When Mark Lauteren started as CIO at University of South Alabama in the spring of 2013, he had two major goals: facilitate seamless integration of data throughout the system, and improve customer service within IT. Sounds simple, right? Luckily he had one major factor on his side — the organization’s willingness to change. In this interview, Lauteren talks about what it took to clean up a fragmented IS department, the gargantuan effort taking place to create ‘one patient, one record,’ why his team doesn’t ‘just say no,’ and the never-ending chess match CIOs must play to keep data secure. He also discusses what it was like to replace a long-time CIO, the mentors who taught him well, and why he takes time to give back.
Chapter 3
- Business continuity planning
- Data housed at the university — “We have to be in lockstep.”
- Learning from Dennis Sato & Rick Warren
- Complexity of the CIO role — “This job is not just about the technology.”
- Staff engagement — “You have to help them understand the tradeoffs.”
- Giving back with Bright Beginnings
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Bold Statements
You can’t just bury your head and hope it doesn’t happen. You just have to be ready for it and try and test your plans and hopefully, they work out right when the time comes.
I was very lucky. I learned from a couple of folks that ran very good shops and really had great relationships with their organization and their people, and hopefully I learned enough from them to run half as good a shop as they did.
They don’t need to know the bits and the bytes and why I want to go to a 10-gig network versus a 1-gig network. They don’t care about that. But they understand, ‘by the way, on this older slower network, your radiology images are going to be slow,’ and they understand that when you’ve got a whole bunch of people sharing that small pipe, it’s going to be slow.
It really helps ground you. Sometimes that we get caught up in how tough things are for us, and then you can see what others may be going through and you realize you don’t have it so bad after all.
Gamble: That brings me to another kind of disaster — the one you can’t help, and form where you’re located, have you had to deal with any business continuity issues or any natural disasters? Or if not, do you have good plans and place for that?
Lauteren: I personally haven’t here yet. Mobile has been hit. I think the last one was Hurricane Ivan — I believe it was a little over 10 years ago, maybe more — that hit Mobile directly. Obviously, anytime a hurricane hits the Gulf Coast, it’s a challenge to the organization. We do have a DR plan. We’ve got a very strong data center that’s based out on campus and backups of those, as well as facility backups. So we’ve got multiple data centers that our data are spread and replicated across. We believe that, like anything else, it’s only as good as the next time it happens, but we believe that we’re ready for that. We can only test and test and retest until hopefully it’s all working right when it actually happens — hopefully it doesn’t. But what people here tell me is every 10 to 15 years, this area gets hit with a hurricane, some stronger than others, so it’s not a matter of if. In those kinds of situations, you can’t just bury your head and hope it doesn’t happen. You just have to be ready for it and try and test your plans and hopefully, they work out right when the time comes.
Gamble: You mentioned the data center, which falls under the university. How does that affect you and your role?
Lauteren: My primary data center is out on campus; they have a very large data center that we share with them. We also have a medium-sized data center at our medical center and a small data center at our Children’s Hospital. Right now we replicate data between the medical center and the campus, and of course we keep tape backup at an offsite location from those. Basically, that means we have a very strong relationship with campus counterpart. My assistant CIO and I meet regularly with our counterparts out on campus. We actually do an integrated plan every year, so we sit down and we talk about how we want to do things and how those interact. Next month we have to do an update to the board about how our joint plans will be going forward together, so we try and keep each other well informed. Since they actually do a fair amount of my infrastructure for the health system, we have to be in lockstep. We can’t afford not to be.
Gamble: It’s an arrangement that seems to work for everybody.
Lauteren: Yeah. It’s been in place for quite a while and they’re good folks. They’re doing a really good job for us. I can’t complain at all. They know what they need to do and they do it well — not just for us, but for themselves as well. In some ways it’s like having a third party do all of my data center information systems. In some ways it’s not, because we both report to the same person, the head of the university, Dr. Walter. So it makes us a little more like dealing with your brother, so to speak. There’s a saying, ‘you can’t choose your brother, but you’re going to live with them forever.’ They do a good job for us and we’ve had not any major disagreements. Of course, we want them to do it cheaper and do more for it. I don’t care who it is, you’re always going to want that.
Gamble: Of course. Going back to your career path a little bit, you’ve been there about two and a half years. And this was your first CIO role though, correct?
Lauteren: Correct. Before this, I was an IT director for two different organizations — one up in Michigan, one up in Oregon, and before that I worked for Intel for a number of years. So I’ve worked at a few different places. I worked in consulting for SAIC for many years as well, about eight and a half years. They sent me all over the world and all over the US, and Intel did the same. So good or bad, I’ve done a lot of things in IT in my 30 some years, and I think I had a couple of great mentors. In Oregon, I worked for a gentleman by the name of Dennis Sato, who’s now mostly retired. He does contract CIO work. I think at the time he had been a CIO for probably 20 years of different organizations, and so now he’s probably been doing it 30 to 35 years. And then when I was up in Michigan, I worked for a guy by the name of Rick Warren, who when I got there had been there 26 years as a CIO. Both of them are great guys who really knew how to run a good shop. They were very good mentors, and hopefully I can do half as well as them.
Gamble: Obviously, you had a lot of a great experience but just not in this particular role. Was this something where you had kept your eye on it, was it kind of like, ‘Let’s see where my career takes me next?’
Lauteren: I had wanted to be a CIO for a long time. Obviously in my field, in IT, the CIO is the top. That’s the pinnacle. That’s where you want to be if you want to do it your way. Like I said, I think I was very lucky. I learned from a couple of folks that ran very good shops and really had great relationships with their organization and their people, and hopefully I learned enough from them to run half as good a shop as they did, because I think very highly of them. I keep in touch with the both of them. Actually, Rick Warren was a national champion in taekwondo, and he worked with my son on his taekwondo when he was young.
Gamble: That’s very cool. Obviously those are both the names that everyone knows, so good people to learn from.
Lauteren: They were both excellent.
Gamble: And was there any particular pieces of advice that really stood out or was it more just watching the way they handled certain situations and things like that?
Lauteren: I don’t know if there’s one piece of advice anybody can give that would answer all of your needs. Obviously, our industry is way too complex, and as you know, this job is not just about the technology. I try to say this job is about the service and it’s about the relationships. If we were to come in here and just do the best job in the world about the technology, but piss all of out customers off, we wouldn’t be successful.
Our customer service satisfier survey is based on their satisfaction and a lot of that is how happy they are with the way we treat them. Are we just saying no or we’re helping them understand the tradeoffs? If we came in there and said, ‘No, you have to do A,’ they’re not going to be happy, even if that’s truly what needs to be done, if they don’t understand why and we haven’t helped them understand what the tradeoffs are. They don’t need to know the bits and the bytes and why I want to go to a 10-gig network versus a 1-gig network. They don’t care about that. They don’t even know what it means. But they understand, ‘by the way, on this older slower network, your radiology images are going to be slow,’ and they understand that when you’ve got a whole bunch of people sharing that small pipe, it’s going to be slow. That’s what you have to help them understand — and the tradeoffs. We have to be realistic.
Being geeks most of us, we want the latest and greatest, but we also have to realize the organization also needs new beds, and they need new infusion pumps, and they need a new elevator and the need other things. So it’s not all about having the latest and greatest laptop and cars and computers and all that. It’s about having what we need for the right price.
Gamble: What about taking on a role when the CIO had been there for 43 years? I can imagine that that may have tough. How did you approach that situation?
Lauteren: He actually was here. He was retiring and he was here until about three months after I got here. He led the search. When I got here, I literally was given the office right across the hall from him. So he helped me learn who the people were in the organization. He helped me understand how he ran the shop. We have different personalities. We do things differently. That’s not a ping against him, and I’m not saying I’m better or he’s worse. It’s just that we’re different, so we run things differently.
But the good thing was he was very open about what he thought worked and what didn’t. He was very open about the strengths and weaknesses of what was here. He had the same tradeoffs I do. There’s no such thing as always the right way. There’s a lot of, ‘well, it was gray and right now we think the best tradeoff is to go with C. Tomorrow, the best tradeoff given the things that we have and know at the time might be D.’ He made decisions based on all the information he had and the resources he had at his time. He had to do something pretty well; he was here 43 years and the place didn’t burn down. That’s a tribute in and of itself. And he went through a couple of hurricanes as I understand it in his 43 years, and again, kept the place working and running.
Gamble: That’s good, and I’m sure it made a difference having him be part of the process of selecting you.
Lauteren: Yes.
Gamble: The last thing I just wanted to ask about was that I had seen on LinkedIn that you were involved in Big Brothers, Big Sisters, and it’s something that I always liked to ask people about. Obviously the role of a CIO right now is time consuming, to put it nicely, but just talk about the importance of taking some time out and what you get out giving your time.
Lauteren: So up in Michigan, I was on the board and was the board president for Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Jackson County. It was very fulfilling in a lot of ways. I’ve always believed in children’s causes. My wife and I have five kids and six grandkids, so we’re both big on children’s causes. I was very involved in that program, and also it was a good thing for our kids to see and to learn to give back to the community.
Down here in Mobile, I’m actually now joined the board of Bright Beginnings, which is a school for severely dyslexic children and children that have other learning disabilities. We’ve been involved in that, and again, it’s a cause that helps us feel good in that we’re doing things for kids that have challenges. There are a lot of kids in this country that have a lot of challenges, and you can’t solve all of them, but you can sure help, and I think that that’s something I think we all should be doing — giving back in some way. I always tell people, even if you give 5 bucks, that’s something. I think that in many cases what people need more though than the money is the time, just to get out there and give some leadership and put some sweat equity into it. Then go out and do the bake sale with them. When I was with Big Brothers, we would go and work at Michigan International Speedway, and that was a lot of work and it was hot, but we’d man a concession stand and clean up after the races and stuff, and we did a lot of other fundraisers. They did bowling events and everything else, and we worked every one of them. My kids and my wife and I would do every one of them. It really helps ground you. Sometimes that we get caught up in how tough things are for us, and then you can see what others may be going through and you realize you don’t have it so bad after all.
Gamble: That’s a good take. I think that if people see that either your family member or your manager or leader is involved in this, sometimes it makes you look at yourself and say, ‘you know what? Maybe I have time to do it too.’ That’s a really good positive thing.
Well, we’ve definitely got to cover a lot so I really appreciate it. Unless there’s anything you wanted to add, which I really think we got through it all. I want to thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
Lauteren: No problem, I appreciate you reaching out. If you have any other follow-up questions, don’t hesitate to call and/or email and we can go over it.
Gamble: Alright. I’ll be in touch, but thanks again so much and I hope to talk to you again in the future.
Lauteren: Okay. Thanks, Kate.
Gamble: Thank you, Mark.
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