Leading at the Highest Level: Alignment, Clarity, and Momentum with Dave Fechtman

In this episode, Velocity Advisory Group CEO Dave Fechtman shares what it takes to lead at the highest level. Dave breaks down how CEOs and executive teams create alignment, navigate uncertainty, and sustain organizational momentum. He offers practical insights on strategy, culture, and leadership clarity — and reveals the habits that help senior leaders thrive in complex environments.

Transcript

Hello, hello, hello. I am so excited today because it is our first episode of the Velocity Advisory Group podcast, and so I am here to welcome you to Activating Greatness, the show where we really dig into what it takes to lead with purpose, inspire performance, and create lasting impact.

I'm your host, Alec McChesney, and every episode, we sit down with leaders, thinkers, and changemakers who are unlocking potential in themselves, their teams, and their organization.

We're gonna talk about the real stuff. Leadership that drives culture, strategy that creates momentum, and the mindset that turns good intentions into game-changing results.

Because greatness isn't a title.

It's a choice. It's something you activate every single day.

So, thank you for listening, for showing up, and for being a part of a community of leaders who refused to settle for good enough.

And I am so excited because this is truly our first episode and we have our CEO Dave Beeckman here to, to kick us off. And Dave, I think you know, That I can talk a little bit and I'm gonna get really excited. I'm gonna pepper questions your way.

But before we do that, would love to hear from you, if you don't mind, just giving the audience your background, you know, the, maybe a little bit of the history of, of Velocity, history of yourself, and then we're gonna jump in and, and we're gonna talk about leading at the highest level.

I love it. Oh, thank you. I have to tell you, I'm really excited about today. We have talked about doing a podcast for years and Um, we weren't organized enough. We really weren't, uh, disciplined enough probably to pull this off until you got here. So thank you for taking, uh, something that we've flirted with for a really long time and never had the, uh, structure to pull off, and we're really excited about it. So, um, yeah, thank you.

Well, um, a little bit about me, which is probably lesser important or significant than Velocity.

I am, am the founder of our company and, and really excited about, uh, where we've come over the last 13 years and, um, uh, my background is from the banking industry. I was an area president for a bank.

I was head of sales for another bank and really decided at one point that I was really not a great banker, uh, just to be truth to be told, but I, I really had a passion for leadership and for culture and, and, um, helping people and organizations reach a higher potential than, than, uh, their current state, and, uh, I, it struck me at some point, well, why don't I do this as opposed to loans and deposits and Um, you know, all those fun things that our banking friends get to do.

So I still love all my banking friends.

I have very fond memories of that, but, um, being able to, uh, start something special and change lives was, was a calling, and, um, and here we are.

I, I love it. I think you're, you're, you're already selling yourself a little bit short, uh, in that introduction, so I'm gonna poke holes throughout it.

But today's focus, what I really wanted to pick your brain on is what it takes to really lead.

At the highest level. And we talk all the time at Velocity, you know, you talk about leadership, you talk about strategy, culture, how difficult it can be in today's environment to be an executive team, to, to navigate difficult moments. I mean, we think about, we're entering 2026, the COVID-19 pandemic feels like it was 30 years ago, but we're still within that, you know, window of time of teams adjusting and coming out of that.

And so, um, one, thank you for, for spending and investing the time in this. It brings me a lot of joy, and I know we're gonna have a lot of great guests on this, but wanted to start with you at the top, and I, I think the first question.

Where I wanna go is this, this perspective of leading Velocity as our CEO and also coaching CEOs. And you talked about wanting to make an impact and you spend your days, I've seen your calendar, right? Uh, it, it's, it's full. It's full of things that we're doing internally, but you're also coaching senior executives, uh, across, across. The United States, across a lot of industries.

How has being a CEO for Velocity shaped the way you coach other CEOs? And how has coaching some of those CEOs shaped the way that you interact with the team here at Velocity? And can you just talk about that dichotomy between those two thought processes that you have?

Yeah, I mean, I, I don't know that I think I have such a major advantage over most CEOs in the fact that I get to work hand in glove with other CEOs every single day and You know, the wisdom that I'm able to compile from working with so many great leaders and share that with other leaders is pretty humbling and and pretty awesome in its own right, so.

As far as as working with them, how it impacts velocity, I would say it's too many ways to count, just to be really candid is, um, I hear great ideas, I hear great approaches.

You and I've talked a lot recently about, um, is this your best work? Well, I picked that up from one of my coaching clients and questions that he asks of his team, and it's amazing, you know, just using that one example is. Um, when I reflect on the things that I do every day, I stop and I pause and I ask, Well, is this my best work? And 90% of the time, it could just be a little bit better, and I could do something a little bit differently.

So, that's one minor example of, of something that I was able to derive from coaching and working with others.

As far as um what I, I'm able to do and bring um from my own world into others, you know, leadership comes in so many different shapes and sizes, and one of the things I appreciate about CEOs, they're the one person in the company and they're the only one in the company that can't just focus on one functional responsibility, you know, these CEOs that I get to work with and, and including myself, um, which is pretty humbling again to be in that group.

I don't get to think about sales. I don't get to think about delivery or operations or client success. I have to think about all of them every day, as do other CEOs. So there's a lot of burden and responsibility, but I can tell you you're never bored.

I don't know any CEOs that I work with that wake up and think, well, what the heck am I going to do today?

And ultimately the ones who are able to have more um discretionary time.

They're, whatever they do decide to do, they're making a significant and major impact on that organization because when you've worked to the point where you've got the right systems and people in place and you have the ability to have a lot more time.

Everything that that CEO does is a creative towards that organization's success.

So, um, but yeah, it's, uh, I feel like I get a cheat sheet to greatness, you know, our, our podcast is called Activating Greatness.

I get a cheat sheet on what all these other amazing leaders get to do and I get to witness and the mistakes that they make. I said, hmm, all right, well, I don't, I don't have to replicate that because I front row seat and a box of popcorn on not to do that myself.

I, I love it. I could picture you with the box of popcorn going through the, the baseball card deck and, and having that conversation. You did, you did bring up something.

I, I promised before we went live that I might take us down a quick tangent and you know I always joke you, you, I, I know, I, you know, I, I always say I'm allowed one or two bad podcast questions and This is one of them right out of the gate, and I'm really excited to, to bring it to the table in our first episode.

You know, you coach CEOs across multiple industries and of course, Velocity sits in kind of the center of this within that consulting and coaching realm, and we Might work with somebody at a small therapeutic company or a large pharma, construction insurance.

How, how has, I guess, talk to me about your philosophy in I can see something that is working or not working in construction.

Be able to take that and how can we apply it to something in the life sciences or something in insurance and finance or even for velocity like a concept like, is this my best work, which I'm gonna ask you about in a second. But how do you, how do you take things from one industry to the other or is there a silo and it's, hey, that's, that's different. That's insurance, that's banking, there's regulations, we have to play a different ballgame. What's your thought process on that?

Yeah, I, you know, I, I, I'm going to answer from a CEO perspective, but the beauty of Velocity is we work with leaders at every level of an organization. We even work with frontline leaders who are more in a supervisor role or a manager role. So I think what I'm about to say applies to all leaders, not just, not just in the CEO role, but I find most leadership skills, um, are industry agnostic. They're, they're transferable, so there are clearly, um.

The CEO has to know enough about his or her industry to to make critical decisions. I mean, you know, part of the CEO's job is to make tough decisions, but I don't think that that's reserved just for that role. I mean, you think about even in middle management, you know, vice presidents, senior directors, they're making tough decisions all day every day.

So I think that um.

I think most skills delegations, you know, time management, relationship management, conflict resolution, um, how to make informed database decisions, none of those things are, are reserved just for the CEO hat, um.

So that's one thing, but you have to be good at your industry, um, at, at whatever levels you reach a certain point, um, I think in certain levels of an organization you have to be really proficient at executing a task or a role, but as you elevate in your career advances, you, you really, um, uh, you need to know your industry, you need to know competitive intelligence, you need to know, um.

Uh, all these different nuances and now you layer in complexity like AI and you layer in complexity. You mentioned COVID earlier of working remotely, working co-located. It, there's just so much the speed of change and, um, it, it's supply chain issues, tariff issues. There's at, at, at these highest of levels, um, you have to know your industry's impact, all these different variables that impact your industry.

But at the end of the day, 99% of the time it's shaping culture, leading people, making important decisions. Those are the kind of the big things that that leaders at certain levels need to focus on.

Yeah, well, and I think you and I have talked about a lot of times, especially in some of these specialized industries, the individuals that are being promoted are specific and subject matter experts, whether they're scientists or project managers, superintendents, and they keep getting promoted.

And at no point has somebody talked about how to lead an effective meeting or how to have the, the proper communication and the difference between coaching and managing and what is micromanaging look like, and I think it's a, it's a really interesting perspective too.

Yeah, I have to, I have to say it's, it's kind of nice. There's some things that keep velocity's lights on and one of these realities are there, there's been this huge, since COVID, a lot of people that were, uh, more advanced in their careers have said, you know what, I'm good. Um.

Um, I don't need this stress. I don't need these headaches.

What's happened is there is a knowledge gap, and one of the things that's quickly bridging that knowledge gap is AI. I mean, uh, people that think that their differentiator is, is industry or product wisdom or knowledge, it's not the case anymore. But what has happened is people have gotten promoted very quickly, who moved from an individual contributor into a leadership role or in some instances, um.

You know, manage small teams and they were the best at what they did and they just got tapped on the shoulder.

That's created a great opportunity for us to work with our clients and help clients because Um, in school, you don't learn a lot of these leadership skills. Um, if they didn't have a really strong leader that invested in their, in coaching and development, um, probably they were ill equipped to handle the, the scale and the, and the, uh, new responsibilities. So, these are things, you know, a lot of our listeners probably heard of the Peter principle. A lot of these things that, that, um, leaders have been subjected to as they advance in their careers.

Keeps us in business. That's where we lean on our coaching, we lean on our emerging leaders programs and some of these resources to help people manage through um.

You know, probably getting promoted in many regards, very much deserve to be, but in, in some regards they're underdeveloped and, and um it's not anyone's fault. It's just kind of where things are at right now and, and um.

It creates opportunity for people to take their own journey and their own career advancement, but also for the companies to invest in them.

Yeah, well, and I think, you know, we've talked all the time about that investment is no longer a nice to have. That investment in those individuals is becoming more and more of a priority, or they're gonna leave and, and they're gonna find new opportunities, which I think brings me back to this comment that you made about is this my best work and when you shared that with the Velocity team.

I was instantly enamored with it because it goes back to a, a phrase that I use often, which is good enough is neither, and they kind of fit together. And I've posted a couple of videos about this and had a lot of feedback. And I would say about 80% of that feedback has been really positive. And then there's been maybe 15, 20% that are asking questions in terms of what does that actually mean? And is that a productivity problem and do you want me working all the time?

And in preparation for this, I started to think about that comment a little bit more.

And what, what really stands out to me is that the executive teams have to also be asking themselves that question, and they have to be living that philosophy. So even hearing you say, you know, I, I ask that question to myself all the time and 90% of the time I can do it a little bit better.

And I think sometimes when those comments are made from an executive team, if there's not belief that they're also doing it.

There can be that rub. And, and the reason I'm going on this tangent is I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that executive team alignment and how important Having a strong executive team and having leaders that people want to follow and believe in and trust, uh, how, how all of that builds not only great leaders, but, but great culture that people want to work with and for.

So I guess this is a really long-winded way to ask, how, how do you view Or I guess maybe what separates an aligned executive team that has that buy-in, that has people believing in them, and they don't think it's lip service when they say things and, and maybe a team that doesn't have that alignment and you can kind of see the fractures, whether you're in a senior management role, middle management, or you're an individual contributor, when you look up, you kind of start to ask those questions.

What, what do you think separates those two types of teams?

I'm gonna answer that. I, I, um, I do want to go back to that. I, I watched your podcast or your, your video that you ran on LinkedIn on um.

Um, good enough is neither and is that your best work, and I read, I read the 80% that got it, the spirit behind it, and I read the 20%, and I don't think that folks that Um, had issue with that or, uh, uh, maybe much different in their way of thinking, but I, I will say this before I answer your executive requirement, um, it's not, it, it's not, um.

Working harder and it's not a level of effort that determines that, but it's the quality and the importance that you put behind it. So we talked about AI earlier.

It's really easy now to cheat and and have AI do a lot of the heavy lifting from a writing standpoint or messaging standpoint.

I find you can still very quickly pick out something that's been AI generated versus something that a human being actually put some time and effort into creating.

So these aren't things around.

If you're working 40 hours now, working 45 hours to put a better product out there, it's just taking care, um, in the, in the product or the service that you're delivering and doing it with excellence and expecting that of yourself and your colleagues and your organization and um I would love to talk about this topic for an hour and I won't, but I, I hope anyone listening to this does not get offended because it's not, hey. You know, I want you to double down on your, on your hours to create something that's better.

It's, you know, the, in construction, they say, you know, measure twice, cut once, and that's not a, that's not a work harder thing. It's just doing something a little bit better than maybe what you naturally are inclined to do. Um, so, that's at least.

Would I apply for myself. So back to your second question. Yes, we're filibustering today, aren't we? I

love it.

We knew it was gonna happen. We're gonna have to have you on. We'll get 10 episodes out and then Dave will come back on for episode 11, and we'll just make it a, we'll make it a theme.

I'm, I'm going to mark my calendar for that, Alan. So, um, executive team alignment, I, uh, a little, a little, uh, something that a lot of people don't know. I'm actually writing a book on this topic, and I know that's not why you asked that question, but I am going to go there for a moment, um.

There, it's really apparent if an executive team's not aligned because if you look at, um, you know, just a little bit of degrees of separation as you go deeper into the organization that becomes much more broad. You have a functional or, you know, entire pieces of the organization that don't know how to work properly together. So, um, I, I think that when, when we talk about this concept of alignment, we are often thinking of chemistry.

We're oftentimes thinking about do we like each other.

Um, so alignment comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes. One is camaraderie and, and making sure that, um, The people in the organization actually like and respect one another and there's levels of trust and those are kind of building blocks, but are you aligned on goals? Are you aligned on direction?

And I find oftentimes organizations that don't have alignment at the top, there's not, they're not working towards a common goal, so there's no unified goal or there's no, um, no why behind the work that they're doing.

I oftentimes think that if they're, if they don't have ways to govern themselves, they're competing for resources, they're competing for talent within the organization I'm talking about, um.

Likely the culture is not in the right place, um, when there's a lack of alignment, so.

You know, different leadership teams go through different maturations, and we've heard of the Tuchman model, um, forming, storming, norming, performing, you know, these are phases of any team, uh, sports as well, for the, for that matter. But when there's a lack of alignment, there are, there are definitely cracks that become really big and For those of you that aren't in the C-suite or you're not part of an executive leadership team, maybe you're part of a senior leadership team or you manage a department of people.

Alignment's really, really critical, so we'll talk maybe another time, Alec, on communication and all the remedies for these things, but um.

If you, if you sense that things are out of alignment, guess what?

Everyone else does too, and um, usually people have these major blind spots that don't even really understand.

How out of alignment or maybe challenged a team is.

And um there's ways to bring light and shine light on those things, and again, those are some of the things I love about my job is getting to do that.

Well, and I'm, I'm glad you mentioned the book because future episodes of this podcast will be you and I debriefing on the book and, and walking through that process and I, I think that you said something there that I wanna hone in on a little bit, which is if, if you start to have those, those cracks, and if one person's feeling misalignment, it's likely that 23, 30, 40 people internally, depending on the size of your team are feeling some version of that misalignment.

But what I think gets missed a lot of times is, so is the client, so is the customer. And a lot of times we think about this as an internal, hey, we, we've got to solve this. It's an internal thing, it's a culture, it's a culture problem, but we can, we'll figure it out.

But the real issue, a lot of times or, or the way that you're going to feel it and get hit on the head.

It is because the clients are going to start to feel that from an external perspective. Again, whether we're talking construction, in my, in my world in the, the life sciences for the last 4 years, we heard this all the time from a, a services standpoint. There was mis misconception on, on who we served or what we did.

And then the, the potential clients and customers, if you ask them, they would say the same thing. And it wasn't until you kind of got that knock on the head or, or that message from a revenue standpoint that you started to take some of this, I don't wanna say seriously. But sometimes it's just something that we can put on the afterburners for next quarter or next year or next offsite, and then all of a sudden, you see the revenue numbers go down, the book to bill go down, and, and we start to put the burners on in, in a much bigger way from that, from that alignment as well.

Yeah, I mean, first of all, it's, are you, are these issues there and you're, it's a blind spot, or are these issues there and you're neglecting them, you know, that that that's kind of the first place to start.

And if you don't know the answer to that, likely it's a blind spot and there's good news that all these things are fixable. That's, that's the good news in this story.

But addressing that blind spot is really, really critical because it's so funny, you know, the emperor has no clothes. There's a reason why some of these phrases exist is usually the higher up in the organization you go, the bigger your blind spots because people either don't want to bring you bad news or you, like we talked about a few minutes ago, you're looking at 100 different things every single day. Of course, some things are going to slip through the cracks or not get the right level of attention.

But all the way down, you know, you mentioned construction earlier, Alec, you, you, but the relationships between general contractors and, and, uh, their subcontractors, or, I mean, there's a lot of dynamics you mentioned like sciences.

This alignment thing is a real thing now.

Communication is, is one of the things that is, is part of this answer key. I think everyone's probably wise enough to, to know that to some degree, but if everyone knew how to do this right, then why is it so commonplace that people are out of alignment and teams are out of alignment, right? So, again, the good news is this stuff is all fixable.

Um, the bad news is, is that it's commonplace, um, so bringing intentionality to your team and, and being, um, committed to fixing them.

is really how you're going to win the battle in 2026 and beyond.

Yeah, well, I love the, the nuance of it's commonplace, but it's fixable, and we talk about some of the things that velocity brings to the table and some of the solutions or You know, obstacles that we're trying to overcome from a communication or collaboration standpoint.

It, it's not rocket science, but at the same time, it's kind of that take your own medicine and you have to be intentional. You also can't set it and forget it. It's something that is practiced and repeated time and time again, and it's a decision that each leader inside the organization has to make. And You know, I think it's a, it's a reasonable enough segue into our, our next line of questioning here, which is, we talked about COVID, but we've also talked about, or, or I wanna talk about how velocity a lot of times will come in.

After an acquisition or after, you know, uh, bringing on new executive team members or where, you know, the CEO finally after some sort of change, yeah, something, something happens and there is complexity to that change. Change and whether it's really positive or it's a negative moment, change is still change inside of these organizations and each person is creating their own story. So I'm, I'm interested, you know, what, what principles, what practices do you rely on when guiding some of these executives through.

Those complex moments, whether again, they're difficult ones or they, they should be exciting, but it's still adding that complexity into the day to day. Where do you go when, when these opportunities arise?

Yeah, I, I, I think one of the things, you know, at, at Velocity, we do a lot around behavioral science. We use birds as a metaphor, you know, overlaying on, on the disk assessment. So, I think one of it is flexing your style in these moments of change. So, um.

Not speaking about the velocity part of your question, but what for your listeners, what like what, what can they do? Well, one, lean on your superpower or if you've got, um, if you're generally very empathetic and you care about other people, then lean on that because no, generally when you're managing through change.

People, there's high degrees of uncertainty.

People generally jump and go to the worst case scenario. Um, everyone's always dialed into the radio station WIIFM. What's in it for me, um, and you have to kind of answer those questions. So, uh, the best that you can talk to the individual as opposed to the groups, um. And there's ways to do that, but, but when, when I feel heard and understood or I at least know, you know, the, the, you know, these anxieties that I have around this change initiative are OK and, and they're normal, I think that's kind of a starting point, but you also, you need to bring clarity, you need to bring, um, give these people a direction of what the new.

Change is going to create and or the impact of it.

If there's bad news, lean into the punch, um, don't skirt around it, uh, because when you skirt around the bad news, people again go, uh, start climbing the ladder of inference and they start telling themselves stories, and 99% of the time it's worse than what the bad news really impact is. So there's a lot of things that um you can do, but ignoring it or thinking that, um.

It's not significant, you know, that it's really hard for people that don't have a say in that change, um, you know, to not, um.

To not be indifferent about it. So you have to, you have to do them a favor and, and address it and talk about it and, and give clarity of what it all, it all means.

I

think the, the, the, the word that I put a giant asterisk next to is the clarity, right? I mean, it goes back to that thought process around clear is kind, but if there's not clarity, every individual, to your point, is making up their own story, and, and it's also their right to be able to do that. And if you don't clear that up for them, you.

You know, we talk about managing each person at the individual level and the whole human being and make work human. You know, there's a lot of different philosophies that we're gonna talk about on this podcast, but it comes back to a lot of times, the ability to communicate, and we have to be able to communicate good and bad news, you know, at the same time.

Yeah, and imagine you're leading a team of 5 people or 7 people, something like that, and There there's impact, there's some sort of change, and there's 5 different stories going on.

What are those 5 people going to do? One, they're going to, they're going to kind of go inward and, and maybe insulate themselves from from the harm that they perceive, or they're going to start gossiping, or they're going to start, you know, uh, but they're not, they're not going to be indifferent about it and just kind of roll the dice and see how it goes. So, as the leader, yeah, clarity is a big piece of it, right, Alec, and then, um, uh, listening, asking them how, how is this impacting you and Um, what do you need to know, and, and maybe I can't share everything, but I'll share whatever I can.

Um, so I think two-way communication is really, really important when you're navigating through change.

Yeah.

All right, last line of questions before we get into some rapid fire, and it's a little bit of, it's a little bit of a detour that I wanted to at least ask because this concept around momentum has, has come up a lot in my initial conversations and Stacking wins, right? We talked about compounding, we talk about creating momentum, protecting it, and rebuilding it when it does stall.

And so, what do, I guess the line of questioning here is what do CEOs and leaders that are listening to this need to understand about sustaining momentum over the long term. And uh when I'm thinking long term here, I think maybe a decade ago, long term would have had a different perspective and now when I talk about long-term vision, maybe you're thinking, yeah, maybe you're thinking 18 months, maybe, maybe 2 years, maybe 3 years, but I think about it as quarter on quarter. How can we build, protect, sustain that momentum, and if you're open to it, just kind of give what momentum actually means to you in this, in this kind of in this concept as well, Dave.

Yeah, um.

You know, I, I, it's funny, the book Good to Great was written a long time ago. Jim Collins did a knockout job on that book, but he talked about, there it is, there it is. He talked about sustained, you know, meaning 20 years to your point. I mean, that, that's unfathomable today. I mean, if he wrote that book today, which is a masterpiece, you'd probably be talking about 24 months, you know.

But um, anyways, um.

I think, you know, take one from Ted Lasso, I need to be a goldfish first of all, and um momentum can swing in both directions. You, you can have positive momentum or you can have negative momentum and um.

Uh, you know.

with the speed of change going on right now.

You, you can't expect momentum alone to carry you forward, so you have to be looking for nuance in, in, while you're in a momentum trajectory.

Um, but winning breeds more winning, and it's true in sports, it's true in, in business, and, and you kind of create your own tailwind or your own headwind depending on Um, what type of momentum you're facing, and if it's ahead when you need to pause, you need to begin leaning more on strategy than living in the moment.

Um, I, I've said this before, I don't, uh, I don't quote velocity very often, but we say at velocity that the biggest enemy of success, I'm sorry, the biggest enemy of strategy is success, if I could get our own quote right, but, but generally you become less strategic when you're winning. Um, you're just going to kind of ride the wave.

But the reality is, is that because of all the change and because of the, um, how short run or short-lived, uh.

Seasonality is on everything nowadays. Um, you have to always lean on your strategy and you have to be very intentional about what you're doing. So, I would, um, I would say that, uh, if you're feeling momentum and it's a tailwind.

Don't, don't take things for granted. Don't think that that's going to last forever, but take, take advantage of it though. Be opportunistic, place bets, um, make investments, um, invest in your people, invest in your, in your strategy.

Um, I think one of the major differentiators, uh, I was going to talk about this maybe on our 11th episode is the impact of culture, um, and All those things are, are contributors towards tailwinds. Um, if you're facing headwinds, you need to pause. You need to get your team together.

You do need to get realigned. You probably have lost that. You've probably lost your common goal.

You've begun thinking of everything as big and insurmountable. You have to start breaking things down into smaller bite-size pieces and And, and really focus on, um, executing at a much smaller scale, um, to start building that momentum, to have those small series of wins. So, a lot to this topic, Alec, but, um, knowing where you're at, are, are you, is it a still tide or is it an incoming tide or an outgoing tide, you kind of got to know that, um, so you can address things accordingly.

Yeah, and I, I appreciate you giving that, that precursor to probably the 22nd episode when we come back and just specifically talk about momentum because, you know, that's a conversation that I've had a lot over the last 4 years, specifically within the life sciences.

So many new competitors are coming into that space. AI is changing it and You kind of get that shiny object syndrome where all of a sudden we change one quarter, we change the next quarter, and we change three quarters, and none of those changes worked. And now we don't know who we are. And so to your point, you, you gotta take that step back and say, has any of this been Going towards our true north to the vision that we actually have as a company and if you don't have that, then all of these changes, you're just changing because you think the industry is headed in that direction and you're not gonna, you're not gonna win in that way.

Yeah,

and data, lean on data, lean on um what the numbers are telling you and, um, you know, whatever insights and metrics that your organization.

Consider is important, pay attention to those and definitely look at trend lines. Are they up, are they flat, are they down and, and, um, and then act accordingly, but um.

Yeah, we, I wish I could say that we've always been on this beautiful upward trajectory. We haven't. 23, 2nd half of 23 and 24 were tough years for us at Velocity. We had, we had a long season of, of upward positive momentum.

And then when you're in the middle of it, you know, I, I, I wish I recorded this, uh, at the early part of 23, because I would listen to my own advice.

Um, you've got to, you've got to find these ways to break those trends, and we did that. Um, it was a longer, kind of flat period than I was hoping for, and we've been in positive momentum since the end of 24 and we're on that. So, um, these, these shifts can be long and, um.

Intentionality is just really key. Paying attention to metrics and all those different things are are important.

I love it. I love it. Well, we are, we're at the end here. I've got 4 rapid fire leadership questions.

OK, 30 seconds.

Maybe I'll give you a 25 seconds each. So I want, I want quick hitters, and then we're

gonna wrap up, tug on your earlobe or something when I'm at, you know,

maybe I'll, I'll bring up the old, uh, timer and, and do a countdown, give you the 321.

these are 44 leadership questions, just quick hitters.

Number one, what is one leadership habit that you rely on every day, no matter what?

Yeah, I, I'm an early riser, so it's starting your day off right. It's, uh, getting exercise in. I know, you know, people that, you know, start off by reading the Bible or whatever it is that your morning ritual is, but do something.

Um, to start your day off right, and, um, I think that if you don't know what that needs to be, that would be a good thing to, to, you know, it's right now it's December, so maybe do a New Year's resolution, but, but create habits and, and do them early in the day. Um, there's decision fatigue and real things that as your day goes along, even if you're a night owl, um, so start off on the right foot.

I love it. Number 2.

What's the most underrated skill that a leader needs to develop in order to be successful in 2025 going into 2026?

Gratitude.

Um.

Period.

You went over on question one, question two, way, way under, way

under. You didn't even, you didn't give me the 32, 1.

You were, you

were,

I loved your answer, so I was just gonna let you run.

Uh, do you want to elaborate? I love Grant. I love the answer here,

and I think it's gonna surprise some people. It's, it's hard for a lot of people to, to have, and it's, it's stressful, and it's, it's, uh, it's kind of the one thing.

Yeah. Number 3, what is on the opposite side of this? What's one thing?

That you believe great leaders should stop doing.

Yeah, holding on to everything.

It's time for you to develop your people. It's time for you to coach and mentor.

Um, it's time to delegate, but quit holding on to everything. Stop doing that. Um, it's holding your people back, it's holding yourself back, and it's creating a lot of extra work for you and not enough work for them.

I love it. Question number 4, 4th and final one. What's the best leadership advice that you've received, and it's bonus points if you still use it.

Yeah, um, I, I, it's funny, I, I, I talk about this a lot with my coaching clients, but really culture is the key, uh, competitive advantage for any organization. It's not, you can bring in people, you can spend money and get any tools or resources that you need, but culture is something that truly differentiates. It helps with recruitment, it helps with retention, it helps with discretionary effort.

Um, it helps with critical thinking and ideation and creativity and collaboration. All these things are positive byproducts of a healthy culture.

Yeah, I love that one. I go back to one of our, one of our mutual friends, Sean Blackburn, used to say that he wanted a culture where people wanted to work with. You and for you, and I think the impact, again, you get to see that internally, you get to see that externally, a good culture also means that potential clients are gonna be able to see through that too, which I love.

I, I don't know that Sean Blackburn is our mutual friend. Uh, during COVID, we went to see, uh, Spider-Man and he was in the row behind me and the next few days, I ended up getting COVID. So I, I blame Sean, um.

Uh, for giving me COVID.

You heard it here first. I mean, that's, I know we're gonna have a lot of exciting like exclusives on the Activating Greatness podcast, but

that is our first

like true breaking news moment. Um, it is,

it is, it's old. It's old. It's 5, it's 5 years old, but It's still news.

News is news. News is news. Um, Dave, last question for you.

Who is a leader that you believe we should interview next? Somebody that is, is doing meaningful work that others can learn from as we grow this podcast? Who should we interview next?

Yeah, I'm biased. I mean we have so many amazing leaders at Velocity. I imagine that they're kind of queued up, Alec, but, and, and I'm also biased because I get to work with a lot of amazing leaders too, um.

I, I have many, um, I, I think John Stenberg is somebody, CEO of Citizens Inc.

I admire his commitment to self and team, and he's on this personal health journey right now. He's bringing innovation to a mature organization. He's a fairly new CEO there, um, but I, I, I feel bad picking one name. I would, I can give you dozens and dozens of names, but I think John would be a fun.

Um, a fun guest.

I love it. Well, I know, I'm, I'm gonna reach out. We'll, we'll connect with John. I love the, the innovation and personal health journey. I think there's a lot that, that can be learned from that, and then I know you and I are gonna connect on the future of the podcast and ensure that every 10 episodes, Dave comes back on to continues to, to tell this story.

We're obviously gonna detail out the The book in a great way.

Um, but, but to your point, you know, this podcast has been a thought for Velocity for a long time because of all of the leaders that we interact with and also the leaders who we don't know yet that we know are making a big impact inside of their teams in, in the lives of the humans that they work with, the organizations, the communities, and our goal is really to, to shed a Light on, on those individuals, their processes and really become, you know, a learning institution for, for a lot of, of these stories.

So I couldn't be more thankful, one, for you giving me the ability to have these conversations. The journalist in me is very happy, but also for you being the first guest on, on this endeavor and kicking us off in 2026.

Yeah, you, you, I mean, you can back me up on this. I actually didn't know I was the first guest until moments before we filmed, uh, so I am honored to be your first guest, and, um, I can't wait to see what this series, I, I hope this was entertaining enough for the second episode to get some listeners, but, um, I think we're going to do some great things and we, we really are blessed as a firm to be able to work with so many creative people, even inside of Velocity, but with all of our clients.

I think the wisdom that's going to be shared through this Activating greatness series is going to be unmatched. So, thank you. Thanks for making this real.

Yeah, absolutely. And to Dave's point, if you are listening to this episode, there are already 6.

Maybe 7 episodes live right now that you can go and listen to of others within Velocity and then we're starting to bring on external guests.

As you are listening, you can get this on our website, you can get it on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. If you do listen somewhere where you can leave a review and a five-star rating, I'm not gonna say no to that. I need that. I need to prove that, that this is a good idea to Dave.

But if you listen and you say, hey, I would love to connect with Alec and Dave, don't hesitate to reach out. Dave and I would love to connect. Send us a note on LinkedIn, or if you are listening and you think, wow, my boss or my leader or I should be on this podcast to share my story, absolutely reach out to us.

Um, maybe we'll even bring Dave on for that episode. It'll just have to be the 11th or 22nd or 3. 33rd and we'll bring Dave on and the two of us will interview you together because again, our, our importance of this and our focus is just sharing stories of, of great leaders across industry. So, Dave, one more time, thank you so much. Appreciate your time and your expertise and to everybody listening.

Thank you again. This has been the first episode of the Activating Greatness podcast.

Thank you, Alec.