Nitin Bajaj

Hey, everyone. Welcome to The Industry Show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj. And joining me today is Ted Ross. Ted, welcome on the show.

Ted Ross

Excellent. Thank you for having me.

Nitin Bajaj

Pleasure is all ours. So let’s start with a big question. Who is Ted?

Ted Ross

Who is Ted? It’s a great question. Well, Ted according to Ted, born and raised in Los Angeles. My dad was an aerospace engineer. We had technology at an early age. First computer, Timex Sinclair t 1000. So I had no, no storage. You had to type in a program using a booklet. And then once you’re all done, you turned it off, and there was you had to retype Nitin if you ever want to use it again. But, you know, grew around technology. Both my brothers, went into the technology field. I decided that I loved business, and so I became an accountant. So I had an accounting degree, and I managed businesses. And before you know it, I was right back in technology again. So here I am. Fast forward, I joined the city of Los Angeles to work in government after 911, and I am currently chief information officer for the city of Los Angeles.

Nitin Bajaj

Thanks, Ted. And you have an amazing background and looking forward to getting a little deeper in that. I myself use the Sinclair, but it wasn’t for anything serious. It was for flight simulation back in those days.

Ted Ross

Yes.

Nitin Bajaj

And, yeah. Before we get into the questions, let’s play a little game. We call this the underrated, overrated. One word response to these mega themes that impact us on a daily basis. So let’s start with the metaverse. Overrated. Okay. What about crypto?

Ted Ross

Overrated.

Nitin Bajaj

NFT?

Ted Ross

Underrated.

Nitin Bajaj

Real estate prices?

Ted Ross

Overrated.

Nitin Bajaj

Inflation?

Ted Ross

Underrated.

Nitin Bajaj

1. What about stock market prices?

Ted Ross

Underrated.

Nitin Bajaj

Okay. And, the great resignation?

Ted Ross

Overrated.

Nitin Bajaj

And then the last one is cash.

Ted Ross

Cash?

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Ted Ross

Underrated.

Nitin Bajaj

Alright. Well, thanks for playing along. It was fun. I know these are deep, deep, thoughtful questions and, you know, you just respond in one word. So thanks for playing along on that. Now let’s get back to the questions. Tell us what is the IT agency at the city of Los Angeles It’s just the size and scale of your operations and also the mission vision.

Ted Ross

Surely. So the City of Los Angeles Information Technology Agency’s job is to deliver technology for the City of Los Angeles, which is the 2nd largest city in the United States. We have over 4,000,000 residents. We have over 500,000 businesses. And at least before the pandemic, we had over 50,000,000 tourists every single year. So as you can imagine, the nature of that work is traditional IT from computer desktop support to networks, to data center, to apps, all that good stuff, to much more progressive IT. For example, we run a TV station. We run social media. We run a a 3 one one call center. So we take all this the different requests that come in from residents and businesses. Over 2,200,000 requests a year come in through 311. So there’s a lot that goes on under the hood. What is our vision? Our vision is to make Los Angeles fully digital and connected. There’s a lot of meaning, I think, when you digitize your organization as well as when you interconnect the people and your organization. And our mission is to deliver best in class information technology services across the city of Los Angeles. And it’s to deliver what we call responsive, responsible, and excellent IT. It’s responsive because what we deliver is truly what our customers need and want. It is responsible because we know that above and beyond technology, we impact our environment, and it is excellent because it needs to be excellent. It needs to be highly available. It needs to be highly usable. It needs to be highly effective because we live in a digital era.

Nitin Bajaj

Well, first off, thank you for running such a massive organization Ross such a big city so efficiently. I’ve been a user of these services for the last 15 years, and I cannot imagine running such a large organization in the background. And I don’t think people understand or appreciate what it takes to make sure everything runs so smoothly. So thank you.

Ted Ross

I greatly appreciate it. I I have to take the credit on behalf of a really great team of staff. I have a department of over 455 people.

Nitin Bajaj

That’s it’s massive, but in the scheme of things, just even handling the number of calls, I did not know three one one feels. That’s a massive call center.

Ted Ross

Yes. It is. Information pothole to be filled. You name the topic, homeless services. You name the topic, the 3 zero one call center is expected to have an answer and to connect residents with the city service that they require.

Nitin Bajaj

And they’re amazing. They’re amazingly informative. And if they don’t know, they will find out.

Ted Ross

Yes. They will.

Nitin Bajaj

Yeah. That’s pretty amazing. So, I mean, this is a lot. Right? If you were to pick one big challenge that you’re facing as an organization, what would that be?

Ted Ross

Well, I would say probably one of the biggest challenges we have is our ability to digitally transform in the post, you know, COVID world.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Ted Ross

I think like a lot of organizations, we knew we needed to digitize. COVID forced us to digitize, but it was very hasty. It was something that was done just enough to be able to get people to work remotely. Remember, early in the pandemic, the expectation is that people would be for 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, whatever it may be. Here we are over 2 years later, and I think the ability to deliver digital transformation across our organization, not just something as simple as allowing people to work from home, but to really transform the way work is done, truly transform how people perform the work, how we automate it, and how we integrate that work with other forms of work, I think that’s probably our greatest challenge right now.

Nitin Bajaj

No. As I look at the magnitude of the challenge and just the the scale of operations, right, makes me wanna wonder. You have an illustrious background. You’re a CPA. You have been in tech. Why do this?

Ted Ross

Why do this? Well, that’s a great question. And, honestly, it starts off with 911. So, I worked in private sector for over 5 years.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Ted Ross

I enjoyed the work I did, but it always a little bit unfulfilling from my perspective. And then after 911, I said to myself, I I feel like I’m a very mission oriented person, a very mission driven person. And I said, let me give a try of working in government. I applied to federal, state, and local organizations, and I was picked up by the city of Los Angeles. And as you can tell, here I am over 20 years later still working for government. So I must have found something I was looking for. But I I do it because I honestly gain value out of that. Yes. It could be very frustrating. Yes. We have tremendous challenges. Yes. The demand for IT services far exceed our ability to meet them, but I love the nature of the work. I love the people that we get to serve. And for all of its frustrations, I still think working in government is a fantastic and a noble thing, and I enjoy it.

Nitin Bajaj

Well, I’m personally selfishly really glad the city found you, and you found this work to be engaging enough to be here for the last 20 years. So thank you again.

Ted Ross

My my pleasure. My pleasure.

Nitin Bajaj

But let’s talk about the most exciting opportunity you’re targeting.

Ted Ross

Yes. So the most exciting opportunity happens to do with a little something called the Summer Olympics.

Nitin Bajaj

Yes.

Ted Ross

In 2028, city of Los Angeles will be hosting the Summer Olympics for the 3rd time. Very few cities have had this tremendous honor.

Nitin Bajaj

Yes.

Ted Ross

And what it means is we need to prepare for the Olympics. We need to have layout the smart city infrastructure that’s required to be able to take on so many people for a period of time. We need to be able to lay out the digital services that we could engage people. We can get people to the locations that they wanna go to, the events they wanna go to. We could get them there on time with next generation transportation mobility solutions. And then we could do so in a safe way where everyone can really fully enjoy the Summer Olympics for what it’s worth and not have to deal with public safety issues associated with it. But even more important than the Olympics themselves is the opportunity of what the Olympics legacy will allow. Mhmm. When I think back to the 1984 Olympics, I remember a lot of really great things are really great Olympic events and really great Olympic moments. But probably the greatest legacy of the 1984 Olympics is that over 800,000 young people in Los Angeles received free athletics, free sports, free games. People learn to play baseball and soccer and football and and all sorts of great sports and connected, and we’re able to be healthier and enjoy an athletic lifestyle. And that came from the Olympics. So when I think about the 2020 Olympics, it’s not only a tremendous opportunity to modernize the cityscape and to really make tremendous leap forward as a smart city, but also an opportunity to have a legacy that goes far beyond 2,028.

Nitin Bajaj

So true. And I remember you saying, again, the sheer scale and magnitude of this event that’s coming at us pretty soon and quickly is 50,000,000 visitors that are gonna come in to the city in in about a couple weeks.

Ted Ross

Yeah. It’s gonna be a massive scale. You’ve got, you know, 50 to a 100000 vendors alone, and people have to help support and do the services. You have tens of thousands of Olympic athletes, and you have millions of visitors who come in just for a 2 week period alone. Not to mention the fact that you often have over a 1000000000 viewers around the globe. And so it is an immense effort, and the city of Los Angeles has been 2 for 2 with its Olympics. It delivered in fact, honestly, if you were to read up on it, the 1984 Olympics was one of those Olympic games that helped save the Olympics. The city of Los Angeles not only was able to deliver it and make a small profit, but the city of Los Angeles also renewed and reinvigorated the Olympic movement back in 1984. We’ve got really good people who are running a 2,000 and 28 event. So you can get ready for not only the world’s most digital Olympics that you could expect to see up until that point, but also one that’s very well run that people can really enjoy and we could really bring back the attention. And, really, the spirit of what the Olympics is, and that is a global community competing with each other, not through violence, not through aggression, not through trade wars, but through sports.

Nitin Bajaj

And I’m personally really excited about the glimpse that you gave us about how augmented and virtual reality is going to make it even more immersive and make it personal for every viewer irrespective of whether they’re in the city or one of the 1,000,000,000 that’s watching it from the remotest part of the world.

Ted Ross

That’s right. I think the remotest parts of the world should have the opportunity to not just view an event, but be able to become immersed in the event. And that is really what technology has been starting to allow us to do so that a young child anywhere in the world become inspired to compete in a sport, to to build the discipline and the focus and to to sacrifice and to really gain the benefits of what athletics has to offer. And as well as even just the immense sense of pride, we know that great athletes come from everywhere across the world, and that nation holds them up with a great sense of pride and confidence. And I think that’s great. Another great aspect of the Olympics is that it doesn’t matter what country you’re from. You can compete on an even playing field and quite often beat some of the very biggest and some of the very best nations when it comes to a variety of sports.

Nitin Bajaj

I’m really excited. This is the true spirit of the Olympics, and I think we’re gonna make it a 3 for 3 under your leadership and I’m

Ted Ross

I’m with you there. There are fantastic leaders around the 2028 Olympics, and I’m here to help deliver on the technology.

Nitin Bajaj

That is awesome. Now as we look forward, Ted, let’s take a look back in the rear view mirror. And through your career, what are two instances that stand out? 1, that you’re really proud of and, you know, it exceeded your own expectations. And one that didn’t work out and maybe became a lesson learned or were just a failure that helped you grow in that particular aspect.

Ted Ross

Yeah. I think one that really stands out to me, that I would call a great success. Mhmm. I was made project manager of a very large ERP, an enterprise resource planning project. And that project, when I was made project manager, it was about a year into the project. I think most would call it a failure. And what I mean by that is the project was failing.

Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

Ted Ross

The existing project manager and the deputy project manager all left to take other jobs. There was a lot of frustration. There were a lot of issues on the project. The department users were not embracing the solution. There was just a long list of issues. In fact, to be honest, when I was offered that job, I felt like I was made captain of the Titanic. Good news, you’re a captain. Bad news, it’s the Titanic. Right? And I remember having kind of a mindset where I tried to screw my head on straight, and I said, do I really wanna take on this role? Do I really wanna take on this responsibility? But I felt like the pieces of the puzzle were in place. I felt like with the right type of leadership and the right type of management, we can go from being a failure to being a true success. And when you think about large governments, ERP systems can transform the way their financials are run, the way they pay their vendors, the way they receive their revenues, the way they budget and they plan. It could fundamentally change the way businesses run-in the form of a government. So I knew the mission was super important. I remember spending many months waking up at 4 AM, not on purpose. I needed to sleep worrying, simply worrying about it and wondering whether or not everything would simply fail. Because I’ve never really had situations like that where something massive failed under my watch. And lo and behold, a lot of people really tightened down. We started to focus in on what mattered. We started to set aside what didn’t, and we really were able to turn this project around. We went live on time, on budget. We delivered a system across 1500 users that really does touch every single aspect of the city of Los Angeles. And it was a true, true success story that, you know, during the height of it, I couldn’t even watch a baseball game because it made me so anxious, and I just couldn’t handle the stress. I had enough of it coming from work. But I really rediscovered and learned a lot of aspects regarding myself. I learned a lot of aspects regarding people. It is a project that I actually learned to own a box of tissues because I had multiple times people crying in my office because of the stress and the pressures we were going through. And by the way, we were doing it during the great recession to add to the level of complexity. The project started, and Nitin a few months later, the great recession started. So it just added a lot of burden to it. So it was a great success that I’m extremely proud of. When I think of a failure, those are always aspects that that that show up. This won’t be a monumental failure, but this is one I thought that really taught me a lot and humbled me. The first time I was made a supervisor, I had a subordinate. And I always thought that if I could be very logical and very persuasive, that’s how you manage people. And this was in an SAP support team. SAP is quite a bit of my background. And so I remember working with them and laying out the Ted, and we’re gonna do this with internal orders. We’re gonna do this with Ross centers and all these kinds of conversations. And no matter how clearly I thought I laid it out, this subordinate never seemed to understand and even criticized me and said I was a terrible supervisor. And what I started to learn very quickly is it wasn’t about logic and it wasn’t about reason. It wasn’t about how well the procedures were, how well the tasks were delegated, but it really was the human factor that was missing. And so I clearly started to realize that I need to build a better relationship with my subordinates. I need to understand their ambitions and their goals. And while we may not always see eye to eye on various facts, that relationship could really extend and take us much further. And so before I left that organization, I started to learn a lot more. And, honestly, on the way out, they actually felt much better about me. But it was something that I had a failure of leadership that I had to learn from.

Nitin Bajaj

Well, thank you for being open and transparent. It’s not easy to have these moments that do make us grow, but they also make us question, a lot about our own capabilities. So thank you for being so transparent and kudos again on pulling off such a major project that obviously set you on the path for growth and continued leadership.

Ted Ross

And to be honest, for anyone out there who’s in the middle of a very challenging, you know, job or a very challenging project, stick with it, you know, if you can. Really stick with it and try to work it through. I think you’ll find that people can be more embracing and more acknowledging. If you give it your best effort and you really do try to solve problems for stakeholders, there’ll be a lot of grace and mercy on your end. And afterwards, you’d be surprised how much it makes you a better person, a better employee, a better leader, and it often opens doors. Quite honestly, when I interviewed for this my current job, it was the kinds of accomplishments I had with this project that really stood out and really allowed me to to compete better for my existing role. So it’s often there is very much a light at the end of the tunnel.

Nitin Bajaj

Yes. There’s hope.

Ted Ross

There is hope.

Nitin Bajaj

So, Ted, this brings me to my favorite part of the show. We call it the one line life lessons. Yes. I would love for you to share some of your one line life lessons with us and our audience.

Ted Ross

Certainly. One that always sticks with me that I’ve really started to grasp and kind of wrap my mind around when it comes to technology. Honestly, any customer service is people don’t want a half inch drill. They simply want a half inch hole. That one always just sticks with me over and over and over again. The reality is even if a customer is telling you that they wanna drill, they don’t really wanna drill. They don’t wanna carry the drill. They don’t wanna buy the drill. They don’t wanna have to replace the drill. They simply want a problem solved or a need or a want fulfilled. And so our ability to best grasp and understand what it is that our customers want and need and then our ability to deliver on it is quite simply the nature of what our roles are. I think another one liner that always sticks with me is watch out what you say in a crowded elevator because you don’t know who’s listening. I typically don’t make this mistake. Sometimes I’m tempted. I might be in the middle of a conversation with a colleague. And it’s during COVID, so I don’t, you know, I don’t know how crowded the elevators are anymore where people are working. But quite honestly, people act as if somehow there’s a cone of silence, and yet I have overheard some of the most crazy things, from people talking on a crowded elevator. So please, please out there, watch out what you say in a crowded elevator because everyone is listening. They can’t help it.

Nitin Bajaj

So true. But then thank you so much for making the time to be with us and for sharing your journey and one line life lessons. For our audience, we have an entire collection at onelinelifelessons.com and wherever you socialize digitally. Ted, thank you once again and really excited to see where we go for the 2028 Olympics and where as a city, we continue to grow from here.

Ted Ross

Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you.