FBI expert Gordon Snow on leading through crisis, active shooter, terrorism and more

Podcast Transcript

Speaker 1: Welcome to Beyond Leadership at the intersection of leadership and everything else. In this Cleveland clinic podcast, we will commingle with extraordinary thinkers and explore the impact of their ideas and experiences of leadership and management.

Brian Bolwell: I'm Brian Bolwell your host. In today's episode I am joined by Gordon Snow, Cleveland Clinic's chief security officer to talk about security and healthcare, his own leadership journey, and what leadership teams can learn from Marines and many, many more things. So, Gordon, welcome. You were an English major at the University of Michigan.

Gordon Snow: I was.

Brian Bolwell: And how did that lead you to the FBI?

Gordon Snow: I was a Marine originally and when I was an enlisted individual, they offered me a chance on a what they call a bootstrap program to go back to college and become an officer. I became an English major and then, when I graduated, I was commissioned a second Lieutenant; and also went into the Marine Corps when I was done. I came from a law enforcement family. My dad was a police officer down at Detroit. So I always wanted to go back into law enforcement and I started looking a lot of the federal agencies and the FBI was most attractive to me.

Brian Bolwell: So you had a very interesting career with the FBI. Why don't you tell us about a few of the highlights?

Gordon Snow: Sure. I went in and I worked violent crimes because I'd been a Marine. I guess they thought that was the right fit. So I worked violent crimes. I left there, I went to the hostage rescue team, which is the civilian counterterrorist team for the United States. Stayed there about five years and then I went up as a national security supervisor and went and ran a desk in Detroit, special events and domestic terrorism. I went back to do weapons of mass destruction and at the time I just continued the education. So MBA at night, law school at night. And then by the time I was running my office in San Jose, they sent me overseas as an on-scene commander in Afghanistan. So a lot of things that federal agencies do in support of military efforts and then back to DC for cyber.

Brian Bolwell: So tell us a little about that. So you were one of the, I guess, pioneers about cybersecurity with the FBI? Is that correct?

Gordon Snow: Correct. I had gone back to headquarters and I was coming off of Afghanistan. So I just assumed I was going back to terrorism as a senior executive. They asked me to go to director of national intelligence as a joint venture, a joint job opportunity. And I wrote policy for cyber. I had been in violent crimes. I had been in national security and I'd been in terrorism. And so they were looking for somebody with a broad breadth of experience. When I got done with that, I applied for a job at the Wash Center for Terrorism. I was notified that I was going back to be the first director of the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, which was all the intelligence agencies together looking at the hacks across the world. So, really interesting to me. Still thought I wanted to go back to terrorism and it got so interesting and obviously so important of national security and infrastructure type issue that I stayed there and I retired as assistant director for cyber.

Brian Bolwell: So you've been at the Clinic for what, about eight years now? What has surprised you?

Gordon Snow: I think that basic concerns that you would have in all industries. So let's just say a loss of electricity or a loss of water. I was a federal emergency management individual in the incident command system out in San Francisco and other places and if something would have happened with the FBI, my people have everything packed up in their vehicles. We have extra water and clothes and if we lost water and power, we would get generators hooked up and we would stay in that building until it was inhabitable. And then we would head out somewhere else with all their vehicles. And the first time I came here and there was a water outage, the pumps weren't pumping up past certain floors, I didn't think it was really such a big impact to a facility or industry like this. Sterilizers weren't going to sterilize. Things had locked down, equipment had locked out and then I watched the movement of patients and personnel and appointments, which was just amazing to me. So I think those types of things are really what hit me when I first came here.

Brian Bolwell: So, Gordon, you've been a leader for quite a while. Is there a form of leadership training in the FBI? I'm kind of curious how they approach the whole topic.

Gordon Snow: There is. There's formal leadership training in the Marine Corps. And then when we enter the FBI and there's actually courses and classes, we call them in services and you always go back to Quantico, Virginia, and then you're usually mentored and supervised as you move up the ranks. Our next big step is when you become an assistant special agent in charge. And prior to that, you get on inspections and you actually inspect other offices and the way they do things; you answer in really unique investigative needs and fly out for certain issues that the FBI has, whether it be shooting or misconduct.

Brian Bolwell: So what are some of the lessons that you've learned from that leadership training that you apply in your day-to-day job now?

Gordon Snow: I think there's so many things out there. The golden rule, treat everybody as you would want to be treated is really, really important. I think I've learned, throughout the Marine Corps and the FBI experience and here, the most important asset to any organization is that human asset. And I think that's just so critical. I love the way Cleveland Clinic treats our individuals. You look at the structured leadership training, the opportunities, even tuition reimbursement and the money that we pour into our people to allow them to be successful, I think is great. I know that all leaders here are out looking and spotting and assessing, and those are some of the same things that we're looking for in the Marine Corps and in the FBI. You're looking for good leaders out there.

Gordon Snow: I think that the biggest thing I've learned throughout my career is no matter what structure training you have, no matter what skills that you learn in your particular subject matter expertise or many subject matter areas, there's book knowledge and things that have to be taught and learned because they're critical, but I don't think leaders will ever have to solve a problem that's already been solved before. They need to be comfortable being uncomfortable. You will not solve a problem as a leader that you've seen before. You may be able to use a lot of reference points to help frame it and resolve it. But it really means that you have to constantly be out there looking. You have to be able to see around corners, hopefully see over the horizon, and you have to really start looking at problems that aren't even considered problems yet because they may be a symptom of something much bigger.

Brian Bolwell: Gordon, I think one of your strengths is your ability to communicate and to reach out to constituents. Some leaders tend to be rather cloistered in their ivory tower, so to speak, but that you have repeatedly in our interactions got out of your way to disseminate information directly to me or with my team. Where did you learn that? Does that just come natural? I mean, I think it's really vital to effective leadership is to be able to do that, to be able to be transparent as much as you can in a security role, obviously, but to also create relationships so that when things do come up, you can know about them more rapidly because people have a relationship with you as well as your ability to help out others.

Gordon Snow: Absolutely. I think I learned to... I told you my father was a police officer and when I left the Marine Corps and I went to the FBI, I sat down with him and I said, "Hey, what's the most important thing I need to understand?" And he said, "There's going to be so many people out there--regardless of whether you're the FBI and you're in charge of the investigation, or you think you're in charge of that investigation--there's going to be so many people out there that have so much to teach you and you have so much you can provide them if you really work those relationships and find out where it is you need to understand your skill." And that skill in the FBI and like any other industry, and even in healthcare, once again, if you can see the future, if you can understand the future or you can see how to respond even quicker, because you understand the problem, you're that much better off.

So he told me to find people that I thought I could learn from and watch everybody, because the loudest person isn't always the one that has the most information, but just start watching people and assess them. When you find--I was working violent crimes originally for the first four and a half years, I was in the FBI--find those investigators that really know what they're doing and partner up with them. Become a student for lack of a better term. And then I understand. I started finding out those relationships were so critical. When I left my first office and I went to the hostage rescue team, it was interesting. The FBI wanted to throw the going away party and I worked seven counties. Probably about 10 or 11 police departments wanted to throw the party.

Before I came on board they hadn't seen FBI agents unless there was a problem. And I was driving and trying to know my territory because I thought that was really critical and I would stop in to the offices and I'd go to lunch with them. And it paid such huge dividends. I did it because it was enjoyable, but I did it because I wanted to learn also what was my responsibility to those stakeholders out there. What was I supposed to be providing them? And regardless of what somebody was telling me I needed to do, I knew the customer, for lack of a better term, that stakeholder, is who could really tell me what they needed.

Brian Bolwell: Yeah. I think that's incredibly important from a global leadership perspective and thank you for sharing that. So a few specifics has happened here at the clinic in the past year or two. One was we had a presidential debate a couple of months ago here on our campus, real close to the cancer center, actually. And boy, the logistics of that must have been interesting and challenging. Obviously, you can't share everything about it, but what can you share about that, Gordon? And were there things that you learned from the experience?

Gordon Snow: So there were a lot of things I learned. One is that the relationships that were built here in Cleveland paid huge dividends, as they always do. And that was probably about the 15th or 16th large-scale event that I'd worked for. This would be the first time I was involved, not as government, either as in the hostage rescue team. So many democratic national conventions, Republican national conventions, NATO 50th, inaugurations, Y2K. I mean, all the things that happen on a large scale event are what you need to do to put those things together. I think the most critical thing was what we just talked about in the relationship building and the transparency. We have the relationships that we need and you really need to structure the teams so that you can find those individuals and play to their strengths while you're teaching some things too.

So we have some retired secret service agents here that really help out tremendously. We have some retired FBI agents here that work out tremendously. Our police chief is a great individual and all that was so critical. You can force an issue. You can do things by brute force. I was a Marine Corps career and I was Navy seal trained on hostage rescue team. You can brute force almost anything if you have enough personnel and people, but you really need to understand with finesse if you want to work in a small, powerful team and that's what took place during the debate. Usually have about 18 months to two years because you have a leeway. You know something's coming. On this one because of COVID, University of Michigan dropped out. And then we dropped out of the East coast and since we were working with the presidential committee on debates, they said, "Cleveland Clinic, would you be able to pull this together?"

So we had a little under two months to pull it off. If we were fighting over territory, fighting over who was in charge, I don't think anything would have functioned like it did, but instead it out from the security side on so many different fronts, but on the security side, it came out being a very powerful event.

Brian Bolwell: Was there a concern? There must have been a concern about all sorts of security issues, especially in light of what had happened a couple of months earlier with the incident surrounding Black Lives Matter. I mean, I know there was anxiety for the people here on campus about what might occur and yet nothing really much did occur. How did you manage to pull that off?

Gordon Snow: There's always an intelligence cycle, gathering the facts and the information, assessing it, deciding if you have what you need to counter something that you're not sure is going to happen yet. You want to ensure that you keep on completing that cycle and refreshing it. We have a Northeast Ohio fusion center, which kind of gathers our intelligence from a lot of different agencies. We have the FBI as an intelligence cell itself. We have the Secret Service putting an intelligence cell together. What I needed to do was just kind of get eyes in to that entire world without feeling that I was being oppressive or overstepping my bounds. So I grabbed one of our retired FBI agents who had run the joint terrorism task force down there. So I knew he had a lot of the relationships here already.

And I sat down with him and I said, "Hey, we have Secret Service guys that are going to be doing this. We have the police department is going to be doing this. We have our other agencies are going to be helping us out. I want you to really start replicating the intelligence cell and pushing everybody." And he wanted to know really, a very skilled individual, how did I want him to go about doing that? And I said, "Start producing intelligence and sending it out there. What we see?"

And then it almost became a really enjoyable competition to see who could get the intelligence the quickest. And we had some advantages too. One of the Secret Service agents here in Cleveland area had gone out to do the Republican National Convention, or the Democratic National Convention first, and when it didn't come to fruition and it went virtual, they had been watching a lot of the very violent groups that were coming through and the anarchists and so we had a pretty good handle on where they were going.

We even got it down to the point where you could tell when somebody we thought in Cleveland was headed down to Columbus, whether they were going to come back again and we saw a bunch of people move out back towards Portland. So we felt pretty comfortable about that. And then just really working with a lot of the community leaders and others on a lot of the civil unrest. I think after that first push in March of the flare up downtown, and we lost a lot of business frontage, the police departments and the community leaders really worked hard to try to bring that back under control.

And we had a lot of primary, secondary, tertiary plans. We had people to create it in a lot of different places that could respond. A lot of good agile groups, but that's pretty much the way the cycle ran. So if you know your threat, know what your capabilities are, and know what your potential responses are, I think you can walk around a lot more comfortable.

Brian Bolwell: Thank you. Couple of years ago, we had a threat at Medina Hospital. Can you educate our listeners about what happened and how we managed that?

Gordon Snow: Sure. So we have, what they call it by many different names, but the industry standard in law enforcement is swatting. And what they do is they call in a threat to a certain area. It could be on somebody's house, or it could be in a facility like it was in ours at Medina Hospital saying that somebody had a gun and they were threatened to shoot somebody. As everybody knows now, that activates a whole active shooter system and process and protocol. I left when I got the first word that it was taking place and drove down there. The response was overwhelming, which was really important to see, that everybody really was working together, that your federal, state, local entities, were all working as one. They had a unified command center like it's supposed to structure and work.

So that was very comforting rolling into that situation. And what I thought was really great is for all the time that we've spent on compliance modules and lunch and learns and active shooter trainings, that the caregivers were phenomenal. I mean, they did everything they could to protect themselves, the visitors, the patients. Many patients woke up and didn't even know anything was going on. And then they had a lot of questions. So I would never wish that event on anybody, but it was such an insightful event for us. We learned that our mass communication system, we were only communicating to people that were in certain locations because we didn't want to communicate to all 60,000 people at the time and it could only do 5,000 a minute. Somebody there may not get it for 10 minutes.

So we switched over to a new system where we can notify everybody because we found people in there that were from main campus from ombudsman office, from patient experience. They didn't get any communication because we didn't have them targeted. I thought that was really critical. And I really thought it was important to look at and listen to everybody there, their perception of what they saw and what they felt. So we had a lot of meetings with the leaders and the caregivers to find out if you could do it differently, what would you want? And we made some improvements that I think really helped out across the enterprise.

Brian Bolwell: Recently, there's been heightened concern about cybersecurity and healthcare, and that certainly has affected us. We previously talked to our director of cybersecurity, Vugar--but this is part of your training and background and you have a huge amount of expertise in this space. What are your thoughts about the subject in general? What are your thoughts about how it affects healthcare and finally how it affects the entire country?

Gordon Snow: Such a huge vulnerability everywhere. I mean, as much as it's such a powerful medium for us everywhere, it's such a huge vulnerability. And I try to tell the leaders always and if I talk to the frontline personnel, you'll not be able to do anything in any career, in any arena, in any industry without understanding cyber and the threat. And when I went from writing policy to running the NCIJTF, the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, I was really concerned that I would not have the technical skill and capability. And they kept on saying, "You're there to be a leader. You don't have to be at the hacker, you don't have to resolve the system." And I thought, "How can you really be the leader without understanding what it is?"

So I probably took the time to do what all managers do and drive you people nuts. So I found the people that were really good at hacks and really good at understanding it. And I kept on saying, "Okay, explain that to me. Here's what I understand. Explain that to me, explain that to me." And the learning curve was steep, but I jumped on it. And I'd done an MBA at a school where, Virginia Tech, where information technology was critical. So I had to take some programming classes. So I had a little bit of a leg up, but now I tell all the leaders here is, and anybody that's working at any industry when they ask me about cyber is, if you don't understand it, don't be concerned.

Just understand that it's in every single article and every single trade manual on every single publication and what you need to do is when you see something, Google three or four of the articles. Find the article that you like. Find a short article, print them off, throw them on your desk, when you get a chance, read it, circle some words you don't know, look at them, try to understand them. You'll start understanding that that stuff is replicated over and over. And just like all adult learners if we take it in small pieces then it'll start to stick. And then it will be really critical to find those people that are doing your cybersecurity and really start asking them some questions. Have them explain it. We're fortunate to have our CIO Vugar Zeynalov, who's the chief information security officer, because they have a skillset that every organization needs. And they really understand you can't wait for a hack.

You have to understand how to protect yourself the most. You remove the probability and lessen the risks. So for the nation, I'm concerned sometimes for the nation. We talk about dropping power grids, which is one thing and everybody in the industry as they get better educated and technology gets better, innovation gets better, we get better at our protection.

But there're certain things that I don't think we all understand yet. And like the Internet of Things, if you took everybody on the East coast, let's just take the New Year's Eve pressure bombing in that van in Times Square a few years back and let's just say, as that bomb went off and everything started to get chaotic, what would happen if somebody had just tapped into the smart devices that control people's lights and power, and we just started dropping people's lights and turning them off, making it look like we were dropping a power grid and what kind of chaos that would cause?

So really, really important to understand it I think for everybody. It doesn't matter. Our police officers, I teach the same thing to. You can't function and structure without an understanding technology and don't be dismayed if you don't. You can pick up on it really quickly.

Brian Bolwell: Do you think that every healthcare system or really every industry needs a chief security officer, just in respect to cybersecurity?

Gordon Snow: I think so. Without a doubt, and obviously we could talk about size or interrelations or whatever it happens to be, but I think... We'll go back to one of the first statements I made. I didn't understand how impactful it was until I saw it for the first time, you know lose power, lose water, lose almost any critical set or skill or function in the healthcare industry and we haven't even talked about loss of Epic, and those... you know the lives that are at stake are so critical that you want to ensure that you do the best you can for every single healthcare system out there. Every industry is the same. The unfortunate piece is that if you look at a maturity of industries, back when I was the assistant director at cyber, your finance centers are more mature, your energy centers are more mature, they spend more money, and it's just such a critical thing for them to be. But we look at normal infrastructure across healthcare, and it's not as mature or it's older than other infrastructure, other places and that goes along right with computer and IT infrastructure, critical.

Brian Bolwell: The other thing that happens in healthcare, of course, is that every day there's an awful lot going on. And you talked about lives at stake. I mean, as we sit here taping this interview across our health system in Northeast Ohio, we probably got 200 operating rooms going. We've probably got... you know there's thousands of inpatients. As of today, we've got about 600 inpatients with COVID who are in the hospital for a reason, et cetera, not to mention the outpatient activities, which from a number of perspective, dwarf that. It doesn't take much to upset the cart. Right?

Gordon Snow: Exactly.

Brian Bolwell: One of the key things that's important for us here in Cleveland is our main campus is in the middle of Cleveland, Ohio and we've talked repeatedly about the importance of relationships. But can you briefly touch on the importance of relationships with our local community?

Gordon Snow: Yeah, I think they're critical. I look at everything from a bunch of different lenses, whether I'm protecting it as a military individual, as I'm protecting it, as a federal organization or whether I'm protecting it as a CSO here from Cleveland Clinic. And if you look at a lot of things, anytime that you can partner with somebody, you make yourself more powerful. You multiply that entity that you have. We have to teach our, as we do constantly, our police officers and our security officers who do a phenomenal job, how to interact with everybody that they know. So I talked about building an intelligence cycle or tapping into an intelligence cycle. Those neighborhoods are an intelligence cycle. We had neighborhood meetings, Zoom meetings, we went out and met people before the debate.

We wanted to know what their concerns were and we wanted to tell them how they could help us and how they could help themselves. So we partnered with all the varied police departments around here, and we talked to those individuals and we learned some things and we provided some things. And I think that's really that relationship that you need out there.

Our neighborhoods are phenomenal. I know many of the councilmen out there. I'm actually starting to know some of the people that lived down the street. So they'll see me and wave because they've seen me at an event or whatever it happens to be. But it's worth stopping and talking to them because they might tell you something that you haven't heard about or something that the police officers have under control, but they just haven't let you know about it yet which helps you because you might be in a meeting some day, which can provide some assistance or some insight to something else that's taken place. So really, really, really critical.

Brian Bolwell: So, Gordon, as we're winding down, are there other key leadership principles that have worked for you that you'd like to share with us?

Gordon Snow: I just think you always have to treat, like I said earlier, you always have to treat everybody as you'd like to be treated. I think that it's really critical to teach every leader that it's okay if they don't know the answer. And I think sometimes that's probably the hardest thing for a leader. I had left the hostage rescue team and I was out running the San Jose office some years later, but I knew the critical incident response group was down there at Quantico and they cover everything that could be anything at any time. I would run into an event in San Jose, which was the 10th largest city in the country and it would be a pretty significant event and we put everything in motion and the next thing I do is I call the watch officer down at Quantico and I'd say, "Hey, so-and-so, I'm running San Jose," and "Hey Gordon. How you doing?" "Great." "Hey, we've got an event out here. Here's what's taking place." And I'd start talking to them about it. And then I'd say, "Here's what I did." And the next question would always be, "What am I missing?"

And after the events would be over, it was unusual, I think, to them, for someone to say that. Nobody wanted to be the guy that was like asking for help because you must not know the answer. I knew what I knew, but I don't know what I didn't know. And the events are more successful. You and I had talked at one time when I first came here. You're the subject matter expert and you know your lane and I was ready to launch on something and it worked. But then I listened to the feedback afterwards and realized if I would have taken just a few minutes, a few meetings, 20 minutes here or there to listen, I probably could have made a more powerful solution, which was implemented quicker.

And now if I'm thinking about something and I think I know somebody that knows how that would impact people, I'll just--because you're always driving in and out and-- I'll give them a call and I'll say, "Hey, how are you doing? I'm thinking about something. Can I run something by you?" "Yeah, you can." And I'll run it by him. I'll say, "Hey, what about this?" And it's usually, I feel like I'm cheating because I'm getting the answers to the test, which is great because I think, "Oh, that's a great idea. I didn't think about that." So I, once again, back to the collaboration and the partnership, the stakeholders, I think you just make yourself more powerful by bringing everybody in and that's the way we should operate.

Brian Bolwell: Yeah. But there's a bunch of lessons there that I think are crucial, Gordon. I think number one is having both the humility, but also the courage to say, "I don't know." I actually wrote an op-ed about saying, I don't know, because very few leaders do it and I find that when I say, "I don't know," it's actually empowering and you usually get a lot of people who are very willing to help you. But secondly is, as you say, it's important to reach out to other people to find out not just about how to help you, but also to educate you about what you don't know and to have that willingness to be humble and also to be inquisitive to try to get as much information as you can. Those learnings, I think, are invaluable. So really important things for all of us to remember. Thank you.

Gordon Snow: Absolutely. We started the intelligence cycle pretty heavily after 9/11 and what I thought was interesting is when we were producing product, is what we call it in the cyber industry for hacking and whatever it happened to be and we're partnering with it, CIA and NSA and Department of Homeland security, and all of us together would decide this was a great product. But I really wouldn't get that rave review when it came back and that started drawing my attention. And so we had industry partners out there that had developed good relationships with. And I was telling the deputy that was running the Intel side, "Hey, when you get to ready to drop this next product, bring in so-and-so. Ask them to review it and have him tell you whether this is worth it for them."

Because he's got to take time out of his busy schedule to read it. And we started getting some real, because we had good relationships starting to get some really good insight. "Hey, this is great. This we know. This we know. This we know. Hey, I'd really like you to write a piece on this." And so I think those kinds of things and to your point is, people need to tell you, your customers, what you need. I think our police officers successful out in the hospitals because they partner with the CEOs and the COOs and the CNOs, and then the nurse managers and they ask them, "What do you need from us?"

Brian Bolwell: Gordon, thank you so much. This has been fabulous. And for our audience, thanks for listening to Beyond Leadership and we look forward to future podcasts to share with all of you.

Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Beyond Leadership. We welcome any topic ideas, comments, or questions about this, or any past episodes. Email us at executiveeducation@ccf.org or by clicking on the link in the show notes.