SUPERCHARGE Your Organization with SOFT SKILLS and Leadership Lessons from the CIA

Episode Transcript
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(00:12):
Mike, how's it going?
Well I'm fine. Nick.
Thank you for having me on.
Yeah, man,I'm really excited to have you on.
You have a backgroundthat's very interesting.
So I figured maybe we'd start there.
Could you introduce yourself?
Sure.
Mike Myers, I retired as, chief
human capital at the, CIA,and started the,

(00:34):
Leadership Academythere and ran that for quite a few years.
And, was in the director of operations.
However, the good news,I guess, for your listeners is I'm
so old,I've done a little bit of everything.
I've worked for,
ge for Jack Welch in the 90s,
when that was at their peak, they werethey were at the top of their game.

(00:58):
I've started up small businesses.
So I've got an appreciation for,
government.
Management leadership as well as,
you know, as well as private sector,small and big business.
So we, we talk about anything you wanttoday.
Awesome.
Well, I can tell youspecifically what I'm interested in.

(01:19):
All that I could probably godown the rabbit hole talking about GE
and Jack Welch and his whole philosophy.
But I doI do love the intelligence community
and talking aboutthe intelligence community
and all the lessons learned, how you canapply those to other aspects of our lives
and how other people can apply them,that aspects of their lives.
Being the the chief of human capital, so

(01:40):
to speak, at the CIA, that's got to haveall sorts of interesting stories.
So I'd love to dive in there.
I like to just start out with a thought.
If you look at a lot of the trade shows
and news and events, everything'svery focused, especially right now
in this time, rightnow, focused on artificial intelligence

(02:02):
technology, edge computing, naturallanguage processing, machine learning,
you know, these computer vision models,all this really awesome high tech stuff.
And it's it's amazing what we canwhat we can do compared to ten years ago.
And who knows what we're going to be doingten years from now.
Exactly.
But I think the the partthat is so critical,

(02:23):
there's so importantand an often so overlooked
is that you can't separate the technologyfrom the people that develop it.
The people.
I'll tell you a quick story about
my my company.
When I first started my company,
I was trying to automate everything.
I was like, I don't need to have anHR person because I can automate that.

(02:43):
Other people put in their data here,and I flow here, flow here, flow there,
and it didn't take me very longto realize that
there was a big flaw in my process.
And the process was I wasn't accountingfor how dynamic and amazing people are.
Yeah, people aren't robots.People aren't machines.
They are dynamic.
They can do a multitudeof different things.

(03:05):
And I thought maybe we could start thereabout, you know, lessons
you've learned from, from your experience,
at the agency and elsewhere regarding the,
the dynamic impact of people, of humans.
Well, you know,you just gave me a thought.
You mean you do a lot on the,
NCA typestuff on imaging and so forth, and,

(03:30):
it just so happens,I teamed up one time with the chief
learning officer over there,and we wrote a case study,
which I'll send to you becausesome of your readers might be interested.
It was an old study.
Let me go.
And way back to 1961 and n pick,which is what now was,
and this is actually the chief learningofficer wrote a book called In pick

(03:52):
that some of your readersmight be interested in picking up
this good history of all that period.
But in 1961, the, the,
they were hit by a number of technologies.
You know, at first, in the old days,it was looking at airplane photos.
And then, we started the U-2
flights to to get a, well, think about,

(04:17):
the the first time the U-2 came back.
The batch processing
was overwhelming to the people.
So there's a new technology, U-2 aircraft.
And then you got to work with the peopleto to get them to change
what they're doing,get over habitual behavior and all that.

(04:38):
And and then right after that,when U-2 got shot down,
we went to the,catching the canister of the satellites.
Right.
It was, Corona, and,
so at that time, what they were doing,
the the technological impact on impactwas huge.

(04:59):
Again, because it's all of a suddenyou've got so much data
because you've got these longruns of cattle,
constant satellite passes.
How did they cope with that?
So this is, you know, technology people,nothing new in your world.
And, my old intelligence world,which is, you're always trying to get.

(05:20):
How how do you get the bestout of the technology where you're not?
If you don'tget the best out of the people?
So the the little, the story in the,
in thelittle case study that I can send you
was in 1961, a new leader came in there,
to head up in pick,and he would grab everybody, every quarter

(05:44):
or about a third of the employeesevery quarter, go offsite, and they would
do a, like, a three day session on
what's going well here at N pick.
What's not going well.
What can we change to do to get better?
What can we stop doing.
That was it those four questions?
But what he did was he harnessedthe brainpower.
The people.

(06:05):
And he got over
time, everybody got bought in.
It was called.
Yes. Something I call, full inclusion.
I mean, you really,you're being inclusive, but I mean, it's
everybody, and you're locking,getting the best at everybody's brains.
So over time, they were ableto, use that, use that method

(06:27):
and that systemto get the best out of people, adapt
to the new technologies at the same time,improve morale and get performance.
So it's, you know, it's funny,you can go back in history
like this and find, to find storieslike this.
I saw the same thing at GE with JackWelch.
He did something calledwork out or quick wins, where he harness

(06:49):
the brainpower of, of all theall the people inside the organization.
And I think that's what a what a win.
If you want to implement new technologies,if you want to get the best out
of the technology,
link that up with
people and, and,and you'll see miracles happen.
I'll give you a quick, Jack Welch story.

(07:09):
You got one?
Well, I work there at GE.
This this was a story going around.
I can't even tell you if it's true,but it's a great story.
GE was at odds, you know, with the union
Union management back then in the 90s.
And, but they had a, retirement dinner
for the union chief.

(07:30):
And it was very cordial.
The, you know, Welch was there,and his key lieutenants and,
very cordial dinner, but but at the end,the union chief stood up
and he gave a talk, and he said he wantedto thank everybody for letting him work
at, that ge he had learned so much,he loved the company deeply.
And he went on and on.

(07:51):
But right at the end, he stops
and he looks at Jack Welchand he said, you know, Mr.
Welch,you had use of my hands for 34 years.
If you had only asked,you could have had my brain as well.
So think about that.

(08:11):
And, and I think that changed Welch and,and started him
more of the old in pickapproach is suddenly realizing,
if you've got all these employees,let's harness the brain power.
Lessness that's just not sitting in rotejobs all day long.
Let them do transactional stuff.
That's that's stuff I could do.

(08:33):
And, and, so I think that have a huge,
huge impact on, on Welch going forward.
But that's the that's the thrust of it isthe more people you can get, on your side
and get them thinking that the betterthe organization is going to be.
I think that's a great lesson

(08:53):
for right now of what's happeningwith with artificial intelligence,
especially since there's now better toolsfor harnessing that brain power.
It's almost like, a force multiplier,you know, if you can,
if you can combine the human brainpowerwith the machine,
computational power,

(09:13):
then you have,you might have a winning formula.
Oh. It's stunning. You know, I'm bold.
Look at me.
I'm an old guy, but I am so bowled overby a, practical AI.
The ChatGPT advanced ChatGPT stuff.
It is absolutely stunning in terms of how
it's going to how it increasesour, productivity and all.

(09:35):
So, it's going to be fascinatingto see how this unfolds.
So if, if, if you were focusedon, let's just say, building
a culture from scratch that is like,you know, has this inclusive,
approach to collecting.
Input from everybodyacross an organization.

(09:58):
What would be how would you approach this?
And, you know, what steps would you taketo, implement that type of approach?
Like, would you begin?
Yeah.
Step one,I would go back to, a lesson learned,
by the OSS, which was the predecessor
to CIA, in 1943.

(10:20):
The psychologiststhere went to General Donovan
and they said, chief,we're we're losing a lot of our agents
basically parachuting into France,because of bad leadership.
We see people are having what they callednervous breakdowns or,
fights going on insome of our judge bird teams and so on.

(10:40):
So they said, we believeif we leave our, Jungian baggage
and our Freudian baggage at the door,we can come up with a way to assess
people, to predict future behaviors.
Well, this was one of the fivebiggest ideas in psychology that century.
It was top secret at the time.
So he said, go ahead.

(11:01):
So three weeks later,they went down to the farm, hammered out
over, over four days,how they would do this.
Three weeks after that, they rented
a, an old estate, not that farfrom where we used to live, in
a place called Fairfax, Fairfax Circle.
And they ran the first OS class through

(11:23):
and assessed themfor leadership abilities.
Right. So,
they're looking at things
like positivity, drive, empathy.
These are thingswe can psychologically assess people on.
And by golly, it works.
So in 1948, they went public with this,
and published a book,

(11:46):
and it blew away the psychology were well,today the intelligence community uses
that for their front end,you know, to to hire people.
They've got the pathwaysthat, psychiatrists, interviews, they got
psychology, psychologist interviews,they got psych psychological assessments.
So they really screaming outthe narcissist psychopaths all of that

(12:08):
to get a great workforce.
So if I wereif I were starting with zero culture,
the first thing I would do is applyall that to assess people
who, in leadership positionsfor their people skills.
And it's interesting,Nick, you you'd mentioned,

(12:28):
you know, we talked about technology and,
so forth.
But what happens is there's a defaultwhen in the intelligence community
and everywhere else,when you pick a leader, you say, I'm
going to pick him for the I'm going to getthe best technical skills gal or guy,
I'm going to get the best, human, skills.

(12:50):
And but then they forget the human skills.
So they always pick,
the, the best technical skill person.
Almost always.
So it's like picking you,you pick the best
salesman to be your sales manager.
And then what happens?
Well, you just lost your best salesman,and you got a bad sales leader.
So step one would beI'd apply some pretty simple

(13:13):
psychological assessments on a front end,these 30 minute instruments
to weed out the really bad bossesbecause they have huge negative impact.
And there's
an interesting twiston why they have a negative impact. Is,
they, they treat people
and they stir up something psychologistscall social pain.

(13:34):
You know, your anger, your fearful,whatever that means.
You're no longerusing your head like you should.
You're cowering.
You're you're bolted down.
And that creates culture because cultureis nothing but shared behaviors.
It's what, what we all do in the office,and when we're.
Are we very creative inthe office? Are we,

(13:56):
do we hold backall that's all that's culture.
So, what happens when the bad leaderleaves after two years?
That culture remains the same.
It's a micro culture.
And then the bad leader goesto another location
for two years, does the same thing,and then the third.
So that's why they can haveabout three times more negative impact

(14:19):
in a, in a in any culture.
Like ait's like a, it's like a cultural virus.
It, it, you know,it is it's toxic isn't it?
I mean it, yeah.
So the step one is just to hire peoplewith better people skills.
And even if youcan, if you only got one applicant, well,
at least you know, they,they lack certain people skills.

(14:40):
So get them a coach or somethingor the culture is step.
But or is this still the rubricthat they use
at the CIA for leaders?
Yeah.
I'm going to send you,
whatever you send me.
I'll also drop in the description as well,just so that people can see it.
Yeah,I'll I'm gonna send you something fun.

(15:01):
Your listeners are going to love this.
This is,
when I was started up, the CIA leadershipacademy, we didn't have a huge budget.
And so I wanted to givethe graduates a gift.
So I made up this, this crazy
periodic tableof the leadership and management elements.
So I'll,
I'll shoot that to youto give it out to everybody.

(15:23):
Print it out on big paper 11 by 17,because you see the fine print.
But on the right side of that,
I had the first 80 graduates,frontline managers, CIA
frontline managerswrite up a their leadership philosophy.
So it's all you'll have it there.

(15:44):
It's all incorporated there.
And it's about the scribes and the.
Yeah, it'sthe names that we would recognize.
Well, it's a no no, but it's got,
you know, it covers, how you andI want to be, want to be led and managed.
You know, all we want.We want to be listened to.
Give us, let us know where we stand.

(16:06):
Don't keep us in the dark.
Give us a little bit of positive feedback.
Give us a sense of purpose.
You know, a higher goalthat we're shooting at,
let us feel like we're accomplishingsomething that's human nature.
And that's basically, that's whatyou've got to really unleash people.
That's what you got to tap into.

(16:26):
And a good, goodinnate manager can do that.
And an average manager can to,
where just up
the amount of positive feedbackthat they give to people.
It's funny how much, Gallup doesthese worldwide surveys,
and farless than 25% of the people in the U.S.

(16:48):
or abroad,
have gotten positive feedback from theirboss in the last couple of weeks.
Well, that's crazy.
Everybody does something every day,
that they could they could get some praisefor positive feedback.
So, just just giving positive feedbackonce a week
can have a huge impact on on the culture.
Again, back to your question.

(17:09):
So it's simple stuff.
But I think one of thewe'll have a couple thoughts there.
One one of the thoughts is today
we look at a companylike the one that I own and run.
We're very dispersed.
We have remote people everywhere.
So I'd love to give praise to everybody.
It really I rely on them toto let me know, you know.

(17:29):
Hey, what's going on?We have these reports.
We do every month called Rhythm Reports.
Or their first line manager says, hey,
this is all the great stuffthat's happening.
Obviouslyin a operationally secure, method.
So that's, that's a, that's a struggle
is the kind of build that, that culture,
remotely because it's just not the same
when you're when you're in the buildingwith somebody every day.

(17:52):
It's something else you mentioned,and I think, I think this is, this is
might be a, pessimistic way of lookingat leadership, ultimately leadership.
And anybody that served inthe military can tell you this.
It's just getting peopleto do what they need to do, right,
to to achieve an organization's goals.

(18:12):
I think the the picture you're paintingof leadership is great, and it sounds like
the environment all of uswould like to live and work in, right?
Yeah. That's great.
But, is there truth?
Is there a real
tangible benefit to a different style,

(18:33):
a more authoritarian style of leadership?
If we look at let's just take,
Russia as an example, right.
I would hardly believe that there,
KGB has is fostering this type of culture.
Maybe I'm wrong.

(18:55):
They might have a moreeastern type of approach, which is.
Right. Right.
Negative reinforcement. Right.
It's it's.
Hey, do thisor you're going to pay, right?
You're going toyou're going to pay for this.
Anybody that has kids will also tell you,yeah, that works.
Right. That works.
So I'm just curious to know your thoughtson on finding the balance,

(19:17):
between those those two worlds to me,I obviously we all want to live in world
A, the nice world where we lead by exampleand do all these great things.
But if we need stuff done nowand there's no ifs,
ands or buts, worldB can be very effective as well.
So maybe your your thoughts on that.
Well I would say USmilitary for example is

(19:40):
is is hugely more effectivethan say the Russian military.
Now why is that?
Well, in the militaryyou do have to receive orders.
You have to take orders.
If you are in, combat,
combat situation,they did a study at West Point.
They found that what was more important,

(20:02):
on the leadership attribute side,just for the period of combat,
is that you have a competent leader.
So you want a competent sergeant.
You're a rifleman.
And so that makes sensebecause it's survival, right?
But in most of the time, the military isnot actually in actual combat.
And most of the military is not in combat,even if there's a war going on. So,

(20:24):
what the US military did is
they have that, hierarchical structure.
But then they createda, a mechanism where,
after every engagement,
either training or warfare,they sit down and they talk about it,
and it's the one timeyou can criticize an officer,

(20:47):
openly.
And get away with it.
They collect all this data and theyshoot it up to, shoot it out to Kansas.
And at the call center, it's called,
and they come up with new doctrineon the spot.
Okay.
So now let's go to the Russian side.
I am obsessed with the Ukraine war.

(21:08):
And I follow,
telegram and, and, which is,
the Russians usethat a lot to communicate.
Openly.
But I study every night what's going on?
And it is absolutely incredible.
The colossal losses of life and equipmentthat they have.
And it's their all time high this week.

(21:30):
It's it's unprecedented.
Highest in war.
They keep grinding away,
but the morale of the Russian armyis so low,
that, it takes,
just like in the World War two days,they had a political commissar,
Communist Party member with a pistolshoot you if you don't.

(21:50):
Well, now they've got Chechens.
They're going to shoot youif you if you retreat.
So they usefear. Well, what does that give you?
This year there was a study on.
On, how does a brain operatewith on using fear as a mechanism spur.
What happens is it completely closes downthe logical part of the brain.

(22:12):
And you lose all creativity.
People are not creative or innovativein a, in a fear based situation.
So that's a long winded answer.
I apologize, but I think Eisenhower saidit best on leadership.
You said it's getting peopleto do what you want them to do.
And he he twisted that.
He said it's getting peopleto want to do what you want them to do.

(22:36):
You know, motivating them.
And so if you want more creativityin your workplace,
what you would do isyou would ask questions about
how can we be more creative,get back to me in a week and let me know.
Or how can we be more collaborative in ourin our work group?
So and you put the onus down,
and, and really tryto make use of their brains.

(22:57):
And that's going to help you change too.
That helps you change thingsbecause, we've got an innate,
clinging to the status quo, risk aversion,
based on our own survival instinct.
And that's the way we overcomeit is is somebody.
You give me something to think about?
I've got to report it out to youat some point.

(23:19):
That's the accountability side.
I'm going to be thinking about it.
I have insights, and then I bought intothe whatever the new approach you want is.
So that's one but one way to look at it,one way to do it.
I'll give you an.
So here's an example talked about tech.
Microsoft was behind the eight ball
on when the internet hit.

(23:41):
You remember the early daysthe internet comes in, he could see it.
He said, this is the future.
And he talked about,
the, the theleadership there talked about the internet
ad nauseum about we got to get moving and,and change things.
So gates was getting moreand more frustrated,
because nobody reacted to himgiven the one way communications.

(24:06):
So one day he just stopped and he said,look, guys, he said, I'm still here.
I'm available for any problems.
You have. You come to my office,you know, make an appointment,
you stop me in the hallway.
He said, well,we've just got one new rule.
And what that rule is, is beforeI'll give you the answer
or talk to you, you have to give meone way you can use the internet

(24:29):
to help Microsoft get better, bigger,
stronger, and left it at that.
So here's the production chiefis sitting there thinking, oh my God,
I got this meltdown in the in thein the packaging plant in Peoria.
I got to talk to gates about it, buthe's going to ask this internet question.
I've got to come up.

(24:49):
And then he starts thinking,so what does he come up with?
Oh, we couldif we downloaded a part of our software,
we could reduce the packaging loadon these boxes.
We ship out everywhere.
So he that he's now bought into that idea,
and he
goes to, he goes to gatesand they have the discussion.

(25:11):
Same thing in marketing.
Somebody thinks, gosh,we could market some on the internet.
And theyhe thinks it through now he's bought it.
So that's how you change peopleis is forcing them to reflect and think
nicely, politely not through fearbecause that closes it down,
but through just ways of question asking,two way conversations.

(25:33):
All that good ABCs of good leadershipcan can help push that.
I feel like if Vladimir Putinwere to tell me that I needed
to get creative with the internet,I would be like,
I would come up with some ideaspretty quickly.
Well, I'm you know, that's a great point.
I, I can let's see.
What can I say?I can say I lived in Russia

(25:54):
for a long period of time.
Years.
And I speak Russian.
And so I study that closely, you know,Russian management techniques and all.
And it is, it's amazing.
It's gone full circle from the timethe wall fell,
you know, there was the opening
and we had Russians going to HarvardBusiness School and places like that.

(26:15):
Anyway, it's gone full circleso that the, the government structure
today is like what they usedto call the nomenclature way back.
It's fear based.
You just you don't want to pass upany bad news, only good news.
And again, going back to your analogyof Ukraine, that's what's going on.
These guys are not getting the bad news

(26:38):
and therefore they're getting blindsidedrepeatedly making
continued losses because they onlyhave good news coming up.
And so
Putin's got a very distortedpicture, as does G.
And China.
He's closed down all dissentand has a very narrow group of people.
So that'sthat's the strength of that hierarchy.

(27:02):
One person calling the shots,it can be fast.
It can be quick.
And but the other side of the thingis that, that it can be disastrous
to if you, if you really make a wrong calllike a one child policy or,
you know, it'sit is really the strategic blunders that.

(27:22):
Oh, well, since you
follow the Ukraine war so closelyand you have a background in Russia,
what is it?
What are your thoughts on,
Russia using North Korean troops
in Ukraine, and how does that escalatethe situation there?
How does that alter the situation there?
And just this is just

(27:43):
my basic analysis.
I'm no expert in this field, but
I feel like
this is an obvious
an obvious use of human shields.
I mean, this is like so obvious to methat he's gone to Kim Jong
un and convinced him or coerced himor however

(28:05):
he's he's done it to get him to supplytroops to Ukraine.
We're obviously going to be fodder.
What are your thoughts on this?
This is this is wild to me. Yeah.
I think, he thought it was a brilliant,Putin thought it was a brilliant move.
And, but.
And what he has done, it'sclever is the North Korean

(28:26):
troops are only in Kherson Oblast,which is Russian territory.
So you see what he's done?
He's not interjectedthird party foreign troops into Ukraine.
So that'sthe way he he keeps that in his mind.
And, and the, from what I've seen so far,it's a real mixed bag of troops.

(28:47):
It's a lot of,
18 and 19 year olds who,
have been slightly better trained
than the Russiansby the time they hit the front lines. Now,
longer period of training,but with no combat experience whatsoever.
And now they're facing languagedifficulties, foreign food difficulties,

(29:11):
logistical systems that are not Korean.
So they got a huge number of problems.
And I think,
also but also with them,there's a considerable number.
Maybe20% of the troops are Special forces.
And I think what the South Koreans fear
is theyou learn a lot when you're fighting,

(29:33):
even even these hierarchical,hierarchical organizations.
So they're, they're worried that the,the North Koreans are going to pick up
better tactics.
Certainly better weapons and better technology because of the swaps with Russia.
But I
think at the end of the day,even though we're looking at,
you know, ten,I think closer to 12,000 North Korean

(29:55):
troops, it's not going to make a hugeamount of difference on the battlefield
because their their traininggoes back to World War
Two type tactics.
They've never confronted drones,
and they've never, never confrontedany of these modern weapons. So,
I think they're,they're going to suffer some,
some very, very heavily heavy casualties.

(30:17):
The wild card would bewhat would undo what he at some time
get frustrated because the Russiansare using them as cannon fodder?
Or does he pump in another 80,000?
Well, it seems likefrom a strategic perspective,
you just talked about those issuesthat they're having.
We're just
operating in a different location,different languages and things like that.

(30:40):
It sounds to me like what he's doingis he's going to let them acclimate
to that area, to the logistical challengesof getting troops into the area.
And then now he has a forcethat he can rely on.
It might be small now, but he'll have,you know, they'll have their
processes in place for getting people toand from where they need to go

(31:01):
via those channels.
And then now he's got a he has a weaponthat he can deploy into Ukraine,
or at least defensivelyto protect parts of Russia.
What's in it for North Korea?
I mean as he Pana like what's all there?
You know what the Kim family is gettingbillions of dollars and as part of that
agreement, direct in their pockets,they're always starved for cash.

(31:23):
That's why North Koreans do the bulk ofthe world's, counterfeiting, for example,
and illicitdrug trade, all kinds of stuff.
But this is, real enrichmentto the family.
Also, the other thing is,
UN has been starved for space.
Space technology, and missiletechnology has had

(31:45):
a real hard problem with its long rangeballistic missiles. So,
the that'swhat's really worrisome is the technology
the Russians are giving back for the,you know, the million
artillery shells coming this wayand the troops coming, coming this way.
So that's that's what's in it for him.

(32:06):
A slope enrichment, more technology,yada, yada, yada.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, that's it makes sense to me.
He's got something directly,especially if,
they're getting the technology from Russiathat that they need.
And Russia is definitely a beastin all those areas,
especially the missile technology,what they can do with Hypersonics, etc..

(32:31):
Kind of jumping
back to leadership,but not but not unrelated to this at all.
We have a new presidentcoming in to play right now.
He's electing or nominate,I should say, new leadership to which
still has to be confirmed by the Senate,which, by the way, I'm going to
one second.
People that everyone that's happythat Trump was elected Republicans.

(32:54):
That's great.
You should celebrate.
But you can't
you can't sayhow much you love the Constitution
and then on one hand,and then cry on the other hand
when they realize that all of hishis nominees have to go through
a confirmation process in the Senate,like the Senate,

(33:17):
still very much has to do their job.
And their job is not to justtip the cap to the president.
And we don't wantnobody wants it like that, right.
Because if the hand were on the
the other, foot, so to speak,or the shoe was on the other foot,
we wouldn't we wouldn't want that.
Right.
So, yeah, we still want that processto happen smoothly.

(33:38):
But some of these nominees, these are,these are a
a drastic,a drastic change from the typical types
of people we see in these roles.
And we can talk through some of these.
But the one that just sticks out to me,the most to me
is Pete Hegsethas the secretary of defense.
Yeah.

(33:58):
Now I, I've watched some content on Pete.
He was a Fox News, contributor,
you know, our military veteran,which is fantastic.
But traditionally,you would think you would want
somebodywith more executive leadership experience.
That'swhy generals are such a natural transition

(34:19):
into the secretary of defense role.
I'm not I'm not sayinganything bad about them.
He might be fantastic.
And I'd like to think through ita bit with you, maybe, you know, like,
what do you think about him in particular?
And maybe some of the other nomineesthat have been presented?
Well, we'll talk through,
what do you need to be a, cabinet level?

(34:42):
The chief,
historically,
you got to be, extraordinarily smart.
Because there's so many conceptsflying around reading, the reading,
the demands alone, meeting demands,all that stuff.
And, it appears he's got that,you know, Princeton grad and so on.

(35:07):
However, there's also,what else do you need?
A whole list of stuff.
You need expertise in the, in the area.
So if you're taking overHealth and Human Services, say,
you really better have an extensivebackground,
that area,you're going to get lost immediately.
You also need to have throw weight,I call it, which is,

(35:29):
Russians call it blot, but it's just,
like Colin Powell, if you remember him.
Yeah, he's a guyyou could stick in anywhere.
And he just had, the phenomenal
leadership skillsand and what I call throw away,
to deal with, people in foreign

(35:50):
countries, you know, of his ilk,
they, having connections
helps wide range connectionsrelated to whatever that is.
Personality comes inthat we never select that.
But that's always good.
So personality wise, you get people,
like a CIA.
You've got,

(36:11):
Director Burns right now
who's just a phenomenal people person,
as was, George Tenet.
And, Well,a few of the others come to mind, but then
but then you get you get thosethat were bereft of people skills.
Like John Deutch,he ran into a lot of trouble.

(36:34):
Another one is you, you know,you want people in your own party,
so you kind ofloyalty is a little litmus test.
And then character of the individual,
you really youyou do want people of higher character
because you don't want to get snarledin, all kinds of,
scandals in a yearor 2 or 3 down the road.

(36:56):
So you think about that listwe just threw out, and I'm fearful
that if,
say the current administration,any administration just goes
after loyalty, right?
As the litmus test, what's going to happen
is that those other things are going to berandomly selected, basically.
Right,because you're not selecting for them.

(37:18):
So you just get this random selectionof those things.
And and some of those thingsare absolutely vital
to pulling pulling off a mega joblike this.
So I think some of the people, let's saysomebody let's say
if somebody was selectedfor their loyalty, they had no experience.
And no, no management experience.

(37:40):
There's another one for our list.
They, they might come through it,you know, they,
they could wiselyquite like to rise to the occasion.
But more often than not, they're not.
So I think it's,
I'm just hopingthe lens is not too narrow.
Sure. To. So.

(38:01):
So it's not to create problemsdown the road, because what happens?
I was just meeting with a guytwo nights ago,
went out for dinner,and he's an expert on all this stuff. The,
especially high level positionsand government jobs and all that stuff.
And, you know,we were talking and, generally,
the turnover rate for political appointees

(38:24):
is roughly 22 to 23 months on average.
Because they get frustrated, right?
So if you're again, selecting
just for loyalty and nothing else,I don't know what will happen.
Will these people get frustratedeven faster?
And therefore, you,you know, have have less,

(38:46):
less impact, positive impact than theyotherwise would?
I don't know, it'sgoing to be interesting to see.
Sure. Amazing.
I think so much of that is dependent.I mean, you mentioned character.
I mean, so much ofthat is dependent on that.
Like, you know, if someone like,like Pete, who by all means
looks like a fantastic human, you know,and I just
the one thing I think about with himis just,

(39:07):
I don't think he has that executiveleadership experience that you would want,
at a certain level,I'm not saying you can't do the job.
And I really hope he does a great jobbecause it's.
We all need him to it, right? Yeah.
If he makes it through,Senate confirmation,
but, you know, just onelast thing on that, too, Nick.
It's funny, there's also a cognitive biasthat, we all think

(39:31):
we all think we can do a job.
There were totally unsuited for us.
Called a Krueger dunning effect,where they,
they tested people in all kinds of stuff.
Everything from, grammar to logicand all this stuff.
And maybe they rank them,you know, like psychologists do.
And they call the bottom25% of any ranking,

(39:55):
are the,
really the basically the rejects.
They're not going to,they're not going to perform.
They don't perform well at all.
So, they asked the people at the top,
how would you rank yourself inwhatever the subject was?
And then they, ranked as the bottom 25%.

(40:17):
So here's where it gets interesting.
Bottom 25% is 12.5 percentile on average.
They self rate themselvesas over 66 percentile.
Right.
And then the,
the ones who are really good, the top 25%say kind of rate themselves.
They know they're pretty good,
but they don't thinkthey're the best in the world.

(40:40):
So they they rate themselvesa little lower than top 25%.
But anyway, it's called KruegerDunning effect.
And so any of us if if all of us got,you know, called by president
said, hey, take over the Departmentof Defense tomorrow.
Oh, I could do that.
You know, I can I can see a lot of thingsthis guy's not doing.
And, therefore I'll jump in and,and, I'll take over.

(41:05):
And I'll give you a one last here'sanother CIA story to round.
Round that subject up.
I was walking with the CIA director
one time down the hall, seventh floor.
And he turns to me and he said, Mike,why aren't they being more innovative?
And I knew he was talkingabout the employees.
But, then he paused and he said,

(41:27):
I've told them in my first five speeches
that I want moreinnovation and creativity.
So how do you answer that?
I mean, a director
asks a question like that.
And on one hand, it'skind of a naive question
where you can't just tellpeople and expect them to,

(41:48):
expect them
to change culture or change behavior.
But on the other hand, it'sreally kind of a cosmic question of why,
why doesn't that work?
And yet it's,
it's an interesting cognitive bias.
We all we all feel like I see
I see you running your companyand I say, geez, Nick's not doing x, y, z.

(42:10):
If he could only do that,he would be a better company.
So I come in and take overand I start doing
X, Y and Z and nothing happens
because this is so much more complexthan what I think in my mind.
Yeah,
that's athat's such a great point actually.
You know, and menthat the more you think about that point,

(42:31):
it's, it's even betterbecause that's you've just described
basicallythe entire media landscape right now,
which is which is where you know
everyone, you know,oh, the, the left, this,
the right that, you know, secondguessing decisions on each side.
And it's like, well,there's a lot more things at play

(42:54):
than what you're even thinkingabout, right?
Like, everyone,
nothing is ever simple, right?
Things are nuanced.
And it's it's that nuance, actually,which brings a level of a great point,
which is if you look at thislast election,
people were craving that nuance.

(43:15):
Like, why didwhy did Trump win in such a big landslide?
Well, there's a lot of reasons, right?
You can look at failures ofof Biden-Harris.
You can, you know, look at his,you know, personality
and like people like that or whatever.
But he was willing to go in
in depth on some of these subjects.

(43:37):
And, you know, maybe he
he might not be the,the best conversationalist in the world,
but he was willing to sit downand give you
these in-depth, nuanced thoughtson his perspective.
And I think that that is really whatpeople crave now.
This is why podcasts are such a big dealright now.
That's what drove me to do.
Mine is is it's not because I'm vanes,because I'm curious.

(43:59):
I like to learn stuff.
I find that peopleare much more willing to talk
and have in-depth conversations with mevia a podcast.
It's a very maybe.
It is kind of a, selfish thing,but people are willing to have these
long conversations with me.
Now, if I were to approachyou and just say,
hey, Mike, you want to talk for two hoursabout your experience,
everything, you'd be like, yeah, cool,I gotta go, Nick.

(44:19):
But if we throw in a podcastthat we can get really in-depth.
Yeah.
And and it provides a lot of value to theto the people watching and listening.
But that nuance,
like, what you're talking about is,
you know, people often
have the surface levelunderstanding of, of the position.
And so that's I mean,that's a fantastic point with all of our

(44:40):
technology and all of our new edge stuff,I still find that
communication is difficult, you know,especially in the intelligence community
where people are working on
inside of skiffs and things like that,where they're on different network.
It's not likeyou can just text them and say,
hey, check your checkyour email or whatever.
What would be kind of like you're applyingeverything

(45:02):
you've learned to that,to this new remote culture.
Like where, like where would you begin,inserting all of your leadership lessons?
You know, it's funny, I, I've been a,I've retired from CIA in 2006,
and I've been do consulting onmy own teaching and all that.
And so

(45:22):
I've been a virtual worker, basically,I've got a little this.
I'm in a little office.
I've got, downtown, Tysons Corner.
But I've also got my home office.
I love it,I love it, I can I can wear my little,
my little slippersand scoot into the kitchen and make a BLT.
The queen of sandwiches and.

(45:43):
Oh my gosh, it's wonderful.
However, when f during Covid,when that hit
and more people started dispersing,I was not for it for other people.
Very selfish view.
And the reason was it is much harderto build a culture remotely.
And so literally everythingI've talked about,

(46:07):
in a bookI've got coming out and all my, all my,
lectures and stuff,I talk about how, in on the remote side,
you almost have to dodouble what you do face to face.
Face to face is just easier, right?
You couldyou could bump into somebody in a hallway,
have a two wayconversation, clear up some issue,

(46:27):
or give them, some positive feedback.
A great job you did on such and such.
And then it took six seconds.
Well, when you're remote, what I seehappening is we're all getting trapped
into the the big meeting,
the big zoom type meeting,and we conduct that.
And psychologically, we feel, well,we've been connected, everybody.

(46:49):
But you're not, humans.
My old psychologyprof was a guy named Paul Lawrence,
at Harvard Business School, and he was,
wrote a book called drivenon the Basic Human Drives.
And he told me one time he said, Mike,just remember this.
We got all these human drives.
He said, first among equals is bonding,

(47:10):
the bonding drivebecause we are social animals.
And that's what's keptthe human race going.
We cooperate with each other, collaborate.
We have our little tiffs,but it all works out.
So that bonding drive, thatsocial connection, we're losing somewhat.
And so if somebody doesn't,

(47:33):
And I'll give you some
ways to get around that,but if somebody doesn't do that,
they're going to find, over time,all their employees are going
to just be like contractors,independent contractors working.
There's not going to be a common culture,not huge loyalty.
They'll be fungible.
They can switch your jobs,you know, in a heartbeat.
Since a virtual.

(47:54):
So how do you do it?
And the the thethe thing is, I think you've got to,
I would recommend to anybody runninga virtual organization once a week.
Just get on a five minute phone call,one on one
with each personthat is your direct report.
And, even your employees, if you're

(48:15):
depending on how many employees you haveand just make some kind of connection,
we find that the human brain,oddly enough, craves chitchat.
Even in
marriages, they've done studies where,
you know,my wife and I are sitting in the,
in the study,and I'm working on my computer.
She's reading the newspaper

(48:35):
and she'll say, oh,there's a new Thai restaurant in town.
Well, that's that's what, John Gottman,
this this guy who studiesmarriage calls a bit.
So she gives me the bid,and now I can answer the bid.
I could say I look up for my computer.Well, we ought to try it.
And then I go back to work.
Or I could ignore and reject the bid.

(48:56):
So what they've doneis they've tracked this over
years and years and in marriages
where bids are rejected 80% of the time,
these little chitchat things,
the marriage ends up in divorce95% of the time.
And then the reverse is the same thingwhere in marriages

(49:18):
where you got 80% or more,you've got 90% probability
of being still marriedhappily five years into the future.
And it's not because the secret to have
marriage is not answering the bids itself.
It's the fact that we do this.
We send out littlesignals like radar pings.

(49:38):
And and
that's how we establishthese personal connections.
So again, we've got a technology nowwith, zoom and teams
and all this to that are,
either breaking those apartor making them not,
you know, making it harder to to do thatreach in.
So there's a guy up at

(50:01):
Harvard Business Schoolnamed Chowdhury who's an expert on this.
And his rule of thumb, was,
try to get the people togetherwhen you can,
and, you know, the, the golden pointwould be like 25% of the time,
they'd be like one day a weekor one week a month or 15 days a quarter,

(50:21):
or like Salesforce.com,people like that, that can afford it.
They've got a big branchin, in the Redlands
and they pull all their employeestogether, for,
a long period of timeto get them to interact and so forth.
And it's just a it's an
important part,especially on the culture side.

(50:43):
Not that you couldn't run a pure businessremote all the time.
I think you could.
And, that's why I run, really.
I go through fiber and Upworkand all these places.
So I've.
I've probably hired a couple hundredpeople over the last two decades,
that I never see again, but.
And that works much.

(51:03):
It's just something to think about.
Yeah.
So so the leveraging
the gig economy,that's that's definitely a good,
a good tool to have at your disposal.
But yeah, if you want to build any,
you know, piece of longstanding organization, I don't
I think you're gonna find success on five
or not to mention, there'sso many people in India on there.

(51:25):
Oh. Oh, my gosh.
It's, I must have 50, peoplefrom Bangladesh and India,
and they're great, by the way.
They're fantastic. Yeah.
But whenyou're trying to build an organization,
probably not the best, the best wayto connect with people across the world.
Very cool.
So, I mean, we talk about quite a bitalready.

(51:47):
What?
Tell me a little bit more about youryour leadership philosophy.
You and I have not heard this before,but on your
on your website,it says leadership theoretician.
Yeah. Okay.
Like where did that come from?
And like, what is that like,can you expand upon that?
I had a,
one time of the day of the deputy directorof operations that at CIA.

(52:12):
I got a call, random call,
and, said thethe message was come up right away.
And, of course,I get that little spike of fear
that everybody doeswhen the big boss calls. Right?
What did I do wrong?
And so I went up thereand he asked me a question,
basically changed my life,which was, simple question.
But I walked in his office and he looks upand he says, Mike, why is it

(52:35):
when I pull the levers, nothing happens?
Meaning,
I don't get the results from the people,
that I think I should.
The levers are,you know, the metric system
and the communicationsand training and all that.
And then I quickly discovered, the.

(52:57):
I won't say which one.
Chairman of the board, one of the three
biggest insurance companies in the world,told me the same thing.
And so think about it.
There are large number of executiveswho feel like,
they're sitting on top of the rocket, but,
you know,they're not even sure what all is going.
And so it's a wonderful questionto think about.

(53:17):
So I've thought about that questionevery day since,
and that's 20 years.
And I came up with the answer as well.
The simple answer is, it's human nature,
human nature is such that you can't sit upat the top like that CIA
director and say, I want more creativitybecause it's not going to happen.

(53:40):
It just doesn't work that way.
And so I really startedreverse engineering human nature,
to see what makes us tick,because you have to do that as a spy.
Let me tell you,
lives depend on understandinghuman nature.
So what I came up with is, okay, survivalinstinct is is the basic instinct.

(54:02):
Everybody agrees with that fear and rewardreward side.
You've got these intrinsic rewardswhich are inside us.
And the extrinsic fearis stronger than reward.
Which goes back to your question.
Earlier, can you rule with fear?
But what happens is you
lose collaborationand you lose, creativity with fear.

(54:25):
So modern, modern audiencesgot to reduce the fear, give people
psychological safety the buzzwordand increase those intrinsic rewards.
So that's that's really what,
lit my fuze and got me started.
So as a result, I've come upwith a whole list of things you can,

(54:45):
you better keep doing that work.
For example.
The one, the two way communications,asking questions.
We know all that stuff worksbased on human nature.
Active listening.
There's certain things you shouldstop doing if you understand human nature.
And that would be the popular wayswe give feedback.

(55:09):
It's absolutely medieval.
Situational feedback method, where we doperformance management,
keep people in the darkand wait for the annual review.
But you can't do a crueler thingto the brain than that.
So there's a lot you can stop doing.
And then thirdly,you get into this new area of,

(55:29):
based on human nature.
Are there things we could dothat have never been done before?
And I gave you the example of Bill gates.
He did, something he called, I call,
insight prompts.
And what we've discovered,two guys discovered
after after nine, 11,

(55:51):
two neuroscientists discoveredwhat happens to the brain
when you have an moment.
And it's absolutely fascinating.
There's a book called The Eureka Factorthey published.
I think they'll get a I thinkthey'll get a Nobel Prize for this.
But I started working with a guy,John Conyers, asking,
okay,so what does this mean in the workplace?

(56:14):
And what we found out you ready forthis is kind of bizarre.
Magical. What happens in your head? Okay.
So if you're if you're reflecting,
you're in a relaxed statekind of alpha brain state.
It can happen.
That's for no apparent reason.
The frequency in your brain increases.

(56:37):
You have an
And what they discoveredis it's not in the prefrontal cortex.
It's not fast analytical thinking.
It's a little area of your right earabout the size of a dime.
Lights upjust like the cartoon does with the flash.
You know, the lightbulb when you have an moment,
lights up

(56:57):
instantaneously and they don't know whynew neuron connections are made.
But this is what what really sold me was,
I asked him about brain chemicals
that, are released during that moment,
and he went through it with me and,
and told me,yeah, when you have an moment,

(57:18):
the chemicals that are releasedgive you a complete sense of certainty.
So if you're doing a Sudoku or a crossword
puzzle, had a little Thatthat's the answer.
It gives you certaintyto write it down in pen.
If you're thinkingbig thoughts, about your future
and this is the person I'm going to marry,you know, that's a big.

(57:41):
But you got the certainty nowto go through with it.
So I keyed off that, and I'm using it
actually in the State Departmentnow to drive culture change.
By asking people positive questions,giving them mental
homework, basically, like gatesdid, make them think and reflect.

(58:03):
They come up with new ideas.
But then you've got to havethe accountability side.
So they have to report out to the big bossor the A group.
So they are going to reflect,
and, and at the end
you, you get this buy in for new ideas.
One last story.
You ready for a bin laden story?

(58:23):
And then I'll also
you want a bin laden story or why not?
Okay, so,
Leon Panetta, when he was, CIA directorand he had
he had really good people skills to,you hold a Wednesday
meeting called a bin laden meetingwhen we were hunting bin laden.
Because, as you know, binladen did away with all technology.

(58:46):
So how do you track somebody with.
No, no, technical connection whatsoever?
And no, he didn't meet with people either.
He used a one courier.
So, we,
Panetta was having the meeting,and he turns this one, doe officer.

(59:07):
Ops officer.
And he says, so what what new ideashave you got to catch?
Bin laden and the the hapless officersays, chief, you know, I don't know.
I'm I'm out of ideas.
The whole group is out of ideas.
So Panetta flared up,
and then he did the right thing.
What good leaders do.
He said, look,I'm sorry, I'm not mad at you.

(59:28):
It was just the situation.He said, let's do this.
He said, let's adjourn the meeting.
And you guys come back next
week with ten new ideas to catch.
Bin lot.
So see what he did.
He gave them all mental homework.
They got to report back to CIA director.
So are they going to be thinkingabout that?

(59:49):
For sure.
So they're thinking about itdriving to and from work.
They're thinking about itwhen they're in the shower running.
So the next week at the bin laden meeting,
they came up with 37
new ideas to catch bin laden.
So that's what that's the potential inside

(01:00:10):
people's minds that if we can harnessand we can pull,
you can get great, great things out.
So that's that's an example of backto that whole process of human nature.
What, what you can do, what you couldstop doing and then what new things to do.
That would be a new one of the new thingsyou could do to to really push

(01:00:32):
your organizationor push people, accept change, so forth.
So yeah, searching for that moment.
Yeah. Exactly.
And and,and we all know how that ended with,
with bin laden
and how they tracked him and there's beenmovies and stuff made about that.
And I did an episode with Rick Prada
who went throughthat whole process was right.

(01:00:52):
Right.
Very heavily involved with that.
So check out that episodeif you're interested.
He's a great guy, by the way.
All that one down. Indeed, indeed.
Very good. So.
You mentioned
some workyou're doing in the State Department.
And, and kind of brought up like,
made me think about,

(01:01:14):
how and of wherethe intelligence community is at
and where it's moving.
In the future, if you look at,
agencies like Unga, who's buildinga new headquarters in Saint Louis,
they already have one there, but they'rebuilding a new, new building there,
which is spurred a lot of interestin geospatial intelligence in Saint Louis.
Yeah, that multi-billion-dollarbuilding going over there.

(01:01:41):
And with this new
and a modern focus on open sourceintelligence, which you're mentioning,
how you're followingso much of Ukraine war on telegram.
I just mymy wheels have been spinning about, like,
this new administration comingin, open source intelligence revolution.

(01:02:04):
And the idea of efficiency. Right.
These, these, these paradigms.
Do we need to have 18 intelligenceagencies anymore?
Do we need to have all of our operationsin skiffs?
Do we need to have,
15 different departments looking at China?

(01:02:28):
Like what do you think about in general,
the efficiencywithin our intelligence community? And,
is it
right for these types of things likeyou've probably heard of this DDoS, right?
The department.
Right, which is a massive troll.
It's I think it's hilarious.

(01:02:48):
Are they goingto look at the intelligence community
and all this new technology and say,you know, this is kind of
this is kind of ancientthe way we do things, even though,
we have, you know, the, the always hasthe coolest tools and all that good stuff.
But they operate on different networks,right?
And it's right complex and,you know, causes a lot of friction.
I mean, it's not even that they operateon different networks.

(01:03:10):
The agencies operate on their own networkswithin the networks.
I mean, it just gets itgets wild and crazy.
What are your thoughts on this?
The idea of efficiency and,
you know,
is the is the intelligence communityready for that?
Well, the the interesting thing,we're coming up the 20th

(01:03:32):
anniversary of the,Intelligence Reorganization Act.
And, which created the DNI structure,
superstructure to help coordinateall this.
I got to tell you,
I got decades,decades of experience on this,
and I am not a fan of restructuring

(01:03:55):
and reorganizing to solve soft problems.
If the problem is lack of coordinationand collaboration, which it was back
then, I can tell you putting a new level
of hierarchy on top is not the answer.
I was, I did with the DNI.
Yeah, I got called up to the number,the WMD commission.
I got called up there three timesand we had the best discussions

(01:04:18):
about culture, the importance of culture,and and how do you change
all the some of the stuffwe're talking about today?
It was wondrous.
However,when they came out with the report,
they pushed aside all the people stuff,all the soft stuff.
And the recommendation was, well,let's let's have a new oversight.

(01:04:39):
It used to be calledthe community management staff.
You know, that the CIA directorhad to hatch
responsible for the whole, I say,plus responsible CIA.
Well, anyway, DNI replace that.
And I was there for the birth of that,
and the the, you know, the fighting fightswere awesome about how many analysts

(01:05:00):
they pull out of CIA to stick up topsideand this, that and the other.
So anyway, I think the answer
is not trying to shift boxes around,because next week
some new technology is going to come or,some new event will occur in the world,
and you're going to findthat the structure doesn't fit that.
I mean, there is no,

(01:05:21):
the answer is on the people side,which is just increasing.
You're always pressing to increasecollaboration and cooperation. And,
a guy named Ron Sanders,who was the first, air
chief up at the DNI level, startedsomething called joint duty.
Well, that was good.That was like Nichols.
The the at the act that the DoD

(01:05:43):
was acting on to dojoint duty was brought in.
And so as people started serving
in NCA and CIA and and that say they found
the other side didn't have horns,they're making connections.
Remember,we're back to this human connection thing.
As that happens, you're less fearfulof your own little, your own little area.

(01:06:07):
You're less protective.
You've got contacts outside.
So that's the stuff that that's the answerto all this and the fact that there are
you know, you mentionedhow many different agencies there are.
Remember a lot of those are very small,like, DIY intelligence.
I've worked a lot withthem. Well, they focus on,

(01:06:27):
nuclear matters that they know best.
Right.
State Department,the INR is, is a little group
that punches above its weight.
And you look at the big ones, NRO launchesthe satellites.
India does just
more and more powerful work all the timebecause of what they're
specializing and CIA's doing,the Humint and analysis,

(01:06:52):
those are all pretty,pretty different tasks.
But I see a lot more cooperationand collaboration today, Nick,
than than I did even ten years agoand certainly 20 years ago.
But, yeah,
I just hope that the end result,the new administration is not.
Well, we're going to we're goingto knock out this box and replace it

(01:07:14):
with that box and put this personover here that that doesn't do anything.
Yeah. Just from a
maybe not too in-depth perspective.
I look at the different agencies,just just their infrastructure alone,
operating on different networks and,

(01:07:34):
well, some of it, like, manifest itself.
It makes sense.
I know thatyou have to have an internal network
that is totally unconnected. Yeah.
Because I look at cyber defense today,
it's the fastest growing cybersecurity,fastest growing area there is.
So you got to do that.
And then there are you know the you've gotJay Wicks and you've got all these other

(01:07:58):
other connect connectionsthat that go in between.
So the organizations can,can communicate separately.
But yeah, I hear you, I hear you.
I even think about the efficiency of.
Of just operating on the networksthemselves.
Like.
Like, when you're operating on Jaybecause you don't have access to ChatGPT.

(01:08:21):
Well, I know they're working on somelanguage models, but you don't have access
to all the new tools.That saves so much time.
I mean, you talked about how ChatGPT isis amazing and Revolution ized.
You know, the way you look at things.
Well, the reason isyou just get instant access to it.
I mean, how much time would besaved on an an an analytic report?
Yeah.
If you just put the data in a formand then ChatGPT spits out the report.

(01:08:45):
Yeah.
How much, you know, like,
there's so much to be gainedfrom just the technology standpoint.
And then,and then if you overlap that with
there's so many different
departments looking at the same thing,it drives me insane.
I, I can't I mean, I can tell youI've been to a lot of the,
the different agencies and I've seen that,you know, I've been in the rooms.

(01:09:08):
I'm like,
oh yeah, those guys,I was just in another room
at the other placeand they're looking at the same thing.
Are you guys?
You guys talk and they're like,no, my okay, all right.
What are we doing here?
So we're all on the same team.
But what we're
we're not quite doing it as,as smartly as we could, but
and I just respect the human natureand I think, you know that.
That's right.

(01:09:28):
You know, just going to be publishinga book on that is how do
and the book, the ulterior of the book,
ulterior motive is how to make the IC workbetter, frankly.
And I giveI only give a few stories, you know, from,
I see intelligence
community organizations,but that's that's my target
audience is how do we solve the problemyou're talking about?

(01:09:52):
Because the the,there'll always be a little bit of a,
a lag on efficiency, say,with new software like, chat.
Sure.
However, or, internal texting.
And the reason is, boy, you'd betterbe sure of the complete pedigree
of anything that you adopt insideof as a secret,

(01:10:17):
communication system.
Because stuffcomes from all over the world.
So you, you know, you find out when youlook at something, looks looks like plain.
It looks like it wasit was made in the UK.
And suddenly find out30% of the software was written in China.
Well, so there's always going to bethat lag we'll never get.
You'll never get governmentto operate, with the, you know, the,

(01:10:40):
the, the rapiditythat you could in the private sector.
But aside from that,
it gets us right back to the whole thingyou've been talking about,
which is it's the people.
You just got to get the peopleto work together, be more collaborative,
be more giving, more trusting.
Apply common sense
and and so on to, to get them allto work together in these organizations.

(01:11:04):
So, you know, I attend a lotof the industry conferences and all that.
Yeah. And,
it's heavyfocus on technology ahead of thought.
And I post on LinkedIn about thisactually had a lot of a lot of post.
But the thought was, what if we startedto assemble more gatherings and,

(01:11:25):
focused on peopleas opposed to the technology,
like have peopleas the central organizing factor
and not xyzzy AI at the edge,which is the new thing, right?
Yeah. Domain.
That's.
Yeah, that's where I want I tell youwhat I'm waiting for that I push for that.
Somebody has got to put a conferenceon, say, hey guys, what about the people?

(01:11:50):
And again, I go back to what I said.
Every blue ribbonpanel says we need more innovation.
Talking about same thingyou are about the.
I say,
and yet nobody tells ushow do you be more innovative?
Well, back to ABCs.
So you got a really good managerwho builds psychological safety.
And by saying hello in the morningand smiling, and they build trust and,

(01:12:14):
say people's name, how, I don't exactly.
I'll tell you a quick story, Mike. Yep.
I have an office in in downtown Starkvillehere.
I'm in beautiful, illustriousMississippi, and,
I drink, I drink Coca-Cola,and I do the monsters and everything.

(01:12:36):
I don't do coffee.
That's what I do.
For my daily drugs.
Caffeine.
And the other day, I was going.
Going into work,and I swung into this gas station
there near where my office is at,and I just go in there, grab
my stuff, and I was just kind of feelingpretty good, you know, a good day.

(01:12:57):
I actually slept that night,which is been, Yeah.
The two yearold. That's that's not always the case.
And, I looked at the
person behind the counter and,and I said, well, thank you very much, ro.
Can I call you ro?Thank you for for helping here.
And, she looked at melike nobody has said her name in months.

(01:13:18):
I mean, all my eyes lit up.
She was like, oh my gosh. Like, yes.
Like, you know.
And I could just see she was so exuberant.
Like, nobody has said, this person's name.
And then she's like,how did you know my name?
And I'm being silly, you know,I'm like, well, you know your name tag.
That's right, that's right.
Your name tag did not realizeshe was wearing an impact.

(01:13:41):
But that those little,
little things, like saying someone's name
like that, that made a big differenceto her at that moment.
And, you know,I'm sure she forgot about it. Two seconds.
But every time I go in there now,I say her name.
You know, I'm like, hey, Ray, how are youdoing? We're best friends now, right?
You know,
what are some other kind of softskills like that that maybe

(01:14:04):
could really alter an organizationif they're applied properly?
What? What comes to your mind?
And it's it's what you just said.
It's all the little stuff.
I'll give you an example. I did a study.
I got ratings of 200 best bosses at CIA.
Now, they were anonymous.
But what I did was and interviewed,

(01:14:26):
the folks who had rated thethe best bosses
and said, well, tell me stories about whatthey did or what they were like.
What how did they behave?
And I just collected all this dataand then broke it down.
And it basically, 20 years ago,what what we were teaching
the CIA is kind ofleadership is got like five steps.
One of them is firstone is establish psychological safety.

(01:14:49):
And this was before,1999 was the first study
that came out outside of the.
I see that about psychological safety.
Now, it's a big deal,but psychological safety is just smile,
say hello to people in the morning, payattention to them and actively listen.
Second stepyou can't build trust if people fear you.

(01:15:11):
But theso you've got the psychological safety.
Now you can build trust.
Well how do you do that?
Well that hingeson the law of reciprocity,
which is nothing more than very small.
Repetitive.
Basically gifts that you give toother people, you could give them advice,

(01:15:32):
you give them opportunities,you could give them positive feedback.
You can you can give them data.
Maybe they're driven data driven people.You can.
There's all these little giftsthat just, you know, periodically
and consist and say is so importanton the trust thing.
You just keep doing that and you don't.
By the same token, at the trust level,you don't do this social pain stuff.

(01:15:55):
I just I talked about alluded to earlierthat the brain shuts down
if you get yelled ator you're shamed at a meeting or,
you your boss makes you angry.
They've lost you for some period of time.
So that's safety, trust.
And then you.
Now that you've built trust,now you've got their attention.

(01:16:16):
You can build clarity.
And clarity comes again.
Simple thingslike you're saying two way conversations,
active listening,
using visual cues to, to give,give people everything
from infographicsto graphic display data to using stories

(01:16:36):
or metaphorsto get at the visioning part of the brain.
But that's building the clarity of,
what's the missionand what your expectations are.
It's all a little stuff.
And then finally you get to a fourth step,which is now you can challenge
a lot of people.
You can really push them because youthey feel psychologically safe.
You've got their trust in you.

(01:17:00):
They're perfectly clearof your expectations
where the guardrails are,how much they can experiment.
That's the clarity.
And now now you just push the let's go guyand gang and let's go for it.
And we're going to really sprint hereand do this, this and this.
And then you just at the end,you review it and start all over again.
So anyway,that's what we taught 20 years ago.

(01:17:21):
But it's all little tiny stuff.
It's just no magic in it.
You know, I'm not much ofa political correctness person.
I'm not I'm not big on this stuff. Okay.
You know, but I,I like the idea of psychological safety.
I just the word safety, to me, it sounds
it sounds likeit sounds a little PC for me.

(01:17:43):
I actually like I like the termpsychological empowerment.
Yeah. It's not it's not like safety.
You're not providing some, like,
you know, cube space for themto care about themselves.
It's no you are empoweredto express your ideas to get your
your thoughts and emotion.
So anyways, but that's a super cool I, I'm

(01:18:04):
going to steal that shamelessly from youand go ahead and quote you on that one.
That's a good one. Yeah.
No no no problem no problem.
I love logical empowerment.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I feel like psychological safetysounds too much like safe space.
And I'm like, okay, all right.
We need to avoid safe space.
Like you need to do the opposite.

(01:18:24):
That's,
That that's pushing people down.
That's assumingthey're not capable of great things.
Yeah,
exactly.
You kind of talk on this a little bit.
I think we we kind of overlook this

(01:18:45):
this portion of soft skills.
You mentioned active listening. Yeah.
That is a skill. That is.
It sounds simple, but, man, that is a realskill that takes developing.
I don't that's somethingI've actually got a little bit better at
doing the podcast because
if you don't,

(01:19:06):
if I don't sit hereand actually pay attention to every word
that you say, yeah, our conversationis going to die in two seconds, right?
I'll be like, why did you say what?
But I've gotten a lot betterat this, over time,
and it's actually helped me quite a bit.
I that's why I tell everybodyeverybody should do a podcast
is is going to help you,with your communication skills.
What are some

(01:19:27):
what are what are your thoughts onon this idea of just, like, strengthening
soft skills through conversation or like,how do you
how do you exercise thosewithout being overt?
You know what?
It's, And I'll let me go to the activelistening thing.
That's the hardest.
I think that's the hardest thing for mepersonally to do,

(01:19:50):
because my brain works real fastat a high level, 30,000ft.
And I just can't wait to interject.
Right.
And here's, here's a quick storyof how you could control that.
I was teaching a narrow class,
through, one of the universities and,
it was in an amphitheater,you know, with the, arena type seating.

(01:20:13):
And they had name tags, name cards up.
Right.
So I like to roam around,go up to the, the back and I'm coming down
and I see this guyon the backside of his name card.
He's got these check marks.
And so I
turned to him and said, you know what iswhat is that?
And, he had, two check, two check

(01:20:35):
marks over this side and four over here.
And, and he, you know, he said, oh, well,I tend I'm an extrovert.
I tend to talk too much and not listen.
And, so what I do is each class
I allow myself to make two big points,and I'll check those
on the right side of the cardonce I've done that.

(01:20:58):
And then.
But I also allow myselfto make four little points
when somebody else has spoken, I'll say,oh, I really agree with that.
Or, you know, it's just a small.
And he checked that and that's he'susing visual cues to hold himself back.
Hold the line back.
I thought that was so cleverof what he did.
Two really good books on that.

(01:21:20):
That on how you do that.
One of them is called,
crucial Conversation.
So there's sold millionsand millions of books.
It's an old book,but all it is is how do you learn to.
If you and I were having a debateon something and my temperatures rising,
how do you keep it civil?

(01:21:42):
How do you break your brain from doing
automatically jumpingto conclusions or whatever?
And then keep the conversation civil
so that you come up with a solutionboth sides want.
So it's called crucial conversations.
And then the other one is called

(01:22:02):
odd name leadership and self-deception.
By a group called the Harbinger Institute.
And it, it, it's a different look of,
doing what you're just saying it,but it outlines very simple approach
to control yourself from going
absolutely bonkers or haywire.

(01:22:23):
And by doing so,you never get caught up in this,
you know, angry disputes or hard feelings.
You have actually come upwith constructive results.
So I'll shoot you the two booksso you could post them.
That's right.
You know, for your listenersif any any were interested but that.
Yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll try to take allthe books that you mentioned, like, you,

(01:22:43):
you have a good library.
And we'll makesure that those are in the description
so people can check those out.
We'll have a letter to your, leadership.
What is it?
A table of all the periodictable of elements.
Yeah. Yeah, you'll love that.
Your your your background.
Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely.

(01:23:05):
I'll definitely check that out.
I think the, the business world
and, more of the.
How's it going?
I guess you say the commercial markets,
they really like to learn lessonsfrom places
like CIA, placeslike special operations units.

(01:23:28):
Because of
their focus on mission,I think is is really.
The thing is, they know that their missionfirst organizations.
The great mentor of mine, Bob
sharp, says, you know,
People first
mission always like that's his thingis, like, people love that people.
People run the missions.

(01:23:49):
And he's formerdirector of MGI super, super great guy.
Anyways,
what are some some of the lessonsyou've learned, maybe from
just your time at CIAthat could be applied in a business sense?
That maybe gets at some of these.
I knowwe've maybe touched on some of them,
but what are some, somemaybe deeper issues you've ran into that

(01:24:11):
you think business.
Maybe, maybe you've had an momentwhere you were like, you were like, hey,
you know what? Businesspeople could really learn from this?
Or you know, so-and-so over at,
you know, Fordcould really use this knowledge, right?
You mentionedyou work with Jack Welch at GE.
What are some of those other lessonslearned

(01:24:32):
that you couldthat you'd be willing to share with us?
I think part well,one of them, this is boring.
But metrics,
is I don't like using metrics
to guide people,because what happens is they get myopic.
You know, you got to produce Nick.
You got to producefour reports this quarter,
but that's all you're going to do,
and you're not going to be thinkingmore broadly.

(01:24:53):
But where metrics are great iswhere do you where do you stand?
So we developed a whole series
of soft metrics, for example,
what is your culture?
Well,if you ask that of most organizations,
they kind of flail a little bit.
It's hard for them to come up.
They've got the value statementon the wall,

(01:25:13):
but that doesn't mean anything.You know what?
What's the actual culture?
So for example, again, easy to gather.
You just give
a group of 30 random folks, a list of,
corporate or organizational values.
And they tell them, circle the top fivethat you see in the workplace,
and then you just collect all thesefrom several groups and you rank them.

(01:25:37):
And by the way, number one,just to back to your point
for the intelligence agenciesthat have done it in this mission, always
number one, alwaysbecause they know that they're just
mission, mission centric.
And then you get the other stuff,you know, excellence or,
cautionor whatever the, the other things are.

(01:25:58):
So that one thing that you can dois it's very easy to measure.
Number two,
we talked about right on the front end,which is really know who your people are.
Screen them carefullyso you get the right people
in the right jobs, peoplethat are in the right job, love it.
They're happier.
They're they'replaying to their strengths.

(01:26:19):
And that
goes that goes a long wayto building morale and everything.
And I think the agenciesall do a really good job that,
then another thing going the other way,you know, you've,
something that Jack Welch startedwhen I was there.
He got rid of the.
He had invented the GE,invented performance management

(01:26:40):
when they werein the Industrial age company,
which really helped themin the early 1900s.
But then they found that.
Wait a minute.
This this is we're keeping peoplein the dark for a whole year
before we give them feedback.
It's kind of cruel and unusual punishment.
So, he did away with itand started something

(01:27:01):
that Adobe laterpicked up and called check ins.
So what this is, is every manageronce a week has a quick,
just a quick five minute informal sessionwith an employee. Hi.
How's it going?Anything I can help you with?
Any. What are you proudest of this week?
You know, simple questions.

(01:27:22):
And it has huge impact on morale.
So we're pulling that in.
We're stealing on the other way,
you know, bringing thatinto some of the intelligence agencies.
It's a great, great practice.Best practice.
So when I was in the Army,we didn't call it stealing.
We called it tactically acquiring.
Yeah. Knowledge. Oh. Were you.
That's right.

(01:27:43):
I forgot you were like me.You're an old army hand.
So you're,you know, the call center, all that stuff.
That's. That's wonderful stuff.
The after action,
discussions.
Yeah. That's it.
Exactly.
Yeah.
We all need to do that a lot more.
And I think,
half of the country right nowis probably doing a hot wash

(01:28:03):
on watching what just happened,saying that that's who they are.
They, what's happening here?
I know we talked earlier about some of the
the nominations that the presidentis putting in place, and,
I just, I don't know, I,I think you're a great person
to, to to talk on,on some of these matters.

(01:28:26):
He's put TulsiGabbard is nominating to be the
the director of national intelligence.
I know we talked about those a little bit.
Maybe they'll reorganizeand do some things there.
What are your thoughts on on oneI guess that role of DNI, you talked
about the history of it, but,you know, her potentially going into that,
that position and I'll and I'll caveat

(01:28:48):
with, I believe what he's doing.
You mentioned,you know, focusing on loyalty, which
which is clearly a part of his partof his plan, not necessarily a bad thing.
Depends on your perspective.
We talked a little bit about Pete Hegseth,and I mentioned
maybe he doesn't quite have,the executive experience.

(01:29:08):
Tulsicertainly has experience in Congress and,
all that.
And she's a veteran as well.
What what are your thoughtson on her as DNI?
And then I guess maybe this,I don't know, this thought on
the different types of the different typesof personalities that have kind of built

(01:29:31):
this the that are just going into this,this it seems it's so
has it always been like this?
It's so personality driven.
Maybe because a lot of these people areout there on the news and media and stuff.
It's like, right,feel like I know a lot of these people.
It's not like it used to be where youyou hear like a DNI selected,
you're like,oh, who's that? Never heard of them.
But now it's like, oh yeah, yeah,

(01:29:52):
I saw them on this podcastor I saw them on the news or you know,
what are your what are your thoughts onall of this?
It's kind of wild.
Well, it's interestingthey did a, back to DNI.
They did in the first Trumpadministration.
They assigned somebody to look at thatand rationalize it.
And I don't know whynothing ever came of it.
In this case,

(01:30:14):
I have no ideawhat her marching orders are.
I asked the historians one time
to to do a study onwhat does the president
say to the new CIA directoror the new DNI,
you know, do they say, go in there,go in there, and shake up the place?
Or are they saying,go in there and keep it out of the press?

(01:30:36):
Or you know what, right.
Yeah, it would be an interesting study.
And I don't knowthat anybody's ever done that.
So I don't know what he would tell.
The president would tell Tulsi.
It maybe I mean, this is just personal opinion.
I feel thatthe, DNI got a little too large.
They they builtthey pulled up too much staff over time.

(01:31:00):
And that's easy to do.
You know, you get this natural bloat.
So maybe, maybe her goal is going
to be somehow to,
reduce the number of personnel, up there,
by, you know, few scores of people.
That's not going to change the world.
I do what I hopeis that the new people don't

(01:31:22):
get so obsessed with,
reducing, say,
reducing Dei or reducing staff levels
on the margins and then forgetting about,
China, Russia, Iran, North Korea,which is what it's all about.
What are these guys up to?
And, you know, you you talked aboutyou like, you know, you be curious to hear

(01:31:45):
that conversation between the presidentand his his cabinet appointees.
I think that's that's kind of the idea.
If you look at, like, the stuffthat Pete Hegseth has written about.
Right.
And even some of the stuff I've heard RonDeSantis say about
just getting back to mission,like get back to mission, right.
This is this is all in our mission,
I and I, and I feel like that's probablythe marching orders he's given them.

(01:32:09):
I hope because they're, you know,no matter what you think about Dei,
there is good stuff in the Dand the I especially,
that, you know, you wouldn't want toyou wouldn't want to get rid of,
that can't be the focus.
It should be mission first. Of course.
Or people first mission always.

(01:32:29):
You know, people on a missionhave to be first.
That's that's my sense of the thing.
It seems like very much like,let's let's let's focus on mission.
Let's let's get back to missionon what we're supposed to be doing here.
I want thethe mission of DNI is supposed to be,
you mentioned has has changed a bit.
Mission mission creep does happen.
I remember Obama saying this very clearlyabout talking about mission creep.

(01:32:52):
And I think that's right.
Things alter and change.
The mission creep on DNI is pretty,pretty clear.
It's been they went from being thethe organization that's supposed to,
you know,hold policy and analytic standards and,
and really make everything cohesive.
Well, now they have actualthey're doing actual intelligence.

(01:33:13):
That'sthat's not what the DNI is supposed to do.
They're supposed to be the right,organizing,
agency, whicheverything should be organized around.
So I don't know that there's, there's,there needs to be some
somebody in thereto, to get a hold on that.
Now, Tulsi in particular,though, she's kind of interesting

(01:33:33):
becauseshe obviously has combat experience.
She has she's no doubta, you know, patriotic American person,
but she doesn't have I don't see that,like, intelligence, experience.
Maybe she's got some in Congressor something.
I'm, I'm unaware of,
what are your thoughts on, like,somebody coming in a leadership position?
And maybe this is a good lesson for peoplethat we talked a little bit about.

(01:33:55):
You talked about the Dunning-Krugereffect, right? Yeah.
Everybody thinks they're betterthan they actually are.
And the ones that think they're worseare actually
the ones that are more qualified.
What are your thoughts onsomebody like her coming in to DNI,
maybe as an outsider and and does
the IC need sometype of shake up, you know,

(01:34:19):
yeah.
It's interesting.
I think,
it's the approach you take.
Any timeyou got a new boss coming in anywhere.
I've worked with neuroscientists.
I've been out to UCLAand seen what happens to your brain
when you have this jolt of uncertainty.
And let me tell you, it's pretty uglywhat it does.

(01:34:42):
It shuts down.
Your, analytical thinking.
It shuts down creativity and everything.
So the the biggerthe splash you come in to make.
And I'll use John Deutch as a primeexample.
CIA he might as well.
The Russians could have flipped the switchand shut the place down for six months,
because that's what he did.

(01:35:02):
So if you come in and you're striking fearin, in people,
and you, you come in and say
you've got all the answers and they don't,you just lost them all.
And ironically, I just wrote a paper.
I'll send it to you.
Believe it or not,
it says, why getting back to mission ismay not be the right answer.

(01:35:24):
And the reason is that 98% of the peoplein the intelligence agencies
and I've gathered data,know what the mission
is, and they're cranking away on a missionevery day.
And then you got 2%is the garbage, the not garbage.
But I'm just saying bells and whistlesthat maybe you're going
to be attacked and reduced,but in doing so,

(01:35:48):
you you can create more turmoil
to actually affect operations below.
Operations and analysis,all the good stuff we do.
And, and inadvertently,
people are not taking the prudent riskthat they should or so on
because there's all these thunderstormsgoing on the top level.

(01:36:12):
And I know I'm not a big fan.
I was not a big fan of creatingthe DNI structure to begin with.
You know, I just again,I don't see how you can ever, ever,
change, fix people problems or soft issues
with organizational changeand putting up new org charts.
It just doesn't work.

(01:36:33):
So it'll be interestingto see what I don't.
I have not a clue.
Again, I wish I knew
what her marching orders wereand I could give you a better answer.
What I hope they are.
What for me?
You much earlier, like,barely touched on this word.
Excellent to me,that has a very strong meaning.
To me, it means, you know,you're you're selecting

(01:36:56):
great people, you'repushing for a performance based culture,
constantlytrying to be better than the day before.
I hope that that's what the hermarching orders are, right?
Like like,okay, you want to push this idea
and then usher in a culture of excellenceand and that has good and bad
ramifications because, as you know,a players are going to love that.

(01:37:19):
They're going to love that.
They're the ones are gonna sit therelike, yes,
let's get this the best of the best.
You know, the cream, rises to the top.
I'm in, but you have your second
tier people, the B players, the C players.
It's not it'snot going to be safe for them.
They're not going to feel
psychologically empoweredin that type of environment
where you're constantlypushing excellence.

(01:37:41):
So that kind of kind of goesfull circle back into your experience.
And where I could ask you more questionsabout, yeah. You know,
you know,
to me, I, I'd love to build and continueto build
a culture of a players of excellence,of being the best at what we do,
selecting the great people,promoting the right people.
My camera just going up with all of.

(01:38:13):
I don't know, just giving us struggles.
The, the you know.
Synology says technology.
Anyways,
so there's this idea of excellence.
I want to jump back into that real quick.
So to me, when I hear excellence,I think about, you know, pushing
the boundaries,bringing in a players, having
the best people doing the work.

(01:38:35):
And, you know, some people aren'tgoing to necessarily like that.
They're going to they're going to bekind of pushed out of a culture like that.
Right? They might think it's too,
too masculine.
Right. You hear this toxic masculinity.
But really, if you're really just pushinga culture of excellence,
then it doesn't it doesn't have,it shouldn't, shouldn't have anyways,

(01:38:56):
any type of toxicity associated with that.
What it does mean is that peoplegot to step up their game, right?
They got they got to elevate their game.
The CEO of Goldman Sachs,he has a cool saying.
It's, it's very simple.
But, you know,
he talks about some of his lower level,
peoplethat are coming in and, and notoriously,

(01:39:19):
they have a, a, a lower acceptancerate than Harvard.
Right.
So it's harder to get a jobtax on the doors to get into Harvard.
You know,
that tells you anything .000 1%or something of the people get hired. And,
those entrylevel positions are incredibly difficult.
I mean, oftentimes people are working 80,you know, hours a week.

(01:39:39):
Really,
sharpen their teeth, on their craft.
And the CEO has a great short saying,it's like,
it's a great place to work,but it's a tough job.
And I love that concept.
I love that, that concept of,you know what?
We're going to create a great organizationfor the people that are here,

(01:40:01):
and it's not for everybody.
It's just not right.
You know, we're specialized inwhat we do in,
it's almost counterto this idea of inclusivity.
It's like, no, no, no, it's inclusive.
But for the people that are here,
it's exclusive of the type of peoplewe don't want here.
Right?
Like, it's I see these two things at odds.

(01:40:23):
It's almost like these battling factions.
It's like there's excellenceand then there's the.
Yeah,I don't think you can have both. Right?
You can't have maximum inclusivityif you're trying to build a great culture.
Special operations units.
Right.
They have the Special Forces has.
There are five soft truths, right.
One of them is soft,cannot be mass produced.

(01:40:45):
Right.
And what they're saying isyou can't create excellence at scale.
You just can't. Right? You can't do that.
What are
what are your thoughts on on these kindof battling ideologies that are really
I see I see this taking placejust across the world, really.
But specifically in the I see it,I think this is going to be the battle.

(01:41:06):
And I think, even in, in business as well.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well,
on, on, on specifically Dei or specific
or just in general,this battle between excellence,
you know, seeking performance a players.
Oh, okay.
Boundaries are also,

(01:41:26):
you know, creating these kindof psychologically empowered spaces.
Right, right, right.
It's kind of like a it's a yin and yangsort of situation in my opinion,
you know, because you want to haveyou want to push your people.
You want to have the best peopledoing doing the work.
You want to create,
a culture of
performance,like when we talk about excellence.

(01:41:48):
But that is at odds with, you know,
the other side of the house, because nowyou have to exclude certain people, right?
You can't.
If you're not a high performer, then,you know,
the culture of excellence is not somethingthat is going to suit you very well.
Right? Right.
So first off, the Goldman concept,

(01:42:08):
works really well.
It used to work actually at GE,
he would only promote eight players,right?
Jack Welch
I mean, excuse me,not eight players, but A-type personality.
So these are very aggressive people.
And so what that did over timestarted creating a culture of,

(01:42:28):
very high aggressionand a lot of internal competition.
So there's a downside to that.
So what Goldman does too, isthey're also looking for people who run
and this is a rarity.
They are more interestedin extrinsic rewards than intrinsic.
What that means is they're very hungryfor bonuses and money.
And putting scores on the, on the board.

(01:42:52):
Then they are in this
intrinsic stuff of internal satisfaction,you know, accomplishing
something every day and having linkedto a higher purpose and all that stuff.
So the the Goldman model works with,my son, you know, runs a, hedge fund.
I mean, a,
private equity fund.
So it works in that financial area.

(01:43:14):
But that's not something we tried.
Somebody tried to bring something calledpay for performance into DoD and CIA,
and that was the biggest RFI had ever seen in my life.
It was unbelievably, because people
don't run on an extra 3% of money.
They run on wanting to do a good job

(01:43:35):
internally and so forth. So,
the performanceculture question is such a good one,
but here's I'm going to spill the beanson some secret information for you.
You ready for this? Here we go.
The the CIA culture.
The NGO culture are not

(01:43:56):
what they look like.
It is not monolithic.
So I could I can give you the CIA,actual values practice.
Right.
But it's it's for the entire organization.
Here's what happens.
Because I was in the chiefhuman capital position, right? HR
I started collecting data on the operatingunits underneath the directorates.

(01:44:17):
Five.
Now, and I collected dataon all the divisions,
and officesthere called that the next level.
Here's, here's what the bigthe amazing thing is,
as you go down,the organization is no longer this, this
mass of what you get back on the Humancapital survey every year, right.

(01:44:42):
That that looks looks pretty good.
And what you get is you get one unit
in which it it is glowing green.
I mean, this isthis is where you want to work.
And in fact,the write in comments are like,
thank you for letting me work here.
I cannot I cannot wait to driveto work in the morning.

(01:45:03):
Okay, that's this unit.
Now I'm over here at this unit.
And the write in comment is
I never thought about quitting until now.
My boss is driving me crazy.
So the deeper you go, the more separate
mini and micro culture you see.
So let's take a new DNIor a new CIA director.

(01:45:25):
They come in and they're they'rethey've got this perceived notion
that this, this, this monolithic thingthat they that needs to repair.
And it's not the case.
It is individual units.
And Gallup backsthis up with very solid data.
60% of the culture of each ofthese subunits is created by the boss.

(01:45:46):
Right.
So by Dan it's better startinstead of coming in and shaking
people up and moving boxes aroundlike we always do.
Come in and just start selecting people
with some people skillsto replace those bad bosses.
Then you're going to get the performance.
You're going to get the bestat a human nature by doing that.

(01:46:06):
So I just strongly react to this top downcrap.
We've been going, Nick,we've been going through this for six
decades that I've seen,and it never works.
There is no fairy godmothers.
There's going to come in and sprinkle dust
from the top downand make anything huge change.

(01:46:27):
It's just not going to happen.
So it's got to beit's really got to be longer term
and grind it outand just pick better leaders.
Keep people in positions longer.
There's a huge turnoverthat's very disruptive internally.
And they I say slow that down.
And that'show you're going to start to get get more.

(01:46:49):
Now, if you're disagreeingwith certain programs, you know, like Dei,
that's, that's up to the individual,administration. And
but that's
not going to affect the,the overall mission.
It's not like thethe CIA is just clogged down
in diversity and thinkingand talking about diversity all day long.

(01:47:11):
It's just, you know, that's just athat's a part, a 2% part or whatever.
And so I just hope that we don't
do what we always do, which is create,
like the chaos basically
trying to fix one thing or two thingsor three things that we perceive
when you don't understandthe whole complexity of the organization.

(01:47:34):
It does indeed. Improvement. You betcha.
And that's what I devote my life to,that that's my purpose in life, is,
is to see fewer bad bossesin the intelligence community.
And I that's why I get up inthe morning. I'll never stop.
But, that it's it's got to be done
the, the hard way,which is we call the soft way.

(01:47:55):
It's not going to be donewith some existential thing coming
crashing down and fixing fixing thingsjust like our work.
It won't hold
it back to what we talked about.
Nuance, right?
There's a lot more nuancehappening at these.
How how do you selectpeople based on these skills?
I mean, we talked about it a bit earlier.

(01:48:17):
But what are some, like, tangible things
that people could useto help select these types of leaders?
Because that's incredibly challenging.
I can tell you as someone thatI've interviewed hundreds of people for,
for jobs, various and various,
places,
it's incredibly difficultto tell from an interview

(01:48:37):
if somebody is going to be goodat a job, it's thank you.
It's almost impossible.
They might be very good
at communicating and talkingand talking about themselves, especially.
But when it comes down to dothey show up to work on time?
Do they,
you know, yeah, the actual nuts and bolts,like, can they actually write an email?
Can they, you know, these kind of crazysimple things.

(01:48:59):
They're just hard to tease outin a, in a simple interview.
I'll, I'll add that, this is actually
a big problem in the special operationscommunity as well.
They try to be very selective,
especially in the jointspecial operations community.
You know, supportslike the National Mission Force,
they try to select and be very selective.

(01:49:20):
Other people, they go through a skillsverification process.
This skills verificationprocess is completely bonkers to me
because it's totally subjective.
There's no objective metric.
It's just like, I don't know, he kind ofdidn't answer that question, right.
Or, you know, I didn't
I didn't wake up in the morningon the right side of the bed.
So, I'm not selecting this person.
What are some tangible things that

(01:49:42):
anyone can use to help selectthese types of good leaders?
You're talking about?
First off, I want to commend you.
I've never heard anybody before admit
that when you do an interview,you're not pulling out.
You don't really get themquite the results.
You don't.And this has been scientifically measured.
They have something called validitycoefficients.

(01:50:04):
I don't want to get geeky here, but
your interview
and your interviewor my interview of somebody is called.
It's a point to validity coefficient,which means it's better
than flipping the coin, which is zero.
Okay, okay.
It's still 0.21 would be perfect selection
all the time and never making mistake.

(01:50:27):
It's two sides of the same coin.
So point two is what I calllayman's interview.
We'll we'll filter out some.
It's better certainly better than nothing.
And I would advise everybody to keep doingthat.
You still want to havethat touch time right.
But there are other thingsyou can do to really boost it.
One of them would be,and you can't afford to do this,

(01:50:49):
but obviously, on the job training,
think about something like that,that get your validity way up
because you're actually seeing it,
and now you're realizing, oh, they docome in to late every morning, you know.
So that's a high,another one is that when the OSS invented
this psychological assessmentconcept to predict future behaviors,

(01:51:11):
the private sector back in 43,private sector stolen it.
So companieslike Talent Plus and Connex, and Gallup
do very short psychological assessments,maybe 30, 35 minutes.
You can buy off the shelf.
That gets you up to almost doublethe validity of the layman's interview.

(01:51:33):
So that's another one.You could buy something off the shelf.
Just an add a step to selection.
Thirdly, use
behavioral interviews.
What are called behavioral interviews
that are structured meaning you're asking
the same questionsbasically that are backward looking.
And I'll tell you why.

(01:51:54):
Here's here's an interesting fact.
You tell me the the last thing you'd wantme for is handling detail, okay.
Because I'm again, strategic guy.
So you ask me a question like, Mike,
you're going to be taking over this unit,and it's important
that we have attention to detailand really get things right can help.

(01:52:17):
How would you do that? That's a standard.
And what happens is my brain
can conjure up anythingthat's future based really easily.
So that's like a setup for me.
Oh, well, I would I would form a team to,
to double check everything that we do.
I would, I would set aside15 minutes out of every day

(01:52:38):
to really pay attention to the detailsthat we're doing.
I would set up the,Six Sigma like metric system,
to, to track everything, real time.
I mean, I could spew off all this stuff,but in reality,
I would never do itbecause my brain is not even go there.
So the.

(01:52:58):
You have to use past tenseon your interviews.
Mike, tell me about a timewhen you came into a group
that needed,a lot more attention to detail.
They were kind of loose cannons,and we needed, we needed.
And now I, I can't answer itbecause I have to go back to reality.
So that's a long winded answer.

(01:53:18):
But those are different waysthat you can get your validity way.
And select people with betterpeople skills to, to run,
I say the intelligence communityor anything else,
you know,you could do just in time training.
You, I mean, not
just in time training, but, OJT
you could do the off the shelfpsychological assessments.

(01:53:41):
You could do the structuredbehavioral interviews or backward looking.
You could train anybodyto do that in three hours.
So anybody in your companyor anywhere else could learn to do that?
So you just got you're movingto higher validity and you're
going to be making a lot better too,so you won't make as many bad decisions.
And I used to start up small companies.

(01:54:01):
And let me tell you,you get one bad worker
when you're at that 4 or 5 sixdeploy level.
That's a disaster because that's goingto soak up 80% of your time.
So the selection is so, so critical.
And again, that goes back to the Tulsiquestion of what would I do.
I would hone in on cure the bad units.

(01:54:22):
Don't put strikefear in the monolithic whole,
if you want,
if youwant really huge changes in performance,
then it sounds likeTulsi needs to come stick out.
Mike's advice.
You know who's actually really good atthis is chick fil A.
Oh, isn't that interesting?
Yeah. You know, I wasI was at a chick fil A once.

(01:54:44):
I don't remember where I was.It doesn't matter.
They're all the same,and they're all amazing.
Yeah. And, I was just kind of curious.
I'm curious. Person.
So I asked one of the workers, I'm like,you know, hey, you know,
how did you get this job at a chick fil A?
And she's like, oh, well, you know,I did a lot of interviews.
I'm like, well,why is everybody so happy here?
She's like,
well, you know, they just kind ofthey do a lot of screening and she's she

(01:55:06):
said, I've had three different interviewsbefore they would hire me.
Yeah. And this is not the managerof the store, mind you.
This is someone that was,you know, the front line
worker and man, they really knowwhat they're doing, don't they?
You know, that's a beautiful example.
You know, another one is, Ritz-Carlton.
If you've ever been to a Ritz Carlton,

(01:55:29):
they test, assess basically every employee
and one time, and so that the employeesare really working to their strengths.
So you get somebody working atthe reception area,
has got to be
somebody who is very attentiveto helping people out.
But there's a twist to it.

(01:55:51):
But they've got to have the abilitythat if they can't, it's
it doesn't trouble them greatly.
The person that likes to help people,
but can't cope ifif they can't meet the person's
demand, you'd have to put those onthe front of the restaurant as greeters.
And so it's that finely tuned.
But here's what they did. They did.

(01:56:12):
There was an the leadership assessment.
Two, they discovered a woman,a maid, in housekeeping,
who had leadership skills off the chart.
I mean, she was, she was a learner.
She was a,
passionate drive, empathy.
She she had the full, full package.

(01:56:34):
And they smartly didn'tmake her a manager.
What they did is theyput her in some gentle training programs.
So she still work there.
They got her a coach today that made is
senior vice presidentat Ritz-Carlton. Wow.
Isn't that cool?
So you talk about discoveringstrengths inside people.

(01:56:57):
Some of these assessmentswe were just talking about,
including your interview in my interview.
Right.
You have to do that part two.
But put the full package together.
You can really make a huge changein an organization. Man.
That's that's such a great point.
Yeah.
Those interviews, I'm always, you know.

(01:57:19):
Yeah.
I'd like to think that,
and I think all of usprobably have this stuff like,
oh, I'm really good at selectinggreat people.
I mean, I've hiredsome people that turned out to be duds.
And yeah, I have to, let me tell you.
Yeah, yeah.
Like you're talking about, if you
if you hire the wrong person at the wrongtime, it's not going to be good.
Anyways.
Well, Mike.
Hey, man,it was great talking to you. Absolutely.

(01:57:39):
Well, and real quick, though,where can people find your your stuff?
You know what,Mike mirrors.com in the IRS.
Mike mirror.
Com is my, new book site, and it's got I'm
loading a lot of blogs and stuff in there.
I'll send you a link,
if you want to post it, that

(01:58:00):
if people want a free bi weeklyleadership newsletter,
they've got it.
And then, also,
please tell people I'm on LinkedInand just send me an invite.
I would love to link up with any,especially your listeners,
because you've got such a unique group,you know, with,

(01:58:21):
with all that you're doing.
So just Mike Myers on LinkedIn,they'll find me.
Awesome. Awesome.
Appreciate it, Mike,
and really great for you to come onand share some of your wisdom with us.
And that's so reallyI could go a lot, a lot longer, but,
I've been drinking too much,
too many of these Cokesand gotta take care of business.
But anyways, Mike, thanks so much.

(01:58:42):
Appreciate everything.
Thanks for watching everybody.
Nick. Thank you sir. Been fun.
All right. Bye bye.

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