Juggling a life impacted by COVID-19 and running the technology department that serves as a backbone for a metropolis of more than 4 million people is an acutely personal challenge for Ted Ross.

“If it were an earthquake or a fire, you can take a week or two off, clean up the mess, and move on. But this is a very slow-changing, very unique type of disaster,” the CIO for the city of Los Angeles said.

With two adult children facing a college semester unlike any before and a grandmother-in-law living her last days without close contact to others because of the global pandemic, the need to keep work going amid all this drama has pushed typical activities he enjoys like exercise to the wayside, he said in a phone interview. 

This period of extended calamity has necessitated some ingenuity. “I’ve actually been doing quite well, but it requires a completely different skill set, and that could be exhausting,” Ross said. 

“It’s not just around technology strategy or execution of projects, but there’s a very human element, a very human side where I have to keep a workforce motivated. I need to adjust how we control and manage peoples’ duties. I need to make sure that everyone’s contributing and working,” he said.

This includes crafting a human-oriented activity every week or so to engage a group of people that didn’t necessarily require that before. A blending of personal and professional responsibilities during typical working hours is something most professionals have been dealing with in entirely new ways these last six months.

LA Embraces Change Amid Uncertainty

While some of these challenges can be overcome and others must be adapted to, Ross said he embraces the dynamic that’s unfolding.

“I’m the kind of person who at work asks personal questions before a meeting or between meetings, and I do so respectfully. I’d like to know how someone’s life is doing, I’d like to know how their family is doing or their kids. It actually makes for better business and better work, so I actually tend to welcome an element of that,” Ross said, adding that it improves employee engagement and the depth of a relationship.

Meeting an employee’s girlfriend during a video conference or asking questions about the art they have hanging on the wall creates a personal-professional overlap, he said. “Work is going to need to adapt a little more to personal life and I think it’s what us as classic overworked Americans have probably been wanting for a while.”

The work-from-home mandate is especially challenging for some employees and there’s a short list of staff that can abuse or otherwise take advantage of the newfound flexibility, so Ross is regularly devising new ways to engage coworkers and monitor their productivity.

“It’s requiring a deeper level of management and that sounds like a good challenge because if you can crack that code you’re actually creating a better work environment that is a little bit more individualized, a little more engaging, and a little more optimized,” he said.

Varied Responsibilities Spread Across 465 IT Pros

A combined 40,000 city employees rely on the tools and services managed by Ross and his team of 465 IT professionals. Those responsibilities, just to name a few, cover a TV station, installations on ambulances and police cars, communications equipment, networking, applications, and “every one of those conversations is different,” Ross said. 

Most of his colleagues don’t want to work from home permanently, but they would like to reach a hybrid model with more flexibility to work from home, the office, or the field. This moment has created a proverbial carrot in that if his department can establish the appropriate culture and safeguards to ensure this framework is effective and doesn’t just take advantage of taxpayers, it could become a viable outcome once the pandemic ends. 

In addition to the COVID-19 crisis, the residents of Los Angeles, Ross’ team, and the country at large, are confronting a long overdue and recurring moment of racial reckoning. Los Angeles is no stranger to systemic racism, police brutality, and persistent protests that erupt when another unarmed person of color is killed by police. 

Racial inequities have literally stained the streets of Los Angeles with blood and broken countless lives throughout its history.

The city's diverse IT department is not immune to these challenges, and it’s impacted the culture of the organization like so many others. While IT professionals are largely stereotyped as isolated or introverted, they have opinions and personal backgrounds much the same as any person.

LA Strives for Racial Equity in Workforce

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in June named the city’s first chief equity officer and signed an executive directive to study and promote racial equity in its workforce. “Our city is hungry for change, and we must knit racial justice and affirmative action into the fabric of our policies, our institutions, and our society,” he said in a statement at the time. 

That plan has allowed for candid conversations about race in America, the recent protests, and the establishment of a series of action items to be implemented on a biannual basis, according to Ross. Colleagues that are dispassionate about racism aren’t required to engage in this process, but “for those who have a strong opinion, feel passionately about it, we have work for them to do,” Ross said.

The city’s IT department has committed to improve diversity in its ranks and plans to do virtual work with students at all age levels interested in science, technology, engineering, and math to mentor youth in underserved communities, he said. 

“We are fortunate to be working in a city that cares passionately about racial equity and we have a good outlet, I believe, for our employees and others to be able to engage,” Ross said. 

Most of the people Ross works with have been stepping up to the challenge, checking potential unconscious biases, finding new ways to relate to each other, and empathizing with the diverse backgrounds and unique challenges of their peers and neighbors.

Empathy Runs Both Ways

This extends to the daily and seemingly mundane occurrences almost everyone is dealing with during this global pandemic. “How many virtual meetings have we been on when someone’s dog starts barking?” Ross said. 

Some people still get offended, make a big deal about those interruptions, or “they create some kind of standard that everyone else needs to meet that’s actually very difficult to meet, or they’re very inconsiderate,” he said. “Most folks are empathetic, but there certainly are some people who get tested by this environment.”

These issues circle back to important, but sometimes difficult management considerations as well. There are still those who truly believe that geography or space equates to work — assuming someone must not be working because they didn’t answer a call at their desk phone.  “I am sure people like that are having a hard time figuring out how to manage teams” today, Ross said. 

“When you deal with a legacy city workforce who associates everything with maybe a specific desktop computer, a specific telephone, this has been having to expand their horizons,” he said. “I am absolutely confronting it and I expect to confront it for years.”

Ross has also gained a more profound appreciation for individual gaps in technology at home. It’s not fair to assume that a team of IT professionals has good technology at home, he said. 

Unexpected Challenges Beget Opportunity

As employees went home to work, he quickly noticed a divide between those that don’t have reliable equipment, connectivity, or familiarity with the tools that quickly became daily drivers for routine tasks. “We have to try to help empower where possible because as a manager ultimately I look good if they’re capable, competent, and contributing. So it’s a judgment on my management, their inability to get things done,” Ross said.

Empathy has to extend to other potentially unforeseen circumstances as well, he added. When desktops and laptops were issued to city employees, some of the staff’s children were using those same devices for school. Ross’s colleagues had to create a version of the work-from-home platform that supported tablets and Chromebooks as well. “It’s one thing to say that an employee is going to work from home. It’s another thing to say the employee and their entire family is going to work from home," he said.

Ross, like all of us, is looking forward to the post-pandemic world. When that time comes, he envisions a more digital, resilient, and adaptable workforce.

“I really hope that we can get the balance right when it comes to teleworking and a work-life balance so that people can improve their health and their quality of life while we try to improve their effectiveness,” he said.

As such, Ross welcomes aspects of this pandemic that are fueling improvements in the city’s resiliency. If, or when, a major earthquake hits and “all of our city facilities were a smoking hole in the ground, our ability to leverage cloud and to have people working from home would be how we would run essential government services, even in the worst of circumstances.”