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Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
John, welcome aboard to the show. Thank you so much for joining us here today.
Speaker 2:It is for an honor. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:And I'll start with a thank you for your service as well. And with that, I want to blast you really, really far into the past. You made a choice that probably changed your life forever. What was that choice?
Speaker 2:Well, grew up in The Bronx in New York, and the opportunity was made aware to me because I was actually dating a girl in high school whose two brothers went to the Air Force Academy in Colorado. I wasn't really sure where Colorado was, to be honest with you. So it was an opportunity, I submitted my application and I was fortunate enough to be accepted. Getting out of New York, first time I flew on an airplane, it's the first time I really was out of the state, Connecticut and New Jersey and things like that, but certainly not in the Western Part of The United States. So it was a beginning of a very interesting adventure.
Speaker 1:What was your first day on uniform kind of experiencing boot camp? What was your low points of like, holy shit, did I I make this decision? Like, was there any low point where you're like, no, take me home?
Speaker 2:You think with a couple of brothers that one of girls I was dating filled me in a little bit, but I was pretty naive. I had no idea what it was gonna be like. So when I got off the bus and they started yelling at you and, you know, it's it's one of those things where it was kind of a kinder, gentler time frame in 1969. They didn't do it that way. They they welcomed us.
Speaker 2:You know? Thank you for coming to Air Force Academy. In the first two days, I wrote back, you know, to my mother and family, I said, I think I'm gonna like it here. And they were all standing at attention the third night, and all of a sudden, we hear these boots coming. So the cadre that was there to welcome us exited and the trainer guys came in and I tell you it was like hell on wheels and I said, what in good names have I got myself into?
Speaker 2:So it was a bit of a shock for a kid from The Bronx.
Speaker 1:And you spent a total of over thirty three years in the Air Force. I'm going to fast forward quite, quite far into the future. Nineeleven happened. A few years after that, we had another disaster happen. Where were you?
Speaker 1:Do you remember the that moment that you kind of figured out, shit, the twins just went down?
Speaker 2:I was in the Pentagon actually, and I was the strategic planner for the Air Force. So, they pick one two star general to be able to do that. So, I was on the 5th Floor, two corridors over, and the airplane hit. Of course, we were all watching what was happening in New York. Not really sure if it was gonna happen in Washington, but kinda suspecting that something might happen.
Speaker 2:Well, then, of course, all the bells and whistles went off in the Pentagon. You could hear it, smell it, and feel it from where I was. There was no immediate injuries for people that I was with, but certainly down the corridors, could see it. We had to carry a woman who was pretty much catatonic, down five flights to get to the outside. And of course, the police and the fire department did an excellent job, and certainly the military.
Speaker 2:But it was a shock for all of us, and we knew that the military was going to change big time because of that event, and of course we all know it did.
Speaker 1:What did that change look like? What are the things that were, you know, true before nineeleven, and you know, of us have our TSA experiences, but with that aside, how the how did the world change from your perspective before and after nine eleven?
Speaker 2:Well, have to go back a little bit further. I was, you know, an F sixteen fighter pilot, squadron commander, and I got called I was dropping laser guided bombs in Puerto Rico for the NATO generals, and I got called in the phone and said, You're not gonna come back to Utah, which is where I was at Hill Air Force Base. You're gonna go to Washington and interview for a job in a Pentagon. I said, I don't wanna go there and interview you for any job. I said, Well, you don't have a choice.
Speaker 2:We're shipping a uniform. So I ended up being interviewed by Secretary Cheney at the time, who was Secretary of Defense, not Vice President at the time in 1990, and he selected me to be his military assistant. And it kind of was a tough time for me because not a month later, you know, we're in Desert Storm, Desert Shield going into Desert Storm, but it gave me a window on history that I think is pretty prescient, a little bit of what happened later on, of course, on 09/11. So I witnessed the operation of a war from the Secretary of Defense's level, and that's why I call it a window on history. It was pretty compelling to see the effort that was done and the comparisons certainly between that and what happened in 2003 when I was in the Pentagon as a two star.
Speaker 2:I spent two and a half years flying over Iraq after Desert Storm, and I was in command of fighter operations as a group commander in Saudi Arabia, and then I was two years as a commander in Inchalik Air Base in Turkey. And of course, they'd shoot at us, we'd shoot at them, we'd take them down, all those things were going on. Certainly not in the intensity that was a desert storm. So certainly realizing what happened, frankly, when you think about the timeline, it was twenty years, about 1991 to 2003, so not quite that twelve years or so. Bottom line was we had been working and fighting really a war on terrorism since that early timeframe.
Speaker 2:And of course, when it happened, I can remember we actually exited the Pentagon, we went to an alternate site. I mean, who went? I mean, everybody went, all the services, all the service chiefs, all the secretaries, And of course, we were back in the Pentagon the next day because Rumsfeld was secretary of defense, he said, We're gonna stay in the Pentagon. Now that Pentagon was on fire for ten days, so I would bring my staff in to brief and then to send them home in an hour because but we all had all the generals had to stay in the Pentagon. So we had the windows open, trying to keep free fresh air coming in.
Speaker 2:So we knew the world was gonna change. There's no doubt about it because really, that was the biggest loss of life since the civil war and the battle of Antietam. So when you think about that and you think about how many people lost their lives in the Pentagon, because there are men, women, and children. There were children in the Pentagon that day on tours. So I can remember going back that night, switching back into my flight suit from my, you know, basically my staff uniform, and, of course the world changed.
Speaker 1:What was the, what was for, I mean many of the people I talked to, they didn't experience nineeleven, they didn't understand, they don't really understand how the world changed. When you look back over many, many years, what are the key differences that you think about when it comes to government or military? What was fundamentally untrue today that was true before nineeleven?
Speaker 2:Well, again, have to go back to Desert Storm because at that time, the decision was made by President Bush Sr. That we were going to kick him out of Kuwait. We were going to defend Saudi Arabia. We were going to be able to destroy the Iraqi army, basically, including the Republican Guard. It was a very succinct, clear objective of what we were able to do, and we did it, and then we left.
Speaker 2:So 2003 was a little bit different. Decisions were made to which was interesting because some of the same leadership secretary of defense Cheney was now the vice president. You know, we had Bush, obviously Bush Junior as the president at the time. We had some of the same people in the Pentagon elevated to higher positions. So it was interesting how that came into a little bit different, not a very clear objective to get in, get out, and be done with it, and we ended up staying.
Speaker 2:And we know the results had occurred because of that. And now we're in a situation what's going on now in Iran, and really, we should have learned and reviewed historically the lessons from 1991 with Shield and Desert Storm. It really was a well done, executed operation with clear objectives and a very well done executed outcome.
Speaker 1:I want to get to that and kind of how government kind of behaves and perceives and creates deterrents, but just following down that timeline, you had the opportunity to Bart to be part of the team that investigated the accident with the Columbia space shuttle. Tell us, what was that story like? How did that even happen? What did that look like? Huge piece of history.
Speaker 2:Well, again, I have to go back a little bit. In 1985, 'eighty six, I was selected as a White House Fellow, and it was only 13 of us, so the bottom line was we were assigned to an executive branch. I ended up getting to work for NASA, which again, to be interesting. There was a crisis when we lost Challenger. That was a teacher in flight takeoff.
Speaker 2:We lost Challenger on explosions. But I was able to witness an organization in crisis, and it was very telling, very obviously emotional for a lot of us who were there and saw the outcome. And then when you think about it, it was seventeen years later, we have Columbia, And I'm a two star at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and I was selected to be on the board for the investigation. I was not only the board member, but also the executive director. So we had a team, great team, did a really good job on trying to put pieces to things together.
Speaker 2:But it was unique in a lot of ways because normally and we've seen accidents in a certainly in the Air Force and all the services, what was the widget that broke or who's part of it, do you hire fire, side retire, whatever the situation is, who was at fault. This was pretty unique in the sense that we made a decision very early that there was a technical cause for this, obviously, that failed on the reentry. Remember, this is the reentry after they'd been up there for about ten days, and a piece of foam had come off on the left leading edge connecting point where the shuttle's tied to the external tank. So the shuttle is tied to the external tank. It points two on the top, two on the bottom, and a piece of that foam, two and a half pounds of foam came off, broke into three different pieces.
Speaker 2:And 1.2 pounds of the bigger piece hit the left wing and damaged it enough that on reentry, that heat that you have, sometimes 7,000, 8,000 degrees, is hitting into the leading edge. Basically, obviously, it's a glider now. There's no fuel. It just ate away at the the wing, and we lost a crew. But we made a decision that there was not only a technical cause, but there was a culture management and organization cause.
Speaker 2:And frankly, that shook NASA pretty well because, you know, we all knew there was a technical reason for the failure. But by saying culture management organization, it went back to, Sally Ride, who was on our board. Sally Ride was the first American woman in space. She was the only one who was on the board in 1986 and in 2003, Challenger and Columbia. And she said something incredibly insightful.
Speaker 2:She said, I hear echoes of Challenger with Columbia. And it was true. We did find some of the same things. So watching two organizations' crises in NASA over a period of seventeen years was pretty insightful, and I'll just share with you one personal story that I thought was pretty compelling. When we had Challenger, they collected all the debris and put it in a silo and buried it.
Speaker 2:When we had Columbia, it was the families, not NASA, families, that said, Take every single piece that we can come, send it to every laboratory no matter where it is in the world, and let's find out everything we can possibly there's a big difference between NASA. It's kinda like, okay. We've been there, done that, buried it. We learned the lesson. Let's move on.
Speaker 2:And that's not unhealthy, but it also didn't allow for a continual learning process. And I'll just tell you one other thing. You can ask any other questions that you want. But I found out that no one in the senior leadership at NASA at the time had done a case study on Challenger. So those lessons learned were kinda like buried in a silo and, you know, let's move on.
Speaker 2:And you know who did do a case study on Challenger? It was the nuclear navy in our US Navy. Every single officer who went through the nuclear armament in the nuclear navy studied Challenger, and NASA didn't. And frankly, having been there in 1986 and obviously been part of the investigation in 2003, I was shocked. Interesting lesson.
Speaker 1:So in Challenger, and keep me honest here that my knowledge of history is accurate, but the O ring that basically did not work at those temperatures, the company that manufactured it did get warnings from their engineering team that there was an issue, that it was not really made to work at those temperatures and they knew what the weather looked like, there was concern and I heard that the statement said by one of the executives at that company was put on your executive, your managerial hat. So they basically use it to form a social psychology to sell it in. Think like a manager, don't think like an engineer because they had some turmoil there and then that information did not end up at NASA. Putting aside the fact that you know, there's, you know, there's NASA and then there's manufacturers that work for NASA. They, you know, NASA obviously can't build everything themselves.
Speaker 1:This is a human issue at its core. It's not just a technical issue. And you alluded before when you were talking that there's cultural aspects and human issues to this. And we're talking about the Challenger here, not about Colombia, right? So what did we learn, what didn't we learn, and what were the takeaways for culture that we should be reminding ourselves constantly when we do these incredibly dangerous things and risky things.
Speaker 2:I'll explain one comparison. NASA has an amazing thing that they do when they get ready for launch. They have all of their sites on, even back in 1986, a webinar of sorts, you know. Johnson Center, you're ready to launch. Kennedy Center, you're ready.
Speaker 2:Mushrooms, you're ready to launch. And they go around there. So it was a different attitude at that time because there was some folks that had said because of the temperature that the O ring, had shown that it blasted through and could be a problem at cold temperatures. That was communicated, but it was not elevated to the highest level, and it's really a shame. But the reason I tell that example about NASA, you know, the attitude was as they went around to all these different sites, my personal opinion, but I think we validated that in the investigation in Challenger in 1986, that if someone raised an issue, you had to prove everybody else wrong.
Speaker 2:So if I brought something up, then I would have to prove it to all the people in all the different sites before we would reverse the decision. It was interesting. NASA learned that lesson in 2003 when we lost Columbia, when they went around the room, Kennedy Center, you're ready, Johnson Spanner, you're ready, everybody. If one person raised an issue, the attitude was that whole group had to prove him wrong or her wrong. See the difference?
Speaker 2:First one was, if I raise an issue, I had to prove to the group that there was a reason why we should stop. But here, it was done correctly. However, it wasn't carried over to the reentry. Now, they knew something had happened. They knew a piece of foam had hit.
Speaker 2:There was some concern by some of the engineers really about the gear blowing down because they're worried about maybe it damaged something, and if you lose a wheel or you lose one of the basically wheels, you're gonna lose the shuttle on reentry when it lands. That's what they were concerned about. However, they went around the room again, Kennedy, Johnson, Michoud, all the different sites again, and was back to that attitude that if you raise an issue, you have to prove everybody wrong. Now here here's the dilemma, and I get this often when I'm given this briefing. What could have NASA done had they really realized that it was really a shuttle ending possibility?
Speaker 2:Could they have done anything? Well, certainly, they could not have repaired it. They didn't even have the arm. It science was mission. They had the science module in the back.
Speaker 2:And even if you did do a spacewalk and looked at the left wing, there's no way you could have repaired it because you didn't have anything to stand on because if you push on it, you know, even if you stuck a telephone book in there, I use that example, you know, try to dissipate the heat on reentry, you couldn't do it. So what could they have done? The only possibility if they didn't know that it was definitely a high risk was do a space rescue. Atlantis was on the pad ready to launch after Columbia landed. Now just imagine how difficult you trying to make a decision because they can only be up there a certain number of days because they're limited not by oxygen or food or anything like that is really your nitrogen dissemination.
Speaker 2:Okay? So they can be up there maybe twenty days. So if you launch the Atlantis with two astronauts and bring back the seven with people sitting on the floor and not in chairs and all, could that have been done? It might have been, But that's the only possibility that could possibly have happened. They never got there.
Speaker 2:They even refused to get a satellite picture because they had done it some time before, and it didn't turn out to be very granular enough to be able to learn anything, but they still never even tried. So for everybody concerned, in 2003, when it was coming back, everything was looking great. And of course it didn't.
Speaker 1:I think it's incredibly interesting that one of the key factors wasn't an additional technical test, wasn't an equation that went wrong, wasn't some engineering aspect, it was really about the process of making decisions. That's what could have tipped us over. Do you see that same kind of decision making issues persist, or has the culture changed significantly since?
Speaker 2:Well, when we finished the investigation for Columbia in 2003, we made our report, and we had our recommendations. And what followed that was a return to flight group. So we left with our group. Return to flight group came in, and they followed through to make sure that the recommendations were followed, and they were. And I think there's examples that I could cite on the space station where people have raised an issue, and it's like, okay, now we have to prove you wrong.
Speaker 2:There was a couple of times where we've almost abandoned the space station, and it was well done on the review and the analysis to be able to determine that as it was raised, but it still was safe enough to keep the astronauts on the space station, and they were able to find a solution to the problem. So I think that attitude, I gotta prove you wrong or you gotta prove the group wrong, was healthy. So they did learn. And I think there was examples, particularly on the space station, on how that has been handled well. So I'm I'm confident that that has been a cultural basic effort that has been embedded into NASA.
Speaker 2:And I think we're seeing it now. You know, when they had trouble trying to launch the second launch around the moon, this time with astronauts.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you would agree, I'll semi talk about the rest of your career where you started to go into more kind of corporate environments. Did you see that kind lesson about how decisions are made? Did you see that culture also applying to the commercial organizations that you were part of as opposed to, or is this just a military thing?
Speaker 2:No, no, actually I've given this briefing on Columbia hospitals, to atomic energy plans, certainly the military in space, and NASA, and SpaceX, and different organizations, because the lessons that are applied to this apply across the board. There's communication issue, there's organization, there's safety issues, there's certainly issues on how you prioritize your risk and where you end up taking that, whether it be in an operating room in a hospital or be certainly on a launch for missiles into space. So what I encourage people to do is take cases, case studies that are not necessarily in your particular area because there are lessons to be learned. This case study for Columbia applies across the board to any large organization and even small organizations that are briefed too. So when I was in the military, I studied business and education.
Speaker 2:When I was in business, I studied education and the military, and then when I was in education, you can see the parallel I'm drawing here. So it is when you have the benefit of taking case studies that may not be in your particular area of expertise because there are lessons that can be learned across the board. That's what I I've had the opportunity to be vice president of SAP almost three years. I was a superintendent of rural public schools staying here in Colorado with 42,000 kids and 60 schools, you know, for seven years. I ran Boys and Girls Club here in the Denver Metro Area here for almost three years, and then I was a CEO of a museum, our Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum for eight years.
Speaker 2:I've had the opportunity to do things, and I've carried those lessons learned from the military into business and from business into the museum, and so sometimes we get caught up into the issue, Well, that was NASA. That was a case study on technology. I'm running an investment company. It has nothing to do with it. And I can tell you, there are lessons learned, particularly as you mentioned, on decision making that can be applied to all of those.
Speaker 1:I think people undervalue the common thread, and it's the humanity that we all share, no matter what we're doing. And the same sickness that we have when we're making decisions for space are the same sicknesses we have when we're making decisions for whether it's a school board or whether it's a multi million dollar company. So I appreciate that insight.
Speaker 2:You know, just another example, when I've hired people over the years, I bring them in and I say, Listen, I'm gonna give you a homework assignment, and they go, Oh, okay, great. I've not even been here a day and this guy's giving me homework already. I said, Okay, here's homework assignment. You got six weeks, okay, and I want you to And the analogy is there's a rock in the road. I can't see the rock in the road anymore because I walk out of it with my habit.
Speaker 2:You have a fresh set of eyes. So that's why a lot of times bringing nontraditional people into your area of expertise, like certainly I was a nontraditional going into education, K-twelve education for seven years, you have a new set of eyes to be able to do that. So their homework assignment is I wanna know what you like that you've seen in the first six weeks, and I wanna know what you don't like or things that we can improve on. It doesn't have to be in your area of if you're a chief financial officer, don't just give me finance stuff. I mean, the paint needs to be done, if there's a tripwire there, is there something that's not working the way it should be, where you're in processing when you came in done well or not done well, that's where you get that fresh set of eyes.
Speaker 2:But I also warn them that in six months, that rock you're not going to see anymore because you're going to walk over to Manhattan. So there's great value in having a fresh set of eyes, even from outside the agency that you're working at, to be able to bring people in some time to do that. And that's why I go back to what I've said earlier. Studying case studies, and this is one here, I'll just talk about it now. There's a book on super ownership, superintendent ownership, but it really is a case study on leadership and how to work organizations.
Speaker 2:Obviously, with children in education, that's a high priority for all of us, but it really shows those lessons learned that I picked up for all those years and applied it to the education systems. It's superownership.com is the website and the book on Amazon is Super Ownership right there.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that, John. There's something incredibly interesting in what you said. You said, well, you know, if it's a finance person, doesn't matter. Tell me whatever you see outside of finance. There is a problem there because I'm not the expert on this.
Speaker 1:I'm the finance guy. Why, like, do I even have permission to say something about engineering? From my sense and experience, I've seen feedback be shut down, belittled, disappeared, not taken seriously. When people kind of step out of their lane, what's your philosophy when it comes to stepping out of your lane, so to speak, and how executives should kind of create a culture around decision making when it comes to feedback?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you that one of the things I've learned sometimes the hard way, not always the easy way, is that when you give people permission, that's the word you use, to be able to provide information outside of their wheelhouse, it allows them to be able to be part and parcel of the communication process. I could give you examples in combat where you think the person who is the least qualified and the youngest in some cases to be able to present something that none of us have ever thought about, I've seen it time and time again. I remember when I was a wing commander in airbase in Turkey, and I'll just I won't use a combat example, but I'll use we had a flood on base. I mean, houses that people lived in are American we had 20,000 people flying combat into Iraq from Incirlik, Turkey. And we had permanent party there, not just transition TDY people in and out as we had over the many years, Northern Watch or what we used to call provide comfort.
Speaker 2:But it was one of those things where I got a room and anybody got any ideas on what we can do. And I had a nurse who had nothing to do with engineering and flood management and crisis management necessarily outside of obviously the operating room, brought forward a suggestion on how we can dam the water up and be able to prevent any more water coming back on the base. I mean, because we were dealing with a problem when trying to get people out of buildings and get them, you know, houses and try to make sure that we took care of their belongings and she says, don't we just do this? It proved to be an example. So someone you have to have that kind of a culture, but people feel comfortable about making suggestions on how things can be done better even if they're not an expert in that area.
Speaker 2:You'd be surprised how many times I've been shocked when people once they're given permission, Have you thought about this? I go, no, we haven't.
Speaker 1:That's absolutely amazing. Is it just a simple cultural fix of giving people permission or are there extra steps where you want to give people tools to think about the problem and to come to the team with kind of a thought out process of data, of qualification of research? Or is it just, hey, if you have something, tell us and we'll look into it. Like, how do you build that structure in a more detailed way?
Speaker 2:I'll tell you another lesson that I bring in on the book, but a couple of places is, you know, when I was a wing commander, I would bring a new squadron commander, you know, a person who's got responsibilities, multimillion dollar operations, F-sixteen aircraft, 24 aircraft, the responsibility of dealing with it, and I bring him, and I go to his office, it was mostly him in my days, but it also applies to anybody else, and I'd say, Okay, here's what I want you to do. I'm gonna sit here in your office, I got some work to do, phone calls to make, and I want you to walk your perimeters and visit and touch every square footage of the buildings that you're responsible for and then come back and talk to me. And they go, what do you want me to do? I mean, what's the purpose of it? I said, just do it.
Speaker 2:Just do it. Now sometimes they'd be annoyed at me for this because, hey, I got a lot to do here. Now this commander is telling me just walk around here and just see what happens. So they'd walk around and they'd come back in about an hour or so, and I'd say, Well, how'd it go? He says, Well, I did what you said.
Speaker 2:I walked around and touched every square foot. Who'd you talk to? And he said, Well, I talked to a lot of people. I said, Well, give me an example of some of the conversations. And I said, Well, I met with this lieutenant, he was working a scheduling problem with the flying, and I told him, Okay, I'll take care of it.
Speaker 2:And then he walked down to somebody else and he said there was a personnel issue that they were dealing with. He said, Okay, I'll take care of that. And he went on and on and on. Usually, you have four or five different examples. And I said, Well, what did you do about taking all these monkeys out of your back?
Speaker 2:There's a great book, you know, the one minute manager meets the monkey. If anybody has it's really a small book. It's quick to do. And I said to him, I said, that's not your job anymore. Your job is not to take those monkeys.
Speaker 2:Okay? I said, well, what was I supposed to do? And I said, okay, here's what you were supposed to do. First of all, there are three steps. What is the problem?
Speaker 2:Because people will talk to you and they don't give you the problem, they give you the effect of the problem. But is it a personnel problem? Is it training problem? Is it a money problem? You gotta deep down.
Speaker 2:So what is the problem that you're bringing to me specifically? Second step is, what are you doing to fix the problem? Because if you have any responsibility as a commander, have your ultimate responsibility, but you're talking to a person who said, You have responsibility because you've identified a problem. What have you done to deal with the problem? And they say, Well, okay, maybe I should have done this and maybe I should have done that.
Speaker 2:And the third step is, What do you want me to do as your commander to fix the problem? So it puts the onus on them to come up with some ideas. So what I would normally do is I bring somebody in, I say, Okay, what's the problem? I said, That's not the problem. Is it a personal problem, money problem, training problem?
Speaker 2:And they said, Okay, I guess it's a personal problem. Okay, now what are you doing to fix it? Well, I tried this. I talked to this person. It work?
Speaker 2:No, it hasn't worked. Okay, now the third step is, What do you want me to do? You want more money? Do you want me to get training? Do we want me to call a conference?
Speaker 2:Do want me to bring an expert in to give a solution? Give me some ideas on how to do that. And that's one of the things that I would tell people a lot of times because they would say, My boss doesn't listen to me. Well, what have you done? If you go in there and you say, Hey boss, this is the problem.
Speaker 2:I think this is the problem. Here's what I've done so far and I can't do anymore. And here's what I need your help on to be able to do these steps. You give them some choices. Now he or she may not take that, but the bottom line is you're giving them some authority to come up with some solutions.
Speaker 2:And that's something that I've seen in business and school district and the museum and so forth, where people just kinda go, Well, he's not gonna listen to me. But he'll listen to you if you come in there and you take that approach. What is the problem? What are you doing to fix the problem? And what do you want me to do?
Speaker 2:And that helps give them authority and responsibility and permission to be able to come with solutions and they feel heard. Okay? Now you may not exactly one guy came in and says, here's the problem. Here's what I've done to fix it. I need $2,000,000 Okay.
Speaker 2:It's not gonna work that way. Okay. What other choices do you have that we can do that?
Speaker 1:Let's talk for a second about what normally happens when you don't use that process. There's kind of two extremes of it from my experience, but keep me honest based on yours. One is you just never hear the problem and they kind of work for weeks and months on something then it kind of explodes and then the executive's like, how do I not know about this? And then the other extreme is where the executive kind of has to solve all the problems and nothing is anybody's responsibility. Now you know obviously these are the extremes that we see the full spectrum.
Speaker 1:So my point is that simple process like that is, and you said it but I want to kind of double down on this, you're empowering your team to take ownership, to take responsibility, to solve problems, to come with with you know a clear plan as opposed to oh don't worry I'll take care of it and then you find that you turn into the bottleneck as an executive and everybody's pointing, oh, I'm waiting for, you know, whoever to solve this problem for me. And now you're a one man show, a or woman. I think we see that a lot, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:And it's true. I mean, it it is giving ownership to folks to be able to come up and not be afraid to be forefront about it. But it's what you need to elevate people. Some people would tell me, so what is your leadership style? And I go, it depends.
Speaker 2:So what does that mean? I mean, are you a micromanager? Are you a people person? Are you the well, let me explain in these manners. And I'm using the example of time to demonstrate this.
Speaker 2:So you got, let's say, 10 people that are working for you, and there's levers. Now, first time a young person comes in, takes a new job, they have to learn that asking for help is a measure of strength, it is not a measure of weakness. Because a lot of times people say, Well, I don't know what the boss should know about that because I'll try to figure it myself. And then end up this small problem now becomes a major problem. Now we got lawyers and we got doctors and we got all sorts of people.
Speaker 2:Had you gotten to us earlier, we could have done that. But think of it as levers. So the first time somebody takes a job, my lever is four. Would you describe that as micromanagement? Maybe.
Speaker 2:Okay, because I'm gonna check on that guy daily or a person daily. Now, I'm using time as an example, I don't do this. And then the other person has been in the job for a while, demonstrated some good thought processes, is learning, is willing to ask for help. I got the lever back, maybe I check on him weekly. I don't do that either, but I'm using time.
Speaker 2:And then the other person is demonstrate, I swear if I never even talked to the guy or gal, it would be well done, because that's how good that person is. However, things change in a heartbeat. So this person with the levers way back, all of a sudden has a spouse who's sick or a child who's sick, or there's something that's come into their life. Now the lever's forward again. Now it may not be there long, or it might be, depending on how that person is handling their only individual crisis.
Speaker 2:So when people ask me what kind of leadership you have, I say it depends. And it really does kind of use that example. So people go, that kind of makes sense, because you can't be the happy go lucky friendly guy all the time, and you can't be the dictator all the time. You have to be able to manage your situations because you manage things, you lead people. That is a big difference between understanding what management and leadership is all about.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that deeply. One of the big pushbacks of social psychology on these kind of personality tests and leadership styles and all that is that if you look at behavior, it's really an equation of two things. It's the situation in your personality and what social science teaches us is that actually the situation can be way stronger than the personality. And I think we kind of forget that many times on how important situations are. So I really appreciate your comment.
Speaker 1:You had to kind of look through your book and think about maybe the key piece of advice or insights or learning, what would be one of them that you would highlight?
Speaker 2:Well, what I see a lot of people do is, you know, sometimes you walk into a situation, it's a crisis situation, a person that you're taking responsibility for that has been fired, that's a really tough thing. But I sometimes think the tougher one is when you take over somebody who's done well. Don't wanna throw the baby out with a bathwater. You wanna build on things and making sure you understand that distinction. I've seen too many people come in where organization is really running well, and then they flip it upside down and they start all over again.
Speaker 2:And when, particularly in the military, you only have command for two years at a time if you're lucky, And you don't have that much time to be able to do it. You need to build on what's been done well, find out where the weaknesses are and improve them. But it's one of those things where in the book I talk about setting up a strategic plan, and it's really about trying to be able to get to the point where you are developing a ninety day plan. We walk around, you talk to people, you find out where the strengths are, you talk to your predecessor as best you can, You find out from other communities, business, from the communities, from parents, from your subordinates, your superiors, be able to put something together and then build a strategic plan. Now, strategy, this is where some people get, Ah, there's that strategic plan stuff, that's kind of old age stuff, that's not a good way to think, and I really think it still is well worthwhile because strategy is connecting ends with means.
Speaker 2:An end is your vision. Means are your goals and objectives. When you connect those, you have a strategy. People get strategies all mixed up with tactical moves. We're gonna fix that broken policy.
Speaker 2:Okay? That's a tactical solution. You need a strategy. And then you have the mission, division, and the values, and then you build what I call strategic pillars. Now almost every strategic plan is a people part, has achievement part, has a community part, has an environment part, but however you do that, you combine it on these strategic pillars that you pick, and then you put the goals and objectives underneath them.
Speaker 2:And the mistake that we've made in the Air Force so many years, and believe me, I became a strategic planner for the Air Force, not because I was so good at it, it's because I was so bad at it, I actually learned how to do it better. You bring in the goals and objectives that set the basic premise. So I'll just give you an example. I was a wing commander at Luke Air Force Base, and we had a Falcon folks, call it. Falcon is the F-sixteen.
Speaker 2:So one of the strategic pillars was about people, Falcon folks. And I had this young three striper on the flight line, and I could see he was following me, you know, and I finally said, Hey, sorry, what are you doing? He said, Hey, sorry. I just wanna let you know that today we did Falcon folks. And okay, what'd you do?
Speaker 2:Well, we've never won Airmen of the Year for the wing, and we've developed a process now where our people can be competitive. Okay. And then Falcon Facilities was the other one, another strategic pillar. He says, We did Falcon Facilities. Our ready room was a freaking nightmare.
Speaker 2:So what we did, I know to get money and all that other stuff and all, so we just went out there and raised money. We did car washes and all. So what I use as an example is, we set the strategic plan on the big stuff, but they filled it in from the bottom up. I didn't tell him to do that, I didn't tell him how to do the airman program, I didn't tell him how to improve his ready room, he figured it out once he understood what our strategic plan was. And to be able to do that, you need metrics and you have to measure things because if don't measure, it doesn't measure up.
Speaker 2:And I would put this data on the wall and everybody would see it. And then that allowed everybody to say, We're winning or we're losing. Okay? And if we're not doing well, we know we gotta do better. And if we're doing well, we can celebrate.
Speaker 2:So it is one of those things where I say in the book here about a strategic plan is a big part of it, but there's also crisis management. And I'll just give you one example. Everybody knows when we had the crisis in Colorado back in '9, you know, kids were shot, and that's kind of kinda well, when we when I took over as superintendent of rural public schools, we started an incident response team, and we practiced. And we set case studies, and we did tabletops. And we worked with the police and the fire department on real train actual exercises, not just tabletop.
Speaker 2:And then we had the theater shooting in Aurora in 2011. Now I was in a shooting in a school district, but it affected our whole school because I had a whole football team in that theater that night and lost two kids and a couple other injured with a bullet in the neck and a couple other things. So but we had practiced and prepared for that. So the reality we live in today is I don't care what organization, whether church or school or manufacturing company, you have to have a crisis management plan. And I talk about that in the book also, on being able how to handle that.
Speaker 2:But then there's all sorts of different kinds of stories I have in there like and I'll just give you one more. Rhythm. Every organization has a rhythm, okay? And I'm not talking about biorhythms or any of that stuff. I'm talking about if you move to another building, your rhythm is broken because where's the bathroom?
Speaker 2:Where do we get the paper? Who do we call? Where's the phones? All those things that go on. Leaders taking over organizations break rhythm because it's a new person, and you have to be sensitive to what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Now, if you're replacing somebody who's failed and you're trying to really fix them, that's one challenge. And then the other one is somebody you're taking over for did really well, and you have to understand what the rhythm is. So I'll give you just one example. We were well behind flying time in the F-sixteen at Hill Air Force Base when I was a squad commander because of snow. So we usually fly an eight turn six.
Speaker 2:So we have 24 airplanes. We were doing eight in the morning and six in the afternoon, maybe a little bit more sometimes, but we started doing a forego. So we did a 12 turn 10, turn eight, turn six. And so I was in a meeting the first day we started doing this. We're gonna do it for three days.
Speaker 2:And I come into the squadron, and the first launch has already been gone. They come back, but the scheduling bills red with changes. We had maintenance, nondeliveries. I got pilots who are sick. I got this problem and that problem, and the second launch is already gone, and they come back and they have at that time, we did a 14 turn 12, so the 12 went out, and eight of them came back with emergencies.
Speaker 2:So I canceled flying for the day. Well, who do you think called me in about two minutes? My wing commander, you know, and he goes, John, he says, what's going on? You know, we're hurting for flying. I said, sir, here's what the situation is.
Speaker 2:The rhythm's going in the toilet. He says, so if the rhythm is going in the toilet, you gotta do something. So we got the pilots together, planned the missions, got maintenance to fix the airplanes, and we had one minor deviation the next day, and a fourteen twelve turn to get in turn eight. That's what you need to do sometimes, but you if you don't understand the rhythm of your organization, even when it's like moving to another building, rhythm changes. You got a new commander or a new boss, rhythm changes.
Speaker 2:So you have to be sensitive to that to be able to operate.
Speaker 1:There are too many good points for me to pick one. I had to kind of stop myself from interrupting you in the middle, so I'm just gonna have to pick one. I think this kind of idea of crisis versus day to day is incredibly interesting because the way that you manage crisis is very different. Then there's a whole different topic of what makes for a good strategy because I think everybody is tactical and I think the basic mistake, keep me honest here if you agree, is that people just do more Like, oh, let's do a better job. Let's do more tactics.
Speaker 1:My perspective of what a good strategy is is a strategy are tactics that create synergies, which means that they work in a way that, you know, one plus one equals three, not two. And it's how you decide to kinda bring things together. How do you define you kind of said this, alluded to it, like a good strategy. I gave you my perspective of it. What's your perspective?
Speaker 1:How do you even evaluate a good strategy?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a key part of it because here's one of the Air Force, and I was part of this too, we'd write this strategic plan, it would be two point A, point B, point C, point Oh my God, you know, first of all, and it goes on a shelf somewhere, and maybe you pull it Side year,
Speaker 1:just stop
Speaker 2:and go, hey, how do we do today? You've got to keep it as a living, breathing document. Let me describe what I mean by that. Is that when you have measured, first of all, you got to measure a metric. You just gotta have somebody who's responsible for us, for a belly button, pardon that expression, but somebody's in charge.
Speaker 2:It's gotta be measurable with a 5% growth, 10% growth. It's gotta be certainly a time contingent. It's going to be done a year, it's going be six months, it's going be three years, something that you can sink your teeth into. I remember Colin Powell when I was working with Cheney, he was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time, got to know a lot of his writings and things like that. But one of the things he says, Vision is like we're standing on a big mountaintop and we know where we want to go, we just don't know how we're going to get there.
Speaker 2:If you don't measure it and if it doesn't measure up, and by having those things that are quarterly reviewed, I don't mean it has to be every week, but certainly quarterly. So in most cases, I would have four strategic pillars, a people achievement, community environment, very different calls on how I arranged that, but you would look at one quarter, one of the strategic pillars, and you'd bring that to the board and then review it, and then at the end of the year, you'd look back at the previous year and say how far we've gone. One of the secrets I would tell people, some is not a real big secret, but if you have a vision and you have these goals and objectives and you accomplish 100% of them, let's say in a five year plan, that strategic plan wasn't strong enough, You didn't reach hard enough. You didn't put yourself out there far enough. I think a really good strategic plan, you're really good at it, maybe 85%.
Speaker 2:I'd say 60% is a home run, 70% is rocket, you know, really well done. You get 85% and not a 100% over five years, you stretched yourself, you know, and you really tried to go out there. I've seen too many strategic plans that go, oh, we'll increase this thing 2%. You can do that 2% in your sleep. That's not a stretch.
Speaker 2:Okay? You gotta have something that stretches. And the next thing, as I alluded to before, even the youngest airman or sergeant or the youngest person in your organization has to know and understand what you're trying to do. So it can't be so complicated like it's a 50 page document. It's gotta be put in about six pages with pictures so people can understand what you're trying to do.
Speaker 2:Isn't the vision like in the school district guards graduator is doing with a choice to attend college without remediation? It was easy to say, easy to remember, and basically every child graduate with a choice. You can go in the military, you can go into business, you can go into any kind of profession like mechanics or whatever you want, or you go to college. And then the mission was the day to day operations on how to get kids to be able to do that. I applied the same thing on the military.
Speaker 2:And then having values. Values sometimes get mixed up because they get put on a wall, looks pretty you know, and everybody goes, that's pretty cool. Values are used on how you hire and fire people. You know? You hire people because they've got integrity, that's one of your values, and they've proven it in other places.
Speaker 2:And you'll fire somebody when they violate. And I'll give you
Speaker 1:one I might take a step forward on that. When you have values on the wall, but when you're in a meeting making a decision and you're not looking at the wall and saying, aren't we adhering to that value with this decision? Your values probably don't mean anything.
Speaker 2:Exactly. There's a lot of stories. I know we're getting close on time here, but there is different kinds of things where, and this is a little dangerous, there are three kinds of people because when you make generic generalizations like that, it's always a little risky, but you'll see where I'm going. Basically, there is the degrader, there is a storekeeper, and the one who makes it better than they found it. Let me give you an example.
Speaker 2:The degrader comes in two kinds. People make mistakes. They make mistakes intentionally or they make mistakes unintentionally. If they make them intentionally, they break the law. That's probably one of the easiest decision a leader has, you're fired.
Speaker 2:Touch a child, you've cheated, you've lied, and things. Those are not hard decisions to make. The harder ones is when somebody makes a mistake and go, Is that purposeful? And that's where you can bill somebody and give them a second chance and then they can go there. And you want a degrader to get to the next level, and that's a storekeeper.
Speaker 2:Now storekeepers are very valuable. I mean, generalizations are very dangerous. Storekeeper is somebody who comes to work every day, does exactly what he's asked or she's asked to do, and does it well. They're a valued employee in your organization, but that's all they do. They do exactly what they're asked to do.
Speaker 2:The next level is where you want people to make it better than you found it. The best compliment I can ever give anybody that ever worked for me, you made it better than you found it. And if everybody can do that, even as little, if you're the youngest person in the organization, but you don't really have a whole kind of that, but you leave it better than you found it to the person who's, you know, got a lot more responsibility. It can go a long way to make a difference in an organization. So the ones I'll give you the story about.
Speaker 2:You know, this admiral told me this story. He had two young lieutenant JGs, under his command, and they're both in the logistics. And he gave them both the same problem but sent them in two different directions. They didn't know they were doing the same thing. One guy comes back and says, Skipper, did exactly what you asked you, A through Z, you know, and and the admiral and the captain of the ship says, well done.
Speaker 2:Well done. Next guy comes in and says, Skipper, you did exactly what you asked, A through Z, and, by the way, we found that policies aren't good and we recommended it to be thrown out, and here's two new ones that you can do. And oh, by the way, one of the suggestions is to hire a new person for this job description, and here's three candidates that you can have for that position to be considered for this new job. See the difference between a storekeeper and a makes it better than you found. That's what you wanna get.
Speaker 2:The graders who make mistakes up to the storekeeper up there. That's where you really get your value.
Speaker 1:John, what an absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining us today. We have one question that we ask every single one of our guests. It's in fact, it's the only question that I know that I'm gonna ask at the show because nothing is scripted here. If you had to think back on your entire career, whether this was forty years ago or four years ago, What is the piece of advice that you would give yourself at your hardest moment?
Speaker 2:Well, I I graduated from the Air Force Academy with a bachelor of science, you know, because we all do that. You know? But I really was an international affairs and political science major, which helped me later on in life. But I wish I was a better historian. I wish I was a better reader of biographies, which I have time now because I am retired, but even though I'm the chair of the Air Force Historical Foundation, I'm vice chair of the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.
Speaker 2:So I have more time, and I'm reading a lot more than I was before. And I said, God, I wish I had that book. I wish I had read that biography of that individual at that time. That could have helped me a lot for what I did. So if I would advise anybody, particularly young people, spend time reading biographies, read history, understand.
Speaker 2:And one of the things that I do is on Substack that you know about, where people write articles. That's what I try to do. I try to take current events, and I try to look back in history to bring them forward to see if there was lessons learned that we should have learned. So that would be my answer.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I'll put out a shout out. You can find your articles also on LinkedIn. I thought it was really interesting because there's so much of an eco political eco chamber happening, having a nonpartisan kind of rational thinking with the lens of history and then really oftentimes asking more questions and saying, oh, this person is good and this person is bad. It's incredibly refreshing.
Speaker 1:So I really appreciated your perspective, John. Thank you so much for joining the show.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.