CIO Leadership Live with Charles Lewis, Vice President, Information Technology, Canada Life

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Welcome to CIO Leadership Live Canada.
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I'm Lee Rennick, editor of CIO.com.
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I'm very pleased and excited to welcome
Charles Lewis, Vice
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President, Information Technology Canada Life.
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Charles,
thanks so much for joining us today.
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Could you please introduce yourself
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and tell us a little bit
about your current role?
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Thanks very much, Lee, and thanks
very much for having me this afternoon.
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It's great to see you.
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I am currently the Vice
President of Technology
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for Canada Life
with a particular focus on our IT
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operations arm
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as it relates to data center
and a lot of the traditional disciplines
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that that comes with around
compute storage databases, the service
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Canada Life Command Center,
as well as network network operations,
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the strategy
also moving into my portfolio over
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the next little while
will be our cloud operations piece
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as we continue our journey
to move to public hyperscalers.
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So a very large portfolio.
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Thank you so much for sharing that
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and I really appreciate you
joining us here, Charles.
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We've created this series to support CIOs
and senior
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technology leaders in their leadership
and business journey.
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So the first question
I ask, and I always ask everyone
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this question, can you tell me
a little bit about your own career path
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and provide some insights
or tips on that road path?
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Are there any lessons learned
that you could share?
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Absolutely.
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You know, the sort of keep it brief,
I came up through the technology
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ranks in a pretty traditional manner
many years.
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Well, decades ago now.
Began life as a software
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developer and software engineer
working with in the telecommunications
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area and was primarily on the software
track through the traditional path
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of developer, senior developer
into leadership in that vein.
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I started to broaden out
into some of the affiliated disciplines,
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such as software release management
and environment management.
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As I began to take on larger portfolios
and got introduced
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in a great way to the infrastructure world
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as well, in about 2016,
at that time I was with Telus Health
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and have had infrastructure
as part of my portfolio.
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Ever since then.
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The journey has been fantastic.
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I've had great opportunity to learn
so many different things from product
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development to infrastructure management,
architecture, user centered design.
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I've been able to work
with so many great teams in that regard.
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Have been very lucky to be part
of planning and execution of migration
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from on premise into public cloud,
which is a journey a lot of large
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organizations have gone through
or are going through will go through.
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In the end,
being able to really delve into my passion
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for using technology
to be able to help others and
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and make the world, if you will,
a better place to be in some small regard.
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As far as lessons learned along the way,
I think there's always a couple of things.
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As you grow older, you start to realize
those lessons a little bit more.
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What sticks with me
primarily that I learned
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and have been able to leverage over
the years is the way things have been done
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before are not necessarily the ways
they're going to work in the future.
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And like anyone probably past
a certain level of age,
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I've had many experiences where
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I've made mistakes by assuming that.
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Approaches
that have been successful for me in
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the past
would be successful in a new situation.
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Sometimes you can implement those
without enough forethought, without enough
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planning, and there can be some negative
connotations and ramifications to that.
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So that's one lesson
that has been has always stuck with me.
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The other is open mind all the time.
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Great solutions
and great ideas can come from anywhere.
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And one thing that I'm always keen on that
I've found
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has helped me along the way,
although it took a long time
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to develop, is to be quite clear
and quite transparent.
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As you move forward and as you engage
others in things you're thinking
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about, to seek their opinions
to make it better as well. Hmm.
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Well, some great advice and some great
lessons learned along the way.
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I totally hear that
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you know, you've undertaken continuous
learning throughout your career.
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You've understood and identified,
obviously, that certain things
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always work out
the way they have in the past.
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So moving through that
and then the opportunity to network
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with individuals, I mean, certainly we're
hearing that from so many leaders
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in the tech sector just that networking
piece is so important.
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So I really appreciate you
sharing that very much with us.
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And you just referred to something
that we had our first discussion
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gave me a little bit of goose bumps
when we first talked, and I was so happy
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that you said you would do this interview,
because what you said to me
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was that you're really passionate
about using technology
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to enable outcomes that will lead,
leave the world in a better place.
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So could you talk a little bit
about that, please?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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It's something I'm quite passionate about
and I think for everyone
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they approach technology or technology
implementation and a different vein.
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And even how people interpret
doing things for good
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can be
looked at in a myriad of different ways.
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But for me, the real and continued
opportunity is always to use
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software and other technology
stacks and approaches
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to be able to realize the true value
of interpretive human beings
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and to remove some of the, you know,
I hesitate to use the term like the
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the grunt work or the
that the items that that weigh you down.
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But to try to address
some of those friction points
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to allow us as humans to be able to really
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use our brains on problems,
start working on the interpretive things.
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You know you can see
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how this conversation leads down
the road of heavy automation, for example.
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But more than that,
especially with burgeoning data strategies
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and the amount of data
that's out there, is a real opportunity
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for any industry to be able to improve
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the user experience of their end users.
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And that can again come in many fashions.
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I've been fortunate enough, both in
my previous role and in this current role,
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to work with companies who are dedicated
to improving the wellness, be it health
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or financial of Canadians.
And to be able to contribute to that,
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to be able to build technology
and support technology
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that is meant to improve
health of Canadian users,
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to improve the financial well-being
and general wellness
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of Canadians users,
particularly here at Canada
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Life as well as in my previous role
at Telus Health,
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is just a fantastic opportunity.
And those are the sorts of things
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that I'm really passionate about,
which is being able to take technology,
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build technology and see an end result
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where people are leading healthier,
happier lives.
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That is really inspiring.
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And thank you for sharing that.
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And, you know, definitely I see that.
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Yeah, with the multiple of data we have
and the way we use it
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and the way you work as an IT leader
to ensure that we can create benefits for,
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as you say,
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Canadians. That impacts on our overall,
you know, health of our country, right?
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Because if we're helping people
have better, more secure lives,
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more healthy lives,
being able to use that data for good, then
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that that impacts on our overall structure
of our country and and what
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we have to use from a tax perspective
to keep the country going and healthy.
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So I really appreciate you sharing that.
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And it gave me just some inspiration
to talk a little bit about doing that.
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Because when you're doing that,
you're working with a
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huge amount of teams in your organizations
and you're leading those teams.
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So I wanted to ask you a little bit
about leadership and leadership roles
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and really ensuring we're hearing
now that a lot of employees and
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especially generations
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want to have purpose.
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So I'm wondering if you could talk
a little bit about how you lead
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to ensure you're understanding,
your teams, you know, in around things
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like generational mix of employees,
wellness and overall team planning,
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Are there any tips you have there
or information you could share?
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I can certainly share my own approaches.
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I don't know if they're
well thought out enough to be considered
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tips for others to use.
But you've hit the nail on the head.
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Generally speaking, long gone
are the days where people will simply work
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in a role or in a job
that they don't feel passionate about.
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We all spend a great deal of time
and emotion
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invested in our work.
So we want to feel
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that there is a tangible, measurable,
good outcome to that.
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That goes far beyond
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just the
notion of traditional compensation.
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Companies like Canada Life, for example,
are dedicated
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to serving our customer base,
but not just serving them
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by providing services, but providing
insights, by being able to help them
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on their wellness journey, be it health
or financial to make their lives better.
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And to do so, we need
and have the engagement
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of a huge number of employees
across a breadth of products and services.
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Canada Life is a massive company
that touches people in a myriad of ways.
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And one of the great things about that is
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you can start to form a cohesive picture
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of, you know, Canadians as a whole
or your users as a whole
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and understand
how you can support them between products,
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between the pieces
that traditionally were isolated.
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Now, the teams
who do that run the gamut from
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new graduates who have joined us and co up
students all the way to team members
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and practitioners that have been with us
for beyond 30 years.
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One of the things that has always
struck me here at Canada, Life
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well, always,
I've only been here about eight months
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is the willingness to come together,
to look at things holistically
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and do the right things,
to arrive at the right solution
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for our customers
and for our stakeholders.
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Leading in an environment like that
that spans a multitude of generations,
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if you will, and different approaches.
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What's really key there is listening
and more than just listening, but hearing
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what people are saying
and what's important to them,
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and giving them a forum to be able
to voice what is important to them.
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And that's why I always harp
and we may talk about it later as well.
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Harp So much on
the concept of transparency.
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We as technology leaders should be able
to form up a technology strategy
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that directly ties
to a publicly known business strategy,
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and our team members
should be able to measure us against
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measure our decisions
against that strategy.
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When everyone is on board and pulling
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in the same direction, you can accomplish
all sorts of amazing things.
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Well, it's very interesting.
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Just before we hopped on this call,
you said, How's your day going?
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I said, we just had a presentation
from our President about our business
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objectives and goals.
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And it was really, really engaging
and amazing just to be able to learn that.
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So when you talk about transparency
that certainly, you know,
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I can relate to that
as an employee of an organization.
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But I'm also hearing from you
from a leadership standpoint,
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like you're talking about all
all of the work that you do for Canadians
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to help with health
and financial stability and support.
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And, you know,
when I think of your employees
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and your teams that are building it,
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there are almost building it
for themselves as well, too.
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So you've got this
very interesting product mix where you're
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supporting Canadians,
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but I'm sure many of your employers
are building building initiatives
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from a technology standpoint
that are also helping them, you know?
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Well, that's one of the amazing things
about working for an organization
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like this and other organizations
like this is,
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you know, the common expression
is eating your own dog food.
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But our team members and practitioners,
as well as our leadership teams,
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we do use the very products and services
that we build for Canadians.
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We're able to weigh in on
whether they meet our needs,
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whether they're intuitive enough,
whether they have the right user
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experience,
whether they have the right results.
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So we know as we build,
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as we promote them,
as we move them out into the wild,
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we know that we've done our utmost
to ensure
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that they're meeting the needs
of our customers and stakeholders.
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Amazing.
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I want to have a whole other conversation
about those.
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I find it very interesting.
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We we didn't actually plan
to have that conversation
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within these these questions,
but it's it's very interesting.
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I'd love to talk further about that.
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But now I wanted to talk about an ask
a question around technology innovation.
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Well, and specifically
AI talking to a lot of individuals
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and tech leaders about this.
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So could you just maybe talk a little bit
about this, Share your views on
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how AI and the future of AI will impact
business?
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I'd be happy to, and this is another one
that could be a full conversation
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in and of itself
could involve hundreds of people
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because it's another one
where there is a wide swath
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of differing opinions
and more than just differing opinions.
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The notion of AI is one of those concepts
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that tends to fracture
people towards one extreme or the other.
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Often, you know, at one camp,
you often see folks that are validly
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raising concerns about the impact a
AI implement
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without proper planning
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and proper foresight
may have on things like the labor market
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may have on things like information
privacy may have on things like, you know,
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what happens
if if a self-driving car directed by AI
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drives into someone,
how do you prevent that?
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What are the quality controls?
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And then, of course, there's another
you know, the other extreme of the camp is
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we've got to push forward with AI. The
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you know, the sky's
the limit on what can be accomplished
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and we can push our innovations
through the roof to the next level.
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I typically tend to feel
that the answer lies in the middle ground.
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I am in the camp of people
that strongly believes
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in the continued development of AI,
but in an ethical and safe manner.
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I believe in planning what it is
you want to do.
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Understanding the use cases.
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You're trying to drive and implement
those through an AI approach
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that is both ethical and safe,
and those have to be sort
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of your primary concerns with the design phase.
I do believe
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AI has a great capability
applied across a swath of industries
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to be able to help humanity
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in everything from diagnostic help
for physicians
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to insights on health and financial
wellness for customers of companies
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like Canada, Life. I don't think it should
always be looked at
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people tend to look at it as a replacement
for humans and or human thought
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patterns. Whereas I tend to look at it
as an extremely strong complement
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to human thought
patterns and human decision making.
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It's another tool
that we could use in our toolbox
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to help us form the proper decisions
for the best outcomes.
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Yeah.
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I appreciate that, those insights.
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And yeah, definitely I've been, you know,
having a few chats around the bringing
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the design teams together
that are building the AI applications
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that you're going to use, really testing,
those are getting some great engineers in
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and like you said, making sure that all
the checks and balances are in there
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when you're going to implement it
into any of your programs
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and products or services.
So I appreciate that.
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All right. So now
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we're getting to the very last question,
which is very interesting for me.
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It's kind of I call it my lightning
round question, but you get one answer.
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And that question is
what is the future of IT?
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That's a great question and I wish I had
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i wish I had thought about that
beforehand.
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The future of IT to me is really about
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what I'll call the frictionless response,
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so it's hard to quantify
exactly what the future of IT is.
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The future of it is now
the future of i.t was five years ago.
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The future of ip is five years from now.
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It's a constantly shifting discipline
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that is driving towards
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specific business outcomes.
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And that's that's really the key.
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As we move the IT landscape forward,
we often make the mistake of implementing
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different IT approaches
for the sake of different approaches.
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And we really need to tie those
to specific business outcomes
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that we're looking to achieve and tie
it deeply to business strategy
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for whatever organization it is
you happen to be part of.
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There are of course
some overarching technology advances.
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I think everyone understands the value
in moving from on premise data centers
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to public cloud in sort of specific
industries and environments.
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Those are well understood.
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There will always be changes like that.
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There will always be a rapid pace
of change.
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In fact, the pace of change in technology
is increasing daily.
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We used to be able to identify
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a standard stack
you could use for ten years, 15 years.
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You'd be lucky to identify
a standard stack that would remain
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the market leader for for more
than a couple of years at this point.
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So you have to be willing to shift.
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But overall, to me, the future of IT,
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I believe the way
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this will start to develop itself
is we will in many cases
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start to abs attract what we consider
the lowest level of IT to be today.
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So just in the same way as we've gone
through a journey of having people sort of
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physically racking and cabling servers
or spending,
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spending a lot of time writing,
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you know, writing COBOL, for example,
you've seen programing languages
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continue to develop into more abstract
and abstract concepts that allow you
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to get more done
with sort of full features of libraries.
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IT as a whole will continue to move
in that direction
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from my viewpoint, which will again
allow the focus of the individuals
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working in those environments
to not concern themselves
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so much with the very time
consuming baseline here,
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but focus on higher value items
for their organization.
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That is fantastic.
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That's a whole other session as well
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to. Thank you so much for joining us
today, Charles.
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I really appreciate it very much.
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If you're interested in viewing this video
or others to support the senior tech
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leader in their journey will include this
interview and a link at cio.com/ca
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Thanks again, Charles.