MAVEN

Odysseas dives into his personal journey coming from a strong family unit and how his values were shaped by those closest to him. We cover mentorship, planning, and discipline that helps explain how his path to joining the US Army was influenced by powerful moments of inspiration. We'll explore how his decision to enlist transformed him, from the challenges he faced to the lessons he learned along the way….Uncovering the lasting impact of how reflective moments and an open mind will provide anyone clear direction when having a desire to set and achieve goals. It's never easy and always earned. https://www.linkedin.com/in/odysseas-trikolas-28bb26203/

Beth shares her journey from attending the Naval Postgraduate School to 15 years in the private sector before joining Oracle. Beth discusses how her experiences shaped her appreciation for pace and purpose, and the importance of bringing people together to stay grounded in our impact and goals. We also highlight a book that emphasizes the value of diverse skills in boosting both personal growth and the ability to contribute to the needs of others.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/beth-sammons/

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Episode Transcript:

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;31;26 You're listening to the Oracle Maven podcast, where we bring people together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight employees, partners, organizations and those who are continuing the mission to serve. Welcome to the Maven podcast. I'm your host, Chris Spencer. In this episode, I'm joined by Beth Sammons, Operations chief of Staff and Maven chapter lead to discuss her journey from attending the Naval Postgraduate School to 15 years in the private sector.

00;00;32;02 - 00;00;51;13 Before joining Oracle. Beth shares how her experience has shaped her appreciation for pace and purpose, and the importance of bringing people together to stay grounded in our impact and goals. We also highlight a book that emphasizes the value of diverse skills, and boosting both personal growth and the ability to contribute to the needs of others. We have all we need to become the person we want to be.

00;00;51;13 - 00;01;09;20 Let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent as we continue the mission to serve. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode, and please remember to check in on your buddies and family. Best contact details are in the podcast description and you can always find me on LinkedIn.

00;01;09;22 - 00;01;50;01 Good morning Beth. How are you? Good morning Chris, I am well. How are you? I'm doing all right. Thanks. Well, welcome. And we're happy to have you and have this conversation. You know, you're sitting here because of the reputation that you have seemingly built for yourself to where people have recognized the type of person you are and how you contribute in all kinds of different ways that we'll talk about, specifically within the Maven community, inside of Oracle here, you know, how you've contributed in doing things for the community, maybe in and as you talk through this, it's related to what you grew up being surrounded by or the location in which you live

00;01;50;01 - 00;02;12;03 and things like that. But, you know, I think it's a good example of the elements when you come into Oracle, when you come into this community, the military affiliated community, you know, you you never know. Obviously, who you're going to meet. But once you settle in, you start to feel like there are things that you can do and that discovery and that curiosity builds relationships.

00;02;12;03 - 00;02;30;14 And that's the essence of of how it came about. So before we get too far into these things, you want to share a little bit about those types of things where where you're from and how you navigated to get to where you are today. Well, thank you for having me, Chris. I want to just start with that, I appreciate it.

00;02;32;06 - 00;03;05;21 So my background, I was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, and didn't have a huge military influence ahead a little bit in my family. But, I went to undergrad for business management at Purdue, and I ended up getting my MBA at naval post-grad. And I think that's a good portion of where I spent a lot of time with military and, spent two years in a different cohort and getting to do and have like a virtual MBA program, which was really neat.

00;03;05;21 - 00;03;33;07 It was a program designed for naval officers, and it was good exposure and all that. But I did that while I was in one of the federal agencies that got three letters and doesn't like to be talked about, but I spent about 15 years there. I started out in government contracting, and I was a contracting officer, and I ended up moving into I do project management.

00;03;33;07 - 00;04;06;00 We kind of built a new financial system. I helped on that project that in a way, and really liked it at the budget. And then I spent some time doing that and working in the IT division, and ended up becoming a unit chief. And because I just loved managing people and helping develop their careers. And so I managed a couple of different software development teams and shops and different, like, testing type organizations, and then a little over three years ago, I left the public sector.

00;04;06;14 - 00;04;29;23 I really thought I'd be there forever and retire there, but I ended up getting an opportunity to come here to Oracle and work in Oracle Cloud. I am a chief of staff, to our head of Sovereign Cloud. And I also, a couple of months ago, that manager bug bit me again, and I just missed managing people and helping develop others.

00;04;29;25 - 00;04;55;25 So I became a manager again. Actually, just a few months ago, literally. And so as I got that itch as well, I started mentoring. So like the last year when I was an individual contributor at Oracle, I was just missing management so much that I mentored in the Oracle Veteran Intern program, and a couple of cohorts.

00;04;55;25 - 00;05;24;00 But I also mentor and like the Oracle Global Mentoring, where you can be paired up with someone who, you know, has similar interest or is you're where you're trying to develop your career in that area. But at Oracle, I've had a lot of Oracle volunteer events and a lot of that kind of introduced me to Maven. Honestly, it was just a colleague, who sat a couple of rows down for me in the office and said, you do all of this like giving back and volunteering your time.

00;05;24;00 - 00;05;42;12 Why aren't you a part of Maven? And I said, you know, explain to me what Maven is. And then I said, well, I'm not a veteran. And, and he said that that's okay. You don't have to be a veteran. You just have to appreciate them. And I was like, well, that's very much something I'm passionate about. And so I've been a part of Maven since.

00;05;42;12 - 00;06;01;14 But I just like in the last few weeks, started helping out and that Maven, DC, Maryland, Virginia chapter. And we're going to try to have more volunteer events, more ways to connect in our area. Because there's a lot of opportunities in the DC area, to give back and to help veterans. And I want to be a part of that.

00;06;01;17 - 00;06;38;12 I'm also a mom of two young boys who keep me quite busy carting them around to activities and enjoying their energy. Yeah, you're being subtle. Yeah, yeah. Yes. I think someone asked me yesterday about work life balance and I'm like, I'm not really sure what that means anymore. Yeah. You just shifting your attention from one thing to the other at this point, a lot of it is, you know, I work, and for the most part, we're able to work hybrid and remote, and there's a lot of people interested in that, kind of flexibility.

00;06;38;14 - 00;07;02;08 But I come into the office every day simply to get out of my house to see other adults. I mean, to feel a little bit more calm coming to work is how I come down. Yeah, it makes sense. There's value in all of that. So thanks for that. Thanks for sharing that. The how did you end up going to or what made you lean towards going to the Naval Postgraduate Academy?

00;07;02;10 - 00;07;23;02 Yeah. So because I got my undergraduate degree in business, you kind of always think at some point I'll go back and get my masters in it. But when you work in the federal government, you know, a lot of those principles that you learn in undergrad about, like maximizing profits, just kind of they don't pan out and you don't use them.

00;07;24;27 - 00;07;57;28 And so as much as I wanted to get my MBA, I hadn't really thought about the best way to do it. You know, I didn't want to spend a huge amount of time going to an elite school, if I wasn't going to use it. And if I was going to stay in the government, where you're really just trying to spend all of your budget like their goal, but we had know a couple of seats in a special program, that was virtual with naval post-grad, where we all got to kind of come together and one day a week, instead of going to work, you got authorized to go to class

00;07;58;01 - 00;08;30;06 that way. Other classmates across the country. And so I got accepted into that program. It was a huge opportunity because I sat next to people who were doing similar work on kind of the DoD civilian side. They were doing finance and budget work, but also sat next to helicopter pilots. And, one of my colleagues was working on the F-35 program, which was at the time, very interesting and probably painful if you ask him.

00;08;31;12 - 00;08;55;01 But it was really good exposure. Our we had a Norfolk group as well who a lot of them worked on subs. And so it was very good exposure to understanding, what, you know, enlisted military go through, how they're, you know, most of, the classmates we had in the two year program didn't even get to stay living in the same spot.

00;08;55;18 - 00;09;27;15 The moving around part of it, is something that it's, not a lot of people, you know, in the civilian life who don't have a lot of military friends. Understand? Once you understand it, you realize, like, military families go through a lot. And part of Oracle veteran intern program and mentor to couple of military spouses and have understood, you know, some concepts about, you know, their resume may have to have them jump around every few years.

00;09;28;15 - 00;10;02;09 And it's not that they're job hopping looking for a better opportunity or something like that. As some people interviewing them, they look at it's more that, you know, you are going where the military sends you. And so I got a lot more appreciation at naval grad living, the DC area. You also just have a lot of friends and colleagues who are either in the military at the time or, veterans themselves, and you kind of understand and empathize a lot more with the struggles that they have coming back into, you know, getting out of the military.

00;10;02;09 - 00;10;34;14 And how do you transition? And it's a very different workspace. I was scared moving from public to the private sector. It's certainly different, but it's it's much more different. You know, I was never deployed or anything like that. I didn't have to go through that change. Yeah. And thank you for recognizing the challenges. You know, I'm sure we all agree that everybody experiences challenging, situations and, and relative to their environment and their, their, choices and things like that.

00;10;34;14 - 00;11;10;23 But it's, you know, it's the unique acknowledgment, the acknowledgment of the unique situations that we, we, you know, when we choose and civilians alike, when you choose to go on and take on a role that where it's the norm, where you're constantly going, where the team needs you, let's say. Yeah. And the perspective that you gain from it, I think is going to be obviously it's going to pay dividends on the work that you're doing now and who you're surrounded by, because it's easier to connect with those when you understand without even speaking, you know, just knowing that they've gone through some of these things and you can be more relatable in the context

00;11;10;23 - 00;11;31;19 of empathy and things like that. As a leader, which you've emphasized that something that you missed and you have a strong desire to do is, you know, not just mentorship, but also leading the teams as you're growing business and applying the principles of the career choice that you're in the industry. So thanks for that and a wordy summary to get us on to the to the to the next thing.

00;11;31;19 - 00;12;00;21 But it's, you know, you talked about struggle. So in your, in your transition from, the three letter agency into the civilian sector where you are now. What share some insight of what you maybe didn't anticipate or didn't expect, but you learned. Yeah, very relevant actually. It was just, talking to someone yesterday who's interested and worried about making that leap from the public sector to the private sector.

00;12;00;23 - 00;12;35;26 And I was ultimately scared as well and not sure which company, you know, I'm going to make the jump, which I'm to go to. But I think the biggest change was the pace. And I think a lot of us who have worked in government and I know military is very similar sometimes the pace is really, really fast because it's something mission critical and urgent, but a lot of the pace of change and the pace of policy that I worked in for a long time and the pace of it was unfortunately, you know, beholden to a lot of security and compliance and governance process.

00;12;35;29 - 00;12;58;13 And it seemed frustratingly slow at times. And so really, the big pitch to leave the public sector was for me, it was, do I want to sit here and wait in line for the next few years and migrate a lot of our systems to the cloud, or do we want to kind of build it? And that was exciting and an interesting challenge for me.

00;12;58;16 - 00;13;25;00 But coming over here, the big difference I think was definitely pace and it took a lot of getting used to. I came over at a time where we had a giant solicitation drop that week, and so I didn't sit around in orientation for very long. I just kind of jumped in because I had a background in contracting and I saw where I get out there, but I think the pace of it is just it's such a benefit.

00;13;25;03 - 00;13;45;15 I know a lot of people worry about like burnout and how that will affect them, but I think it's also amazing to see, you know, one of our customers in the cloud has a problem, and it's amazing to see the amount of executives and the amount of people that we can throw at that problem very quickly and solve that problem and one of the OCI values is put your customers first.

00;13;45;18 - 00;14;05;25 And that's a huge important factor to everything that we do. But it's also nice I, I stay within a group that we call ourselves Sovereign Cloud, but we really support the government and within the US and globally. And so it's nice to also be able to explain to everyone the importance of what our customers are doing. They have mission critical applications.

00;14;05;25 - 00;14;31;00 These applications are very important for many of them. We have DoD applications running. They're supporting our veterans. We're working with a group that's going to be moving all of the veterans electronic health records over to one of our cloud rooms, and it's helpful to have that perspective and understand why what our customers are doing is so important, and that we can bring the pace of change and support that they need.

00;14;31;03 - 00;15;08;01 And it's nice being on the side that gets to help with that. Yeah, I was just thinking about that, how the the correlating factors of being on one side and then going to the other side to help drive some of the issues that that you experienced. And I say issues, but some of the feelings you had on the experiences of pace, probably skills and security, I mean, processes, all of those factors weigh into things that, you know, probably drives us to look in other areas of where we can provide more value, which it sounds like you did so and so for everybody listening, OCI is Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

00;15;08;03 - 00;15;30;05 And most, most will know that if you're paying attention to what what Oracle is and has become. But the transition in the mindset, you covered a little bit of it and you landed on it with the work that you're involved in is including the veteran community, but also the health records, I mean, the importance of it and the relevance of it.

00;15;30;05 - 00;16;02;13 You know, how is this to share your feelings about the impact that you feel you're having now with that responsibility to be a part of that effort? Yeah. So that was one of the careers I had when I left the government was, well, I still feel that same sense of mission. Because at the end of the day, you can kind of feel like, well, our job is actually just to make money, but I think we've been able to bring that sense of mission to a lot of our teams that my boss is very helpful in this, but we bring in on a monthly basis to our team.

00;16;02;13 - 00;16;31;23 We have like a spotlight speaker. And we bring in customers, we bring in potential customers, we bring in some of the Oracle Global business units who are running on our cloud and show the actual mission that, they're supporting. So, for example, we have a safety global business unit, and Oracle is running local and state law enforcement like a suite of tools, but they are running an emergency management system.

00;16;31;24 - 00;17;11;12 They're running, you know, police law enforcement videos in the cruisers, you know, pull cameras, all of it. It's all integrated into what we do. And we've been able to reinforce that with our teams and show them, you know, our teams are doing a lot of operations work, deploying changes. They may never speak to a customer. And I think it's important to put your customer in front of you on a regular basis so that you understand their mission and why what we're doing has to be done with a sense of urgency, because we have really important customers out there that if we have an outage, there is an emergency management system that's that's gone down.

00;17;11;17 - 00;17;39;04 And one of our US local organizations. So I think it helps to drive home that sense of mission and importance just by hearing from your customers. We also bring in a lot of partners. My team, tries to bring in more partners and have more collaboration engagement with, US defense and intelligence customers or partners as well. And it's good to hear from some of those partnerships, the work they're doing to support our customers.

00;17;39;04 - 00;18;00;07 And they're going to run it on Oracle Cloud. But it's nice to see what new partners like Palantir and Anduril are doing and and how they're helping serve. A lot of them are helping serve us. Department of Defense. That's amazing. I mean, that's a great that's a great concept. And we can we can look at it simply. We're human.

00;18;00;07 - 00;18;28;23 And sometimes we may lean towards forgetting our purpose, you know, because of how our lives are shaping our mindset and our attention, focusing on things, internalizing things. And so I love to hear that what you're doing is bringing people in to remind us and keep us focused, keep us aware of what we're actually affecting and impacting when we contribute the customers, the experiences, the subtleties behind that.

00;18;28;25 - 00;19;04;00 You know, I'm hopeful that everybody's understanding the importance of that. So they can always be reminded that this is why you're doing what you're doing. Yeah, no it's good. So so now so you're here and and you're doing these things and you've become more familiar with your surroundings enough. And I'm kind of floating around it. So the relationship that you've, the relationships that you've created here talk a little bit about those and, and share some of the, some of the value that comes from meeting different people in different roles and how it contributes to the things that you're doing.

00;19;04;03 - 00;19;30;28 So I and the position I have as a chief of staff, a lot of the people that I work with. So I directly support our VP. And so from day one, I have kind of always been in meetings and supporting and reporting to, a lot of executives, which was an interesting change. I think the piece of that that can be difficult is that I have to be very succinct and clear.

00;19;31;00 - 00;19;58;16 But I think a lot of what we try to do with, the volunteer events and also what we're doing with Maven is create relationships that you wouldn't normally have. And so we've got different groups. We run our classified ops teams for Oracle Cloud. But I think about a, I think we're now at like two years ago maybe before Oracle kind of encouraged people to come back into the office.

00;19;58;16 - 00;20;17;12 We were thinking of what are the ways that would drive people to come back, like they don't want to come back and sit on zoom all day. And so we started having Oracle volunteer event. And I think the best thing that we've gotten out of that and it's good to get back, but every time we host one of these, we get someone who's never been into the office and they're like, how do I get a badge?

00;20;17;12 - 00;20;37;11 How do I get in the door? But we always have people that as we're doing these volunteer events, they're talking. They work on different parts of this very, very large organization that we work for. Some of them realize they do similar work just in different divisions and lines of business, but it's been a good opportunity for people to connect where we don't normally do that.

00;20;37;11 - 00;20;58;11 I mean, I still come into the office but sit on a zoom call most of the day. And so these Oracle volunteer events are a really good way for us to give back. Our company supports it and helps us increase our social impact. But I think the relationships that we've got there, I have a really, really strong group of volunteers who come to just about any event I have.

00;20;58;14 - 00;21;18;10 We do a monthly volunteer event where we serve meals in the evenings with one of our local nonprofits, and I have a group of 4 to 5 people. I think half of them are actually Maven, but they come out every month and they're there. I had some of them in the snow the other night. They're like my ride or die group of volunteers.

00;21;18;25 - 00;21;36;06 And I have a lot of people who come to all of our in-person events in the office, and they're like, this is the only time I ever come into the office. I work from home the rest of the time. So I think we create a lot of good relationships because we're doing good things that, you know, make us feel like we're giving back as a company.

00;21;36;18 - 00;22;07;05 But it's also just creating those opportunities for people. A lot of times working from home, that was one of the scariest things that I left for government, as I had been in the office coming to a work from home or flexible remote opportunity. It sounds great, but it's also can be isolating. And so I think having these volunteer events and anything we can do with Maven to bring people out and meet in person, helps develop great relationships that we're all kind of looking to that same sense of purpose of giving back and continuing to serve.

00;22;07;08 - 00;22;29;28 I love it, and I, you know, I'm excited. I get chills in the back of my neck just imagining the feeling, right? Because it's, it's common, right? We get it. We we we have life and we do things and we're focused on business, let's say. Right, whatever your priorities are. So you can, take care of the family, take care of the house and, you know, pay bills and things like that.

00;22;29;28 - 00;22;56;21 And it's it's I wouldn't call it a distraction so much, but it is, you know, it serves as a, responsible action you can take to remind yourself of the value and humanity and, and helping others in different ways. And so this one, I believe, you know, there's a there's a bunch of different reasons and the benefits, but, you know, a couple that stand out is the fact that you're going to also provide an environment for other people to explore things that they otherwise wouldn't have.

00;22;56;21 - 00;23;23;06 You summarized it well, but it's also to get them to realize, I didn't think I'd like it. I didn't think I'd want to do this. And I think that that helps us uplift, especially in winter. You know, where it's cloudy, dreary, cold, and you're not going out a lot. You get out and you start to do things, takes your mind off of the monotony and the minutia to be able to now serve that little internal need of service, like you said, continuing the mission to serve.

00;23;23;09 - 00;23;46;06 So they say, yeah, yeah, it's great. Thanks for that and thanks for doing that. And thanks for stepping up to lead that and support that and co-lead. I imagine there's a bunch of people within your your team there that do a bunch of different things. You had somewhat of a segue because you had mentioned the book. And it's the title itself is was the grab for me.

00;23;46;06 - 00;24;06;02 It was the hook, and I was more curious about it. So immediately when you mentioned it. And we here do love to talk about books and things like that. Talk a little bit about the book that you, you mentioned. Yeah. So it was recommended. There is a great book club if anyone wants to be a part of it and or got caffeinated chapter eight.

00;24;06;03 - 00;24;44;07 There's there's a slack channel you can find it, but it's one of the books they are meeting about and reading and book club. And I like assigned reading because it gives me, you know, a motivation and a deadline to finish it. But the book is called Range Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, and I was drawn to it because I am one of the many people that are also described in the book that feel I have kind of bopped around to different things in my career, and I think you get a little bit of imposter syndrome from some of that you feel like you were.

00;24;44;09 - 00;25;07;25 We're all kind of taught that specialization is important and it will, you know, make us successful in our careers and I definitely have, you know, I don't I've never been a software developer, but I've managed them and always a little bit of that imposter syndrome. Do I do I belong managing someone who I have no idea what they're doing and working in technology, not having a huge tech background.

00;25;07;27 - 00;25;29;14 And I always thought that way. But, you know, I started in contracting, went into it. It's like a project manager and then ended up managing these teams. But a lot of that is and then jumped over here to become a chief of staff, which I didn't have really experience in it either. And all of those kind of career pivots that I took were off at the time.

00;25;29;16 - 00;26;03;19 And I think because it is that like desire or what we are taught, is specialization and that idea of what is that like 10,000 hours of practice will make you great at something. And the book talks about that from the perspective of, yes, there are there are things that you can learn and do better that way. Chat is a really good example that they use in the amount of practice and starting early with children and getting them interested because is, you know, you can learn rules, there are strategies.

00;26;03;19 - 00;26;33;19 It is you know, all knowable. But the book talks about most of the work that we do is what it calls wicked. But, most of it, you require a lot of different skills. It's not linear and easily learner, and you need a variety of a background. And so the book actually, the author says he started writing this book and started the idea of the book because he was actually giving a speech, too, and it was the Pat Tillman Foundation.

00;26;33;19 - 00;26;54;21 So a lot of really high up military leadership, who came to him afterwards and said they felt they had been told in their careers that specialization was the way to go, and each of them had actually made a career pivot at some point and felt scared of it because they didn't feel it would be valued and that it might derail their success.

00;26;54;26 - 00;27;26;00 And the book gives a lot of great examples across music and art and business and engineering and technology, where there's great examples of people who actually have incredible success because they had a diverse background, because they didn't only know one type of engineering, because the instruments are the most fascinating one kind of think that if you want to become a great violinist, you should start at the age of three and play violin.

00;27;26;03 - 00;27;51;11 Oh, your whole career. But some of the greatest violinists actually learned, you know, 5 or 10 different instruments. And it made them better because they could understand and adapt, to different things. And that was kind of very reaffirming. I've also had many people recently. I don't know why this book just kind of when you're reading something, we've brought it up many times with people that I'm mentoring.

00;27;51;17 - 00;28;16;03 I have a lot of people reaching out from public sector right now who are interested leaving to go to the private sector, but they're very scared. They don't think they're, you know, government skills are transferable. And I felt that way at some point too. But you can't you can choose to specialize for a long time if you want, but a lot of that diverse background will actually help make you more successful, I think.

00;28;16;06 - 00;28;39;25 And it was interesting. It was a very, very good read. I recommend it, but I think it was helpful in affirming for me to know that this strange background I have, where I haven't really met anyone with something similar, but it does make me it can help make me really more successful and more understanding of different parts of this kind of business process that we're in.

00;28;39;27 - 00;29;00;29 Agree 1,000%, and I'm glad you brought it up because it is. So I mean, the story you're sharing and the way you're phrasing things is very similar to the environment to which the military affiliate community thrives in. Right? Dictates their experience. Right? And we hope everybody thrives. But it's a reality of saying, I did this, you know, didn't it becomes a dilemma that I'm going to transition.

00;29;00;29 - 00;29;17;28 I'm going to choose to do something different, do something different in a different place, whether it's doing something different or just doing it a different place, you know, apply the principle of what that means. I'm going to go do something different. We often think about the comfort and security and, you know, the safety and doing what you've done.

00;29;17;28 - 00;29;47;01 But to realize some of those in the the emotional component, and this is my opinion, right? I'm not think I'm qualified to speak too deeply on this, but in my experience, it's to say because of that, because of that belief that I have, I'm going to stick within this area because it's going to give me the thing that I'm looking for when the reality is sometimes we forget to, I don't know, maybe play with the idea of breaking it down like a project plan where you're looking at resources of self.

00;29;47;03 - 00;30;08;04 I can do these things. I do these things. I don't know how to correlate those. And you're able to isolate each one, compartmentalize it and look and say, well, I'm stronger in this area. It's a hard skill, and I'm familiar in these areas, which might be the soft skills in today's world. And I'm I swear I'm going to land somewhere in a minute because we're talking about mentoring.

00;30;08;07 - 00;30;27;28 When we look for mentors, we have a purpose. And so when we see somebody who specializes, there is a play, a place for that, for sure. But there is something uniquely different in the experience of getting to a mentor, somebody in a position of influence that you can feel, you can learn from and realize that you can ask almost any question.

00;30;27;28 - 00;30;51;02 And there's a, there's a, a certain level of familiarity in each of the spaces of what you're asking that. Yeah. And for me blows my mind like, wow, great. This is perfect because it's almost like a one stop shop that allows me to get generally familiar with these areas that I'm not comfortable with yet, and it moves me forward and just gets me, potentially.

00;30;51;02 - 00;31;11;22 It gets me through the situation where I am. So when you're talking about over at the Oracle Veteran Internship Program, where they, you know, the the interns that come in, they're in a specific situation to where that generalization that you're allowing them to hear about will help them get through the situation where they are. If they're looking for a job, looking for an experience and things like that.

00;31;11;22 - 00;31;38;02 So absolutely relevant. And skimming through the book, I probably landed in some of the spaces that you we'll talk about. But you know, the one one place inside here, if I may, when we try to briefly touched about it, touched on it before we started recording here, the desirable difficulties, you know, the obstacles that make learning more challenging, slower and more frustrating in the short term, but better in the long term.

00;31;38;04 - 00;32;02;13 What are your thoughts on that particular statement inside the space? Yeah, I think that's part of a section of the book that's talking about, you know, how we learn and you can like, apply it within. I had young children who were trying to figure out how do they best learn. And I think they have like a study where you give kids, they learn one thing, take a test, and then they move on to the next topic.

00;32;02;13 - 00;32;24;05 But kids who actually, like, dabble in all of the topics, learn it and retain it better. And I think that's helpful knowledge to know. And I think really as we grow, we need to understand how we best learn. I know I can breeze through like 30 audiobooks and not retain any of it because that's not how I learn.

00;32;25;01 - 00;32;47;29 But I think reflecting back and actually every time you go to write a resume is a good point to reflect and figure out what you learned in that role. And I, even as I've brushed up my resume in like the last year, gone back to way previous jobs and thought, how do I frame this differently? And that was one of the changes as I moved from government to private sector.

00;32;47;29 - 00;33;14;05 Like, you have to get rid of all the acronyms and things that didn't make sense to people outside of the government. But what did I learn from that? Like you want your resume to focus on results like, oh, I, you know, decrease costs by X percentage grade. That is important stuff. But what did you learn from it? And it's a question I ask and a lot of my interviews of other people, it's like, tell me about something you went outside of your comfort zone to learn and how did you do it?

00;33;14;07 - 00;33;32;21 And I think that tells you a lot about someone. And I think that's a big piece of anyone coming out of the military. You have had to learn things that didn't make any sense when you started them. Right? Like, how did you go about doing that and how would you then apply it to learning a whole new space if you came into the private sector or wherever you're headed?

00;33;32;24 - 00;34;08;09 And I think using those examples and demonstrating that pretty much everyone I know coming out of the military is really, really good at learning something new, handling stress and pressure. And that's something that we all are looking for in good candidates, someone who, you know, could reduce that learning curve and help add value quickly on my team and someone who can handle the pressure or, you know, the quick turnaround that I'm going to have, and the roles that we're in and I think a resume writing that helps you reflect on that.

00;34;08;09 - 00;34;28;28 But I think it's also something that I think we just went through kind of like a mid-year performance review is a sitting down and how did I grow? I'm one of those people that I always want to have a goal of, what am I going to learn? New what new certification am I going to get? And I think you need to sit down and reflect on like what helps me in my career, but also the same piece of what this book is talking about.

00;34;28;28 - 00;34;49;03 I don't need to sit here and specialize and an oracle cloud and only take for cloud classes what are the other things that are adjacent to what I do that would help make me better at my job? Or maybe lead me to a different career path that I have explored again. And I think I also I will always throw up, volunteering.

00;34;49;03 - 00;35;13;05 But if you're ever worried, if you can do something, there's probably a volunteer opportunity. You don't necessarily have to, learn something new by getting paid to do it. You can find an organization or a nonprofit that needs some help in an area, build some skills there by volunteering and figure out if that's something that the career path you want to go down, or somewhere where you can take those skills and apply them.

00;35;13;05 - 00;35;45;13 If you are looking to change careers, you landed on so many things. There is the connecting the dots. It's, the imposter syndrome, right? It's feeling you're out of place from a from a perspective. And, you know, the exploration of new things as you're reflecting and paying attention to the small things that you might overlook or dismiss because you in the moment don't find value in those things that you're writing down as maybe you're reviewing your resume, you know, and reconciling and tying it back to relevance.

00;35;45;15 - 00;36;10;03 You know, this happened everything. I believe, everything that we're doing is an opportunity to be able to understand how it's connecting to something else. I believe it's all interconnected. And I'm not I'm not blowing anybody's mind and saying that. I'm saying just for me, that this is why I'm saying it is because, like relationships, you don't know how important it is to treat everybody with kindness because you don't know when that may come around.

00;36;10;03 - 00;36;40;16 And that's the situation. Make it make it connect to the situations. Every situation is going to now bring a value and you don't know when or where it's going to occur. But these are the things that we're talking about. When you talking about what you've experienced and what you've learned, it's important to journal it, write it down, take inventory of it because you want to tie it back to help alleviate some doubt that you may have on where I am and why I'm here and those types of things, and especially in transition, because the common question is where will I fit in?

00;36;40;18 - 00;37;17;00 I'm looking for something specific. Sometimes that narrow focus has this overlooked the peripheral because we're so yeah, we're so we're shining the light on very specific things that we believe needs to occur. But sometimes what needs to happen is actually in your blind side. Yeah, yeah. You know, a plan is just a plan kind of thing. So when you're mentoring, tying it back to that, that's part of the occurrence is it's helping helping you, helping us as a mentor, speaking with others who are mentees, it's helping us as well because now it's helping us.

00;37;17;03 - 00;37;31;24 Am I am I who I think I am? Am I as effective as I think I am? Am I as helpful or being an asset like I think I am? And sometimes you'll learn that you I mean you'll learn the hard way. You get humbled it you maybe you're not you're not as good as you thought you were.

00;37;31;29 - 00;37;49;07 And here's why. You know, and that helps us grow even in leadership positions. And you never know when it's going to happen. Yeah, even you even you come in here in this conversation and it kind of bring it back to the book. You know, the Outsider advantage is one of the chapters, you know, and the benefits of an external perspective.

00;37;49;09 - 00;38;15;05 I think you touched on it here, but just because we're now specifically talking about it, what is the value of an outsider perspective? Yeah, the book actually talks about it from the perspective, I think, in engineering of people who have a very specialized engineering or specialized research role. And like they see things the way they see it and even gives like an example of like a specific type of cardiologist.

00;38;15;05 - 00;38;41;27 And that's, that's exactly what they see and that's how they want to act. But I think anyone coming in with different perspectives, and we all bring those but different backgrounds will help you think about a problem differently. And ultimately, like we sometimes we'll see it. We have a problem. We bring in a bunch of different people, and sometimes you get in as an engineer, like, I think too many of us being thrown against this problem.

00;38;41;29 - 00;39;13;23 Then you hear a thought or an idea and none of the rest of us have thought about it, and it's great. And those only come if you bring people in and bring in several people with different backgrounds and different perspectives and different, you know. Agendas of what they need to accomplish. And so I in my role as a chief of staff, I have to think a lot about the financial aspects of what we're doing.

00;39;13;25 - 00;39;33;02 And you can start to think about, like, bottom line of everything but a lot, bringing people in who have different ideas and motivations. And they're thinking about, how do I keep work for my employees and how do I, you know, grow them and grow their careers. And so we'll all get better ideas from that. And they have very specific examples in the book.

00;39;33;04 - 00;40;03;07 It's a great chapter about huge innovations that have come about because they brought people in who weren't specialized. And I think that's really amazing to see. Good to remember that you have value even if you don't have a very specialized background in something. And I think that's important to remember, and it will help us, you know, have better ideas to have better project outcomes and, and results, hence volunteering.

00;40;03;11 - 00;40;21;28 Right. So this this all ties back to bringing people together. And you know, you can classify it or categorize it however you want. Volunteering work, workplace in the office. You know, when you bring people together, there's a higher potential of new things occurring because of a realization. Oh, I didn't think of it like that. Or the obviously the importance of taking a break, right?

00;40;21;29 - 00;40;57;24 You know, when you're so focused on it, the theory is get up, walk away, give yourself 15 minute, take a walk, get distracted. And sometimes those epiphanies occur when you least expect it in the shower. You know, we're walking your dog. You know, some of these elements are the the essence of what we're talking about. And, and and, you know, as we kind of wind down this conversation a little bit, it's, you know, it's great to have you on be able to talk about these things because your perspective from where you started and how, you know, I'll say evolved or maybe you know, how you kind of, you know, shifted your attention through from as

00;40;57;24 - 00;41;20;14 your experiences were, you know, shaping your mindset to change life, change, maybe, you know, maybe it's a bunch of them. But all the factors that you talked about early on as to as to why you were now looking to do something different, those started from somewhere else, I'm sure. And those are a walking example of how information is important for us when we're open to see it and hear it as it's occurring.

00;41;20;17 - 00;41;42;00 Instead of being and it have jokes, being stubborn and not allowing it to kind of freely flow into into what you're doing. Volunteering is one of those elements, you know, reminding ourselves what service means and, you know, bringing customers in, bringing partners in to bring a perspective to remind us that whatever you're doing, don't forget this is why you're doing it here.

00;41;42;02 - 00;42;17;28 And that's for everything family, personal life, professional life, things like that. You know, there's a there's a ton of things that we could go through, inside this space, inside this book. I will touch on one thing, and then I'll ask you if you want to, you know, mention anything on your own specifically, but, you know, experts and and the ones that know what are some of the pitfalls based off of what we just talked about, what are some of the pitfalls of engaging with somebody that is, is, supposed to be an expert or someone who knows a lot about something?

00;42;18;00 - 00;42;48;14 Pitfalls of an expert? I think they have gotten really great by doing things. They're known set of ways, and it can really help them in certain situations, but it gives them kind of a myopic focus, and they don't always see the broader options of perspective and kind of see the force and everything. And so I think it can also help link if those experts think with an open mind and think, I would I approach this problem if I were someone else, if I didn't know everything that I know.

00;42;48;20 - 00;43;10;21 And so there are pitfalls, but there are ways to kind of try to avoid them. And there are plenty of experts that we absolutely need out there. If you have a doctor, you would like them to be an expert and have, you know, as much expertise and years of experience as possible. But I think it's it's good for those of us who are generalists and helps us know that, like, you can take a career pivot and and do something different.

00;43;10;21 - 00;43;27;22 It might be a better fit for you. I think that's good to be open to that as well. Yeah. Well thanks for that. And that's a good, good summary. So any final words or things that you'd like to share with the audience? For those of you who are or alone please I'm just going to do another pitch for volunteering.

00;43;27;22 - 00;43;44;22 You can lead an effort. You can lead a project. You can lead an event. It's not as difficult as people think. That's what a lot of people think. It'll be a ton of time. I'm happy to help you with it. There's a whole community, social impact, community leaders and awful. And you can reach out to any of them for help.

00;43;44;24 - 00;44;03;06 And that's what I'll leave us. Got it. Thank you so much. And for anybody else outside that's not an Oracle employee. Get with your community. Get with any workplace and where you are, get with your you know, even if it's your neighborhood. Think about the things that you can pull people together for and find value in that and pay it forward.

00;44;03;06 - 00;44;24;12 So Beth, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for the input. Like I said, we could have gone down a whole bunch of different paths to discuss this further, but, I think this was a good scraping the surface on what people can consider, you know, whether you're a military service member or a military spouse. The transition does sometimes play mind games on how you can focus on things.

00;44;24;12 - 00;44;41;02 But remember, use your use your network, use your support mechanisms. You know, bring people together, get a perspective and ask for help. We're all here to help and keep moving forward. Yeah. Thank you bet. Thanks, Chris.

We're excited to bring back Halty for a discussion surrounding The Honor Foundation's growth and success that includes Vector Accelerator - Accelerating the veteran journey to clarity, confidence, and conviction for life. If you're a service member within a year from separation or a veteran from any branch of the US Military, you'll want to hear this episode and learn why you would want to consider leveraging this program to support your transition. Do you have a family member, friend, co-worker who fits into this category? Share it and support the possibility of them finding ways to learn more about themselves in different ways they may not have realized possible. https://www.vectoraccelerator.org/ https://www.youtube.com/@VectorAccelerator https://www.linkedin.com/company/vector-accelerator/posts/?feedView=all https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelghalterman/ --------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript:

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:39:07 You're listening to the Oracle MAVEN podcast, where we bring people together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight employees, partners, organizations and those who are continuing the mission to serve. Welcome to the main podcast. I'm your host, Chris Spencer. And in this episode I'm joined by Michael Halterman, vice president of the Honor Foundation's Vector Accelerator. I'm excited to bring back Hall T for a discussion surrounding the Honor Foundation's growth and success that includes Vector Accelerator accelerating the veteran journey to clarity, confidence and conviction for life.

00:00:39:09 - 00:01:00:12 If you're a service member within a year of separation or a veteran from any branch of the US military, you want to hear this episode and learn why you would want to consider leveraging this program to support your transition. Do you have a family member, friend or coworker who fits into this category? Share it and support the possibility of them finding ways to learn more about themselves in different ways they may not have realized possible.

00:01:00:15 - 00:01:24:20 We have all we need to become the person we want to be. Let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent as we continue the mission to serve. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode and please remember to check in on your buddies and family Hall. These contact details are in the podcast description along with the links to the source of all the information you need to know to learn more about Vector Accelerator.

00:01:24:22 - 00:01:48:21 Paul T, What's going on? It's good to see you again. Chris Great to see you. Things are well, Good. Yeah, it looks like significant change is going on around you. And you know, and I think when you and I were talking because we kept in touch, you know, sporadically, but intentionally over the last three years. Now September 2nd is when I look back and know how long has it been and it's September crazy how fast, right?

00:01:48:23 - 00:02:14:25 Yes. Yeah. And, you know, it started out getting introduced to chef Jerry Bhatia, coworker, but also friend of mine here at Oracle, who runs the Oracle Veteran Internship program. You know, he and I were talking several years ago and he's like, you need to come down to San Diego and I'm gonna introduce you to some people. So he introduced me to psych armor, the good folks over at Psych Armor, which is just close to you, and then.

00:02:14:28 - 00:02:37:14 TMF Heather Kelly now. TMF And then, then you all and yeah, as fate would have it, you know, he had a scheduling conflict, so he sent me in to talk to I think it was just Jesse at that at that moment. But she brought union and we had that conversation. And then Hillary came in and we sat down at the table and kind of just shared vision.

00:02:37:16 - 00:03:08:00 Yeah, Took off from there. Yeah. And it's crazy. You know, half was half the size in terms of what who was serving. We had five campuses back then trying to figure out how to create the now five more campuses that we have. We're our team was probably a third the size so yeah non nonstop acceleration as we've continue to grow and now we've expanded because it's always been in our heart.

00:03:08:00 - 00:03:28:29 It's really hard when you go pitch take off and they soldiers, sailors, airmen Marine from broader military comes up to you and says, hey, do you have a program for for you know, all military? And at that time we did not. But it's always been in our heart to have it because it's really hard to turn folks away.

00:03:29:02 - 00:03:50:19 And so during that time period, we have been quietly working on this project known as Vector Accelerator. And yeah, and it feels really good to every veteran that comes up to you and says, Hey, I need help in transition. Say yes, brother, sister, I've got you. Let's talk about it. Let's let's get you into the services that we provide.

00:03:50:21 - 00:04:19:03 Yeah. And I and I agree because it's, you know, so if we can go back to that in the in the conversation that we're having, you know, as much as I was, I thought I was aware of what DHS was doing. I went to the site and I saw the mission and those things. I didn't have the intricacies as far as like the details and format, the intention, who's involved and what, what you know, what type of professionals are you bringing in to help support the program in and out of?

00:04:19:06 - 00:04:56:00 If you know? And so maybe maybe it'll do us some service too. If you could just recap initially to have the format and all of those types of things and then and then it will help others see why. Because for me, you know, really quickly slide it in. There is immediately after I started to hear more about it, it's the structure of it was so similar to the logic and common sense I think was in my head of how to get somebody in to see more about what it is that's going to bring value to that individual through a process that is the structure and stability that is often needed, you know, and pull it

00:04:56:00 - 00:05:26:01 out, you know, help nudge them towards the discomfort and then get them comfortable with that next evolution of their life. Yeah, Yeah. So quickly, quick overview. You know, I was ten years old. We've been serving special operations in a very specific way, Special Operations veterans, and really were trying to get to the active duty service member somewhere between eight and 12 months before they leave active military service, because the best time to get a job is when you still have a job.

00:05:26:03 - 00:05:50:25 And working through the transition while still on active duty. Service, we find is far more efficient and what's best for the service member. You want to find yourself in crisis with no answers. You want to work through a lot of the the really the transition is a a tremendous number of individual steps. There is a lot of change management.

00:05:50:25 - 00:06:19:10 But then there's also the transition piece, which is the psychological how do I in my heart and head deal with this massive transformation that's happening in my life? And so the way we do that is, again, try and get to them early before they've left uniform and we help them with the change management stuff that is necessary, but completely insufficient for what is really going to happen in the transition.

00:06:19:10 - 00:06:36:18 And I thought that was amazing that Heather Miller brought that up in a previous podcast and that was her favorite book. I didn't know that was a book. I've got to go search that thing out now because it's it's commonly known that is, there's a lot of unnecessary things. And just because it's on the checklist doesn't mean that it is completely what you need.

00:06:36:18 - 00:07:00:18 There's more to it. And so how do we tackle that at takeoff? We have a three month phased approach. Each phase is approximately one month long. It's changed slightly since we began, but essentially so you get three phases. But we start with the one place that kind of no other foundation starts with or veterans per organization is Who are you?

00:07:00:18 - 00:07:23:15 Chris When the title and the rank goes away and no one no one cares any longer that you're a pilot, a sniper, a logistician, a, you know, fill in the blank. The thing that you did in the military that matters very much to you when no one cares about that. Who's Chris again? You need to identify who you are and what matters most.

00:07:23:17 - 00:07:46:15 What are your values? What are you not willing to give up about you and what and and how do you articulate that? When you sit down, interview and you shake hands with somebody and they say, thank you for your service and that's it, And now it's how do you interview and how do you show up to that? Ready and prepared because you know yourself.

00:07:46:17 - 00:08:16:07 Unknown And so we spent a month with those active duty service members and veterans trying to figure that out in a very structured way. Once we've done that, then we take them into phase two, and that's where we do kind of the the necessary tactical change management things of LinkedIn and resumes and how to dress and really diving into how to pitch yourself, which are 32nd pitch, which are five minute, you know, and so on and so forth.

00:08:16:15 - 00:08:48:14 And then phase three is where we put all of the information together and then give them opportunities to get engaged with other veterans who are out in the workforce, civilians who have never served, who are doing things like sales, marketing and all the other different verticals. You'll find this stereotypical business across multiple industries so that they have different touchpoints and have gotten to utilize these skills in kind of a safe space to make the, you know, to to have the UPS's.

00:08:48:14 - 00:09:07:28 And and I need to work on this pitch and I mean, I need to change my language because the language I'm using is still Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and it's not civilian yet. So let me work on that before we release them into the wild and all the way through that, we don't let them do it alone.

00:09:08:01 - 00:09:39:27 That's such a key and fundamental portion of all of this. We layer in humans support at every layer we can. And so as soon as they come into the classroom, we put them in triads. So they've got swim buddies or rock buddies that they're going through the whole class with, and they do some pretty deep, intimate, rough work together to really help each other because some of these pieces and parts out, every individual gets a coach and those coaches help them with their individual needs in the transition.

00:09:39:27 - 00:10:08:14 Because even though you and I might be going through the course together, we're having wildly different transition experiences. Lots of things overlap. But like you've got kids and I do not. You live where you live and you want to move somewhere and mine's going to be different. You're looking at the tech industry and I'm looking at nonprofit, so we're all those differences we cover with giving them a professional coach and then once they get to a certain point, we drop them into the overall alumni pool, which is a it's pretty close to 3000 right now.

00:10:08:16 - 00:10:33:18 And then they can reach out to all of those alumni. We're spread throughout the United States and they can start answering and asking questions. And so support, support, support all the way through. Then obviously, our staff are very much involved at different levels and in different ways. And so, you know, the big takeaway is diving into who you are is probably one of the most important things to do.

00:10:33:20 - 00:10:55:09 And we fundamentally make sure that they're supported all the way through, that they don't ever feel alone all the way through the hiring process. And even in like the first years of employment and that's where our mission statement really comes alive. We serve others with honor for life. So the next mission is clear and continues to impact the world.

00:10:55:09 - 00:11:15:11 We will serve you for the rest of your life once you graduate with THC from any of the programs. We're always going to be here. There's always going to be levels of support available to you. We're never going to forget about you. You can always come back and take a class, talk to alumni, get answers, and yeah, that's that's the basics of what we do.

00:11:15:13 - 00:11:46:24 Yeah, that's, that's a great, great recap. I mean, the key, the key thing hearing this is the support that's in place, the human centered focus. And as you were speaking, I realize and you probably know this, but I realized, like you're kind of stripping away the things that help compartmentalize how to how to use your past and your experiences, but focus on the like you have the future, but you're also you becoming.

00:11:46:24 - 00:12:17:27 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that starts with some of the the defining moments that occur is probably the realization like I've, I found myself to be consistent. These areas I've been this is the way I've been the whole time. Yeah. Just added layers, accumulated things in such a way over my experiences, however long you were in. And now I'm leveraging that, you know, and then, you know, being able to understand when to use the tools that I've developed over the years.

00:12:17:27 - 00:12:41:12 But you know, the right tool, right, right job and then build new tools and then but the, the amazing thing is the number of people that will continue the new the new tribe as they develop and now the scenarios playing in their head of who they can look to left and right for the new the new evolution, you know, face to face you wherever you are in your life stage.

00:12:41:12 - 00:13:09:18 And that yeah, that's probably something that. Do you think it requires a lot of investment in trust what do you think the main I guess contributor to being able to establish that is it's all relationships and relationships are all trust at the end of the day. Right. The the deeper the trust, the better relationship. And that's from friends to partners to, you know, you name it, whatever, whatever title you want to put on it.

00:13:09:18 - 00:13:41:07 It all begins with can I trust you? Right? And we try and build that in at every single layer. Now, you know, back when I joined and came on staff in 2018, I had had really long conversations with individuals about why they should, why they should come through to achieve. And we've built trust over time with the community because now we're ten years old and we have thousands of individual examples and we love seeing alumni.

00:13:41:07 - 00:14:04:17 Unknown A LinkedIn posting, I got this new job, I've been promoted. I made a career switch. When most people don't make a career switch because I knew how to do it and I did not feel stuck, right, Because I had a I had a community around me of that alumni network that allowed me to go from, you know what, this this whole real estate thing is not working out.

00:14:04:19 - 00:14:24:27 And I'm not finding a passion here. And but I'm not stuck. I can get to Oracle because I know one or two folks that work there. They're also alumni and I can have a conversation with them. The trust is already built, and now I get to have a conversation with the hiring manager because of, again, trusting relationships. And we all say it's networking, right?

00:14:24:27 - 00:14:52:18 But I think the reality is it's community building. And the more communities you can build, the more you can link those disparate communities together and the more together all of us can get harder and more complex things done. Yeah, that's that's a great a great flip on on the term, right. So networking in some traditional, conventional thinking, we you know and it's from could be generational I don't know but you know we say networking most people understand that.

00:14:52:18 - 00:15:18:13 Many people understand that for for what it used to mean. But it doesn't really get to the essence of what it is. And that's what you're saying I'm hearing is the relationship and trust is the community building you're just establishing now another extension of the things that you had into the things that you want or need. And there's the incentive is personal, right?

00:15:18:13 - 00:15:38:28 Whereas networking probably doesn't describe it like that. Networking, I think, sometimes can feel transactional to a degree. Yeah, right. It can feel transactional. But the reality is all the veterans that I've had the privilege of working with, they don't want a transactional relationship. They really want to help you. And they're asking for a little bit of help also.

00:15:38:28 - 00:16:08:14 And them asking for help is really hard. Like, it's really hard because you get taught regardless of which branch you went through, be self-sufficient, figure it out, do it yourself. And so being able to have it build a community where the trust is reciprocal and knowing that if I if I extend my trust in saying that I'm vulnerable and I need your help with this, that it will be reciprocated with, you know, helping me find the answer to that thing.

00:16:08:14 - 00:16:37:09 And and certainly that veteran is going to help you And in return. Yes. Yeah, that was you articulated that better than I did. Yeah. It's it's that I've had time to think about it. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. All right. So, so then, you know, so when, when did the what sparked the idea then, to feel like now's the time to spin off into doing something that was in your hearts?

00:16:37:12 - 00:16:59:13 It has been, I would say, simmering in the background probably since the very beginning. I would give credit to all the way back to the founder because it was simmering in his head. Matt Stevens, our current CEO, has been here now for coming up on six years. He he it has always been in his mind and but it's always how right?

00:16:59:13 - 00:17:29:20 Because no matter no matter what you want to do, whether it's Oracle or real estate or finance or you're always resource constrained, always right. So we had to scale to a certain point to where we had enough resource, mostly time to be able to work on a world class curriculum that was right for a broader audience. We knew that the curriculum works because we have a we have ten years of of test case with special operators who are pretty tough customers.

00:17:29:23 - 00:17:54:23 They're going to give you harsh feedback in the moment. The critical piece. Yeah, the absolute critical piece. You know, when the time allocation, the money allocation, the most critical thing though, was the human and that was Casey Volunteer. Casey volunteer is a master builder of technology products. And this is only her second one. She's on her. She's moved on and she's on to her third one now.

00:17:54:26 - 00:18:18:01 But everything she touches, it's not gold. It turns to platinum. I mean, it just so everything that you see that's built out in there from the marketing, the language, the colors, the fonts, she just did a tremendous job. And then making it all work and work the first time from the get go. So she handed off an amazing product to me.

00:18:18:03 - 00:18:46:18 But I absolutely have to say, you know, she was the critical piece that made this happen. So having the resource of time, having a few more members on the team, some great, great, great civilians here who got passionate about it and do various parts of business, worked on it in their spare time. And then we started to collaborate, you know, then we started, you know, then you get some technology around it and you start sharing ideas in one space and it got some real momentum.

00:18:46:18 - 00:19:13:12 And then we we got some funding and then that's where that was the big change, right? So resource allocation and and the need to show up in the market, if you will, with a world class product, right. Oracle can't just launch something willy nilly. It has to be of of Oracle value before the world can see it, right.

00:19:13:12 - 00:19:34:03 Even though it might be a minimum viable product. Your minimum, I'm sure at Oracle is is much different than anyone would conceive of at this point. We feel the same way, right? It really has to be world class as a minimum viable product and we're going to make the changes as we get the customer feedback. But it's an it's got to be good from the jump.

00:19:34:03 - 00:20:06:09 So a lot of little individual things had to coalesced. And we have not officially launched yet. We're we're still quietly making it happen. And you'll see like an official launch 2025 and and a lot of co-branding from Daughter Foundation and Vector Accelerator and other great partners and I think there is there and and you're saying it without saying it is you know because the pride you're taking in the work and then the outcome, you know, you want to make sure that that trust and the brand that's been built.

00:20:06:11 - 00:20:33:22 Yeah. And then the trust that's been established isn't diluted with, you know, hasty thinking or a haphazardly effort. Right. Just to try to push something out. I mean, it's taken as long as you've said to get to that part where the risk is high because what what will happen will, you know, does it does it dilute the uniqueness of DHS program if by extending it?

00:20:33:22 - 00:20:54:13 Did that occur, that QUESTION Yeah, yeah, I know that's a valid question and that's absolutely something that the staff has struggled with to, you know, how how do you maintain high value, high touch, Right. That's one of our internal mantras, high value, high touch to every single fellow, every single alumni, every single coach, every single partnership and all the communities we build.

00:20:54:16 - 00:21:20:28 And how do you do that in a completely modality? Because we're going fully online, there's almost no human touch. So how do you do? High value, high touch when it's completely asynchronous online and, and, and there's no all these levels of support we've built in all these in-person opportunities. You can't scale that to 200,000 every single year. You have to make tradeoffs.

00:21:21:00 - 00:21:50:00 And so going into this completely different modality of completely online, we really took some painstaking look at the details and how exactly does this information in this format lands with the individual and is it actually serving them? So we had we had to answer a lot of those questions up front. And they have to believe then the risk is the risk reward factors, because now it is online.

00:21:50:03 - 00:22:28:06 Your reach has a higher potential, which is that's huge. And then by design, Right, Right. And you can tell I've gone through it and, you know, maybe talk about later my experience, whatever, maybe don't. But the idea, though, I mean, it's it's fantastic because the fact that now you can extend the reach and you're talking about, you know, if you're within a year of separation or after and maybe because of what you talked about earlier, you know, my choices were including relocating to this place where access to a physical place isn't isn't available.

00:22:28:08 - 00:22:49:21 And you're allowing people to be able to have that option. And then because the brand and the trust that's been established, you can invest, taking a chance and going through it, which I'm biased because I've gone through it. So with the extension of now having it being accessible. And when, when did you first when was it first made available?

00:22:49:25 - 00:23:16:18 How long has it been in play to where you've had the time to go through some of the pilot programs and talk a little bit about the experience? Sure. So we we did the first, we did an alpha and a beta test internal to the staff and then external to go to great partners like yourself. And, you know, veterans who have experienced the transition, know what it's like and allowed everyone to give their inputs.

00:23:16:19 - 00:23:38:09 Hey, change happened to glide change, small dog to puppy. This doesn't make sense. Like all of those little things. And then there was some very tough feedback right up front like this. This flow of these chapters does not work like you need to flip this around. And so we took that. All of the feedback from the Alpha and Bravo tasks and then we moved it into a pilot.

00:23:38:09 - 00:24:02:00 We did a pilot one and two, and then we really focused on folks that did not know each draft. This is the first time there. Or maybe they have heard of a takeoff for the brand, but they haven't. They've never touched the product. And so it went out to veterans in transition or active duty military members in transition, and veterans who have already transitioned, who have no in-person experience with have got their feedback.

00:24:02:00 - 00:24:28:15 Again, those little tweaks, some bigger tweaks even occurred. We got offered the idea that, hey, maybe you should do some video, some extra material. So we decided, okay, let's to a podcast in conjunction with and we'll do the whole first season on the chapters. So if someone has time, they want to get in depth about a chapter now, then go listen to a podcast episode that is focused on that chapter.

00:24:28:16 - 00:25:02:28 They can really dive in. And then and then after that there was a bit of a pause. Cassie decided to take a new opportunity with it. With another company. We had a shift internally who's going to take it over ultimately was decided on myself. And so for the last approximately four months, we're kind of in a we're ramping back up to really and I'm trying to drive awareness largely right now, do some recruiting, but really to give us some momentum going into 2025 and then that'll be are our kind of official launch date.

00:25:02:28 - 00:25:30:09 I think we'll we'll probably place in the history books. This is when it actually started. So a little bit of a convoluted answer, but we've been we've been working on it and it's been exposed to about just shy of 200 folks in 2024 with what we're looking to. You know, my internal metric for success is can I get a thousand graduates in 2025?

00:25:30:11 - 00:26:04:00 I think that's achievable based on throughput and and rates of completion. Yeah, I agree. And that yeah it sounds pretty typical of right people right time and you know achieving a certain threshold and then a change right and it's and it's it makes sense because it's evolving and it's scaling and then you know where that where the the experts can come in and certain phases is key.

00:26:04:00 - 00:26:22:00 And what's nice about it is the continuity. I mean, what I heard, what you were saying is there's still continuity in all of this and there's still from the focus is still trying to strive to improve the small things because there is that logical flow when you're an impressionable moment that you probably are hyper focused on those little things.

00:26:22:00 - 00:26:40:27 And those are the one those are the things that get you to have the confidence, to want to do the things. Some of the things that you talk about, you know, allow myself to be vulnerable, allow myself to ask for help, allow myself to go through a thing where I'm guided through somebody else that has to know me just enough to keep me there to learn more about me.

00:26:40:29 - 00:27:02:02 And then we can start to get into the meat of who you who you were, who you are, who you thought you were, who you think you are, that you want to be. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. It's interesting. I heard a quote most recently that we are, and it was by a psychology a I forget the I forget who it was exactly.

00:27:02:02 - 00:27:42:20 But essentially she stated, We are nothing more than the few stories we tell ourselves, but we are also nothing less. So be careful the stories you tell yourselves. And on the surface you can kind of swipe that away and like whatever. Like you can kind of. It's not. But when you really dig into that and you really start to analyze how you talk to yourself in your own head all day, every day, and what is the consistency of the story, How you maybe don't talk to yourself so nicely or how you you think and tell yourself about your past military service, your past career, whatever your career was is.

00:27:42:22 - 00:28:06:26 It's interesting how that plays out in your day and how you show up to the next thing. And then I started to realize, like, I am just but nothing less than the stories, the collection of stories that I tell myself about myself. So be careful. Yeah, because you can convince yourself either side it's worse or it's better than the reality of it.

00:28:06:28 - 00:28:31:16 Absolutely. And it is why we work on the stories inside of Vector Accelerator that you tell yourself so that you're telling the right story. When it goes external. Yeah. And that perspective. So I'm glad we landed there because we probably skipped over the excitement of talking about the stuff that we have. But so let's, let's talk about, you know, it went from takeoff.

00:28:31:16 - 00:29:01:23 It shifted over. There was a there was context in a theoretical approach to improve and extend. But now it translated into this, you know, a vector accelerator. So the the typical rundown vector, the mission, you know, the program, the pragmatic approach, you've touched on all that stuff, but that summarize it and construct kind of give people a clear vision on what it is, what you're trying to achieve, how you're doing it specifically and the timing and and things like that.

00:29:01:25 - 00:29:22:24 So who's it for? It is for active duty service members about one year from transition. So that means if you're getting out today or you're getting out about a year from now, you're the right person and we would love to catch you earlier than later. If you're a veteran, there's 18.1 or 18.2 million living veterans, according to the most recent VA.

00:29:22:24 - 00:29:50:01 And since this study of 2023, it's for you too. There are 18.1 or 2 million open seats in available. So if you're in nine or ten and you're like, I want to take a seat from a young soldier, young airman, you're not. It's for you too. So if you fit that in those categories or in that in that category, then please join.

00:29:50:03 - 00:30:17:09 It's 100% free. It's 100% online. There are no mandatory due dates that you have to show up to. We do offer a right now it's only once a week, but we do offer a once a week check in called Azimuth Chat. So anybody who's going through the course at any point in the course can just check in and have a human interaction with other folks doing the same thing, thinking about the same things as you.

00:30:17:12 - 00:30:39:21 And then you get to start to build your community because then you can hear from other soldiers, sailors, airmen, marine guardians about what their transitions like the resources, the other resources they found, what is working for them in the curriculum, and maybe what's not working for what is sticking that just doesn't feel right in the curriculum. So what's the curriculum?

00:30:39:21 - 00:31:29:10 It is ten chapters and the idea of the ten chapters is not to again help you with LinkedIn or resumés or any of those things explicitly, but implicitly. What it does is help you build the idea in your own mind of who you were in your time and service and how that plays through who you are today. Understanding your value, your values, what your priorities are in terms of when I talk about priorities, you're going to have endless opportunities come at you, and the immediate pressure is going to be, I have rent, I have a mortgage, I have the obligatory bills, I've got kids, I've got to get through college.

00:31:29:10 - 00:31:52:11 If you're at that stage or or on and on, and you're going have a lot of financial obligation, more than likely, where am I living? And on the Maslow hierarchy of needs, that one's really important. It's the base, right? You've got to take care of that. But the reality is it goes through all the way through Maslow's hierarchy of needs of who do I want to become, what makes me successful?

00:31:52:16 - 00:32:40:00 When I look back at my life and I tell my story about myself, and so what we're really trying to do is not so much help you with the change management of get a LinkedIn, check that box, get a resumé, check that box, get an interview, check that box. We're trying to help you with the transition that is going on in your head and in your heart about who you are and who you're becoming, utilizing everything that you've learned over the last four or 30 years in the military so that you can move that into the next phase of your life, not feeling lost, confused, bewildered sometimes about how did I end up with this

00:32:40:00 - 00:33:00:19 job? Or how did I end up in State X? I took this opportunity and it's the wrong opportunity. We want to help you filter through all of that and go on this journey before you have to do it. All the deadlines are right upon you because you just got your 2014 and it's crunch time and you haven't thought about any of this.

00:33:00:21 - 00:33:23:06 So that's really what we're trying to do in a nutshell. Yeah, so that's the substance behind this, the top layers of activity for prep. You know, you're talking about the tasks oriented focus of the resume and the profile and the, you know, the typical like we talked about the networking component to make yourself marketable, to show people the perception of you.

00:33:23:08 - 00:33:57:00 This this is more focused on the depths of you being comfortable and confident in knowing more about what you want to do, the way you want to do it, how you want. You're more in control of it. Whereas before it might have been at the mercy of orders, whatever they may be, location or role, you know. But but you're it sounds like you're also continuing to establish and maintain the core of the person itself that, yes, retains those things.

00:33:57:00 - 00:34:21:06 You're not using the things that you've acquired. You're just learning how to leverage those things in the new scenarios in your life stage. Absolutely. And so I can tell a personal story going into networking, going into community building, going into building my LinkedIn and all of those things on the surface. I didn't want to do any of it.

00:34:21:09 - 00:34:41:10 I just didn't. All of it was new is foreign. There was a lot of critical. It felt like very critical decisions I had to make. Where's my headshot? What is my title? How do I explain myself to the world? What happens when I make a post? What happens when I follow somebody? What happens when I put the wrong?

00:34:41:12 - 00:35:03:27 What if I put the wrong line of information on the resume? And that's the thing that gets me. You know, to miss an opportunity. You get hit with all of these seemingly critical decisions that you have to make in mass. And these are all decisions you haven't had to make before. And it wasn't until I had done a lot of other veterans for organizations, and they're phenomenal.

00:35:03:29 - 00:35:51:00 They do a great job hiring heroes, great organization, hire our heroes, great organization, and many, many others. But it wasn't until I went through the Honor Foundation and I went through phase one and really started to pull myself apart. And this is what we're doing in Vector, pulling myself apart, really understanding my own story. It wasn't until at the end of that, plus a little bit more time having comfortable conversations with fellow veterans, working on talking about myself, quite honestly, that I could go have a conversation, intelligent conversation with someone like, I don't know, someone who's been in banking as a VP of banking for 20 years at Wells Fargo, or someone who's been doing

00:35:51:00 - 00:36:15:13 real estate for 30 years. Like I had a really hard time and I see this happen with all of my brothers and sisters in the veteran space. They don't feel comfortable because they don't know who they are yet. They don't know how to talk about themselves. But as soon as they they they figure that out, the the switch flips and they're just they're able to navigate those social environments so much better.

00:36:15:16 - 00:36:40:23 And then you're building communities and it just it works. Thanks for that. And and you're right, once once you get to the part, because I'm not trying to oversimplify it, I'm trying to find the right words to explain it. But you know that the ability to do the task itself is less the issue, right? The comfortability, the unknown of now it's different.

00:36:40:23 - 00:37:09:28 I mean, if you I mean, comparatively, probably this is not doing it justice. If I'm if I'm serving and I'm in going to a new unit. Do you have a relationship with some NCO somewhere else or it doesn't matter you have a relationship with somebody else, maybe where you're going and then you reach out. And the point of that, I think, is the essence of what we're really talking about is the the understanding of the known is one thing, but the the acceptance of the unknown and the confidence to maneuver through that when it's now affecting things differently.

00:37:10:00 - 00:37:32:21 A mission is things I'm no I'm going to go execute whatever the mission is. But if it's going to affect me personally or my family, we sometimes convince ourselves that there's higher risk. I have to do it differently. And maybe you do, maybe you don't. But this is just clearing the pathway for you to see that. Now you have a common the Common Core understanding of what it is that is going to be needed.

00:37:32:21 - 00:37:55:27 And some of it is not too much different than what you already know to do. You're just now seeing better about how you can, you know, establish facts in your head to tell yourself what it is that you need to do so you don't get distracted with the abyss of the unknown because that that can be consuming as the two extremes can happen, you can feel like a total imposter.

00:37:56:03 - 00:38:16:09 Yes, and I did. I felt like a total imposter. I'm talking to a senior vice president of corporation acts or executive vice president. I don't know if I'm supposed to call her Stacy or Mrs. So-and-so or senior vice. Like, what do I call this person? Right? I got an opportunity to talk to CEO. What do I call you, Bob?

00:38:16:12 - 00:38:43:26 I don't know. And then you get the other stream. I was a pilot, right? I've made thousands of critical calls. Like anyone's going to want me at their company. Like, there's. They're like the two extremes in that you've got to figure out how to build trust with other humans and and do it in a social situation and understand their language and adapt to it.

00:38:43:28 - 00:39:08:21 And then the nuance of the language of that industry. And you can't do any of that confidently if you can't show up authentically you and open and willing to take in new information and adapt, but be able to tell your story. Yeah, settle in, settle into the second step. The first step is saying yes to an opportunity, Right?

00:39:08:21 - 00:39:29:22 And that's it. In this case, I want I want help, I want support. I want to do something, whatever it is. Second step. Now you can just settle into hey, that that felt right. More. I still have a question. So now I'm again comfortable being curious and out loud, I guess is the best way to say yes to the out loud.

00:39:29:22 - 00:39:52:08 Yeah, right. I mean you know, this this intuition, right? This intuitive approach that I know. I feel like I know what needs to be done but in that but is the thing that which I guess we can kind of just narrow it down to what we talk about that but is now your hesitation, your procrastination, your self-doubt, you know, for whatever the cause is this is the construct that helps you through that.

00:39:52:08 - 00:40:13:04 So what what are what are some of the common mistakes that still occur? We've probably touched on in here, but explicitly, what do you think the common mistakes on two ends and the individual in this situation and then the people that are making it clear after we won't talk about the ones that make no effort to help support anybody in the communities or what have you.

00:40:13:04 - 00:40:45:21 But we'll talk about the ones that are trying to what are some of the common things that we can pay attention to to help provide or shed light on? You know, we're still doing this and we need to do it differently or and then companies or organizations trying to help. We're still doing this and we can do this differently understanding that every single veteran who comes, if you're trying to recruit veterans, if you're trying to bring that goodness into your company, regardless of the size of the company, realizing that every single veteran has a heart to serve.

00:40:45:23 - 00:41:08:24 I mean, we are service members. It's in our name right? We are service members. And so the only thing that we're looking to genuinely do is find a new hard problem that is complex and we want to help you solve it because we want to provide value. We're 100% team driven, motivated individuals who really want to work well with the team.

00:41:08:24 - 00:41:41:21 And we we want all of those things because whether we did it for four or 40 years, that's what we were doing. We're solving really complex global problems with great teams and that's that's all we want to do next. So the gap, the area that could really help recruiting efforts and retention efforts and great American companies that are looking for for veteran talent is have a training pipeline and really, really think about it.

00:41:41:21 - 00:42:07:15 You know, build it the best you can. But they get a veteran on board to lead that thing for you because they're going to be able to help you navigate what it should really look like to get someone to go from years of service into what it's like being at Oracle and you have to do that because their entire life's context to that point has been in it just a different industry, right?

00:42:07:15 - 00:42:51:15 They're making an industry change, so help them understand your company, the insides, the the, the nuances, the culture, how things actually get done, if that's what culture is, how things actually get done. And if you do that, you've fully empowered them to be the most successful they can be. And look, we we know this works. How do we We can absolutely pick a date in history and say, yeah, this whole veteran thing works because the millions of veterans who came back from World War Two have put our entire country on a a bull market largely for decades.

00:42:51:15 - 00:43:30:10 And they all just came right back years of war in places all over the globe and came right back to be management. Frontline workers starting their own companies, going into academia like we know it works. An entire generation did it. And so if companies spent some time investing and training and making sure that the veteran understands how things work at your account, at your company, and how they can lay out how they can be successful, help them work on figuring themselves out a little bit and give them a little grace while they're doing that.

00:43:30:12 - 00:44:10:20 Veteran or Vector Accelerator would love to be a partner in that. Yeah, I think you'll see much higher recruiting, retention and success rates overall, do you think? Thanks for that. Do you do you think that there's a portion of folks that maybe had held formal leadership positions that, you know, as as they shift? Do you believe that maybe there's an emphasis by certain organizations in general to maybe leverage the leadership from them, expect leadership from them like they want.

00:44:10:23 - 00:44:33:20 They have this desire to be a formal leader versus now that they're coming out because of how exhausting or for whatever reason, they might have shifted their mindset. Today, I just want to be an icy, an individual contributor. I know I have the capabilities, I know have the potential and the skill sets and those things. But I want to break how do you how do you navigate that scenario when there's an expectation of certain kinds?

00:44:33:22 - 00:44:58:23 Well, I guess what I would offer the best way to do that is just have an honest conversation and build build a real relationship with that individual at the individual level, not just blanket. We're going to treat all veterans. Here's the box. We're going to put them in and we're going to once they're in that box, there's always going to like, Hey, Chris, I know you've been the Army now for 30 years and you're getting out as an six colonel.

00:44:58:25 - 00:45:24:11 You shows on your resume that you've led upwards of thousands of people for even up to a year at a time in a complex combat environment. Do you want to continue to lead at that level, or would you like some time as just an individual contributor on team? Because really what we're trying to do with our company is make sure that you're in the right spot so that you can be the most successful.

00:45:24:13 - 00:45:45:26 And if you don't want to lead right now and you want to take some time, you should feel empowered to do that. And conversely, if you're ready to just jump straight in and you want to we want to put you on a leadership track sooner. Well, let's talk about what that could look like. I mean, in my mind, that is that is how simple it could be.

00:45:45:28 - 00:46:10:24 Yeah, that's that sound. And it is simple. And I think that's and thanks for sharing that because that does share the perspective. You know, you as as in your role now taking on the leadership position which carries the influence on the style, the approach. It's good to hear your perspective on that because it does account for those those subtle differences, you know, and then sometimes you just take it for granted.

00:46:10:24 - 00:46:29:04 And now the opposite of that would also be the fear of not doing that. And that probably gets broken down in the process of your ten chapters to where you can identify maybe you don't realize that you don't want to do that, but you felt compelled. That's the only thing that you feel the need establish since then. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:46:29:04 - 00:46:50:00 I one of the questions we ask is, Tell me something. You're great at that you never want to do again. And people have promoted you because of this. You've won awards potentially for this. But what do you never want to do again? And it is an opportunity for someone to take a deep breath and go, you know, I've done adult day care for a really long time.

00:46:50:03 - 00:47:06:15 I no longer desire to do adult day care. I want to be an I see I want to be an individual contributor on a tremendous team solving hard problems. But I'm just not in the phase right now where I want to make those hard decisions. Maybe I just need about a year. Maybe they won't even be able to articulate this part.

00:47:06:18 - 00:47:33:13 I need a year at Oracle before I feel comfortable in that position. I need to really understand the language and the nuance, how a vertical, how to verticals collaborate together or how potentially they don't, but how you navigate that political environment. And then after a year, I might come back with a different answer. You know, that's that's definitely something we work on.

00:47:33:16 - 00:48:00:28 Yeah. Do would do do you or has there been in your weekly calls a conversation where you either observed the need or been asked to connect dots in the scenario of, Hey, I'm in the situation, I've, I've been out, I'm in the situation at work wherever I work. And this is the scenario. This is the the organizational scenario, whether it's a company or a business or a team.

00:48:00:28 - 00:48:29:22 Here's the organizational scenario I'm in. Can you help me? Can you help me navigate that where you're you're taking a process from separation focus and then you're actually tailoring now to their individual situation? And have you ever had to deal or had to address that? I would say that's that's come up more than once. There's a gentleman who's at another tech company right now who's gone through that a little bit.

00:48:30:00 - 00:48:54:09 And he's he's been a civilian now for about four years. And, you know, he's he's still trying to figure out it's a very large tech company, much like Oracle. So trying to figure out the the culture and the totality of the how you get things done in a monolithic size company where naturally, I think veterans want to move fast.

00:48:54:09 - 00:49:15:24 They want to they want to from we call it from flash to bang. We want it to be very fast. But things move slower in corporations of larger sizes and for good reason. Right? There's share prices involved and so on, so forth. So yeah, I would say that's the stereotypical conversation, maybe a bit episodic, but it definitely happens.

00:49:15:27 - 00:49:36:00 Yeah, Yeah, I would imagine. And that's part of it. D d as we, as we kind of wind down the conversation d Where's the sweet spot for transition that in your experience, because there's no science to it and I'm going to ask you to speculate too, where it now gives somebody the impression on the timeline because it is different for everybody.

00:49:36:00 - 00:50:14:02 But where's a sweet spot that you found in your experience, individual experience, yours or self? Excuse me? And then those that your help supporting their transition. Yeah where you see it's a it's clear this shift is occurring and so there's a I'm six years into it right myself I'm six years into I'm coming up to that in January officially as a transition service member and I would say that it goes in phases and it's, it's, it's like, like a sine wave.

00:50:14:02 - 00:50:39:18 There's there's highs and lows. You have epiphanies and moments. I remember about two years into two years into my transition, I woke up one morning, literally my eyes popped open. My first thought was, I think I made it. I've been paying my mortgage now for two years. My relationship with my partner is stable. I have teammates that I love.

00:50:39:18 - 00:51:18:08 I love what we're doing together. Both of those things were extremely important to me. Love, Love what you do, love who you work with are things that a lot of veterans are looking for, but not necessarily. And it finally hit me like, I think I've made it like this. This is it. And so fast forward two more years and I found myself having interesting conversations with other veterans who are kind of at that four and six year and even ten year mark of of having a epiphanies of I've really become somebody else.

00:51:18:08 - 00:51:45:13 And now I'm wondering potentially what the next chapter is. And I feel empowered about that, at least the ones that if not through THC or the ones that have found success and know how to multiply that success. And so going back to the original question, like where's the sweet spot or where's how long does transition take? Maybe as another way of of asking that question.

00:51:45:13 - 00:52:20:03 I think it unfolds over time. I think veterans arrive at a different places and I think when you surround them with support and you give them some structure to, you know, we don't say we're a psychology or health and wellness program, but the reality is we are I mean, we just we are we're using best known practices in journaling and really deep self work to help you get to where you need to be next.

00:52:20:05 - 00:52:44:05 So when you surround people with opportunities like that, even if they're not veterans, you're going to find that they're going to progress. And the stories they tell themselves are going to be inherently more positive and they're going to find the story that says, Here's the direction I'm going and here's how I'm going to get there, which empowers them to do it solid.

00:52:44:07 - 00:53:16:07 What if it wasn't that? What's the the thing as we wrap that you want everybody to know? As I've gotten older, no longer a young man, I'm probably a middle aged man is probably the right way to put it. I've realized that there are so many things that I not only don't know, I'll never know. And then if I can concentrate on truly knowing one thing, it should be myself.

00:53:16:09 - 00:53:47:02 Because if I know myself at up, I can show up better to help others. And we find our best selves when we're helping others. Like talk about the most satisfaction we can find, the most purpose, the most meaning in our lives. It's when we really show up authentically and do something for someone else. Solving a hard, complex problem, making a big win in business, showing up for your partner, showing up for your children, whatever that is.

00:53:47:04 - 00:54:14:01 Doctor Accelerator is here to help you find the most authentic you and help you move into the next chapter of your life. Solid. And we'll leave it at that party. It's a pleasure. I always feel I'm smarter when I walk away with a conversation from you. Thanks for your time. Congratulations on coming up. Six years of transition that is never ending.

00:54:14:03 - 00:54:21:20 Thank you. All right, everyone, keep moving forward.

Mike's clear line of sight into the small things that gave him the tools to be successful is credited to his humility, self-awareness, and commitment to leading people. We talk mentors, change, commitment, integrity, patience, and much more! This is definitely an episode you'll want to make time for! Mike Reavy - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mkreavey/ David Cross - https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-b-cross-b856657/ -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript:

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;28;25 You're listening to the Oracle MAVEN podcast, where we bring people together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight employees, partners, organizations and those who are continuing the mission to serve what one of the main podcast, I'm your host, Chris Spencer. And in this episode I'm joined by our cohost David Cross, senior Vice President and SAS Chief Information Security Officer within Oracle.

00;00;28;27 - 00;00;51;11 And today we are joined by our special guest, Mike Reavy, Senior Vice President for security engineering at Electronic Arts, and also an Air Force veteran. We're really excited about this episode because of how many slivers of information we touched on. Mike's clear line of sight and the small things they give him the tools to be successful, his credit to his humility, self-awareness and commitment to leading people.

00;00;51;13 - 00;01;12;20 We talk mentors change commitment, integrity, patience, and it's packed with much more. This is definitely an episode you'll want to make time for. We have all we need to become the person we want to be. So let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity. In genuine intent as we continue the mission to serve. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode and please remember to check in on your buddies and family.

00;01;12;23 - 00;01;38;20 David's and Mike's contact details are in the podcast description and you can always find me on LinkedIn. All right. Good morning, David. Good morning, Mike. Good morning, Chris. It's great to be back. You know, I know the community is waiting for a while for this, so but we have a special edition today, don't we? We do. And there's there's I'll let I'll let our guest talk more about his intro and things.

00;01;38;20 - 00;01;58;25 But we have Mike Reaves, senior vice president, security engineering over at Electronic Arts. And what we're doing today is we're just tapping into our network. We've been talking about it for many episodes, how our networks are important, how wherever we end up, it's always important to keep in touch with others that you've grown up with or experience in different lives.

00;01;58;25 - 00;02;14;17 And as you get to where you want to be, you know, you call in those not only call them favors, but you call in that chat and say, Hey, we have a conversation that we'd love to get you involved in. Do you want to do it? So David reached out to Mike. Mike said yes, and here he is.

00;02;14;18 - 00;02;31;29 Mike, welcome. Hey, thank you. Thank you. I know. Look, I just to be clear, I view this as a as a real opportunity. I appreciate you guys give me a chance to be out here. No check called out at all if I get a chance to talk About what? We're going to talk about, I want to take up take up the time, and I will do it.

00;02;32;01 - 00;02;49;07 So, yeah, let's start out a little bit with your background, kind of just, you know, the typical stuff where you grew up, the choices you made and how you ended up where you are. And then then we'll get into the get into the weeds. Yeah, yeah. I'll try to make this quick, but like where I grew up on a dirt road in a trailer next to a creek named Poverty Creek.

00;02;49;09 - 00;03;04;05 You know, we didn't have any cable television as the joke. That's that's very real. But my dad, he was. He was. He was a retired colonel, so we were only in the trailer while we were building a house. I don't want to give this scene of, like, deep poverty, even though we did live on a creek and and poverty creek.

00;03;04;08 - 00;03;23;05 But I will say what was kind of crazy about that upbringing, it was in lower kind of lower Alabama, northern Florida. It was technically Florida. But I swear I thought our state song was Sweet Home Alabama, where I grew up. And I had a much different accent. But I did. I did. I did manage to get on the Internet back in the early nineties on that dirt road.

00;03;23;08 - 00;03;40;02 So that kind of was a good signal and sort of where my career went. So that's where I grew up. You want me to kind of go into how I got to where I am now because yeah, so where you are in where you just described and you're building a place and then all of a sudden you're old enough to make your own choices and then you do.

00;03;40;04 - 00;03;58;16 So let's go with that. Yeah. So, So, you know, my dad was a pilot. He flew A-10s in other planes. So I was going to be a fighter pilot like my dad, like all my friends, you know, that I was around growing up and but I also had this deep, deep love for computers. So long story short, like, ended up with an option to go to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

00;03;58;16 - 00;04;14;23 And I and I took that option to go to go fly. And my first year there, I ended up breaking my back snowboarding, which was Deckard me for any of the cool fighter jets that I wanted to do and made me think a bit about like, Hey, what I want to do in my life. And that's when I actually changed my major to computer science.

00;04;14;23 - 00;04;33;09 You know, to take up this hobby and maybe turn it into a career. Looking back, you know, as one of these great transitions that paid off really well. So I went to the Air Force getting out of the academy. I actually was a communications officer, worked there. Basically, if you guys know Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, there's a lot of commands there, trans comms there.

00;04;33;11 - 00;04;55;05 AMC's command was there. So it was a big installation and I was part of the COM squadron supporting the networks in the late nineties. So as a young lieutenant, I was technically in charge of 10,000 workstations across multiple commands. You know, as you probably know, there is the senior enlisted personnel that knew what was really going on from my first few years there.

00;04;55;05 - 00;05;16;11 And but I really got a deep a deep crash course and had a support network. And that was the time when there were things like the Melissa virus and stuff going on in security. And so I was in charge of messaging, which was basically exchange back then. And the help desk, which got flooded when, you know, the generals in there just couldn't get their emails.

00;05;16;11 - 00;05;46;20 So that was my introduction to computers in the real world. And then actually my, my, I spent all five active duty years at Scott Air Force Base. My last two years I went to a group called Scope, and they basically did. We flew to every Air Force base as a small team and did a kind of a two week optimization and securing of their network, because back then Air Force networks were basically built kind of out of closets, you know, like maybe some tech sergeant knew what to do and built out a domain on windows into it.

00;05;46;20 - 00;06;04;07 So this was part of the Air Force trying to professionalize their networks worldwide. So as a young lieutenant, young captain, junior captain, I was able to fly two weeks on, two weeks off and lead small teams. I mean, just you don't get an experience like that anywhere else. You know, like they they threw a bunch of training at me, but I was hands on.

00;06;04;07 - 00;06;29;02 I had to, like, go convince people that really, you know, sort of bled over creating these networks, that this young lieutenant, young officers and contractors were going to help their networks and then leave. That's a dicey conversation, right? That's how I got started. And then I had a job lined up with a government contractor. It was kind of the dream job as close to a fighter pilot as you could get, but sit at a computer.

00;06;29;05 - 00;06;45;18 It was computer network attack before we really talked about it dream gig. But then I had an option through some friends to interview at a place called Microsoft, and so who says no to that? So I interviewed at Microsoft and ended up, you know, taking that option instead of the Dream gig. Just because I thought there'd be more opportunities, I'd learn a lot more.

00;06;45;18 - 00;07;04;00 And that's exactly how it turned out. I met a lot of great people. Microsoft, one of them is on this call, on this podcast today, and I spent a decade and a half there now media liability for seven years securing the video game company, probably one of the craziest forms of entertainment that exist in the world is video games.

00;07;04;00 - 00;07;21;03 It's massive. Anywhere you have huge value, you had a lot of attackers trying to get at that value. So we definitely have a very important mission as far as it goes. And we take the ability of getting people a chance to play very serious, like life is serious, you got to have outlets. So we take our job very, very seriously.

00;07;21;06 - 00;07;40;21 So so, you know, Microsoft, we got the truth out now, like Microsoft was not a dream gig, Right. You know, so the truth is finally came out and really the dream gig is that you can play, you know, games all day on your Xbox. That's that's what you're saying for everybody. Yeah. You know, the the young 20 year old Mike Reed, he had real mature plans.

00;07;40;24 - 00;07;59;14 Luckily, the world took care and gave me better plans, took care of me, gave me a better plan. So now there's there's little brief vision of like, hey, you know what? Who says no to Microsoft? And getting that chance was pretty eye opening. I just never saw it coming. Yeah, I imagine it's just one of those things David's talked about in the past of some.

00;07;59;14 - 00;08;19;17 Sometimes, you know, your plan, your focus, your intentions not derailed, but you know, you get distracted or something else draws your attention to it and then you make a choice. So when when you were offered that choice, how excited were you and what were you thinking about? Now that wasn't necessarily in your primary plan, but now, now you have a chance.

00;08;19;18 - 00;08;35;26 Now you have an opportunity. Absolutely torn. I was really torn. Like I said, the gig that I had lined up at this government contractor, small firm, if I said the name, it wouldn't mean anything. But I'm sure I'm supposed to say it because they got acquired. But I had friends that had that I had followed through my Air Force career that had joined that group.

00;08;35;26 - 00;09;02;21 And it was all gravy, like everything was set up great and I had signed. And so there was a relationship there and I had committed. And there's a bit about this integrity and like, I just wasn't sure what to do. And then I get this thing from Microsoft that I remember I went to my parents, right, Because this is I'm still pretty young and I just take a week to think and I really kind of laid it out and I said, Well, what I think this company is going to be okay if I say no, and I will just talk to them honestly about what happens to you if I say no.

00;09;02;21 - 00;09;21;00 Because if I hurt you, I don't want to hurt you because it was a small contractor and then too, I looked at it and I said, There's kind of two principles that have guided my career. And one was, Where do I think what choice is going to give me the most options in life? Because the one thing I knew about, like myself in the world was change is constant.

00;09;21;02 - 00;09;41;18 So the more options I have, the more opportunities I'm leaving open, the better I will probably be. And number two is where do I think I'm going to be the most helpful? And the story I had gotten from Microsoft and what they needed, they really needed help. Like this was the crisis in the early 2000 where Microsoft Security was, you know, kind of under the gun and this government contract like they had tons of great people.

00;09;41;18 - 00;09;58;29 Like I was probably one of the least skilled, you know, honestly going there. I was basically getting offered the job because they really liked me. It was relationship. So where was I going to be the most helpful? What was going to give me the most options and opportunities alive? And that guided my decision. Well, I think that comes into the topic always.

00;09;58;29 - 00;10;16;01 We talk about it many times on the podcast is about, you know, the networks and connections, Right? You know, is that the most important thing for, you know, veterans that are working to make a transition or to kind of make a move, you know, in their career? You know, has that changed in the past 20 years since you and I joined now?

00;10;16;03 - 00;10;39;09 I think I think the network, you know, the connections are really important. And I've always viewed myself as really poor at networking. But then if I look back at my career, networking has done everything for me. Like even the job at Microsoft that they got sat in front of me was because I had gone to Blackhat Def Con Solo in the Air Force because we weren't sending people there yet in the early 2000s.

00;10;39;12 - 00;10;57;02 And I stood out to a guy and when we started talking, he realized I was prior. I was active Air Force and his dad was prior Navy and he got to the Naval Academy. So that was the bond. That guy ended up getting me the interview a microsoft. He wasn't working at Microsoft, but he knew the people and he ended up speaking at a conference in Seattle.

00;10;57;02 - 00;11;11;09 I joined him as Black Hat Seattle back when they had it. I had no money, right like as a and some usually used leave. I think, or stuff like that. But I end up like doing the videotaping for Black Hat. That's how I got a free ticket. I slept on the floor of his hotel room because he was speaking at it.

00;11;11;09 - 00;11;28;00 And that's when a microsoft recruiter overheard me talking when we were getting bagels about me getting out of the Air Force. And I had a job lined up at DC. And she said, Well, we're hiring. Why don't you give me your resume and just that thing over bagels. And I went right upstairs and sent my resume to her.

00;11;28;02 - 00;11;46;09 And I remember she told me later, like she was really impressed with how quick I responded, but that's how it happened. So it was networking on both sides, right? So I think that's always been important. And I actually think the best networking I've done is kind of genuine, like people that I like, that I enjoy talking to it ends up flowing, but I have to I have to be conscious about it.

00;11;46;15 - 00;12;01;27 Otherwise, you know, I'm very comfortable, right? I could sit on my couch all day, look at my shoes, have a shoe collection. I could just look at my shoes. Right. And I'm not going to really meet people. So I think it's important to keep those networks alive if you. So he weaved it in there. So I'm going to capitalize on this that you can't see it.

00;12;01;27 - 00;12;27;28 But behind him, I don't know who four, six, eight 2020 pairs about behind him on display colors the whole nine. It's really beautiful actually if you're loving it. So so thanks for that. So the question might then you know because it is tough choice and your two priorities that you're looking at is, you know, the options you know, the most options for you and then where are you going to be the most helpful and how you assessed it.

00;12;27;28 - 00;12;47;08 I mean, that that's not very typical today where it sounds like the depth that what you were looking at is how many people were in the contracting organization. And then did that. Was that the significant influence of saying, well, that lessens the the kind of the decision making process for me to know that they're going to be taken care of.

00;12;47;13 - 00;13;02;14 I'm going to go over here and and create a new path going my perception that was that I mean, I knew they would be I'd actually had a very open conversation with the person who was in charge of the company, the person that recruited me. And, you know, they were they were okay. And that was a big part.

00;13;02;16 - 00;13;17;04 Like if they had said, hey, this is tough, we were really betting on you. We have, you know, you know, because you know how government contracts were like, sometimes they actually booked work based off of the credentials of the people on the bench. And they had said that I think I would have changed my mind, but they were just like that were good.

00;13;17;06 - 00;13;34;29 And then I'll tell you what, like that relationship stayed alive and they ended up working together on some stuff that was not being very helpful for everybody. So I just say like it was done in a way, in such a way that like I was still and still to this day friendly and friends with some of the folks that were part of that group.

00;13;34;29 - 00;13;50;13 And that group is kind of moved on. So yeah, like I think that's a great point is element is like there's an element, as we all know, don't burn bridges of the past and things like that. But also I think is that sometimes maintaining those connections and you know, helping out of you never know that hey, you could help them.

00;13;50;13 - 00;14;04;04 You may have met the right person or you need make a change, but you can you can repay or, you know, kind of reciprocate back to them. And I think that's maintaining those network is a very, very important because you never know you could be one year from now, maybe not for ourselves, but one year is now a five year turn out.

00;14;04;04 - 00;14;23;00 You come across a man, wow. Because of what you paid there, they're there to help you when you need it. That is exactly how it played out. As they needed something down the road. You never would've seen it coming. But it was all done with integrity. It was all done with mutual respect and just open transparency. And as a result, like when it up doing a lot of things together over the years.

00;14;23;03 - 00;14;51;10 Yeah, that's the sorry David said. And I just want to touch on it because when we're talking about the topics that were seemingly just kind of naturally going into is like transition. It's a decision making level, the loyalty of what I had, how do I maintain that? And now when I'm struggling with feeling like I'm not being loyal to this and then I'm trying to go out and do something different, that feeling, that angst, that that uncertainty as to what's going to be the impact it sounds like it turned out.

00;14;51;10 - 00;15;10;01 And that's what I think, you know, for me, I just want to make sure anybody listening is clear on is you can still have that integrity and the loyalty and how you do those things to preserve that. If you just imagine down the line, it's a small world. And I know David's talked about this before, not only veteran community, but also the security communities.

00;15;10;01 - 00;15;29;20 Very small in a sense. Right. So the relationship component, I think was key. And you kind of just played that card well, Yeah, I think I think it played out the you know, looking back as best I could have ever hoped for, you know, Mike eventually, like, you know, you know, and Chris, just talk about loyalty like Air Force, right?

00;15;29;21 - 00;15;49;11 You know, your family's Air Force. And you mentioned Navy. You would actually Air Force people. You would actually work for another service. What where did I hear that before it? Yeah, it is. You know, I've met a few Navy people that I can actually really respect and get along with. Now, tell us about them someday, but we'll go on to that.

00;15;49;13 - 00;16;08;25 But there's been there's an element of, you know, the service is that, you know, it's not just we're all veterans, right? We're all together. Right. And I think that's a connection I think many people don't make sometimes. Is that is that even though we know the Marines are very Marines, but like, hey, we're all together, all you have a common mission.

00;16;08;25 - 00;16;25;23 We think of things like the Gulf War or major conflicts like we're all in together. It doesn't matter what service we are. And I think it's you know, from a network perspective, I think people keep their eyes open and much broader. Yeah, I think it's kind of like sibling rivalry, right? Like, you know, sibling siblings pick on each other because they're bonded because they care about each other.

00;16;25;23 - 00;16;44;02 They can do it. And people see it from the outside to like, what the heck's going on? Like, you guys hate each other, like, now, like we're here in it together, you know? And that's that's why we can do that. Yep. Yes. So, so now you've made the choice and you're obviously looking back now. It was it was a good choice.

00;16;44;03 - 00;17;11;13 It turned out that, you know, there was some connections later down the line. What's happened since then that you felt probably were aren't the things were unexpected or, you know, where you were introduced to things to where there were some contributing factors of how you made your decision, like the awareness or just kind of the knowing yourself? Well, just to explain a little bit on how things progressed since making that choice.

00;17;11;17 - 00;17;25;12 Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you, when I when I made the choice to join up with Microsoft, part of what I had been doing in the military and, you know, you get a you get a lot of this as a young officer, you get a lot of this at the at the Air Force, any service academy. Like I love it.

00;17;25;19 - 00;17;43;17 So when I say something negative, please understand this is totally, totally backed by so much positive. But when you join the Air Force Academy or any military academy, I think they tell you like you're the best of the best, you're the cream of the crop. You're going to be the future leaders of the world, the like. You really get a lot of a lot of talk that you're awesome, right?

00;17;43;19 - 00;18;00;25 And I think part of me started to realize there wasn't much separating me from all the people that I knew that did not go to the service academy. And that started becoming immediately apparent when I got on active duty and I started seeing like the noncommissioned officers that were just amazing and I was like, why do they, you know, teach us that?

00;18;00;25 - 00;18;17;24 They did teach us a lot more, but I just remember that. So I do remember like when I had when I had finally decided to leave the military, which was a tough choice. But what I finally decided to leave the military. I wanted to take a position where I wasn't going to be a leader. I wanted to be an individual contributor.

00;18;17;26 - 00;18;37;20 I just wanted to work like I think I had just been. I was tired of I had been taught leadership principles since I was 17, you know, And I and I my first year at Microsoft, I was working in this group where we dealt with all the vulnerabilities coming in to Microsoft for all of Microsoft's products and the way the team was set up.

00;18;37;20 - 00;19;10;16 You had program managers who helped manage the relationship with all the hackers that were finding the vulnerabilities with all the product teams at Microsoft that maybe had like Internet Explorer Windows, they needed to fix the vulnerabilities and then we had this team that was the the deep technical team that understood the vulnerabilities. And to make a very long story short, after about six months at Microsoft, I realized I was never going to be as good as these tech guys, these deep, deep tech guys that like folks like there's a gentleman named David Ross who passed recently, like just so smart, the best in the world at what they were doing.

00;19;10;16 - 00;19;26;25 I'm like, I'm never going to be that good. Like, I could try. I might get 90% of the way there, but it took me ten times the effort than it would be for me to actually be a people leader and manage people and motivate people like that I could do would be a lot more helpful to the organization and what I wanted to do.

00;19;26;25 - 00;19;40;21 So I think that was one of the first points where I was like, What I want and what I can do to be helpful maybe aren't the same thing at that level of maturity. That kind of hit me. I think it was just it was the caliber of the people that let me realize that. And I think that was one of these other kind of forks in the road.

00;19;40;21 - 00;20;01;23 For me, it's like really what I want and what I what I am best at or what I can be the most helpful doing may not be the same thing. Yeah. And so I was thinking that now when you said that the people that you're surrounded by, so I'm guessing then it naturally puts you in positions in the environment where most of the people are, because I don't know.

00;20;01;23 - 00;20;17;10 And you can tell us most of the people around you were very supportive in allowing you to kind of find your way. Is that right? And I just I think I think where that comes in to like being veterans and stuff is like, yeah, people were supportive and helped me find my way. But the other thing is they started recognizing the stuff that I was taught and how it was helpful to the organization.

00;20;17;13 - 00;20;37;07 And so like, I don't know, you know, if this is going to be universally true, but I'd say it's probably true for the majority of us in the military. We learn a lot. We learn a lot about working as a team, accomplishing a mission, staying motivated, staying focused, working through distractions and keeping on on target. Like we learn a lot.

00;20;37;07 - 00;21;01;06 Like you don't get that everywhere. So this gentleman that I mentioned who was like the best in the world at this technical capability, like he learned a lot, right? But what we learn and it's not something everybody gets like this person didn't learn all that. We get that in the military and that can if you can align that to the organizational needs, that can really accelerate not just your career, but it can it can accelerate what the organization is trying to do.

00;21;01;06 - 00;21;18;25 So I think that's one part of what it was for me. It was like, you know, I had like eight years of leadership training and here I was trying to do, I don't know, like five years of assembly, reverse engineering, you know, in my spare time. So I could do this. One thing I wanted to do as a non leader like that doesn't make any sense.

00;21;18;25 - 00;21;35;27 Like we were I was given this. I was given this experience and this training. I should use it for the best effect. So I think, Michael, you raise a great point of, you know, leadership and things and many companies, right. You know, that of hey, they may have some gaps, they may have some needs and often, often sometimes they may make change.

00;21;35;27 - 00;21;51;19 And I think this is where military veterans are often and can be the best change agents because A, they like you can say, here's the mission, here's the challenges, Right. You know, here's what we need you to do. Right. And, you know, the veterans really know how to operate that say, and they may need to learn something as part of it and say operate, make it happen.

00;21;51;19 - 00;22;11;24 Right. And be that voice. Be that that catalyst and things like that. And often when change is needed, veterans can be some of the best choices in bringing into your leadership team. Absolutely. I mean, just take it to the core. What the military is compared to what you do in the private sector at like just one of the fundamental truth about being active duty in the military, you're probably going to move every 2 to 3 years.

00;22;11;27 - 00;22;34;18 You're probably going to change some sort of career, something every 2 to 3 years. Like you don't have that kind of change baked into private sector tech roles. And we deal with that just on the norm. Well, die bomber in new team, new mission, go figure it out. Get it done like we just that's part of our bread and butter And so like you think about what you want to do to take an organizational change at a private company like a veteran's going to understand how to work through change.

00;22;34;18 - 00;22;52;03 They've been doing it their whole career every few years. Now. Building on that, though, I would say the other point let's sort of take the converse of things is what is the biggest challenge you think veterans is like, Hey, they could be leaders, they can adapt to change, but what's the biggest element you've seen in your experience when hiring or bringing your sons in?

00;22;52;03 - 00;23;13;02 They've transitioning. That is the largest gap or change that they need to make to adapt to the civilian world. Yeah, I mean, this is such this is such a good question. This is such a good question. And I think it kind of varies between where folks are coming in from, like somebody that's coming in with five years versus somebody is coming in with 25 years.

00;23;13;05 - 00;23;35;11 Right. It's different. You know, one thing that's the same is you need to learn the culture of the organization right away. Does it matter if five years, 25 years, you need to understand the culture, You need to find mentors that can help you understand the culture. You probably need to find more than one mentor so you can bounce, cross cross views and triangulate to build your own truth around the culture of an organization.

00;23;35;11 - 00;24;09;02 How the wheel really moves In an organization like 525 years. You got to learn that because it's not going to be the same one that you came from. I don't care what company you're joining unless it's you're going right back into the military. It's going to be different. So he got to learn that. But I'd say, like the folks joining with 20 years, you know, long, historic like great career, like coming in as a leader, one of the things I've seen that has been disappointing and just like I wish you could go different is folks come in with this background in leadership and they think their leadership is going to just naturally push them forward,

00;24;09;05 - 00;24;24;22 that it's going to be recognized and immediately appreciated because of what they did in service to the country. And unfortunately, that's not true. These most companies, they're just meritocracy. So it's going to be. What did you do for me lately? What have you gotten done? What impact have you had? And your credentials aren't going to get you anywhere.

00;24;24;25 - 00;24;42;26 Where your credentials are going to come into play is how you're able to leverage those for impact in the organization or the timeframe that you're there. And I think that's just hard because you come in with a service, this historic career and it's just it bring it built helps you build a network immediately and make connections immediately. But it's not going to get the job done.

00;24;42;26 - 00;25;00;14 You're not going to get a great end of year review because of what you did for 20 years in the military. So, Mike, you're saying that just because you're wearing the academy ring, I don't have to bow down and kiss it? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. I thought for sure that was going to happen. I, I end up not wearing the rate because nobody seemed to care.

00;25;00;17 - 00;25;20;07 I was lied to all those years. So there's one. I'm going back to the dad jokes because you said, you know, multiple mentors to get cross views. David We're not talking about David Cross views just so we're clear. But I'm from who? I'm here all week. All right. So the meritocracy, right? So and I think you just landed on something, you know what?

00;25;20;07 - 00;25;44;12 What I feel is expected. What I feel is earned, how I feel about how I'm supposed to be treated. You know, we use the ring as a symbol, you know, an academy grad. But it's basically any any any role to wear even during the academy said, you know, basically you're awesome coming from a workplace situation if you've never even served where you've been told, you're awesome.

00;25;44;12 - 00;26;11;02 You know, we're talking about competency driven evaluations, performance reviews and things like that. To wear hard conversations to help guide people correctly where you're giving them information that is contradictory to how they feel. And David's been a big proponent of this. You know, feedback has the sting and the good ones actually know how to deliver it. Tell us about one experience that burst your bubble, if you will.

00;26;11;06 - 00;26;28;01 my God. Yeah. I mean, an experience. It wasn't it wasn't me per say. I mean, I can give you an experience about me, but that was, you know, I was coming in with five years, but some of that came up with like 20 something years. There was this six and I helped recruit and vote organization. I just thought they walked on water like I didn't work with them when I was active duty, but I saw how they showed up.

00;26;28;01 - 00;26;45;20 I knew a bit about their career or they ended up being the commander of a group that I was attached to as a reservist because I did the reserves for a couple of years, active after active duty. So they were also I mean, I knew what impact they had. The military, they joined, they failed horribly. And I had my fingerprints like I recruited them.

00;26;45;20 - 00;27;09;02 I sold I sold him to people like he joined into this in this role. And, you know, he just never really adapted to the culture. And, you know, I could tell that after a tenured career that got him to Oecs, he thought like rank had its privileges. And what he said would go like really getting people on board when there was no formal authority per se.

00;27;09;02 - 00;27;28;20 I was not especially cross organizationally was not a skill set they had developed and not a skill set that it looked like they really wanted to develop. And so that really burst my bubble. That's when I that's when when you said when you when you ask the question and I kind of just like you can't say it on the podcast, but like, I'm just grabbing my forehead is because that was the one that really hurt.

00;27;28;22 - 00;27;54;28 Yeah, because it hit me that like what got them there did not help them here at the time. And they really and I felt like if this ever happens to me again, you never, ever know anybody coming in from the military after a long career into a very senior role into a private organization like a tech company. I want to grab them and just be like, okay, here's the crash course and what you got to let go of what you're getting yourself into, you know, before they join.

00;27;55;00 - 00;28;10;17 Well, I think that always comes in. I think maybe the biggest mistake for some is that with putting aside all that things of the elite ism and all that, that's like you got to have a great mentor and peer mentor that's really going to give you the here's the hard to heart is like, this is not a mission that you've ever expected before.

00;28;10;19 - 00;28;31;26 And if you're not ready to take this on in understanding this, you're going to fail. You know, the mission is going to fail. Yeah. And like Chris said, I love what you say, David. You know, feedback, good feedback, important, critical feedback has to sting. You have to deliver words really hard. And I think a mentor like that in the context of a manager, an employee, of course that matters.

00;28;31;26 - 00;28;46;26 But as a mentor it really matters too, because you need a mentor that can really bust through that so you can feel it. I remember, you know, going into Service Academy, they had me meet up with this guy before I decided to join is like, I think he was like an insurance salesman who had graduated at some point in his life.

00;28;46;26 - 00;29;10;22 And he told me about how miserable life was at the academy, just how bad it was, how horrible, how he woke up with a in a hole in his gut every day. And I needed that because I still said yes, like I knew what I was getting into. Right. And I think being able to deliver that kind of message is something that you do in the military because you because you got to weed people out earlier, they're going to hurt the people around them, you know?

00;29;10;24 - 00;29;31;14 So I think it's important to be able to communicate that. Yeah. No. And you landed on something that's that's common today, no matter where the candidate comes from, is commitment, understanding, commitment and what that means. And I think what I heard and what you just said is you got something from somebody that potentially could potentially be perceived as negative.

00;29;31;14 - 00;29;55;13 It's you're giving me a negative experience, but that's X, Y, and whatever. But you looked at is like, well, it's real and I'm going to use it. And that just reinforced your commitment to make the decision. Talk about commitment. You know what what are some of the key factors that contribute to us getting past some of those things that we create on our own that prevents us from making the right decision?

00;29;55;16 - 00;30;14;26 Yeah, I mean, I think I think one is we're kind of grown with that. No, we're not. We're not going to let the mission fail attitude and a lot of ways. So whether that's a personal mission or an organizational mission, I think that's part of what we get as a indoctrination through our time in a in a in a military career as veterans.

00;30;14;28 - 00;30;34;17 And so like whether that is we're not going let the mission fail at this. You know, we're kind of in the to use another services term because we don't have this term in the Air Force that you're kind of in the sack. You just kind of grunt through it. Like I remember first a few years of my time in Microsoft, like I was basically my career was doing well because I was the last man standing.

00;30;34;20 - 00;31;01;13 It was just too hard for a lot of people. And I just had the resilience and the commitment and maybe I was too dumb to quit, right? But I just kept pushing through it. That's part of commitment. The other part of commitment is being willing as as David said, to embrace a change and to make a change when when it's early enough, where the change will save the mission and not so late that everybody sees the need, because when it's so late that everybody sees the need, it's usually too late.

00;31;01;13 - 00;31;26;24 But it's easier as a leader to get people on board. But when you see the change before the pain is really there, you have to communicate that change. And people may not believe in the Y yet you have to like bring them along and that's hard and that there's commitment involved in doing that. So that I love this part because it wraps a lot of what you've already talked about, our experience conditioned mindset.

00;31;27;00 - 00;31;54;12 We're instructed, trained and brought to believe on how we can influence outcomes, whether it's change, whether it's I recognize situational awareness, I'm observant, I'm connected to something where I can see it. So let's talk about that piece real quick. When you have somebody coming in, no matter where they come from and you can talk about the veterans, they see things faster, like we see the organizational structure, we see the culture, and we kind of just say, I've seen this movie before.

00;31;54;14 - 00;32;15;05 I already have the answer in my head. Talk about what you just said as far as like leading change and how sometimes people aren't ready to hear it until sometimes it's too late and then then it's easy. But when you're that person that sees it early, what are some of the behavioral components that are gotchas on how we now deliver what we see?

00;32;15;08 - 00;32;32;18 That's really good. That's a really good question. You know, there's a there's this dance. Remember the Nokia burning platform memo that went out and Nokia, the telephone company, the the right. David, do you remember this? Yes. have. And it was becoming pretty clear that Nokia was losing market share, even though they had been the dominant phone maker.

00;32;32;18 - 00;32;50;21 I mean, who who you know, if you're around our age, like you had the phone, you played snake, everybody did. Right. The candy bar, Nokia phone. And after the iPhone, you know, an Android, it became pretty clear Nokia wasn't going to make it. And and they did a burning platform memo. It's public it's kind of famous and like basically saying, hey, we've got we're on a burning platform.

00;32;50;21 - 00;33;06;24 We have to make massive change. I use that as an example of courageous communication, but also probably a little too late. Right. And so like at that point, it was pretty easy to communicate the difference. I'm sure there was a percentage of the population that Nokia felt like everything was going to be okay. Still, at that point in time.

00;33;06;26 - 00;33;20;00 So there are some people that needed the memo, but there was a lot of people and a lot of folks in the market like, hey, they got to make a change. They're not going to make it. So that's kind of a too late thing when you see a change before that, before that, before that pain and you need to communicate it.

00;33;20;02 - 00;33;46;01 One of the big trappings is that people get it. It's the hubris, right? It's just like everybody sees it, everybody knows it. And so when I communicate, it's going to be no big deal. That's a trapping, because what you're going to have is either going to have to use because I said so type language when people push back or you're going to end up having to fight against other parts of the organization, whether inside or outside, that to get them to embrace the change.

00;33;46;04 - 00;34;06;00 And you may never make it finished, you may never finish the change, you may never make it complete fully. It may be so long that you shouldn't have done it in the first place. Could be the worst of all situations. So what it really requires is the ability to bring people on board and communicate a vision and a need and kind of make them feel it as their own.

00;34;06;02 - 00;34;25;27 What was the is it was it a patent quote, general patent quote that said, you know, never roughly like never tell people what to do. Just tell them what's needed. Let them surprise you with the ingenuity. Like you have to give an up autonomy to the people underneath you. We're like, we have this need for change. And maybe they actually know the steps you want to follow in sequence to make that change happen.

00;34;25;29 - 00;34;40;05 But the way that you can actually get that change to land is people make it their own and just sort of point and you can watch and you can guide, especially if you know where it needs to go and. That and that I think is a real skill and you have to have that. I mean, the quote I just gave is from a general in the military.

00;34;40;05 - 00;34;53;23 It's something we learn in the military is how to get people on board with the mission and make them feel embrace it as their own. Yeah, I think that's a great story and things like that. And I think back to my time. It's about resilience, it's about focus. It's also being patient as well and not giving up as well.

00;34;54;00 - 00;35;10;22 You know, I can go back a long time ago like, you know, the Windows XP timeframe and I own the encrypting file system. I wrote this 100 page spec that when you should have full disk encryption, I won't mention names. They said the meeting ended after like 15 minutes. Like we're never going to do this. No one's ever going to pay for this.

00;35;10;27 - 00;35;27;06 Well, what do we do a few years later? we have bitlocker, right? So but like, you know, what Bob Muglia told me is like, you know, before in a different story, it's like it's like, hey, sometimes when you get set back, you don't just quit and walk away. You st patient resilience, right? Stick with it right in the time will come.

00;35;27;09 - 00;36;00;06 Yeah. No, I think that is such a good point. Patience. Organizational patience is a is a learned skill to. I don't think it's something that you're just born with. And I have seen and they've probably seen this too. I have seen what you call them in the Air Force fast burners like folks that are just, you know, amazing impact driven people that can get so much done, just not eight, not able to have the organizational patience and they burn out or they get frustrated or they cause drama.

00;36;00;09 - 00;36;20;12 And and if you can have that organizational patience because there is there's another truth sort of in the market, in the business world, the nonmilitary. Well, I'm sure there's an allegory in the military as well. But like sometimes you have the right idea too soon. The market's not ready. So having the patience to recognize that you can see the opportunities when to slide that and that's good business.

00;36;20;15 - 00;36;36;13 And it's kind of core to what success looks like. I mean, Microsoft had the tablets. Yeah, I joined in the early 2000, so. Right. You know, and right idea, probably not the right time for the market. Like people had to get used to playing on glass first which happened with the iPhone because they wanted their music with them wherever they go.

00;36;36;15 - 00;36;55;07 Once they got used to playing on glass, you could have an iPad, right? And it was a lot more streamlined and having to have a tablet that could spin around and also have a keyboard because people were already comfortable with glass. Like, I don't if that's exactly the way it plays out. But that's that's my interpretation of the way the market worked, even though, you know, Microsoft had some pretty amazing tablet computers in the early 2000s.

00;36;55;10 - 00;37;19;22 Yeah, we had the Zune, which I still use, you know, at my desk. You know, you can see it because that's audio, but I still have the Zune. I still run with it, you know, every day. So I know I now know two people that use the Zune, David Cross and Star-Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy. Yes. But you know, it might going back to a little bit about, you know, the fast burners, like it's, you know, the civilian world, like it's the Ferraris, right?

00;37;19;22 - 00;37;44;24 You're going to have Ferraris in the team. And it is a management leadership. Right. How you got to put the guardrails on the road. Otherwise, you know, you know what's getting jog your gaming language, right? You got a you the open map right at the games while you run all over, right? You know. Yeah. What you know how do how do people you know that are the fast burners of the military survive in a, you know, a slow moving corporate world.

00;37;44;26 - 00;38;01;09 Yeah. No, that's that's a that's a great question. And I love the kind of the analogy there. Right. So you've got one hand, you have Ferraris, but maybe need like some sort of like tank, like a like a like a g-wagon. They can really just push through all the muck and get things done. And how can you make one the other?

00;38;01;12 - 00;38;20;03 And I think actually, as a leader, like you can recognize the opportunities that are kind of paved. Like there are things where like the mission, the organization, the culture all lines up, but you can just run and get things done. And maybe it's not the biggest impactful thing, but it lets the Ferrari run and they sometimes just need to do that for the engine and for that talent just to stay happy.

00;38;20;05 - 00;38;34;01 So you find those, you let them run, but then you kind of use that to say, Now we have another tough gig coming up and that's kind of where you can teach them how to be a little bit more resilient to be that G-wagon that can just plow through the mud and get something done and pull out with it.

00;38;34;03 - 00;38;59;22 Now, maybe someday we'll meet some people that have Ferraris and G-wagon back. See if this analogy plays out in the real world, but bring it and put it in the mud, specifically the job crafting. So as you as you're speaking and I'm thinking about, there's a ton of Ferraris and there's a ton of kit cars that have the body of a Ferrari, but the insides maybe, I don't know, red flier, I don't know, something like that.

00;38;59;22 - 00;39;16;13 Right. So it's not quite made or built to sustain what their what their perception is creating for them to think that they can do these things that fast this way. And that's common. So you just kind of smash some things together. You know, you talked about how veterans, you know, are used to moving around a lot, 2 to 3 years.

00;39;16;13 - 00;39;40;27 If you take that in the private sector, it's like, well, your job hopping. That's how I consider success. It's what the job asks me to do. And I get promoted by take and duty stations and roles and things like that. So there's this interpretive translation that sometimes occurs for those that are smart about how to talk to others and learn more about what they do and how their change is apparent on, on, on paper.

00;39;41;00 - 00;40;20;06 But when it comes to now, having somebody where you understand what their ambitions are and how they're dialed in their capable of doing things, but you see that they're going to get impatient. Have you have you what are your thoughts on now creating that that that role of responsibility from other needs and kind of merging in some things to help pacify the ambition of somebody to where you're creating things that don't necessarily in the original job description, You know, you're actually making me think of another sort of truism that was hard for me to wrap my head around when you say that, which was sometimes you got to be okay letting talent go because it's

00;40;20;06 - 00;40;38;29 the best thing for them and the organization, even if they're amazing and like we are driven as leaders in general to not have negative attrition. You never want a good person to leave. And that kind of works against us. But I will say there are times, Chris, that you cannot do what you said where there there they are.

00;40;38;29 - 00;40;56;24 They are not going to be happy in role where they are. And I will say that, you know, especially in cybersecurity, I'm sure we don't have a monopoly on this, but especially in cybersecurity, when somebody takes a role at a different company, they're not dead. To us, that network is still there. And we talked about that at the beginning.

00;40;56;28 - 00;41;14;18 If you if you help them, I have actually helped myself. I've helped lose talent is I could tell it was the right thing and it was hard because it was going to cause more work for me. Right. So that's one thing I will just say is and then usually like we were talking about earlier, it will come full circle.

00;41;14;20 - 00;41;32;15 And if you have any kind of career, you're going to end up helping each other out again down the road. You know, Spirit is kind of interesting because we actually have bad guys just kind of like we have the military. And so if you really think about it, regardless of the company, in a lot of ways, we are all fighting the common enemy, which are the bad guys.

00;41;32;15 - 00;41;45;23 And so if you think about it that way, it kind of helps me wrap my head around what I just said. But I will also say that there are times where I've had some of my best director reports have really challenged me and they've really made me think about like, am I self-limiting in our mission? What else could we be doing?

00;41;45;24 - 00;42;06;21 Is there another part of the organization that's failing that we can help out in and this person really good at it? So to your point, Chris, about how do you create opportunities for somebody? A lot of times you look at where the where the business need is, like the the the biggest mistakes I made is when I tried to create something for somebody and it wasn't aligned with a business need because corporations are made of people, but they're not people.

00;42;06;23 - 00;42;25;00 Corporations are not people. They're not going to be nice. They have to survive. They have shareholders. You know, they're public. So as a result, like, you cannot get crossways is from what the business needs in the name of trying to get somebody is career ahead, you know. And if you do like maybe you'll get away with it for a little while because there is some slack in there.

00;42;25;00 - 00;42;44;21 You know, you never know. Nothing's it's not a perfect system. There are some friction and some lost. And so there's areas for people to do work inside the system that may not be perfectly aligned with the business and help them grow some skills right there, some room for that. But I will say like if you really try to create a you call a job crafting a role for a fast burner who's, you know, growing outside of their role.

00;42;44;21 - 00;43;00;17 But you think there is a need like tied to the business need that's going to if you don't, that's going to be bad for them and bad for you dog track and and that and that was good. You caught me on that one because that's a good that's a great response is is because a lot of people are fearful of the patriot.

00;43;00;17 - 00;43;20;20 Right. It's that asterisk on them. You know you had X percent a trip in this timeframe. I'm you know, are you a good leader? Are you effective leader? And the reality is the micro perspective is well for the greater good, this person's maybe my business, but the industry could use this person somewhere else. And you just I kind of alluded to it.

00;43;20;20 - 00;43;41;04 You know, you're thinking big, big picture for security. This person could be a great fit somewhere else and still contribute to the greater good of the industry itself. Yeah. So business goals in my mind translates into industry specific things, which is and I will say like we still work for a company. So like if you've looked around and there truly isn't a business need that fits that person's role than yeah, then that's an option.

00;43;41;06 - 00;43;58;04 But where I would make a mistake would be if there was a business, see where this talent could be really helpful and I let them go. I probably made a mistake. So really it goes all back to the business and how they align the business to the person. Well, there's the other element. I think as we all run into sometimes is that every company is not going to grow in size increasing.

In this episode, David and I discuss how to prepare for career change and choices. We took this opportunity to get David's perspective on how important decisions begin with planning and being flexible. A plan is just a plan and sometimes what we thought would be the path to the goal changes unexpectedly. We need to anticipate that things won't always go as planned and say yes to the opportunities that rise as a result. David Cross - https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-b-cross-b856657/ -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript:

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;28;06 You're listening to the Oracle MAVEN podcast, where we bring people together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight employees, partners, organizations and those who are continuing the mission to serve. Welcome to the MAVEN podcast. I'm your host, Chris Spencer. And in this episode and joined by our co-host David Cross, senior Vice President Sass, Chief Information Security Officer within Oracle.

00;00;28;07 - 00;00;44;12 Here we are, folks. Season three. It's been a while since we've come together to deliver a new episode, and we're ready to kick off our new season with new conversation. These newer topics sometimes bringing back previous guests and maybe we'll go deeper into past conversations. We hope all of you are well and putting in the work to be better.

00;00;44;14 - 00;01;00;15 If not, listen in and maybe we can help change that. We have all we need to become the person we want to be. So let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent as we continue the mission to serve. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode and please remember to check in on your buddies and family.

00;01;00;19 - 00;01;08;12 David's contact details are in the podcast description and you can always find me on LinkedIn.

00;01;08;14 - 00;01;48;27 All right, so season three, first episode of Season three. We're coming at you for career oriented conversation, joined here with David Cross. Many of you already know. He's our MAVEN podcast co-host and he's got specialization in a particular career field. So as we were talking about what we should be considering to discuss in this new season as we roll into summer, but career choices, you know, this might be the season where many of you are getting ready to transition, whether out of service or from careers where being relevant matters and trying to understand what it takes and what people look for.

00;01;49;00 - 00;02;15;03 David's going to share some information I'll probe a little bit on, you know, before you make the decision, what are the considerations? And we've talked many, many times about this particular topic or decision making process in previous episodes. You hear about it a lot in everywhere else. Probably every self-help book is critical thinking, some sort of element of emotional intelligence, things that go into how you're going to decide what you're going to do.

00;02;15;06 - 00;02;32;03 It starts from, we believe, what do you want to do and the passion that comes through that. And so, David, it's nice to see again. You know, Chris, it's great to be back, right? You know, it's kind of like, you know, I'm we're excited about this next season here. It's kind of like your favorite TV show, you know, Netflix, right?

00;02;32;03 - 00;02;50;00 You know, selling Sunset. I know you get really excited every time there's a new season and kind of like, you know, when they went down to Orange County, Right. They kind of got to change it up a bit and talk about that. So, you know, I think this is going to be a fun season of like we talk about careers, maybe we have some some outside guests, you know, that also help us in like, you know, how do we make this transition?

00;02;50;02 - 00;03;09;12 We want to mix it up and kind of, you know, up it a bit and get people excited about it. So it's sometimes these seasons take a little longer than we like, just like Netflix, but we're, you know, we'll see. We can do better. So if anybody's been paying attention to every episode, David says, I look forward to these things.

00;03;09;14 - 00;03;26;11 It's up to you to decide if I'm really a fan of I don't know what you said. Would you say the sunset selling sunset? You know, I know you like all the real estate and the cars they drive and, you know, the Hollywood properties. So yeah, you know, we'll talk about that another time. Yeah, another time. Yes, it is.

00;03;26;11 - 00;03;46;17 You know, it it is always interesting. You know, sometimes we take a little hiatus to, you know, focus on other things, but also, you know, take priorities as they come. And maybe it's just a another way of just realizing what else can we do to be more impactful and how do we consider, you know, reassess and this is the after action review is like, how were we effective?

00;03;46;17 - 00;04;07;03 And, you know, are there other things that we should try in order to make sure that we're keeping up with the things that people will want to talk about or want to listen to? And so the one thing that we can never get away from is career choices, because we know, you know, that's that that's an important area of conversation in any circle that you're in.

00;04;07;06 - 00;04;30;28 Excuse me, but it's just a matter of understanding the depth in which to go into these these things. And so we're talking security, cyber, career choice. You know, David, I'd like to get into some of the depth of what it what it means to consider what choice you're going to make, what career choice you're going to make. But, you know, let's start with this one.

00;04;31;01 - 00;04;54;21 What matters most? Is it theory or education or experience? You know, it's a great question, Kristen. I know this like a big debate. Like I was at a conference last week and people were you know, we were talking a little bit about is like, do you have to have a degree, you know, to be successful in computer science or do you have to have a degree to be, you know, successful or get into cybersecurity?

00;04;54;24 - 00;05;13;12 And the answer is, I'm going to say, no, you don't. However, right. I think it's really the most important point is there's different ways to get into things, right? You know, just like getting into sports, writing notes to some people. Do you have a professional trainer, some people are. They get their their parents, you know, you know, kind of guide them.

00;05;13;12 - 00;05;29;26 Other people, it's natural. But ultimately, it's like, what is the result you want, Right? You know, saying that if you're a tennis are running, right, you have to have a set of skills, right? And you have to be able to demonstrate those skills. Like right now, I think around the world and certainly we're watching late this weekend, the Olympic trials.

00;05;29;26 - 00;05;45;06 Right. You have to have a set of skills. Are you in the Olympics, are not like, can you take a get a degree and get in the Olympics? No. You have to demonstrate your skills. So I think that's the point here. Everybody is like, if you want to get to computer science, can you write a program? yeah.

00;05;45;09 - 00;06;03;04 Can you show me that you can write a program? Can you put it on GitHub and let me see it? Same thing for cybersecurity, right? Can you pen test? Can you identify a vulnerability? Right. Can you evaluate a threat? Well, can you show me Right. It just like diving. Can you dive in the pool, not make a splash?

00;06;03;04 - 00;06;26;18 Show me. Right. I think it's the best place to start. No, I like that. And thanks for that. And that that I feel like many who would be listening would say, Well, that's the scraping the surface. It sounds like you have very specific examples. And I would assume then if I'm taking notes, that if if you as an expert or would you consider yourself an expert in these areas.

00;06;26;20 - 00;06;46;22 Yeah, there's always debate. Am I an expert or subject matter expert or am I an influencer to say I'm going to say I have 30 patents in the United States and most almost all of them are security. So I'm going to say, yeah, I am an expert for today. Buy that for a dollar selling sunset clip right there.

00;06;46;27 - 00;07;15;18 You see the reference there. Gotcha. That jokes. All right. So 30 patents in the U.S. You correct. Okay. So I'm going to put a pin in that one. We'll come back to it. So, you know, off the top of your head, you were talking about very specific examples of something that somebody would have to prove to you and show you and say, So can you help us figure out what if if I were to be someone who is interested, I have and I'm going to put a pin in this one, too.

00;07;15;18 - 00;07;42;19 I have a passion for technology and it just so seems to now drive me towards security because of either the career field seems to be trending or somebody told me that it's place to a place to go or what have you. For whatever reason I'm interested in it. What are some of the things that I would look at that somebody like you who would, you know, are are you're worth is going to be determined based off of the things that you're able to demonstrate.

00;07;42;20 - 00;08;05;12 What are the top things that I would need to focus on to be able to make sure that I'm aligning beginning my career choice or beginning the skill development that I can make sure that I'm not veering too far away from. Sure, I will. I'm going to go back a little bit to kind of my career and kind of like, how do I truly break into cybersecurity right now?

00;08;05;12 - 00;08;23;24 I think that there's a lot of people you hear about, go take this class or get this certification or this thing's on Coursera and magically you're a cybersecurity person. In the end, I'm going to go back is it's about demonstrate something. So I got into Microsoft. I was in I got I won't do the story of like how I get in Microsoft, but I got my foot in the door of Microsoft.

00;08;23;24 - 00;08;40;02 But I wanted to be in security. I wanted to be in Windows Security. And at the time I was in Microsoft Consulting, just like Oracle Consulting, right? But I wanted to be in the product group. I wanted to be in the Windows Security product group. At the time, I said, Well, David, you know, there's program managers are hiring.

00;08;40;02 - 00;08;59;08 Is that how do I be one? They said, well, program managers, they write white papers, right? They actually speak at conferences to our comfort customers. So, okay, so then what did I do? So I was working with customers and I found a need. Right? Because just like being in like in business, right? You find a need this time it's going to go way back.

00;08;59;08 - 00;09;30;26 This is the Windows 94.0. And they also had a thing called Windows Certificate Server 1.0, an exchange server, and say, How do you connect a certificate server to the Microsoft Exchange Server and CMS so you can actually encryption right in in in your your exchange email deployment. There was no real documentation about this. So what I did is I worked on with the product group and others in my free time and I wrote a white paper about it.

00;09;30;26 - 00;09;51;07 It became the Microsoft whitepaper, like, how do you integrate certificate server exchange CMS and getting it all to work? And it became a public white paper, right? There was a need, there was a demand and people like, bang, this is useful, this is valuable, this is security. And Mr. Cross, you did it. Another element is they said, well, they speak at conferences.

00;09;51;10 - 00;10;07;15 Well, I'm on the clock. I'm in consulting. Right. They don't pay me to go to a conference like now. So I wrote a paper or an abstract, things like that. And I went and spoke at Microsoft Tech. Ed And then I also spoke at the RSA Conference. I took vacation on my own time because they're not going to pay for me to go do this.

00;10;07;15 - 00;10;27;21 I took vacation. I got good scores on. There's to say, this is what I want to do. They said, okay, David, this is nice. But, you know, that's a one year one hit wonder. Like, just kind of like your favorite bands you talk about Chris Quinn before this podcast is Well, I spent time with that. Here we go there.

00;10;27;23 - 00;10;52;29 So I wrote another white paper right? I ended up writing, you know, over the course of a year, five white papers in my free time spoke at two conferences and said, Will you let me in? Right? And I said, Maybe you're not the best that we thought of, but great. You showing the passion things. We talk about this package, that passion, determination, the ability to learn right, and ability to adapt right, customer focused.

00;10;53;01 - 00;11;12;28 And they let me in, right? And that was the start of the journey, right? But coming back to Element is identifying need, right? Identify gap right. Go right about it. Create an artifact, create a deliverable. So how do you demonstrate you can do something? You know, Chris you think about is you know think about kids in school, right?

00;11;13;01 - 00;11;29;28 Things like how do you know what they're doing? Can they write a paper? Can they produce something? Do they have a project that's the trick here. And once you have, it's very tangible. And I would say, gosh, we'd let you into our company. You know what a junior position is like? Yeah, look what I wrote. Look what I can do.

00;11;30;01 - 00;11;52;17 It's very easy to convince someone that you may be eligible for that. Got it. There's a ton of good nuggets in there. Thanks for that. So the need and demand, I mean, that I think probably is a place to start for some of this is to recognize the need. And again, I go back to the individual need and the external need.

00;11;52;18 - 00;12;12;27 Right. So do you need it? Do you want it? Do you need to feel like you X Right. And that I think, is important. Do you feel like you need to do this? Do you feel like you want to do this right? And what's the difference? Right. And I think some of this is circling around a personal passion because you're talking about using your free time to do things that are setting you up.

00;12;12;29 - 00;12;34;05 And I'm oversimplifying it, but it is, in fact, one of those things to say, if I'm wanting to achieve these things, then I, I need to consider how far you're willing to go in order to have success there and some of what you were sharing. Again, you know, cutting it down to very simple approaches is to say, I want to do this.

00;12;34;12 - 00;12;54;17 You use phrases like foot in the door. That's common, especially through veterans or service members getting ready to transition. I just want to get my foot in the door and I will represent recruiting. That was advocate on the side hearing from a candidate. I'm just trying to get a foot in the door. Be careful with that because it's it's important for you to believe that.

00;12;54;20 - 00;13;11;11 And that can be something you keep inside your head. But if a hiring manager hears this from people now, it draws the question commitment. If it means that I I've given you a chance to get a foot in the door, don't misunderstand it to be don't misunderstand that to be something that's going to help you in every case.

00;13;11;11 - 00;13;29;14 Because now I, I as a hiring manager, I may shy away from that because now I'm looking at I want you to be here for as long as we need you and you want to be here. That indicates that you're going to be here until you have what you need to move on to something else because your long term goals don't include what you're interviewing for.

00;13;29;14 - 00;13;44;15 So put a pin in that one. But need demand. Do you want to do it? Do you need to do it? Is this going to be fulfilling? If you're in a second phase of a career, you've probably achieved all the things that you wanted to in the first one. Is this a transition from something that you're well established in?

00;13;44;17 - 00;14;06;04 If it is, you probably already understand the key elements of what to do moving forward. You may be questioning what you've already achieved, has given you the already existing mindset and skill and attitude to represent or demonstrate your desire, your ability in these types of things because you've done it already. But sometimes we get tempted to forget that because it's new.

00;14;06;06 - 00;14;24;09 We think that we have to start from zero, but maybe you don't. So, David, maybe let's hit on that. What? By the time that you were saying before you went into that first role where you wanted to get your foot in the door, what did you already acquire? What had you already acquired and accomplished to get to that part?

00;14;24;11 - 00;14;41;28 Well, I think the I don't know if I've talked about this before, but element is I've looked at the company right. And what is kind of like the basic, you know, kind of criteria they're looking at for someone that would be valuable like. So I was going like, you know, my first role was Microsoft Consulting. What do they need to do?

00;14;41;29 - 00;15;03;23 Right? And so I tried to understand, you know, this is the days before LinkedIn, and I think we had heard of Monster Board was around back then and is like almost 29 years ago. Right. You know, it's like, what are they looking for? You know, what do they want people to have said, I they actually have this called the Microsoft Certifications, the Microsoft Certified Professional, the MCP program.

00;15;03;23 - 00;15;30;16 Right. And so it was kind of expensive at the time, but like, I'm still in the service. I took a a week of leave. Right. And of Malcolm all day is just a convocation of like a week on leave, right. Taking and things like that. So I went to took a microsoft class, you know, my third party, right, Because this is like 30 years ago, you know, like $2,000 or $3,000, very expensive for one week class.

00;15;30;16 - 00;15;48;13 Right. They said, I'm going to go in, take the certification class in tech, not are learning it right, get certified, take the you know take the exam and saying, hey, I've got the bare minimum, like give me a chance because I know that I could demonstrate at this time. Right. Getting those exams in courses were a demonstration of the skills that I had.

00;15;48;14 - 00;16;05;17 Right. That was in addition to that, hey, in my home time. Right. Things like that still in the service. Like I had a computer, I installed Windows 93.51. Right. I'm learning the Windows and T system, right? Because I knew this is what they need people to do. This is what enterprises are doing. This is the job I want.

00;16;05;17 - 00;16;23;21 So I'm going to get hands on my free time doing this type of things. And eventually it did this all. It said Microsoft, give me a shot at it. I've got these skills, right? Can you give me a shot and just just let me in and I'll demonstrate it. And a lot of a lot of work and demonstration of that.

00;16;23;26 - 00;16;48;21 And I got in. And the reality is also sounds bad, but it is the what I wanted is that I was doing consulting other things outside of Microsoft, but I wanted in the club, right. I want in the high tech I took a 50% pay cut to get into Microsoft because it was the long term. I was going for the long term, not the short term win a 50% pay cut of my stupid, but I knew I was betting on the long term.

00;16;48;21 - 00;17;13;05 And that's what you have to think about. Everybody. Yeah, that's the sacrifice. Right? So it's it comes down to just to summarize, what I heard is, you know, fundamentals. You establish fundamentals, certifications is, you know, top layer of understanding through information, right? You're getting the acclimate to be familiar with. And then what the key thing here is the connection.

00;17;13;05 - 00;17;35;08 And we've already talked about this, how important it is relationship building, right? So when you're when you're asking things of others, it's the reciprocating value, right? It's I'm give me a chance. I'll give you this. Give me your time. I'll give you this. You know, there's there's that part. So the relationship building seemed to appeared to have been key because you're you're you're you're asking somebody to bet on you.

00;17;35;10 - 00;17;57;10 And so through this demonstration of things, you know, it's it's important for us to remember that. The other part here is you said it, you took a 50% pay cut, which means it's only half. Remember, I was talking about you don't have to start from zero if you already acquired or accumulated something. So I know it's not the same, but just the context of some being symbolic.

00;17;57;13 - 00;18;16;05 You didn't take 100% pay cut. You took a 50% pay cut. So it means that you were in some place and then you wanted to shift and you did these things to prove value. You established yourself in a way to understand the fundamentals of not only the skill sets, but relationship building to to get somebody to want to listen, let alone bet.

00;18;16;08 - 00;18;33;10 And then, you know, you had to make a sacrifice and you determined what was going to be acceptable for you based off of the perspective that you have. This is a long term game. This is this is the marathon versus the sprint thing. I think you put I think you got me spot on there or, you know, four things.

00;18;33;10 - 00;18;51;18 It's like it's a transition. It's a choice. Right? And you take with every choice, it's kind of like there's opportunity costs, right? You know, there's physical cost, there's logistical costs, all the things. And you make these choice for that transition and that's what you go for. You're making a bet, right? Just like you make a bet on the roulette wheel in Las Vegas.

00;18;51;18 - 00;19;17;16 Right. You're making a bet is that return can be big enough. I bet the return was going to be big enough and it proved to be true. But and that's what it's all about, the choice you make. Yep. Choices. So. So let's. Let's go then. So now. Now we've established kind of the mindset you should have, right? This is, this is, you know, for those of us and I'll split it up into some categories to make sure that I'm speaking to each of you, whoever you are.

00;19;17;16 - 00;19;38;26 Right? So there's the early career folks beginning, which means that you've spent your latter part of, you know, your late teens, early adult life doing something to get to somewhere. So I'm speaking to you. You know, we're talking about those the mid-career midlife stage, right. So that could be, you know, anywhere from the mid to late twenties, all the way up to whatever.

00;19;38;26 - 00;19;56;22 Fill in the blank. Right. And then you've got the other right. And that's those of that of, you know, if you go by a job description, it's, you know, 0 to 3 years, 3 to 5 years, you know, 8 to 10 years. Think of it in the context of that. When when you're looking at qualifications, somebody is presenting you what's what's necessary to qualify for this role, to have a conversation.

00;19;56;24 - 00;20;14;16 You're determining at that point, do you do you match? And if you don't, you're thinking about who you are and what you bring to the table. And then you're you're landing on what am I willing to do and what am I willing to not do? What am I willing to sacrifice? So you're building your boundaries. That's important. So now you're at the table.

00;20;14;16 - 00;20;43;13 You have this conversation and you land on the opportunity where somebody is presenting it to you and then says, okay, show me. And then, David, you had mentioned, you know, I've done these things, so I'm going to kind of mix this really quickly into this next questions, because what does it take to get to 30 patents? Well, I have been in the industry for 30 years almost, but what does it take?

00;20;43;15 - 00;21;06;10 Well, the first part is like many things, it's it's like, you know, a running race. Right. What's it take to complete a5k? What's it take to complete a ten? Okay. Well, the first and foremost, the first one's the hardest, isn't it. Right. But with that said is how do we mostly get through the first one? It's usually because you have an inspiration.

00;21;06;12 - 00;21;27;11 You have someone that you look up to. You have a model, right? And often I think for many of us, for you know, that really get into running and races, especially after our, you know, high school, college, whatever, just in life saying, you get to go start doing a you're going to go do a half marathon, someone inspires you, someone coaches you, Right.

00;21;27;18 - 00;21;52;07 How you find someone, right. To help you through that first one. And after that, it's kind of like after you do your first five K, Chris, you know, is in the second one much easier. No big deal. Right? And I think that's what happens is you get you get that a coach and I think that's a big part of our topic here is you find someone inspires you, someone this that motivates you, find someone that can help you through that first one.

00;21;52;10 - 00;22;20;17 It just like in the career and from there it's then, you know, practice, practice, practice. Got it. Thanks for that. And that was intentional because a lot of us want, metaphorically speaking, we want the three patents. Now, I want to get to where you are, David. Now, why I'm asking that question after establishing what we did early in this conversation is because it takes it takes a couple of things to get to that part clearly.

00;22;20;17 - 00;22;42;28 And I'm not trying to be insulting to anybody who's listening. What I'm saying is, don't forget, it takes a while to get to the part of what you're going to consider to be the goal. And you don't know when or how long it's going to start or end, let's say. But you got to decide. You have to decide what it is that you want to do.

00;22;42;29 - 00;23;02;09 You have to now consider what it is that you're willing to do and not do, and then you present that and then you start. And I think any entrepreneur will appreciate this. Just start like you indicated, here is the first one may be the hardest, but we often know that if I'm not familiar with it, it's not comfortable.

00;23;02;11 - 00;23;20;05 I'm uncertain. I don't know what's going to happen. And that sometimes creates the self-talk to where we hesitate, we procrastinate. We, you know, we set it for next year. Tomorrow, we always say, I'll get it to the next time or whatever, but just starting is going to get you in the mix because it's not a one time one hit wonder.

00;23;20;07 - 00;23;53;07 It takes repetitive motion in order to get to the parts that help you understand through the experience what it takes to build the experience that when you get to experience or when you get to demonstrate it to somebody, they can hear it in the examples that you're providing. So you chose to go into this field. What were the determining factors after you've gotten your foot in the door and as you progressed, you know, what are some of the things that you seem to have introduced to keep you, I guess, moving forward?

00;23;53;07 - 00;24;13;03 But more, more so, you know, not only maintaining your motivation, but your inspiration, your desire to continue to grow. What are some of the things that you can talk through as far as what got you to want to continue? Well, I think it's hard. I think, well, I'll give you the hard part and then the easy part, Right?

00;24;13;05 - 00;24;36;25 The hard part is the reality is you need to work on something you love, right? And because it's hard to do something for 30 years unless you love it. Right. And I think there's a lot of people that say, hey, you can make more money doing X, right? Or but you really love working on cars. Right? You know, is like, can you some people can do it, others cannot.

00;24;36;25 - 00;24;57;03 Right. I think the thing for me about what I loved about security is it's always dynamic. You know, I think one of my strengths and weaknesses is that my brain is always working right. It's always going to be moving If I'm not, I can't sit there for 5 minutes and my brain not working, I'll go crazy. And so I have to be reading or doing something or running, running.

00;24;57;03 - 00;25;16;19 I can't be running without listening to something. I'll I'll go mental. You know, I have to let a podcast. So the thing about security is it's always dynamic, it's always changing. Everyone says it's always a horse race between the attackers and the defenders because it's always a horse race is very dynamic. And for me, that keeps me energized, right?

00;25;16;21 - 00;25;34;23 And because of that, then also also there's a demand. Let's do the simple economics thing, supply demand, right, to supply people that want to or can work on security and the demand of people that need to work on security, great. It creates a nice economic benefit right on that. And so I like things in life are simple, as simple as that.

00;25;34;23 - 00;25;55;09 So great, you know, it's a win win. And so I think that's what continues to drive me. There's always ways to move up, but you do reach a point in your career and say that, Hey, I'm happy, right? You know, because it's about we got the topics of work life balance. Work life choice, you know, is what people think as you move up in the world and move up in the ranks of a company in management, Right.

00;25;55;11 - 00;26;15;00 Life gets easier. It gets harder and harder. You always have to make a choice. It's like, what's enough? Enough's enough right here at the right balance. But that's a whole nother, I think, podcast on it right? But also, I'm going to go back to another point here is you talked about moving up. Is that the again, it's about a marathon, right?

00;26;15;00 - 00;26;28;28 It's a career at the long term is that I think I talked about it at a conference last week is that you stop, you get your foot in the door and you don't move to the top of the ladder in two years. Right. People that say, I want to be in security, I want to be a CSO, right?

00;26;29;00 - 00;26;46;05 It took me 30 years to be a C, so right here, 25 years to be a C, So right. Did I do it of one step like I became a leader of a five person team. And my next step is to become a CEO of a 300 person team? No, it's about a long term marathon plan. It will take time.

00;26;46;05 - 00;27;14;12 Right. And you're making a bet to get that point. And then you peak, you know, but it's not a it's you have to think about all the steps along the way. And those steps could take you 15 years. Did you know that when you started? I did. I did. I think is you know, I could say the my dream when I joined Microsoft at the beginning, I says, you know, the product people said, after ten years, I want to run, you know, building 26, Building 26 was it was windows at the time.

00;27;14;12 - 00;27;32;13 So I want to be running windows. Right. Be a vice president of Windows. Now, ten years later, I wasn't running windows, but ten years later I was running Windows Security Organization. You know, so I said a big aspiration, a big goal. I didn't get the at the end, you know, the full thing, but maybe it was little bit too aspirational.

00;27;32;13 - 00;28;01;08 But I got a big, you know, major achievement, you know, going from nothing to ten years. I'm running the Windows Security organization, something that affects the whole world. Can't complain. Well, in that and you and you hadn't planned for that. I never had say this clearly. It wasn't part of your plan to be that specific in Windows security because you were wanting to do just Windows, not just windows, but focus on Windows, which for me, not knowing the depth of it, is different, I'm assuming.

00;28;01;11 - 00;28;23;12 Was that a shift in your original plan? I mean, you know, did you realize that you were moving away from your original plan as it was occurring? Because sometimes when you're in the middle of it, you don't realize what's happening. So was that was that something that was occurring where you realized all of a sudden or did you see it evolve over time and then you started if your mind's always working, did you already connect this as things were happening?

00;28;23;12 - 00;28;43;25 You you were keeping a pulse on the shift away from the original goal. Yeah, I think, you know, I think that's a great question, Chris. I think it's it's kind of an evolution as you evolve. It's like you set a plan, right? And there's an element of you see some benefits of things and like what you get into a rhythm on you know, it's kind of like running routes.

00;28;43;25 - 00;28;58;13 Let's go back, you know, is the word of analogy. Like you start to run like, I'm going to run a marathon. But then you're saying, what routes do I want to train with? What routes do I'm comfortable with, What shoes do I like? Right. You kind of start to get to really to say, you know, yeah, I would do a marathon, but I'm not going to do a trail marathon.

00;28;58;13 - 00;29;15;00 I'm not going to do a Boston marathon. I just want to do a nice flat marathon or I want to do one that's, you know, of, you know, this type of terrain or you know, of type of things. And that becomes your preference And you're like, that's okay, right? You know, you adjusted because of how you feel, how you get comfortable with it.

00;29;15;00 - 00;29;31;06 And that's a big part of it. And as I got more and more security, that's where I wanted to be. I realized, no, this is me, right? This is who I am. I'm not the Boston Marathon type. And my going to try to be that right. And I'm happy with that. And so that's I think exactly you described.

00;29;31;06 - 00;29;50;01 I got it. So excuse me. The message then is don't forget who you are. Right. And the things that you've achieved indicate who you are. And if you want to have stretch goals, it's absolutely fine. But just keep in mind, because what we're not wanting to do is have you be tempted to stay where you are and then use the excuse?

00;29;50;01 - 00;30;04;24 Well, that's just who I am. No, Sometimes it's a choice in certain things to where it's who you choose to be. But if you want something different and you go back to what we just previously talked about, you know, what do you want to do and how do you envision yourself getting to where you want to be? What are you going to sacrifice?

00;30;04;24 - 00;30;30;17 Those types of things. So so always a demand, always changing. You'd mentioned that today. How important is security? Well, as you see in the news every week and it's kind of like, we did a podcast or we talk about, hey, the we've got a deal. I think this one will come out later. But like in of all the car dealers, right, You know, the software used by all car dealers.

00;30;30;17 - 00;30;48;19 Right. They're all shut down, right. You know, because of ransomware and cybersecurity. Right. It hasn't ended. It's you know, it's continued to be number one for until I die. Right. I'm going to say that for sure. Right. Of confidence in saying that. And I also plan on living for a much longer time, not looking. I die quickly here.

00;30;48;19 - 00;31;08;16 Everybody will keep running those flat marathons. You'll be fine. There's no risk. I pulled back, right? Is like I'm not aspirational. Go for marathons anymore. Half is good enough for me at this stage, but it's still important, right? That's great. It's something I love. It's still important. You know, I've chosen that and I stick with it. Right. But the same time, Right.

00;31;08;17 - 00;31;28;04 I hope I have switched companies. Right? I was at Microsoft, which I love, right? I went to Google. I've been Oracle. I do make switches, right? Because sometimes you just say that maybe I get too comfortable or like, hey, I'm not you know, I'm not expiring, aspiring to anything anymore. Right. And that's when you take that little bit of a a minor reset or a minor shift, Right.

00;31;28;04 - 00;31;47;00 Saying I need to adjust a little bit, make a move and where you go. And I think that's where the most enjoyment comes from. The do you think or how do you think technology influences that last part where there's always a demand it's not going to go away as technology becomes now, everything you know, again, I'm summarizing, right?

00;31;47;00 - 00;32;07;26 But how important is it where the technology or the the place in which you do this, how important is that in your decision making? it's very important. And coming back to our conference last week, they spoke it is there is discussion which are about CISOs in a technology and people staying up to date. Here's a reality. Someone called it out.

00;32;07;26 - 00;32;25;08 I said, CISOs, if you're not learning A.I. right now, you're pretty much you're done in two years, right? A.I. Artificial intelligence is not going away. It's going to affect almost everybody, right? We go back to, you know, computers 20 years ago. If you're not learning, a computer are going to be able to keep a job. No way. Right.

00;32;25;11 - 00;32;51;28 Nowadays, can you can anyone get a job and not use a computer anywhere anymore? Right. Almost impossible. Right. There's maybe a few things. Agriculture, maybe not. But putting that aside. So now looking forward in many of our jobs is not just technical people, but he is part of the life for the rest of our lives. Right? If you can't adapt to that, you cannot learn that you're going to be stale in two years.

00;32;52;02 - 00;33;19;06 Right. And I think that's the reality. And two years may be an arbitrary time selection. Maybe not. I don't know. It doesn't matter. But the point is, whatever the timeline is, it goes by quick. Right. And so the preparation, the steps involved in order to get you ready as an individual that's looking to pursue something either for the first time or transition from where you are into something different, which is in the space security.

00;33;19;08 - 00;33;42;15 There's things there are things involved that takes time to accumulate based off of everything that we're talking about. So with that, what do you feel is the most significant change that's occurring outside of what you just talked about? Outside of I boy, that's what A.I. is going to change a lot, right? I think in a lot of good things, you know, But, you know, I won't say necessarily bad things, right?

00;33;42;18 - 00;33;59;07 You know, born and raised in Detroit. Right. And they said, you know, the seventies, eighties, Right. Robots are going to kill all the manufacturing. Now, they didn't. It was just a shift. Right. I think I give you the same thing I think is what's the other you know shift is I think the air power is still the biggest one.

00;33;59;12 - 00;34;22;29 You know, top of mind is that how do we there's a good analogy that or a talk that people say that the people that use AI are going to be more productive than ever. Right? That people who don't use AI are the people that are going to be in trouble. Right. And I think that's reality. So, Chris, are you not using AI in creating the transcript for the podcast?

00;34;23;02 - 00;34;43;00 We are. See, did you think you think about it three years ago? Could you think of that? You thought of that, that we would, you know, have a you know, in thought of that would you know, that's a great point and half jokes but not because that change adapting to change I think is kind of the the subsequent parallel here.

00;34;43;00 - 00;35;01;00 Right. It's a for me, that particular case when I was presented with, hey, we're shifting the format now you have to review the document. I was absolutely not on board initially, right. And it was because it was to me, it was an inconvenience. I had to read through it. Is it is it translating properly what it did do?

00;35;01;02 - 00;35;30;03 And I'll be very specific with this had this conversation last night, as a matter of fact, with a couple of my peers in the team that I was working on. It's making me better as it translates in the way that I'm communicating. Am I articulating? Am I enunciating how I'm speaking is actually now being captured in a way to where I'm looking at it and say, and I use that kind of a symbolic way of understanding if it's if it's putting into words the language that I'm using and the way that I'm phrasing things.

00;35;30;05 - 00;35;49;19 Is it understood on the other end? Is it being received properly? And so I'm looking at it from that perspective that allowed me to find something in the inevitable right changes and inevitable right. We do it every minute of our life. It's changing and evolving. But I had to I had to get my head wrapped around the reality that here's the thing that we love to do.

00;35;49;19 - 00;36;09;16 We love having the conversations technology that's using or that's being used in order to improve. This particular offering is incorporating A.I.. It's using now that technology to take words and make it available and accessible for other people. So I had to kind of think and rewire my brain on how I'm adapting to change. And it took a minute.

00;36;09;18 - 00;36;28;29 And then after a while, I started to establish a better understanding of its use through critical thinking and emotional intelligence, just consideration of others. I think, is the premise of it. It's going to be beneficial to somebody. So then I was able to adapt to that. And I think that is the the initial reluctance, you know, kind of what you're hinting is obvious.

00;36;28;29 - 00;36;48;25 Hey, Chris, you're using it today. You know, did you know? And the answer is like, yeah, I didn't really think about it until later. So there's that. I think that's part of the process also is, you know, spinning it back to career choices. It's not going away. And it's not just technology is not going right. Security is absolutely not going away.

00;36;48;25 - 00;37;11;13 In fact, it's, you know, one 2% necessary for everything that's here. The changing of it, you know, the things that are involved includes not only the use of it, but how it's now being are influencing society in ways that it's modifying the way we're thinking about what we're doing right. And it's giving us a better estimate of how effective we are.

00;37;11;13 - 00;37;31;18 And I use my example, use yours, but it is helping make you better if it's used properly, right? I mean, there's other things that, you know, when you kind of how do you say when you take it and not take it for granted, but you abuse it, you know, and used for other things, There's that too, which is kind of indirectly the same, but.

00;37;31;20 - 00;38;08;04 All right. So going back to careers, somebody decided this is what they want to do. What can you tell them right now today, if somebody was in front of you asking for that that break, what do you say? The. Yeah, the you know, the I have to say, I mean, to go back to A.I. right now, there's of compared to like machine learning from, you know, ten years ago it was very hard to learn and it take a lot you know, but almost people had to go back almost to college or college level, you know, kind of education to really how to use it.

00;38;08;07 - 00;38;33;24 A.I. is much different, much simpler. And there's a huge demand for people to use A.I. and how to use A.I., everything from prompt, not just from a security perspective, but I think as if anybody wants a leap in a change. Right now, A.I. is crystal clear. There's lots of opportunities, and if myself, I'm learning it because I don't want to be phased out to be stale in two years.

00;38;33;26 - 00;38;49;23 But if anybody is, you know, saying you got a little bit of freedom, you got a little bit of time, and it's not going take a lot of time, and you want to jump into a new world that's exploding and not going away, jump into A.I. and there's training and education, other things jumping in. There's tons of opportunity.

00;38;49;23 - 00;39;09;15 Everybody, I'd like to see that someone actually knows A.I. and how to help implement it, you know, in a company or applications or other types of things, you can't get a job. Yeah, I think something else is wrong. Got it. What would that be considered From what you just said, like the most basic place to start, Is it just diving in?

00;39;09;15 - 00;39;32;23 I mean, how. How would I know exactly where to start today with what's available in order to not get ahead of myself by just doing a search for A.I.? Learn A.I., and then you start there where I don't want to start in the middle. I want to start the beginning. Yeah, I think there's a limit. So I think there's tons of things on Coursera, Microsoft, Oracle, others.

00;39;32;23 - 00;39;51;15 Right? You all have had introduction to A.I. and how to use it in their systems and actually getting to be an implementer or a user, right? Or someone that can be a practitioner, you know, in these things is all these companies are looking to implement. But not everyone's ready to jump on it. Like is like many companies, they want to start doing it, but they need some help, right?

00;39;51;15 - 00;40;07;13 You're like, Great, Google learn it, right? And then you can help other companies that need that talent. Because I know there's there's many companies, especially small and medium businesses especially. Right. It's like they're going to have people learning and onboarding to this in helping them know they need it. And they're going to hire people that can help them with that.

00;40;07;17 - 00;40;34;09 And that's an opportunity when there's a need, that means that's something you go after, right? And it's crystal clear everyone's trying to do it. Ooh, I was getting ready to kind of just taper us off to the start. But you just mentioned one thing. How do I stand out from others if everybody's doing it and everybody's using it and everybody's trying to learn how to do it, how do I stand out to be the David of 30 years ago today?

00;40;34;12 - 00;40;48;22 You know, I think coming back to an element is, you know, showing the the the artifacts of that. Right. It's you can start for easy. There's lots of things. Do you do you have a blog right. Do you have a podcast? Do you have a video blog? Right. You have a YouTube channel, right? Do you have a GitHub repo?

00;40;49;00 - 00;41;10;23 Do you have a medium, you know, kind of or substack, you know, kind of things? If you know some things, write it down, create an artifact, right? It's not about writing big white paper to write a blog, you know, do a podcast, you know, things like that, build your repository, build your portfolio of things you know how to do, and then you put it in your resume and say, Hey, Chris, you know, I heard you're looking for someone.

00;41;10;26 - 00;41;25;05 Take a look at my work right? You know, say people like, I look at your resume, I don't know if you know, do it like, hey, go look at my web, my, my YouTube channel, go look at my my medium blog and things like that and show you that I know what I'm doing. Right. And and guess what?

00;41;25;08 - 00;41;45;03 People will be interested, right? Because it's so easy. Because they don't have to interview you. Because people do it. Like interviewing people that might be worthless. No, it's a waste of our time, right? We only want to interview people that we think are going to pass and are be great. Right? But if you make it so easy for someone to see that what you can really do in total safety, right?

00;41;45;06 - 00;42;01;10 They're like, great, They're going to pick it. If you got the stuff, they're going to grab you really quick because it's so easy and safe for that, right? Do the investment. I know. Chris, do you like to be you know, you want to be a movie star, You know, many years ago. Right. And you had your your portfolio of all your pictures and everything's like that.

00;42;01;10 - 00;42;15;26 You got to have pictures, right? You got to be a movie star. You want to be a model. You got to have pictures, kind have a portfolio. So you want to be an eye, you want to be in security, you want to be in, you know, technical create your portfolio, make it available publicly, and then point people at it.

00;42;15;28 - 00;42;35;02 Now, I have to say, you're bringing up things that I'm wondering if you're trolling me and because you're in security, are you are you doing is there some subversion here that you're actually finding things out about me and you're finding in the depths of the dark web? I'm understand. Anyway, and we're back. So. Yes. Got it. So it tracks.

00;42;35;02 - 00;42;52;13 I mean, everything that you're saying, David, is it saying, you know, there's there's effort involved? Probably having a solid plan. Initial plan doesn't have to be 90% bulletproof, but you need to start with a plan that's going to help you where you are, get to the next step or to have a vision with Chris and see if there's a plan.

00;42;52;13 - 00;43;11;06 It's like I say, let's go to military, right? What's the target? Who is the target? What is the target? Then you build the plan to take out that target. Right? Fair point. And you said that in the past. I mean, you're consistent in that. You need to understand where you want to go, but also anticipate that things will things will change along the way.

00;43;11;11 - 00;43;28;03 And you were a good example of that, right? So in ten years, your plan shifted a little bit, wasn't entirely off base. It was just, you know, the azimuth just veered off from the original target in this case. So, you know, but be gentle on yourself as that occurs. Right? I mean, I think this is one of the things that's important for us to know that.

00;43;28;03 - 00;43;50;25 Nobody's harder on us than ourselves, I would hope. Right. Because that keeps us dedicated and disciplined. Right. And, you know, the motivation is you. It's not something external influence, you know, that's inspiring. It's not motivation, things like that. I think it's just a matter of be true to who you want to be. Right. Understand who that is, how you envision yourself, you know, a year, two years, five years, ten years from now, what do you want to do?

00;43;50;25 - 00;44;15;21 When do you want to retire? When do you want to separate from the workforce and live your best life in the ways that you imagine? Whatever it is matters less, but have that trajectory lined out with a variation, an understanding of a variation of degrees that will occur over time and be okay with it. Give yourself permission to be okay with change and then, you know, read the transcript in the know how it can be used.

00;44;15;21 - 00;44;54;10 Just to use myself as the example of what change includes. Any, any last comments? David And that's kind of I think the is I think always always expect the unexpected, right? You know, and things like that. It's like, you know, is, is we get into rhythm, we get happy with the way things are going, making progress. But then always be aware that hey, the unexpected, right Could be a minute from now, a week from now, a year from now, always being aware, being always self-conscious and is part of that I think is we've talked about before is like be self-critical, always asking, you know, feedback from others or your peers, your mentors, like where am

00;44;54;10 - 00;45;08;27 I going to stumble? Where am I about to fail? What am I missing? If you don't ask that, you know you're going to get blindsided every time. Yes, And that's a great point, too, because you've mentioned that before. You know, feedback having you're in your circle, somebody that's willing to give you the hard feedback that should stay. Right.

00;45;08;29 - 00;45;27;16 And that's the best quote that I've heard from you. Top, top three at least. Probably number two of the reality. You know it. You want to hear you want to hear those hard realities from others to help you get better. So thank you, David. And if anybody has any further cause I know we're just scraping the surface on this, I hope it was helpful for everybody.

00;45;27;16 - 00;45;47;17 But, you know, if you're if you want to shift careers or enter the workforce in the in the security space or A.I. or whatever, David, is it okay if people reach out and if so, how? Absolutely. You can find us on LinkedIn, you know, things like that. Always happy answer. I answer everybody that's always looking for some advice or connections, things like that.

00;45;47;19 - 00;46;06;26 I can't take on mentees at this point, but at the same time I always ask questions are answer questions, and in return I'll say, Hey, please listen to our podcast and kind of spread the word.

Yes, please. All right, everyone, keep moving forward.

Let's roll.

We're excited to have Dr. Smith join us to share his thoughts surrounding change and how we respond to external and internal factors. We cover considerations of how we can prepare and where we may learn to make minor adjustments to how we perceive external environmental situations by better understanding context.

This is one of our more exciting episodes where we're provided the opportunity to discover more about, not only ourselves but also how we may consider ways to serve and support others through change.

A Dr. Smith quote from the conversation: "Bring it every day".

We have all we need to become the person we want to be. So, let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent as we continue the mission to serve.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinsmithphd/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrissspencer/ X: mrdbcross

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Episode Transcript:

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;28;18 You're listening to the Oracle MAVEN podcast, where we bring people together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight Employees, Partners, organization fans and those who are continuing the mission to serve. Welcome to the MAVEN podcast. I'm your host, Chris Spencer. And today's episode, I'm joined by our co-host David Kross, senior vice president and SAS chief Information security officer within Oracle.

00;00;28;24 - 00;00;51;16 And today we have a special guest, Dr. Justin Smith, neuroscientist, CTO and passionate advocate for data analytics and all things stress. We're excited to have Dr. Smith join us today to share his thoughts surrounding change and how we respond to external and internal factors. We cover considerations of how we can prepare and where we may learn to make minor adjustments to how we perceive external environmental situations by better understanding context.

00;00;51;16 - 00;01;11;17 This is one of our more exciting episodes where we're provided the opportunity to discover more about not only ourselves, but also how we may consider ways to serve and support others through change. A Dr. Smith quote from the conversation Bring it every day we have all we need to become the person we want to be. So let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent as we continue the mission to serve.

00;01;11;18 - 00;01;25;23 Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode and please remember to check in on your buddies and family. Doctor Smith's and David's contact details are in the podcast description and you can always find me on LinkedIn.

00;01;25;26 - 00;01;46;09 MrdbCross How is it going, sir? Chris It's great. I'm excited that we're now getting more guests on our podcast because we're going to get up there. You know, we're going to have more listeners than the All in podcast, so just stay tuned for 2020 for everyone. There you go. Today we have a special guest with us, Dr. Justin Smith, and he'll introduce himself and his brief background.

00;01;46;09 - 00;02;04;08 But you know, what we're talking about today is how to how to maneuver and navigate through change. Dr. Smith Absolutely. Hello. Thank you very much for having me. My name is Justin Smith, and my background is in neuroscience. That's what my Ph.D. is in. And the reason why people I jokingly say I won't make my brothers call me Dr. Bias.

00;02;04;08 - 00;02;35;00 Just you can call me Justin, but my Ph.D. is in neuroscience specifically and stress and decision making. And I get asked or brought in to help work with groups that groups or individuals. Interesting. An interest in enhancing their decision making under extreme stress, but also understanding how the brain works under dynamic circumstances. And I think that's very applicable to what we're talking about today, this idea of change and transition and kind of what's happening specifically to you as individuals, but also to the groups that you're part of.

00;02;35;03 - 00;02;58;09 Well, it's pretty exciting, Dr. Smith, that really having you, because not many people know is that actually about 12 plus years ago, I actually had a brain aneurysm. Right? It ruptured. You know, I had the hemorrhagic stroke and my brain needed to change under a lot of stress and things like that. It's amazing to, you know, to talk to someone and how people can go through these things and how the brain can change and how people can change.

00;02;58;09 - 00;03;19;15 When you're under stress, our life and life changes. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a an incredible story. I'm happy to see just my brief interaction already that you've done a fantastic recovery. Those are very can be very life altering events. One of the one of the things I'd like to talk about, it's kind of bring it in for us today, kind of jump jump the agenda a little bit.

00;03;19;15 - 00;03;42;29 But the idea of neuroplasticity. Right. And so in your case specifically, David, the idea of how does our brain repair itself when it's going through or has experienced a specific injury. Right. So an aneurysm is a very specific injury. And the mechanisms that happen on both these structural meaning like parts of your brain change and able to grow and adapt, we call that neuroplasticity.

00;03;42;29 - 00;04;21;29 But also how do you learn new things or go through and your brain changes? And essentially the idea of memory is being formed, but also the plasticity of how do you become better at something through experience? And the mechanism is essentially very similar. There's a couple of nuances that are differentiated, but what's fascinating is that our brains have this incredible ability that we knew about for about 200 years ago or so, but then we've really been able to show in the last 30 to 50 years that our brains can actually change and adapt and grow to appreciate experiences and also, you know, overcome injuries that happened to us.

00;04;21;29 - 00;04;43;06 And so I think that's something where when you're going through or you perceive that you may be going into a time of transition and or change, how do you prepare yourself for that? Right? How do you build in those building blocks to know I'm going to have something that's going to be pretty dynamic or stressful, potentially occurring, even just going home to see friends and family for the holidays all the way to a major life event.

00;04;43;09 - 00;05;01;15 How do you prepare and change and adapt yourself so that you can respond as best as possible? That's always that's always a fantastic conversation. So thanks for that and let's jump in right to it. I mean, that's that's what we're here to do, you know, and this is just to remind anybody, this is this is an idea based off of some things that David.

00;05;01;15 - 00;05;42;25 Mr.. Mr.. CROSS So you got me ready with the formalities. I was thinking about. Dr. SMITH. It's columns that Tom just in the idea of, of being able to understand when we're about to enter something right in a situation, a conversation. David you and I have been talking about these in the series of conversations on previous podcasts. You know, when we're recognizing that something is about to occur, how do we how are we going to create the awareness for us to know what we're going to need to do to prepare for this appropriately so we can be informed enough, but also understand our limitation, you know, because we don't know what we don't know, but

00;05;42;25 - 00;06;03;06 we have to be able to recognize that we need to be prepared for the things that we don't know. So when we do fail, we can respond to that accordingly or appropriately to where we don't stop. We've got to keep moving. So just then, if you wouldn't mind maybe taking it from that to say, how do we understand that something's about to occur?

00;06;03;09 - 00;06;20;09 Yeah, absolutely. David, you have one thing you want to add before he jumped in. Well, yeah, I think that I was going to ask maybe another part of that question to you. Is that a big part of it I used to think about is like you is all about having a vision, right. And a plan. Right. And then that's what drives your brain to get there, right?

00;06;20;15 - 00;06;36;16 Or am I being naive? You know, obviously like last podcast talk about, you know, being useful and the tools and saying, hey, you have a vision and a plan and that's what drives you. Is that being too simplistic or is that part of the whole story? No, I think that's very much a part of the whole story, right?

00;06;36;17 - 00;06;59;06 We are, as a species goal driven and plan oriented, and I like to use evolutionary examples right? When you're going to go out and gather food, whether it's berries or you're going to procure meat from some something, some animal, right. Usually go with a plan. You know, I tend to wander around aimlessly and waste expenditure and calories on just randomly going to see if I can find a new blueberry patch.

00;06;59;08 - 00;07;16;20 You were going to specifically say, I know there's blue blueberry patches here, here and here. And because our species, we're thinkers as well, right? Not just going to go to a blueberry patch and gather blueberries. We're going to hunt our way there. We're going to hunt anyway back right here and optimize when I have a plan to go through and say, you know, what is it we want to do?

00;07;16;21 - 00;07;39;01 What are the goals we'd like to accomplish today, even if it feels informal? Right. Those still are kind of structured. Portions of our day are weeks or months and I would argue our years are kind of the overall arc of our life as well. But I think it's not too simplistic to say how do you create a plan and set goals for yourself and a group to understand, okay, this is what the this is what we're shooting for, right?

00;07;39;01 - 00;07;57;27 And kind of breaking it down in business. We do this a lot. We here's the here's the house on the Hill we're trying to build. How do we get there? How do we build these smaller building blocks that are accomplishable and spur planning and all that kind of stuff, Right. To to hunker down and tweak instruments or our instruments or whatever it is that you're doing that cousins causes effort or takes effort to do.

00;07;58;00 - 00;08;30;03 But having a plan is very much how our brains are organized structurally as well. I would argue, to be able to optimize, be able to accomplish those things for the basic level, for survival. Right. We most of us have those needs. Metaphor Listeners podcast. So how do you plan to do it for organizational advancement? So in part of that planning, because you're talking about these things too, where if you've never done it before, it's easy to say, you know, here's what I think I need to do, and then you stop there and then you learn, right?

00;08;30;03 - 00;08;54;05 So this is some of that developmental process that you mentioned earlier about the growth and how that becomes a valuable. So how much is this kind of a qualitative quantitative thing about how much effort do you think you need to go into typical situations in life stages and and, you know, maybe jobs or performance or relationships or even the climate like seasons, right?

00;08;54;05 - 00;09;11;04 So we're going from summer to fall, fall or winter, and then what occurs inside those seasons. Yeah. And so this is where I would say you start to see a spectrum occur, right? Individuals who do very little to no preparation just kind of go with the way to the flow, all the way to individuals who are preparing for seasons and or events at that.

00;09;11;04 - 00;09;27;07 Really, I'll just use the word elite and or extreme event, right? Where they going to try and control as much, if not everything that they can. And so depending on where you feel like it's the most appropriate place for yourself to fall, and this is where you can really start to see it in the workplace or even just in human performance.

00;09;27;09 - 00;09;44;06 Individuals who prepare more perform better. It's a pretty clear cut correlation. It's not, wow, they're really good at that. They're good at that because they practiced it for years and years and years of their speaking where there's a certain skill worth. You're an athlete, you know, if you're leading a team meeting, you know, that's not just thing you happen into.

00;09;44;06 - 00;10;19;15 Those are those are finance skills that you're able to practice and build upon. And so for the transitions, right, is understanding what are the potential transitions you're going to experience. How do you figure out those before they occur? Right. And then if you're if you're a planner who thinks diligently, right, the military has a bunch of acronyms for this as well, but you have your primary, secondary and tertiary plan knowing that they're all three going to be a little bit different in the end because dynamics and things change in the world evolves around us constantly, but at least have some structure to hold on to as you're going through this dynamic situation.

00;10;19;15 - 00;10;39;27 And that's the part where setting yourself up for success is really key, right? And so, again, to use the evolutionary example, 10,000 years ago, you know, we were looking at when winter is coming, seasons are changing. You got to start storing food, storing things so you can make them this long winter because things are growing, peaches gotten harvest, blueberries, got to save them.

00;10;40;00 - 00;10;57;18 You know, Dr. Smith, this really brings, you know, another question to my mind, and since you are the expert here is, you know, there's always left brain and right brain, and I can't remember which one's which, but right brain is more structured, methodical, and the other side is is more creative, artistic. Right. And we talk about visions in planning structure.

00;10;57;18 - 00;11;24;11 Does it matter if a person's left brain focused or right brain focused, or am I just making up a crazy thought? No, no, I think so. This is the hard part. From the neuroscience perspective. We view bilaterally like the split in your brain as being essentially a redundant system, right? There is there is specialization, right? So your right hands control the left hand, push your brain, you know, your eyeballs, cross your optic nerve, goes back and crosses it, gets back to your occipital lobe in the back of your brain.

00;11;24;13 - 00;11;44;21 So there there is a duality or there is a bifurcation right between the two lobes. Your brain. But how it's organized in terms of people being right brain and left brain, I this is my personal opinion. I think it's far oversimplistic, right? Because all of your brain is working more or less constantly all the time. And we do see individuals that are more creative, right?

00;11;44;24 - 00;12;06;09 But it's not creative because one side the brain's functioning at a higher percentage or higher perspective and some people are more analytical or more, you know, logic based, you know, less we can say less creative, right? Less creative. In the same way they're not able to paint and draw pictures readily. But that just might be because they're using different forces of brain that are more optimized to how things are running for them intuitively, or we call it in neuroscience.

00;12;06;09 - 00;12;24;13 It's called the default mode network, right? So essentially it's that what's the Hummer? What's the idol of your brain when you're at rest and then you're able to bring it up to say, I have a cognitive task. Can you take care of I have this big thing I need to prepare for. How do I prepare resources? How do I plan how to prepare myself physically, mentally, you know, all those kind of things.

00;12;24;13 - 00;12;43;08 And that process takes your whole brain, like all the parts of your brain from your cortex, all the way down to your limbic system. The emotional, you know, emotional portion of your brain. And so when it gets to the idea of left brain versus right brain, I it's just it's too simplistic for me. This what I like to say.

00;12;43;10 - 00;13;01;29 Well, that's great to hear. Certainly I can say from my experience when I had my ears and my my speech center, which was on my left, left behind my left eye. Yes. Will be damaged. Right. I'm still paranoid today that I don't speak properly, but it is amazing of how my brain evolved, you know, adjusted so quickly to say, well, I need to still speak.

00;13;01;29 - 00;13;24;16 And I actually I all the language just started coming back and things like over time. And that means I can adapt and I think that's maybe our our our conversation today. How do you adapt right? How can you get through stress, stress or a change or a challenge? Yeah, absolutely. And so using your example is really, really illustrative for us today, because that is exactly neuroplasticity, right?

00;13;24;16 - 00;13;53;29 You have a large damage to the course of your brain is responsible for a very specific process. And this is what do I do this often? I'm still I get excited and I'm like, this is incredible. You're brain to have a damaged that's just that big area yet parts that were closer near it are able to pick up some of that functionality right and you're able to train and bring in and your body kind of helps to move those resources that your neurons can connect again, to say this is a core functionality of existence for us, it's speech, right?

00;13;53;29 - 00;14;11;15 Understanding and processing and be able to speak language. We have to figure this out. And so you practice it, right? You go to these therapies, you do all these things that are that are hard and take effort, but your brain is able to kind of overcome that deficiency or that that injury that I experienced. Right. And that's that's phenomenal.

00;14;11;15 - 00;14;25;24 And so where that leads us for the transitions and the change portion is knowing that there might be a change coming up and, you know, it's going to be stressful. What do you do to prepare? Right? So number one is you figure out what that area might be, right? So let's just say it's a big transition for your family.

00;14;25;24 - 00;14;42;06 You're moving across the country, right? We have this cool thing called the Internet. You're able to do a bunch of background research and say, where's I'm going? Where do I want to live? Kind of paint that picture for yourself. Right. The other part, too, is you're able to ideally if you're moving, is let's use that as the example, right?

00;14;42;08 - 00;14;59;04 Hopefully able to save some money to say, I'm going to make an advanced trip out there and this goes in that person that's super logical and can do a bunch of planning, right. And then make an advance about there and not tell your whole family, send one person, your family, maybe, hopefully the person that's really interested in deciding what parts of town you want to live in or what you want to have as your living situation.

00;14;59;06 - 00;15;28;16 You will do a little reconnaissance of that area to say this is a this looks like a great place on the Internet and on a map. Then you get there and it's an area that's under heavy construction. And they're not there's no end in sight. That's not a place you want to bring yourself or your family. But what you're able to do during that process, and this is where even if you don't have to physically go somewhere to practice, this is the key part, the practice of thinking about what is it you can do to prepare for these big transitions are going to go through, helps to restructure and organize your brain, if that makes

00;15;28;16 - 00;15;44;14 sense. Right? So it's doing those kind of thought experiments is thought exercise and even going through and asking yourself and thinking about where would I like to live? Sounds super easy. Intuitive, right? I don't care. Apartment, condo, house, it's fine, doesn't matter. But then it's way more nuanced that do I want to buy water? You want to buy a golf course?

00;15;44;14 - 00;16;05;09 Do I live by the road, the airport, and going through and say, okay, what are those options? And laying them out for yourselves that your prefrontal cortex, your executive decision making process in your brain can really start to step in to say, I know that we as a unit, a family unit or use individual really appreciate I'm happiest, healthiest when I have access to a green belt to ride my bike and go for runs.

00;16;05;09 - 00;16;34;21 Right. Or I like to play golf every day. So if I can move in or out a golf course, they have accessibility to, you know, these are things to start to practice in the exercises. Again, it doesn't sound like exercise. We talk about physical exercise and these those mental exercises to be able to prepare for these types of change is setting yourself up for success so that if you have to make that big transition and most people say, wow, you had you found out in 30 days, you moving across the country, your response if you thought about it ahead of time because you had an inkling that might be happening is yeah, but I already

00;16;34;21 - 00;17;05;25 have a really good idea of what I'm looking for and I've got a list of places I can contact. And I have a realtor that I have kind of on standby, right? Those are things that, again, seem like they're completely tangential to the idea of like, how do you prepare for big transitions? But it's the idea of preparing yourself and your brain to practice and exercise this cognitive thinking that you're able to do so that when you have to do it and this goes down to really specific situations as to as well, you're able to kind of rely on those experiences and those resources because they're readily available and you've trained them up, if that

00;17;05;25 - 00;17;29;11 makes sense. If I'm if well, if I'm transitioning right to our military family, you're transitioning right? You have a network of people to where anybody that you're asking if even if you overhear it, but if you're intentional on trying to find out and pursue investigate, like you just said about, you know, connaissance. Right. You're trying to figure out ahead of time whether or not this is something for you, it's safe to say.

00;17;29;11 - 00;17;50;28 Then you have to identify and be as accurate as possible by thinking critically about what's important to you and understand the levels of importance. So to prioritize these things. Yeah. Yes. Yes, absolutely. And that's something where, again, going back to our spectrum of laissez faire people, they don't they go with the wind all the way to individuals who are, you know, really large, you know, meticulous planners.

00;17;51;00 - 00;18;06;09 Understanding where you fall on that spectrum is key. But also it takes resources to think what makes me happy and healthy. Right? And it's easy to say I'm a go with the flow kind of person, but all of a sudden you find yourself not in the place that you're you recognize. After six months, you're not very happy or healthy.

00;18;06;09 - 00;18;36;12 And why is that? Is that things that you can change in your environment is that the career path? Is it the new job you took within the organization that you thought would you be really good at? Turns out it's really hard. It's not a good fit for you, right? How do you how do you make sure that you're able to stay self-aware, which again, it sounds easy to say it's a skill to practice that then when you go through to these major large changes and transitions really helps you to say, I know that I'm very good and comfortable when I get to these situations, but I need to practice these other types of situations, right?

00;18;36;12 - 00;18;53;27 And that's where the business side comes in to us. If you know, you have to give a talk to 30 people and you're comfortable doing that, what happens is 30 people that are three levels above you. How do you practice for that? How do you think about what's that audience going to want to hear that's different than talking to 33 individuals that are your peers, right?

00;18;53;27 - 00;19;13;12 And so, again, transitions change that planning ahead of time is really key and critical. And again, it's a skill to practice because it's like golf. You never win golf. You play it and get better, hopefully, but at some point you're like, okay, I'm still practicing, still getting better, I'm still hopefully enjoying it. But you never you never win.

00;19;13;13 - 00;19;28;17 You know, you kind of continually practice it. I think that's kind of just like the we always talk about lots of books and I say, Well, what's the best book? When you think about presenting? I say, Well, go get the book on the presentation. Secrets of Steve Jobs. Right. And how does Steve Jobs get really good at presenting?

00;19;28;24 - 00;19;55;02 Because he practice, practice, practice, practice, practice straight. And I and I think that's what it's all about. Whenever you need to do something and be successful at it. Practice, practice, practice. Chris What's your favorite book? Isn't that the Malcolm Gladwell saying 10000 Hours? Yeah, it's repeatedly it's the outliers because it does talk about very specific things. That's relative to not only time in a place to where it just so happens to be that it was convenient, right?

00;19;55;02 - 00;20;18;28 If you're in the right place at the right time, then you just your opportunity. And then there's the ones that actually put in the effort, put in the reps, develop that skill set based off of repetition and things like that, which Dr. Smith, you've talked about in the past, how important repetitions are and then the outcomes of those acts and how you're going to now develop the awareness to know what you can do better and what you shouldn't repeat?

00;20;19;00 - 00;20;34;27 Yeah, absolutely. And that's that feedback loop in training, right? So if you're really diligent about your training, you want to have a near immediate or real time feedback loop of did that work or did it not work? You know, we do it oftentimes we're we'll send a survey after we have, you know, a big all hands meeting. What did you hear?

00;20;34;27 - 00;21;01;06 What did you like? What could we change for next time? You know, leaders want to know what what worked, what didn't, how we adjusted for the future. And that's, again, a skill you can practice or think about often. It's easy to say it's hard to do, right. I think that's that's pretty gets down to in practicing takes effort and cognitive resources which are finite and so making sure you're able to prepare yourself as best as possible to leverage those resources appropriately is key.

00;21;01;06 - 00;21;22;22 And that's one of the other points I really enjoy making. I think it's super important. It sounds again, tangential, but it's extremely valid and is really important. And that's the idea of exercise, physical exercise, specifically voluntary exercise. Right? And so whatever your athletic ability is, challenge yourself. If you want to go for a walk for 30 minutes every hour of the day, Right, Do that.

00;21;22;23 - 00;21;40;10 That's your exercise. The big thing I have to say is making sure you're getting your heart rate elevated, your break a little bit of a sweat like that's that you're physiologically moving your body in in a meaningful way. You know, you don't run an ultramarathon or do 100 K like that. Sometimes it's not good. And those have certain effects on your body that aren't always great.

00;21;40;10 - 00;22;10;18 But the reason why exercise is so potent and powerful, this is a probably good transmission to the idea of stress is our bodies are really good at mitigating stress when we have access to free exercise or we're able to move our bodies. Right. So there's two components that. One is the physiology. Your body gets better at moving things around through it, through your blood system, through endocrine system, through, you know, the lymphatic system, the parts that move things through your body when you're when you appropriately exercise or use that system with intention, especially, it's voluntary.

00;22;10;18 - 00;22;28;23 That's the key part, is it gets better doing it right. It's kind of like if you haven't done a certain exercise a long time, you're like, I'm going to go out and lift weights. That first two or three weeks back is really hard because your body is like your brain says, I know how to do is a dumbbell curl like it is all day long and your muscles are freaking out because they haven't done it in such a long time.

00;22;28;23 - 00;22;48;03 Your bone structure may have changed. You know, you may have had an injury or coming back from ulcers. This different makes an impact. And so starting where you are is key. Building up your physiologist, you have that physiological response. But also this is the part to where I think it was probably five or six years ago. Now they're finally able to get a real time image of the brain while you're breathing, right?

00;22;48;03 - 00;23;03;20 So you can see inside the skull and watch the brain. So all of our textbooks, until about ten years ago had the brain is this just static thing that stuck inside your skull? Well, it turns out when they did a race, they were all kind of played as a movie. Our brain moves as we breathe with our heart rate as well.

00;23;03;20 - 00;23;24;13 Right. It's this incredible like, my gosh, this thing is actually not just this static, you know, mushy gray matter. White men are stuck in a box. It's moving and it's moving with your breath, with your respirations, your situation system, all these things change it. And so what happens is the more you're able to build up the appropriate level of physiology for you, for yourself, right.

00;23;24;16 - 00;23;43;27 You're able to not only think better and more clearly because you're kind of resources will be able to be moving around much faster. You're able to physiologically have a response. It's appropriate to a certain stressor. And that's the key thing, right? So if you're feeling completely unprepared and overwhelmed, you have to stop and say, what is it that's overwhelming me?

00;23;43;29 - 00;24;06;04 And after time, that's a very difficult question to ask yourself as well, because it could be personal, it could be professional, it could be systems that are under your control, somewhat out of your control. Right. But be able to stop and say, okay, what's what's bugging me, What's stress me right now, How can I deal with that? And the more you're able to leverage voluntary exercise in your life, the better you will be at doing that.

00;24;06;06 - 00;24;34;22 You know, Dr. Smith, that I can't agree 100% more certainly to those things is that certainly whenever I'm stressed for the work life, whatever, I go for a run. Right? And it's amazing of how much just a5k run. I'm not as hard core and you know, Chris and his his 50 K, you know, kind of sprints and things like that but my little five K running boy, it's amazing of like how that can just reset everything, reset your brain, reset your body like okay, I'm now able to, you know, take on things and also the element is he made his luck I don't know.

00;24;34;24 - 00;24;53;25 But literally one week before I had my brain aneurysm, I ran my first half marathon race. And in some ways, I believe to this day is that my body, my mind was conditioned for stress, you know, in a race of that type. And that's maybe one of the reasons I survived, is because of that. But I could be wrong.

00;24;53;27 - 00;25;20;14 I was not a medical doctor to send it very clearly. But I will say you were in a far better position for recovery because you prepared for that ten K then had you been sitting on the couch and been completely sessile or just not moving around for two or three years before that injury happened? Right. And that's where in health care we see this massive split of individuals that have what seem like near miraculous recoveries, but turns out like, no, that person casualty's a triathlete as well.

00;25;20;16 - 00;25;39;27 It's like you. Their body is ready to respond to stressors that may come into it, whether it's injury, internal or external, whatever it may be, versus, you know, people that are let's just say, not as conditioned to have those types of responses because what we see or what we think about, especially especially with exercise, is, a person's weight's going up or down, right?

00;25;39;27 - 00;25;58;14 You look at the overall physical structure, what we don't think about is what they do internally is your blood pressure. How is your heart looking out? What's the rate of oxygen return from your lungs all in that just before you even get into the brain chemistry, Right. It's all affected. And exercise is an extremely powerful tool. And again, using the evolutionary examples, right.

00;25;58;14 - 00;26;25;13 We weren't meant to sit behind computers for 8 to 10 hours a day, like we're supposed to be out walking around doing stuff, thinking and talking, interacting with our peers and being social as well. But moving is a big part of our existence and it should be. So I think that's part of it too. Where I get to work with certain groups is the idea of letting it and letting everyone know it's okay to take 30 minutes to go outside and do a walk like that will your productivity will increase like we've seen it over and over again.

00;26;25;15 - 00;26;45;28 Your response to stress will become better for sure if you have even just a small amount of movement in your day. And I think that's where we start to see that on the other side, the negative side of chronic health conditions of people that aren't moving around very much. So it's it's again easy to say, hard to do, but building it into your day and planning for it can be very key.

00;26;46;00 - 00;27;14;04 And that can it goes the idea of stretching or having those large changes, that preparation, that anticipation for those big changes, they come up. Yeah. So part of the part of the plan and I think this is something that's commonly omitted from the plan is self care. Right? And so this this is along the lines of, you know, interestingly, when I'm trying to do something to be better at it, you know, I'm thinking about the external factors and how I'm looking ahead externally, meaning out of out of self, right?

00;27;14;04 - 00;27;33;12 I'm saying, well, if I need to go to the store, if I need to, you know, I want to work towards a degree or a certificate or something to that element, there isn't a lot of these things that I'm adding the value or incorporating the value of the physical element that that's necessary for me to function, hydration, nutrition, rest, I mean, all of those factors.

00;27;33;12 - 00;27;52;02 So can we kind of just touch on some of those things because your perspective on how how the brain is what it is and you just started to explain it, but how it needs the nutritional components to be able to optimize its function and things like that. How does how do all of these things connect? Yeah, so that's one that's a really big question.

00;27;52;04 - 00;28;09;17 But to kind of take it in smaller bites and chunks, right? So how does it all connect? One of the ways that I like to kind of describe this to think about it is the idea of context. And so when I say context, I mean in two different ways. I mean the external context to you, the physical environment that you're in, your surroundings around you, right?

00;28;09;17 - 00;28;27;00 So like literally the room that you're in or the space that you're occupying external context, and then also your internal context, what's happening inside your body, inside your brain. This is my favorite joke with the whole scientists is like, we can't point to a thought like we're told about your mind, Like we don't know where the mind or you can't put your mind.

00;28;27;00 - 00;28;52;28 We think it's in your head, right? But our our neurochemistry, our physiology inside our body is new. What's happening can be your considering talk about is your internal context. Those two things are related. They're interconnected completely right, because your external environment influences your internal environment. But what I like to say, and this is why I think is fun, is as humans we have this really unique ability and that is to think.

00;28;53;01 - 00;29;11;27 And when you can have an experience that's external. So an external context is a stressful situation. You have the ability to say, I'm going to put this as best as I can, right? And so I'll use my self as an example. If I get stuck at a dinner party or some sort of gathering and it is just a really dry conversation or something's happening, right?

00;29;12;04 - 00;29;25;06 And I don't want to be the person who's going to dominate the room, because sometimes I think that's fun to do as well. But sometimes it's not. It's the idea of sitting back and saying, How can I make this more enjoyable for others? How can we and we call it steering the conversation. How do you steer this conversation?

00;29;25;06 - 00;29;58;22 So it picks back up again? How do I help control these external contexts? Because in my brain, my internal context is like, this is boring. Like I don't want to be here anymore. What's going on right? And so specifically to do that and usually I talk about this more in more applied circumstances in terms of individuals that go into extreme stress environments, meaning life or death situations, but for us that aren't usually facing those situations on a day to day basis, hopefully the idea of how do you take care of or set yourself up for success in the best way possible, right?

00;29;58;22 - 00;30;19;18 So exercise is very type of exercise. Next to it is nutrition, hydration, Right. And so making sure you're meeting your body's needs for what you're asking you to do and this is another fun fact I really enjoy talking about is when you and Chris, you should know the answer because you heard this one before, I think. But for individuals that are playing in a elite grandmaster level chess tournament.

00;30;19;20 - 00;30;38;10 Right. How many calories do you think their body or their brain or their body overall is burning in a day? Like what would you say if you had to guess? David Wow, I'm stuck with that. I don't I don't have a good guess on this one, actually. Okay. Would you guess it'd be low because they're just sitting there and they're just playing chess all day?

00;30;38;12 - 00;31;01;01 No, I don't think so. I think that that is hard to say. It doesn't make sense. But now that sounds like I'm being comedic. Doesn't right now. It's all good. So what's amazing, right, is when you watch somebody play at the grandmaster level, these really intense chess tournaments, what we see externally from the external environment is they're sitting there and they're staring at a board with pieces on it.

00;31;01;01 - 00;31;22;07 Right. But what's happening to them internally, their internal context, their brain is firing and they're thinking ten, 20, 50 moves ahead, They're playing what's happening, what they think the strategy of their opponents going to be. They are literally thinking at the most cognitively resource intense level possible for hours on end. This isn't like a 30 minute speech chess game.

00;31;22;07 - 00;31;38;28 Like these people play games over and over again the other day. So it's fascinating is the number of changes a little bit, but you can think about in terms of it's a lot, right? So the idea is it's either eight, it's up to 8 to 12000 calories a day, which when you sit there and think you're like, holy cow, that's day.

00;31;39;02 - 00;31;58;02 So, Michael Phelps is swimming in the Olympics. He was eating 10,000 calories a day, right, because he was in the water training and racing and to feed his fuel's body for the physical exertion. But what's amazing is those grandmasters in chess, they're literally thinking their way through their caloric resources to their body because they're thinking so hard, they're playing these games.

00;31;58;04 - 00;32;13;28 And so that's the idea of what nutrition do you need? And this is where I get to have fun. Another group specifically. But knowing that you're getting ready to go do something, it's going to be extremely stressful. How do you set yourself up for success? And our brains run on glucose and oxygen. It's kind of the way you can think of it, right?

00;32;13;28 - 00;32;31;01 So simple the simple sugar glucose and need to be able to breathe, right? So before you go and you think it's stressful, especially if you know it's an event that's coming up, I usually don't have any with my desk here. I usually keep the organic gummy bears like the kids Gummy bears, right. That are just really just you know, it's like honey, Honey is a great example.

00;32;31;01 - 00;32;49;02 Those honey shots for athletes and they take without running, do laundry and stuff, having glucose on demand that you can boost yourself up, help special blood sugar. It's all the physiology kind of comes together, but setting your brain up for success to say, Hey, we're going to boost your brain, I'm going to boost you up with glucose so that you can have the resources you need for this.

00;32;49;04 - 00;33;07;07 Hopefully a medium to short duration, high level of cognitive load to deal with the transition or change you're going through, especially into an acute event. These are acute event examples. We talk about chronic events in a moment, but then also understanding this is another fun study was done probably 15, 20 years ago now. But it's not just any but individuals.

00;33;07;07 - 00;33;29;28 They measured respirations during an intense test. I think it was in the category also after medical school or law school to get into. And what they found was individuals that had the same resting actions, meaning they weren't holding their breath when they're taking a test, individuals that were able to have the same respirations throughout the whole test experience scored significantly better than individuals who are holding their breath during the testing process.

00;33;30;00 - 00;33;49;00 And again, it makes sense because when you do something, it's hard. What do you think about what happens? You go we ask you a question like how you think about that and you hold or pause your breath, right? And so recognizing what your breathwork is doing at the time, especially again, these are acute stressors, can help to actually improve your performance.

00;33;49;03 - 00;34;03;10 And so when you watch like Olympic athletes are great because they're on camera all the time before they're getting ready to go and do their event. When you watch them, a lot of times they're doing these deep inhalation breaths. They're helping to saturate their body with oxygen. They're thinking about it. I guarantee you they've had a snack for the last hour.

00;34;03;12 - 00;34;25;28 Right. All these sort of subtle things that we do intuitively at elite athlete athletic levels. But to understand now the physiology, especially the neuroscience of why that works so well, that's what's really key. And so there's these really foundational building blocks of chronic stress. You know, make sure you have access to voluntary exercise, right? You'll make sure you're eating a healthy diet that's appropriate for the caloric intake and exertion that you're going to have.

00;34;26;01 - 00;34;41;28 So if you if you know, you're going to be biking 2 to 3 hours a day, get that smoothie in the afternoon. If you're not, you're not sitting through 6 hours of intense strategic meetings. Maybe you don't need the smoothie to have. You know, it's nice to have a dessert by Nita. And so I'm putting all those together I think is really kind of part of the key.

00;34;42;00 - 00;35;03;12 What makes so much sense now. Right. And it's elements of, hey, we got a hard presentation, you got hard work to do. It's your brain needs the calories. And let's come back to that. You know, the continuous runner theme that we have on our podcast is, you know, there's a running I've done a measurement myself and it makes sense now is that, hey, I'm running a5k, it's flat, it's straight, right?

00;35;03;12 - 00;35;18;14 I'd like to think I just get into a zone. I know some runners are going get mad at me, like you get into a zone. You're not thinking right. And I know exactly how much weight I'm going to burn off, but then I do a5k in a a mountain trail. Right now it doesn't. It's not because of hills.

00;35;18;14 - 00;35;49;29 It's like I have to think about every single step, every single move. Because if I make the wrong one, I'm going to fall over. And how much more energy you consume. And it's not from the physical energy. It's like the brainpower. I'm exhausted from your brain perspective, from that same five k distance. Yeah, Yeah. And what's really fun and what are the examples I love to hear, especially from runners, is once they start doing more of those mentally engaging runs, they say it's really hard to go and run a flat five k on pavement because you get you, you want to do it.

00;35;49;29 - 00;36;08;22 Your body says, let's go and try this right because it's fun and you're doing it voluntarily. I think that's the other part that's key, but it's it's engaging. Yeah. So then I think, Chris, we got to see you doing some hills, dude, and not just doing those trademark KS around the Redwood Lake. You know this guy, He's trying to get me into a what, a 25 minute ten.

00;36;08;23 - 00;36;32;14 Okay, so it's baby steps. So just to kind of get to where we are and summarize what we've taken, you've taken us through at this point. It's it's the planning, right? So becoming intimately familiar with what you're trying to do, it requires that you understand yourself better. And that comes through a true inventory of what you've achieved in the past.

00;36;32;14 - 00;37;01;13 And then, you know, somehow coming up to a methodology of categorizing things, of capable, not capable, want, don't want, you know, need, don't need things. However it works for you, you have to come up with some theory that is applicable to to what steps you're going to take to get in motion to move forward. And that's the preparing the, anticipating, you know, going through the experience, reassessing because the growth is going to now uncover some other patterns that you didn't know that you were going to benefit from.

00;37;01;13 - 00;37;31;24 And so you realize it. You know, even we're talking about nutrition, this little this little tweak and how your body's identifying stress and then acclimating to stress the recovery component, which is not often spoken about, you know, how you recover from these activities, from the physical component, the biological component, the mental component. You don't have to restore all of these things where I don't know that everybody's realizing that just sitting idle, the perception on the outside with the chess analogy is, you know, you're not really demonstrating physically anything outside.

00;37;31;24 - 00;37;51;14 Do people think that you're actually doing something, but internally you're expanding an enormous amount of energy to where it can be draining. You put it into word the context of what we're talking about. Again, military family, you know, the deployments, the idle time. There's still this thing that you're now putting your body through to assess, should I be doing something?

00;37;51;14 - 00;38;16;23 I should be doing more, maybe I shouldn't be doing this. And then the families being brought through those experiences on the same same context, the deployments, time away, time back, getting associated through the relationships and all that stuff. That's putting a weight on us to be able to understand what we need to do to prepare for that. But then it's the decision to get out of an environment that you've been in for an enormous amount of time, say five, ten, 15, 20 years.

00;38;16;26 - 00;38;40;19 You know, what are some of the things that you can do where, you know I'm thinking positive psychology, you know, things that you can reinforce through the self-talk of understanding a how to get through a moment to get unstuck or just make sure that you're not going to remain stagnant if that's how you feel. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think this is a really, again, key component, especially when you go through major life transitions, right?

00;38;40;27 - 00;38;59;27 Is one is again, I think I saw this 16 times today, but easy to say, hard to do. Number one is recognize that it's hard it's hard to do like this is going to be stressful. I think just accepting and recognizing that sounds easy, but it's so like we're really good at denying things. I mean, like, I can get through this.

00;38;59;27 - 00;39;13;15 I'm just going to brush in the rug, recognize it's hard because when you recognize that something is going to be hard or be difficult, you then recognize you have to put effort into it. Right. And so then once you know, you put effort into it, this is the part of having a really be and this is why our brains are cool.

00;39;13;21 - 00;39;33;11 We can take that into the context of a giant transition that they separate from. Military is a good example, right. And switch it. So it's not this it's not a negative event. You can look at it and frame it for yourself, Change the internal context you're experiencing into a positive or just this is a transition I'm going to be going through and making it as positive as possible.

00;39;33;13 - 00;39;50;29 Right? And so that kind of gets the idea of the positive psychology of how do you think about challenges. You're going to have to go through. And once you recognize that doesn't have to be a negative challenge, it starts to become fun because then you kind of start to gamified, where do I want to live? What do I want to do with a second career?

00;39;51;00 - 00;40;11;06 What do I want to do in my retirement? What what does getting back to being self aware? What does bring me joy and happiness? What makes me a better at being a partner to my in my significant other, to my kids, to my people in my life. And so I think that's again, one of those things that you kind of talk about or hear about this bajillion books written about it, right?

00;40;11;09 - 00;40;30;28 But it's the idea of changing an internal context that you perceive that you're telling a story that you're telling yourself, which is why our brains are different. Fantastic. Because I'll say the military is a good example because you see, you have to think it's really hard and difficult to do. But the more kind of selecting the groups you get to work with or you go into, you recognize you're surrounded by people that have chosen to be there.

00;40;31;06 - 00;40;58;03 They want to do those hard, dangerous, let's be honest, exciting tasks because it's not mundane. It's the trail run with the rocks with the side of the cliff exposed. You can have to run it through or around or find a bridge to go across that river. Right? These are challenging things that when you kind of set it into a positive framework, become challenges that you want to do and you want to accelerate out and accelerate and you want to accelerate your experience going into those so that you can come out of them as best as possible.

00;40;58;06 - 00;41;14;20 And so I think that's something where recognizing that you have the ability to say this is again the idea I'm not, I'm going to be okay. There today or I'm going have a good day today, right? If your days go and carry one piece, you got in a fender bender in the morning and your lunch spilled out on the floor.

00;41;14;22 - 00;41;32;23 I'm going to get there today. You know what that means? I could figure it out. I'm going to solve this problem, this car wreck. It sucks, but I can figure this out. I'm okay. That's one thing, right? It's about okay, I'm okay. This happens part of driving a vehicle on the roadway. Also, my lunch is malicious. Tash, I want you to tell us if you did, but you're like, okay, how am I going to solve this problem of finding my new lunch?

00;41;32;23 - 00;41;59;15 How I'm going to steer every source of calories to my brain by taking those things that could easily spiral to be very acute negative for an individual and saying, okay, this is a challenge I get to solve now, right? Just that that small, subtle flip from on what's happening to me to how can I influence the outcome. And that's where you start to see individuals that we call resilience to resign, individuals they are extremely good at telling themselves, I can solve this situation.

00;41;59;20 - 00;42;16;21 I don't know how yet, but I know I can solve it. Right? And so that's where those kind of core features that we see people that are really, really good at adapting to change, which we're all not very good at it, but people that are better than others, potentially, they're really good and. A lot of times they don't even realize they're doing it.

00;42;16;23 - 00;42;28;18 It's that I'm going to have a good day today. I'm going to an awesome day out. I can build in three things that I love to do today, right? As in this is we kind of get to the setting, the plan, we talk about the beginning, but setting up something that's fun to do in the middle part of the day.

00;42;28;22 - 00;42;43;16 You have it takes a minute your life and it's like filling up the joint through the end of the day, right? That's enjoyable. No takes. My friend can tell you that I'm having a great deal, a great day, as well as small, subtle things do not just influence yourself, but also influence others. I think that's the idea of kind of getting back to that.

00;42;43;16 - 00;43;08;20 How does it all come together? You know, that's not that's a four Ph.D. dissertation right there, but kind of recognizing that you can change your internal context and then you also have influence often your external context as well, even when it seems like it's outside of your control. I think that's kind of those things where the more we understand and think about it in those terms, the more able people are to find tools that work for them so they can mitigate the situations as best as possible.

00;43;08;23 - 00;43;30;19 Yeah, I agree. So the the idea that there's context, how you shape the context to understand how you can motivate yourself because you've probably at some point, if you've done this repeatedly, you've created a discipline where that means that you have the routine already set there. Isn't it an external factor to motivate you? It's just because, you know it needs to be done.

00;43;30;19 - 00;43;57;18 You've already acknowledged and accepted, which I think is some of the things that you know have been consistent. David And what you and I have been talking about, the one thing that I can't help not bring up is the value. So the value component, because if we're talking in our situations to where maybe there isn't something that's obvious about what you're needing to do to make sure that you're not being complacent, that you're prepared is to understand, are you in what you're doing right now?

00;43;57;18 - 00;44;17;25 Are you creating the value for others to leverage, to not you in a position to where you have to change or transition to? That could be a career, a job or a task, something to that effect. So I don't know. Do we dive into a little bit with the time we have left? I can give I can give a quick a quick sort response.

00;44;17;27 - 00;44;38;18 It won't take hopefully too long. But on the idea of creating a value, I had an amazing coach and I was playing at this football and it was a team sport and this coach came with so much passion and he played the collegiate level. So his techniques were off the charts like he was really good at all. These things needed to kind of build into a beginning athlete.

00;44;38;18 - 00;44;53;13 And we were playing high school football. But one of the major takeaways and he'd say this and every practice was bring something to the party, because if you're the fastest runner, bring your speed. If you have fast runner, but you have a lot of a lot of personality to share with the team, you're a great man. Bring that right.

00;44;53;13 - 00;45;12;13

Impact is about results. Impact is delivered by having clear and measurable goals that are regularly tracked with milestones. Understanding how to achieve impact or what the desired results should be is sometimes not easy. This is where we want to tie back and leverage some of our previous episodes on connections, communication, and visibility to help others in driving impact. Short and long success personally and professionally is all about driving the best and highest impact. We have all we need to become the person we want to be…let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent as we continue the mission to serve. --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript:

00;00;08;00 - 00;00;28;17 You're listening to the Oracle Maven podcast, where we bring people together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight employees, partners, organized actions, and those who are continuing the mission to serve. Welcome to the Maiden podcast. I'm your host, Chris Spencer, and in this episode I'm joined by our co-host David Cross, senior vice president and SAS Chief Information Security Officer within Oracle.

00;00;28;29 - 00;00;51;20 In this episode, we discuss impact. The impact is about results. Impact is delivered by having clear and measurable goals that are regularly tracked with milestones. Understanding how to achieve impact or what the desired results should be is sometimes not easy. This is where we want to tie back and leverage some of our previous episodes on connections, communication and visibility to help others in driving impact short and long term success.

00;00;51;24 - 00;01;08;02 Personally and professionally is all about driving the best and highest impact We have all we need to become the person we want to be. So let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent. As we continue the mission to serve. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode. And please remember to check in on your buddies and family.

00;01;08;07 - 00;01;24;11 And don't forget to send us feedback, suggestions and topics on what you would like us to cover in future episodes. It helps spread the word to the broader community David's contact details are in the podcast description, and you can always find me on LinkedIn Morning, David.

00;01;24;19 - 00;01;33;16 Good morning. I'm excited. Seems like it's been a couple of weeks here, almost taking too long. And this for get to there because we want to have impact, right? You know with our community.

00;01;34;01 - 00;01;36;29 Impact sounds like we're talking about impact.

00;01;37;10 - 00;02;03;27 Well, in the end, you know, Chris, it's kind of everything we're talking about is why are we doing this, right? Why do we, you know, talking about, you know, connecting in relationships and communicating? You know, it's because so we can have more impact impact our lives, impact on our jobs, impacting our careers. And so I kind of start thinking about how can we help people to, you know, have some best practices understanding how to have the largest amount of impact.

00;02;04;09 - 00;02;12;01 That's right. To discover what your purpose is probably has a lot to influence whether or not you feel like you're being impactful.

00;02;12;17 - 00;02;31;26 Well, you know, I think as many companies are certainly high tech companies now is you know, I don't get into the performance reviews and things like that. Maybe that's a whole nother podcast in itself. But it's really people want to say, you know, measure how much impact did you have? You know, what were your results you know, did you have big results?

00;02;31;26 - 00;02;45;18 Do you have major results? Do you have minor results? And I think then we should really talk about how do you measure these things? How do you drive for impact? Right? How do you know when you may not be measuring or looking at the right things?

00;02;46;00 - 00;03;10;16 Yeah, that's right. You touched on a couple of things inside that already as we're just kicking this off. So I think when when you know what you're supposed to be doing, the questions that come in are somewhat of what you introduced as well. How do I do that when you find what's important? And then you say, well, how do I know it's going to actually yield the results that everybody's considering or expecting?

00;03;11;05 - 00;03;34;02 You know? And so you have the OKRs, the KPIs, you know, even in response to a question, could give an indicator as to whether or not you're aligned What I guess the you or the group had discussed is what is needing to be done. But I think there's also some room here to talk about some of those other things that maybe aren't measurable or at least maybe hard to explain.

00;03;34;02 - 00;03;52;04 Maybe there are measurable if you if you're skilled at being able to interpret what's happening so maybe maybe we'll kind of focus on some two key areas, you know, the obvious things and then the ones that probably aren't as commonly referred to or understood, but is a part of the equation.

00;03;53;03 - 00;04;12;07 Well, I think that's a great point in that because sometimes it is when we're part of organizations and goals priorities and things are top down, right? And saying, these are things you hit us like, okay, the impact I'm having is based on those goals with their top down, that's very easy. But also sometimes we work in organizations where it's not so crystal clear.

00;04;12;08 - 00;04;28;28 Right. Or your goals aren't so well defined. Boy, I wish we we're in the military again, right? Everything here's the mission here. The tack is this which had to clean this all written down. It's a checklist. You either did it or you didn't did not do it. It's a lot simpler sometimes. Sometimes that you also say it's hard to.

00;04;29;08 - 00;04;44;02 But I think one of the things is that, well, how do you measure or identify the impact you need to have if it's not written down? It's not well stated. Out, you know, in obvious ways. Right. And I think that's maybe part of our discussion today.

00;04;44;24 - 00;05;04;16 Yep. So start with the basics. So you in your personal life, in your professional life, you have them, they may be named differently or phrased differently or even set up differently, but you have a mission statement, you have a vision, you have goals, you know, and then from there you could develop all the actionable items that will be your strategy.

00;05;04;16 - 00;05;31;16 And then the team definition where you can break down tasks by role and things like that, and you can start to put the resources in motion to to begin the path towards those objectives. So maybe to bring value and understand the type of impact is do I think we'll start with clarity? First, we need to understand it.

00;05;31;26 - 00;05;54;01 Well, I think that's where we talked before. Communication and listening, asking questions comes into play right and I think kind of tying those together is, you know, one of the things I think is when you don't know what the impact should be or needs to be. Right. It's often it is how you ask questions of, you know, a person or organization or a manager is what are they looking for?

00;05;54;06 - 00;06;21;07 What do they need? You know, what results do they want? What is bothering them? I was love to say that, you know, the best employees often go to their manager and say, let's keep you awake at night. What is worrying you? Right. What are the biggest problems, you know, in your mind? Because, you know, if you solve those problems, the things that are keeping your manager and your organization away awake at night, those are the things that will have the greatest impact.

00;06;21;27 - 00;06;58;27 You said that and thought of I think it was General Mattis I'm the one that keeps the others awake at night or something to that effect is is this quote. So, you know, and I think we look at it as clearly we can talk about it in all kinds of ways. But when you look at it where you have external goals and internal goals, so if you're a customer facing the customer, facing any any entity outside of what you or your organization is, and then you have internal because while we're doing this, everything that we've spoken about in previous episodes and what all of us have rooted into our being is I want to get something

00;06;58;27 - 00;07;28;01 out of it also. So value is twofold, right? I want to be able to provide value to the external entities. Our customer focus our organizational goals and things like that. But if I don't feel fulfilled, then it's not reciprocating value. And I want to make sure that we're also including the impact. It's got to be impactful not only for the purpose of why we're driving towards common goals with others, but we want to also have an impact for ourselves so we feel fulfilled and we can continue the motivation and the desire in that purpose.

00;07;28;23 - 00;08;04;27 So, you know, when we talk about impact that this leads to and it just so happens, it's men's Health Awareness Month, right? And so it can be anybody's it doesn't matter, you know, to have your mental mindset preserved you know, impactful, being impactful also has to include that that internal component. And so when we think about where we're going and it's got to be measurable, what are some of the key elements that can serve both purposes?

00;08;06;02 - 00;08;23;29 You know, I think I'll be bad. I say, you know, let's bring a book into the conversation like we do for every podcast. Right. And so, you know, Chris and I say, please be useful right? And what am I talking about here? It's like, well, I'm going back. You know, I'm going to you know, are Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest book, you know, B would be useful, right?

00;08;24;07 - 00;08;42;05 And I've actually been reading it recently and I think one of the things is that of kind of tying this together and I thought was just great for, you know, our podcast this morning is that you it's not just about building a vision. It's not just, you know, understanding things. It's that really of how you're investing in yourself.

00;08;42;05 - 00;09;02;04 Right. To realize a vision, to realize a goal. And having the impact. And it's not just something that you spend 5 minutes on. Right. Arnold Schwarzenegger talked about his book. He said, hey, when he was trying to be a weightlifter or, you know, Olympian. Right. He spent 5 hours a day. Right. You know, working out. Then he should only do two and a half in the morning and two and a half in the afternoon.

00;09;02;05 - 00;09;21;24 Right. And he said this is the same as actually if you have a vision for your life or you have a vision for what you want to achieve. And he said you may have to spend 5 hours a day to do it, but that's because that's an example of doing something above and beyond to have the ultimate goal, the ultimate dream.

00;09;22;12 - 00;09;29;08 And I think that's a great book to really kind of emphasize and kind of use as a catalyst for this conversation.

00;09;30;29 - 00;09;59;05 That's a good example because I think what I heard from that was a description of lessons learned. And so in the process of pursuing objectives or goals, right. So in this case, by building, right? For that example or scalability, you know, increasing the organizational scalability potential or effectively delivering X within a certain amount of time frame you could, you could, you could say that we did that.

00;09;59;16 - 00;10;38;03 But what the other components are that consist of what happens while you're doing that can also be perceived as impactful. You know, hey, we did this. But when while we were doing that, we also learned this. And so in this case, you know, there's a a time frame in which things were allocated to perform a particular task. And then as time went on, it was learned that, you know, addressing how that timeline was split up to optimize the ability to be more effective, more efficient, more scalable, more sustainable, you know, there's an outcome there that you wouldn't really understand until you had actually gone through it.

00;10;40;03 - 00;11;03;05 What kind of building upon that example is he said what? He went to make a movie like a Terminator. He said, yeah, he spent 5 hours a day. Right. You know, there's I it being blindfolded and shooting a gun. So he never blinked again. Right. Or he's trying to become you know, the governor of California said he spent 5 hours a day, you know, studying all the issues and things like that because he said the impact he had was enormous or he wanted to have is enormous.

00;11;03;06 - 00;11;06;14 So he had, you know, invest enormously to achieve that.

00;11;07;00 - 00;11;40;07 Yeah. And most of us can relate to that. The more you're ever you're putting into something, you're in control of that. And so I can't help but think about a word that can help describe this, because there's an element here that we're all understanding. It's necessary is leadership where we have informal and formal leaders. But these are the ones that are in a hierarchal or oppositional position of influence that guide or take us from one place to the other and then be able to manage it effectively the results.

00;11;40;07 - 00;12;00;27 And so we can stay on track. But I think a lot of those things, as you learn, is to be impactful is the perception that you know, hey, David, the way that you're doing that is impactful. Keep going. Or, Hey, David, in order to achieve a greater impact for what we're trying to do, you know, would you would you be able to do this, that or the other thing?

00;12;01;08 - 00;12;25;11 In those two examples of the many, we can start to talk about the management or leadership style to where some of us as we learn and we grow, we need less oversight. Right. And that's now I'm going to introduce to micromanage micro and macro managers. Right. So some of us perform at a high level when we have a lot of autonomy that that's gained through experience.

00;12;25;11 - 00;12;48;05 And that, again, you've earned that by being impactful. What are your thoughts on how the dynamics between it within an organization? Let's say when you have multiple people in an organization trying to do the same thing differently? What do you think some of the elements are that we have to continuously watch to make sure that we're reciprocating the impact?

00;12;49;18 - 00;13;08;28 So I think one of the things that we talked about in like I think in our previous podcast about communication is one element is being clear on what the results will be. Right. So you can think about stuff like, hey, this is the impact people want you to have. It is the result they want you to achieve. But you're going to be clear, is it is the results they're going to achieve?

00;13;08;28 - 00;13;33;04 Right, because you could be off on that. You you know, you could you could perceive incorrectly. You could think incorrectly. And really when you what sometimes writing things down and asking maybe this is what we want to achieve. Is that correct? And then people validating it. That is very, very important because otherwise the impact you think you're going to have may not be the the actual results that are achieved.

00;13;34;01 - 00;13;39;21 What happens when there's a breakdown during that process of pursuing clarity?

00;13;40;05 - 00;13;59;00 Well, I think a bigger question is then there could be breakdowns at the beginning and are be breakdowns along the way. Right. And so I think it's it's kind of upfront is saying just like, okay, are and B are just saying like, hey, this is what we're going to achieve and these are the results. And sometimes I think it's very important to call out who is the customer of that result.

00;13;59;00 - 00;14;18;23 Right. And say an internal customer. External customer, maybe a person, maybe a group. Who is the customer? Right. And what are they going to achieve? And people agree with that. That's a good point. And then also, I think is always having milestones along the way saying how are the results are achieving the results? We expected right. You know, are we continuing measuring that?

00;14;18;23 - 00;14;20;27 If we don't, you can get off track very quickly.

00;14;21;21 - 00;14;45;28 Yeah. And I can't help think of the word mastery at that point. Like you know, a word that would help define how skilled you are to be able to recognize what does it take? So again, previous episodes have included elements of what we can put in our toolbox. So we have these levers to pull when we need to and how to become effective communicator.

00;14;45;28 - 00;15;12;21 How do you make sure that your understanding how to make, how to make yourself presence or be known the visibility component right where others see you and what you're doing? Because of course, that's you know, that's one of those milestone Check-In points where people can see what's occurring and then know how the different leadership or how the different roles will contribute.

00;15;13;18 - 00;15;32;05 The value of those roles they gives at a time or a period of time will go by and something will change. And we know this all the time. Organizational change, right? So something happened last week. We made we had a discussion. We made some some goals and some tasks. We distributed the tasks and we said, let's check in next week.

00;15;32;05 - 00;15;54;05 Well, within that timeframe, things changed. Something happened. So in the journey we've discovered and we made some accomplishments that changed the dynamics or the trajectory or the plan. So we have to check in every now and again to make sure that whatever's occurred since the last time we talked, what you just said is are we aligned or are we still in line for the things that we had discussed before?

00;15;54;13 - 00;16;12;24 Or what has changed? And this comes to back to I think is the mastery or the skill of the one, you know, really good program managers or project manager. We're going to stay on exactly what we're talking about. And effective leaders will also understand you're going to be able to understand now what everybody else is saying at the right level, the detail.

00;16;12;24 - 00;16;32;23 Because what you and I had talked about before, I can't remember when you as as a senior vice president or exposed to a lot of high level discussions, that is a culmination of everybody else's tasks passed up into context. So there's some relatable messaging that gives you the sense of what's going on.

00;16;34;11 - 00;17;13;17 I think one of the points, let's call it the real world example, right? We work on a result, right? It's very easy to find. The trap is like, I'm going to enhance something, I'm going to improve something, I'm going to extend something. Right. In an element of seeing that. Well, what does that really mean? Right. Those are ways where so many people fall into the trap of like you have ambiguous or ambiguous know impact goals or have ambiguous results and really want you to say, is that okay, we are going to improve the performance of the system and we can get 10% more power savings.

00;17;13;17 - 00;17;37;00 You know, things like that is like, oh, okay, you can measure it any time you try to have a goal or deliver impact that you can't actually measure in a physically or logically, it's always going to be a trap of mis, you know, missed results. Rate is I think it's easy to create things that are saying that you're going to improve something, but like, oh, how do you measure that?

00;17;38;01 - 00;17;54;11 Chris So let's say, okay, we're going to make this a podcast. We're going make this podcast, you know better. Okay, how do we measure that right now? We said we're going to have 10% more listeners next month. Like, Oh, okay, we can measure that. Did we achieve that or not?

00;17;55;11 - 00;18;39;04 Yeah. I think what you in between that you had said something about kind of equated to the e autonomy. Somebody is going to discover something and then realize real time maybe that something else is needing to be done. And I think that comes back down to the skill sets that have developed over time where communicating in this case is going to be necessary because if it hasn't been discussed in the plan, now we're getting down to the next level of a plan or goals that says, hey, if if we're doing this, we're going to expect this is our contingent planning piece planning right?

00;18;39;05 - 00;19;10;07 We're going to say, if we achieve this and this occurs, then this, then we're going to define what that is. That way we know that if it doesn't happen the way we expected, we're going to have to stop, reassess, and then recalibrate what we're going to do and then get agreement to continue on. What do you think would be the inhibitors or the ability, the things that would prevent us from having that occur without being too disruptive?

00;19;11;10 - 00;19;29;26 You know, actually, I think this is raising a really good point here. I think one thing is, is that jumps to mind immediately is people don't want to plan up front. It's easy to kind of jump in and get it running down, you know, running down the road and realizing like, okay, what's the time I really wanted to achieve here?

00;19;29;26 - 00;19;50;06 Right. Well, no, you need a planet just like a marathon or half marathon or five days. Like, you know, you're going to go in in a race. It's like, okay, what's your goal? You define that upfront, don't you? Or, you know, Chris, I know you run lots of marathons, right? So would you actually kick off or running 26.2 miles and you say, oh, I don't know what I'm going to how fast I'm going to go I'm, you know, whatever it is I'm going to finish.

00;19;50;06 - 00;19;57;20 So so then why do people start trying to have impact without measuring planning what the results are going to be from the very start?

00;19;57;27 - 00;20;36;03 They're defining what it is now. You're right. And I think we're stumbling across it now that, you know, to be impactful is relative. It's a perception based opinion, and it has to be something that everybody understands whose opinion it is right. To be impactful. Is it my managers for me, if I am trying to achieve goals successfully and make sure that I'm doing my job properly, then my whoever's in charge of me, whether directly or indirectly, whoever has influence on me, right?

00;20;36;03 - 00;20;59;09 Because I'll be I may be working with other other teams and people where that collective feedback is going to come back to some gatekeeper, whoever that may be, that will have an influence on my my career, my future, or me being able to continue on this particular project or task or effort. You know, it's just one of those things that it has to be agreed upon, you know, who's whose opinion matters.

00;20;59;09 - 00;21;24;19 So to bring impact, we have to understand who the stakeholders are, who the decision makers are, who the ones that matter most, and then who are the other key components are personnel that matter, but play a particular role in how it can be a collective input that provides that perspective into that key decision maker, that key leader. That's a good point.

00;21;24;20 - 00;21;27;12 Is defining the team, you know, who who's involved?

00;21;28;14 - 00;21;47;07 Well, I think that's a I don't want to get into there at this point, but it's almost like the race, right? Is kind of like who's who's a participant, right? Who's the approver? Right. Who's a reviewer? Right. Who's an informant? Right. And just like that, planning those should be defined upfront is part of it because you never want to say okay, here's the results and here's the plan.

00;21;47;13 - 00;21;53;18 Well, I don't know who's the approval of this. Right. Wow. What a horrible spot to end up in.

00;21;54;23 - 00;22;31;21 Yeah. You don't you don't want to learn after the fact. And then you get surprised because then we're talking about morale. You know, the the impact that has occurred has an effect on not only the organization. And we keep saying organization. I'm going to box this in. This is this is everyday life. This is everything that occurs in what we do, even from waking up and doing whatever you doing to get ready to go, whatever it is that you do here in the day or the night or whatever, it's just an understanding of I'm supposed to be doing this and here's why and here's where I know I don't need to do it anymore, right?

00;22;31;22 - 00;23;21;14 So we've achieved something the the people, the, the ripple effect, the people that are impacted by different context, the people that are affected. When we drive towards being impactful, we have to have that to be a consideration. Because if we're too focused or narrowly focused on that one thing and we don't do what you just talked about, plan accordingly, to where we can know the risk factors, we aren't capable now of truly capturing what that ultimate outcome, which we can consider to be the impact, what that ultimate outcome can cause, because then we may end up doing what's common when we don't plan effectively.

00;23;21;14 - 00;23;22;16 As we cause more issues.

00;23;23;14 - 00;23;42;16 Absolutely. You know, another thing, Chris, I was thinking about here is that I think you touched on a bit earlier is that as you get down into the implementation or the execution of a plan, the plans can change, right? Because there can be variables that aren't known, right? You could run into blockers, you to run in obstacles. You could run into you know, difficulties.

00;23;42;16 - 00;24;07;28 And so the plan can change. And that's not that's not bad, right? It's was that you're always understanding and watching for it. And that's where the milestones come in saying, okay, the assumptions that we had, the variables that we knew in various we didn't know. Right. Is there some change? So then let's update our plan. Let's update the results let's check in with all the reviewers and the participants with check in with the approver is like, is this the right new plan?

00;24;07;29 - 00;24;11;29 Is this the right new results? Right. And that's very, very important. To always keep in mind.

00;24;12;28 - 00;24;35;07 Yeah. So maybe, maybe let's toy with this idea. Let's, let's apply it to something specific because I I don't know about you, but I feel like we're so ambiguous at this moment that I know, no, we're being impactful in this conversation. But I do think that we've set a good framework by introducing a bunch of different things. So, one, you have to know what you're wanting to do.

00;24;35;25 - 00;25;05;24 So let's apply it to transition. Let's let's spread it across any type of transition. You're moving from one place to another. In this case, we'll keep it with our veteran affiliated community and we'll say we have service members getting ready to make a choice when there's too much information out there and there is a lot of information, it's probably too much, but some of it may be considered to be valuable based off of how you're seeing it, right?

00;25;05;24 - 00;25;23;02 Whatever lens you're wearing and how you feel and all those types of things. And your scenario could be unique in a sense of where it's applicable. Got it. However, the bigger picture is, generally speaking, there's a ton of information out there, and it's hard to choose which one. It's like a thought, right? If you don't know where to start, stand in front of your garage.

00;25;23;02 - 00;25;42;26 You see, you want to clean your garage and there's a bunch of stuff that you have to do. Where do you start? Have to know what you're trying to achieve. These are your objectives. Your goals doesn't have doesn't matter if it's short term, near-term, long term, it has to be something. And then from there, it's to say, Well, how do I think I need to get there?

00;25;43;07 - 00;26;17;04 And this is key because this now comes back down to what we've always been talking about is the mindset, open mindset, growth mindset, close mindset, fixed mindset. You know, Carol Dweck has that book mindset where it's fixed growth. You know, all of those things factor into to understand some other things that we've talked about. Your mindset could shift based off of little acts of or events that have occurred to where now you've learned something and now you need to make the adjustment, which is what we've just been talking about.

00;26;17;18 - 00;26;46;04 So you have to know what you want to do. You have to think about how you're going to get there. You have to have an open mindset to know that as you pursue this, you're going to learn some things and you have to be willing to take what you learn and apply it. If you think about all of the other folks that have also transitioned, one question that I always want to ask somebody is What made you stop listening to what people have shared with you about how to do this?

00;26;47;18 - 00;27;07;17 You know, I think, you know, one thing comes to mind is there to issue you read out the there's great examples and steps, Chris, is that you got to write it down, right? How many people are successful in just things that are in their memory or they're in their head? Right. Or they talked about once. Right. I can't think of too many examples of that.

00;27;07;21 - 00;27;31;05 Or how do you have check points with your team, your organization, if it's not written down, you say, yeah, let's go off the top of her head every once a month. Like, how are we doing against our results and what was our results? Did I remember correctly you know, so it's one things on that because when they're written down, right, you can reference them, you can use them, and they will reinforce all of your structure and behaviors.

00;27;33;02 - 00;27;57;18 Right? Yes. It's an infinite loop. And if you don't have it in front of you, you don't have a focus right now. You could I could be wrong. I'm absolutely not skilled and experienced in the depth of what that could be. As far as a specialization you know, having your thoughts versus writing it down, you could be focused on your thoughts if you're very skilled at it.

00;27;57;18 - 00;28;17;20 But is that a way to do it? Maybe there's a technique that you're introducing now is to say, well, instead of that and relying on that because that can be so elusive, then write it down. And when you write it down now, you have a point of reference. How often do we like because you've labeled me some running fanatic to where my knees would argue the point.

00;28;18;06 - 00;28;46;26 But when we're out doing something, walking by ourselves in our in our own mind and we think about things, how often do we have this epiphany? So things change. If you have recall, great if you have the ability to recall through being able to see it, you can go back to say, well, that was my thought before. Now I have this new thought and this is journaling, and you're creating a trail of how your thought began and where your thought is growing.

00;28;47;23 - 00;29;10;12 And maybe the thought will end if you no longer have it be a priority, but you have you have the ability to trace it and then go back to these things that can help develop these dynamics that allow you to maneuver through the conditions where ambiguity might be coming. Right. It's determining now there's too much space for me to know where to focus on and I don't know where to start.

00;29;10;25 - 00;29;29;23 And then you potentially have a higher probability of no longer pursuing it, because now it becomes overwhelming. These types of things, you know, to be impactful, you have to be able to understand where you started and where you want to go. So you can lessons learned, you can do lessons learned, but also you can bring people with you and then you can understand what was what was valuable what was impactful.

00;29;30;17 - 00;29;31;28 That got you to that next step.

00;29;33;10 - 00;29;56;11 In kind of building upon that is I think there's one thing as well. It's just your goal and is just you and no one else, right? Yep, absolutely. You can think about it as a point of mind, but anything is like how you bring others, right? From engagement, from a from a collaboration perspective. Like what I even think about recently for us at Oracle, we have our Maven 11 kind of initiative, right?

00;29;56;11 - 00;30;23;17 Is like the 11 days, you know, going up to the Veterans Day, right? We, we use our slack, we use email that 11. We, we called out and said, hey everybody every day, you know, kind of send a slack message, you know, what did you achieve that day. It had impact. It had impact on me is like, oh what I've forgotten about it great is I was a motivated seeing others had big impact is amazing how the impact of one small thing of just using some tools in setting the goals and results and then being public about it.

00;30;23;17 - 00;30;27;10 It was motivating and drove me did it do the same for you.

00;30;29;03 - 00;30;58;16 Did and that's a good call out and while we're there you know huge shout out to the military affiliated veteran employee network board where they allow this idea sharing to come up because that that came from an idea means basically what we're talking about we have a large organization filled with veteran affiliated people. Right so we have spouses, we have family members, we have parents we have veterans, we have reservists.

00;30;59;00 - 00;31;20;14 We have all of those components inside this organization. And we're all looking for something. And when we bring people together, and we discover that commonality, what can we do to be impactful? What do we want to do to encourage to retain that camaraderie, retain that feeling of that purpose? That we can have in that common bond that we've we've shared through generations?

00;31;21;21 - 00;31;50;20 We we came up and we landed on through a conversation. We landed on well, for Veterans Day, let's do maybe 11 for 11 days leading up to Veterans Day. We'll do an activity. And this goes back to the health benefits of being active from the mental state, the emotional state, the physical state, the nutritional value, all of these elements to where we're putting in front of us a target, a goal, an objective and the objective was to try to replicate something in a new environment.

00;31;51;12 - 00;32;08;08 And how we did that was brought people together, talked about what we could do and it's a living, breathing thing. It was occurring over time and it kept evolving. And it will continue to evolve because we've introduced so many different things in alternatives that allows us to do those types of things. So how do we measure the impact?

00;32;08;24 - 00;32;28;22 Well, actually, Chris, let me try that. We measure impact because we used the Slack channel, right? We we had registration, made a Slack channel and we measured, right? We watched who was participating, who was actually reporting the results like that, that we measured it. Right? That was what mattered in the environment. There's a reward saying, well, you don't get swag if you actually don't report it.

00;32;28;22 - 00;32;32;19 So we measured what mattered, right? And we're rewarding people that achieve the goals.

00;32;33;12 - 00;32;53;17 Yeah. Good point. Yep. And we did it in a sense to where we left. We left the, the autonomy there, right? Because it didn't matter what people were doing. We weren't monitoring to make sure that people were actually doing something other than just to, to give an incentive, you know, that they could have a purpose for the next day.

00;32;53;18 - 00;33;10;09 You know, for some of us that maybe pushed a little too hard on this thing that were our physical limitations or our desire and all that stuff was having us in a certain way one day and we did something, we pushed ourselves hard that day and the next day maybe we're a little sore, but we woke up and somebody else was doing something and we were like, you know what?

00;33;10;23 - 00;33;44;08 That person's doing it. I'm doing it. Got us up out and doing it. And, you know, the level of engagement is based off of perception that we talked about. It's relative to those that, you know, in this case were the the creators of it to make sure that it wasn't terrible, meaning, you know, it was safely done. We put you know, resources in to make sure that they have a way to to reference what's needed for them to to to maintain and sustain the things that are necessary to be safe and and capable.

00;33;44;21 - 00;34;07;08 You know, but I think at the end of the day, we defined early on, here's what we're trying to do. Here's how we're going to we're going to measure it. And here's how we're not going to measure it. Measure it. How do you make sure you don't over measure or over state? How are you going to let's not even overstate how do you measure your oversight to make sure that it's not too restrictive?

00;34;08;28 - 00;34;45;17 Well, that's a good question. I think one of the first, you know, gaps or challenged I think people run into is you measuring too much, right? You over measure, right. And sometimes pressure, you know, the analysis paralysis. Right. Is like we have a goal and you say let's have 15 different measurements like now is that really what matters because ultimately and this is sometimes the ah the science behind it is identify is what is the one or two things that you can measure that really will be indicators of the entire impact you don't want every performance angle is it's not like hey in an airplane like we're going to look at 15,000 different sensors and say

00;34;45;17 - 00;35;02;29 we're going to track each one of I know we want to know do we get up in the air and do we land with everyone alive. Right. That's what matters in the end. That's what matters isn't it. So I'm being overly simplistic but I think there is an element is that you really of coming back to who is the customer, right?

00;35;02;29 - 00;35;19;15 And what does success look like for that customer? And then what's at what's one metric, what's one litmus test that we can use for that? Right. And I think coming back to our mission is kind of ultimately is we had engagement rate. You know, it was about how many people engaged, right? You know, it was for the greater the who was the customer.

00;35;19;15 - 00;35;30;01 It was the community itself. Right. And really, I think this was slack and I think it came into play. We could actually see how many people are engaging. And that was a way we measured. And because there was a lot I think it was a big success.

00;35;31;24 - 00;36;07;17 And I would agree. I mean, it's yeah, there's different ways to do that. I mean, we keep talking about it humble, humble, brag about it because, you know, it is it's something we hold dear for for for us for our reasons and we'll leave it there. But so we have we have this this idea we've created a place for those ideas to be shared and heard and regulated I mean, because there's some there's some real far out ideas that that are possible, but probably not in the current state maybe.

00;36;07;17 - 00;36;28;16 And we start to think about futuristic. So in any case, the dialog was created for everybody to come together to think about things in you and yourself. And we have this we'll go back to the transition mindset. We know where we want to go. We're thinking about how we're going to get there. We're having an open mind to consider what happens when I'm going to hear from people.

00;36;28;19 - 00;36;48;00 I'm going to go out, I'm going to talk to people, I'm going to I'm going to figure out how to do this. This kind of the duality of this issue now that's been created as I have internal a perspective where over over a period of years where we always get jammed up is, well, this is the way I've done it.

00;36;48;12 - 00;37;09;21 I'm going to continue to do it this way. And if we're that's why that open mind is critical, because if you're hearing something that you don't like, we all know that sometimes that's what you need to hear when you're not hearing what you want to hear. There's a reason for that. And so when we start to classify what we need to hear as something that I don't want to hear, what do you do with that?

00;37;09;21 - 00;37;27;18 And that's the benefit of now opening yourself up to hear things that you haven't heard previously, because that's where your growth potential could occur. When you have that and operate as an opportunity in front of you and then you act on it. I think that's kind of the fore fourth element here is to be impactful. You have to get to the next step and do something with it.

00;37;29;27 - 00;37;49;28 Well, something like coming back to a point which I think maybe lateral that is, sometimes you can you can define the doors that that you want to achieve and are measuring, but it's also okay to define the things that you don't want to achieve, right? Is I'll say this is not a priority. This is not you know, it's not about this.

00;37;49;28 - 00;38;04;22 It's not about A, B and C, right. Sometimes that gives a lot of clarity on the results you do want to achieve. And there's less confusion because you've got all of of the the negatives, let's say the negative is defined or the non goal is defined as well.

00;38;06;02 - 00;38;25;08 So right. David, so that the non goals I mean these are these are factors are things that we all know, you know, a plant, a plan is defined based off of what's known and even what's not known will be known like, hey, we know this. So we're going to try to do that and be aware of these things.

00;38;25;08 - 00;38;43;29 And that's the unknown, right? So we factor in some of the things that are unknown with the open mind. We're able to kind of make a clear delineation between where our left and right and a backstop would be like if we occur if we encounter too many things that we didn't plan for, we need to stop. So now we have a measure, a time, a timeline to be able to let's reassess.

00;38;44;15 - 00;39;09;11 But then we factor in the things that we weren't aware of, which now comes with other people if other people come into the equation and have input. My question to anybody really is what are you willing because we can't talk about these external occurrences. Do we ever how often do we account for the internal occurrence to say, somebody is going to tell me something?

00;39;10;17 - 00;39;31;24 How am I going to see that as one of those factors that we accounted for? And take ourselves out of what that person saying? This is feedback. I mean, basically you can equate it to feedback. Are we going to hear it for what it is and then do something with it or are we going to dismiss it? And this is listening to your leaders write all of these elements that we talk about.

00;39;32;04 - 00;39;37;18 When you listen to others, who are you considering the ones that are valuable enough to be heard.

00;39;39;20 - 00;40;02;04 Well, I think that's a great point. You know, coming back and communication, listening, right. You know, the connections on, I think a part of the goal is going back to the element of the RACI, the approver, right. You know, who who who is the approver? Who is going to track the results? Is their perception or their acceptance of the results, you know, is that the right person for that?

00;40;02;04 - 00;40;03;29 Right. I think it's very, very important to call out.

00;40;05;18 - 00;40;32;13 Yeah, it's it's it is it's a tough one because when you're when you're intensely focused on a path that has been defined under different circumstance, ounces in the warmth, the safety comfort of wherever you are, you're developing a plan on your whiteboard while you have coffee in your hand. You know, you're you're comfortable and then you get out.

00;40;32;13 - 00;40;59;23 And now it's uncomfortable because the inclement weather, it's cold. It's it's not where you want to be. How does information occur to you in different environments and circumstances where you're going to continue on with the point as as you act, you should understand completely that that's your learning environment. And that's probably the only I mean, this is debatable, but this is me talking.

00;41;01;20 - 00;41;20;08 That's the only thing that you should ever carry into your mindset is everything that's going to happen after I take this next step is something that I need. I need to learn, I need to pay attention to. I need to factor in what I'm going to do next. Now, you can compartmentalize it. You can say well, that's that's important, that's urgent.

00;41;20;18 - 00;41;37;06 That's not as important. That's relevant. Maybe not relevant now. But I'm going to make note. This goes back to what you're saying, writing it down. So you have a, you know, some nuggets and breadcrumbs to go back to you to say so-and-so said something a couple of weeks ago that I didn't know that it meant something then, but it means something now.

00;41;37;15 - 00;41;51;25 And you have record of it and you can incorporate it because you never know when these things will come together to build something. The pieces to the puzzle. You're going to get pieces over time that you never know if it's going to actually surface itself to be relevant in the future. You don't know, but you have to think about it.

00;41;52;20 - 00;41;59;28 Well, I think I spot on, Chris. I that's why we had all the bulls written down for maybe 11 because like everyone on Veterans Day was doing a marathon, wasn't that correct?

00;42;02;15 - 00;42;12;11 I think you need to wear your bow tie and your sweater vest, get out there and do that marathon. If you do that, I'll run with you all right.

00;42;12;11 - 00;42;16;19 As long as I your game for under three 30 Boston qualifier Chris Stapleton.

00;42;17;29 - 00;42;19;05 Not saying it's impossible.

00;42;20;06 - 00;42;28;04 That's right. If it was the end of the world and if we got invaded like in the red movie Red Dawn right. Yep yep. We'll run some marathons yeah.

00;42;28;09 - 00;42;53;29 Chase me and we'll see what happens. I don't know yeah. So you know thinking about where you want to go thinking about how you can get there and your current mindset knowing that your current mindset is not the future mindset think about what you're going to incorporate as part as far as the, the contributors to your growth to know if, if what you're doing is aligned to what you set out to do.

00;42;55;07 - 00;43;18;06 Anticipate that you're going to learn things along the way and have that as your primary objective so you can receive information or clarity without interference of your self-talk or your conditioned mindset that has you thinking, Well, this is the way I've done it before. This is how I'm going to do it again. I mean, there's there's limitations on that.

00;43;18;06 - 00;43;40;01 And I think we all get that context and then what how are you going to incorporate as you learn, what are you going to need to do to be impactful? It takes a little bit of work I think the thing that you landed on early, David, was key the plan. What is the plan? Because some of us just have an idea and then we execute on that idea.

00;43;40;11 - 00;43;58;02 I use your analogy, so sitting on my butt for several months, I used to run sitting on my butt for several months. I go out and try to run that tank. Not good. It's not a great idea. Your hips will tell you things, right? Your knees will tell you things. All right. So I use those as an indicator.

00;43;58;02 - 00;44;07;18 And the analogy of like you can't just get up and do stuff if you've never done it before and think that you're going to get to where you want to be. And if you do well, congrats. You're lucky.

00;44;08;14 - 00;44;26;10 I think a spot on, you know, kind of on closing, Chris, is that ultimately you set your goal, build your plan. Who is the customer? Sometimes the customer is yourself. Sometimes the customer is your boss. Sometimes your customer is an external customer. Then define how you're going to measure that result in a way that you can actually measure.

00;44;26;12 - 00;44;44;21 Right. And the last but not least, right you have regular check points and milestones until they actually look, are we on plan? Do we need change the plan? Are we going to achieve the results or not is sometimes there can be things are coming up but you adjust. You now have a new plan, you have update the customer, update your approval, and then you get ready to go.

00;44;45;15 - 00;44;51;22 Well stated. Last thing, listen to your people all right. David Z it.

00;44;53;17 - 00;45;11;06 Is that it, Chris? Well, we're never ending. You know, our goal is that every month we're going to get 10% more listeners to the podcast and we're not going to we're going to take the variables, we're going to get the feedback on that and we, we're going to continue to strive to that. And because we can keep doing that forever, it can't we?

00;45;12;01 - 00;45;25;10 We could. I'm going to, I'm going to throw something out here. It's just we're talking about that. If you got this far into this podcast, and this episode and you hear this send send David and I have a LinkedIn message and say, I heard it.

00;45;27;15 - 00;45;45;23 We loved it. We'd love to hear from you. And I would say that people that have reached out to us, I respond to every single one. We welcome the feedback and because we want to make this better for the community. And so we're excited to get all your messages. And even though I get a gazillion messages from LinkedIn scammers or what else, I respond to everyone.

00;45;45;24 - 00;45;46;14 Believe it or not.

00;45;47;07 - 00;45;50;12 I believe it already. One Keep moving forward.

00;45;50;24 - 00;45;51;11 Let's roll.

Reviewing one's activity and experiences to assess the effect or value of the outcome is what we often do with intention, sometimes without even realizing we are doing it. Thinking about how we performed, interacted with others, or maybe even didn't do enough is important. What's more important is how we manage those thoughts where we regulate what we think, how we feel, and what we need to do. There are specific techniques that help! Focusing on the mental and cognitive aspects of our performance is a key component in the complete package of personal optimization. We're talking Reflection and Regulation. Listen in as Colin and I continue our discussion journey of how EXOS delivers value toward helping get you ready for the moments that matter. Remember to take time to care for yourself. We have all we need to become the person we want to be…let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent as we continue the mission to serve. - https://teamexos.com/ - https://www.linkedin.com/company/exos/ - https://www.teamexos.com/athlete/military - [email protected] - [email protected] - [email protected] - [email protected] - https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-andrews-institute/ - http://www.andrewsinstitute.com/ - https://andrewsref.org/ - https://andrewsref.org/donate/ ---------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript:

00;00;08;00 - 00;00;33;07 You're listening to the Oracle Maven podcast, where we bring people together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight employees, partners, organized actions and those who are continuing the mission to serve. Welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Chris Spencer, and in this episode I'm joined by our guest, Colin Young, senior director of Operations with Axios, reviewing one's activity and experiences to assess the effect or value of the outcome is what we often do with intention.

00;00;33;16 - 00;00;55;11 Sometimes without even realizing we're doing it thinking about how we performed, interacted with others, or maybe didn't do enough are important. What's more important is how we manage those thoughts, where we regulate what we think, how we feel, and what we need to do. There are specific techniques that help. Focusing on the mental and cognitive aspect of our performance is a key component in the complete package of personal optimism.

00;00;55;22 - 00;01;12;11 Today, we're talking reflection and regulation. Listen in as Colin and I continue our discussion journey of how EXOS delivers value towards helping you get ready for the moments that matter. Remember to take time to care for yourself. We have all we need to become the person we want to be. So let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent.

00;01;12;12 - 00;01;28;08 As we continue the mission to serve. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode and please remember to check in on your buddies and family. Collins Contact details are in the podcast description and you can always find me on LinkedIn Call and what's going on.

00;01;29;09 - 00;01;30;10 Good morning. Good afternoon.

00;01;31;11 - 00;01;59;20 Hey, it's great to have you, Colin. You know, I know we've we've got a pretty good schedule going on. And for everybody out there listening, we've got Colin Young here, who is the senior director of operations within XO. And the topic for today that Colin will speak to is focused on reflection and regulation. And in the scheme of everything that we're putting together, how we broken down on these components, it's important that we we cover the whole gamut and make sure that we're talking about how to think about things and consider what you're going to do moving forward.

00;01;59;21 - 00;02;05;22 So the depth will come from Colin and everything that he's going to do to explain it. So Colin.

00;02;06;10 - 00;02;15;04 So you know, you're expecting depth. All right. You know, I usually hang out with my son in the shallow area, but I'll do my best to dove in with you today.

00;02;15;05 - 00;02;17;04 So let's go. Yeah.

00;02;18;02 - 00;02;39;01 So, yeah, so I'm really excited to be here. My background for, for those that probably haven't heard my name is in coaching in general. I started as a strength coach, like many folks who have been with EXOS for a long time. Right. We were athletes performance a long time ago. And have since rebranded and expanded. And so I started coaching at a young age.

00;02;39;17 - 00;02;58;18 I was involved in sports in high school and college, played college baseball and it was a small school. So oddly enough, I ended up being our strength coach my senior year. So I got my first kind of like dabble into that world before I was even out of there. I was an extra science and sports science major, so I really enjoy the coaching aspect of it.

00;02;58;28 - 00;03;27;24 Went on to join athletes performance in its infancy, and we expanded and now we coach in a lot of different realms. We coach in the workplace, we coach incorporate fitness facilities, but still rooted in that kind of like athlete's background. Which I always very much relate to myself. So now what I'm doing is shifted kind of pretty dramatically into more of the mental and cognitive performance side of things, which is still just coaching with a different lens.

00;03;28;05 - 00;03;56;10 And it's just been incredibly rewarding and an educational and just a ton of fun for me to to shift my lens to this new space and understanding how much overlap there is and being able to bring my experience there. So direct director of operations and say a whole lot with the title, you know about it. Yeah, that's, that's where I'm at now is operating a lot of our programs that are designed around mental and cognitive performance.

00;03;56;10 - 00;04;09;00 How can I get the most of myself? How can I get the most out of my team? How can I find the most kind of rewarding aspects of what I do and who I am as an individual each day? And that's that's my focus day to day now.

00;04;09;25 - 00;04;14;24 Got it. Now, I appreciate that backdrop but what position in baseball?

00;04;15;19 - 00;04;41;24 I was an outfielder, and then my senior year I got to D.H., which is like the best position in baseball, especially playing ball in the Pacific Northwest. You know, it's not exactly your season starts in February. It's not the greatest weather. So it's like, all right, I've been playing defense. I'm a step by the space here. Like, you guys are great, you're doing great out there, and then go up and hit, you know, three to five times a game and come back and said so yeah.

00;04;42;14 - 00;04;49;08 I got to say, because of all the great dishes out there, do you have walk on music? What was your what was your song?

00;04;49;09 - 00;05;15;02 We we did oh, man. You know, I think I was always and we'll maybe get to this. Maybe we can dissect some of my own internal workings here. I didn't I wasn't always and still to this day, not like super high volumes go, go, go type music, whether it's hip hop, rock, whatever it is. So my senior year, my walk up song was Fortunate Son by CCR.

00;05;15;05 - 00;05;15;24 Oh, there you go.

00;05;16;05 - 00;05;25;05 It's just kind of like, hey, I'm already hyped up enough to get to the play. Like, let me call myself down a little bit and kind of get zoned in. So yeah, that was my walkup song my senior year.

00;05;25;14 - 00;05;28;01 I like it. Yeah, that that paints the picture.

00;05;28;12 - 00;05;28;29 There you go.

00;05;29;16 - 00;05;33;18 All right. So so about when did you did you join XOs?

00;05;34;13 - 00;06;02;09 Yeah, I did my internship in 2008 it was where I started. And then after that I worked mostly with baseball players, obviously with my background a little bit with our combine prep program that you may or may not have touched on in previous episodes with Anthony or John or whomever. So mostly baseball guys. And then I see it, the longer, longer I've been with the company, the more it feels like a little hiatus.

00;06;03;03 - 00;06;24;18 It was on a paid internship. They didn't have anything for me. I went and got a job elsewhere. I did some coaching at a charter school coach, football and baseball and soccer and everything from like kick and giggle all the way up to two more competitive spaces. And then was a director at the YMCA for a few years at a very young age and three apartments, our wellness membership and aquatics department.

00;06;25;01 - 00;06;41;10 Oddly enough, they just kind of kicked it to me. So and then came back full time with the company in 2011. So and then since then I've held a ton of different roles. Like I said, I started as a strength coach when I came back and then kind of shifted into management and then have shifted and since into this kind of mental performance space.

00;06;41;27 - 00;06;51;22 Got it. And so what's the attract into this mental space that we're talking about and what is, what is reflection and regulation mean to the layman?

00;06;52;15 - 00;07;16;07 Yeah. So first question kind of what, what attracted me to the space? Yeah, my my other major in college was psychology. So that was always kind of around. And oddly enough, I really enjoyed my time at the Y Looking back on it, maybe I didn't enjoy it at the time, but it was it was such a rewarding experience for me to see in the grand scheme of things.

00;07;16;07 - 00;07;45;07 The YMCA is is not known for its progressiveness and excellence in the movement and fitness space. However, if you look at and think of some of the benefits and some of the things of the YMCA as well, it's community and that society just kind of so I really delve into the psychology of how to build a community, how to get someone and many someones to start a habit and keep a habit that's positive for them.

00;07;45;07 - 00;08;09;05 So you learn things like motivational interviewing, you learn things like group dynamics, just kind of on the fly and you see the attitude there. And so that really helped propel my, my interest in it and have since taken that and apply to both to my own teams that I manage within EXOS as well as with the content that we create for this kind of mental and cognitive performance space.

00;08;09;05 - 00;08;27;27 So it's always kind of been around for me. It was kind of accelerated with with the YMCA at the time with that concept of community because you know, we say all the time you could have the best program in the world. If someone doesn't show up to do it, it doesn't matter. And so it's like, you know, they get results from people just because people enjoy being there and coming back.

00;08;27;27 - 00;08;46;14 So it's like, how do you how do you pair the two to really get the most out of someone, get them coming back and then, man, you're really dialed in for one of their and so now, you know, we're where we're at with mental, mental and cognitive performance. It's it's really, really interesting to kind of apply that in the workforce.

00;08;46;25 - 00;09;17;04 And certainly for me in my own personal endeavors as well, and that's where I loved it was probably a favorite topic to talk about a reflection and regulation and what does that mean? So reflection is really just can I observe myself and my surrounding sands critiques sans ego, right? Can I do it without judgment? And then regulation is can I go through that observation again?

00;09;17;18 - 00;09;40;29 Can I then determine what is required of my own performance and those around me eventually? But typically, most of us spend a ton of time on on our own endeavors. Can I understand? Hey, here's the situation. Here's what I understand it to be and here's what's required of me as far as my own performance. And then that regulation gets into a bunch of different kind of wires that we could certainly go into a little bit.

00;09;40;29 - 00;09;54;10 So a lot of people love to just jump into regulation. It's also like yeah, so we can get into it further, but a lot of people love regulation. I kind of have spent an equal time in both, and I think you need both to maximize performance.

00;09;55;25 - 00;10;22;26 Hundred percent immediately. I'm applying it, I think, well, in the past episodes I've probably bored people with how I look at it for me. And when I'm talking to those of you that have this specialization, the principle is if I'm getting ready to go out and do something, I'm thinking about me and kind of translating and what you're saying as far as observing the surroundings, hey, my I'm recognizing my physical limitations or the abilities.

00;10;22;26 - 00;10;40;12 And so I'm going to go out and I'm going to run the mountain or I'm going to run up this hill, I'm going to run or I'm going to walk or I'm going to do something. I'm trying to trying to figure out whether or not I'm capable of doing it with the things that I know and then trying to anticipate whether I know what I should know.

00;10;40;22 - 00;10;50;28 Right. And so I'm just trying to figure out, is that is that kind of the idea between the reflection is you're kind of going through the cycles of your own mind to figure out what you want to do, where you want to do it and how you want to do it.

00;10;51;24 - 00;11;17;28 Yeah, I think, yeah. You summarized it really nicely. You know, there's there's so it starts with kind of drive, you know, we do something calls about a values exploration and kind of understanding what's driving you both in a positive and a negative. Like that's one thing we call kind of the shadow self a little bit. You know, a lot of people call the subconscious whatever it is, you know, we are as human beings are built to kind of go on autopilot.

00;11;17;28 - 00;11;34;10 And a lot of those things aren't necessarily helping us kind of get to that next level and kind of grow and do what we want to do. And so understanding what those drivers are, you might have a conscious driver of like consciously, you and I probably sit here and go, oh, I want to be as healthy as I can be.

00;11;34;16 - 00;12;03;12 I want to go train every day. I want to train hard, I want to eat healthy, I want to be present with my family. I want to do all of these things right like consciously I'm going to say, of course, we're gonna be like, yeah, you know, and but subconsciously, like, why don't we every minute or every hour of the day and every day of the week and every week of the month and month of the year, why don't we always strive towards doing those things which we consciously say Yes, that's what I want.

00;12;03;12 - 00;12;24;16 That's a driver. And that's that's kind of the, the, you know, one of the spaces you can take is, is what is truly driving me. And that's, I think, a great place to apply kind of what we would look at as a reflection. We break reflection down in the name. Reflection is a little bit misleading because it's things it kind of leads you to think retroactively.

00;12;25;02 - 00;12;46;00 And we look at it. You could also use a little bit of a synonym towards awareness and that word might spark things a little bit differently. So we break it down into three spaces. There's proactive and retroactive certainly. So like proactively to your point of doing an assessment, say I'm going on a hike or whatever, doing that assessment, like where am I truly at doing that self assessment?

00;12;46;20 - 00;13;04;17 What do I need? You know, the proactive space and then retroactive would be going out. Like how did that go? How did I feel? What did I experience? What did I do well? What could I have done better right there? Those kind of bookends of it. But then that holy grail of what we categorize under reflection or awareness is real time awareness.

00;13;04;27 - 00;13;25;02 And that's where reflection in regulation or awareness and regulation or almost an inextricably linked. It's also probably the most challenging place to get to when you're trying to upskill in this space of self-awareness for a variety of reasons. So yeah.

00;13;26;00 - 00;13;43;20 Is that just so I'm clear on that one? Because when you said it, I started to smirk. Now I'm running, I've gone through the first two things, now I'm running and I'm imagining how much this running sucks. Is that that part where it's the real time awareness to where you're going through it and then you're paying attention to what's happening while it's happening?

00;13;44;01 - 00;13;45;00 Where am I off there?

00;13;45;16 - 00;14;06;25 No, no, not at all. Yeah, that's that's part of it. Again, within that awareness we've got, we'll break it down for we love turning things into systems. I think that's what's allowed XOs to be great is you've got phenomenal, you know, the coaches and, and string coaches and within each section and with their specialties all over the place.

00;14;06;25 - 00;14;31;26 And that knowledge end up staying very tribal in nature. And with them learning what access has been able to do really well with systematize a lot of this and have it makes sense and this really makes sense to me. So it's like within real time awareness. There's three things that we're looking at. What you're definitely talking about is, is there's the kind of what we got into receptive like physically what's going on within my body at that time there's emotional awareness.

00;14;31;26 - 00;14;55;28 So like what emotions are my experiencing? Like am I, you know, okay, this is difficult. Like in what how am I tackling that? Am I frustrated? Am I, you know, looking at is is as some type of challenge, you know, whatever it is, right? What emotions are bubbling up for you? And then from kind of like a thought pattern awareness.

00;14;55;28 - 00;15;17;08 So, you know, what am I thinking? Where am I going with this? Can you this is where like meditation comes into play really really as a tool to teach this, to help you observe your thoughts, like, oh, wow, this is really challenging. Do I immediately go to school I can take this on? Do I have the self-efficacy to say this is challenging, but it's doable.

00;15;17;08 - 00;15;33;14 I can do this. I know it's difficult. I've done difficult things before. I'm going to do it or is like, I want to give up I hate this. This sucks. Whatever it is, right? There's no right or wrong within that space, but just being aware of which way you kind of go in that space. So like what are my emotions?

00;15;33;14 - 00;15;42;11 What are my thoughts and what's my body telling me doing in the space and being aware of that in real time can can be really challenging yeah.

00;15;42;11 - 00;16;05;13 That that's, that's where I think the discipline in those things is probably I'm assuming that the focus here is to get you to understand there's phases of realizations. You broke them down seemingly in chunks of threes, which is a great start, but it's procedural and you've planned for that. And this this is all again, to reiterate, this is all part of the reflective component.

00;16;05;22 - 00;16;10;28 We haven't gotten to the to the regulation part or has that kind of mixed into each.

00;16;10;28 - 00;16;48;23 Other it certainly ties into it, absolutely. You know, so emotions, right? They'll they're going to bubble up. So they might as humans were designed with these crazy, amazing survival mechanisms. And so what happens is in real time, we take in a stimulus from our environment or even from our internal environment. We might remember a stressful thing in our body is really good and our brains are really good at making something that either hasn't happened or or has happened and isn't happening to us anymore feel very real.

00;16;49;14 - 00;17;13;04 And so the stimulus could be from our external or internal environment. It bubbles it up. And then our brain the thing is that stimulus goes through the amygdala, which is at the base of our school, which is the emotive center of the brain after it's also interpreted by the central nervous system that allows us gets us ready for movement.

00;17;13;09 - 00;17;35;23 So we're already already ready to move or act and we're already feeling things before that stimulus makes it up into our frontal cortex or frontal lobe, which is where our executive function and that's where we actually cognitively and consciously can start to internalize what this is and so that's designed to help us react very quickly to a life threatening situation.

00;17;35;23 - 00;17;56;17 Right. Which was there were a lot more of those back before modern medicine and before our stressors. So it's like these stressful environments. Right. Cool. So my brain is automatically looking at some shaking bushes and interpreting all these different signals, sounds, smells, like it's all those things to say, hey, is that just the wind or a squirrel or is that something a little bit more threatening?

00;17;56;28 - 00;18;16;26 And so I perhaps chose to act it helps us with through emotions, ties it to previous experiences of, oh, it was a squirrel. Cool. You know, I might, you know, by the time he gets to the frontal lobe, I can say, yeah, that's not not a big deal. Or is it like, oh, that really resembles a time where I had to get out of Dodge.

00;18;17;03 - 00;18;44;23 And so it's we're already like anxious. We're already are our senses are heightened and we might already be a little bit frightened or scared. And so when we get a stimulus that is is sent to us there and the stimulus has shifted, now it's I get you know, someone triggered me because I they said something in a way that someone in a toxic past relationship said something or I had a bad manager or my manager isn't great in there.

00;18;45;00 - 00;19;21;08 They're, you know, sending an email in a certain tone and so that starts to trigger. And our body interprets that and our brain interprets then it ties it to a survival mechanism. Oh, if I lose my job, I can't provide for my family. You know, I'm not going to be able to to make things happen. So it bridges this huge gap for us, even though the stressors of change, the response is the same and so we're already fighting against this uphill battle of of the survival mechanism when we have especially stressful or interpretative stress for stimulus into our environment.

00;19;21;08 - 00;19;42;03 And that's where the awareness piece can come in being aware of, hey, I'm feeling a certain way. I'm feeling this physical sensation of, oh, I'm sweating or my, my stomach is upset or my heart is racing. There's the interceptor oh, my thought patterns are going, oh, I'm not very good at my job because I screw this up or whatever it is.

00;19;43;05 - 00;20;12;29 And then now being aware of that, then we can start to look at regulating in that that space. And then we can start to say, Okay, wow, this anxiety is built to help me survive. Right? There's a purpose for it, but it's not serving me right now. So then how do I, in this case, down regulate my body and my brain to help me come to a more we'll call it productive outcome for this.

00;20;12;29 - 00;20;28;28 So that's a long ways. I say it's really challenging. Why it's so challenging to both be aware in the space and also why regulation is so challenging to put into play and why you have to have both. Because if you don't know what you need to regulate you're not aware that you don't. It doesn't matter. We can be all the tools in the world.

00;20;29;03 - 00;20;33;16 You're not going be applying it properly. You're going to be trying to eat a bowl of cereal with a pitchfork or something, you know?

00;20;33;17 - 00;20;36;14 So it's a big old ball. Remember those?

00;20;36;27 - 00;20;38;16 Hey, you know what? Now I'm kind of hungry.

00;20;38;16 - 00;20;42;14 So for charter school, come in front of the TV on the table.

00;20;42;27 - 00;20;43;19 That's right.

00;20;43;19 - 00;21;08;19 Captain Crunch for days right. So I'm so thanks for that. I mean, so there's a couple of things with this to kind of just figure out where it applies in some scenarios. So, I mean, you talked about some workplace scenarios, talked about says anywhere in life, you just basically assessing when you're when you're awake and you look around, things are happening all the time.

00;21;08;19 - 00;21;25;03 You've you've regulated it right now. I know you're going to get to that. But just kind of for for all of us trying to figure out what bookmark where we are. You regulated it in a way, too, where you've now understood it enough to say threat, not threat is that we're saying, right, I'm getting up I'm walking here, no big deal.

00;21;25;16 - 00;21;43;24 But if I'm now same scenario or I'm getting up, I'm the environment's different. I'm in my tent in the middle of nowhere where I already know that there's threats of bears and wildlife and things like that. I'm getting up needing to go walk over there. I'm more alert. It's different because you're regulation hasn't yet the experience of that particular scenario.

00;21;43;24 - 00;21;54;21 So you're developing these patterns that we can maybe simplify our self-talk, right? You're trying to speak yourself through these scenarios. Is that kind of a good gauge for that situation of what you just said?

00;21;55;13 - 00;22;00;18 So you're talking about like in an actual scenario where you're out in the wild or, you know.

00;22;00;27 - 00;22;05;13 Kind of piecing it together and like this reality component of everything that you broke down?

00;22;05;25 - 00;22;32;20 Yes. Yep. So we talk about all the time. Biology will always trump psychology so, you know, self-talk can be great in more of a proactive space, you know, and saying, hey, look, we know that like talking and rewriting even more so helps ingrain things in the brain to to help us overcome. So if you're for example, you know, like your hike or you run or whatever, right?

00;22;32;21 - 00;22;53;27 Like if you get to a point where you're actually anxious or you're kind of beyond just kind of walk all of the norms of of, you know, our emotions and our reactions, psychology and psychological tactics like visualization and self-talk, they get a little bit diminished returns to the point where they may not and may not be be helpful.

00;22;53;27 - 00;23;11;23 And that's where we use things like breath quite a bit to help us use our biology to try to change the psychology. There's this interesting feedback loop, and I'm pointing between my brain and my body if we're on audio here, right? It's like we think of it as like brain and body, but like it's all the nervous system.

00;23;11;23 - 00;23;31;26 It's all it's all linked together. But there's this feedback loop of like my brain in how I thought we talked about how you can relive past experiences, and that will trigger physical response, could be anxiety, could be joy, could be whatever, and then vice versa. We can actually have our bodies say, look, we're in a safe space. You know, we don't have to be stressed out here.

00;23;32;04 - 00;23;51;27 And that's where you can kind of calm yourself down or downregulate. And so we use things like breath, we use things like vision, natural light, movements are all wonderful strategies to help us kind of up or down regulate, because there might be times where a lot of us we're talking about downregulation, there's stress and we need to kind of bring ourselves down.

00;23;52;05 - 00;24;13;08 There's also like, ah, afternoon low, I'm a little lethargic or I didn't sleep well and I need to be kind of dialed for this coming up. I mean, that's one thing why we talk so much with our special operators. The community that we work with about sleep is like, Man, you're starting this huge deficit. We know you're going to be going and going out at different times.

00;24;13;08 - 00;24;32;27 It doesn't matter. You're on the different patterns but sleep when you can because it's always kind of a huge hole to dig out of. But then and you might need to upregulate, Hey, I know I'm going into a dangerous situation. I need to be dialed. I want to have some of those things like adrenaline going through my body because it will focus my attention and energy and I will be more alert.

00;24;33;07 - 00;24;54;07 So there's kind of like, okay, turn the dial up. Turn the dial down. That's where a tie is to reflection. Hey, what do I need in this space? And we really try to use especially for Downregulation, but also for up using using biology to help us out and so that's where like breathwork comes into play is a fantastic strategy both directions, so.

00;24;54;17 - 00;25;21;02 Got it. Okay. Thanks for that. Yeah. So yeah, the second one I was going to you answered already because then I was thinking about movements. If you're, if you're injured and because of in the rehab process, you're having to address that injury the hesitation, the reluctance to do it because you had the pain receptor is recognizing if I do that, move my knees going to whatever I think my knee is going to do, whatever kind of the same thing, different scenarios.

00;25;21;02 - 00;25;23;29 I guess it's just kind of how you're imagining things. Yeah.

00;25;24;12 - 00;25;47;12 Totally. Yeah. I mean, what we're talking about, the ability to regulate the ability to kind of get ourselves up to do the hard thing to to, you know, find space and clarity in a stressful situation, very much like especially there's trauma, emotional trauma, like physical trauma. You're going to avoid it. That's a shadow driver that you may or may not be conscious of for a long period of time.

00;25;47;26 - 00;26;19;02 And so kind of digging into it in the right way and within the right boundaries is going to be critical and doing it over and over again, practicing that just like with rehab. Right it if you have a phenomenal surgeon, put everything back to back together, if you don't kind of get those reps in of putting it through the range of motion strengthening, you know, getting that confidence and like that's oftentimes a huge portion of rehab is like guys physically how the capabilities to come back from an ACL.

00;26;19;11 - 00;26;37;28 But they just it's so tough to trust it there and you've just got to get the reps in. You know, I can change direction, I can change direction, I can change direction. And then when it comes into that kind of chaotic space like on the field, then you don't have to think about it. You don't want to have to be think about it's like you make a make it unconscious.

00;26;37;28 - 00;26;59;21 And so it becomes a habit. And so it just like with that emotionally and regulating, putting yourself in those situations, and creating that tolerance to stress is is is really helpful or understanding, you know, putting the reps in to understand that awareness. Like that's where meditation like a lot of people hate it. A lot of people struggle with it.

00;26;59;22 - 00;27;17;02 Our CEO, you know, that's my I'm on, I'm on. I work with her a decent amount and that's my goal is to get her to just, you know, spend, you know, 5 minutes a month, you know, just taking, you know, stillness practice and kind of bringing the attention inward with no distractions. That takes practice and you can get better at it.

00;27;17;27 - 00;27;35;09 And so, yeah, the injury analogy is, is perfect of, hey, there's something that's driving us in that I'm working around. If I can kind of keep digging into that, keep get those reps in, I'm going to be able to regulate more when there's a little bit more stress. I'm going to be able to understand myself and how I'm going to respond in those situations.

00;27;35;15 - 00;27;40;07 And therefore make it a more productive outcome. So, yeah, it's it's spot on.

00;27;40;24 - 00;27;59;08 Got it now. Thanks for that, doc. I mean, I now I know what you mean where you're going to bounce back and forth when you try and explain one of the other. So I think we covered the reflection part and we've dabbled in the regulation component and let's dig deeper.

00;27;59;20 - 00;28;31;24 Yeah. So I'd say one of the big tools we use is a good representative of up and down regulation is, is breathwork. So we're trying to like, okay, let's make a tangible call and cool. You know, you're going off on bushes and stimulus and you know, things are going to harm me. What I like is it's kind of sounds a little bit out there, but like, okay, let's make it tangible the first thing from a reflective component that we can do is take a few moments proactively.

00;28;31;24 - 00;28;50;03 What is the day going to demand of me? Okay. Hey, I've got a podcast that I've got to chat about and try to sound smart for a few minutes. I want to make sure that I do the right things proactively to get myself ready for that. And then afterwards I'm going to say, Hey, well, why didn't, you know, get feedback from Chris and all that kind of stuff?

00;28;50;03 - 00;29;08;06 And so cool. Did you know, how did I do with that? And then real time I got to make sure, hey, what is my, my current state, my getting really excited talking about this stuff? Do I need to maybe slow my voice down a little bit? Right. So there's there's that component to it. So finding that space, I think, is really crucial.

00;29;08;06 - 00;29;28;14 That's one thing that we straw like that. We we see that high performers struggle with is everybody wants to do more, give me more stuff to do. And we love to focus on being. And so when we're tired, that's where, you know, again, I'll come back to the concept of stillness or meditation or mindfulness, whatever you want to label it.

00;29;29;18 - 00;29;54;29 Some we work with a lot of SEO is a lot of athletes, a lot of special operators. Just give me more to do. I give me the perfect exercise, give me the perfect meal plan, give me the perfect strategy. But when you just say, cool, here's what I like you to do. I would like you to sit alone with no distractions in your eyes closed for 5 minutes and people almost like recoil from that.

00;29;55;16 - 00;30;20;14 But what we're doing is as we're getting better at understanding what's going on internally, and be depending on what your protocol is for your meditation, you're learning to bring your info, your focus and attention to where you want it to be. And it just I know it sounds maybe, I don't know, base level, but think of just truly how powerful that can be throughout your life.

00;30;20;14 - 00;30;41;16 Like when I want to focus and bring my attention to something that's important to me, man. Like, I want to be perfectly I got a two and a half year old, like the days and months are flying by. Do you know he's talking? And I just I still remember and he was just, you know, a little tiny nugget and like, I don't want to I don't want to be distracted from that.

00;30;41;16 - 00;30;57;14 And it's, you know, there's everything is is designed to distract us from it, thinking about what happened at work, our phones, you know, everything going on. What do I have to do tomorrow? But, man, that is what's really important to me right now. And I'm going to do my best to make sure that I can focus that. And so you have to practice that.

00;30;57;22 - 00;31;16;28 You have to practice not getting distracted and so, you know, that's that's for me what's most important. But for others, it could be, hey, I really want to dial an interview. I want I've got to get up for again, our special operator community like I've got to be perfectly dialed and focus for this mission because it is literally life or death.

00;31;16;28 - 00;31;32;26 Right? So like imagine being able to to bring your focus and attention where you wanted to be. So I'm from a kind of awareness standpoint. I think that's that's a great place. Do you have to kind of the book ends of the day for the proactive and retroactive of those are great places to start there a little easier, right?

00;31;32;26 - 00;31;54;05 You're a little further removed from, you know, the real time kind of chaos of of life. And then, you know, the meditative component or the stillness practice, there's a bunch of different ways you can do that, but just sit alone and with with nothing, no distractions for a minute, for 2 minutes, for 5 minutes. And and that can be really, really powerful.

00;31;54;05 - 00;32;24;16 So that's from a reflective or awareness component and then from a regular literary component, especially in an in the midst of kind of needing to get myself up or bring myself down. We love starting with breathwork, and it's really the simple strategy is the longer your exhale is especially and compared to your inhale, the more signals it's going to send to your brain that you can be in this rest and digest state.

00;32;24;20 - 00;32;54;26 So if I have a nice like an elongated exhale there, that's going to start sending signals that, hey, anxiety isn't really what I need here. I don't need my brain and my thoughts to be going a million miles an hour. I just can be calm. And then it's quite the opposite. Like forceful, short exhales you think of like things like athletes or like I always think of like a bobsled or like they slap their legs and then go, right.

00;32;54;26 - 00;33;17;01 They're actually up regulating so we have, you know, a ton of different protocols that can go as long as 25 minutes. They can almost put you in a bit of a euphoric state. When you get there. Yeah, but just like short, you know, power breathing, that kind of stuff. Like is, is kind of the, the simplest way to break that down and utilize your breath.

00;33;17;01 - 00;34;03;09 So most people, I would say throughout the day, breathe too quickly and put themselves into more of this kind of fight or flight stress response chronically which does not serve us. And so most people, we could benefit from slowing our breathing down just in general. And for those that are like colony loss me and meditation but maybe, you know, I want to do something to help myself, breathwork and even just rhythmically breathing without having a crazy protocol, but just focusing a little bit more on that exhale, rhythmically breathing for 5 minutes a day has actually been shown to have the same chronic benefits as far as like morbidity, blood pressure, heart disease, all those things like in

00;34;03;09 - 00;34;24;05 a positive manner in the same way that like meditation can. So like if you're like, I don't really want to meditate, but hey, maybe I'll try that. You're just focusing on my breathing and bringing attention there that can be really beneficial. So you don't you don't need to meditate to calm yourself down a little bit. But there are certainly other benefits of meditative practices.

00;34;24;10 - 00;34;28;02 So yeah, it's so that there's a bunch there.

00;34;28;14 - 00;34;28;23 Yeah.

00;34;29;09 - 00;34;37;07 But so I wrote down some things as you were going through that stuff and so that the kind of the that stuff, I don't mean to undermine what you did.

00;34;37;08 - 00;34;41;12 Oh no, it's totally fine. My wife feels the same way. So yeah, that's about what I do.

00;34;41;20 - 00;35;05;03 It's, it's you know, the, the do more and doing right. And then it's the, it's the, the, maybe it's not what I believe so much is. It is what it could be but I'll say I believe it to be this way as it's conditioned. We've been led to believe that we have to in order to influence or persuade others that were effective.

00;35;05;19 - 00;35;28;14 I'm, if I'm doing more than they'll look at me as I'm being bringing some value. Right. And so I think there's this value component is started in this kind of play games, at least in my life stage, to realize what the value is that is actually giving me the belief that if I do more or if I do X, then I'm going to get the things that I'm expecting.

00;35;28;14 - 00;35;57;29 So the expectations that come from it. And so when it comes now to the the to the flow of thought to believe, when you say, oh, you want to do that, let's start with 5 minutes of breath work immediately. Is it is it do you find that it's because you're telling them something that's so far off when they thought they were going to hear from you as far as what the steps would be on how to get to that high performing out element of breathwork?

00;35;57;29 - 00;36;13;05 What are you talking about? So it's the resistance of what I've what I've been conditioned to believe or understand as far as what is necessary to become a high performer. Never thought about breathwork. Is it more of a resistance to what they've been conditioned to understand or is it something else?

00;36;13;29 - 00;36;34;19 Yeah, you know, that's a good question. It's certainly a little bit different for each for each of us like. Well, again, that goes back to drivers, right? You know what is what is driving the need for this accomplishment, this need to do more? A lot of it is. And this is where we talk with a lot of our clients about a lot of it is not necessarily time management either.

00;36;34;19 - 00;36;56;29 It's about attention and focus management and what you want to do. And so people just want they they want to just add more and really that the limiting factor to their their long term, especially their long term performance, not just performance in general, but like we very much about sustainable performance, right? Like we want you to have a long career in the NFL, in the MLB.

00;36;57;04 - 00;37;12;10 We want you to come home from all the missions. We want you to be able to you know, continue to achieve what you want to in the workplace, where whoever we're working with, it's all about sustainable performance. And yeah, in the short term, doing more can give you more. You get you get more ROI, right? It's a media.

00;37;12;10 - 00;37;34;18 It's also like the same thing of like, oh, why people more people will exercise till the cows come home and CrossFit are the day away and all that kind of stuff. But it's like really the limiting performance to what you want out of your fitness right now is just nutrition. And that requires restraint and that concept of restraint is, I think, where people really, really struggle.

00;37;34;18 - 00;37;58;20 And so, you know, it could be they've been brought up with our culturally or from family, from childhood. A lot of the stuff that we work with is, is, is your stems from that. But, you know, for whatever reason, it's like I've got to hustle culture, right? That's also like media. It's like hustle culture, hustle culture. And and so it's slowly starting to kind of shift back a little bit.

00;37;58;27 - 00;38;31;27 So we're fighting against those expectations. But I think it's that element of restraint that people are really challenged with. It takes it sounds weird, but it takes more willpower for a lot of folks, especially people who are achievement oriented. Like you don't get anything back right away from sitting along with your thoughts for 5 minutes, just like you don't really get anything back from eating one vegetable bowl like you had a bunch of vegetables over time and suddenly, wow, there's a lot of these wonderful benefits, body composition, blood pressure, you name it.

00;38;31;27 - 00;39;02;04 Right. So, yeah, it's it's this we deal with that concept of restraint and helping people to understand the value that like doing less now over the long term is going to pay dividends because you're not going to be burnt out and tired all the time. From Go, go, go. And because you're going to be more present in the time that you do go and do things, you are more efficient at it because hey, you're suddenly more understanding of how you operate internally.

00;39;02;09 - 00;39;06;03 And so you can navigate a lot more different scenarios of that makes sense.

00;39;06;11 - 00;39;45;08 It does 100%. I'm recalling what and I probably everybody that we talked to, whether it was John or Jan or Anthony I'm Stefan and now you it's implying we'll just call it as a break taking a nap. I mean, been talking to John so you're saying is taking a ten minute nap is going to be beneficial because you're going to reset and the optimization of time is instead of staying awake for 24 hours because you believe it's going to give you an opportunity spend more time doing more but you're going to be slower at it less efficient and probably risk injury in some capacity whereas if you took you know in this case context the ten minute

00;39;45;08 - 00;40;06;27 break or nap, you can refocus your body can kind of reset, recalibrate. This is kind of the same thing it sounds like is what you're doing is the same level of decision making that goes into deciding to do something. The restraint component is to say the temptation to feel like you got to do more is the same thing.

00;40;06;27 - 00;40;10;27 Is the temptation is to not take a break. Would you say.

00;40;11;13 - 00;40;14;08 On vacation, spot on, spot on.

00;40;14;23 - 00;40;35;21 The view out there, they're saying that your work life balance is an element of understanding this and that it's tough for whatever it starts with you. It sounds like this is what directing is internalizing, which is the friction part reflection. It's your self. If you understand how you can self-regulate you're saying the biology, I guess, is probably the best way to say it.

00;40;35;21 - 00;40;46;21 Through these practices, these techniques, you're going to see the benefit that can be comparable to allow you to make decisions differently to know what sustainable even means, because you'll feel it over time.

00;40;47;18 - 00;41;08;08 Yeah. And this this is where for me, it's been really rewarding to dove into a lot of the stuff and putting it into practice for myself because this isn't just for sports, you know, you see the application there, right, of understanding your own abilities and, and having that ability to regulate and calm yourself down in stressful situations, you know, fourth quarter scenarios, that kind of thing.

00;41;08;08 - 00;41;29;15 Right? You're going to have an edge over your your competitor right? In the workplace, you know, the ability to kind of have that that ability to stay calm in stressful situations, to be more creative when it's, you know, when the necessity arises to be able to problem solve because you've created that space for yourself to be able to do that.

00;41;30;09 - 00;41;48;24 It's going to be critical and certainly just to be a better partner. Right? Oh, I I'm in an argument with my partner. Right. It's it's it's you know, I think what a lot of folks will say is you're never going to find that. You're not going to argue with just the ability to to come to a common understanding and commitment.

00;41;49;07 - 00;42;10;00 It's not snapping and saying something that you regret later. Right. Because you said, oh, I'm I recognize this internal state. I understand what I need. I can call myself down and I can then respond, not react. And so, you know, it's it's the ability to bring that to whatever scenario. And yeah, it's it's less about going and finding.

00;42;10;06 - 00;42;26;08 I mean, yes, they're breathing protocols. But you said like just breathing rhythmically is going to give you a benefit, right? You don't need to even have a perfect protocol for you. And just creating a space for yourself is is going to be really just so powerful. So.

00;42;26;20 - 00;42;37;06 Yeah. Yep. Okay. Well, we scratched the surface, clearly, but anything else to touch on before we close?

00;42;37;24 - 00;43;16;05 Now, I just I hope that people take some space after listeners for themselves and just see what happens. Be curious about what's going on in inside, and that's just going to help you in so many ways. You know, it's, it's and can be really rewarding because you're just being more present with yourself, with those around you and then, you know, finding those strategies that work for you once you understand where you need find those strategies and you're going to find that, hey, I'm, I'm at my best a lot more frequently when I'm able to do that.

00;43;16;05 - 00;43;23;19 So yeah, go ahead and just take some time and try doing nothing for a minute. See what happens though.

00;43;24;03 - 00;43;26;03 You're doing nothing is doing something. Yeah.

00;43;26;13 - 00;43;26;22 Yeah.

00;43;27;01 - 00;44;02;00 I've learned that when it comes to decision making, when we don't take a position on certain things and then when we sit and lay on the grass and look at the sky and you actually imagine how nice it is to do that and you forget so. Mm. So thanks for that call and thanks for your time. I will, I will say this and take an opportunity to challenge anybody listening then, you know, 30 days try for 30 days, you know, a minute, 5 minutes a day for 30 days journal it just, you know, jot down how you felt before you did it and then when you made the decision maybe jot down why you made the decision

00;44;02;00 - 00;44;24;18 to do it. Try it 5 minutes breathwork. If you're not completely sure what that means, you know, find out from EXO's, go on site, find out what's available, maybe Google some things do do whatever it takes unless you have a resource immediately available where you can ask that person Hey, how do I do this? Find out, do for 30 days and let us know what you get back, you know?

00;44;24;19 - 00;44;30;19 So Colin, if you're up for it, if, if anybody wants to reach out and connect with you, what's the best way?

00;44;31;18 - 00;44;52;08 Yeah, I'm not much of a social media warrior, so probably I'll throw my email out there. See Young at Axios dot com and I always love talking shop. I always love talking about how we can help you. And if you want to understand a little bit more about how to reflect and bring awareness and regulation, your space man all talk your ear.

00;44;52;15 - 00;44;52;25 So.

00;44;54;10 - 00;44;56;28 Got it. Appreciate your call and thanks for everything you're doing.

00;44;57;14 - 00;44;58;00 Yeah. Thanks, Chris.

00;44;58;17 - 00;45;00;08 All right, everybody, keep moving forward.

In this episode we're talking emotional intelligence. Building up from previous episodes, we're connecting a flow of developing our skills to be better contributors to common goals, team dynamics, and personal growth. EQ includes important abilities like recognizing what you observe, how you react, and how others perceive you. Want to improve? Are you interested in becoming a greater asset to those around you? Take a listen and we'll support you in that effort! We have all we need to become the person we want to be…let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent as we continue the mission to serve. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode and please remember to check in on your buddies and family. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript:

00;00;08;00 - 00;00;28;29 You're listening to the Oracle Maven podcast, where we bring people together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight employees, partners, organized actions, and those who are continuing the mission to serve. Welcome to the main podcast. I'm your host, Chris Spencer, and in this episode I'm joined by our co-host David Cross, senior vice president and SAS, chief information security officer within Oracle.

00;00;29;08 - 00;00;50;26 In this episode, we're talking emotional intelligence building up from previous episodes. We're connecting a flow of developing our skills to be better contributors to common goals, team dynamics and personal growth. IQ includes important abilities like recognize what you observe, how you react, and how others perceive you want to improve. Are you interested in becoming a greater asset to those around you?

00;00;51;09 - 00;01;05;27 Take a listen and we'll support you in that effort. We have all we need to become the person we want to be. So let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent. As we continue the mission to serve. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode and please remember to check in on your buddies and family.

00;01;06;00 - 00;01;15;19 David's contact details are in the podcast description and you can always find me on LinkedIn Good morning, David Cross. How are you?

00;01;16;03 - 00;01;23;17 You know, Chris, today I'm a little emotional, right? What's going on in the world, but we're going to take it to a new direction here, I think, with our topic today.

00;01;23;29 - 00;01;49;09 Got it. Ten today. We're talking about emotional intelligence, why it matters. Some of the key components to consider when you're thinking about how effective are you, what are you doing to prepare yourself to go out and influence others in a way that they can see what you're asking for, they can understand it. And then more importantly, something happens as a result of that.

00;01;49;09 - 00;01;50;05 There's action taken.

00;01;51;21 - 00;02;13;05 You know, Chris, you know, I think about this a little bit is, you know, IQ, right? Or the emotional quotient or emotional intelligence II. You know, it's one of those things that is I wish could be on every resume. You're looking at people, right? But like, how do you measure it? Right. How you quantify it, right? How do you you know, does someone have you know, emotional intelligence or IQ?

00;02;14;05 - 00;02;34;21 I think one of the challenges at the same time, if you think about our history and your experience, of hiring people, what's sometimes the one number one failure that you sometimes see when you hire someone, they look great, but then they have no IQ, right? It's a total disaster. So I think is maybe something we should talk about today.

00;02;35;16 - 00;02;58;15 I think you're right. And in a lot of those components, you know, that I mean, we can break it down. There's a lot of good references. I mean, let's let's out of the gate, let's talk about one of the main ones that everybody's already familiar with, Daniel Goleman, emotional intelligence There are other resources that are self-help, like books coming from a valid, credible resource like organizational psychologists and whatnot.

00;02;58;15 - 00;03;25;05 I mean, the list is deep and you can get into the details of it from philosophical approach to the psychological facts and science and experience you know, all of those things contributing. You know, you talked about some things that were specific examples that contribute to one's ability to know how to navigate the area to where you can understand what it takes to be effective.

00;03;25;13 - 00;03;50;28 Emotional intelligence includes probably starts with, I guess, safe to say, and we can talk about it self. Right. It's it's it's it's your perspective and others perspective is basically the breakdown of the views of who's considering judging, classifying, categorizing, assessing or what have you on whether or not you're doing the things that influence others in a way where there's an honest, true understanding of what's going on now.

00;03;50;28 - 00;04;02;27 True in the sense of perception. We talked about this before. Not everything is real. You know, it's just the way that we see it. And so we just have to do the best to try to acknowledge what it is, in fact, that we're seeing or hearing.

00;04;03;11 - 00;04;25;09 Well, I think that almost brings to my brings to mind a little bit, you know, perception right? It's like communication. Right. Is saying that like sometimes how do you perceive yourself, right. And out of others perceive you. Right. And it's like it's just like communication sometimes is your emotional intelligence. Is that well, are you reading people right in how they are reading you?

00;04;25;09 - 00;04;46;05 Right. And I think it's one of the most important things is your feedback, communication, you know, reaching out to mentors is that do you really have good IQ? Well, how do you know? Have you asked anyone have you talked to your mentor? Have you gotten for asked for feedback? And I think sometimes there could be a major delta in yourself.

00;04;47;12 - 00;05;13;18 Yeah, you're right. That because this I mean, this is a series of things that we've landed on almost accidentally. But then we realized you and I realize that there's a sequence of conversation topics that will have occurred in the previous episodes leading up to this one. Right. Relationships and trust, how you define everything that you just said comes from a place of acknowledging and accepting, right?

00;05;13;19 - 00;05;35;20 You've acknowledge that somebody either you trust yourself or you trust somebody else. You've acknowledged something that has allowed you to decide where you've chosen to accept what it is that is being said. Or given right. So I'm accepting that my self-talk has convinced me because it makes sense to me, which we can absolutely unpack. It makes sense to me.

00;05;35;20 - 00;06;03;16 And so I accept it. This is how I view this. And then what you mentioned is the external influence of somebody else coming to you and saying, Hey, you have really good emotional intelligence, you have a really good ability to understand the audience, the situation, the conversation that's occurring how did they come to be able to assess that to you as from their perception based off of the other things that are almost aligned to what you're doing for yourself?

00;06;03;16 - 00;06;35;15 Right. Because you like it and you're comfortable. You might now find you lean towards that because it is comfort. So you go with that. They might have a personal motive or a preference as to how they have come to that conclusion on where you fit within their assessment based off of their rationalization. So that's kind of the, the catch 22 is you have to understand yourself well enough to trust by acknowledging and accepting the opinion of yourself and others that either agree or don't agree, but you have to get to that part Absolutely.

00;06;36;05 - 00;07;01;06 You know, it's amazing that how two different people could say exactly the same thing in a different in different ways. And the results and the impact and the emotional and emotional impact is completely different. We can go back to our military days, right? We've all seen commanding officers that they give an order and they're so gruff and you feel like you're dirty or worthless, whatever.

00;07;01;25 - 00;07;29;07 And you also have another commanding officer that you can say the way they express it. Yep. Here's an order. It's tough work. But you it feels like they care about you. It feels that they understand the pain you're going to feel from that order and you accept it completely differently. And that's what leadership is all about, is understanding the state of who you're talking to, how you communicate and really evaluating what is the person's emotions, how will it affect their emotions.

00;07;29;20 - 00;07;40;26 And it's also so important that context and it's not just the military, it's the whole world. And there's amazing differences in leadership and impact. Just based just on that.

00;07;41;13 - 00;08;05;07 Yeah, you you unloaded on that one. So there's a couple of things here. So the expectations and expectation settings, it's it's a realization of a standard, right? Or a goal or classification. Somewhere along the line, you're determining that somebody has to be a certain way to be able to do this. Whatever this is, do this job, do this role, do this project.

00;08;05;19 - 00;08;25;24 We have to determine what skill sets are compatible with what the objectives are based off of whatever it is. And I'm using these words because personally we're not walking down the street saying these things, Hey, does this person align to my objective? When you're walking past somebody walking a dog now, you have a preference. That preference has evolved from something that you talked about, where empathy plays a big part in this.

00;08;25;24 - 00;08;49;16 Right? Being able to understand and relate to somebody through empathy is to make them feel as if you care, right? And that's I can kind of the main thing is, you know, emotional intelligence can come down to, you know, several components. But one of the key ones is how you make others feel is a big influence on whether or not you're going to continue to have that relationship in the way that you want it to be or expected to be or need it to be.

00;08;49;27 - 00;09;27;03 You also talked about something for the context. You mentioned context, and that I think comes through the experience, those with more experience. It is safe to assume that they have a higher level of emotional intelligence, and it's an assumption because of the experience. We go back to the first thing in expectation, I would say, and you and I have talked about it before in context, if you and I are going into a situation where there's we're surrounded by executives, there's an assumption that because of your experience, you probably have a better understanding of what the expectations would be in that setting.

00;09;27;18 - 00;09;48;22 Right before we even started recording, we talked about junior enlisted versus senior enlisted, and I'm paraphrasing, the expectations are different, the understanding of different because the level of the role is probably assuming that they don't have yet the experience to put things in context. Therefore, they can't have the same level of IQ because of the fact that they just don't know yet.

00;09;48;28 - 00;09;50;01 They haven't gone through it yet.

00;09;50;13 - 00;10;07;28 Yeah. Spin on Chris. You know, I think we have to keep reminding of ready to go back and listen to the podcast about communication. So when you bring up about context is sometimes ah, experience, I think it means a really good scenario is that sometimes you can walk into a scenario or a situation you don't have the experience.

00;10;08;09 - 00;10;33;06 So then well how do you act? Well, this comes back in communication, ask questions because if you don't have experience and you don't have a context, you can start asking questions that can help you to understand the landscape, to understand what's going on, so that you can have the right perspective in context, in emotional intelligence to act, respond you know, engage the right way versus blindly guessing.

00;10;33;06 - 00;10;40;06 Right. You know, your favorite Seinfeld episode, never assume. Right anything, right? Because you're going to get burnt.

00;10;41;01 - 00;11;06;26 Right. Yeah. As to curiosity, I think as time will go on, you become more intimate with instinct or that gut, that gut feel. Right. The instinctive approach is if something just doesn't feel right, you know the scenario, you're going down the street walking down the street, walk into a conversation. It just feels weird. There's something off that I think also and I'm sure I read it somewhere.

00;11;06;26 - 00;11;33;16 So it's just me saying I know it's I think I've it's been stated before where that is associated. And part of this is, you know, there's these certain instincts that one has that develops over time. With the experience that evolves into what we can consider at a high level to be part of emotional intelligence. You have awareness, self-awareness, situational awareness, so like you said, walking into a conversation or something and you're curious if that is your priority is to understand.

00;11;33;16 - 00;11;57;06 Probably humility plays a big part in that you're humble enough to be curious regardless of how you feel, whether or not you're going to get looked at for asking the dumb question, things like that, where there really isn't one. If you don't know, setting matters time in a place, don't forget that. But that's part of the emotion intelligence if you're curious and and that's how you go into a situation because you're sincerely trying to accomplish something collectively.

00;11;57;06 - 00;12;22;27 We collectively, meaning the same people in the room or the people in the room, are trying to achieve the same thing. Similar things. Sincerity will drive you towards not wanting to ask questions, to learn to contribute, knowing when to ask questions, how to quite the right question to ask. We've talked about these things also. I think it's just an understanding of being able to develop that over time, gives you gives you the opportunity to know you're on the right path.

00;12;23;20 - 00;12;44;00 You know, Chris, the ah, you know, it's kind of thinking on this overall topic and maybe it could be, you know, on a landmine that someone could step into is like is the world global? Now we work for a global company you know, there are people from many different different countries and backgrounds and things like that. Different languages, right?

00;12;44;08 - 00;13;06;13 Is English the native language for everyone in the world? No. Right. And do we all have the same culture and background and gestures? No. Right. And I think this is very, very important sometimes when we work in diverse teams, right. We're not just about out of geographic of ethnicity and backgrounds. Other things is we have to be very aware of that.

00;13;06;18 - 00;13;33;04 Is that how someone's language could it we we could read it incorrectly or treat it incorrectly or improperly. And I think so very different. I won't use any of the typical stereotypical biased examples here, but is that some people could read and perceive right are a statement very differently based on language alone. And I think that's very, very important to be aware of in this overall topic.

00;13;33;24 - 00;14;08;22 100% a great great poll. It's global, right? And if we go into outdated characteristics or an understanding of where we play a part in a global role and we haven't yet been exposed to what that actually means and that that's I'm not I'm not going to begin to try to unpack that one. It's hard because there's a lot of things that you have to do and we talked about this in different ways over the last many episodes is effort the amount of effort is dependent upon your interest.

00;14;09;02 - 00;14;42;20 If you prioritize things, then the effort doesn't necessarily equate to hard or easy. You just understand it's necessary in order to achieve what you want to achieve. That's part of the issue is how much effort is it going to take to understand all of the things that are going to contribute to the success of myself and others. That in itself is probably a solid approach to understand how you can without even trying become better at acknowledging your emotional intelligence, understanding it well enough to say, here are the requirements and here's what I need to do, and then you map it out.

00;14;43;10 - 00;14;55;15 Absolutely. So we're coming back to, you know, hiring people. You know, Chris, you know, you're involved with recruiting and hiring people, you know, which is better high IQ or high IQ.

00;14;57;19 - 00;14;59;28 Yeah, I figured you were going to give me up on that one.

00;15;01;12 - 00;15;11;24 We have to have a fun podcast, right? Chris, do you want us to be boring and everyone? That's what I is it is supposed to be. I was proud to have a podcast here. People listen to Fall Asleep. Not every night, you know?

00;15;12;23 - 00;15;39;11 Yep. So I'm going to give the classic answer that I found myself acknowledging in most intelligence. And I'm saying, well, it's appropriate. It depends. Right. I would like to say that because the way that I look at it is this is the actions where there is nothing that we're doing right now that is our own right. And what I mean by that is we're reacting to somebody else's action.

00;15;40;06 - 00;16;17;16 You don't know if it's this conversation or something. A month ago. A year ago. It doesn't matter. We're reacting. I feel in that way. So it goes back to how you how you prepare in hiring, when you're looking for somebody to fill a role how you define the role requirements by restricting the explanation into a job description. Well, if you're not an excellent writer or translator of thought into words and writing it effectively to where people can now read that without emotion, they just see it for what it is and everybody walks away with the same understanding of what the requirements are.

00;16;18;13 - 00;16;33;07 You should understand that that's part of the problem if you're going to answer that question, because in that you still have to define what it is that you're looking for. And then you have to go through the verbal approach. And so now you have let's say you and I say I'm interviewing with you. I have to do everything that we just talked about.

00;16;33;07 - 00;16;49;12 I have to make assumptions on who I'm speaking with. To demonstrate something that's going to fit into your perception of what you're looking for. I don't know what that is. I just know that I read a job description. There's been somebody that talked to me about the role and somewhat of the culture that I'm the role sits in.

00;16;49;23 - 00;17;01;10 And now I have to make assessments on how do I make sure that I'm being my organic self to you. Without eliminating me from a possibility of taking the job because it's a it's a delicate dance.

00;17;02;00 - 00;17;16;28 You know, Chris, I think that's a great example, you know, and I think as both for hiring managers as well as candidates. Right. Is is hiring manager. You really want you should lay out saying, hey, this is the state of the organization. Right? It could be a very diverse organization. Or it could actually be maybe not so. Right.

00;17;16;28 - 00;17;41;22 And really so that is very clear what the expectations are. What are the needs? Right. So people say, well, I fit into that or not. Right. Likewise, I think as a candidate, you should always look and understand, right? You know, where the organization is. And so that you say, will you be a good match for that or are you going to step into something that it's not going to be where you are from an ego perspective, maybe this will not be a good match or maybe could be dangerous.

00;17;41;27 - 00;17;44;25 And I think we should be open and honest and both directions on this.

00;17;46;14 - 00;18;12;02 And in that, you defined what you can consider to be in a higher ratios of animal, emotional, intelligent individual. Right. You're recognizing these variables based off of your experience. Now, you've you've been in a career for, you know, decades to where you can understand these things. You've accumulated a lot of this information to where it allows you to leverage that and then put it to good use.

00;18;12;05 - 00;18;33;19 Maybe this is the best way to say it. And that's a fair that's a fair way to do it. Unfortunately, that's not across the board from everywhere that we've experienced. I'm sure all of us can name at least one scenario where it wasn't like that. It wasn't transparent. It wasn't a place to where you feel you can be brutally honest with each other and know that it's the position that you're discussing through dialog to get to the end state of knowing each other better.

00;18;34;23 - 00;19;07;11 I think I think you're right. I think in that case, I'll tell you this, if I had to pick one because you asked the question, I would say IQ to me is more important than IQ. And I'm not completely aware of the depths of what both of those mean independently. Of each other. I can just say from my understanding, I would choose IQ over IQ just for the basic nature of being able to relate higher probability of relating to others more often because it's all about people connecting with people.

00;19;07;11 - 00;19;10;28 And you just gave a scenario where your focus was connecting.

00;19;11;19 - 00;19;34;23 You know, I think that I think some jobs will be different, but certainly I think we're we're, you know, maybe used to or very familiar for the past in a long time here, I could say that we're working in teams and organizations in so that having low IQ is dangerous territory. Right. And people that could be really caustic and dangerous and create a bad environment.

00;19;35;03 - 00;19;53;06 But we'll be honest, right? We're not we're not our audience here. The veteran community is not just working in high tech not just working large companies and things like that. Yes. Sometimes there will be some differences so someone can be an individual right and not have to deal with others. Maybe that's okay. I'm not saying have a no IQ is a good thing anybody.

00;19;53;06 - 00;20;11;22 But I think it's like you really need to again, the context of the position and expectations. But certainly I think of that in I'd say almost all companies that having low IQ as a people manager is almost a guaranteed the plane is going to crash yeah.

00;20;11;22 - 00;20;35;24 It's there's probably a higher point of failure in that, you know, because it does I mean, people move things I mean, I'm declaring it as if it's my we know this. We don't we can't do it alone. You know, we need people around us. There's a supporting cast of crew in everything that we're doing, whether you acknowledge it or recognize it's matters less.

00;20;35;24 - 00;21;00;24 But everybody's giving us support in some capacity like we talked about. It's indirect. It could be appearing the independent of each other, but it's not everything that we accumulate is is stored information and recalled at some point, I believe so you know I think the kind of the the summary at this point is, you know, it is maybe the question for you.

00;21;01;12 - 00;21;10;07 We skimmed over it. We talked about it. But you asked me a question. I asked you a question. Should I care more about what others think or should I care more about what I think?

00;21;11;13 - 00;21;19;02 Wow. At first I was I said, oh, this is an easy answer. Then you really stop me there for a second. Right?

00;21;22;09 - 00;21;49;00 You know, why am I hesitating on this one? Certainly at first I was going to say it is it's what everyone else thinks of course. Right. But I think maybe that's you're trying to be clever here, Chris, and give me the trick question. But like what everyone thinks may not be what I really think I am. Right. And that's the maybe that's a problem in itself, right, is that I think I'm a caring, loving person.

00;21;49;01 - 00;22;05;02 But everyone thinks I'm an evil tyrant or an micromanager. Right. And I think the real answer is you have to look at both and saying, do they match? If they don't match, then you say there's a problem that you need to explore and figure out.

00;22;07;21 - 00;22;32;16 Fair, very neutral answer, but I'll take it because it's not wrong. You're right. Situational. You know, if if we if we subscribe to the theory that working together in teams, direct or indirect you know, you have to influence others. And so you have to consider what they're feeling and what they're thinking about, whether or not you're in the capacity that is necessary for everybody.

00;22;32;16 - 00;22;49;04 To feel confident in moving forward. So strength finders, I'll introduce this real quick. We've talked about it before, a scientific approach. If you can go Google it, you know, look it up. I'm sure many are familiar. If not, though, check it out. It's a fun thing to be able to assess where you're in. There's plenty of these tools out there.

00;22;49;04 - 00;23;13;11 But, you know, the defines there's four things that a leader, a follower wants from a leader, trust, compassion, stability and hope. Well, if what you had said is any indication of how any of those four can be impacted, if I don't have that in the leader, I don't have trust I don't have or the leader doesn't have the trust doesn't have the compassion, which we talked about.

00;23;13;11 - 00;23;32;26 You kind of mentioned earlier about how you make me feel. And as a follower, leader doesn't provide the opportunity for me to trust that you have there's a stable environment and then give me hope. And for those of us have jokes, hope is not a course of action, but it does play a part in whether or not you can survive in certain scenarios.

00;23;33;16 - 00;23;55;23 If we don't have any of those for it could break. So I think you're right. It's just a matter of understanding you take into consideration whether people think what or what other people think. But there is a there is a factor that weighs into how you're because it still comes back to you on how you're receiving information, whether or not yourself talking you're true to yourself.

00;23;57;07 - 00;24;01;05 It still has to transmit what other people think and you still have to process it.

00;24;02;10 - 00;24;39;10 You know, the one thing that I still think about in this area is in the question you asked is, is there still an element on what you want your your IQ to be versus your perceived IQ? Right. You know, and and that's really important. I think sometimes that of what you think saying, hey, I'm just being caring and loving and compassionate and, you know, green on the you know, the chart signal that's not everyone sees you as red, blue right.

00;24;41;06 - 00;24;54;13 And isn't that not an important element that everyone should go through on a regular basis? Right. Is just like technical skills. Right. You should have my keeping up to up to speed with my technical skills, but I may keep you up to speed with my IQ.

00;24;55;07 - 00;25;35;17 Yeah, it's a tool I you're that's great talking about that. It abs it is absolute an absolute tool that's necessary to be successful. Now, you can call it different things, you know, don't even call it emotional intelligence. Call it anything else. Like, are you able to understand things that are occurring around you in a way that you can have the same or common language used not only with yourself but with others to be able to address it in a way that you can still take your position because your skill development also is now relative interpretation of the scenario situation, words, actions, observations, all those things.

00;25;35;17 - 00;26;00;12 Right. You have to understand it and know that it's evolving. Everything is development, right? Every every scenario, even if it's it feels repetitious, it's giving you an idea of like oh, that, that equates to a trend as we defined it. What's happening similar or the same as before. And it's common. It's a trend if you're recognizing things to be a trend and you're resisting that influence.

00;26;00;12 - 00;26;20;29 But things are now changing. Now we talk about how you're not being relevant because you're refusing to accept the ever changing environment which now is limiting your ability to contribute effectively. Therefore, what you're probably going to experience is getting pushed out of the circle of that action. Right. You now you're no longer going to be wanted on the team.

00;26;20;29 - 00;26;36;10 Now you're no longer to be valued member. Now you're not contributing in a way that's relevant to the expectations and the goals set forth because you're not accepting the evolution. Now, it's not to say that you have to what it has to what I think is it means that you have to be able to adapt to it and grow from it.

00;26;36;21 - 00;26;53;25 Or make a decision. You either refuse to accept it or you accept it, but acknowledging that for yourself is you're either in it or you're not, and you have to decide. But I think that's the evolution of what you just mentioned, is you still have to pay attention to those things and then decide because you don't want to lose yourself.

00;26;54;14 - 00;27;03;13 That's what we talk about. Bring in your organic self to to the workplace or to the scenario, to the family, to whatever you have. You have to be able to adapt.

00;27;04;05 - 00;27;19;24 So, Chris, I guess this then leads to the one big question I think for the whole podcast here. And you know, I know you're an avid book reader and you know, you read way more than I do. But the real question is how can you improve your emotional intelligence or IQ? What's what do you recommend?

00;27;21;11 - 00;27;30;25 Hmm. Simple terms. Pay attention. That's it. And Dad jokes, I'll give you a dollar to pay attention. How's that for.

00;27;30;27 - 00;27;36;28 You saying I give bad jokes here, Chris? No, no, not at all. Great. I got a guy got a good read on that one. Okay.

00;27;38;06 - 00;27;54;25 Yep. It's paying attention. I mean, you and I, I mean, we I walk away from each conversation. It simply is. You know, I'm not saying that we're going into this conversation to deliver something, and that's it. That's all. It's value. No, the value is that you and I are going to talk and sincerely exchange information in a way where I walk.

00;27;55;01 - 00;28;22;25 I walk away knowing something, learning something, you know, so paying attention to that. Every opportunity that you're presented with by being present, right? If you're paying attention than your present, it's an assumption that will help you figure out how you need to adopt a different approach in order to address the things that you feel are challenging because now you're now you're going down the path of discovery.

00;28;22;26 - 00;28;36;12 When you talked about it early, you know, asking not asking questions doesn't mean necessarily to ask questions than others as much as it also means ask questions to yourself. Are you recognizing what's happening and are you talking it through to be able to know what needs to happen next?

00;28;36;27 - 00;28;50;00 Yeah. So, Chris, you know, what, Brooke, I know you think you've mentioned one earlier. What book would you recommend to people? Right, Alex? I know people love books. And sometimes resources are when you recommend to people that you've read yourself.

00;28;50;28 - 00;29;12;02 Yeah, it's my my default so early, early in what I feel is probably the best way to describe it. My transformation right is when I've hit a life stage in a career stage, too, where I feel like I felt like I needed to do something different, more what have you. I stumbled across a popular one, the emotional intelligence we talked about.

00;29;12;02 - 00;29;33;03 Daniel Goleman. I'm a huge fan of the way that not only the book explains things in the way that he's speaking to these dynamics in the book. It's also, to me, the catalyst of other other areas of skillset development that you need to focus on, right? Is introducing things. And if I were to just do it, I'm going to do this right now.

00;29;33;03 - 00;29;50;29 I'm just going to flip through the book and land on a page. And then it's the chapter is managing with Hart. So, you know, we, we just and that was random. David saw me do it, not that I need to prove to anybody out there listening, but I've randomly flipped landed on that managing with heart talk about and.

00;29;51;01 - 00;29;58;06 Everybody I saw audio I saw on. So we don't have to get into the debate whether this is a fake podcast or not. A fake.

00;29;58;10 - 00;30;10;05 Yeah, this isn't real. This is actually it's not an actual conversation's all I do. You get it. The emotional intelligence, artificial intelligence. Do you see that? That's funny. All right. Coming back in the.

00;30;10;05 - 00;30;10;25 Movie, Chris.

00;30;11;18 - 00;30;37;00 Let's keep it moving. All right. With heart sincerity. You ever you ever. And I think we've talked about the scenario before. If you ever walk into a situation, I don't care if it's a perceived stereotypical way, you know, going to use car dealer or something to that effect where somebody walks up, there's an intent, right? Somebody approaches you with a motive, you can feel it and the words that come next are scripted, not natural.

00;30;37;00 - 00;30;54;07 It just doesn't feel sincere. Right. Well, if you look at that in in its form, you can recognize that person has a job to do and they're trying to execute it based off of what has been deemed to be the appropriate process by the organization that that person's with. But you know, they're still trying to put food on the table.

00;30;54;21 - 00;31;15;20 So there's there's a sincerity in there that they're trying to manage the situation or the people with the sincerity, but having to go through some of these things that may appear to us to be crafted. Well, yeah, everything we do is almost like that. So if you can if you can develop your emotional intelligence in a way through in this case, a book that I'm suggesting I'm speaking of, it doesn't matter.

00;31;15;20 - 00;31;53;07 Pick one just to understand that everything is an introduction to something else. And so if you just follow the path of what that is, you can learn more not only about yourself, but how others are also engaging with you. And then now you can strive for perfecting your craft of human connection to where you can either mitigate that feeling by having it just calling it outright, saying for what it is, or play along you know, at the end of the day, we're all trying to achieve something, but we have to learn better on how we can connect with others to be able to achieve the same thing without having to think about whether or not it's

00;31;53;07 - 00;31;53;17 fake.

00;31;54;04 - 00;32;16;29 Yeah, well put Chris in a certainly I know that if this was a video I was watching right but they're not very good, right? Because it clearly when you see the videos, their beards are always crafted, things like that. And the hats always perfectly on. Right. So that not in this episode. So, you know, so unless they're fooling me, I don't know, they're pretty good.

00;32;18;22 - 00;32;41;18 But different topic on the book. One is that it's not about IQ, but I just kind of came across a recent book called Burn Out for Dummies. And I said, why is this important? How does this apply to said? Well, eliminate is, I think, is that when many people get burned out, their IQ II goes down enormously and it kind it becomes a fire, right?

00;32;41;27 - 00;33;02;25 Someone gets burned out or under stress and things like that. Then they start losing the kind of view of what's going on around them, how they treat people those type of things. And sometimes I think that I think of why this is a great book recommendation. Also, like to makers like people need to detect when they are burning out right because that affects their emotional intelligence and IQ enormously.

00;33;03;15 - 00;33;25;01 There you go. Detect. That's the word of the day. I'm going to I'm going to use it today. More than once. Yeah. You have to be able to understand it, to detect it. The you know, this is where it can become somewhat of a challenge because we can do it in rabbit hole. But, you know, I feel that we all have instinctive ideas.

00;33;25;01 - 00;33;47;28 They're shaped around a feeling right where it comes from. I can't explain and I know somebody can. And we can probably get 50 people in a room and 51 explanations, but you get this feeling. It comes from somewhere and then that that is, I think, the kind of the key catalyst for how you're going to be able to detect not only is it the opportunity, but be able to understand how you're affected by something.

00;33;48;15 - 00;34;21;29 We had we had brought neurologist on, on, on the show in its early stages before this podcast evolved. It was a different one, but talk about stress and his expertize in that area of Expertize was how to manage stress. And part of that talk included, you know, identifying the physiological effects and be able to recognize it early. Now, he was focused on certain part of the special operations community where your physiological response to stress was an important indicator whether or not you can be able to execute in your role.

00;34;22;07 - 00;34;40;15 Right. In I'm being ambiguous, but for those that know, they know the idea, though, is if you understand how your body is morphing or changing based off of how it's responding to a situation, then you have to be able to optimize that and control it and you learn how to do that and there's techniques to do that. So I think you're right.

00;34;41;19 - 00;35;05;12 You know, there isn't a level that you should consider. I think it's a fact that you should consider. You don't you don't have to get to a certain point to understand that detecting that early is absolutely critical to your success, because how we we dismiss it by things by saying like, oh, David's hangry, you know, his blood sugar this and it's affecting his attitude in his moonlight.

00;35;05;12 - 00;35;25;20 Stuff. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. But if somebody's saying it, that means it's already been presented. And now think about the effect some people can write it off as a joke, but now how are you going into a decision where you actually carry that in there? And are you making the right decision based off of the baseline that you should have for that type of decision?

00;35;27;03 - 00;35;43;16 Absolutely. You know, and I think it was like a military versus less formal involvement, like the the Navy's, you know, personal reliability program. We could think about aviation we could think about doctors. Is the under stress. Right? We want people to make the right decisions, right? Be very clinical, are focused. Right. And this is for all types of jobs.

00;35;43;16 - 00;36;03;15 And I think this is where emotional intelligence comes into play and very, very important. But how we can detect it, we can be aware of it and we can actually take actions. And then coming back to an element of I think, you know, I've talked about many times is that, you know, sometimes the workday can get very stressful and we can then say there's so much work, whatever it's like, that's the time you take a break.

00;36;03;20 - 00;36;15;23 You know, I go for a run, I go for a five K run, and I say I take that time at 30 minutes out. Right. And then de-stress. So then I can come back to work and make the right decisions because I remove that stress.

00;36;16;13 - 00;36;37;26 Yeah, that's. There you go. I'm going to throw it out there. Maybe, maybe we got a couple of things going on here is maybe. Maybe we bring that guest back on or bring bring somebody on or talk about stress and recognize and detect and respond. But the other part of what you just said is another element of me, because we did talk about it in some capacity.

00;36;38;07 - 00;37;04;24 I think we sprinkle it in in past episodes, but making the right decision is probably an element that we should consider talking about because then we can take all of these previous podcasts on nutrition and sleep and rest and body functions and climate work climate and all of the environmental contributors to how it affects our ability to deliver in the role that we're expected, delivering it's a good one.

00;37;05;18 - 00;37;26;07 Well, I think there's been a great episode, I think, and I think it's really excited that of of how we can continue to hear from our community, how we can kind of help everyone. And I want to call out that, hey, we're always looking for feedback, right? You know, certainly as this goes live, you know, ping us on Twitter or X or they call it now, find us on LinkedIn.

00;37;26;29 - 00;37;36;08 So my I'm on Twitter, our X, I'm on Mr. DB Cross, reach out to us. We'd love to know what you think. We'd love to know of what you'd like to hear. And we're here to help the community and that's how we grow.

00;37;37;08 - 00;38;00;18 That's it. That feedback next episode recommendations, anything we haven't gotten feedback lately, so maybe this will kick up some dust in and get us to consider what we can do more of or modify. But the it's a great up. So David, I think I think, you know, again, we started to to pull the layers back a little bit on some of the stuff.

00;38;00;18 - 00;38;14;24 And I think it can warrant maybe getting a little deeper in the future episode. So I think that's probably what we'll maybe tee up for the next season is to get into different layers because we're not so well.

00;38;14;24 - 00;38;34;18 I hope the this season that we finished the season will be, you know, good for not just us but also for the Seahawks this this year, you know, but it's kind of tough going every game. We kind of they just like every episode of their podcast here, it's like we're going to play one by one. But we're we're really going to kind of hit that end goal of reaching the Super Bowl.

00;38;34;18 - 00;38;39;12 So we want to be number one on the veteran podcast in the world. So let's keep trying for it.

00;38;39;27 - 00;38;43;05 We'll keep trying All righty. One keep moving forward.

How do we know what questions to ask? What happens when you feel like asking but don't? There is a lot going on in today's world where we either have too much information or the feeling of not enough time…sometimes both! Where do we begin to understand how we fit into a situation and take away more than what we started with? Asking the right question includes a lot of understanding about yourself, your needs, needs of others, and many more considerations and it's best to bet on yourself to know how to ask the right question, at the right time. This episode touches on several places to start. Take a listen and continue your discovery journey! We have all we need to become the person we want to be…let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent as we continue the mission to serve. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode and please remember to check in on your buddies and family. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcription:

00;00;08;00 - 00;00;27;27 You're listening to the Oracle Maven podcast, where we bring people together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight employees, partners, organized actions, and those who are continuing the mission to serve. Welcome to the Maven podcast. I'm your host, Chris Spencer, and in this episode I'm joined by our co-host David Cross, senior vice president and SAS Chief Information Security Officer within Oracle.

00;00;28;03 - 00;00;42;04 How do we know what questions to ask? What happens when you feel like asking but don't? There's a lot going on in today's world where we either have too much information or the feeling of not enough time. Sometimes both. Where do we begin to understand how we fit into a situation and take away more than what we start with?

00;00;42;08 - 00;01;00;09 Asking the right question includes a lot of understanding about yourself. Your needs, the needs of others, and many more considerations. And it's best to bet on yourself to know how to ask the right question at the right time. This episode touches on several places to start, so take a listen and continue your discovery journey. We have all we need to become the person we want to be.

00;01;00;10 - 00;01;19;24 So let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent. As we continue the mission to serve. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode and please remember to check in on your buddies and family. David's contact details are in the podcast description and you can always find me on LinkedIn Good morning, David. How's it going?

00;01;20;17 - 00;01;32;22 Great, Chris. You know, I'm always looking forward kicking off Monday morning when we record these. You know, after the weekends, this is a top priority. That's why it's, you know, exciting to be part of this podcast community.

00;01;33;10 - 00;02;16;27 Yeah, no, you're right. It is You know, some some would say that Mondays is probably the most active depending on how you set up your time. But, you know, for everybody out there, we usually kick this off when David and I are speaking early in the week, early in the morning, fresh mindset, clear thinking, and hopefully it just paves the way for the solid 40 something minutes to talk about some things that are either introducing what we had talked about before, but not in too much depth or, you know, we've now just had something transition from something we had mentioned before and you know, we think it's a good idea to dove into some of that

00;02;16;27 - 00;02;49;22 So in the past, we've talked about visibility, you know, making yourself visible to others based off of your performance in your activities. Or others can see it good, bad or indifferent. It all culminates into building and establishing credibility in the things that you're responsible for. But extend your opportunity to network. Of course, now that more people can see what value you provide, you're able to you know, provide the details in a way that they can make it relevant to the needs for whatever they're trying to achieve.

00;02;50;18 - 00;03;20;23 And then we talked about communication, and there's levels to that right? There's the verbal, non-verbal, but being effective and how you communicate these things as as you know, when we're writing certain things down, you know, a misplaced word and context of a structured, you know, you can have a definite different meaning than what was intended. And so we want to make sure that we're able to articulate things in a way that's making it relevant to the perception or the potential perception that one might take on where you stand within their circle.

00;03;20;29 - 00;03;24;23 And so today, we'll talk about asking the right questions.

00;03;25;08 - 00;03;46;22 That's right, Chris. And certainly we're going to ask lots of questions here and kind of push the envelope, you know, and some people may asking, why in the world do we try to target, you know, 45 minutes or so for this podcast, right. Well, the answer is everybody, let's be open, honest, is that because we're all runners, right? And we want to listen to a podcast that takes about 45 minutes because that's how fast we all run our ten ks, isn't it?

00;03;47;21 - 00;03;48;00 Yes.

00;03;49;06 - 00;03;55;24 Yes, yes. I will say until you actually challenge me to where I have to demonstrate whether or not going to do it that way.

00;03;56;06 - 00;04;01;13 Yeah, we're going to roll, Chris, and so we're going to push this year. Let's see if we can do a 25 minute ten K sound good.

00;04;02;02 - 00;04;28;24 Let's do it. I might be limping along there for the last part of it, but that's all right. Don't quit. Yeah. So asking the right questions, I think you would. Situational awareness. You're kind of, you're, you're not kind of you're sitting around in, in a moment and observing and then you're trying to find probably the spots that you can pick to either add value or, you know, obtain more information through some method.

00;04;28;24 - 00;04;41;19 Right. And so asking questions, of course, is is one of the ways to do that. Of course, if you sit and listen more, you probably, you know, learn more than you anticipated. But, you know, finding the right time to ask a question, I think David is probably where we should start. Right?

00;04;42;01 - 00;05;02;02 I absolutely you know, and I think it's like everything that I think is we should always be thinking about like, you know, the book Atomic Habits, right? You actually want to build a habit of always asking questions, you know, is like every day, every hour, maybe not every day, every week. You know, with things like with your managers, your peers, your organization.

00;05;02;02 - 00;05;22;16 Right. You should be thinking about. All right. Have I ask any questions today? And it's not about, you know, to play a game. It's more of that. Hey, am I delivering the right results today? Right. Am I meeting expectations today? Is my focus on the right priorities today? Right. It sounds simple in a sound sometimes not necessary, but it's it's a great mindset.

00;05;22;16 - 00;05;24;20 And so I got to build that habit with everybody.

00;05;25;04 - 00;05;49;24 You know, and this wasn't planned. But you'd mentioned the book and what's funny is this last weekend, I had I had gone away for a couple of days off grid disconnected. No, no cell reception. So it was forced. But also a convenient way to not be tempted because you just even if you wanted to connect, you couldn't. There was a book who's in a cabin there was that book.

00;05;49;26 - 00;06;07;17 It was one of the three books in the house, in the cabin. That was one that was sitting on there. And I didn't pick it up, but my eyes gravitated towards it. And you just mentioned it. So let's let's kick this around a little bit, you know, because you mentioned about asking asking questions at certain times and, you know, the philosophical approach.

00;06;07;17 - 00;06;29;15 And am I doing enough for my doing the right things and things like that? Well, maybe we kick this thing off and say, well, how do you get to that part? Right. And I believe that if you're immersed into a situation where there's intensity, pressure, stress, maybe you're not thinking as clearly as you as you could or should unless you've conditioned yourself to where you introduced it.

00;06;29;15 - 00;06;47;07 And we've talked about it before. You've conditioned yourself to have the right mindset. Right, and you become resilient in that way to know that in in in sometimes high pressure situations, I'm able to think about what's necessary for for me to be valuable in that moment.

00;06;49;10 - 00;07;13;10 That weekend, this last weekend was an opportunity for me to be able to clear, clear the room, if you will, of congestion. Right. Or you know, just high volume or high amount of activity that had me, you know, probably not prioritizing things the right way or following a path that I could make sense of the right questions to be asking at this point, given the situation I'm in.

00;07;14;09 - 00;07;23;19 What are your thoughts on how do you get to the part of understanding whether or not you need to do something different related to questions?

00;07;24;20 - 00;07;49;08 Well, let's go back again to the atomic habits like I could I'll say something that, okay, if you have a family, right, I see a significant other. You know, sometimes you'd ask the question to your significant other, like, am I doing the right things for our our marriage right now? Yes. Your kids and my I am I being a good dad or mom, you know, to the two to you right now, you guys asked your mentors or friends.

00;07;49;08 - 00;08;05;17 It's like, you know, how am I doing right now? What's your perception in sounds like, why in the world would you ask these questions? But if you take a step back right now, you know, I love to hear what your feedback process is like. Would you not want to know exactly what they're thinking when you ask your kids?

00;08;05;17 - 00;08;24;26 Like my being a good dad, your your significant other is like my being a good partner right now or your friends, like, what's your perception of me, you know, and in some ways they may be a really excited or even surprised that you're asking, but when you want to know exactly what they're thinking when you ask that question.

00;08;26;01 - 00;08;42;24 Yeah. And I have jokes in my head, if I'm asking my kids, Am I being a good dad to you? And then be like, No, because you've got to give me money, you know? So yeah, everybody wins on that one. I guess I got my feedback and they maybe get some cash it, you know, you said it the feedback, right?

00;08;42;24 - 00;09;03;07 So another, another scenario which my thoughts will include is, you know, recently if somebody is coming to you that doesn't normally come to you and they're and they're, you know, it could be a manager, somebody, some position of influence authority that matters less. But you're not used to the answering questions in a way that they aren't. So they ask.

00;09;03;11 - 00;09;21;19 So like different levels of questioning right. So, you know, you being a senior vice president, probably high level, you have an enormous amount of knowledge in the details of something wherever in the topic that you have because you've conditioned your mindset to understand that stuff. You know, it it's your it's your thing. Whereas maybe I don't because I'm not I'm not at that level.

00;09;21;19 - 00;09;38;10 I'm not exposed to it on a regular basis to think that way. So I'm a little bit more in the weeds and whatnot. So if you ask me a question that I'm not used to hearing, I may not answer it accurately, especially if it's over Slack or text or something like that written. Then I, I may answer it.

00;09;38;10 - 00;10;10;29 And then you walk away thinking a certain kind of way about my answer where it wasn't wasn't complete. I have learned in that sense to where there's some people out there that hear things and they answer a question, but they don't understand the context or the spirit or the essence of the question to be able to follow up and be mindful of the things that I'm taking the long way around to answer your your or respond to your your statement is the selfless thought that goes into wanting to know, did I answer your question?

00;10;11;05 - 00;10;28;24 Am I serving you in the way that you expect? Am I delivering the things that are of value to you? And I think if we learned to become habitual in responding to people when they ask a question you say something along the lines of and you can make it your own. Does that into your question? Was that helpful?

00;10;29;27 - 00;10;33;28 You know, that way you can kind of calibrate whether or not you did answer it.

00;10;34;17 - 00;10;51;29 I think it's a very important point, Chris, just like is that when you're asking questions, you get an answer, or if you're giving an answer to some ask you questions it's the follow up questions. There's sometimes even more important. Right. I think you just said, is that did that answer what you were looking for is did I provide you in that the right direction?

00;10;51;29 - 00;11;15;21 Getting that clarity right? That's a big part of communication. Likewise, I think when sometimes you let's say you ask your manager or a peer saying, hey, am I doing the right things for the team? No, no, you're wasting everyone's time or you're focused on the wrong things. Now, sometimes people immediately will be defensive, right? And say, oh, hang on, the most important point is saying, oh, I'd like to understand that more.

00;11;15;22 - 00;11;42;17 Speaker 2 Right. You then asked them an additional question to get the more context so you can reflect and internalizing on it. And that's the most important thing because it's there especially you now open up the door that's a positive door, a getting a a wealth of information and feedback loops in and it's a safe place to do so. You know, I know I said a million times, especially on this topic, is that whenever you get feedback you always have one answer.

00;11;43;01 - 00;11;58;06 Thank you for the feedback. You never be defensive on it. If you ever respond, it's more of like can it's about asking more questions to get more feedback in a safe way because then that you never, ever, ever want to close that door because that means you're shutting the door on your career.

00;11;59;18 - 00;12;23;24 Yeah, there's missed opportunities. I mean that there's the can we open it up? So the missed opportunity, I mean, the engagement through dialog I think is kind of a, for me, a simplistic way to approach it, right? If if relationships are key to the things that we are trying to achieve right? Because we never do it alone. We may think that that's not accurate.

00;12;24;18 - 00;12;55;11 If relationships are key to the things that we're trying to achieve, the kind of the base premise right? The the fundamentals of the foundation of that comes through the dialog where we learn more about the types of individuals that we're engaging with. And I think you just nailed it is one, the candor which you've talked about before is all is all most of us need is because if everything's good in our head, then we don't really grow because we're not being challenged.

00;12;55;11 - 00;13;14;25 You know, it's all perceptions virtual virtually, depending upon how you perceive things in the timing of things. But if the dialog isn't occurring where it's it's inconsistent of just facts, right? It's just we're just talking and I'm sharing with you based off of our, our relationship and the value that we provide each other in the roles that we're in.

00;13;15;03 - 00;13;25;00 I'm giving you information so we can together continue this to grow this relationship and then be able to, you know, how do you say drive towards common goals?

00;13;26;10 - 00;13;30;20 Yes. You know, common goals, shared goals, shared outcomes, Absolutely.

00;13;31;18 - 00;13;51;00 Yeah. So it's the you know, like you said, is, you know, taking the information in for what it is, you know, avoiding the temptation to be take it personally. I was going to say not be emotional about it. Maybe you should be emotional about it. Maybe maybe you should be upset that somebody is coming to you and sharing with you.

00;13;51;02 - 00;14;08;24 Now, delivery is also the thing. I want to I want to be clear here, right? So you have to be we learned this in the military, but, you know, anywhere you learn this tact is important, right? How you deliver it. It's not necessarily sometimes what you say, it's how you say it that carries the impact, too. So but even then, we can dissect that and say, well, that's all relative perception.

00;14;08;24 - 00;14;24;09 Based off of the person you're speaking with, how they feel at the moment, maybe the lens they have, maybe they are in a you know, not in a great mood. And then, you know, some you could say the same thing twice and it be interpreted differently each time. But depending on the mood of the individual, you're saying it, too.

00;14;24;09 - 00;14;37;12 But I think I think you're right. It's it's a matter of understanding the timing of everything that we share with each other and the information we share has got to be relevant. And you had to be able to tie it to something that's important to what you're trying to do together.

00;14;38;17 - 00;15;02;03 I think you brought up a really important point, Chris. It's they it's not just about tact. Right. And I think as we learn, it's about IQ right here, the emotional quotient. And I'm going to put that one down me. That's why we have a future podcast, right? Because you may be as factually correct and accurate as possible, but if you don't have your IQ in line, right by the the the communication flow, the result can be very, very negative.

00;15;02;03 - 00;15;04;24 So I'm going to see that on our list here for that for the future.

00;15;05;06 - 00;15;06;05 I wrote it down.

00;15;06;20 - 00;15;26;07 You know, with that said, you know, I think that there's also a little bit of the time and place of when to ask questions, right? So just like, you know, the IQ being in a safe place is that you really want to understand the and think about the context, the situation that you're in, right? Is that asking questions at the wrong time, right?

00;15;26;07 - 00;15;50;13 Can be create the wrong perceptions and things like that. And you always make sure there's a a safe place. Right. It also likewise is that knowing you know, you may get, you know, not the you may get feedback that may be painful. Right. So for example, one of my favorite things I told many mentors is that once a month, you should ask your manager, you know, what's the one thing that you're doing wrong, right?

00;15;50;14 - 00;16;06;06 What's the most painful, you know, failure, right? And you want to do it safe. That your manager gets to emotion that into a position that they're very comfortable sharing with you because you want to know the things that are the back of their mind that they're holding back. They know it's going to be painful they don't want to share it because we're human.

00;16;07;00 - 00;16;23;26 So certainly don't do this on a Friday, you know, because in a Friday, it's like, yeah, the weekend's going to be kind of miserable for you. Right? You know, the idea is like maybe doing a Monday or Tuesday. So that night you're going to go home, not feel so good, but you're going to get through it. Right. Versus dwelling on it.

00;16;23;26 - 00;16;35;07 Over the weekend. But once you get used to it, you also want to do it. You want to continue doing it, but you're going can be ready for it. So it's about planning when you perform things.

00;16;35;28 - 00;16;54;06 Yeah, it's a good point. The you know, this is classic. So time time is is a factor in everything that we're doing, right? I mean, that's I think everybody understands that if you have time for it, you try to bring it up. But here's a common thing that I've noticed. You know, maybe you've you're in a you're in a conversation with somebody like, oh, I have to go like, wait one more question.

00;16;54;06 - 00;17;16;20 And it's it's the big question that probably should have been asked earlier. But you drop it when somebody has already said that they're in a rush, in a hurry, needing to now, you know, leave the leave the conversation and then you give them this this deep question that significant in everything that's happening. And like you on the Friday, what you're saying on a Friday is, you know, sometimes you don't want to do that for whatever reason.

00;17;17;12 - 00;17;48;26 I think it's a matter of that IQ that you're talking about. The the situational awareness and we've experienced this where if under pressure the timing of it is to say, hey, we got we have to go. We have to execute well. If that's the case, then recognize read the room to recognize, you know, is this a question that I need to know the answer based on the severity of the time of where we're in at the moment, or is this something that we just table and we can learn after?

00;17;49;05 - 00;18;13;17 Or I can ask somebody else. And I think that's what it all it's an infinite loop that comes back to the individual and understanding if you're not contributing at the right level where you bring in value that's par with the team that you're in or the group that you're in, then it's probably better safe than sorry to hold the question and take it offline instead of consuming time with everybody else around.

00;18;13;28 - 00;18;27;15 That is probably already on the table. Now we can go back and pass it back to you, but you go back and say, Well, maybe everybody's thinking the same thing and nobody's asking it. And then now that important question doesn't get asked. That's a tough one.

00;18;27;26 - 00;18;40;23 Actually. I think you raise some great points here about is the timing of like in the audience when it's a one on one audience. For a larger audience, there's the times of things that you'd say that now I need to ask a question because there's an elephant in the room and no one's raising it, and that's the right thing to do.

00;18;41;03 - 00;19;05;17 There's other times that they're everyone's maybe afraid to ask the question and you need to step up and lead through that. There's also other times that you need be careful that you may have an issue with one person. You may have an issue with, you know, one thing, that thing of sometimes asking the wrong question at the wrong time can derail everything and be very damaging in saying that you may want to choose to take it offline or go to individual.

00;19;06;09 - 00;19;21;24 And so to be very careful and thinking through that. Right, is that whose impact would be the question, is it everyone in a positive or negative way or is it just one person? And being very strategic and thoughtful on that is equally important yeah.

00;19;22;08 - 00;19;44;26 Yeah. And actually just kind of rolling my eyes, looking for a way to explain it. If you're really dialed in to the room where there's multiple people or maybe it's just one, you know, that you you probably see the right person to ask the question. So maybe it's not necessarily to everybody, but then you've already identified that this person is demonstrated to be skilled in this area.

00;19;45;17 - 00;20;06;02 Let me not consume time from everybody else to ask the question that's probably most relevant to only that one person that I'm able to now be aware of, because historically we've learned that these, you know, these positions that we're in and roles that we're in, you know, we know who to go to. And we can we can target the question specifically being more efficient.

00;20;06;02 - 00;20;21;00 But that's the work that we're talking about, is to be able to share the information, to know who's bringing the value in particular areas. This is what we're talking about. You're developing a group of people around you to know who to go to for very specific things to optimize time.

00;20;21;03 - 00;20;46;09 Yeah, absolutely. Now, let's take it to the next level is thinking about best practices. And sometimes that that there's a topic, whether it's a meeting with others or topic with, you know, with a manager or a peer. And you need to ask a hard question or exploratory. Well, sometimes you want to be do it in advance and saying, hey, for the meeting later in the week, here's the questions I'm going to ask.

00;20;46;13 - 00;21;04;11 Right. Or here's the questions here's the things that I'm looking for feedback on, or here's the things that I'm concerned about, or here's things I need clarity on in how you can do the, you know, the prep work. I love I'm a big fan of pre read, right? When you're helping everybody understand is what's going to come up, they can be ready for it.

00;21;04;12 - 00;21;29;02 They can be they can think through it. They can, you know, be thoughtful about it versus being a surprise right now. We all admit that sometimes that is the right tactic to surprise someone when things are going wrong. But think about it. You know, what is going to be a tactical hit? You know what's going to be a strategic, you know, motion and the timing is is critical planning.

00;21;30;02 - 00;21;47;25 That's another one that we talk about planning, right? So you're if you know, you're going to a conference, it's a mindset you've talked about it. But drilling down into that, if you know you're going somewhere, you know you're going on a trip, you can travel you want on a plane, taking a road trip, going to a conference, you plan you prepare.

00;21;48;10 - 00;22;06;23 That level of preparation is to get you to be more present wherever you're going as much as possible. To know that where you are is what's relevant to what should be on your mind. But you've prepared for it no different in planning a conversation. And I think that's probably what some people I don't know how many I don't know.

00;22;07;10 - 00;22;24;23 Some people don't consider that and they wait until the meeting to introduce something. So they create an agenda or they say, hey, I want to talk to you next week, let me know what's good and then leave it at that with the common question that comes back. But some people just probably have become accustomed to receiving it that way.

00;22;25;01 - 00;22;46;13 There isn't a follow up. Say Hey, great. Yeah, I can try to find time. What is it that we want to talk about? You can fire that question off and help somebody grow around you to be better prepared by planting the information early on what the general topics would include. So we have more meaningful depth and substance in the conversation when we get to that part yeah.

00;22;46;14 - 00;23;01;03 Chris, I can't resist commenting on this one. It's like one of my personal pet peeves is people that as you didn't become a manager, an organization, you know, over time, if you're like, Oh, David, I want to have a one on one with you. And I'm like, all right, what's the agenda? What questions you want to ask, right?

00;23;01;13 - 00;23;18;14 Is like, I don't want to meet unless I know what's upcoming is like, am I the right person? Is can I be prepped on the questions? Are we going to be surprised on it? Right. And I think that is it's a my personal pet peeve. But I also, I think in being a better leader, being a better person is kind of like, all right, here's the agenda.

00;23;18;14 - 00;23;29;27 Here's the questions I'm going to ask so that it can be the most productive, you know, in optimized conversation versus being surprised and then it's like great questions. I need to follow up on that because I got to go look into it.

00;23;30;17 - 00;23;50;26 Right. Which delays. Yeah. And, you know, the selfish thing and I'll say that with love in my heart, the selfish thing is to think that if it happens to you, you won't feel the same way, right? If somebody comes in and drops something last minute on you, you know, it's happened to us before. It was like, why didn't you tell me earlier?

00;23;51;04 - 00;24;18;23 Or Why didn't you let me know? Or I don't know. I'd have to think about that. I mean, we're digging deep on this one because some people probably won't even be able to have our, say, courage or confidence might be a better word. I don't know. To be able to say because it's we're all based. Right. You know, David, senior vice president, you know, chief information security, these titles that might interfere with my ability where David comes to me, ask me a question that I don't really have an answer for.

00;24;18;23 - 00;24;36;24 So instead of saying it's a good question, David, I'm going to need a day to probably go back and try to find some of those answers. Instead, I'll feel compelled to accommodate the question because of the pressure I put on myself on who is in front of me. And it's my own thing. And I'm like, hmm, And now I might be reaching for the answers, right?

00;24;36;24 - 00;25;00;26 So I think I think these things that we're talking about here is, you know, we're scraping the surface on scenarios that should introduce to anybody that's caring to hear it all the opportunities to where you can simply optimize time and be courteous to others by asking questions up front but that takes preparation, which you have to have clarity, which you have to know yourself on.

00;25;01;02 - 00;25;07;06 What will it take for me to have these elements to be optimal, invaluable in other people's goals?

00;25;07;24 - 00;25;25;17 Absolutely. And Chris, it doesn't matter of what the levels are for the people, you know, the hierarchy's things like that. You know, tomorrow, Chris, if you get a you get a message saying, Chris, I want to have a one on one with you tomorrow for some urgent issues. How do you feel about that ambiguity? Right. Am I the right person you know, can I be prepped for this?

00;25;25;17 - 00;25;34;26 Right. You know, and this person would join with me. Who cares, right? You want to be ready for it. And it's really then you say no one on one because I want to know what the questions are.

00;25;35;22 - 00;25;52;24 Yeah, it's not fair. And that goes back to the core asking the right questions. So it's like, okay, great. Got it. Can you give me the top three things just real quick? I know you have to go consider it. Right? I'm acknowledging compassion and empathy. I'm saying, well, the person's probably benefit doubt. Probably too busy to give me the details.

00;25;52;24 - 00;26;17;28 And in their mind, is just doing me. They think they're doing me a favor by saying, hey, it's it's important. But now my mind's especially on Friday, my mind's world wending around the infinite loop of the abyss of what it could be. And to them, again, it's it's relative to perception. To them, it's urgent. To me, it's like, oh, I wish you had told me that in the beginning, because that simple I could slack or text you or simply respond immediately because I know the answer.

00;26;18;25 - 00;26;35;00 Correct? Yeah. Or it's a Friday. A Friday afternoon. Chris, an urgent to talk to you about. And like, I got to wait 8 hours to find out about this. You know, I was going to take off a weekend, right? Yeah. And I think that's sometimes when you play it back to people like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's quite reasonable. I should have offer that to you.

00;26;35;01 - 00;26;35;09 Right?

00;26;35;21 - 00;27;02;21 It's fair, right? To be fair, you know, and that's, that's being inclusive, that's being respectful, that's being mindful, it's being you know, the type of professional that, you know, most people would love to have. Some people don't recognize that it's a possibility because not everybody's doing it because well, a bunch of reasons, but maybe just people aren't aware or they're not cognizant of how they're they're giving the impression to others.

00;27;02;21 - 00;27;27;07 Of what they're doing. Maybe maybe nobody slow them down to say, here's what you said. Here's the one thing that you can improve on. I've noticed this last week. Right. But if you don't ask that now, you've put it on somebody else to to, you know, overflow their tolerance levels, if you will, and then feel compelled to say it through probably a higher level of emotion versus a baseline of just simple conversation.

00;27;27;23 - 00;27;50;27 Absolutely. And I think that the thing is, you know, coming back to the fundamentals here, is is we talked many times of things about, you know, listening. Sometimes, you know, the best listeners, the best leaders are the people that ask questions. Right. And it's not a challenge. Right. It's to understand. And sometimes by asking questions, people can really feel right that you care, that you're understanding.

00;27;50;27 - 00;28;12;00 Right. You're you're that you are listening. Right? Because if you ask questions versus, you know, like, now I'm just talking to you, you're nodding your head like, are you really listening to me, Chris? Right. But like but if you start asking me questions like, oh, you were listening to me, oh, you do care, right? You do understand. It's amazing how powerful just asking a few questions can be in communication.

00;28;12;16 - 00;28;45;07 I'm not my head because immediately said something that had me think of a friend of mine who introduced something that when when he and I talk, he wasn't asking the right questions right. And he'd gone through a pretty significant career and being successful at it. He's humble enough. He probably won't admit that. But when he when somebody in my mind that I hold in high regard says it not asking the right questions, I'm like, how do you how did you achieve everything that you did and not ask the right questions?

00;28;45;19 - 00;29;08;21 But so I was immediately I was listening and listening to talk a little bit because I wanted to share that. But you're right. The you know, the communication, that's another element that you factor in. And what's your what's your observing that should spark if you're in the moment, you should spark that should spark you now to realize something because you're recognizing that it's different than what you had seen in the last couple of minutes.

00;29;08;21 - 00;29;28;23 And it's initiating another desire to learn. And that's the point. I think we all get that you ask questions to learn. Some of the problem is, you know, some of us have some pride and ego or we don't feel like we can or should from the people that we're around at the moment. And so we don't. Right. And that's probably your most vulnerable moment.

00;29;29;12 - 00;29;48;17 Yeah. I'm coming back to the point is, you know, Chris, I think that you think about times that we're doing a review or presentation to one of our leaders, executives, others right. And do you like it the most when they just they nod, they quiet for an hour and they say, all right, thanks, everybody. See you soon. Okay.

00;29;48;17 - 00;30;11;02 Do they get it? Do they really like it? You know, feedback versus throughout the question, you know, throughout the presentation or review, they're like they're asking some questions, some thoughtful question, and they understand it. Oh, yeah. They they clearly we're on the same page. Oh, oh, no. We're we're off track here. We ask just sometimes just asking a few questions, even if it's that they're totally aligned, they're totally on the same page.

00;30;11;02 - 00;30;26;16 They're totally going to approve everything. A few questions gives us that validation, right? And that sometimes is very important to us as leaders. So thinking about or just anyone, right? Is how are you coming, you know, communicating back, ask a few questions. You've conveyed a very clear message back.

00;30;27;09 - 00;30;50;13 Yeah. So let's let's tinker with the. Well, let me go back and I just did what you just said. I teach back in a conversation. It's a classroom setting sometimes that where you've seen it, right? Where the you know, we we show, we tell, we show. And then they demonstrate understanding something that we're familiar with. Right. That's sort of times training and all that stuff.

00;30;50;13 - 00;31;13;06 When we go out there in the field and learn something or not, depending on who you are, but the idea, though, is, you know, you're acknowledging through, you know, repeating what was just discussed like. No, it's a good point, David. You know, it's it's when people don't demonstrate that they've confirmed or, you know, through some method confirm that they've heard what you just said before you move on.

00;31;13;06 - 00;31;32;24 I was just did that. And the intent is to be curious about it enough to where you don't have to think about that. Right. And I think that comes through putting the reps in and rehearsing on how to just a good news you heard all the time he's you know the person she's a great conversationalist. You know, she really listens.

00;31;33;06 - 00;31;57;25 And I really feel like there's substance in the conversations that we're having because before you move on to a subject, you want to make sure that it's complete. Right. And that comes through just the thing that we just talked about. You know, somebody says something and you respond. It's how you respond that kind of motivates or incentivizes somebody wanted to continue because if it's empty and like what you said in your example, you know, they just said, okay, that's great.

00;31;57;25 - 00;32;17;18 And any other questions, everybody? Yeah, you don't feel heard, which probably is another episode, you know, how do you feel heard or how can you you know what? I don't know. Doesn't matter. But yeah, I think I think it's a it's a point to where, you know, reciprocating the the you got to close beginning, middle end the story.

00;32;17;22 - 00;32;25;28 The beginning is what's the question? The middle is the conversation. And the end is the summary of what we just talked about in some brief form, depending on the level of conversation.

00;32;26;26 - 00;32;44;29 Yeah. Spin on. I think that's a great summary, Chris. I think the I think that, you know, the real question, I think at the end here, no, pun intended to. Right. Is like how do we get everyone, you know, to build the habit of asking lots of questions, right. You know, and I'll say if you're having everybody, you know, pick up the book, you know, comic habits, right?

00;32;44;29 - 00;32;52;03 An easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones. And if you haven't read the book, Chris, have you read that book yet?

00;32;52;21 - 00;33;04;05 No, I don't. I I have I have a lot of books. I read some of them, but rarely do I read all of them all the way through. So but I have it and I've dabbled yes.

00;33;04;22 - 00;33;13;12 Yeah. So, Chris, we we have to we have to build the habit of you reading all the book recommendations we make on this this podcast. Yeah. And that's not a question. It's a statement.

00;33;14;09 - 00;33;51;09 It's a fact. Right. So you're right. Yeah. I mean, it's I think the funny thing is there if I were to kind of pull that as an analogy or kind of metaphorically speaking, I'd probably analogy an example is that's indicative of conversation, right? Where you pick your spots level of interest and then that probably either excites you about asking more questions because it's something that you're connected to and your, your, you know, it's important and so you do that or if it's not that compelling for you, that probably drives your interest level too, where you don't answer the question or you don't read the whole book.

00;33;51;09 - 00;34;14;02 You know, you're looking for something that you want and then you leave, right? So whether it's conversation or relationship or book or what have you and maybe that's the things that we can consider to say it's it's never about you, really. It's always about others. And so what you're wanting to do is a goal is maybe to carry that mindset into, say, how can I serve you better?

00;34;15;14 - 00;34;15;29 Well, what?

00;34;17;11 - 00;34;22;24 All right. Good stuff, David. It's always a pleasure. Any closing comments.

00;34;23;19 - 00;34;43;17 In closing comment is I say to everyone is that starting tomorrow, start asking yourself questions. I start asking your managers questions, start asking your peers questions. Right. And you know, we're looking forward to the next podcast, too. And we're going to ask everybody at the beginning, you know, what questions have you asked yourself today before kicking off the episode?

00;34;44;16 - 00;34;49;12 I love it. Yeah. Questions. Ask them how anybody keep moving forward,