#86 (Ret) MG Keith Thurgood & (Ret) LTG Neil Thurgood - The Thurgood Brothers on Cultivating Leadership Excellence - Tales of Leadership

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to the Tells the Leadership podcast
.
This podcast is for leaders atany phase on their leadership
journey to become a morepurposeful and accountable
leader what I like to call a pal.
Join me on our journey togethertowards transformational
leadership.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
All right team.
Welcome back to the Tells theLeadership podcast.
I am your host, josh McMillian.
I'm an active duty army officer, I'm an army leadership coach
and I run my own coachingcompany called McMillian
Leadership Coaching, and I'm ona mission to create a better
leader what I like to call apurposeful, accountable leader
or a pal and my vision is to endtoxic leadership, regardless of

(00:42):
where you find yourself, bypromoting transformational
stories and skills.
And on today's episode it's alittle bit different.
I have two brothers on and oh,by the way, those two brothers
are both retired generals Oneretiring, keith Thurgood, is a
rank of major general, two-stargeneral, and then Neil Thurgood,

(01:03):
retiring at the rank ofLieutenant General.
Keith Thurgood is a clinicalprofessor of healthcare
leadership and management at theJindal School of Management at
the University of Texas atDallas, where he also leads a
graduate program in healthcareleadership and management, and
he has had multiple differentamazing careers throughout his

(01:24):
military experience, to includebeing a reservist officer and
working in as a CEO of verylarge corporations, to include
AFIS, which is absolutelyincredible.
And then his brother, on theother hand, lieutenant General
Neil Thurgood, is currentlyserving as a special advisor for
the University of Alabama inHuntsville, president for

(01:47):
military affairs and technology.
Prior to his appointment to theUniversity of Alabama in
Huntsville, he served as thedirector for hypersonics,
directed energy, space and rapidacquisitions for the office of
the assistant secretary of theArmy acquisitionquisition,
logistics and Technology atRedstone Arsenal, alabama that's

(02:07):
the place that I come fromwhich is absolutely amazing, and
the amount of wisdom that thesetwo gentlemen bring is
phenomenal.
And I mean that because I havetaken, I think, over eight
different pages of notes on thisepisode alone, and that's why I
love podcasting.
I get an opportunity to talk toamazing individuals about

(02:30):
leadership that I can activelygo and use in my current role as
an active duty army officer.
And I do all of this not tomake any money.
I started from the standpointis that I was on the pursuit to
become the best version ofmyself so I can show up
authentic and whole and helpother people and help the team

(02:52):
and help the organization win.
And before we even start, I wantto make sure you know that this
podcast episode that is justreleased, you can go to
McMillianLeadershipCoachingcom,click the Leadership Resources
tab and you can find the blogthat accompanies this, of where

(03:13):
I have pulled out and distilledsome of the key points from
Keith and Neil, and you can gothrough and read that at your
own time and use theseprinciples and practices in your
current leadership role.
So, without any further ado,let's bring on the Thurgood.
I'm going to start off bysaying, gentlemen, welcome to

(03:34):
the Tales of Leadership podcast.
How are you both doing?

Speaker 3 (03:37):
Super Doing great today, thanks for asking Yep,
same here.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Thanks, joshua.
Yeah, so I always like to takethe time at the very beginning
of allowing our guests to kindof introduce themselves.
And, keith, if we could startwith you, if you could take the
time just to quickly provide anoverview?

Speaker 4 (03:54):
Yeah, happy to do it and again, thanks for spending
some time with us and allowingus to spend some time with you
as we learn and talk aboutleadership.
Keith Thurgood, I live inDallas, Texas.
Retired two-star general, spentsome time in Iraq and
Afghanistan and I've also hadthe opportunity to lead some
pretty large organizations.
So if you're in the military,you may know AFIS are now the

(04:15):
exchange.
I was the CG and CEO of thatorganization.
For a period of time.
I've been one of the seniorleaders at Walmart and Sam's
Club, leading one of their $15billion business units, and
today I'm a professor at theUniversity of Texas at Dallas,
where I lead a graduate programin healthcare management and
leadership, where we teach ourclinicians and non-clinicians

(04:38):
about transformation,transformational leadership,
driving change, striving forexcellence and then, finally,
I've got five kids and 15grandkids.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Wow, congratulations on all of that, sir.
Thanks, neil, if you could takethe time to introduce yourself
to the listeners.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
Yeah, thanks, joshua, and again thanks for having us
on.
It's not very often I get to doa podcast with my brother, so
that's all a good thing.

Speaker 4 (05:09):
That is true.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Yeah, I just retired from the military active duty
for just under 38 years about ayear ago.
So you know, I enlisted as ayoung soldier in the infantry a
long time ago and came upthrough the ranks and was
blessed to do some pretty greatthings.
I've commanded at every level,from captain to three-star,

(05:33):
retired as a three-star.
In my last job I was actuallystood up a brand new
organization to teach, to try todo the material buying of our
army differently than it's everbeen done, say, in the last four
years.
So building teams,organizational culture, leading
teams, how to lead teams, waswhat I spent my time doing Since

(05:58):
I retired.
I work full-time with a companycalled Andrel, which is a
startup company, very dynamic,very passionate, focused on the
defense, which matches mypassion for helping soldiers,
service members, and then and Ialso work with the University of
Alabama here in Huntsville ontheir leadership programs with

(06:21):
President Carr, the president ofthe university.
So just been a greatopportunity now to serve so far
along in the military and thennow on the defense industrial
base side and on the educationside, which is a passion of mine
for teaching.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
I think it's very interesting that I have two
brothers that were in themilitary together on the podcast
at the same time, but both ofyou have achieved exceptionally
high ranks in the army andthat's no like small thing.
So I'm curious, having you bothon here at the same time.
Was there any level ofcompetition between you as

(06:59):
you're going through the ranks?

Speaker 4 (07:01):
Well, I would say this, this and he'll, neil, jump
in.
For a period of time we wereboth in the pentagon and I was
up on the third floor orsomething like that.
He was one below, literally onebelow, and every once in a
while I'd go down to see what hewas doing.
At the time he was a colonel,he was the chief of staff for,
uh yeah, part of the acquisitioncorps and I would go down out.

(07:24):
At the time I was, you know, Iwas already been promoted, so I
was a general and I would go.
The first time I went downthere, the people in the office
looked at me and said, hey,weren't you a colonel when you
left the office, and now you'rea general coming back.
I said, yeah, that's tough.
Quickly things happen in thearmy.

(07:45):
But I would say I don't know ifthere was really any competition
to say.
What I would say is that we'vebeen in our family, we've tried
to do things that I think thatmost great leaders do, and that
is focus on purpose, try to besomebody that's going to add
value at the end of the day, andthen when you do those kinds of
things and you're focused onthose kinds of things, the cards
fall where they fall at the endof the day.

(08:05):
And then when you do thosekinds of things and you're
focused on those kinds of things, the cards fall where they fall
at the end of the day.
So for me it wasn't reallyalways about becoming a general
or a CEO.
That just happened to be thefruit of, I think, being
self-aware, being humble,gracious, recognizing that
you're not the smartest personin the room and that you can
make a difference in certainareas in any organization.

(08:26):
So I don't know, neil comment.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
Yeah, I think when we were much younger, of course,
like any brothers, we wrestledand occasionally we still do
wrestle when we get together itwas never a competition on a
measure of successprofessionally and I would say
the strength of that came fromour parents, right, who really
raised us well.

(08:49):
And then in my case, and I'msure in Keith's case, where we
had great leaders that mentoredus and taught us and put us
under their wings and developeda soft potential maybe we didn't
see in ourselves.
And when you have a brother andwe have a sister as well who is
just like you know, just issuccessful in her, her
professional domain, it reallyis a springboard, not a

(09:11):
competition, it's.
It's how do you, how do youlearn from each other?
You know, when Keith wasworking on his doctor and I was
working on my doctor, what didwe learn together?
What could we do together?
So I don't, it was never acompetition, it was.
It was more of a springboard ofa lifetime of relationship.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
And that helped accelerate, I think, our
learning capabilities and whatwe believed, and having an
accountability partner almost inthe way of being able to push
through some of the morechallenging experiences that you
probably face.
Because both of you, gentlemen,have achieved a lot, and
include educationally you bothachieved doctorate degrees and
that's no small thing in itself.
What I would love to kind ofstart off with at the beginning

(10:02):
phases of your military journeywhat drove you both to join the
military?

Speaker 4 (10:08):
Well, I'll start.
And, by the way, I may add thisto everything that Neil knows
about generalship I had to teachhim while he was a colonel.
Just so you know, I would sayI'm going to give you a little
bit of a snapshot.
I don't know if this will behelpful or not to the listeners,
but when I got out of highschool, my parents were in

(10:28):
Germany.
Our dad is a retired colonel,infantry ranger, aviator and at
the time he was stationed atStuttgart, germany, where I
graduated from high school andwhere Neil went to high school
as well.
And I came back to go to schooland I talked to a recruiter one
day.
He said hey, you ought to jointhe army.
And I'm like, well, I know alittle bit about the army, so I

(10:50):
signed up and I was a private.
I went to basic training andAIT and, uh, at the time they
have a pro, a program calledsimultaneous membership program.
So I I eventually uh, gotthrough basic training and AIT
and then went back to my reserveunit at the time and eventually
got.

(11:10):
Then I signed up for ROTC andthey allowed me to be in this
SMP program and what I learnedfrom that experience was one as
I went to basic training, itstarted to instill in me this
idea that people can make adifference and it really doesn't
matter what level you are,because organizations need
leaders at every single level ofevery single organization.

(11:34):
And this implies that we, asjust good citizens of the nation
and as good leaders in themilitary, we need to model the
right kinds of behaviors.
And so I started to see that,right in basic training, the
impact that leaders have.
In fact, if I were to see mydrill sergeant, I'm pretty sure

(11:56):
I would be locked up atattention standing in the
hallways because of the thingsthat you learn.
So I learned from thatexperience that you know,
leaders make a difference allthe time.
And those early experiences inreal life leadership positions
helped frame up my thinking sothat when I was commissioned I

(12:20):
was, you know, a regularlieutenant, and when I was a
lieutenant one of my firstassignments was to Europe and I
was a platoon leader and we hadI was in the transportation
corps at the time.
So it was all about logisticsand we one of our missions was
port clearance.
So we would, you know, allthese ships would come in, we
would unload them, we'd put themon trucks and send them all

(12:41):
over Europe and the Beneluxcountries.
But I had an additional duty,much like you're familiar with,
and one of my additional dutieswas to take an American team to
what was then called theNijmegen marches.
So these were marches that wereinternational in scope.
The US sent a couple of teams.
I took one and it was a marchthat was 100 miles, took one,

(13:09):
and it was a march that was 100miles, four days, 25 miles a day
, to celebrate the World War II.
And if you've seen the movie ABridge Too Far, it's about
Nijmegen and Remagen.
It's those bridges in Holland.
So I took this team.
We walked about a thousandmiles over the course of four or
five months.
That's all I did.
Did every day, 20 to 25 miles aday, and one day the formation
was just getting out of controland so I stopped the formation,

(13:31):
gave him a half right face,front, leaning, rest position,
knock out, a couple of push-upsback to attention, forward,
march, and about 10 minuteslater the same thing happened
again and I stopped theformation.
And I looked up the formationand I could see who was causing
the problem.
It was this young private up inthe very front.
So I ran up to the front of theformation.

(13:53):
Now, if you can imagine this,how dumb this is.
I mean, you'd never want to dothis today.
I reached in and I grabbed thisshoulder, this young soldier by
his collar, and I yanked him outof the formation.
And he knew that I was totallyirritated.
And as I yanked him out of theformation, he tripped and he

(14:14):
fell on the ground.
So I'm staring at him, he'sstaring at me.
The entire formation is likewhat the heck just happened here
.
Entire formation is like whatthe heck just happened here.
And in that moment I recognizedthat I wasn't the leader, that
I knew that I should be and thatI could be.
And that was one of the earlymoments in my life where I'm

(14:35):
like, okay, yeah, I got allthose awards in college and I
got a bunch of awards on activeduty, but you know what?
At the end of the day, that wasa turning point for me to
recognize that you know what?
You have a lot to learn here,lieutenant.
You have a lot to learn.
So, neil, over to you.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
So the question you asked, Josh, was a good one,
which is you know what made youwant to come in the Army?
And I can think of two veryspecific things that shaped my
thought of what I thought wouldbe important values that drove
me for the passion for success.
So the first was in Germany,our father, who was then on the

(15:19):
staff as a major and lieutenantcolonel.
He took us to Berlin and Iremember very distinctly I was
13, 12 or 13 years old, and Iremember very distinctly like it
was yesterday I can almostsmell it that standing on
checkpoint Charlie, lookingacross the Berlin Wall, and I
remember thinking very clearlyin my mind those people are not

(15:41):
happy, this can be better.
There is something to thisthing that we call freedom, and
what I'm looking at is not that,and that has stuck with me for
a long time.
And then fast forward a fewyears.
You might recall on militarytheaters they would play the
national anthem before eachmovie, and I remember going to

(16:06):
the theater with my father andwe'd all, of course, stand up
and he would play the nationalanthem two tours in Vietnam.
Matter of fact, those twoChinooks on the wall behind me,
if you can see those.
One was given to me in 1967, mydad's first tour in Vietnam,
and one was 1969, his secondtour in Vietnam.
Oh, wow, I can rememberwatching my dad listen to the

(16:33):
national anthem and crying andI'm like you know, I was a young
kid, I'm like hey, big cry baby.
But now, having served for 38years on active duty, I am that
guy.
What I learned that moment oftime watching my dad was
something I didn't understand atthe time but came to appreciate
.
Which is this great country welive in, this great republic,
this great experiment calledAmerica, needs people who are

(16:54):
going to put the greater goodabove themselves.
And that gets right to theleadership principles that I
think have formed you know,Keith and I, over the years and
the passion to do things.
And then I'll just share you.
I can remember the moment intime I decided I wanted to be a
leader.

(17:14):
I was enlisted, I was the RTOfor a Lieutenant named Jane
Conway.
It was an infantry Ranger,airborne killer guy, and we were
on a patrol.
We've been awake for a few daysand we were under our ponchos.
We've been awake for a few daysand we were under our ponchos
in those days, under our poncho,with a red light, looking at
the map, and I was the RTO.
So I had the PRC-77 on my backand I'm down there on the map

(17:37):
under the poncho with Jay Conway.
Jay Conway, he's my platoonleader and I'd been out there a
few times and it was his firsttime out there and he was lost
bigger than Stuttgart.
He was lost, like you know,Monday morning, Easter egg, and
he said hey, where do you thinkwe are?
I said we're right here, so weare right here.
He goes no, no, I think we'reover here.
And I remember sitting there inthe rain under the poncho with

(17:59):
my red light going I can do thisbetter, I can do this better
and I'll do whatever it takes tonever be the weak link in the
formation.
And I think that's what leadersdo.
They realize that leaders mustalways have the capacity, no
matter what's happening aroundthem, to help others, and those

(18:22):
leaders that use all of theircapacity or haven't developed
enough excess capacity inthemselves will struggle to
become great leaders.
Because they'll spend so muchtime looking inward, they won't
spend the time looking outwardto help those around them.

Speaker 4 (18:40):
I love that, Neil, because it reminds me of how the
Army defines leadership, and Ithink it's a really great
definition, even though there'sno universal definition on what
effective leadership is.
But the way the Army thinksabout it is it's the ability to
influence others to accomplishthe mission by inspiring them,

(19:00):
providing motivation and purposethat we should probably come
back to them.
Providing motivation andpurpose that we should probably
come back to.
But there's a second componentto that, and it's about creating
an organization that's betterthan when you left it.
So great leaders, at least theones that I know of, do those
two things.
They always accomplish themission you can never take your
eye off the ball of the revenuestream or driving productivity

(19:23):
but simultaneously they also setthe organization up for success
.
They're always developingleaders.
They're building the capacityand the capability that they
need so the organization canextend well beyond their own
life cycle.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
Yeah, it is.
If the organization only workswhen you're leading it, you have
not developed the organizationfor success.
The organization and the valuestream you put in place, if it
is of value, will work whenyou're not there.
It will work after you leavethe organization and you have to

(20:01):
have the capacity to thinkthrough that.
So to tie those two thoughtstogether, right, if you're so
busy trying to keep yourself inthe formation when you're
running, then you have noability to help those around you
in the formation.
You have no ability to shapewhat's happening around you if
your entire capacity is used upjust trying to do your piece and
your piece only that was onething that I had to learn

(20:24):
quickly.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, I'm still active duty.
And then, Neil, kind of to thepoint, I've served in
acquisition corps.
Now I started off as aninfantryman, so a lot of those
stories resonate.
Keith, with you.
As a simultaneous membershipprogram, I started that through
Marshall University.
I was in the National Guard andthen kind of commissioned
through that process and thenlooking at a map with the red

(20:46):
light under a poncho.
I spent countless nights doingthat, especially at Fort Polk,
Louisiana, which I hope to neverable to look beyond my current
scope.
I guess what I like to calllike leadership intelligence.
It's not about me anymore, andthat was really at the company

(21:09):
command slot of where I have tobe able to look through me and
then develop systems andprocesses that make the
organization better.
But also whenever I leave,which will happen one day that
organization can still moveforward.
And what I would love to hearfrom both of you and then, Keith
, you hit the nail on the headand I was going to bring that up
of how you both definedleadership, purpose, direction

(21:32):
and motivation, and it'suniversal in the Ranger Handbook
or in ADP 6-22, because I kindof nerded out on that and I love
how you go back to thatdefinition of influence because
I think that that's one of thecore out on that and I love how
you go back to that definitionof influence because I think
that that's one of the corepieces of it.
But as you gentlemen kind ofgrew through your Army
experience, being lieutenantsand then moving to be a company

(21:55):
grade officer and then a fieldgrade officer and eventually a
flag officer how did yourleadership maturity grow through
those ranks?

Speaker 4 (22:04):
So you brought up some really good points here,
and one I would classify it as ajourney.
So some people think, when youthink about leadership
development, there's a seminarthat I can go to, there's a
great podcast that I couldlisten to, there's a great book
I can go get, there's a Ganttchart, I can go get my 12 things

(22:27):
that I need to go do, and thosemake me a great leader.
It's called leadershipdevelopment for a reason, and
this is why I think that themilitary has absolutely got this
right.
I don't know of anotherorganization and I've been
senior leader, ceo, president ofbig organizations.
Pepsi is a $50 billionorganization, walmart is a $500

(22:50):
billion organization, and I'mjust telling you there's two
things you have to get right inevery organization.
One is leaders matter, and yougot to get the right people.
To paraphrase Collins, you gotto get them on the bus, and once
they're on the bus, you got togive them the right seat.
And then the corollary to thatis, once you have the right

(23:11):
leaders, then you can developthe right strategies right,
which should be theoreticallyand practically tied to the end
state, to the vision, so thatwhen people are executing, they
know exactly what's happeningand how their particular job
impacts the strategy and theoutcomes overall.

(23:34):
And to your questionspecifically, what I've learned
is in terms of influence, isthis simple idea the key to
human influence is to first beinfluenced.
The key to being powerful is togive your power away, and that
has all kinds of implicationsempowerment, responsibility,
accountability, et cetera.

(23:55):
But you cannot, as a leader,think that you're the smartest
person in the room.
You actually might be thesmartest person in the room and
this would apply probably toNeil more than me, because he
works with rocket scientists butyou have to be humble, you have
to be grateful, you have to beinfluenceable.
And the magic of that littleformula is, when you are

(24:17):
influenceable, you build trust,which is the glue that holds
teams together, and you becomeknown as a very trustworthy
person, a person of integrity.
You get those two things right.
You can build an organization,you can build an effective team.
So my early lesson for me wasI'm not as smart as I think I am
.
I'm not as good as I think I am.

(24:39):
Nobody in this room's got acorner on good ideas.
Therefore, let me learn, let megrow, let me create some
psychological safety in theorganization, let me give team
members a chance to fail alittle bit here.
So we recognize that failure isnot a tragedy, it's a tutor,
it's a way to help everybodygrow and build the capacity that

(25:00):
you need in the organization.
So, neil, over to you.

Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, I think the model you started with Joshua.
I think the military's got agood piece of this right.
But but the academic andlearning of that military
process, the decision-makingprocess which, which is a
consistent characteristic ofleaders, right?
I'm also the same school.
I don't believe that you canread all these books sitting
here behind me or behind Keith.
These 16 things do these 16,you'll be a great leader.

(25:28):
I don't believe that.
What I believe is that greatleaders have a toolbox and they
pull from that toolbox thethings they need to at the time.
It needs to be pulled toempower the team around them for
mission success, team aroundthem for mission success.

(25:48):
Leadership is, of all thedefinitions, the one I
particularly fond of isleaderships allow teams to
accomplish what they would notaccomplish on their own and
that's a very powerful tool andit encompasses many of the
thoughts that we're talkingabout.
You talked about being a youngcompany commander.
The maturation of leadership isalso about the maturation of
self.
Great leaders know themselves.

(26:10):
They know how they behave, theyknow how they assimilate and
make decisions, how theyre-assimilate information.
They know what excites them andwhat upsets them.
And you think about how youhave been taught to make leaders
and you see this in.
I've seen this in corporations,I've seen it in the military

(26:30):
Young officers.
I'll just use a militaryexample.
Young officers come in and fromthe time you're a lieutenant to
a captain, to a major, you'repaid and you are excellent at
accomplishing a task with a team.
It's task orientation and it'stask oriented thinking.
And then you go off to CGSC orthe advanced course and you

(26:51):
learn to think differently andby the time you get to be a
battalion commander and abrigade commander.
It's all about strategicthinking right, because you're
not the one probably turning thewrenches or climbing the hill
or fixing the tank or fixing ahelicopter.
You're developing teams ofpeople to do that.
So this capacity to understandand link from why PFC Thurgood

(27:13):
is going to turn a wrench todayand why that goes all the way up
to the National DefenseStrategy.
You have to be able to see thatvision and explain that vision
from top to bottom.
Tasking ends, ways and means isa term we use in the military.
It's the same as task, purpose,end, state vision, mission.
All of those things aredesigned to create the vision of
those around you.

(27:35):
When I was in my last tour inAfghanistan in 17 and 18,
general Nicholson was thecommander and I was the DCG he
started every staff call I wentto in a year with these words.
He would say team, and this isall the division commanders,
right, all the two stars, allthe commanders from the region.

(27:56):
He said team.
Let's begin with a commonunderstanding and a shared
visualization.
Why are we here and what are wetrying to accomplish?
Let's make sure that we can allsee the same side picture of
the thing that we're here to doBecause, as Keith said, if
they're only going to do it theway you want to have it done, it

(28:16):
probably isn't the best way.
Right, you've got to energizethe team around you and my
experience has been, if youcould do that, they'll come up
with a really great solution andthey'll come up with creative,
innovative solutions that willactually probably accelerate the
success of the mission andthose around them.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
All right, team, let's take a quick break from
this podcast and I want topersonally invite you to our
private Facebook community thatI call Purposeful Accountable
Leaders, or PALS, and PALS is acommunity dedicated to inspiring
and developing servant leadersby sharing transformational
stories and skills Exactly whattells the leadership is all
about.
My goal is to build a communityof like minded leaders that can

(29:01):
share lessons, learn questionsand celebrate wins when it
happens, and my mission in lifeis clear I will end toxic
leadership by sharingtransformational stories and
skills, and you will findcountless transformational
leaders in this group, many ofthem I have had the honor to
serve with in the military.
If you want to find a communitythat can help you grow both

(29:23):
personally and professionally,we would love to have you.
You can simply searchPurposeful Accountable Leaders
on Facebook or click theLeadership Resources tab in the
show notes to join.
I am looking forward to seeingyou guys and continuing to grow
together on our leadershipjourney.
Back to the podcast.
I love the concept of, like apsychological safe environment.

(29:44):
I think the military, at least,does a fairly good job of that,
especially within theacquisitions core with a lot of
like the rapid prototypingelements that we kind of go
through and thinking throughlike the engineering model
failing fast and failing small,so being able to find a problem
and then quickly integrate andimprove upon that every single

(30:05):
time but also the strategiclevel thinking of what both of
you gentlemen said and I lovepodcasting from this point of
view is that no other time wouldI ever have a one-on-one
conversation for an hour withtwo highly successful generals
that are also happen to bebrothers.
So that is awesome and I cansee themes and correlations.

(30:26):
So when I had General Petraeuson here, he were talking about
strategic level thinking and howhe thinks through that Get the
big ideas right, the concepts,be able to clearly communicate
those to the organization, setmetrics out of how we want to
get to those and how we candefine it and then iterate.
How are we continuing to getthrough that process?
And I love being able to seethose correlations between all

(30:50):
the different.
Regardless of what yourbackground is a logistician,
infantryman or being able to bean acquisition officer starting
off as an infantryman thosecommon principles and leadership
core competencies andcharacteristics are universal
and one of the key things that Iwanted to go back to that you
both kind of hit on isunderstanding the leadership

(31:13):
methodology, the educationalpiece of it, and then having
leadership experience.
And I think in the military wedo a fairly good job of
educating our workforce, but theexperience is where we really
shine.
If you give me an infantrylieutenant, I give him a task
and purpose.
He's going to go do it.

(31:34):
It doesn't matter what it is,but the education behind that, I
think, is often lacking interms of like tools in the
toolkit.
How does the civilian sector dothat?
In terms of developing leaderswould be something I'm very
interested in.

Speaker 4 (31:50):
Well, I'll give you my perspective.
Go ahead, neil, you go.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
I was just going to offer a couple of thoughts there
.
I've been teaching for quite anumber of years in the academic
world and in the industry world.
Here's where there's a gap thatthe military has, through a
very deliberate educationprocess.

(32:15):
So you went through officerbasic course, advanced course,
cgsc, war college and you namethe school.
We've been through that andthat's a very it's a very
deliberate way to refresh yourprofessional knowledge over time
.
Go to your average industrypartner and go.
When's the last time you wentto professional education?
When was the last time you wentto a particular thing Unless

(32:39):
you're a senior executive, ifyou're in the middle of that
organization, you probably.
It was probably your master'sdegree, if you have one, maybe
your undergraduate degree.
I had the chance to go to aschool up in Boston and I was a
major at the time and I had justleft the war fighting army and

(32:59):
came out of Task Force 160Special Operations Aviation.
I'm an aviator by basic branchas an officer and I was with
this group of people at schoolup in Boston and they were it
was the economic minister fromJapan, you know, lumber company
presidents, oil companypresidents, anybody that we
would define as success In this10-week course.

(33:21):
I went to part of my doctorateprogram and about three weeks
into it, after the teacher left,the entire class said hey, neil
, we want you to stay behind, wewant to talk to you.
And I'm like, oh, this is goingto be bad.
I'm a major in the army.
These guys are just by everymeasure of success and what they

(33:44):
said to me, by every measure ofsuccess.
And what they said to me liveswith me this day.
They said Neil, we want you toteach us how to make decisions.
And like what he goes, yeah, wedon't have a decision-making
process that we can userepeatedly over and over.
That's consistent and gets usto a good answer every time.
And, joshua, I promise you youcould do that in your sleep.

(34:06):
We could give you 70% of theinformation nine times out of 10
, you'll make the right choiceand you'll do it so fast you
won't even recognize, becauseyou've practiced the process of
leadership and decision-makinginherent to the outcome.
And what happens is and I'lljust give you a simple example
how many times have you given atask to a subordinate and you

(34:32):
had the task clearly in yourmind and it came out of your
mouth and they went away and didthe task and they came back and
presented you a course ofaction or a resolution to the
task and you said in your mindnot out loud, but you said in
your mind that is the dumbestthing I've ever heard.
And what you should have said,and what I've learned to say

(34:53):
over time, is that how is itpossible that it was so clear in
my mind that I articulated itso poorly that the person came
back with what they believe is agreat job and it was so far off
the mark.
That's on me, it's not on them.
That's how leaders think, right?

(35:15):
Because no, I promise you,joshua, no one woke up this
morning in any job I've everbeen part of military civilian
that said you know, I'm going togo to work today and screw
something up.
That's just what I'm going to dono one does that, so you must
assume they're trying to do theright thing.
So how is it when they comeback with something that's so
far off the mark?

(35:35):
It must be that my guidance wasso poor that I didn't use it
correctly.
I did not translate what was soclear in my mind common
understanding and sharedvisualization so clear in my
mind to them that they came backwith that task.
And a leader will beintrospective when the answers
coming back are not what'sexpected.
Rather than assume the personacross the table is not trying

(35:57):
to be successful, the assumptionis how is it that I did not
help them be successful?

Speaker 2 (36:03):
That's powerful.

Speaker 4 (36:04):
Yeah, and I would add on this.
I'll give you a couple of datapoints to think about.
One is we talked earlier aboutthe importance of purpose and
the power of purpose inorganizations.
So once you're clear on that,which you have to spend a lot of
time doing it.
And oh, by the way, thisapplies not only at the tactical
, the operational and thestrategic or, in corporate lingo

(36:24):
, the enterprise level.
This applies at the individuallevel as well.
So if you're not clear on whatyour purpose is, where your
voice is, it's impossible foryou to help others find their
voice and therefore make adifference.
But in organizations,specifically purpose-driven
organizations, grow 10% faster,they have more successful

(36:49):
product launches 56% of the time, and they grow globally faster
as well.
So there's a reason to talkabout all this kind of stuff and
really drive it deep down tothe organization.
And I think we're manyorganizations that I work with
on the corporate side.
So we said that the militarydoes a great job.

(37:09):
There's no question about that.
You want to be a battalioncommander.
Guess what?
You're going to be 20 years inthe army before you get to be a
commander at that level.
And think about this when wefire a four-star general or one
resigns or retires.
We don't go to the Australiansor to the Brits and say, hey,

(37:35):
can you give me one of yourfour-star generals to be the
next chief of staff of the Army?
In the corporate world, we firea CEO, we go find another one.
We don't do that in the army.
We grow and develop our leadersover a long period of time in a
sustained, methodical way.

(37:58):
And this is so important becausethink of these other data
points, if you think and theseare from a variety of different
studies and we can cite themlater if we need to 89% of
leaders that come intoorganizations new hires admit
that they don't have thecomplete skill sets they need to
be successful.
Now think about that.
89% Are you kidding me?

(38:19):
That implies that we're notinvesting, we're not building
the capability that we need.
A couple of other data pointsfor you.
Great leaders create threetimes more economic value than
poor leaders.
High performing teams that areheld together by trust, that
understand the enterprise pointof view, deliver 48% improved

(38:41):
productivity versus averageperformers.
A couple of other data pointsfor you.
I don't want to worry you outhere.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
But these are important.
I've already taken six pages ofI'm not joking six pages, I
love it.

Speaker 4 (38:55):
Think of this 58% of new senior executive hires, 58%
fail within 18 months of beinghired.
Now, if that doesn't get youthink about this Organizations
that have great leadership.
There's a 16% equity premium onthe value of the company.

(39:18):
And likewise, there's a 19%equity discount on the value of
the company because of perceivedpoor leaders.
And then one last data point.
So, given all of that, here's astunning one Only 30% of CEOs
are confident they have thetalent they need to grow their

(39:40):
organizations into the future.
So you think about living in aworld that is complex.
It's ambiguous.
You think about living in aworld where there's black swans,
gray rhinos.
You have to have leaders thatcan think on their own.
Distributed leadership mattersmore today than it ever has, and

(40:00):
you have to get this right.
And I think failure to get thisright is a failure of epic
proportions, and I don't believethat most organizations spend
enough time investing in theirpeople, and you see this every
day.
Why?
Because if there's an expense,a crunch on the expenses, what's

(40:23):
one of the first things thatgoes?
A crunch on the expenses,what's one of the first things
that goes?
Training, travel, because it'san easy budget line, but it's
the paradox of success, the verything that you should not be
doing.
Most organizations end up doingit because it's easy, so go
ahead, bill.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
Yeah.
So think about this idea ofleaders of organizations that
invest in not only the peoplearound them and in continuous
education, professionaleducation, right?
All these books that we havebehind us.
We don't read them to memorizethem, we read them for ideas.

(41:03):
Right, there's books onmountain climbing.
There's books, right, there'sbooks on mountain climbing.
There's books on farming.
There's books on buildingtrains.
There's books.
These books are about ideas.
To create thought, right, tocreate ideas around you and use
the ideas and the power ofconnective tissue.
Great leaders will makeconnections that your average
leaders won't make, and they dothat because they have a set of

(41:26):
wide thinking, strategicoutcomes.
So think about how we developpeople to do that and what are
the tools we use to developpeople to do that.
And I'll compare and contrastwhat Keith was saying within the
civilian world versus themilitary world.
So you're a battalion commander.
Did you get to choose thepeople in your organization?
Probably not, where in acivilian, you may have inherited

(41:52):
, but you can change thatrelatively quickly to key point,
right, a lot of people gettingfired, a lot of people moving
around the industry base Forcedleadership to develop a
successful organization in themilitary is a little bit
different than leadership in acivilian.
And I say different not in thevalues that we're talking about,
but different in the tools youuse and the knobs and dials you

(42:16):
can use to change thoseparticular outcomes.
You look at your average PhD.
You know.
You said you're in theacquisition corps in the army
and so you know.
I interviewed every officer andevery senior civilian that came
in my organization when I wasdoing rapid capability.
You know offensive hypersonicweapons and high-end

(42:39):
technologies that we need toaccelerate past the traditional
model of PEO structures.
We need to accelerate past thetraditional model of BEO
structures.
So ask your next time you're inyour office, ask your, go up to
your average PhD and go heythere, mr or Mrs PhD, how many
classes on leadership have youhad to get your doctorate?

(43:02):
How many classes ondecision-making have you had to
get your doctorate?
Oh, by on decision-making haveyou had to get your doctorate?
Oh, by the way, the systemengineering process is not a
decision-making tool.
The engineering V is not adecision-making tool.
So what happens is that they'revery good at their thing, but we

(43:23):
want them to become leadersover time.
But we don't train them.
To Keith's point, we don't trainthem to become leaders, we
think, because they have a PhD,they're inherently leaders,
especially if it's, you know,from a Tier 1 school, mit, where
they've got, you know, anengineering degree, aerospace,
you know, whatever it might be.
You know physics, space dynamics, whatever it might be, space

(43:48):
dynamics, whatever it might be.
And so leaders that arepassionate, value-based leaders
that can see the vision of whatthe organization can become and
build that to become what itshould be, spend time with
people and I would say, and Iwould go so far as to say I
actually believe that it'sactually a moral obligation of
leaders to develop other greatleaders, and I could give you

(44:09):
story after story of leaders whosaw in me more than I did in
myself and spent the time withme and taught and mentored me
over dinner or on a, you know, ahelicopter ride or whatever it
was.
Leaders, as Keith indicated,right.
You pick them and then you getthe right ones in the right seat
on the bus and then get out ofthe way because they will do

(44:32):
phenomenal things for theorganization.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
I always thought about the content Go ahead.

Speaker 4 (44:38):
Absolutely Sorry.
Sorry, sorry, keith, I wasinterrupting you there.
So this reminds me of a coupleof things which is a great
dialogue, and that is, if youwant to improve an organization,

(44:59):
you have to improve the peoplein the organization.
There's no such thing as theprocedures, the structure, the
strategies better that allow youto enable the end state and
Neil mentioned this idea ofdecision making which, again, I
think it's important I think themilitary's intent, the
confirmation brief, the backbrief, the AAR, red teaming,
that tool set, if organizationsuse those tool sets, I'm telling

(45:35):
you there would be a stepfunction improvement, not only
in leadership development but inthe outcomes that they're
seeking.
That's how powerful this stuffis and I just don't think that
we spend enough time.
Powerful this stuff is and Ijust don't think that we spend
enough time, at least on thecommercial side, doing this.
As Neil said, it's a deficit.
People talk about it.
I'm going to send you to thenext seminar, but you've got to

(45:56):
invest in people and when youinvest in people you expect an
ROI at the end of the day.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
This is the easiest podcast that I've ever ran.
Continue, go ahead, sir.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
I was just going to say.
Here's the thing about training.
This book right here, youprobably have one just like it.
It's my battle book when I wasa captain in the 160th.
I have had this on my desksince I was a captain.
It was on my desk when I was athree-star Wow, to remind me of

(46:26):
the fundamental skill sets.
And what happens is we tend tothink that we can't resource
training and we can't providethe training because we're so
busy, and it's a fallacy, right?
The actual fact is you can'tafford not to.
So when I was, when I was in myprevious job, just before I

(46:48):
retired, I required all my o6sand above.
You will go to one school everyyear, no matter what you got
one week.
You pick the school, I'll payfor it.
I don't care where it's at, Idon't care what university, what
organization, what industrytraining, but you're going to go
to a school.
You're going to continue yourprofessional education.
Now, the problem with that ideais you don't get relief from

(47:10):
your day job while you're inschool.
You got to do that at night,but you've got to dedicate some
time to where you can think andstep back from the forest that
you're fighting in every day,the trees that are around you
that you're trying to cut downevery day.
You got to step back and go.

(47:31):
Here's the big scheme of things,and this idea of a very
centralized vision and theclarity of the vision is really
important.
In the task force, in thespecial Operations Aviation
Regiment, task Force 160, thereis one mission in life and

(47:53):
everybody knows it.
It is the value base of theorganization.
You will get to the target plusor minus 30 seconds, no excuses
, and everybody is on thatmission set.
Everybody in that organizationis on that train.
We will not quit until thatreality becomes true and you
reinforce it in everything.
And when the organization andthe leader has that clarity,

(48:16):
it's very, very powerful.
And it's not about what you puton the wall.
It's not about a visionstatement on the wall with these
16 priorities.
It's got nothing to do withthat.
It is embedded in the thingthat you breathe and the thing
that you bleed.
It is what the organizationsees themselves as collectively

(48:36):
and individually.
And when those are aligned, theoutcome is hugely powerful.

Speaker 4 (48:43):
This reminds me of something that is often
attributed to General Patton,but others have said it as well
Never tell people how to dosomething.
Always tell them what has to bedone, and they will amaze you
with their ingenuity.
And that's the exact point thatNeil's making, and I've been
thinking about this for a whilenow Well, longer than a while

(49:05):
but I've recently developed anew word, and I'm going to share
this word with you, and theword is transformance.
It's just a word that I made up.
So when I think about strategicleadership, or I think about
enterprise leadership, there'stwo things that you have to get
right.
One, you have to perform today.

(49:25):
So this is about working in thebusiness.
It's about working in your unit, but simultaneously, you have
to be thinking, as a leader,about changing the organization
for the future.
That's what I would describe asworking on the business.
Now here's the trick you haveto do both of these things
simultaneously.
So if you're in the corporateworld, you can never take your

(49:49):
eye off the revenue stream.
If you do that, you're notgoing to have a business over
time.
If you do that, you're notgoing to have a business over
time.
But if that's all that you'refocused on and you're not
thinking about what the futurewill look like, you will not be
able to thrive, probably noteven be able to survive, in a
VUCA world.
You just won't make it.
And so I've taken these twowords, this idea of performing

(50:10):
and transforming, and I'vecombined them into this word
called transformance.
That's what leaders have to doif you want to thrive and win in
this world.
You have to be adaptable, youhave to be agile, you have to
have the right structure,systems and processes that
enable the team to execute.
And I'm often asked well, why dowe talk about culture all the

(50:31):
time, if this is so important?
The reason that we talk aboutculture is because the culture
is an enabler to the executionof the strategies.
That's why culture is important, and leaders have to shape that
culture and they have to do itevery single day by the things
they say, the stories they tell,the model, the behaviors that

(50:54):
they exhibit.
Super important to get right,right, and all that ties to
everything that we've beentalking about purpose, vision,
mission, supporting strategies,allocation and resources in ways
means all of that.
When you, when you justlistening to ourselves talk
about this, it makes totalcommon sense.
Most people would agree withall of this and yet somehow

(51:16):
we've got 30% of our CEO.
Only 30% of our CEOs say I havethe right capacity, I don't
know, yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:24):
so think about that capacity right and tie that to
the connective tissue of theearlier conversations.
So if your capacity as a leaderis all used up in getting the
thing right today, then you haveno capacity to think about
tomorrow.
If all your capacity is used upin the performance of today,

(51:46):
you have no capacity to be thetransformational leader for
tomorrow.
And it gets back to the vision.
I'll use Andrel as an example.
Right, the six founders ofAndrel all came out of the
commercial marketplace very,very successful.
They said these words and thisis a core thing.
This is like plus or minus 30seconds on the target.
We are going to do thingsdifferently, period.

(52:09):
Whatever we've been doing since1950 in acquisition, we're not
going to do it and we're goingto find ways to do it
differently.
And that passion drives thatorganization.
The widgetry is widgetry, butthe idea to be different and
stick with that, and they talkabout it all the time in every

(52:29):
meeting.
What are we doing different?
Why are we doing it this way?
How can we do it faster?
And you have to reinforce thatconversation every time you get
into a common, you know ameeting.
General Nicholson's wordscommon understanding, shared
visualization.
And when you have that completepicture and, by the way, it's a

(52:54):
continuous evolution of work.
It's not something you get donetoday.
It's something you developevery day and work on it every
day and change every day.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
All right team.
Let's take a quick break fromthis episode and I want to share
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Want to share a leadershipresource with you, and that is
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So why do you need to build andlead a resilient team?
Resilient teams are the key toindividual and organizational

(53:30):
growth, regardless of being inthe military or in the civilian
workforce.
Building collective teamsallows for exponential growth
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And then bottom line, up front.
Resilient teams are juststronger together.
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(53:50):
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(54:12):
M C M I L L I O N codeJ-M-C-M-I-L-L-I-O-N, and that is
also in the show notes Back tothe episode.
So I wrote down culture and thatwas one of the things that I
really wanted to kind of to talkabout, because I've worked in
organizations that have okaycultures and the performance has
been okay, and then I've seenthe power of what one leader can

(54:35):
do, both for the bad and bothfor the good within 90 days,
being able to completely changewhat that one company was the
ugly sister of the bad companywithin a battalion to the top
company because of that oneleader and how they were able to
shape the culture.
And I just started writingthings down, as both you

(54:55):
gentlemen talked about havingthat leadership capacity,
frequency, being with yourpeople, focusing on your people,
deeds and words, and I alwaysused to live by that motto deeds
, not words is that actionsspeak louder than words.
But as I'm growing in myleadership maturity, I
understand words are also justas powerful.
So you have to be able to tocommunicate clearly but also

(55:18):
follow through with action andhaving trust and then, most
importantly, going back to yourpeople at every given time.
I think culture is one of thehardest things to really bound
down.
Um, especially like strategiclevel leadership.
Keith, for example, I thinkwhat, uh, one of your
corporations that you ran hadover 35,000 people Sam's Club.

(55:40):
I was doing some LinkedInstalking on you.
Oh, there you go.

Speaker 4 (55:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
But that blows my mind from an organization that
is that large like AFIS,maintaining a culture, how do
you do that at such a high level?
And then, sir, for you too,like working within RICTO or
being a PEO of Missiles in Space, like that is a culture of a
huge organization.
How do you manage and keep that?

Speaker 4 (56:08):
Well, I'll give you my perspective and again, I'm
just one man thinking about it.
But this is as we talked aboutearlier.
Leadership is a journeyBuilding the culture and
sustaining that culture.
And if you're trying to changeyour culture, by the way, in a
transformational way, the datasuggests that those journeys are
five to seven years.
So, as a leader, one way thatyou can do that is you're always

(56:34):
under the microscope, so tospeak.
You're always on display,you're always telling the story,
and one of the ways that I usedto do that is when I was a CEO
and when I was a CG is I createdsome little three by five cards
and everywhere I went, I wouldtalk about what I called my four
rules of the road, basically myleadership philosophy Don't

(56:57):
bunt, no second place trophies,look for yellow cars and solve
for yes.
And then I tell a story abouteach one of those.
So you have to model the rightkinds of behaviors, and I think
it's also important that, whenit comes to shaping culture, you
have to be able to get rid ofall of the policies and

(57:17):
procedures and the structurethat makes absolutely no sense,
because people will hide behindthe policies.
And if we have time, at the endI'll tell you a Burger King
story, but it's a common thing.
Middle managers love the statusquo, because there's no
intellectual curiosity, there'sno emotional energy that you

(57:39):
need to exhibit.
It's like just float on, let'skick the can down the road here.
And that attitude is rampant inlarge organizations because
everybody can kind of hide inthe middle here.
So you've got the senior leadersnodding about yes, we're going
to go do this and we've got thisvision and purpose and we're
all rallied behind it.

(57:59):
Then you've got the middlemanagers that may be nodding
their heads in meetings but atthe end of the day they're like
nah, I don't believe in this,I'm going to kick the can down
the road.
So I think one is you have tohave you got to have a stump
speech, you got to talk about itall the time.
You have to recognize andreward those that are living up
to the standards and thebehaviors and, as shine would

(58:19):
say so he talked a lot aboutculture there are primary levers
you can pull and they'reembedding levers you can pull,
and recognizing and rewardingthe right kinds of behaviors is
one of the things that's on thetop of the list I'll.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
I'll add to that if I could, and those are great
points.
I'll put this on a little morepersonal level.
If you want to change theculture in an organization, you
have to be that culture.
You, as the leader, have to bethat culture, whatever culture
you want.
If you are not that as a leader, the organization will never

(58:56):
become that.
I'll give you a couple examples.
I'll give you a military oneand not a military one.
As a young captain, when I wasflying in the task force, I were
on a mission set and I had ayoung soldier.
His call sign was Weasel.
His real name was Jim Lee GrandGreat young E-4.
He was a crew chief on myaircraft.
We were flying MH47s at thetime.

(59:18):
We're out of country doing amission and back in those days
we had satellite phones rightWith biggest suitcases.
You know there was no pocketthing back in those days.
So I carried my big oldsuitcase with me everywhere.
I went with a little bittyphone in it and I'm out there
walking around you know, walkingaround leadership and watching
Jimmy do some maintenance on theaircraft, and I can tell he's

(59:39):
very distracted and he'sstruggling with this task, and
so I walk up to talk to him hey,hey, what's going on?
You okay, he goes.
You know, sir, my wife is backat home and she's at the doctor
today with our first baby.
They're doing the prenatalchecks and his wife was hearing

(01:00:02):
challenged and I'm like, okay, Igot it.
I broke out my suitcase phone.
I said call your.
I got the doctor on the phone,talk to your wife right now.
That was a very impactful thingfor that young soldier.
Now, fast forward, 10 yearslater, I'm as a one star in
Afghanistan.

(01:00:23):
Jimmy Legrand is now the firstsergeant of a company and I walk
in I didn't know he was.
I walk into the Chinook companythere to just to check on and
walk around the middle of themorning because you can't sleep
when you get there, right.
So it's three o'clock in themorning.
I'm walking through the hangarthat's what aviators do and I
walk into the talk and there'sJimmy as the first Sergeant.
By the way, it happens to bethe same company of that top

(01:00:45):
Chinook that my dad commanded in1967 in Vietnam.
Oh wow, same company, thepachyderms and it was great to
see him again and I hadforgotten about that whole
experience until he brought itup.
Because you have no, he saidsir, you have no idea the impact
that you made that day.
You have to be the leader ofthe culture you want around you.
Fast forward now.

(01:01:05):
Just last week in our company wehad a young lady in the UK to
Keith's earlier point, she wasfilled with some equipment to
the Royal Military in the UK.
She's down in the battles ofthe organization and she is
doing a great job.
She has no idea who I am.
She knows who I am.

(01:01:26):
I'm the division lead, I'm thesenior vice president.
I call her on the phone in theUK hey, you don't really know me
, but I'm just calling to tellyou thank you for working so
hard and doing such a great job.
And she I don't think anybodyever called her before.
So I guess my message to thosetwo stories are if you want to

(01:01:49):
change the culture, you have tobecome the culture you want and
you have to demonstrate it inyour actions.
And, as Keith said, you have torepeat it all the time and you
have to live it, because if youdon't leave it because you're in
a glass house that Keith saidyou don't get any B days.
All your days are A days andyou have to behave that way, not
only when people are watchingyou, but when people aren't

(01:02:09):
watching you, and because thereare no B days and there are no
free days when you're a leader.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
That's one of the most powerful things, I think is
that always do the right thingbecause it's the right thing to
do, not because it's the mostconvenient or other people are
watching you, because I thinkthat's the truest test of a
character, for anyone is like,if you get in the car, the
grandma rule would you put yourseatbelt on if your grandmother
was in the car besides you?
A hundred percent you would,but do you do it when you're

(01:02:41):
just by yourself every singleday?
And I think that's a hallmarkof a great leader, regardless of
the level.
I want to be respectful of yourtime.
If I could still two hours, Iwould.
I haven't even touched the topof most of the questions that I
want, but one of the things thatI really wanted to get into was
the leadership program that youboth worked on building the
curriculum for the University ofAlabama, huntsville.

(01:03:01):
So that's something near anddear to my heart, because I'm
thinking now about potentiallygetting a doctorate in
leadership, because I absolutelylove this topic and you can see
I just got off work.
I'm still kind of in my uniformand this is stuff that I
absolutely love doing work.
I'm still kind of in my uniformand this is stuff that I
absolutely love doing, and Ijust moved from PO Aviation
where I worked on smaller drones, so the University of Alabama

(01:03:23):
Huntsville is like a close to myheart.
If you could kind of go throughthat curriculum and the topic
of what you guys are offering.

Speaker 4 (01:03:30):
Well.
I would say this Go ahead, Neil.

Speaker 3 (01:03:33):
No, Keith, go ahead.
Go ahead, please Okay.

Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
Well, I was going to just underscore.
One of the things that we werejust talking about is people
will believe the messenger longbefore they believe the message.
This whole idea of developingculture, as Neil was talking
about.
You just cannot overcommunicatethat enough.
That's one of the secrets togreat leaders In terms of the

(01:03:57):
University of Alabama.
I think Neil hit on thisearlier.
What we've discovered isespecially on the technical side
.
We have some great engineers,we have some great rocket
scientists, we've got some greatcontractors in organizations
and in the military, but they'recivilians and they just haven't

(01:04:19):
had the leadership trainingthat they need to make a
difference.
So if you fundamentally believethat leaders make a difference
at every level in everyorganization, regardless of your
functional specialty, thenorganizations need to invest in
people.
That's how they're going toimprove the revenue stream.
That's how they're going todrive costs.
People that's how they're goingto improve the revenue stream.
That's how they're going todrive costs down.
That's how they're going todrive radical collaboration and

(01:04:41):
improve trust.
And so we were looking at thisand saying, okay, how can we
develop some curriculum a class,if you will that at least
begins to build the foundationof what effective leadership is
about?
And notice I used the wordeffective here as opposed to
efficient.
So we need effective leaders.

(01:05:02):
What do effective leaders do?
These are leaders of character,competence and courage.
They do the right thing.
They do the harder rightinstead of the easier wrong, as
you just said.
That's what we need inorganizations and that's what
that was all about, neil.
Over to you to add.

Speaker 3 (01:05:17):
Yeah, I'll just add to that.
My experience has been prettyclear in a lot of areas and what
I found in industry and in themilitary we did the same thing.
I'll just use Army Aviation asan example.
We picked great platoonsergeants in Army army aviation
because they were great crewchiefs.
They may not know how to be aplatoon sergeant at all, but,

(01:05:40):
man, they can fix helicoptersand and sometimes we get a great
mechanic who's also a greatleader and occasionally in
industry and in government,civilian workforce where you
have high performing, highthinking phds.
Huntsville is a very goodexample of high performing, high
thinking phds.
Huntsville is a very goodexample of this yeah now more
phds per capita huntsville thanany other place in the nation.

(01:06:02):
And and we, we bring them outof college because they're great
at their task.
Man, they can do engineeringlike no one's business.
And then they will go back andget a master's and they're good
at it.
They go back and get a master'sand they're good at it, they go
back and get a PhD and prettysoon, because they're great
engineers, we put them in chargeof two engineers, and then we
put them in charge of threeengineers and that's okay.

(01:06:24):
And then pretty soon they're incharge of 20 and have no idea
how to be in charge of 20 peoplebecause they're not doing the
math every day anymore.
Now they're responsible forpeople doing the math and the
engineering.
The life is like an hourglassright, high skill sets at the
base, but we put them throughthis funnel of leadership and a
few come out on the top andthey're great physicists and

(01:06:46):
great leaders, but very few.
Why is that?
It's because we don't spend thetime in organizations
developing them outside theirexpertise in a PhD area.
So I'll use an example inacquisition you get a young
major, comes into a command andhe's coming out of the

(01:07:07):
operational army.
He's done great things, verysuccessful, or he wouldn't be in
the acquisition corps.
Same in industry they progressup because they're very
successful and all successful,and also they're in charge of a
team.
And if they're young,aggressive people in the
industry or in the military,they're in charge of a team with
generally older than them yeah,have more experience than them,
have more education than them,and what happens is they

(01:07:29):
immediately abdicate all theirleadership responsibilities
based on experience, and I usethat term deliberately.
What they don't have they havea lot of experience but they
don't have is the academiceducation of leadership that
Keith's talking about.
The combination of experienceand education is called wisdom,

(01:07:50):
and bringing those to bear as aleader is what we're trying to
get them to think about in thiscourse.
They have all the technicalskills, but we need them to lead
through those technicaloutcomes.
And it's the same on the otherside.
Right, you got a lot of greatleaders.
They can't do the math.
Yeah, they can't solve thetechnical problem, they can't

(01:08:11):
even understand the technicalproblem.
And so, building leaders thatcan balance both sides right,
there's a plenty of studies andyou know, keith and I can quote
numbers all day long Most CEOsare well-rounded people right,
they were good at one point intheir life about a very specific
thing, but most of them have apretty well-rounded outcome, at

(01:08:33):
least the successful ones.
And I know we're going longhere and, if you can't tell,
keith and I are very passionateabout this thing called
leadership.
It is something that we feelvery strongly about and have a
lot of passion about and have alot of experience Some not so
successful, some very successfuland the scar tissue that we

(01:08:57):
call development and theleadership skills.
So I'll just pause there.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
So I think it's almost impossible to distill
down all of the leadershipwisdom that both of you
gentlemen have in one hour.
I could probably do anindividual episode with each one
of you and it would be twohours long, 100%.
And it's funny in Huntsville wewere playing soccer with my

(01:09:23):
kids.
We'd always go out Saturdaysand I'd ask the parents hey,
what do you do for a living?
I'm a mechanical engineer, I'man aeronautical engineer, I'm an
engineer and it's like what doyou do?
I'm an army acquisitions.
Every single person that mydaughter would play on sports

(01:09:43):
teams with was was an engineer.
But that level of technicalacumen kind of raised me up in a
way of where I had to kind ofgrow that area.
And I've always looked at froma standpoint of leadership, of
being a lake versus a well.
I I'm okay with being a footdeep in a mile wide.
I don't need to be thatdangerous in certain things.
Certain things maybe I got toget a little bit deeper in.
But wells that's people on myteam, those subject matter

(01:10:03):
experts at least of where theyneed to be a mile deep and a
foot wide and being okay withnot understanding everything but
being able to get down to atleast the third level.
So if you ask me a question,sir, I'd kind of pride myself on
being able to get to that thirdlevel.
But beyond that, that's what Ihave my team for, and that's
very hard to do, I think, for atechnical person who is an

(01:10:25):
engineer by trade, being able topull back from the work because
that's all they've ever known,that's, their self-worth is tied
to that, their job satisfactionis tied to that.
And then leading other people,that's a challenge and I commend
both of you because thatcurriculum, I think, is going to
be extremely powerful,especially in Huntsville with

(01:10:46):
some of the hypersonics and thespace programs, especially the
drone technology that is takingplace and that is needed right
now.
If anyone wants to learn moreabout that program, how could
they find it?

Speaker 3 (01:10:59):
So the best place to do it is part of the School of
Business.
Dr Jason Green is the dean ofthe School of Business.
Under that umbrella is acontinuing education program for
the University of Huntsvilleand Alabama Huntsville that's
where it's at and we've got agreat team that has been putting

(01:11:19):
this together and helping Keithand I put this together and
Fatia, who runs the continuingeducation program, has just been
really super.
Her and Amber and the wholeteam over there have been super,
helping us do this.
And just watch for theannouncements of the school you
know this kind of a three orfour day workshop, depending on
how it folds out and just watchfor it there on the University

(01:11:41):
of Alabama Huntsville's schoolpage and then, of course, here
locally there'll beannouncements in Huntsville and
in the area, so just watch forit there.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
I'll work with Amber too, within the show notes.
So when this actual officiallyairs, I'll work with Amber too,
within the show notes.
So when this actual officiallyairs, I'll work with her to make
sure that that's kind ofbounded and clear for anyone who
is listening to this episode.
The last question that I havefor both of you, gentlemen, is
how can our listeners find youand add value to any of your
current missions if they want toreach out?

Speaker 3 (01:12:11):
Yeah, it's real easy for me.
You can just reach out to myemail address.
It's lnthurgood at gmailcom.
Lnthurgood at gmailcomno-transcript.

Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
you taking time to go through your journey with me
and also share your leadershipwisdom.
I've learned a lot.
I'm now on page six, so thankyou again.

Speaker 3 (01:13:19):
All right, have a great evening.
Thanks for having us.

Speaker 4 (01:13:21):
Yeah, and, by the way , my last piece of advice to you
, josh, when you work on yourPhD, make sure you call us so we
can give you some good adviceon setting up your dissertation
committee.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
Okay, no, so you know All right.
All right, all right, have agood evening.
All right, team.
That was a phenomenal episodewith Keith and Neil Thurgood, so
one that was completely nervewracking and amazing at the same

(01:13:52):
time.
Right?
So I'm a major in the UnitedStates Army and I just had the
honor and the privilege to talkto two retired flag officers,
one being a major general,another being a lieutenant
general.
That is not a small thing atwo-star general and a
three-star general, and thembeing brothers.

(01:14:13):
Honestly, this was one of thebest podcasts in terms of
leadership content that I've hadthe ability to record, and
that's saying a lot, because Ihave recorded now over, I think,
a hundred different episodes.
It's absolutely incredible, andsome of the leadership nuggets
that Keith and Neil provided aredifferent from other episodes,

(01:14:37):
and that's great.
And having two brothers thatcan play upon each other and
share their experiences isphenomenal Keith having a
logistician background andrunning very, very, very, very
large organizations to includeAFIS, to include AFIS.

(01:14:59):
And then Neil having a moretechnical acumen background,
focused on technology, but alsobeing the cutting edge
capabilities of acquisitions andhow we can improve that process
and leading people.
Those two together, I think,were very powerful.
So what are my top threetakeaways.
I took a lot of notes.
You may take different keytakeaways and that's okay.
These are my top three.
So number one is leadershipdevelopment.

(01:15:21):
We always focus on problems.
We always focus on the bottomlines.
If you want to createextraordinary results as a
leader, it's simple.
Keep it simple right.
Focus on the people, give themthe training, give them the
resources, ensure that they arestretching themselves beyond

(01:15:43):
their capability.
Focusing on people just isn'tproviding them education and
giving them the tools to besuccessful.
It's also holding themaccountable, forcing them to
develop growth plans, and I likehow Neil talked about he would
always have his 06s take aacademic class every single year

(01:16:04):
.
And oh, by the way, you'redoing that outside of your
normal duty hours, like mefilming this podcast right now.
I do not allow myextracurricular activities to
take away from what I'm doing inthe army, because that's a
no-fail mission for me, but thisis something that I am deeply

(01:16:25):
passionate about and I willhappily spend time focusing on
talking to leaders and being abetter leader.
That takes discipline, but italso takes a level of
accountability right, and sowhen you are a leader in an
organization, understand thatand focus on developing people.
If you can do that, you'regoing to create extraordinary

(01:16:47):
results.
Number two key takeaway that Iwanted to kind of focus on was
transformance, and then Keithbrought this up.
I love the merger of two words,essentially performance and
transformation.
As leaders, we still have thebasic capability of producing
results.
That is what you were put intothat role to do and that is to

(01:17:11):
get results.
And that's one of the phases onleadership for me is achieving
results.
The fourth phase of leadership,after you take over a position,
is focused on strengtheningrelationships.
And why do you want tostrengthen relationships with
people?
Because they work bettertogether, and performance is one

(01:17:31):
of those key metrics.
You can always tell afunctioning team if they're
hitting home runs and they'reconsistently getting base hits.
That's what makes a great teama great team is they're always
moving forward and they'reproactive.
And then transformation isanother powerful tool, because
we can't have status quothinking in all or any of our

(01:17:53):
organizations.
We have to be able to transformto whatever environment that we
find ourselves in.
So the leadership style andtrait that I have now, if you
would have went 10 years ago, 11years ago, 12 years ago, would
be dramatically different,because I've matured, I've
learned more.
I've educated myself more.
I've pushed myself outside mycomfort zone more times than I

(01:18:15):
can count and I'm a betterperson.
For that Transformance.
Make sure you are atransformance type of leader.
And then the last one wasbuilding a robust culture, and
Keith just started throwing outa lot of different metrics in
terms of data, of data.

(01:18:40):
One of them that stood out tome is 30% of CEOs do not believe
they have the right resourcesto be successful.
89% of the people do notbelieve they have what it takes
or the skills to be successfulin their job.
43% of people believe that whenyou have strong leaders, you
can have better performance.
There's a correlation there ofthat.
We always have impostersyndrome.
Even if you have the tools andthe capability to do things, it

(01:19:05):
comes still down to leadership.
You have to have that ability.
If you can have someone get onthe bus and put them in the
right seat exactly what the twogentlemen talked about get on
the bus and put them in theright seat exactly what the two
gentlemen talked about you canhave extraordinary results.
And that is one of the mostimportant things is putting the
right person at the top.
And that's the third takeaway isculture.

(01:19:27):
Culture starts at the top, it'swater, it flows down the
mountain and it touches everysingle aspect of the
organization.
But culture encompasses a lotof different components or
characteristics.
One is modeling the way and Ilove how Neil talked about this
be the culture.
What other way can you put that?

(01:19:49):
That is clear, it is concise,it is directly to the point.
If you want other people tomodel or emulate what you're
doing, be that person.
Policies and procedures.
I think one of the mosthamstring things we do,
especially as Americans, is justthrow more policies and

(01:20:10):
procedures at things, thinkingthat that is systemizing and
making things better and inessence, all you're doing is
you're just adding another layerof bureaucracy.
And trust me, I'm anacquisition officer and if you
want to get into the level ofbureaucracy it is absolutely
mind blowing.
We have to be able to take thataway to build an effective
culture that is transformative.

(01:20:30):
Getting after our second pointrecognizing and rewarding people
, being positive, because it'sinfectious.
If you show up every single daywith my motto every day is a
gift, I'm not going to wastemine.
People just are naturally goingto want to come to work and
they're going to love whatthey're doing.
You have to have the leadershipcapacity.

(01:20:51):
You have to have more in thetank and the drive to go,
continue to educate.
You have to invest in people.
You have to be more in the tankand the drive to go, continue
to educate.
You have to invest in people.
You have to be willing to dothe hard things because it's the
right thing to do, not becauseit's the popular thing to do and
there's people watching you.
And then, finally, you have tobe able to establish trust.
All of those things, andprobably countless more, go into

(01:21:15):
developing a culture.
But at the top, it's all aboutwho is in that seat.
It's the leader.
You are the leader of thatorganization, your organization.
You establish the culture andit takes time to build that.
It's consistency, it's routine,it's a discipline Remember RAD,

(01:21:37):
routine, accountability,discipline, all of those things
kind of go into building thatculture.
Hey, team, do me a favor If youlike this content and the
content that I continue to pushout, make sure you share this
podcast, make sure you rate iton whatever platform you listen
to.
You can listen to me on anymajor platform that you're
listening on currently, rightnow.

(01:21:57):
And then, number three, you cansupport this channel.
Go tomcmillianleadershipcoachingcom.
You can click the leadershipresources tabs.
You can read additional contentto include this podcast.
We'll have a blog articleassociated with it and I'll
distill down what the key pointsare that Keith and Nill made
and you can find ways at thebottom of that of supporting the

(01:22:18):
show.
And as always, I'm your host,josh McMillian, saying every day
is a gift, don't waste yours.
I'll see you next time.

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#86 (Ret) MG Keith Thurgood & (Ret) LTG Neil Thurgood - The Thurgood Brothers on Cultivating Leadership Excellence

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#86 (Ret) MG Keith Thurgood & (Ret) LTG Neil Thurgood - The Thurgood Brothers on Cultivating Leadership Excellence