I am so pleased and honored to introduce to you our guest speaker tonight. Dr Mijke Gazarik, he is the Vice President of Engineering at Ball Aerospace, before that he had an illustrious career at NASA where he left that organization as the Associate Administrator for the Space Technology Mission Director. He has just a long history of leadership, technical leadership in various dimensions. And like I said, he is such an engaged leader and he of anyone would understand what it means to lead a technical organization and that the challenges and the opportunities, the surprises and the benefits of doing some advice. So with that I am going to turn it over to Mike. >> Hey and appreciate that really warm welcome, appreciate those kind words, very nice of you and really great to be here. Hello everyone, and it's kind of exciting and an honor to be in your last thoughts, I think you're done after this. So I do understand that I stand the last thing before you and when you're finished with of course, so I get that. So let's try to make it interesting and exciting and something worthwhile. And boy, that video is something else that's going to be hard to follow Kathryn. Jesus, that was pretty inspirational, so I'm not sure how to live up with that. But it's interesting, there's some teams in there that and I didn't of course know that video is going to be played, but I have them in my slides, I have 10 slides tonight. So not a lot really, and they're really just a framework for discussion, they're not meant to be this one after another story that I want to tell you. So let's use it as a framework and see if we can add some value on your last class. So with that, let's go to the next chart. I'm going to spend just a few minutes talking about me in my career, not because I think you'll find it interesting. But I think it maybe can services a context, here's a career path that some of you may relate to. There's some decisions along the way we can talk about, and it gives you some context, you can ask questions a little bit about my background. So that's the only reason I have it in here, and it's really a career on one slide or maybe 1.5 slides. So I will take you through the all the beginning, but basically for me, I grew up in Pittsburgh 1987 graduated Pittsburgh and Electrical Engineering. I went to the Universe, I grew up there and I went there, it was a local school for me was also the only place I got accepted, to be honest with you, so that's where I went. And from there and I kind of a funny story there, my parents, it's kind of on the lower side of growing up and at a time we always had enough, but not a lot. And actually my halfway through school actually [COUGH] my parents ran into financial difficulties and so I couldn't finish school. I didn't know how I was going to and I was lucky enough to get a general motors scholarship. And so the general motors truck and bus and I worked in Detroit for two summers. And so that's kind of how I finished school. When I graduated, my department chair and I did fairly well school recommended I came from Georgia Tech, which is kind of a connection there. I also had an offer to go to TRW out in Los Angeles and they could go to a master's program at USC. I really didn't know a lot about masters and advanced degrees, I really did. I was pretty naive back then, probably still him today, but especially when it came to graduate school. But my department chair and this is where networks and people like your professor for this course and the networks, you have said you really do gotta go to graduate school, whatever that is. I went to Georgia Tech in Atlanta and worked for Rockwell International. So for some of you who may be working full time and also going to school, I was one of those as well back in the 80s. because back then there was no zoom, was all in person and Rockwell was kind enough for me to take off time in the day run downtown to Atlanta and take some courses. Eventually that was really hard. So for those of you doing it, it was the hardest thing I think I've ever done. Eventually left Rockwell to finish full time and got my degree, got married and I went up to New Jersey outside of New York city. My wife worked as a chemical engineer for Merck, so I followed her. And I worked for a small company doing navy work. It's what's shown there, very technical doing, making submarines not be heard if you will. And we did a lot of work for general dynamics in the Navy and that was a picture of us. We were on the island of a Lutheran when hurricane Andrew hit actually, we were trying to get off the island. So very exciting got the right around submarines, installed sensors and accelerometers. Very technical began there to do some team leadership, kind of, I was on the third shift. We were running 24/7 and that kind of informal team. But then I kind of had the itch when I was my master's program at Georgia Tech, one of the professors. Again, another connection said Mike, you really need to go for your PhD. Again, I was like I was not ready at that time to go do that, four years later though I was. And so we had our first child and we moved back to Atlanta and I did four years and actually my department chair at the University of Pittsburgh who sent me to Georgia Tech had come back to Georgia Tech. So again that connection is strong and I did my PhD thesis there with Ed came in and very wordy. After 97, it was a really hot area for engineering, lots of opportunities and I really didn't know what I wanted to do. And this comes in later when we talk about careers a bit, so I had a lot of offers, lots of opportunity. I ended up choosing MIT Lincoln laboratory. I was lucky enough to be entertained an offer and I thought that was one of the best places one could go turns out. Georgia tech is actually the number two supplier of talent to Lincoln lab after after MIT. Had a great career guided electro optics in aerospace and I built a center there for NASA which shown there that looks at the atmosphere, we can get a remote sensing, looking at temperature and community profiles. But then, so that was for NASA Langley in Virginia, but then you can see this is the journey part. I wasn't sure this is two thousand's, a lot of people was the .com era very bubbly kind of little similar to what we see today anyway. But I went off and did some commercial work for DSL and high speed internet and I did that like that company for a while. But then I thought wow, DSL I'm not sure that's the technology of the day. So I joined Texas instruments and I just bought a startup in Boston and they were doing 3G at the time. So at this point I'm in software, I'm a team lead but it was a huge mistake, huge mistake. The year I had at that Texas instruments startup I hated and I think they hated me, it was a horrible culture fit. I went for the technology thinking 3G not DSL, I didn't do due diligence on culture and fit and we can talk about that in a bit later. So, I'm stuck at Texas instruments of what I do. Well, on the next slide I got a call every year from NASA because I built that instrument and Steve Jersey at the time kept calling me up. And so I finally said what we're going to go to NASA. And this is where I really learned that for me, I loved aerospace, I love working for something bigger than myself, whether it would be the government or defense or whether making more than just making high speed Internet, that was me. And it took me a long time, I'm probably late thirties now, early forties to figure that out, I wish I had figured it out earlier. For their long story at NASA Program Manager build a camera for the shuttle that's kind of buried between all those pictures. That's what shown the astronaut crew that were there. This is after the Columbia accident. So that was just an exciting opportunity in the bottom kind of buried was the heat shield for the curiosity rover. I got in the entry descent landing and worked a lot with JPL and so it got amazing experiences and program management. It was also what's called like a department head of branch, head of the engineering directorate. Eventually then applied for the senior executive service, it's called SES in the government to be a deputy director for engineering. Eventually then engineering director at NASA Langley and then I got a call that really makes no sense. This is the long linear part of the whole thing to say do you want to come to NASA headquarters in Washington, DC. And this is during the Obama administration and we wanted the chief technologist, time Bobby Braun wanted to set up a cross cutting technology organization, so it did not exist. And this is I wasn't sure I was ready, I'm just a knuckle dragging engineer and that was involved in technology. But it's one of those decisions that you're ready or you're not and you want to give it a go. And so I did so for four years I went to move to Washington DC with the family back in to Virginia and led the creation of what's now called the space technician directorate. So NASA at the time had three main focuses aeronautics, human spaceflight and science. So I led the creation of the fourth which is now called space technology and I'm happy to say 11 years later that exists. But there I had to learn how to work on the hill, how to meet congressman and senators. How do I convince them to make an appropriation to create an organization to appropriate funds for a cross cutting technology organization. And so it was quite a learning experience and very political working both with the White House and the Hill, the Congress is and learning about appropriation and authorizations. And how do you do that, how do you make those relationships so much to say there, but quite a journey. After four years of that it was really hard and the hardest thing I've ever done in terms of career and then came the Ball. So I've been to Ball seven years where I lead the engineering directorate. So that's just a quick snapshot with a few little decisions that maybe we can provide a framework as we go forward and talk a little bit about leading a technical organization. So let's go to the next chart, so that's it for career. Let me shift a little bit on these next couple of charts and talk about at least my journey through leadership. So a couple of things that I'd offer to all of you and I kind of give this talk in pieces to different audiences. So look, if you haven't started your leadership journey, a couple of things to think about, I think from leadership if you haven't started it already. I think and it's leading technical organizations clearly you want to move it from being any accidental team leads. Project leads kind of in the video it showed many examples of where you could lead in your life to intention, right? You now have an organization that you're responsible for that presumably is going to try to accomplish something and go do something. And so now it really shifts, so for me I'm a lifelong, I wanted to learn about it, there's a bunch of books and I've showed some of my favorites here. There are many out there, mine would be pick a model for me and it's funny, I saw in the video the servant style model. It's not about you, it's about the team and you're there to help the team move forward, help that or move forward. And we'll talk a little about that in the next couple kind of minutes about what does that mean, what does that look like? But for me, first and foremost it's a servant style where you're there to help others move forward. There's a lot of framework of leadership, mine I favor his emotional intelligence by Daniel Goleman. He wrote a couple books, social intelligence, emotional intelligence, it's been around for quite a while. But I really just I guess being an engineer that goes into the physiological of the brain and the functions and it's really tied to that. And you'll see that and actually a number of concept, the whole understanding of the brain and spending a little bit of time, at least through books. I don't think you need formal training to be a neurologist, but it really does help understand where that comes from. I think Bernie Brown, one of my favorite leading authors podcast, many of you may know her, she does a weekly on dare to Lead. Talks about we, I think think of ourselves as rational rational beings that have occasionally have emotions. When in reality we're probably all emotional beatings on occasion, have a rational thought. And if you can kind of shift that thinking to the fact that now you have people to think about. That's in a very intentional framework and I think the emotional intelligence can kind of help process that. A few other things conflict comes up, especially if you're a change agent and so we can talk about that. There's certainly an art to it and the books by John E Kotter talk a little, a lot about change management. I think I have a leading change, I knew I had one of them, he has a bunch but boy, I tell you, I think that really helps often when you're in ignoring it is about change. You're trying to do something right to accomplish something, we can talk about that. And a little bit also in the bottom, basic leadership stuff, you've all heard this before, right? Finding mentors that really help whether they be at your company, your organ, the community, other highlights on this page that I wanted to hit where at the bottom. Bernet Brown again did a podcast about how to complete the stress cycle. It turns out right if you all of us, if you have an emotional reaction could be at work, could be at home. But something that really kind of sticks with you, whereas they use are you have a pinch or something that really bothers you. It turns out it's probably in your emotional system and you need to process it and there's only seven ways that you can process that emotional reaction. And if you don't you will live with it and then you can pick one of the seven, some people have different, that's one of the seven one has to do. And I say all that because you're going to be dealing with people and emotions and organizations. And if you can stay in that rational part of your thinking it really will help you and help the team move forward. And so that's a big part of it is understanding our emotional cycles, you're going to lead organizations. We'll talk about the technology and your acumen and street cred but the really, I think emphasis needs to be on the people's side and on the emotional side. And really getting comfortable with who you are and your ability to process emotions and then understanding others. If you can do that and begin to see it in people and teams, it will change your life and your ability to lead a technical organization. Okay, let's go to the next one. >> Yeah, I want to ask you about your managing conflict statement and how important it is to let your teams have that conflict in a positive way. But yet still sort of control a little bit, not necessarily the outcome but how they go about it. >> Yeah, great question, yeah and I think I have this on upcoming chart, but one if you can get to an environment. What the best way I think is through something called radical candor where you can challenge each other's ideas, thoughts, plans, schedules, but it's not personal. And so this involves relationships and understanding and trusting each other where you can debate each other to get better. And debate each other's ideas, but that it's not personal and I think that's the ultimate goal. If you can ever find that environment on your teams, on your project, on your classes and your organization. Then you really can get to that point where you really have an effective change and the other aspects of change out O'Connor would be a lot of things. One, most change the reason why it becomes emotional, right is because people feel like they're losing something, whether they're comfortable with, whether they're valued. And then you want to change and or gore process or the way to do things you can often hit accidentally unless you really understand change. It's taking away people's comfort It's taking away where people feel valued and you can imagine that emotion that comes with that. So understanding that is really key and kind of maybe recognizing when that happens. Okay, yeah, let's move on, so speaking of leaders and taking on roles, I found these personally and I see it in other people. But the most difficult transition is when we become from a technical performer where you've been proving your acumen pretty much since you were a little kid, right? Proving through high school, middle school, get into college, you're trying to prove yourself, you get into those first couple of jobs, maybe you're doing an analysis or writing code, doing it. It's technical and you're trying to prove, right? You're good, that's great when you move into the leadership there's nothing worse. I think I've seen that a leader still trying to prove themselves, it never goes well, right? You think about it what do you want that in your leader? You want, they're trying to prove themselves that's never good, right? They have to shift the leader needs to shift from them improving themselves to helping the team. And that focus on people and not just the result. And I remember that being very explicit struggle and you can lose the value of who you are. Think of all these years, you've been able to contribute, you can point to your value that you add. And all of a sudden now your leave, I can't write that letter code anymore, you wouldn't want me to, and I can't write C code anymore and you probably don't want me doing any kind of technical analysis, and you can quickly become, well, what value do I add? And you got all the deal with cartoons about leadership and management, right? [LAUGH] You might want to. So that could be a real pitfall and it can really trip you. And I've seen a trip people. So something to be conscious about when you make that transition. And yes, there's value added, there's this funny on that little chart of the army did, what's the best attributes of a leader, lazy, energetic, smart or dumb? Hopefully you didn't dumb and lazy, probably not the best quadrant to be in, but it turns out you might think energetic and smart. But it turns out [LAUGH] actually lazy and smart actually tends to be the best combination and that understanding of what needs to get done, but not on the energetic side, it can actually add more churning chaos into leadership. And you think about and we'll get to that what's the vision where you're trying to accomplish and then you're really trying to empowering people. And there's a certain element of being laid back and just being involved enough, it's a balance that I still try to achieve, that actually turns out to be often some of the best leaders. So there's some thoughts on the transition in aerospace, the other part of this becomes system engineering is a big part of what we do. It all started from there is a great book by the way, The Secrets of Apollo, which laid out kind of the basics of system engineering. Because most, at least in aerospace, what we do is so team oriented, complicated multi discipline. And so often leaders can fall into that, it doesn't have to but come out of the system engineering just because the overall system, it can be a natural lead to being a leader of a team lead or department. Not always, but often that's where it comes from. And then the other leadership aspect that we have to talk about in aerospace and I know you have this captain knows a lot about this isn't the program and project management. If you have an interesting process and schedule that becomes that of course, and typically in aerospace often where our leaders come from is from the program management area. Often in least an industry that's where profit and loss responsibility lies, which then generally tends to be often a career path with following the project and program management. So that's a few thoughts on kind of making that transition from technical performer into the different aspects, at least in aerospace of leadership. Let's get more broad in a second and let's go to the next chart. I mentioned before and you'll see a lot of this talk has a lot to do with people and emotions. Things we don't talk about technically, but it turns out you're going to lead an organization that is who you are leading. And that gets into the idea of culture and I mentioned before I made a poor choice not due diligence about a culture of a company or a team. And so I'm sure all of you and see you management engineering won't be cultural killers, and I'm sure you're good on the technical scale. But let's just talk about this to make sure [LAUGH] so there's lots of books and studies on this. You often see in a technical order someone who's really good technically p performers but no one wants to work with them. There's actually a book on this and you may know called the no **** role, and all studies will show you that that box three, the value that people take away because their cultural killers, because they're hard to work with, does not add enough value for their technical performance. So don't fall into that trap. It turns out if you don't find people in there and I'm sure none of you will be there. But if you find people in your or exit are there, you gotta coach them or move them out. It turns out that the value they detract is way more than the value they had. And so again, I say that because the technical you often will find that technical superstar. But, at least in aerospace you got, it's a team sport. And so what you really want to be of course is a p performer and a culture champion. Someone who people rally around, people who make the whole team better, who make the or better and our p performers in that box for where we all want to be, and we want to look for those and identify those. And that's the other thing in the organization that you joined trying to find out who those people are, who you can really around. You can really bring the team forward to bring the order forward. Those are key, and if you're new to the role, those also are key champions and advocates for support as you try to move the organization forward. Often if you're moving change, those people can also be your change advocates. Those are the people that people trust and can go to if you're trying to change a process or an order a vision or direction. The other kind of trap that I see is in the bottom represent, especially when you have projects and programs, aerospace is generally organized that ways and I found this, I did this, I did this and I see other people as well. But what happens you get on a project or program, you're trying to build an infrared camera for the astronauts to use to save the shuttle, right? It's pretty powerful and pretty important. And you're really faced against cost and schedule, and you're trying to rally the team to really build that camera. And you can fall into an us and them and then as the rest of the organization supply chain contracting people, human resources, basically anyone is not on your team is them. And so you kind of get this island mentality, it's us against the world. And you see that because you're just so driven, it's almost a natural tendency. And I would offer you after doing that, don't do that. If you can enlist advocates and all those organizations, but they all have a different charter than you. You're trying to do a certain thing for your project and program, but they do to. There are things they're trying to do just to help the organization, whether they be how to buy things and supply chain or on the human resources side. And so if you can get advocates and actually get them and embrace them, be that box forward to bring them in with you, you'll have so much more success. It'll be so much more graceful than just trying to pioneer it as your own, your own band of pirates as you try to implement what you're trying to do. And so you can bring, and I see it larger corporations, especially a ball even at this point those successful project managers and program managers are those that can embrace and get everyone to work for you, everyone that wants to support you. And they will, yeah, they got their own roles and constraints. And so it's often a balance, but if you can get them on your side, and get them into your vision, and get them to buy in, you'll have, I think just so much more graceful success. Okay, so, here's one of my favorite concepts of the book by Kim Scott. She was at Google and Facebook and a bunch of the high tech companies and I mentioned it earlier, but just to kind of dive into it a little deeper. It's called Radical Candor. And again, if you've ever experienced it on your project teams or maybe some of your group work, it's fantastic. And there you can challenge each other again, ideas, your plans, your schedules, your concepts and all that to get to get better. And it can be often, I know when I was a space tech with Bobby Braun and the team we had, if you walk by our office yelling, yelling was just intensity because we wanted to get better, but it wasn't personal. We'd go to dinner and have beer everywhere. There was nothing to do with personal. We were just trying to get better and that can lead to growth and making the company better every day or your or department every day. A lot of places fall into ruin sympathy where I really don't think your idea is too great for your plan. I don't think it's good, but I don't want to say anything, I want to be nice. We're just going to be nice and that's ruinous empathy, which is really, we're not attacking each other personally. So, that's good. But it's really not getting us any better. If you find yourself in an org where in the bottom two, it's probably not going to be very healthy for you because it's manipulative or it's just downright obnoxious aggression. And it's interesting and some of the work that's being done by companies and some of the high tech companies we see in our industry that are often viewed as innovative, kind of have some of that. If you see their attrition data and you look at some of the reports, it tends to fall into those bottom two categories and I offer you doesn't have to be that way. You can still be innovative and aggressive in your technology, but you can be in the radical candor space. So, you as future leaders, I would say to try to generate environment and what I think about is an org. Yeah, how do I make an environment? I've 2300 people in engineering here Paul, how do I make an environment where we can achieve radical candor? I'm not naive to think it's everywhere and it is not. But it is something we talk about. And how do we get there at all? Again, when you think about it, the base of it is you got to care about each other personally, which gets back to those earlier charts on leadership. Do you care about people? What is your interest right now on people? Do you have interested in the people in your class? You have interesting people in your own organization? How much do you really care and how much do you really study about them and their emotions and where they came from? That in the end is the understanding that allows you to achieve profound change. Well, let's go to the next chart. We'll dive into a few more concepts. Okay, so, [LAUGH] I got a couple of things about, okay, I think about this, if you're in engineering and ball aerospace rating, you're in this 2300 person or what do you want from your leader? I don't know that answer. I'm still working on it, right? But one I think a vision of the org and confidence and we know where we're going, we know where we're headed. We're moving people get better every day. Were world class, I always say we're world class engineering organization. Here, it was my vision when I took the job, my boss is Rob Strain and I said, one, we got to maintain our world class technical chops so I got to make moves whatever I can to make sure we remain world class. Two, we've got to be externally community. We want to have a presence in our aerospace community, AI AA and other organizations such as that. And then three, we got to care about the people, right? We got to be a home, in the matrix system in aerospace,, people are assigned projects and programs and they're off with a big bad program managers, right? We got to make sure we're engineering, we're a home for those people if it's not working out career moves. Sometimes it's just a style match for whatever leadership or culture there in, let's make sure they got another move to make those are the three things. And so, I talked a lot about that vision. And it still remains today after seven years, even with the growth we've had, I think I would add, and we've had the scale is part of it, but I talked a lot about the vision of the order. And a lot about thought leadership and do that in a variety of ways. Again, how effective it is, I don't know. And part of that is also making sure we have an inclusive environment. Again, not naive to think it is inclusive everywhere, but I do think we talk about it in the leadership team. And you think about, from an engineering view, my team is a series of very senior level directors and senior directors. So, that's you work up to different levels of leadership, what do they need? They don't need a lot, they know what to do. So for me, right, it's about, here's a vision, here's what I want to go, commander's intent, often that word. And then what do they need each of them? And I think about them each individually what they need, where they are, their leadership journey, where they are and their experience, where they are with their group and department. What challenges do they face and how can I help, right. And certainly staying out of the way. And it's trying not to micromanage but yet give direction and vision about where we're going. So, a couple quotes, you've all heard that before without vision people are impaired. So, again, as a leader, I think having that vision of being articulate about it is really key and getting people to buy into that the inclusive environment that gets to the culture. And again, you can have all the strategy and vision you want, but you probably heard that phrase before as well in the end, the culture and the environment you have will dictate the progress you make. And then the other thing that's taken me a while is on this last point, you can have a strategy and here's what we want to do and how to go, how do you translate that into specific actions? Otherwise it is kind of just hallucination, right? And so, that was taking me a while. I have a game plan, I've used it for years, it's kind of like a one trick pony for me, but it worked. I usually come up with initiatives for the year, for example, for the organization, things that we want to go do that abroad, sign of owners, okay. Provide resources is what we want to do and I use that series of initiatives to try to accomplish the strategy. So we have something we could tangible think about, to make it real to make a difference and then we can look back at, after a year or whatever quarter by quarter, how're we doing? Are we moving the needle? Is it overtaken by events? This is what we want to focus on, are we getting any better in execution? Are we getting any better in, some of our environments that aren't very inclusive, having made a difference? And I'll talk about that in just a second. One of the books, extreme ownership I think was on the one of the books is Choco Will Linky, he and his counterpart of seals wrote a book on leadership if you're interested. I thought was really interesting, very storytelling format, but he has just this incredible story about, there are no bad teams, only leaders. And if you don't believe me read the book and he has examples of that in the still training. Taking teams that were bad performing teams and all they did was change the leadership and the worst team in all the competitions that they do and their training became the best. How can that be? It's really illustrated. So, think about that, the leadership does matter and that gets me to the strategy and things you want to change. What moves does one make when you're running the 2300 person organization? What moves do you have? And I think about it this way, there's kind of three moves that I get to make. If there's something I want to go do, I can change the organization. Maybe you don't have the right reporting structure. We're not organized the right way, we're organized by disciplines, maybe that's not the right idea. Maybe we should have an organization focused on ground systems because we never had one before. Maybe we should have an organization focused on spacecraft development because we didn't have one. Maybe that's the move, maybe it's the right order but you have to change the leadership. Maybe if things aren't working out well, maybe you don't have the right person in the lead role. Or maybe the third one is well, maybe that's all both of those are good, but you don't have the right groups talking to each other. You're missing things because in our ground support development for example, we We don't have the people who write the requirements from the ground support and the people who implement them, they're not even talking to each other. Those are the three moves you get to make, you can change the leadership, you can change the Oregon, you can change kind of economics, it's about all I get to do. The challenge of course, is figuring out what move is to make. And if you've ever seen an org where and this is the everything I found right. If you see if there's drama or people are unhappy and there's a lot of churn. It's generally because one of these isn't right and if you make a move and you guess wrong, and for example, you change the leader, but the org is still not right, you'll still end up in turn. So it's hard I find to find which move is it to make? Once you figure that out making the move is it's hard. I mean, changing things is hard, but the real hard part is the assessment piece and that's what I found we had a problem in one of our areas, we were just turning on this particular area, we weren't delivered for cost and schedule, it was continually not good. And in the end it was, well, it was actually all three, but first was changing the leader because the leader didn't have a rate vision or the construct that even get us to be better. Once I changed the leader, it took nine months to change actually the person, the new leader changed the org, divided it differently and develop new products, new roles, responsibilities. And it just took now over a year and a half where we're finally beginning to see results since moved out. So that's the other thing is the timeframe for these kinds of things in these orgs is often slow. Now, it is a start up for smaller company maybe not so much, you can move a lot quicker. But I think that the principles kind of still remain and that's something I think to kind of think about and that assessment is really key to figure out which one to make the other thing got off. >> Yeah, quick question. So as a leader you have a vision mission in terms of where you want to grow in the next few years or for a long time. Is it fair to have a financial vision, let's say you're doing maybe 15 million now. You want to grow in three years, 100 million. How do you, is that fair to have and if you do, how do you communicate and translate to all your team? What are your thoughts on that? >> I said yeah, It's a really good question and certainly many companies do and almost everybody has a growth plan, right, grow or die. However, I think I have seen, I know at our company and there's books by Simon Sinek and others will tell you. It's good to have those goals, those are outcomes. And what I've seen on the good leadership would be, you can set the outcomes where you want to be. But at the end, what you have to work on is how to get there and that's the internal, that's the machinery, that's the people, that's the processes, that's the why we do what we do and really that it's like a team that focuses on the score. They want to win the game. How do you win the game you score more points? Okay. That does not help me, you figure out how to score more points. That's what I amounted to, John Hayes, our corporate COO often says he hardly ever talks about the outcomes. The outcomes will come from the result of what you want to do in your org and your vision, your strategy, that's what you got, that's what you can change. That's what you can make and the outcomes will be what they will be. So they're important. But I don't think they can be the driving force. And many Simon Sinek will say any companies whose mission and vision is to make more money, you can hardly, it hardly ever works. There has to be something more than that. Yeah, good question. Let's go to my last, I think it's my last one two again, a couple more comments. >> second last one, yeah, this is D and I. >> Okay, D and I Alright. Yeah. Okay, so one thing is the technical organization I wanted to hit on is technical acumen, right? You get this question a lot. You have street cred can you be what if you don't have subject matter expertise, can you lead that organization? And again, I would suggest the answer is yes. Although if you have a good understanding of whatever the technical or you're in, it does help with your assessments, your intuition, you need less data. I don't get a lot of data at this level, so you have to kind of into it and if you've been there before, you can kind of go, okay, I know what this means or I've seen this before, or I'm pretty sure I know what this means. That's part of it. And it does help for many leaders if you, establish your street credibility. Whether you're an expert in that field can help, advocates can go help, if you're new to that or to establish that street credibility and it is, I think more of an art than a science in terms of leading technical organizations. However, I don't think it's absolutely mandatory and there's certainly, you don't need a PhD in these technical fields. There's many leaders at my level who do not, it's not a requirement by any stretch. The other topic I get is, Authenticity and trying to be off and this is where if you've been through, especially if you have street credit or you've been through that experience. You can speak to it from kind of an authentic point of view because, you can kind of basically understand where people are coming from. And that's where I think about it. I mean I built and developed systems. I think I know what that means to be on the program team. And I think I'm trying to relate to people from that kind of level thinking about it from their lens, thinking about it from their angle. So that's a few words a little bit on authenticity. Both of these are, kind of hard and you can't just turn it on to make it happen. But it is something to think about in your career, to establishing both. And let me get to this last chart and and my last one, I didn't want it to be last because it's one of the most important, is diversity and inclusion. And it's a topic and there's a maturity model if you want to measure it. Deloitte and Touche, I think put this together, kind of really like it. You can measure it as an org where you're at. I think it's absolutely essential, especially on the inclusion part. And again, we talked about all the opinions and make an inclusive environment. Why would you want people to feel they can bring their whole self to work everyday. Wouldn't that make for a better organized team? And there's lots of thoughts and lots of work on this. I would say the following, for everybody here. This is the number one question. I use the screen out candidates for leadership in the engineering orange. You won't believe how much this question tells me everything I need to know. I just asked as the leader of this organ in this new role, what's your D and I gameplan? I can tell within about 15 seconds whether they have one, whether they've ever thought about it, whether they had any game plan at all about what they're going to do because it's important value for us in most companies it is now. And if the person hasn't thought about what that means, what they're going to do to make it more inclusive and it can't just be while I'm diverse, that's my game plan. That's not a game plan. That's interesting and it's probably good, but it's not. And so I would offer all of you to think about, what is your game, what's your move be articulate about D and I. What would you do, what are the actions you would take? How would you be a thought leader? There are things that you can go do to make that better for the organization, at least I know it's a goal that would be key. But my other comment on this is and I just heard this talk. So I put it here because I, this guy Steve Robbins. If you ever heard of, you can find him on, I put a link in but you can find him on. Hope you guys know how to do that on. Just amazing. I heard him two weeks ago and he talks about inclusion and he gets back to the brain and the vision, it's actually right. Just like we talked about for emotional intelligence. It's the reptilian brain and the contextual brain. And while we want to be with our tribe, why that's more comfortable for all of us? It's a natural thing of evolution about why that is and the things that we can do to be open minded and curious right to open up the aperture and not resort to our natural bias about I want to be with people like me. I want to be with my tribe lots there to talk about. I won't have time tonight. But if you get a chance, one of the best things I've ever seen in terms of specifically on the inclusion piece and I think that any leaders and are going forward in today's world this while we didn't have a lot of time on it is essential. >> So how do you hold individuals accountable? Especially leaders accountable to have a D E I Strategy. Because it is, it's personal and I've seen multiple things that say, you know you can tell me your strategy, you can tell me what you want to do. But numbers, retention, demographics tell the story. >> Yeah that's a really good thing. I think we all wrestle with that. So we measure too, we look at data but you gotta be careful with that too. We talk about that right? It's not quotas, it's a nuanced thing when you think about diversity at least for us. So holding people accountable in a way that, I think we measure to see how we're doing, we don't use it for rewards or system like that. I think the studies have shown that leads to unintentional consequences that are not good. So, what we talk about, what you can talk about is people's actions. Are they intentional about it or they articulate about it? Do they message it? I think not necessarily a numbers game as much as it is a person's approach to the topic? And really it folds right into our inclusive environment? So the diversity pieces, one piece of it. But are they curious, are they open minded, are they bringing an inclusive, are they working to make an inclusive environment or their department. That's where some of the things that we look for. And so, you got to give everybody a chance to continue to grow. >> AlI right, Mike, we're going to let you go back to your event, and I can't believe that you gave us this time. Thank you so much. >> Congratulations everyone.
