you do that, you're missing out on the other things that somebody could really grow with. And so you have to focus your effort on people in their forte, and then push them down that space, and stretch them. A lot of times, people don't get those opportunities. So those are the main things that I use usually focus on the human side with my team. So I think those are the biggest impacts.
Joe Toste:
I love that. There is another podcast I listen to. I've only listened to one episode, but I'm going to listen to the rest. It's really good. It's called the Ransomware Files. If you haven't listened to it, it's fantastic. There's this episode in Texas and what happened in 2019 where, I'm just going to read this off real quick, where 23 cities across Texas were infected with ransomware. Oh, I'm blanking on his name. I feel so bad. The guy who hosts it, he does a fantastic job, and he has Mandy on there and then Nancy, who's a state CISO, and they're recounting the story. And then going back to what you had said about failures drive success, and just the adjustments that the state of Texas was making. Failures drive success. People make adjustments across teams. And I just loved that.
Joe Toste:
Hey, Eric, this was fantastic. Where do you like to hang out online? Where's your favorite spot? LinkedIn, Twitter, where do you like to ...
Eric Prosser:
I would say I'm not a big social person, but LinkedIn is definitely a space. I use it more on the professional side. I can lean on and throw some stuff out there and I get a lot of hits, and that medium has really been a real great platform for me to at least find talent and so forth.
Joe Toste:
Great. So LinkedIn is the spot.
Eric Prosser:
Yeah.
Joe Toste:
Hey, Eric, thank you for coming on TechTables. Hopefully, we'll see each other again. You were telling me about, is IT MISAC? Is that right? Is it MISAC?
Eric Prosser:
Yeah.
Joe Toste:
Yeah. So it's actually on my list to sign up for. Do I need a recommendation from you to get in? Are they going to vet me pretty hard?
Eric Prosser:
I don't know. So I'll follow up with that, but MISAC is a good organization. For those who are in California, it's a fantastic org for being able to network with your staff. There's a lot of commonality of IT folks that are on there and a lot of things are flowing through it. So it's actually a pretty good platform in that space. But I'll talk to them about you though.
Joe Toste:
Yeah. I'm going to see what the application process looks like and then I will send some screenshots if it looks difficult. So anyway, thank you, Eric. I appreciate the time.
Eric Prosser:
Awesome. Thanks so much.
