Sticking the Landing as CEO w/ Art delaCruz of Team Rubicon

If you enjoy flight metaphors, this is the episode for you! Chris talks to Art delaCruz of Team Rubicon, an extraordinary nonprofit that's shifting the future for veterans and communities affected by natural disasters. In 2021, Art filled the shoes of season 1 guest Jake Wood, the cofounder and former CEO of Team Rubicon.

In this episode, Art and Chris discuss: 

• How Art got his start as a fighter pilot in the United States Navy
• The art of navigating the turbulent shift from chief operating officer to CEO at Team Rubicon
• How making high-stakes decisions at high velocity equipped Art for the world of disaster relief in the middle of COVID
• Whether the real Top Gun experience lives up to the movie
• How losing a $40 million plane transformed Art as a leader

And much more!

Transcript

Art delaCruz  0:00  
And you're moving forward in this this idea of ambiguity that you don't have 100% of the answers, which is really a lot like taking off on an aircraft carrier. You can't control the winds, you can't control the visibility in the place you're supposed to go, you can't control what the adversary is going to throw at you. You have to take a look at what is going on evaluate what you want to do, then execute a plan to achieve the mission.

Chris Hare  0:27  
Welcome to the Storied Future Podcast, a show where I interview high-performing CEOs, experts and innovators who have put new narratives out into the world and then used those narratives to shift the future. If you want to create a future where you're celebrated not only for what you've accomplished, but for how you've accomplished it, who you took with you and who you became in the process, this is the show for you. How do you stick the landing as a new CEO? As a retired fighter pilot and Top Gun instructor, Art Delacruz knows a thing or two about making split second, life or death decisions at high velocity. But when Art stepped into his first role as a CEO, he took on a whole new level of responsibility, with over 150,000 volunteers today, hundreds of employees and countless donors and communities that count on him to take them to the next level.

Last season, I interviewed Jake Wood. Jake is the former CEO and cofounder of Team Rubicon, an extraordinary nonprofit that's shifting the future for veterans and for communities that have been impacted by natural disasters. Today, I get to interview Art, his successor, who transitioned from Chief Operating Officer to CEO in 2021. Art and I discuss his leadership journey from Naval aviator to consultant to executive, we explore his transition into the CEO seat and how he navigated the turbulence he encountered in our gives a masterclass and how to turn your greatest failure into a narrative that unlocks learning, vulnerability, and transformation as a leader. Let's dive in. 

Art, thanks for joining me on the Storied Future Podcast.

Art delaCruz  1:56  
Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. And thank you for having me, Chris.

Chris Hare  1:59  
You took over as CEO from Jake Wood in 2021. I had him on the podcast last year. We'd love to hear a little bit what that transition was like for you. And then kind of making that leap to CEO and learning to harness the power of the organization, as you've talked about.

Art delaCruz  2:14  
Yeah, you know, I think the first thing to really credit in the transition is number one is trying to fill Jake shoes. In addition to him having massive shoes as a six foot five lineman, you know, that's difficult, but an absolutely incredible leader, visionary strategic can get tactical when he needs to develop great relationships has, you know, an incredible presence. And it was obviously going to be something tough to try to fill his shoes. But as a testament to his leadership, I think across this six years, we were able to work together prior to me taking over as the COO, the beauty of the journey wasn't a sudden transition, it was something where mentorship and him allowing me to be involved him allowing ownership of some of the decision making in really, really close collaboration and vision and a willingness to challenge each other when our visions didn't meet, really set me up to at least have a running start to try to fill issues. That being said, one of the things that I've certainly learned, and this is, you know, something for any CEO, or anybody who's, uh, ascending into a new position is, you know, you have to give yourself a little grace and understand that that journey takes a while to begin to understand because again, it was a massive transition going from CEO and president to CEO because the accountabilities the responsibilities and the team working underneath you, you had to retool every one of those relationships, the expectations you had across the board, and then how you're going to interact and lead them. So it has been a learning journey, it has been a journey of growth, it has been a journey of making mistakes and learning from them. But I feel like, you know, my feet are following in succession there. And we're hitting a running clip as we move forward.

Chris Hare  4:05  
And do you recall, like, what was some of the turbulence that you hit in that transition, whether it was in within the culture, as you're taking the lead or kind of within yourself and how you lead?

Art delaCruz  4:15  
You know, turbulence is a good word, you know, because you, you fly through it, you feel the shaking, it steadies out a little bit, you know, oftentimes a little farther in the flight, you're gonna experience a little more turbulence. So it's been, it's been sporadic. But I think some of the turbulence is just, you have to naturally have an organization where there are going to be some types of transitions, the type of leadership that Jake used and the relationships he had, and the approaches were slightly different from mine. And I think that transition always takes time. I think the people you lead when you make an internal transition like I did, they oftentimes look at it and say, Alright, how is art going to change what is going to remain in his demeanor and how he leads and that becomes a part of it. The other part It was turbulent for me was just the shift in responsibilities. It Jake led the finance department, he led the fundraising, I was largely leading the operations and the volunteer side. And again, I had to learn new things and work with a different set of executives. But that was really, really exciting and that it promoted my personal growth. It gave me great satisfaction. And hopefully, it allowed the people that I worked with to, you know, take on some of those operational responsibilities. But those little turbulent pieces continue to happen. Because again, some of that's driven by the external environment, some of it's driven by the employees that you have, and the expectations they have. But you know, as a team, I feel like we can smooth out those bumps and move forward.

Chris Hare  5:44  
Love it. I know you have a background in flying and see your helmet there in the background, flying fighters, and you've talked about how that really gives you a competitive advantage. And I do want to dive into that in a little bit. But first, I'd love to understand when you first began thinking about becoming a pilot.

Art delaCruz  6:00  
Yeah, you know, I wasn't one of those people who stared up at the sky at an airshow when I was six and said, that has to be me. My journey I grew up in Minnesota is one of five kids, immigrant parents from the Philippines. And I had an incredible childhood, I was fortunate enough to be involved in sports at a young age and continuously able to play anything I wanted to had great friends, a nurturing environment from friends, the neighborhood, I grew up in to, you know, close knit families. And I think one of the things in my journey for life was because it was so fulfilling in that standpoint. And sports were a huge part of it. I went to the University of Minnesota for a year, and I basically had aspirations to try to continue sports with school. But at that level, it just wasn't going to happen. And I was unfulfilled. And we had some friends I had a friend that I grew up with, that went to the Naval Academy, and when they came back with the stories of their freshman year was drastically different from the ones when I was experiencing, and I felt a calling to have some different types of challenge. And that's how I ended up at the Naval Academy. And from there, it was exposure to all the different opportunities you had as a naval officer from submarines to being a United States Marine to driving ships and flying airplanes. And it wasn't until really my junior year that I decided, this is what I wanted to do. So no premonitions, had no idea if I was going to be good or bad at it. But I really had a desire to try something different and you know, hopefully, find a fulfilling career in IT.

Chris Hare  7:40  
And kind of rewinding to when you were a kid, what was it that you did imagine about the future? And and what did you think was possible at that time? Or was it just the very present in the moment of enjoying sports? And that sort of thing?

Art delaCruz  7:52  
Yeah, I think one of the neat things about growing up, the way I did was at a pretty early age, I learned that you were going to have to work from anybody in the Midwest is de tasseled, coin corn for 335 an hour, you know, and walked for hours. And

Chris Hare  8:09  
I did that when I was six. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Walking through the fields and super early in the morning and getting kind of like paper cuts on your eyelids from the corn paper cuts,

Art delaCruz  8:17  
getting stung by bees, you know, because of the random sunflower seeds, but you began to learn that hard work could be rewarded, you know, and it became for me, the ability to pay back a co signed loan, my dad decided I told my dad I wanted a Hobey cat a sailboat because I wanted to learn to sail and he co signed a loan and, you know, I'd walk through the field and work at McDonald's to like make that $110 a month to pay off that loan in 13 months, I think it was. But you kind of learned that you had to work had to have conviction. Academics was something that was always stressed in my family. So I knew that was a part of it. So hard work was really something I think I learned. And then the other component that I think I learned is you have a real controlling stake a majority stake in your future. And one of the things I learned at a young ages, you either spend your life trying to be lucky or you make your own luck. And I think that was one of the things that allowed me to leave essentially, an academic scholarship at the University of Minnesota, to go to the other side of the country and be the first person in my family and really amongst my friends to join the military. And I knew it was a significant move from the looks from my parents to my friends. When I said hey, I'm I'm leaving in July and I'm joining the Navy. The surprise but then, you know, four years later as I got commissioned as an officer, they could kind of see that. It was something that was going to serve me and hopefully the country well.

Chris Hare  9:52  
So after you graduated from the Naval Academy, I know you went on to become a naval flight officer. Love to hear a little bit about that. Understand What plane you flew? And yeah, so let's just start there.

Art delaCruz  10:03  
Yeah, so they have something at the Naval Academy called service selection and you decide what you want to do. And in my case, it was aviation. So I went down to Pensacola, Florida, I went through the initial training for a naval flight officer, and then you the next wicket you jumped through is what type of airplane you're going to fly. And I was fortunate enough to select be selected to join the fighter community at this point in time. And this is in the 1990s, you know, five or six years after the first half gun came out. And here I am, you know, in the pipeline to learn to be a fly F fourteens, which would take me to Virginia Beach. And that's really where I'd get the first half of my career was flying F 14 out of places like Oceana, Nevada, you know, off of carriers on multiple deployments. But I think it was really, really unique to have this opportunity to be in such a dynamic aircraft, because it really began to train me and helped me to understand strengths and weaknesses I had in the ability to make decisions at a rapid pace and execute in the airplane. The other unique piece that it gave me is, at the same time you were honing your skills to fly this incredible airplane, you're also honing your skills because you have responsibilities to lead. Young men and women, sailors who it ages as young as 17 have raised their right hand do you have a responsibility to ensure their career progression, their safety, their ability to contribute to the mission? And that obligation was really, I think, unique for young person who just graduated from college.

Chris Hare  11:42  
Can you talk a little bit about I'd love to hear kind of the first if you remember the first time you took off of a carrier the first time you landed? What was that like? or just in general what it was like? 

Art delaCruz  11:50  
Yeah, it's, it's something you'll never forget. And I remember it was off the coast of Virginia Beach, or in an F 14 We're doing carrier qualifications where the new pilots were taking off and landing and they had to get day traps, arrested landings and night traps and catapults. When I was flying with a guy named Butch Jones, you know, he had an incredible reputation in the F 14 community and incredible as an instructor, he had an incredible track record. And I'll never forget seeing the carrier off the coast emerge out of a bank of fog. So one of the things you always worry about is the ability to land and see the aircraft and there was a big worry that we'd have to do a fully instrumented landing. But we're up there flying over the ship, we see a couple of pockets. And we're actually directing the captain of the aircraft carrier in these different directions to get them into these little pockets in the fog, where you'd have the ability to run the ship and get the wind over the deck that was needed and land and launch airplanes. And then they turn around and reset in these little pockets of clear air so people wouldn't have to fly in the fog where they wouldn't be able to see the aircraft carrier. So certainly remember those I remember the thrill of the first arrested landing where you're going from 140 miles an hour to zero and the thrill from going zero miles an hour or 250. You know, in the span of under a football field. All of that is kind of ingrained in your brain, just this physical feelings and the vision that you have around you. And now, here I am probably 12 years after that last takeoff and landing. And you remember just how exciting and neat it really was and how lucky I was to be able to be a part of that for some 850 takeoffs and landings.

Chris Hare  13:41  
So I believe it was 1998 You made the leap to Top Gun instructor. good looking dude. I'm curious what it was like for you showing up on your motorcycle, no helmet on and chasing an F 14 down down the runway at sunset. What was that like for you? 

Art delaCruz  13:56  
Wow, that wasn't even a remote expectation as I sat there as a senior in high school watching it for the first time. I'll tell you what it really looked like I drove into a town called Fallon, Nevada, which is basically, I don't know, an hour and a half away hour outside of Reno, in the middle of the desert top kind of had just moved from San Diego with the glorious beaches, the volleyball scenes and the motorcycles to this desert. Call it Oasis outside of Reno. And I remember pulling into the grocery store and the first scene I saw was a little kid in cowboy boots, a cowboy hat in a diaper with to cap guns running through an aisle in the store. And I remember thinking to myself, What did I sign up for to live here in Fallon, Nevada, but it would turn out to be one of the greatest tours I could ever have. Because of the people that were there, this unbelievable commitment to being the best you could be and this unrelenting commitment to each other to make sure in this small cadre of instructors that you were going to do everything you could to create the best tactics in the world to ensure survivability and Mission Success for fighters and strike fighters across the Navy fleet. So it was really, really incredible, but it was void of motorcycles, you know, volleyball and meeting, you know, a ton of women.

Chris Hare  15:25  
What were some of the commonalities that you saw during your time in the Navy, but especially there across those leaders that succeeded,

Art delaCruz  15:33  
You know, it varied, I think, just like any environment that a person gets into, especially when you're being mentored or you're seeing senior people above you, is you learn from people how to do it, and you learn from people how not to do it. And there were some extraordinary, extraordinary examples of people that just gave you little tidbits of information that allowed you to understand beyond what you could do in the airplane, beyond the lectures you give, how to be a great officer and how to be a person that people would follow, instead of a person that commanded. And I think they're really, really different types of leadership. And there's one person that I'll attribute to that was actually in the first quadrant, one of the first quadrant that was in, and then he would subsequently we'd be Top Gun instructors together, a guy named Bob Sanders, his callsign was Colonel, just a really, really insightful and amazing leader. And the first piece of advice, you know, he gave to people generally was, pardon me for being a little bit raw here. He said, your job is to go into these environments, and never leave the room and give anybody in that room a reason, as you walked out the door to say, that guy's an asshole. Yeah, you know, he concentrated on awareness of how you make people feel. He concentrated on how you create awareness. And this idea that people don't want to fail, not just the mission, but they don't want to fail you. He created, you know, this incredible environment where you teach people, you know, when he's really, really high performance, you know, like, you're pursuing these extreme standards. And you can take a type A personality, and make them feel like complete dirt when the reality is they're at the top of the game, how in these high performance moments, you can adjust your leadership style to be able to follow and then you had other people that only had a singular toolbox in their leadership style, which is, I'm senior to you and rank. I say you do this, follow me the way I do it. And that was kind of the end of the discussion. And I think for high performing organizations, which Topcon certainly was, the real trick isn't about just teaching people how to do things. It's how to unlock that ability for them to have this continual curiosity on how to be better this continual pursuit of excellence in this kind of dedication, that continual learning that really unlocked the best instructors. And I think the other piece of instructing is Top Gun isn't about creating naval officers that are going to be the first people sent to fight a war. It's about how do you create the best instructor so they can go into an environment and create the tide that lifts all the boats in an individual squadron from the youngest brand new nugget, as we called people on their first deployment to the most senior officer to say, these are the latest tactics, this is how we're going to execute. This is what the book says and how you should perform and then have the ability to teach, create these after action moments where you mentor people, and use every single ounce of gas that you had in the airplane, review relentlessly and be ready to do it better than next time.

Chris Hare  19:00  
So obviously, humility plays a huge role in that. Which is interesting, right? Because you're the best in the world at what you do. But there's also a humility of, I'm going to train others and help elevate them, right.

Art delaCruz  19:15  
I think, at least the view I had was humility was your outward demeanor, it's how people would characterize you. And it was very, very different from confidence. And the real trick is to have this cockiness and this arrogance about what you can do because again, that's that confidence is contagious. That confidence is a byproduct of studying and practicing and talking to as many people as you can. So I think it's a fine line as you walk between, you know, humility and confidence. The real question was, you know, humility is a really powerful teaching tool, and humility, as you'd sit in front of people And as you train them, you can empower them to have the confidence that was going to accelerate their personal growth. So one of the things that we often talked about because again, you risked the ability of accepting something that wasn't optimal in a debrief as an example, is we always talked about something called I called it bookending. And you start out with this idea that you say, this is how the flight went. And you know, generally in a debrief, you'd say, X number of airplanes, the following things, then I would concentrate on a couple of good things that the student did, Hey, you did an incredible job here. And then you turn the mirror on yourself, and you begin critiquing your own performance. So you've gone from this is what the flights done. And honestly, it's a, an assessment, we won, we lost, we tied, whatever it is, you know, these are the things that I think you as a student really performed? Well, I'm really going to show you the things that I think I can be better at my communications were bad, my radar was, you know, had some work that positioning. Because if you could do that, then you turn the student on the other side of the table, that student that is you have this temptation where they're saying, I'm going to be graded, how am I going to get an A, B, C, D, E, or F, I guess you don't have these. And now they're going, okay, these are the things I did well, and these are the things I could do better. And here's what I want to do next. So you go through this piece, and then you'd finish it up and say, Hey, this is overall, this is how the flight went. And these are the things we could do better. And you could throw that student and nugget to say, Listen, I really appreciate any close it out these things you did well, and these are the things that you're going to do awesome the next time and you're off and running through this. So you're walking that for the student you're teaching, you're balancing the critique piece, which again, was where humility is really, really important. And then you're not swaying from the standards that will get everybody to excellence, but you're delivering them in a manner where a lot of it is self revelation, because you can always commend a person for going, Wow, I could have done this better, instead of just sitting there. And breaking out the belt gun of things they did wrong in a let them walk that journey. Because again, that's a big part of improvement. One of the things we pride ourselves on when we are there is just this relentless commitment to winning. It's one of the things that really perplexed me when I took off my uniform as you'd walk into environments where people would say fail fast, fail fast, fail fast. And it was so counterintuitive to me, because I just spent 22 years where the cost of failure was high, you're gonna kill yourself, you're gonna lose a jet, you're not going to perform the mission, you're gonna get shot down, whatever it is, all of those things were so high, that it really got me thinking about this idea of failure, it became a competitive advantage for me, because you always sought actions and outputs from those actions that will get you on the winning side of the equation.

Chris Hare  23:14  
Last time, we talked about the importance of planning, and with admission, and then how everything shifts, the minute you take off, can you talk a little bit about that?

Art delaCruz  23:22  
Yeah, probably a good construct for that is to think about a typical flight at Top Gun, they will give you a scenario, you might fit spend five or six hours planning for the mission, you know, on top of that is hundreds of hours are really beginning to understand the weapons, the airplane, the employment tactics. So you've done all of that, you will brief for an hour, you'll pre flight for an hour, you'll fly for one hour, and then you'll spend five or six hours debriefing the flight. That's where the learning happens in reexamining what has happened in the airplane, and then critiquing in front of everybody what you've done. So you have this mutuality and this commitment to excellence, where you're not just learning from what you did or didn't do. You're also learning from what your wingman did, from what the instructor did what other people did. So you have all of these different inputs that allow you to categorize things, you could do better things that are going really well, the things you did right the things you did wrong, the things you have to dive into the books for. But it's all kind of steeped in this preparation and continual learning, because every one of these hours of flights done properly becomes 10 hours of learning on the back end. And that's I always think of Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours. In theory, you can race to 10,000 hours, much quicker if you actually take the time to reflect. If you actually take the time to dissect. You know what has happened if you actually take the time to ask other people for their perspective, one hour of action can become have multiple hours of learning. I don't know that it necessarily applies to hitting golf balls or baseballs. But certainly, I think in these high stakes environments where it's costly to rack up those hours, you can't leave anything on the table in these reviews, and debriefs are incredibly, incredibly important.

Chris Hare  25:18  
And how do you carry that with you now and apply that now?

Art delaCruz  25:21  
Yeah, I think you know, that idea that you do everything you can for the plan, and then execute and evaluate has been incredibly important for me, I'm convinced in the biggest event that really kind of convinced me that it's, it's served me well, my background was COVID. So when March 12 2021, COVID hit, it felt familiar to me, it felt like strike planning on an aircraft carrier, where you said, this is what we have on the carrier, this is what we can do. Let's retool the organization and let's move forward. And you're moving forward in this this idea of ambiguity. And you're moving forward in this idea that you don't have 100% of the answers, which is really a lot like taking off on an aircraft carrier, you have some type of mission you plan to perform, you can't control the winds, you can't control the visibility in the place, you're supposed to go, you can't control what the adversary is going to throw at you. You can't control the condition necessarily of your airplane and your wingman airplane, all these different variables are there, which is when you have to take a look at what is going on evaluate what you want to do then execute a plan to achieve the mission. I think all the time about the ability to look back on COVID. Now, three years later, and you know, staring at the COO and Jake, the CEO, and then the chief program officer, David Burke, and we kind of made a commitment to say, Listen, Team Rubicon cannot just survive COVID We have to thrive in it, which is a very, very different mindset in driving an organization forward and ambiguity. And I am convinced it happened. And it was a byproduct and it's reflections of moments flying heavy steel over over a you know, bad guy country and you know, training over the ocean?

Chris Hare  27:12  
Well, I think what I'm struck by is, as an outsider looking in and you see the movies and things like that of, hey, that's what they do all day is they do the thing that brings them glory, and they're flying and all these things. But really, the reality is most of the work is not in the cockpit. Most of the work, like you said is up to all the preparation work, and then the debrief afterwards. And that's a critical part of it. But all of that work that goes on behind there that prepares you for that, I think is really powerful.

Art delaCruz  27:38  
Yeah, certainly. And I think one of the things that you begin to do, through dedication to training and understanding of the airplane and the tactics is now you're beginning to eliminate things you need really need to think about. One of the things that always impressed me about really, really skilled aviators and I consider myself middle of the pack, at best, there were people over the course of my career, that it was impossible to overload their cognitive ability. If you're listening to four different radios, you're in an airplane in your mood, maneuvering it in three dimensions, you're managing your fuel flow, the weapons you have, you're taking into consideration, things like the energy state of other airplanes that you might be fighting all of these different things. And people weren't overwhelmed. And you see it in people who can really slow down situations when things go haywire. Because again, they really understand and don't have to think deeply about the things they can control, I can control what I'm going to do with the airplane because I did my studying, I did my training, I can control all of these different things, then you can concentrate on the variables where you can make a difference. If I do the following, I can change the outcome versus being Sisyphus and being that person who kind of presses on that rock and pushes up the hill with this inevitability that it's going to roll back down. So I think that's the other piece is put yourself in a position through familiarity through practice, through discussions through rehearsal through mentoring, where now you give yourself the space to really identify what you can control and then make decisions for you in the organization you lead or the people you lead to begin to influence the outcome of your actions.

Chris Hare  29:28  
So is there a specific exercise or mission that comes to mind where something really went sideways? And I'm kind of curious what happened and how you responded?

Art delaCruz  29:37  
Yeah, I think you know, if I was to look through my flights, the one that definitely went sideways, was a training flight. I did it Top Gun. It was a basic fighter maneuver, flight and we are doing a very, very aggressive. It's called a perch that basically, you position another airplane directly at your six o'clock right behind you. There in a salute Shouldn't where they can employ multiple weapons. And at the start of the training exercise, which is called fights on, you basically start to maneuver the airplane as violently as you can to make sure that they can't get a solution and they're literally in your knickers right behind you. It's the pit bull chasing you down the street, you know, and you can feel its breath on your heels. And we're doing this. And in the first maneuver, you know, high G, we have once one engine stalls, the second engine stalls. And this is incidentally, the only thing that's true about the first Top Gun movie is you know, we find ourselves over the Nevada desert in a flat span, and for 52 seconds, with no engines running and our wingman diving down and walking through the emergency procedures stick forward neutral, that'll harness like red or opposite. We hit the minimum altitude and we eject. And I remember staring at the ejection handle, we're spinning in a fashion where you can, you can feel the centrifugal force, it's like being on a merry go round facing outward, you pressed up against the flight controls. And I remember looking down at the yellow and black handle and saying This better work, pull on that handle. Seconds later, I see my chute open up, I look down between my legs, I see the jet, which still has 16,000 pounds of fuel in it spinning towards the ground and other three times hits the deck and this giant black and orange fireball starts to come out of it. I think now I'm getting cooked, managed to steer the shoot away outside of the wreckage. But in that moment, I had millions of thoughts running through my head number one was, holy smokes, I'm still alive. Number two was this might be the last flight I ever fly. So that moment of turmoil was absolutely incredible. Like they do in the Navy, we we make it a mutual obligation to each other, where we say I will tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, you have an understanding in these boards of inquiry that there's going to be something you could have done better, nobody is perfect. And they decide if you're gonna fly or not fly again. And fortunately, I was able to fly again, they attributed some of it to a couple of bad decisions I had made in you know, the bulk of it to maintenance failure in the airplane and the practices they used to maintain it. But the funny thing about it was it turned into probably one of the best teaching tools I'd have for the rest of my career. Because you could look at every single person you flew with every single sailor that worked on your airplanes, and you could say, hey, Jesse, you know, if we don't do things the right way, this could be you. And if it is you make sure that you've rehearsed, how these things are, what you're going to do in that situation, because it could be mean the difference between life or death for you. I mean, it was a really, really neat and vulnerable way to say, Hey, I'll tell you what happened to me, don't be me. And here's how you can overcome it, avoid it.

Chris Hare  33:01  
Well, I think that also gives everyone who's a part of the process, it gives them kind of meaning and purpose and seeing how critical no matter how small their job is, right? It's critical to the team and to survival. Right?

Art delaCruz  33:15  
Yeah, everybody has a role, let alone success. Yeah, everybody has a role.

Chris Hare  33:18  
Do you recall the emotion? You know, once you have time to process that I know in the moment, you're just surviving, right? But do you recall that

Art delaCruz  33:26  
it's funny, you know, a couple of years ago, I actually ran into the person who was in the rescue helicopter that picked us up. We just happened to be on this call, I was speaking at another engagement. And it was this reunion with this guy Jack and kind of put it together, said Holy smokes. You're the guy who who picked me up from the desert. And I remember being in shock. I remember the other person being in shock. I remember being on a helicopter on a backboard. And flying from the middle of the desert to be examined by the doctors and I think physically, I'm okay. But the emotions and the blinding that adrenaline has in those moments is you're invincible from the moment you strap on that airplane and you get after it. And then you suddenly realize how vulnerable you really were through this whole thing. And then it was just everything from gratefulness to be alive to questioning yourself, you know, what did I done incorrectly? How did I fail? How did I end up putting a $40 million jet on the floor of the desert? All of these different things, run through your head and then bizarrely one of the things that really kind of stuck in my head is how do you tell people what happened? Mostly being my parents and my, my mom had always worried about the things I was doing my dad I think not as much but to have to call them up and go, Hey, just so you know, you might hear about this in the news. Here's what happens today. It was really an interesting piece as you went through it. And then through the entire process, I actually got pretty comfortable with this understanding that people were going to be fair in their assessment. It was one of those times where I said, Listen, I'm going to carry myself with the utmost dignity. And I'm going to in every one of these boards present what I believe happened, and to the best of my recollection, what happened, and kind of see where the cards would lay afterwards.

Chris Hare  35:34  
What I found fascinating was, when you're talking about losing the plane, in reflecting back on it, how you actually wrote a narrative for yourself, or that was grounded, not in despair, or, you know, failure, but you chose to view it through a positive lens, right, and chose to allow that to grow you, right? I'm curious how, how you approach, you know, narrative at Team Rubicon, you obviously the majority of your team is volunteers. And I know, you really learn to lead, as you said, by influence within the military versus just do what I say, right. But when you're rallying your employees, and all of these volunteers around this shared future, what what role does narrative play in that for them?

Art delaCruz  36:22  
Yeah, I think it's incredibly important for the entirety of the organization. And I like to view and I hate to use such business jargon. But our volunteers are probably our second most important customer, we have to obsess over those customers, we have to make sure that they have ownership of the mission, we have to make sure that they feel included, we have to make sure that their time is valued, because ultimately, that's the gift they're giving us. They've got 1.4 million other nonprofits, they could volunteer for in the US, and somehow they pick us, somehow, they say, I'm gonna give you my time for free, and I'm going to help somebody, I probably don't know, I'm going to do physical work, I'm gonna do mental work, I'm going to give my gifts to tie myself to some type of outcome. And I think in my role of CEO, I just curate that it's really about the other volunteers, it's about the brand we've built, it's about our culture and our commitment to service, I run as much a risk of getting in the way as not, I don't know is getting in the way as much as failing to encourage that culture. So it's, again, a fine balance, where it's not so much me, as a leader. It's me as a leader assembling a chorus of 1000s of volunteers and volunteer leaders and a small staff of 200. To say, let's, let's accomplish this audacious vision that Jake would set out to start 13 years ago and see if we can't help more people. So I think all of this comes together in a way where you have to demonstrate that you're a servant. And for me, in particular, and the people that get paid do a staff to be part of Team Rubicon is we have to focus a lot on not only delivering services to the clients who have unmet needs. But we also have to ensure that these volunteers have a great experience. One of the things I tell people is, I don't run a nonprofit, I run a for impact organization. And people who give us gifts, which is money or time donors or investors give us money, volunteers give us time, my goal is to show them that what we have at the end of the year, or the end of an operation is greater than we had at the start of it. I can say this volunteer had a great experience, and they're going to come back as volunteer became more empowered and curious. They're a better leader. And now they're teaching people to do something, I can look at a donor and say, the roof that you helped us build in Puerto Rico has now survived a tropical storms and the family is still dry, their kids go to school, their belongings haven't been destroyed. You know, those are investments that are really, really incredible, which is I think, for us in particular in disaster response is significantly different from donation in that moment is the goal is to be able to show across the entirety of an organization that we will be better positioned for the disasters that are inevitably going to come because we have more people that are ready to volunteer, they have capabilities, and they're trained to do more, because our brand is strong will continue to grow and the number of volunteers we have and because of our reach, we can do it in more places. You know, ultimately, that's what you hope to do and building an engine that can serve in an environment where we're going to need be needed more and more.

Chris Hare  39:52  
You know, it's pretty remarkable what you all have built. You know, I got I texted my neighbor earlier this week. So we've got wildfire smoke coming in like it does every summer, unfortunately. And I texted him, I said, Hey, do you need me to seal your windows up? Because he was out of town? And he said, No, we're good to go. But thanks to you, I'm teaching a Team Rubicon chainsaw class in New Mexico, right. And then he followed it up with a photo of everyone that had been in the course, right. And what's powerful to me is seeing all of the folks who come, you know, I know you have a huge core of people who come from the military where they have structure and purpose. And then when they leave the military, a lot of that can go away overnight, or my neighbor's case, he's a retired police officer. And when he learned about Team Rubicon, he just dove right in and absolutely loves it, right. But it provides that sense of purpose and that sense of community. So you and Jake, and everyone else are to be commended for how that you truly do make it that they are one of your most important customers, and you prove it. So

Art delaCruz  40:53  
Yeah, I think that it's a testament of it, you know, if he has a great experience and comes back, you know, those the number of hours or the, in this example, maybe he taught six different people to be soldiers and those soldiers will serve for years to come. I mean, that becomes incredibly, incredibly valuable. One of the corporate leaders, that's a been a longtime sponsor, one of them looked at me and said, What's the value of your standing army? And I said, Wow, that's a great way to say we've got this incredible gift of people spread across the country, at a moment's notice, will drop what they're doing to help people. I mean, that's an incredible manifestation and a continuance of, for the police officer, your friend, you know, the training he or she had for military veterans for the training they had, and for civilians, as well who commit to this life of service, you know, their personal growth and their ability to apply that growth, to do great things around the world is, you know, it's a pretty amazing sequence of events that curated properly continues a virtuous cycle.

Chris Hare  41:58  
I love it. Well, as we come to a close, I'm curious, I know, you've told your story a lot, really grateful for your time. I'm curious, as you've been telling the time, if there's anything new that's come up for you. And as you've been telling it,

Art delaCruz  42:10  
I've actually spent a lot of time recently centered on why people serve, why they can serve. And I believe to some extent, volunteering is a bit of privilege as the way I've begun to categorize it, you happen to have time, you know, when you don't have to compete with a job where that money becomes the difference between I don't know making a payment on a car, your rent. So there is this element of privilege, that allows people to give up for us, you know, sometimes a week of their time, or maybe a day of their time. They're selfless. And I'll never accuse them of anything but being selfless. But it's allowed me to begin to understand what type of barriers exist for people who want to volunteer, who doesn't have the ability to, and has to make a conscious choice to say, you know, this is one of those moments where I'd really love to help, but I simply can't. So that's something that I've been thinking a lot about. And one of the things that really kind of triggered a deeper thought about it was the Surgeon General's report that he released, I don't know, a few months ago on the epidemic of loneliness. And the reason I think that report is so incredible and connects with me, is we've always said people join Team Rubicon, in particular military veterans, because they can reconnect with community identity and purpose. And you begin to understand in a document from the Surgeon General, where he says, Being lonely from a psychosocial health aspect, I don't know if that terminology is correct, is being lonely as the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day from a mortality perspective. So after I read that report, after I started diving into this idea of volunteering is a privilege. And that report mentions volunteering 13 times, I think, as a source of community and resilience and connection, and really, really centered on how much volunteering can give a person for their own well being, for the connection to community, for their ability to selfishly feel better about themselves, and the friends they make and stay connected with. So that's something that I encourage people in whatever capacity it could be. And I think one of the Silver Linings for COVID was volunteering went up, people were knocking on doors of their neighbors and seeing how they were doing. And it's my hope that we can kind of continue that momentum in a time where we're tempted to find reasons not to help, you know, in a polarized sense, is how do we actually use this moment to intentionally wake up in the morning and go, How can I help someone around me in whatever way it is? And I think that's one of the things that I hope Have all of your listeners will look at when they wake up and say you really have the ability. One of the things you can control in your life is how you make others feel and how you serve others.

Chris Hare  45:10  
Well, thank you. Final question. Fast forward to the last day of your career. Let's assume you're at Team Rubicon to the last day of your career. What is it that you hope people will say about you and that you will feel about how you lead?

Art delaCruz  45:24  
I hope I prove restless. So, Colonel Bob Sanders, right. Everyone standing around will unanimously say, That guy's not an asshole. He's one of them. When they go there, you know, this is a guy who, who cared about other people that served well, you know, I think often of David Brooks, you know, the famous New York Times article and what he wrote, where he said, You, you live your life to build your resume Are you live your life to write your eulogy? And I hope my kids will go, Hey, he lived a good life. I hope my wife will say he lived a good life. I hope the people around me will say, you know, our lived a good life and I hope you know, the people in the in whoever they might be, will kind of look around and go Yeah, I learned a thing or two from as he went out the door on the you know, the other thing i i hope they remember is maybe instead of crying that they they laugh a little bit, you know, about some levity, or I brought to them in some form or fashion.

Chris Hare  46:25  
Awesome Art. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you joining us. 

Art delaCruz  46:27  
Well, thank you so much for having me, Chris.

Chris Hare  46:31  
Thanks for joining me for another episode of The Storied Future. What part of our story did you find most impactful? Did anything shift and how you're thinking about the future and how you're thinking about your narrative about how you want to tell your story? Find someone today, and tell them your story. Tell them about your life journey, because when we tell our stories, it can change us, it can change others, and it has the power to change the future. And that's it. Please subscribe, leave us a review and be sure to visit TSFpod.com for more information about Art Delacruz and Team Rubicon, for show notes, and to check out other episodes.

The Storied Future Podcast is a production of the Storied Future, LLC. Produced and edited by Ray Sylvester, audio engineering by Ali Ozbay, music by The Brewz. Your host is me, Chris Hare. Learn more about how I help leaders use the power of narrative to transform themselves, their companies and their industries at WWW.thestoriedfuture.com.