Practical Leadership with guest - Karl Pichler

In this episode of Practical Leadership we will uncover the essential steps to transition from technical expertise to outstanding leadership. In today's episode, we have a remarkable guest who shares their transformative journey and sheds light on the key ingredients necessary for success.

Join us as we explore the crucial role of awareness and care as the initial steps towards this transformation. Our guest reveals the powerful insights gained from their personal experience, demonstrating how these qualities lay the foundation for exceptional leadership.

But that's just the beginning. We delve into the practical tools that propel leaders forward, such as Strength Finders. Discover how this tool can unlock the true potential of your team, enabling you to harness their strengths and enhance engagement within your organization.

Furthermore, we unravel the significance of listening and understanding your team, as well as aligning their ambitions with the broader objectives of the business. Learn how this vital connection forms the basis for creating a strategic plan and charting the path towards success.

Intriguingly, we challenge traditional notions of goal setting, as our guest emphasizes the power of embracing uncertainty. Uncover the secrets of tackling the unknown head-on, as we reveal how navigating uncharted territory compels us to think critically and solve the most significant challenges.

So, if you're ready to embark on a transformative leadership journey, packed with practical insights and actionable strategies, this episode is for you. Whether you're an aspiring leader or a seasoned professional, join us as we unlock the secrets of exceptional leadership together.

Get ready to broaden your horizons, challenge your assumptions, and revolutionize your approach to leadership. It's time to dive in!"

Transcript

0:06

Hello and welcome to the Practical Leadership Podcast where leaders share their tools and practical advice to make you a better leader today. Today I have a wonderful guest. He is a young legend in the business world here in San Antonio. Carl is a current vice president, chief financial officer of Source ability. It's a semiconductor supply chain service company. He has also been professor for professional practice and finance at Trinity University. He, is well known to have been worked and participated with with Rackspace. And during his time, Rackspace went from an 80 million company to 2 billion. Then it went public then it went back private, and then it sold to a global asset management company. Carl has had a bunch of different leadership roles in the us in Europe. He's been a, consultant. He's been, a partner. He's been in business, done a lot of different, lot of different things. To me, when I think about Carl, I think about someone that is super aware. I, I think he understands things at a, at a better and deeper level than most. And he just observes and is quiet. And then when he has to speak, you know, great things come, come out of his mouth. And, and everybody's just always listening when, when he has something to say. He is kind. He's caring. He's a family man. Ladies and gentlemen, Carl Pickler, it is great to have you here today. Thank you. Happy to be here. Thank you, Carl. So I'll, I'll tell the audience that there's a a lot of humility in you. And when I invited you to the podcast, you're like, ah, I don't know what I'm going to be sharing, what I'm gonna be talking about. And it wasn't the easiest gig to get, even though I've known you for a long time. But I know that you're gonna blow us away. So before we get started what's something good that's been happening in your world in the last few weeks or months? Hmm. Well that's always, that's always gotta do with the kids, right? Being them evolve and grow and mature and get better at things is always super exciting. I have three girls. They're 15, 12, and 10 years old. The oldest one is going to Spain by herself for the first time going away overseas, travel by herself, and live with a guest family. That's super exciting to see that she wants to do that and will do that. Assuming that we get the passport back on time there's a little hurdle there. The middle one is playing competitive basketball, and that's a humiliating experience for her because the kids are very determined and the opponents are very strong and it's a very competitive field. So that teaches her along a lot. And the youngest one did her first skiing by herself experience, which which is great. She has special needs and so it's a little bit harder for her to, you know engage in recreational sporting activities. But she has been skiing down the mountain without any help and that was amazing to see. So those are probably a couple of highlights over the next, like, next last couple of months. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us. And it's no surprise to me that you know that there had to be something family related. Let, let me ask you so you're born in Switzerland. If I remember correctly, you have a sister. Mm-hmm. I have three siblings, two brothers and one sister. Yes. Much older than me. And, and do you think that these, like family values were, were they instilled in you as a family back in Switzerland? Do you think they evolved later? Tell, tell us a little bit about, about that. Right. Because we we're gonna get into leadership, believe me or not, but mm-hmm. I, I, I believe that you know, how you take care of people one way is how you take care of people everywhere and, you know, family is very important to you. So I'm curious to learn a little bit about that. Yeah. I mean, my, my siblings are much older than me. They're 10, 11, and 13 years older, so I was the baby or the accident, however you wanna call it. And my mom had me when she was 40. My parents are no longer with us. And you know, growing up it was mostly my mom who take, who took care of us. My dad was traveling a lot business wise, and my mom really managed everything. She ran the household. She you know, nurtured us and educated us and, and she was very important for us. And then my, my siblings also had almost like a little bit of a parental role for me as well. They they introduced me to music. All of them had different flavors of music that they liked. So I got to appreciate a wide variety, a wide spectrum of, of different music. That was a, that was a big influential factor. They they coached me on how to choose a career. They they were very influential or still are. And and then. On my wife's side, at least from Mexico. And for her family is just, you know, everything. And so I think the combination of those two things have you know, are making it clear that you know, family is probably the most important thing or is the most important thing anyways in life. So, and, and any thoughts on you know, your mother being in her forties, when, when, when she had you? Was that, you know, was, was she a little bit more mature and, and knowing and understanding of the world and a better mother because of that? Or, I mean, I know it's difficult to have a reference. You only have one mother, but I, I, I wonder cuz sometimes I think that if, you know, if I had, if I had a child, I'd be so much better father than I was before. So I wonder, yeah, I always think that I, I'm, it's amazing how much I. Freedom and how much I got away with. And I think that has a lot to do with the fact that she had to raise three kids before me, and the fourth one was just like, ah, you know, it's gonna go well no matter what. So the ease at which she approached this now thinking back is was amazing. Yeah, that is, that is, that is good to hear. And I'm sure that that's will have played an important role in, in, in how you view the world. But let, let's get a little bit into the leadership conversation. When did you first become aware of this concept of, of leadership, right? That there's people that, you know, lead others in, in how, you know, how did that evolve for you? Yeah. Actually I think that's quite a unique story. You know, when you, when I see what my kids do here in the United States in school the whole idea about leadership as a. Has a, has a strong plays a strong role in, in anything, right? Learn, kids learn early on to assume leadership roles. They participate in school standards, and they, they run for positions and they lead others. We never had anything like that that I can remember in Switzerland growing up. Not that it was like a foreign concept or anything like that, but it was not nurtured the same way. Here, like I always I'm always puzzled when you interview young people coming out of college, they, they immediately wanna become a leader. And and, and you know, I, I always found that a little bit curious, but, but my, my path was a, was a little I think interesting in the sense that I was a PhD dropout. I pursued a PhD in finance in Switzerland. Had an unplanned opportunity to join a consulting firm in New York, which I did. So I dropped out of the program. That was in 2000. I joined a, a consulting firm in New York by the name of Stern Stewart, which was a little bit of a nerdy corporate finance shop, a little nichey consulting firm. And and I really, really enjoyed the, the job. I didn't so much enjoy the company, but the, the job was really great. And their, their mission was to take the best out of corporate finance prac theory and apply it to the real world. And to me, this was a perfect a perfect job, so to speak, because I'm always drawn to theory, but I'm always, I, I, I think I'd like to say I'm pragmatic as well. And really try to, you know, figure out what is it that theory teaches us and how do we then best apply it to corporate settings? And so the company that. Had that as their mission was, was a, was a perfect starting ground for me and let me live out my deep nerdiness about finance and and all of these things. And I did that for about five years or so and forced the end of my career there. I I thought like, I really don't want to do this anymore. I don't wanna, if you grow up in consulting, you become sales person rather than a consultant. And I really love, love the consulting part of it, not the sales part of it. And so I started to look around and, and ultimately I ended up joining a, a client of mine by the comp, by the name of Rackspace, which is also the, the, the company that got me to San Antonio. And it was a, a very unique company, very unique situation, very unique set of people. And and they hired me e eventually they hired me as their VP of finance. But in that process I got to interview with Gallup. Gallup has a interview service that you can hire, and they do professional interviews. They have people that do nothing but interview other people, and they do that to basically assess amongst other things leadership qualities and leadership skills. And in the process of, of getting hired by Rackspace, I had to do one of those Gallup interviews. And it was an absolute disaster. The first question that they asked me is, why do you wanna become a leader? And I was a telephone interview. I was in New York, they were wherever. And I never thought about that question, never thought about that question, and obviously had a terrible answer. I don't even know what I answered, but it was like in my thought, it's like, well, I don't want to be a leader. I just wanna work at Rackspace. But I knew that that wouldn't fly very well. So I probably made up something that was not very not very thoughtful. And anyways, long story short Gallup called back the c e o of the company and said that I should not get hired. I have no leadership qualities. I have no leadership potential. And again, long story short, they still hired me and I became head of finance as planned. And I realized that I did that I have a lot of work to do. So I had read, I, at that point, I've read every finance book I've written, and I have never read or ever thought about leadership ever in my life. And that interview and then subsequent conversations about it with the leadership of Rackspace, I made it very clear that my role is gonna change significantly, right from being a subject matter expert. To being a corporate leader and to have leadership roles and responsibilities that, that I personally have never thought about. And so it was a that interview was a great wake up call very early on, which it's great, you know, not two months into the job, but like, you know, a month before I started the club. And and so I was fortunate enough to be in a company or to go to a company that where leadership was very important and was lived out exemplary by the top leaders of the company. We were, we were going about it very thoughtfully. And I'm, I'm happy to share some of these frameworks and, and and tools that we've used and it certainly helped me a lot to you know, copy some of those role models to thinking about those frameworks that we've used. And they certainly helped me develop into. You know, into my position, I guess over the years and not to brag, but, but I think that, that the, the the tools really helped. So I was assessed again later on with a, with this Gallup framework Q 12, which I'm happy to talk about because I think that's a very useful tool. And after like two years, my team was ranked in the top 10 of the entire global Gallup database in terms of employee engagement and and you know, not happiness and satisfaction. Those are really not good terms but employee engagement. So it worked. Wow. And also you know, one of my, my, one of my yardsticks is that I want my, my people to become, you know, in my case, CFOs. And so all of my direct reports I had the direct space are now CFOs in other companies. And that's probably the, you know, you think about kids and seeing them succeed when you grow up, if you talk about your team and see them succeed when they grow up. That's the, that's the biggest accomplishment that I can name for myself, I guess. Wow. Wow. Carl really, really appreciate you sharing that story. It, it I didn't know it, I did not know this story. Mm-hmm. And it, it's perfectly with what we're discussing here because, you know, you, you, you don't, you don't see yourself as being born a leader per se. Right? I would disagree on some, on some levels, right. You, you've always cared about people and, and I don't think that that has changed. But knowing how to care for them and how to care for them in a, in a corporate environment is, is a, is a different skill set. And, and in, and in helping them grow and develop in their, in their career paths. And, and I love that you said it, it's like, First you became, you became aware of the gap. You had a willingness and desire to, to close that gap, and you put in the time, the energy, the effort, the work, and, and it, and it took you way, way beyond what you probably would've expected at, at that time. And, and then you get the, the ultimate rewards, right? Obviously your success with the company and ultimately the success that other people achieve with, with your, you know, your, through your training in your, in your guidance. Very, very interesting that it wasn't necessarily a mindset. Remind me, I, I believe you, you skied and played other sports. Was it ever competitive in Switzerland? No, not at all. I'm not athletic at all. I, I never really engaged. I mean, I played a lot of different things. I played tennis, I played squash. I played a lot of Ultimate Frisbee, or, well now it's called Ultimate Frisbee. Back then it was just called frib. Nice. And and ping pong and pool and all the bar games and arcades. I'm a, I'm a the runner up of the Swiss PackMan Championship, by the way. Oh, wow. So I, I'm a kid of the a I'm a kid of the eighties. I grew up in playing video games a lot. Wow. Yeah. The early versions right now, I can't play it anymore. It's too play a mean Ackman. So yeah, go for it. No, no, no, no athletic background. No competitive sports. No, no, nothing like that. I, I asked that because I know you had played a lot of different sports and stuff and typically, you know, the concept of leadership is many times brought on through, through sports. But, but you were like really, really unaware of the abi the big idea. And were a big, as you said, financial nerd. That, you know, decided to take, take on the challenge and grow and develop. So, so you went from, I'm not a leader to, I need to become one and I want to become a great leader. And you've mentioned a lot of frameworks and tools. Let's give gimme your, your broad perspective on what you think leadership, leadership is. What, what is it all about at the end of the day for you? That's a good question. I, I, I think there's so many good quotes. I, I think the one that I usually like the most, or that, that I think summarizes it well, I think it's from Roosevelt, but I'm not sure is that as, and I'm paraphrasing here, is that as a leader, you've gotta figure out what needs to, what needs to get done. And then you gotta either go do it yourself or get the organization to go do it. And I think that's, that's that's a wonderful summary in the sense that Developing the awareness of or developing the agenda. I call it developing the agenda and then executing and getting stuff done are two super important things. So I think as we grow up professionally, I think we learn how to get stuff done, hopefully. But it's very important also to figure out what, what are the most important things to work on? And then allocate your, your own resources or the resources of your organization to those most important things. I think that's probably, that covers a lot. Obviously we have lots of other things, which is how do you create a highly effective organization? How do you think about developing your individual team members and, and all these other things. But I think agenda setting the agenda, And mobilizing the resources to those most important elements, I think is, is at the very top. That's how I think about it. Okay. And that applies to small businesses, medium, large, and, and, and to, to life unicorns right? It to life as you said it. So what, what is your framework? Like, how do you, how do you first start to figure out what, what needs to be done? So, you know, you have a new position, you have a new job, you have a new, you know, you're, you're a new board member. You, you know, whatever situation you put yourself in. How do you go from I just arrived to, I have a plan. Yeah. I mean, o the, the obvious one is like, you, you gotta be very you gotta be a very good listener. You gotta do your own research, right? I mean, you gotta I mean, any company that, I mean, unless it's a startup any company has a lot. Has a lot to tell you, right? All the people that are there, they have their thoughts and views and pain points. And that's a good starting point, right? You interview everyone interview sounds a little too formal. You mm-hmm. You have conversations with people and you get their perspectives and you gather the perspectives and you start to paint a picture in your head on paper and you figure out what are the most pressing issues. And and you know, and then you can categorize it, right? Like, what are the most pressing issues operationally, what are things, what are bottlenecks? What are what are the ambitions of the company? Does the company have any ambitions? Obviously ambitions, drive results. A company has no ambition. It's just, you know, at the whim of the market, maybe they're opportunistic, maybe they're not, but, but truly great companies require people to really have big, you know, call it BHAs or whatever, whatever concept you want to use. But big goals that are not obvious on how we gonna achieve them, because that is gonna stretch their thinking, that's gonna make people think about stuff and be innovative and, and, you know, and, and that drives, you know, future results that are extraordinary. It's almost a, a required ingredient to, to get to extraordinary outcomes. And so, you know, it's a couple of things. It's like, well, do we have the right management tools? Do we have the right frameworks in mind? Do we know what the opportunity is? Do we think big enough? Do we. Do we understand where the bottlenecks are? Do we actively work on removing them? Do we have a, a framework that that attracts and retains great people? Do we have a way to let them, let them grow? And so you, you know, we have all these different pointers that, that you can gather information around and then categorize it and, and then you know, build a good agenda around process and goals and frameworks and leadership for the lack of a better term. And and, you know, depending on what you find, you will create a different agenda. Obviously. I, I, as you know, I'm a, I'm a framework guy, right? I, I believe that there's a lot of framers, there's a lot of tools that you could utilize. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, kind of, you know, jump, jump on them and utilize them. Yeah. I, I, I don't think you should just focus on one tool. I think you should focus on, on, on dozens of them. Let me ask you a question. That is particularly interesting to me. So you talked a little bit about, you know, bha bhag or ambition be here, ad audacious golfer those that are not familiar with the concept, but having a very, very big ambition. I, I really believe in that that you have to have an ambition. It drives, generates a lot of energy. And what I see a lot is that y it doesn't take too much to build a big ambition or to be able to kind of create some sort of a vision, but people tend to get stuck on the how. And you said something I think is magical is, is if, if, if you don't have a vision that's big enough that you don't know how you're going to achieve it, it's probably not big enough. How do you, how do you work with that? Right. I mean and, and again, I sorry to stereotype you or your type you know, talking about the finance people, But typically finance people wanted to see kind of like the clear path forward, right? The numbers of forecast the direction. How do you, how do you work with this idea of we've got a dream or an idea that's bigger than we know how to achieve it, and yet we need to have some, some level of certainty that we can actually accomplish it. What's your approach to something like that? I, I wouldn't necessarily say the second part is, is, is a necessity from the get-go. The, the, the high likelihood of being able to achieve it, I think is, is something that needs to be developed or the conviction around it needs to be developed. Again, I think if you, if you create a goal that you have a high likelihood of achieving it. It's probably not very ambitious. And so, you know, for example, right? There are, again, there's many concepts. You know, there's like you're a, you're a hundred million dollar company. I want to be a billion dollar company, right? There is many different ways of a achieving that. The likelihood of a cleaning it is, is not very high. But, but it just forces your it forces you to think about things differently because if the, if the thinking is, is structured, and when I say thinking, you know, the, there's all these management tools that companies do, right? The, the, the companies use, whether it's explicit ones or implicit ones, but, but you know, you have meetings, you have recurring meetings, you have an agenda, you have a goal setting process. You have incentive targets. You have all these different things that you, you use, you have budgets that that, that all govern your, the management of the company. And, and again, if you, if you're focusing on goals that are highly achievable, then you are just, you, you're gonna be an incremental improvement type of company, right? Usually you set goals that are a little bit better than what you've already achieved because everybody believes that they want to get better. Or at least that's kind of a good standard attitude, I would say. But you know, how do you get to Mar and you know, there's, Elon Musk is a very controversial man, and for, for, you know, good reasons. I, I think he's the most important entrepreneur of our lifetime because he sets these goals that are just crazy, right? And when he started the car company a you know, it was just crazy. You're gonna fail and it's not even gonna work. And, and you know, just a, just something simple like the supercharging network, right? Which is like, well, why did, why we're. Electric cars so difficult to pull off in the, in the old days, it's like, well, because you can't charge them, right? So in order for your cars to actually become Main Street, you mainstream, you not only have to build the cars, you also have to build a supercharger network. And it's like, oh my God, this is so, you know, it's infrastructure and it's complicated and it's not, I'm a car company, not a, in, and you know, 10 years later he has, I don't know how many thousands, tens of thousands of superchargers all over the world. And, you know, he's always being accused of not meeting his timelines and having goals that are crazy, like full self-tracking is one of those things. But again, if you don't set these crazy goals, you will certainly never get there. It's like the analogy in the pudding, right? If you put too short, you have a hundred percent chance of not thinking the ball. That's my sport. Exactly. So, so ne crazy goals are necessary. You know, there's this other SA saying that, you know, read for the stars and you land on the moon kind of a thing. It's, it's like unless you set goals that you are, that you are okay possibly not achieving because they are so crazy. Yeah. It's not really stretching your thinking. And, and, and again, everybody can work on in incremental improvements. That's not like, that's not that hard. But if you think about how do I drastically improve the performance of the company or the size of the company, or the value of the company, whatever, whatever your objective function is that you're thinking about you gotta think about things differently. And I think that, that setting a, an an outrageous goal that's not obviously e achievable forces that, thank you. So this takes me to the, to the leadership and the people side question. So do you think that you need a certain type of person personality style mindset to go along with that and work with that? Or you could convert someone to, to believe in it and think about it? Because I come into companies and I see people that are, you know, somewhat happy with the status quo to totally happy and, and complacent with the status quo. And I have some that like to dream a little bit bigger and some that are very comfortable dreaming big, but ultimately you've gotta move the whole organization into that, into that mindset. And then a lot of cool things happen along the way. Some good, some not so good for some people. But what is your take on that in terms of bhs do well? Yeah. Do, do you have to hire for people that have big visions? Happy. I mean, you have to hire for, for people that you know, are gonna be like, okay, well, leadership wants this. I can do this. Take someone that is good at what they do, they don't quite have a great vision, but you can kind of bring'em along and, and, and get them to see you know, a future that is, again, 10 x better. Yeah. I, I think you know, there is obviously a variety of of personalities and way that people think about these questions always present in a company, right? So if people that are, again, as you say, they're happy with the status quo there are people that are dreamers and not doers, that doesn't help either, right? There is there is a I would say there is a time and the place for these things, and then there's always a. Also the, the daily operations of the business, right? So, so, you know when companies go public, there's a, there's this, there's always this debate about, you know, whether you manage the company for the, for the 90 day shot clock. And, and, and how do you, how do you prevent the company from getting onto the quarterly treadmill with, with the results? And Wall Street is so short minded and shortsighted, and, and so the company becomes shortsighted and all of that. And the reality is you have to be, you have to be thoughtful about the short term and the long term, right? So you can't ignore the short term and you cannot ignore the long term. So you gotta, you gotta work on both. And so I think there's a room for both, and there's people that, that naturally will clinging to one or will be better at you know, at the continuous improvement type work. And then there, there are people better that are, you know, let's think about how this business differently and, and what needs to happen for us to. You know, again, become much bigger, more profitable, more valuable, whatever it is that we wanna focus on. And so there's probably different groups of people. There's coaches like yours who help organization you know, mobilize on that thought. There is probably, again, going back to meetings, there's probably a, a a benefit of compartmentalizing these conversations and to, you know, maybe once a month we talk about our long-term vision. And then every week we're gonna talk about con continuous execution. And we're not gonna talk about all these things at all times and intermingle the whole things, right? Because they're different thought exercises, they're completely different topics, maybe with a different group of people that, that naturally, you know, Can contribute and wants to be part of those, those conversations. So it's not like you know, it's not that Everybody's good at that. And and people that are not good at that or, you know, they should, you know, you should work on things that you're good at and and not trying to just be part of something because you think it's important. Do, do you think that that holds true even at the management team level? Where, where, I mean, obviously you have managers that are more executional and operational. You could, you could, you need, I mean, I'm, what I'm understanding is you're saying you know, it takes all types to make it work and it takes all types at all levels. So it is okay if somebody is not necessarily, you know, thrilled about, you know going to Mars. As long as they're working on the, you know, on the, on the next rocket that needs to be fired. That's exactly right. And I think, you know, when, when, when, when leadership teams have a good culture, so to speak I think it's totally fine. You know, I think it if you have people that say, you know, you go do your dream up, your dreaming exercise, I make sure that the current business is running well. Right. And that's totally fine. Because I think you need both. And I think they're somewhat, they're not mutually exclusive, but they're somewhat, you know, parallel exercises if you want. And it's solely fine for some people to engage in other people to not engage. You know, if you, if you don't have much to contribute, then maybe, maybe don't. That's okay. I'll, I'll add, I'll add something to that. So, so our audience is also aware of this. So yes, it takes all types and it requires people to be aware of their type. And I think that one of the things that Rackspace I, I don't know what they're doing currently, but they use strength Finders a, a gal company. So everybody knew their strengths, their weaknesses, their style, their, their approach to things. So you could know that, you know, you're in front of a dreamer, so don't get in their way of dreaming, let them do their thing. That's why they are there. And everybody knows that they are there to be the dreamer type, right. Or, or the, or the other type. Right. And again, this is not a Gallup speak at all. They would kill me if I, if I called it that. Mm-hmm. But if you are, if you are the worker bee type, then that's excellent. And then everybody knows that, you know, let's, let's give you the task and you're, and you're gonna get it done. And that's what you enjoy doing. So there's a component of, you need all types, but you also need that awareness of the types, because you have to have a level of acceptance about the people surrounding you and, and, and, and what they are good at and what their styles are. How, how key do you think that was for, you know, Rackspace success? Incredibly important. I, I think strength is one of those things that I point everybody to. You know, I, again when I, when I sort of get involved or work with, with Rackspace, they immediately let me take the strength finder on day one in the first interaction, oh, you gotta take your strength finder. And I took it. And I have, again, this is not a Gallup commercial, but probably comes across as such. I have never seen a better articulation about my personality than what I read about my, when I read my top five. And the basic idea, I think for, for the audience here, is that the, the basic idea of StrengthFinder is that you capitalize and double down and triple down on what you're good at. And you're not trying to fix your weaknesses. Okay. But and that's, that's a very fundamental thought, which is that, you know, we all have weaknesses and and, you know, you should, you know, fix your weaknesses. It's completely, no, you should not fix your weaknesses. Make sure that your weaknesses don't get you fired. That's important. So there's a little bit of awareness there too. But StrengthFinder has identified 34 different, what they call strength or themes of personality traits, whatever you want to, however you wanna explain it. And when you take the test, the normal test, it only gives you the top five. It doesn't actually give you all 34 in sequence, so you don't even know what your bottoms one bottom ones are. You can get a more elaborate test that ranks all the 34th, and, and so you can actually figure out. But the whole basic idea is it gives you your top five. And the top five things are the things that really define you in the way that you work, influence other work with other, I think. And and in my case it was incredibly art on point. I have my wife take it. I have my friends take it. I I have everybody take it, really. And I should get a commission, I think. But but I thi I'm gonna have people take it now in my new company Trinity Take has all the first year students take it at school, and it's just a very good tool of making yourself aware about who you are and how you think and how you work with others. And so, in terms of self-awareness, it's great. But as you, as you rightfully point out you know, we were celebrating the individual at Rackspace to, to, to an extent, and that was the way to do it, right? We had our top five strengths were on the back of the back. Our top five strengths were on the, on the name tag on the desk. And you could immediately, I mean, it's not like you ca categorize people and you see the back and Oh, you're, you're that type of guy. But, but. But it helps you very quickly to to understand and relate and and and, you know, work with people. You know, one of the things that really I think was difficult for me from a leadership perspective is I have one of my top five is restorative. And restorative people are people that are drawn to problems, they're fixers. And and the way that this manifested itself is that if you work for me, if I have two direct reports and you have everything perfectly on the control, and your peer has a lot of problems, I spend all of my time with your peer. You get no time from me because you have everything on the control. Right. From a leadership perspective, that's awful because it's like, I do not give you the proper recognition that you deserve because you have everything under your control. I don't even talk to you because you got it right. You don't need my attention. The other guy needs my attention. And, and that is, you know, under appreciating the successful people was something that, that I figured out as a blind spot, not because it was a weakness, it was actually strength of mine. That, that, that pointed out that I have a huge weak or blind spot or things that go well and for people that take care of things going well. And that was an important one for me to, to help me in my leadership journey. Oh, I, I appreciate the example because I see that a lot, right. Your, your strengths can also be your, your weaknesses. They, what makes you good at one thing actually leaves a hole somewhere else, or a gap somewhere else. So when you can become aware of it, you can pay it the appropriate attention to it and, and overcome it. So, you know, when leading people is know, know yourself, know your team, and understand the, you know, the benefits of your strengths, but what gaps might be there because of your, because of your strengths as well. And then you help your people become aware of theirs probably, right? Mm-hmm. So, How, so I guess I'm gonna go back to a broader question for you. So what, when you are thinking about leading people, working with people, helping people, what, what is like your, your big approach? So one is like, Hey, let's do the research. Let's understand exactly where we are. Let's understand exactly where we want to be. Let's figure out what's getting in our way. Craft a plan to get there. But then you said you've gotta energize and mobilize people. What's, what's your take? What's your approach in, okay, now we know what needs to be done, we have a plan, or we're building a plan now I want people engaged, motivated, and doing their part. Yeah. How do you engage, motivate people? I think a lot of that By, by the way, that, that pause audience is, is not because he doesn't have a good answer, it's because he has too many ideas at the same time in his head. He's trying to sort through them. I don't know about that. So I, I guess there's a couple of things. Okay. So one is if you find an organization, if you join an organization, you do a little research about, you know, what's going on, what needs to be done, you very quickly figure out what kind of culture the company has. And usually that leads to different ver there are different degrees of engagement, of energy, of, you know, self-drive, et cetera. So if you find a, if you find an organization where everybody's just like going to work, not being excited, not thinking about the business, then you know that that's kind of, you know, not very e engaging. And so people are not, you know, they're not gonna, they're not gonna be excited. So how do you get people excited? I think. Especially in finance and accounting, which is kind of my little garden there is a danger very quickly that, that you become a back office administrator, right? So good, good cfo, bad CFOs, right? Good CFOs, bad CFOs, bad CFOs or people, and not bad, bad, but just, you know, black and white kind of distinction. Are people that are running the back office recorded transactions, report the numbers, and that's it, right? But really, a, a good finance and accounting organization is really obviously has a bigger role to play in terms of, you know, really helping the company to identify opportunities to get better, to drive the company, to get better, to ask the right questions, to prompt the right conversations. And then also to know that the finance agenda is not the most important thing in a company, right? So I always tell, or I told my students because my trinity time is over, that you know, you cannot especially if you're in a younger company, you cannot impose the finance agenda over the customer agenda, so to speak, right? So the first thing for a company has to be that it has to figure out what it is, what problem it solves, why it is there, why it has a reason to to be. And that all has to do with the solution, with the product, with the customer, right? Specifically, You know how you know, when you, when you are in a very successful growth phase, for example, when the company's growing very fast to what extent do you wanna drive profitability? For example, you know, the age old debate that is held every management meeting. How do you trade off growth versus profits, right? And usually growth costs money. So there's a usually a direct inverse relationship between the two. And so you've gotta figure out kind of when is the time to drive for profitability and when is the time for driving growth? And what are the implications if you don't drive for profitability during a growth base in terms of funding and, and where's the limits and all of these other things, right? But my point here is a little bit that I think the way that you drive engagement is that you start encouraging and demanding from your team that they think about the business and. And encourage them, meaning that, you know, I want you to think about the business and I want you to think about, Hey, could we do things differently? And I want to empower you to suggest and think and, and then implement, you know, things. So I think taking people out of the, this is your job and I need you to do this, to actually say, look, you are a part of a business and I want you to think and tell me what you think about the business and start actively, intellectually engaging with the place that you work at. I think that goes a very long way because people are usually not asked to give their opinion unless they're high up in the organization, which is total bullshit, right? Everybody has now it doesn't mean that every suggestion of everybody gets implemented, right? But just the, the mental engagement of people that they're Asked and invited to, to think about the business and to provide their views, I think goes a long way. That's one thing I l let me, let me just make a comment on those two, two ideas. So I, I really believe it in mind space, right? Like, where, where is your mind at? What, what are you thinking about? If, if work is just one thing that you do, then you might be present during the work time. But a lot of great ideas, breakthroughs a lot of creativity happens when you're outside of work. When, when you love what you do and you care about it, and your mind is working, you know consciously or subconsciously, and, and, and then you develop it. When you're not engaged, you, you only show up and do your job and then you move on and, and, and you're missing out on, on a lot of the potential. So to me, getting people's mite space is, is critical. The other big idea I like to, I like to talk a lot about is Not only, not only do we want our people to think as managers, I think we want them to think as business owners. And that's exactly what you're describing. It's like, look, if you own this business, what would you do and why would you do it? And let's, let's, let's discuss it. Because then that's, that's where a lot of learning occurs, right? Yeah. Like, well, I would do this and then, you know, you can have really great conversations. And, and one, one last comment is I think that we, when we think about finance people, the ST stereotype is that, you know, they're pretty square and you know, they've got a job to do. And the reality is, is the best CFOs that I know, the best finance people that are actually very creative, right? They are actually very, very, very creative and intuitive. And, and you'd be like, well, what does intuition have to do with numbers? There's an element of intuition and, and sometimes it's hard to explain it. Do, do you consider yourself kind of, to have some, some of that intuition. Well I hope you know, it was funny. I was never really the numbers guy. I'm a much more conceptual person than I'm a a numbers guy. I actually had to force myself to memorize the numbers of Rackspace because at the beginning I was just not, I am not I'm not a person who retains factual facts very easily. I retained concepts very easily and and that's how I think. But you know, once I grew into my role at Rackspace, I had to realize that you, you know, that's again, like with the leadership thing, right? It's just not enough. There are certain blind spots. In my case, it was just like, you, you just have to know all the numbers. Cold. And, you know, that took me some time, but it was a, it was a very worthwhile exercise. But, but yeah, I, I, I think I'm more on the conceptual side than on the numerical side. The numbers are what they are, but but they're, they're just the outcome, they're not really yeah, they don't drive the result. I am in a, in a way, my question's kind of just, just a confirmation, right? Because we, we know there's creativity and, and then we know that there's a intuition of being able to use these concepts. Carl, you, you, you know, we've talked a lot about like different frameworks. You actually mentioned that there's a few that are like your go-to or that you really like. Do, do you wanna, do you wanna talk a little bit about a couple, like, tools that have helped you when, in terms of, of leadership, whether they are formal, informal, you know a template that you use, or just conceptually Yeah. What, what are some of those that you think could be useful? I think let, let me just add one more thing before please about the energizing thing. There's two more el there, there's two more things I want add to that. So one is there's as a leader, I think another way to think about leadership is about setting and enforcing the standards and and that that's, that's another big part of what I consider my job to be, is that I set the standards and the standards in I view have to be very high. And then I want people to engage and work on those standards. And my take for tat is that I help you in any way I can fulfill your career objectives, right? Whether that is in, in, you know, drag space, it was a lot about. What role are you gonna play in our organization? What exposure do you get? Where do you want to work? We had a lot of people that went from the US to the UK to Asia. We had a lot of people who went from the UK to America. We had a, a lot, it was a very actively used tool for career development to allow people to move internationally. I did that myself. I think it has completely changed my life. And I think it has changed the life of many other people as well. If they get the cultural experience, cultural and professional experience of working somewhere else. So, but, you know, setting, setting the or or, or defining the standards and then, you know, make sure that people work towards it is, is kind of, is is an important part. I also think when you, when you have people engage on the business and, and as you said, have them think like the owner. You know, it takes a lot out of, it takes a lot of the bickering away because in a lot of companies that have bad cultures, people always bitch about their job, their bosses, right? And it's like, oh, he's done, he's done this and she's done that. And, you know, how terrible and what a bad decision. And, and, you know, just ask them, you know, how would you, if you were Mark Zuckerberg, how would you solve the problem that they had with, you know, election manipulation? And he didn't wa wake up one morning and say, Hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna build a, a platform that is going to be used to, to influence political outcomes. You know? And so those are very, very hard problems to think about. And even more importantly, to solve or to not even to solve, to just deal with and, and, and inviting somebody to put themselves into those shoes. Creates a lot of appreciation for, for the challenges that, that you have when you run a business. And I think it's very easy for the person further below to basically just, you know, criticize and, and, and and create, you know, a dysfunctional environment. Anyways, that's a little, no, that, that's, that's, that's amazing. That's amazing. Thank you. Thank you for stopping me. And, and kind of going back to that, cuz you just gave us some, some, some gems here. You know, one of the things that I can take from this is that there's a lot of empathy in understanding at the same time, which is, which is someti something that sometimes people think that you could either be one or the other. So you could have, you could have empathy and understanding and at the same time, set, set high standards. Right. And, and, and, and have great expectations. Mm-hmm. But always, always with the understanding that this is for your benefit. It's for the benefit of the team member. It's so they accomplish their goals. So the standards are there for, for, for their betterment. Of course, they're gonna help the company, but they are there for their betterment. Yeah. And, and ha and having that empathy and understanding of the situation. So you don't kind of go the easy route of complaining, but rather, you know, step into their shoes and say, what, what would I do? Which makes you think, which makes you develop. Yes. I also think one of the, one of the little good questions that go a long way is like the simple thing, like, are you proud of your work? And and if the answer is yes versus the answer is no, that tells you a lot of things. Right? And, and I once read that, you know, what, what makes you happy? And, and you know, there's obviously. Thousands of books that have been written about what makes you happy. But 1, 1, 1 thing that I read that makes you happy is earned success and and earned success being, you know, both successful, but having had something to do with it. Because if you just win the lottery, we all know that doesn't make you very happy, right? But if you, if you work hard and it leads to success, that that, that, that accomplishment generates positive feelings, I think and a lot of it has to do with work hard, right? There's a, I, I have a lot of guest speakers at, at the university, and we always ask, you know, what, what's the advice? What's the advice? And the, the students, they complain about the fact that most people say, well, they just tell us to work hard because, you know, eight out of 10 people that have, that are, have accomplished careers. They tell the students, you gotta work hard. So the students are like, Ugh. Again, again, again. But the reality is that that is a lot of what drives the difference. And and yes, maybe some people are successful by not working hard, but, but but the world is very competitive. You don't apply yourself if you don't aim for very high standards. If you're not doing work that you're proud of yourself, cuz that's your own internal, you know, assessment mechanism is like, did I produce something that I'm proud of? And if I can say I'm proud of it, then it's probably good. If I'm ashamed of it or I'm not proud of it, then it's probably not good, right? Because the person above me probably has naturally higher standards because they're, they're more advanced or they're older or they theme more things. And so if I'm, especially if I'm at the beginning of the career, I need to figure out what those standards are. And, and being proud of my work is, is a, is a good continuous. Little yardstick that you, that you can use and, you know, if you deliver bad work and you know, or if you deliver what you think is good work and, and, you know, that's an important difference, I think. Okay. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna just open a little parenthesis and I, I wanna see if we can demystify what hard work is. So when, when you think about hard work, you've got these guests, they're talking about hard work, hard work, hard work. What, what exactly do you think hard work is and what, what is what, isn't it, right? What, what is hard work? Not what are your thoughts? Well, it's not ours. It's not FaceTime. It's not being in the office for being in the office. To me it's really about I mean, to a certain extent it is ours because you know, if you do research. If you have to do research as part of your project, let's say research is highly correlated to the amount of time that you put towards it. If you research a company for one hour and you write report about the company, the quality of the product, it's just not as good as if you spend 10 hours, right? So there's a high correlation there. So what I don't mean what I mean with ours or what I don't mean. Hard work is like, you know, doesn't matter where you are. It doesn't ma matter whether in your office, whether you show your face as you said before, which is very important. I think it's an important takeaway. If you're engaged about your business, you think about it all the time, and that doesn't mean that you don't have work-life balance and you, and you're like a workaholic or anything like that, but you just constantly have. Thoughts about it. You know, you go for a walk with your dog and, and suddenly you have an idea about the business, right? It's not like business thinking happens when you are at work and when you're not at work. And so the whole idea about FaceTime and, and, and especially in our times where everybody's virtual anyways, it doesn't really matter that much. I really think that, you know, you have this other term that people use, you have to apply yourself. We all have talents. We all are very well educated. We all have intellectual strength, et cetera. And the question is, are you gonna use it or not? And if you just put something on paper for the sake of putting something on paper, you don't apply yourself. You're not thinking about it. You don't use the information that you have available to you. That's what I mean with, with good, doing good work or hard work, which is like, Well go research things and figure out what the situation actually is, and then critically think about all the things they tell you in school. Right? Yeah. Do the research. Use critical thinking. What does critical thinking mean? Right? It means that you actually think about what you read and, and how it all fits together. Whether it's contradictory. If it is contradictory, how do you resolve the contradiction, right? Or if you cannot resolve it, you know, put it on paper and lay it out as such, and, and, you know, it's just like applying yourself, seeing that somebody really put thought into the matter and, and put those and was able to articulate those thoughts. All of that is hard work because it's very easy to just write something down. It's very hard to, actually, writing is very hard. And and because it forces you to really be clear about your thinking. And if you, if you, if you don't work hard on it, it becomes very obvious because your writing is poor. I don't know if that makes any sense, but, but I, I love it. I love it. And, and I'll kind of give you my, my spin on it as well, which is I think that many times when people hear hard work, they, they imagine suffering. Right? And, and I think that hard work is like, well, I gotta suffer to be successful. And, and I don't think it's about suffering, but there is some suffering if you let it be like that. When, when you have to grow outside your comfort zone. Cuz as you said our brains actually don't want us to think. Right. It consumes a lot of energy. It goes against mm-hmm. It goes against survival, the instincts. So you're actually, you're, you're actually telling people go and consume all this brain energy. Right? Which, which is a lot of your energy. To think, which is difficult because you have to solve things, troubleshoot work around issues that you're not comfortable with. And, and that's actually where, where growth happens, and that's where the quality of the work comes in. So for our audience out there, let's, I think we sometimes have to communicate what with our team, what hard work means to us. And as Carl's saying, it's not just the hours. I mean, you could, you could be in an office, you know, nine to nine and you're not gonna be any better than somebody that could potentially be there nine to five, but actually was doing the, the, the, the hard work of, of thinking and going in deeper and using a lot of energy. On the flip side, there is some evidence and some research that, you know, more hours spent in the right place can lead to better, better quality and, and better work. But here's the thing, I believe you have to learn how to, how to love doing that work. If it's, if it's important to, to you, if it's important to your job, then you actually have to have to appreciate it. And, and that gets us into a whole other subject and conversation. But I'm, but I'm curious to, to, to kind of get your thoughts, Carl, on, on feedback, right? Because if somebody's gonna grow, they're gonna have to get feedback, and the feedback has to be about their blind spots or their opportunities. And a lot of people kind of take that in a negative way. What's, what's your approach when it comes to feedback? Yeah. I, I'm certainly in the camp of people who don't, you know, again strength Finder, I have harmony in my top 10 actually. And Harmony is a strength that you know, drives towards creating harmonious environments. But again The, the, the other way of, of describing or interpreting the skill is non harmonious environments. Sad, my energy, like immediately. And and so, you know, I'm not the best at confrontational conversations or really difficult conversations. And but you know, feedback is not exactly that, right? So, so I, I, I think that on a feedback side, I think there's a couple of, again, tools I think that are that are very important to that I, that I've used over time to to hopefully provide better, better feedback. One is the idea of balancing. And two is, is really going back to the strength, which is that especially because, you know, there's two th two things about the strength thing. That's relevant in my, in my personal situation which is not applicable for everyone. But, but again, my restorative nature will create a feedback list for you that it's all about your problem. Right? And because that's what I'm drawn to, I immediately see all the things that are wrong with you and your work, right? Which is very demoralizing. Which does, is not helpful, which is not good feedback, which is not, not helping anymore. So, so one of the ideas that I think is super helpful is, is the idea of balancing. So if you give five points of constructive improvement ideas, you have to give five points of things that you do really well. Ideas. And if you think about it that way, actually it, it goes back again to the strength idea, which is like, what is the most valuable feedback that I can give you? It's not really about things that you've done terribly wrong and trying to fix those, fixing your weakness, but it's really trying to figure out what are the things that you do really well? Point those out. Explain them, right? Why, why do you, or maybe have a hypothesis or an explanation or maybe some context building around why do you, why do I think you're really good at that? And then really double down on those rather than giving you a long list of things that you didn't do well. And this is a little bit the parenting mistake as well, which I've. Certainly committed a million times, which is that you always point out the negative, right? With your kids. You always like, oh, this is not good. This is not good. This is not good. You should not do this. You should not do, no, it's, it's never, Hey, you're great at this. Let's know, let's build you up on this. So I, I think those are some, some little things that I think help, like the balancing thing is very important, I think. Balanced feedback. And I force myself, you know, I'm not gonna give you a negative. I'm not gonna, when I think about or write down my feedback, I, I'm forcing myself to have as many positive things, the negative things. And they have to be equal of equal quality. Not just like, I'm gonna give you five bad things. And then the good things are like, oh, you did a great job because you did a great job. It's like obviously completely worthless. So they have to be really You know, like an athletic coach that, you know, thinks about their players and what role they play in the team, and he's really good at that. So let's put her in that position and, and really kind of give them something that they can build on, not just something that puts them down. And, and then I, I think, I think that's, that's great advice. I'll, I'll just mention that again. Right. So you, you go into a lot of depth for both the good and the bad, right? Or at least to the same level of depth. You don't keep good feedback shallow and, and negative feedback super deep. Yeah. And then you had said something, which I'm sure you connect all the time, which is at the end of the day, that feedback is not just for the business, it's for their betterment. And it's so they can achieve their career goals and, and kind of be on the path to get them what they want. So that way that feedback is not like me demanding of you. But rather is, as a coach, it's like, this is what you want to accomplish, this is what you want to achieve. So I'm gonna help you by pointing out what is not working. So you know, what you need to work on to accomplish your goals, not my goals. Right. I mean, of course we're gonna accomplish all of our goals together. So Carl, I'm, I'm gonna go back. I know we've, we, we've, we've kind of talked about a lot of great things. Let me just kind of see if I can go back to, to a tool that I think you had in mind that you wanted to share. I don't know if we've covered it or is, is, is Q 12? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think that was it. The, the what you wanted to talk about? Yeah. Yes. Q 12 is a is a tool that we've also used at drag space which is, and everybody can look that up. It's also Gallup. It's it's basically an employee engagement survey that asks 12 questions that people have to assess and And we use that extensively. We also use the NPS framework from rahel. That I think is super, super useful. That was only one question. That's, that is the net promoter score for those that are not familiar with nps. Exactly. And Fred Reichheld was on our board and he actually coined the phrase together with Graham, that, that we will talk about here in a second. That came in very, very, at the end of my Rackspace tenure. So it wasn't really a a tool that I was help that I was using, but it was a very insightful, I think, summary of all of this anyways, in a se in a minute. Q 12 is a, again, is an engagement survey. And it really, if you, if you, again, if you basically say that I, I am, I'm aiming to create a. Functional organization where people can do their best work and where people grow and thereby also contribute to the company. Then these 12 questions are really covering a lot of ground and it's very hard to do well on these 12 questions. It's, it's hard work, right? There are questions like, for example at work I get the chance to do what I'm really good at, right? Think about that. If you need to create an environment or your organization where everybody can genuinely, continuously say that I get to do what I'm good at every day at work. Think about the implications of what that means on how you build a team and the work, how you divide the work, how you let people, you know, opt into things that they work on, how you get everything done that needs to get done. I mean, there is a lot of things. There's a very que there is a very controversial question, which is I have a best friend at work, which always people always complain about because, you know, I don't wanna have a friend at work. I have my friends outside of work. But it's very powerful if, if your work relationship expand into true friendships. It's very powerful. And companies where you have that, they would say, Gallop would say they've researched, it tends to show that these companies perform better. You have you know, I, I don't remember all the questions. I haven't used the system in a while. But, but the point is there are 12 questions and it's very. Broad in the sense that it covers a lot of things. And so you have to be very deliberate and very careful on how you build and run your organization. Again, in order to score high on these. And it's not about scoring high on these, it is that they have identified a lot of things that really matter and collectively drives a lot of performance. And I think thinking about these individual and collectively again, this is the hard work, right is is giving you at least a framework and a lot of pointers on how you can think about leading, building and leading organizations. I, I love the, the subject of engagement versus happiness. We we're not gonna have time to get into it. Yeah. But I really appreciate that idea and, and I, I think you guys really, I mean you guys, meaning at Rackspace and the work that you've done really helped. Make it very obvious to a lot of people that happiness is, is good, right? For you to be happy at work. It might want you, you know, you'll, you'll, you'll stay around maybe for longer, but engagement is directly impacting the quality of your work and the quality of the collective work of those around you. So, you know, it's, it's like a few levels above just happiness and, and that's where there's a huge win-win upsides for the organization as well. With engagement versus just happiness or satisfaction. Yes, absolutely. Satisfaction. That's also why, why, why NPS is so good, because NPS doesn't tell, ask you whether your satisfied customer. It asks you whether you would recommend the product or the service to, to a friend or family or a colleague, and. This is so much more comprehensive because if you're happy or not, you know that there are a million reasons why you're happy or not with, with some sort of product feature or product experience. But in order for you to be able to put your reputation on the line for somebody else's product, it is so much more. And it is so all encompassing that that makes it such a powerful tool. And and I, I think if every company should aim for that and, you know, all your customers should be raving about you and your product, and if not, then you want to understand why. Because that's, that's a that's the desirable outcome, I think. But I wanna go back to that, to that one quote. I think that's, that's That's great. So it's we have a big banner or we had, or I don't know, maybe they still have it, a big banner of the Rackspace. I use it all the time. I, I believe it encompasses so much. So, exactly. Tell us from where it came from. So, so Graham and Fred Rakel, which I mentioned before, who is the NPSs inventor. They were on a phone call and they were chatting with each other. And then, you know, Graham, it's attributed to Graham, but also Graham attributed to Fred, so I don't know who came up with it. They came up with it together and they both, it's all about these things, but they basically came up with this quote about what is it really that people want and at work, right? And and they came up with this thing, which I think is very powerful. They said that everybody wants to be a valued member on a winning team with an inspiring mission. Okay, so there's three, three elements really only you have to be valued, appreciated. You want to, you, it's, it's very hard for you to do good work if you are not the wanted, if you are not welcomed, if you're not integrated, if you're not, if you're not, you know, shown that we care about what you think and what you, what you do. Always losing stocks, right? You need to, you, you cannot, I mean, it is so demoralizing for some people. It's very important to win for some other peoples. It's not, not so much important to win, but to never win is really demoralizing. So you want to be part of a winning team because you, you can celebrate success again, earn success is, is a, is a, is an important driver for, for happiness. And and so that, that's super important. And then, Which is also, you know, there's also then a leadership element element in that, in how do you define winning and what is winning and what is not winning. And, and maybe if you have two crazy goals and you're only landing on the moon instead of on the stars, people would see it as losing. But, but I, I think that you know, anyways, that, that, and then you wanna work on something that matters to you in the grand scheme of things, right? I can do my job in a bank and I probably, that wouldn't score high on the mission scale, right? I can work at the school, which mission is of the charts. And, and so obviously throughout your career you will have different degrees of, you know, attainment on these three scales if you, if you think back about your jobs. But it's probably true that. That you are the most engaged and the most productive and the most happy, for the lack of a better word, if you score on these three, three things high. And if you think back through your career, and if you think where you scored high on these three things those are probably jobs that you look back with, with a lot of positive sentiments. Wow. Wow. We could, we could probably go on for, for a few more hours, but I know you don't have so much time. So this is, this is the part of the podcast where I tried to do a little bit of a summary. So I'm gonna try to summarize some of the key points at the end of that. Carl, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask to see what, what did I miss, not just from the summary, but if there's something else you'd like to share with the audience that I, that I, that we, you know, you haven't had a chance to share, or that you know, I didn't cover in the summary, please, please make sure that you, you helped me out with that. So let's see. Where, where do I start now? Now I can't, I can't read anymore. Now I have to lift my glasses. I'm trying do it a little bit old. So I I I think that, you know, you said a little bit that, you know, when you, I think you, you notice a difference between kind of maybe the current world and, and, and where you were born, that, right, right now there's a lot of emphasis on leadership positions. E even early on in, in people's development, you were talking about your daughter and, and leadership. What, what I, what I, what I really appreciated also was the idea that you, you like to learn the theory, but be pragmatic about it. Like you've gotta convert what you're learning in the books, per se, in the theory and apply it. And, and that's where, you know, you will notice the, the big difference. So as much as you loved the, the learning and the thinking, it, it, it is ultimately about the doing. And you have that in mind. Using, using a lot of frameworks and, and tools without having to reinvent the wheel. It's leveraging them and it then it becomes about what tools to use, what are the best tools that I can use to help me leverage and, and speed things up. We talked about a lot about Gallup Strength Finders, Q 12. I'll comment on that a couple, a, a little bit more as we go on. Leadership is about figuring out what needs to be done, then developing a plan to do it, and then doing it right, creating the agenda. There was a lot of conversation in, in how to do that. You said, you know, if I need to create an agenda, I'm going to listen. I'm going to, I'm going to do the research, have the conversations, have the interviews, find the pain points, find the, the bottlenecks, the blind spots. But most importantly, I think it's the ambitions. What are the ambitions and what are the aspirations? And getting comfortable and making sure that the organization has ambitions that don't necessarily have a clear path on how to get it done or execute. If you have, if you have an ambition that you know exactly how you're going to achieve, then it's probably not ambitious enough. And it's where it, it's significantly ambitious that you'll really get to think right? Hard work equals thinking a lot and come up with these big, big solutions. So getting comfortable with the idea of having what might seem to be crazy goals, crazy goals. Now we talked a little bit about the team and the big conclusion there is that, you know, it takes all types. You need people that can have big visions and big dreams, but you need people that can execute. You need people that are working on the long term. You need people that are working on the short term and everything has to have a place in time. So you're not always talking about the vision, you're not always talking about execution. And again, going back to using a tool like Strength Finders helps people understand what people are best at so we can focus their energy and their efforts in what they are best at. In that we build better understanding of yourself and you build more awareness so you know what sort of blind spots you might have or what weaknesses you might have caused by your, by your strength. And you can do the same for people. So we talked a a little bit about, you know, how to get people excited and and you said, look, in finance, it's key to ensure that people don't become back office, that they recognize that they are part of the solution. In other words, they need to think as, as owners as well. And do some critical thinking about the business. Figure out put themselves in the shoes of the people that are having the issues and the challenges and, and, and come up with solutions. Instead of, you know, any, any other alternative, like pointing fingers at each other. You said your role as a leader is to set and enforce standards and to help people achieve their personal goals. So you've got empathy on one hand and caring by, because of that, you can set and enforce high standards. You know, you want to achieve great things in your life, in your career. Great. Well, we're gonna do that through excellence and you help you, you ensure that people are, are putting themselves in, in other people's shoes. I think I, I've mentioned that. Great question. Love the question. Are you proud of your work? And there's a high correlation between people that you know when, when people say, yes, I'm proud of my work and the quality that you would expect from that, versus when people are not necessarily proud of the work that they did. And it took us to another concept of the importance, the value of earned success. Meaning you played a role in your success. It wasn't just given to you, which leads to happiness. So you're kinda, you're kinda preparing the soil for, you know, and you're fertilizing it. So great, great people emerge from it. And great ideas come from that. We, we talked about, you know, hard work is not just putting in the time, but it's growing outside your comfort zone and investing time in thinking and problem solving and understanding, which is not necessarily the path of least resistance. There's actually a lot of resistance because it's difficult to do. You're trying to figure things out that are not, you know, clear and simple and it's not suffering. It is, it is doing the hard work. We talked about providing feedback, right? So as a person that wants to grow and learn, you're like, well, I need feedback to get better. And you need to be providing feedback. If you're, if you're helping others, and I really like your formula, if you're gonna give, you know, five pieces of constructive feedback, let's call it negative, you're not doing this great. Then you also have to provide five points of feedback of positive things. And you said this, which to me is critical. It has to be in depth. It can't just be high level. And then, and then we kind of, there was a couple, another concept, but, but this big idea, you know, we, we, we wanna work in an environment that values you. You are winning and you're on inspiring mission, right? So valued team member on a winning team, on an inspiring mission. And that, and that is key to your engagement in job satisfaction. I'm looking at the clock. I know we're running outta time, so I'll wrap up my summary with that. Carl, what did I miss? Is there, is there something I'm sure I missed something. Is there, is there something else you'd like to share with us to kind of start wrapping up for today? No, I, there's a lot of things now that you summarized it all. No, I, I, I think that, that, that last, that last piece is really, I, I think an a wonderful summary of, of all these things. There's obviously, you know, a lot of things we haven't touched upon. Like, I now have a team of people in Singapore, in China. I have no cultural awareness of Southeast Asia and Chinese culture. So I have a, a lot of respect for what I don't know on how to interact and deal and lead for the lack of better term. Individuals in a completely different culture. So we haven't touched upon that at all. But cultural differences are obviously huge. And, and cannot be gloss over or cannot be ignored. What works in the US doesn't work everywhere. We know that. But, but what works is a, is a, is an unknown for me yet. Even simple things like interviewing somebody, how do you interview somebody in a com from a completely different culture. It's an endless, it's an endless learning experience. And so, you know, there's, there's a lot of things. So I guess my, my, my point is these tools are very helpful and have helped me a lot. And and I was in a company for a long time that was led very well that allowed me to, you know, copy some of these things for my own benefit. And I would encourage everyone to do the same. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. There's a lot of good frameworks out there. And I don't think there's better ones that worse ones, there are just some that are more applicable and others that are less applicable. But, you know, that's part of the work is figure out what, what the organization needs and can benefit from. I, I agree. Thanks so much. So yes, I, I believe you're gonna use your own principles, right? You're gonna do the research, you're gonna do the, the, the, the critical thinking, and you're gonna find out those, those cultural differences and be able to, to adapt to them. And just to finally finalize today, what's something you're looking forward to that's happening here in the next, you know, few weeks or months for you? I am going to travel to, to Singapore and China, which I'm super excited about. For all the obvious reasons. Just the cultural experience, the professional experience. I'm starting a new job for all that for all intents and purposes. And so that's super exciting. So those two things are, Great. Both professionally on, on the new company, working with the new set of people, and then you know, the cultural exposure that it will afford me to have is very exciting. Well, Carl, I, I can't wait until we do you know, the, the follow up interview and figure out how you view some of these concepts to get the company moving and, and going in the right direction. Thank you so much for, for taking the time with me today. It's been fantastic. So much, so much value. So, so much to learn from, really. Thank you. Thank you Carl for taking the time. Really appreciate it. Of course. Thank you, max.