How to work with me as the CTO of Florence Healthcare

I am jumping on the wagon of leaders in technology organizations writing their how-to-work-with-me manuals, since I have admired and been inspired by many of those that I have read.

This is my attempt to writing my own manual and I expect that it will be evolving over time. But here we go.

Introduction

My name is Andres Garcia and I am currently the CTO at Florence Healthcare. I am also one of its co-founders.

I have put this document together as a guide to improve the way we work together as I hope you can get to know me, and I absolutely want to get to know you. I hope that this document will help both of us collaborate better.

Let’s get started…

The things I value

As a human being I really pay attention to core values like honesty, kindness, humor, sharing, open communication, etc. As Richard Sheridan, in his book Joy, Inc says, and I paraphrase, it’s about the kindergarten skills.

However I pay special attention to the following:

Speak Up — I expect you to challenge my assumptions and arguments

I strongly believe that it is unlikely one person can hold the truth and answers to everything, and much less me. If I come to you with ideas and suggestions, I am NOT expecting you to drop everything and implement them; I expect you to listen to me and raise any concerns, challenges, and shortcomings about my ideas and suggestions you can think of. We can then make a decision together, or you can make a decision on your own depending on the situation.

Expect to be challenged in your assumptions and arguments

Similarly to the point above, I will try to find issues and problems in your suggestions and ideas; not because I want to be a jerk about it, but because I am convinced that both of us have the responsibility with Florence to do our best to find the truth, and not simply hold a comfortable and unchallenged opinion.

If you want to have some help in a second opinion about something, I will try to give you a critical perspective, when I am able. (I also say I don’t know very often)

Work well with others

I hate the concept of the brilliant jerk, this person who is so good at their job and has great skills that they believe they can treat others poorly or be left alone and not be bothered. I value a person that gets excited about working on a team, that wants to learn from others and at the same time share or teach others. I admire selfless people, because they grow by helping others grow.

I believe in luck

I subscribe to the definition that luck is “when preparation meets opportunity” ( I believe Oprah came up with that one), and recently I came across the concept of “Luck Surface Area” by Jason Roberts, and I really liked it. It says that you need to increase your luck by doing and telling. Which I interpret as do great stuff, and tell people about it (i.e. networking); then you increase your chances for serendipity. I believe we need to work hard to get luckier, and luckier. Other way to put it is, shame on me if something positive happens around me and I am not prepared to take advantage of it.

I believe in experimentation as a process

It is part of Florence’s DNA that we value experimentation above other things. It is a fact that we all make mistakes and have cognitive biases, because we are emotional and imperfect beings. A way to always account for that trend to making mistakes is to have a process that validates ideas, seeks disconfirmation and contradictions, challenges ideas (not people), and that always has a start and an end.

This is as simple as applying the concepts that kids learn in 8th grade (or whatever grade is today) around the scientific method. Come up with a hypothesis, enumerate expected outcomes, test it on the field, gather results and come up with a conclusion (that is, learn!). This process should have a specific duration after which a decision is made, it can be a day, a week, a month, or a quarter.

One of the clear benefits of this approach is that when there is disagreement, we can agree on experimenting with A or B approach. By defining a period of time we are not committing to a choice indefinitely, but we are committed to learning about, say Option A. If after experimenting and gathering conclusions we are happy with the results, we can stick with it; if it didn’t work, we can test something else; and the cycle continues.

This means that at Florence we don’t commit to mistakes because we are embarrassed to admit we were wrong, or when something goes wrong there is never the ugly I told you so! Instead, we know that mistakes and failures are a normal part of our day to day; in fact, we codified it in our values with the Experiment! Mistakes are OK! value.

I value great questions, not answers

When I’m interviewing candidates for a position at Florence, I usually tell them that I don’t expect from them that, once hired, they are going to bring the answers to every problem I or the company has. That is an impossible expectation. Instead, I expect they are going to ask great questions in the form of hypotheses that can be entered into the process (see point above) and we will arrive to the truth together. However, I expect that because of their preparation and experience, they will come up with very well informed hypotheses that are going to get us faster to the truth. This applies to everyone, everywhere in the organization. Nobody should come up with answers to important problems without defining a hypothesis and experimentation.

Note: My hope when I present this idea to candidates is to remove a point of anxiety about whether they are going to succeed at Florence or not. If someone is expected to come up with answers to everything because they have certain experience or title, they certainly are going to fail; instead, if someone can join us and use their experience to make us more effective at running experiments, that is a sure path to success.

Scheduling time with me

I love meeting with people at Florence for any purpose, from sharing a (virtual) coffee, to mentoring, or working on a task, etc.

Simply look at my calendar and schedule something. Don’t ask me if I am available, as my answer is going to be, “look at my calendar and schedule something”. Just include an agenda and we are all set.

A few things about me

I am married to my beautiful wife and I have 2 daughters. I love to travel and photography (I said that I like photography, not that I am good at it). I am a homebody, so working from home has been a blessing for me. I like it a lot.

I am originally from Colombia, I speak 2 languages, Spanish and English with a tiny bit of Portuguese and hoping to learn French soon.

For many years I wanted to be an entrepreneur and my dream came true with Florence and the great people I have met here. I think this is the best job that I’ve ever had, and I love what I do. I sincerely aspire that everyone that works with me can say the same of their job. I know it is a huge aspiration, but I still try darn hard to make it possible.