PSNS & IMF Presents: Simon Sinek

hey good morning Pacific Northwest Navy family great to see you I'm looking for our guests here we come here so hey one quick a couple quick housekeeping things make sure your phones are on silence please off or vibrate and uh obviously in a case of emergency please you know exit the building the nearest exit and uh you know get outside so hey my name is Captain jip Mossman I'm the commanding officer of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard an intermediate maintenance facility and I'll tell you it is my absolute distinct pleasure to introduce Simon sinek this morning you know him as a world-renowned speaker author and Leadership expert you've probably watched his TED Talks you've watched his YouTube videos you quote him you've read his books you know books like start with why Leaders Eat Last the infinite game and we've had the absolute pleasure of having him here he had an opportunity earlier this month to spend some time on board USS Nimitz and then he's been here in the shipyard talking to her the great people of the shipyard and understanding what we do and making some ties and and listening and understanding our role in the in our nation's defense so today I had the distinct pleasure of having Simon come up and uh joining him will be Rob Gorman our process Improvement leader of the shipyard for this fireside chat so thank you [Applause] it is as uncomfortable as you imagine I thought I'm fine Simon we got to thank you again for being here with us we got to spend some time I followed him around the shipyard yesterday and and Simon had some time uh with Nimitz and I think I think it would be fair to share some of your impressions with your time with the Navy you've been with other services you've been uh with many other businesses and groups so would you start us out with sharing some Impressions you have of these last few days yeah sure it's been a joy I'll start there um so I've had a relationship with DOD for many years and I studied anthropology in college and sort of my interest was the Western Urban cultures I I'm it's like I live in a Petri dish basically um and I'm fascinated by the cultures of people especially subculture um and you know every human being has a desire to feel like we belong um and the cultures of the military are not we don't think about them we know they exist right and Airman is different from a sailor is different from a soldiers different from a marine they're different they're different human beings and even if they did the same job in a different place they may not enjoy it here where they loved it there and I think that the dod does itself a disservice by not really trying to uncover the different cultures because they have different strengths like you and I have different characteristics and in the right context those characteristics are either strengths or weaknesses right and it's the same for an organization so for example the Marine Corps in the Army often used interchangeably because they both happen to have infantries but they're really different and uh where the Marines struggle is when you put them in a position where it really should have been the Army and vice versa so I spent a lot of time with the Air Force quite a lot of time with the Marine Corps um a little bit of time with the Army and I had very little time with the Navy um and so when I got a call to come out here I thought I'd love to come but I I don't I want to know first and so you were very nice enough to arrange for me to go sail within the mitz for a few days which was um phenomenal uh um but I spent a lot of time talking to people like we had lots of meetings with all ranks and all jobs um so I could uncover neediness um um yeah it's that's uh it's I've you've said that phrase a few times and uh I I appreciate a little expansion on that sure sure yeah so um you know there is something called naviness and whether you wear a uniform or work with the Navy if you assuming that you enjoy it and you you like the the people in the culture then you fit naviness right and um the the little exercise that I use um I like high school because High School is super clicky um like those the Nerds those the jocks those are the drama kids like super easy right so I've done this with the other services I say you know if if I go into a high school and there's a kid who wants to show how tough he is by ramming his head through the sheetrock that kid's a marine right so I asked the question if I go to high school where are my sailors now when I go to the Air Force and I say wear my Airmen of every job and every rank enlisted an officer I've never had any variation in other words people have a sense of what air forcing this is right they know they always give the same answer where in the high school I find those Airmen so I asked this question all these sailors junior senior you name it where do I find my sailors and they all looked at me first of all completely perplexed by the question they struggled to answer the question and they all sort of settled on well it's everyone and I said well it can't be everyone because if it's everyone it's no one right because I'm trying to define a culture and they and they sort of understood that logic and they sort of struggled again and what we came to realize it's the whole High School because if you consider naviness the the naval culture Navy culture comes from going going to Sea it's like bye see a maybe right yeah and that you're completely a self-contained City with your own laws and your own prisons and your your own if something breaks this is these are the only resources we have and this is intense level of Independence right and so you do need a little bit of everyone who knows a little bit of everything otherwise it's not going to work um and and what you find is it's a group of people who are really intuitive good at figuring things out inventive because they have to but also I was just I was just floored by the cross-pollination which you don't see in the other services were the silos that of course there's silos in every organization but the silos usually don't talk to each other and in the Navy people make an effort to make relationships across silos because you sometimes have to ask for help so the way I've been describing it is fiercely dependent so that you can be fiercely independent because if you don't work together you can't achieve that intense level of of uh cooperation that depends level of Independence um okay so I have this idea of naviness in my head from spending time at Sea so I came here open mind and I went and was toured the facility uh yesterday which was wonderful I met a few folks and I I will concede you know it's a very very very small sound Theory but I asked some of the apprentices um you know uh why did you come here oh I left that one important detail everybody I asked why did you join the Navy everybody right they said incredibly similar answers which were different than the other services that I've talked to they all said I I came from a bad family or I grew up in the middle of the country and I knew this wasn't for me like I needed to get out I needed I needed to get out of there and I wanted to go on an adventure I said okay go on an adventure the Army like no no no the Navy is where you go for an adventure you know I wanted to see the world but there's a sense of getting out and going on an adventure and by the way it was it was bright-eyed you know when they said these things and so I was talking to the the apprentices yesterday and I said why why did you come here and they said I didn't know what I wanted so I came to just try something few if any of them came to do a thing they came to sort of like find out kind of like an adventure like come in sort of completely open-minded about what could happen and when they showed me their projects they specifically pointed out how um they worked with a different group to help them you know we talked to the other group that does you know 3D printing so we could put so I saw the cross-pollination and I realized oh my gosh maybe this is alive and well here that the people who theory is the people who Thrive here are looking for some sort of career Adventure you're going to do something different like if you want mundane if you want routine you can take your skill set and you go work for Corporate America and you'll do the same thing every Monday for the rest of your life you know here every single ship is different the challenges are different routine is damn near impossible which is difficult for process because it's always changing kind of like an adventure and so if you kind of like that that there's a lack of routine and that it's always different and the challenge is always different and it's always new and it's always challenges you and you have to get good at saying I need help or can you help me or what do you think otherwise it's not going to work then this is the place for you hmm so it if you take a very high altitude look at what we do and it's a vast oversimplification but the fleet gives us a ship says we'd like these things done to that ship and we'd like it back by this day from that level it's very Stark kind of plane but it's it's very easy as you get into the work that that becomes gray that the silos become harder to cross that teeming becomes difficult in the day-to-day struggle to accomplish what's in front of you yeah wins the day yep in your travels and your experience here how does one take what you just described some points to taking that and making that a vision an opportunity to strive for so human beings are not very good by ourselves like if I leave you in the Woods by yourself it's it's not going to go well right especially me yeah says I'm a city boy I get it uh I didn't want to go in daytime but you take a group of human beings you put them together we're remarkable and we're tribal animals and so uh few of the problems that we can solve um that we canceled without the help of others but that when we work together we are absolutely remarkable and this is sort of the importance of uh different thinking and diverse points of view this is the importance of cross-pollination because when we're in our silos um we all think of the problem very similarly and so what I find amazing is simply by going to a different silo and saying what do you think of this problem uh they have an entirely different point of view that doesn't mean they're right but it forces us to think differently and so I think when what I've seen in the best organizations and the best leaders are really good at asking for help I can tell you personally it's the single biggest um thing that changed the course of my career when I was younger in my career I owned a little business I owned a little small business and I thought because I was the senior person I had to know all the answers and if I didn't I had to pretend that I did because I had to convey confidence all the time and turns out I don't know the answers and all I was doing was lying hiding and faking and the biggest thing I learned was to say I don't know or what do you think and to this day I will not make a significant decision without just double checking it with somebody and sometimes it's just to affirm my own thinking but some very often they'll give me a point of view or a Nuance that I just hadn't thought of because I'm blind you know we don't know what we don't know um and so the best thing you can do like social activity believe it or not eating together believe it or not you know cross silos or just going and saying can I can I just meet you guys or asking people can you come and work with us for a few days you know we even though you don't do what we do and just work with us and try and help us solve a problem whenever military has an issue you know at the flag level I always say why don't you go down to the front lines and ask them to solve the problem that you're trying to solve for them because I guarantee you they have more information and David Marquez talks about this you know the people at the top of all the authority and none of the information and the people you know on the front lines have all of the information that none of the authorities you want to push Authority down yeah I appreciate you bringing that up that's one of those books that as I read it it resonated with how I like to be led in my life so so let's let's delve into that a little bit as you cross-pollinate with leadership um Reaching Across and asking for help as you describe I think some of the times we feel that leadership comes and provides us help that we don't necessarily know how to use want and so forth and being able to be empowered to work across our our work strings from a personal experience I have a tendency as I in my career as I promoted into a job I could find myself helping too much with the people that were doing the job I had previously yeah because I'm comfortable there I whatever the character is I mean this is this is one of the the hard Parts about becoming a leader you know when we're Junior the organization will give us tons of training you know apprenticeships and you know all of this kind of stuff to learn how to do the job um and if you're good at your job they'll eventually promote you to a position where you're now responsible for leading others who do the job you used to do or you're dual-headed when you're a doer and you're a leader right um and they gave us tons literally years of training to do the job and they give us negligible training to leave and so this is why we get managers and not leaders it's because nobody taught us and I do know how to do your job better than you that's what got me promoted right um uh and so we have to teach the skills of leadership which include things like listening which include things like um how to give and receive feedback how to have an effective confrontation what happens if somebody really screwed up and you need to like tell them what's what because just kind of comes in guns ablazing you know they'll shut you out you know how to have difficult conversations these are the skills of leadership so very often we get ourselves involved mainly because we think we're helping because we do know but we forget that somebody let us make mistakes that we could learn and we have to do the same for others that's our job plus the pressure doesn't help when you're the pressure to make a date you're like well I don't have time to let them try and try again but unfortunately if we if it's if it's you solving all the problems it's actually weakening the organization sure because you're not building advantage and sometimes missing one deadline or being slow in one deadline to make every other deadline you know there's some long-term thinking there if you treat every everything like a like it's the end of the game if you treat every ship like at the end of the game you weaken the team over the over the course of time you need time to learn and practice and hone your skills um so yeah and by the way I'm a great believer just being open about it like this is what we're going to be doing we're building a bench here so you uh you you delved into the game a little bit and treating each ship is the end of the game yeah that mindset is something that is fairly new to our thinking we've overtly started to talk and think like that and there's this mix that I think we get it across with thinking that yes indeed the the preservation of the Navy's sea power is a continuing and long-range infinite game yeah and the projects appear to be finite there's an end to it yeah and I I wonder if we're misleading ourselves or maybe trying to rationalize that we can play in both mindsets what are your thoughts about that so let me Define the terms for those thank you so that people know what we're talking about um in the mid-1980s a philosopher and theologian by the name of Dr James karst Define these two types of games finite games and infinite games finite game is defined as known players fixed rules and agreed upon objectives right football baseball the repair of a ship right where if those winners that have to be losers in the case of preparing a ship there isn't but there's always a beginning a middle and an end then you have infinite games infinite games are defined as known and unknown players which means new players can join at any time the rules are changeable which means everyone can play however they want and the objective is to sustain the game as long as possible to perpetuate the game so we are players in infinite games every day of Our Lives or whether you know it or not nobody wins education right you can come in first for the fine amount of time you're at school you know where we agree upon the uh the metrics grades and the time frames but nobody wins education or wins learning you can't win career there's no such thing as winning business right there's no such thing as as winning the the game that you're in either it's a Perpetual game it just never ends um which means it's not finite it means it's going to obey all of the the characteristics of an infinite game and this is important because if you we hear so many of our leaders constantly saying you know we have to be the best we have to be number one we have to beat our competition based on what based on what agreed upon metrics objectives and time frame and this is a problem because we're playing uh with a finite mindset and an infinite game when we play to win in a game that has no Finish Line what we do is we destroy trust we destroy cooperation and we destroy Innovation right now you can absolutely have finite games within the infinite game clearly a ship coming in repairing it for a date and getting it out there's a beginning middle and end to the project whether you're on time or not but then it then it ends and then there's the next one right but you have to have an infinite mindset because you you want that thing to last as long as possible you want to be you want to constantly improve what you're doing right think of it more like a lifestyle think of it more like being healthy let's say I decide I want to be healthy there's many things I have to do to be healthy I have to exercise I have to eat right I have to get enough sleep I have to nourish my personal relationships there's probably 30 other things I can't do all of those things well all the time it's a striving and I can absolutely have finite goals within that I'm going to lose x amount of weight by X date which is largely arbitrary right and to some degree so are the dates set for the repairs for your ships somebody said I want it by that time I mean they had a rationale for it but they just made up a date right um no but but I can prove it because when you're late except for people getting upset or maybe affecting somebody else's plans nothing happens right um well I said they right I'll accept it I said they have a rationale and they were strategically that's true it's true but at the end of the day when you're a week late like it it affects the plan but like the world doesn't end and you don't come to a grinding hole nobody you know it's just the point is it's it's to some degree made up made up based on for what we're talking about I would love to get further than this but I also see that clock so somebody came up with a series of things that we have to get it done and somebody concluded whether it was uh whether they made it up or whether it was done with a formula a date came at the bottom and somebody said we could do it a week later that okay a week later you know um Fair yeah um uh so so like like like in a lifestyle I want to lose x amount of weight by state um and I'll do all the things that I have to and I stand on the scale and we love a metric human beings love a metric like we're super tangible animals we love measuring things because it helps us know how fast and how far we're going right that's what metrics are speed and distance and so sometimes it's up and I feel good sometimes it's down I feel bad and I hit the goal on the right date on the right time I feel amazing like you get a ship out on time everybody's cheering but then you have to do it again the game's not over right you have to I have to exercise for the rest of my life right I didn't win anything right it's true but what's more interesting to me is if you miss the goal right if you miss the goal um nothing happened now again I know there were ripples right but it's not like the world collapses I know that what happens is it affects other people's plans I get that there are there are there are there is an impact um uh but my point was is the organization doesn't collapse sure right um and what's most important is that is the striving what's most important is that I was eating better than I've ever eaten and exercising as much as I can I just happen to because it's more complicated than people thought or there are more things that went wrong we just got the wrong date you know if we knew exactly what we had to repair going in we would have picked a different date because we just didn't know but I keep hearing that it's like we don't always know and new things keep showing up right right so to that degree the date is arbitrary right um and the point is if you're striving to be better and better and better and better and better and better each ship you want every process we had for this ship to be better than the last ship the communication should be better this time than it was last time it's that constant constant constant Improvement that's what the infinite game is right um and you're going to be way healthier now even if you missed the date than you were the previous repair sure and that's how finite games fit with anything again you have to have a mindset of constant Improvement let me let me add some complexity to this and in the discussions uh one could hear you say that the ships are in series where we're actually doing several at one time so there's a number of finite games happening in this Sunday night game competing for the same resources and so forth and there's a need for us to be agile to react to things because they're even if we predict better the condition of the ship and we go inspect better and so forth there are going to be things that come up that we just don't see sure um we don't x-ray everything and something fails something goes a different direction so as you add that complexity would you would you expand on your thinking just a bit with that complexity in mind I mean you're making a case for cooperation which is which is with added complexity you have to include new people you have to ask for help you have to say what do you think I'm a huge fan of the Monday morning huddle or the daily huddle where the team comes together and just talks about some of the big things but the point is everybody's listening you know so even if that's not my project I'm hearing it so I know what's going on in other parts of of the ship that day you know or I get to say have you thought about this or you walk away and say you know I had an idea or we fixed that yesterday or we fixed that last week you should try this and it's it's that it's that Brain Trust the most valuable thing you have are the people in their experience and by the way inexperience also still comes with some sort of experience bright eyes and new ideas as opposed to when this is the way we've always done it so there's value in every single human being um across even just on one ship you know and it's the cross-pollination so um the the best thing you can do is Foster relationships like I said a Monday morning huddle is a great way to start a day or a daily huddle is a great way to start the day or the week okay all right thank you I'm gonna look at my my cheat sheet and see what else I would like to um you're hearing uh probably heard some discussion as we were in building 431 yesterday with the apprentices and the inside shop and you saw and heard some of the discussion about our facilities about the infrastructure I don't know if psyop came up at all the Shipyard infrastructure optimization program it's a corporate thing where we're going to go build buildings and make flow better and that sort of thing for many of us that is out in the distance where these optimized facilities show up in the in the current construct with this teaming and thinking about where facilities where I.T where tools training and so forth what have you seen effective outside of our yard or what did you see that modeled some of that Effectiveness that that you'd like to discuss with us um I mean these these problems are wildly complex and overwhelming and I think for most people you know one of the things that I can't stand is is when people say you know people fear change like no people don't fear change we change all the time you know it's like nobody still has their television that you turn the dial on and it's like you know like people are fine with change you know um so we all have very different telephones than we had you know um it's that people fear Sudden Change um uh or people feel uh fear change that they don't understand that there's no context change is not the problem um and in these wildly complex things I sometimes think that they're so big and so overwhelming that that's what makes people shut down it's just too hard to conceptualize of all the things to do and I'm a great believer in making things bite-sized um you've I mean you heard me say it yesterday and you know what's the fastest simplest thing we can do with the highest probability of success start there you know and there's there's research on this now if I would say to myself okay I gotta get back into shape I'm going to do 20 push-ups a day right just just when they wake up in the morning do 20 push-ups a day and if I only do 15 or 16 or 17 I'm fail that's how I feel I feel like I've let myself down and the opportunity for giving up is goes up whereas if you make the goal stupidly small like stupidly small I'm going to do two push-ups a day so like I can't even psych myself out I'm like I can do two push-ups I don't even have to like put on gym clothes for that you know and then when you're down there you do five and now you feel like you're on top of the world you know and morale goes up and then you want to keep doing it because you beat your goal and then you do 10 and then you do 15 and you 20. you know I did 5x my goal um so making things bite sizes and and accomplishable and and that everybody can understand very easily what needs to be done and have a concept of how we could get it done like that if everybody can contribute I think I have an idea how we could get that done versus I have no no clue um I think is a huge step in the right direction and again if you think with an infinite mindset those things add up it's steps and if anybody's ever run a marathon it's one step at a time you know you don't just run a marathon you sort of it takes a while you know um and you don't think about 26 miles you think about I just got to get to that lamp um it's the same thing so we've we've talked a lot about kind of the characteristics within the Navy and with us uh yesterday you uh made some comments about where this Shipyard and maintenance fits and the bigger world pictures oh yeah yeah yeah and I think I think it would be good to hear that perspective so I don't to the biggest arguably the biggest foreign policy blunder of the 20th century that the America made it probably was the biggest foreign policy blender of the 20th century is when the Soviet Union collapsed and the United States announced that we had won the Cold War right no we didn't right um the Cold War you know global politics is an infinite game there's no winners and losers players come and go not baseball right that's like when Circuit City went bankrupt Best Buy didn't win anything right just one of the one of their competitors went bankrupt and dropped out of the game that's all that's half that's all that happened and that's what happened to us the Soviet Union was Circuit City and where Best Buy except we announced that we had won right and we kind of like acted like Victors and imposed our will in the world with with good intentions you know declared no-fly zones of a Sovereign Nation things like that which you couldn't do if there was a balance of power but what always happens in an infinite game as new players emerge right new players fill those spaces the Cold War exists on three tensions it was a a a nuclear tension the United States and Soviet Union the two largest nuclear powers in the world an ideological pension both ideological exporters looking for customers democracy and capitalism versus soviet-style communism right all of our alliances were ideological if you were you were Communists we weren't friends with you super easy right and uh and then there was an economic tension those are the two largest economies in the world right not so coincidentally those things align perfectly with life liberty in the pursuit of happiness the only three things for which we will bear any burden and pay any price in other words it's existential the Soviet Union represented an existential threat to the United States they fell out of the game right and after about 11 years new players started to emerge so the nuclear tension was replaced by North Korea maybe Iran right the ideological tension was largely replaced by religious extremism for quite a while and the economic attention was replaced by China we don't really fear nuclear war with China right um and you could argue that Russia is trying to insert itself in some one or more of those places in other words the cold war is alive and well it's cold war 2.0 except it's way more complex because because we no longer have a concept that the the not us of the the existential threat coming from one single place which is easy to spot right um and that means all the rules are different all the Dynamics are different and now we see a new balance of power showing up in the Pacific Theater the Chinese Communist Party is now becoming quite a force and they mean to check American power right um they don't want nuclear war with us we don't want nuclear war with them it doesn't that's there's no huge arms race happening with them there's no fear of that um uh it's largely economic they could float throw a switch and our economy would turn off like all those numbers you see in your bank account those one you know if we went to war it they would all just say zero you know we've seen them toying around with shutting down pipelines and shutting down playing with our agriculture you know it's mutually assured destruction but it's economic mutually sure destruction but but what they're also trying to do is match our our military might with Conventional Weapons everything they've been studying us they've been studying us for 30 years and they've been developing weapons and systems to match or surpass everything we have and their speed of innovation is astonishing it's absolutely astonishing it takes us 30 years to go from requirements to Fielding something then it takes half or less you know their ability to improve things like we believe in Perfection like we won't put it out unless it's absolutely perfect they're fine with good enough and then fix it fix it fix it fix it as you go um and my belief is this the the new Cold War Cold War 2.0 it's not just about physical might though of course that's always a part of it now it's about speed and speed of two things speed at which you can deploy new ideas right and the speed at which you can fix old stuff I believe that it's not the Marine Corps and it's not the army that are the tip of the Spear of this new Cold War 2.0 it's this that you are the tip of the spear the better your processes get because remember most of the Chinese Communist party's infrastructure is relatively new compared to ours that means they haven't developed the systems yet on how to fix old stuff if you can figure out new and better systems that to expedite and be more creative in how you fix systems by the time their stuff gets old we actually have a competitive advantage right now is that don't wait because if you wait until they'll go quicker right because that's how they are they're fantastic um look at the speed at which they build buildings for example um uh so I believe that the tip of the Spear of Cold War 2.0 is our ability to innovate and field stuff as quick as possible so innovation and the ability to to to repair things um as quick as possible as well I think that this is this is you are that the front line and I don't think people recognize or realize the importance in this new world order of what you do I appreciate that uh that perspective as we've been working through n3s why the naval sustainment system shipyards as we've tried to operate in a process Improvement mind and innovate and bring new technologies in having an understanding of where we fit in the bigger picture not that just we need to go faster and produce faster I think is helpful and I think it's very important there has to be a narrative that goes up to Big Navy right it's very important that when you affect change when you when you when you're going to start doing things differently and changing the system every time the metrics will go down in the short term always it's like let's go back to our lifestyle analogy like you want to start working out you don't just go from you know you know Couch Potato to you know Arnold Schwarzenegger that's not how it goes first there's like pain and agony right like you go to the gym and the next day you can't move your arms right right and then if you keep sticking with it that pain goes away and then you get the growth and the same thing's here if you're going to change systems you're going to invent you're going to reinvent you're going to you know create Dynamic new ways of cooperation absolutely necessarily it's just how it is the metrics do go down in the first place and you just have to manage expectations that we're going to try something entirely different than how we repair this ship which means we'll tell you right at the beginning we will be late we're going to be late because we're trying new things but here's the good thing if you let us be late on this one those will all be early for the rest of time right because we're innovating we're figuring things out you have to allow great leaders allow for the metrics to dip in the short term as you try new things because if you refuse to let the metrics dip in the short term that means you can only rely on the way we've always done things which means you're always going to be the same or it's going to be minor improvements that would take too long to combine anyway um yeah and I think the opportunity is astonishing astonishing all right I I look at what time we have left and I although I have role here I don't want to monopolize all of the time we've we've given opportunity for questions to be written on cards and taken some comments online while this live streams and I'd like to shift to that time now sure take some questions I can also take questions live as well if you want to raise your hand can we bring the house lights up is that possible it's nice to see people foreign yeah so we had a couple of discussions yesterday and with the diverse diversity of experience that we have in the room you had some discussion about you know the Communist Regime uh software Hardware yeah imagine an unimagined Vision yeah I think will resonate with this entire crowd because you're filming that just a bit yeah absolutely so the nature of innovation has completely changed over the past couple decades right for Millennia uh Innovation was largely defined by Hardware stuff so really the difference between a Gutenberg printing press and a modern day printing press it they're faster and bigger but it's the same basic idea like stick ink on paper right it's basically the same and Hardware is expensive and so for many years the only people who could really afford to innovate were Rich Nations wealthy Nations or large corporations that was it um but the the invention of the personal computer and the internet has completely changed all of that completely changed how Innovation Works um so now a uh an individual thanks to a personal computer can actually compete with a corporation or a small team can actually compete with the corporation which is amazing and a poor Nation can actually compete with the United States right cyber attacks right um it's completely changed things it's much more it's much more Dynamic and much much crazier um and the we have to adjust our thinking for a software world because it's completely changed so Hardware world was um and this is how all Innovation happens if you consider an x y axis there's performance and then there's time and all Innovation happens whether you're inventing a new ship or whether you want to redo your website somebody says wouldn't it be cool if it did these things and uh maybe there's a committee and everybody puts their two cents in in the military you call it requirements you know but uh but like I said wouldn't it be cool if and somebody writes down what they call what I call the the imagined Vision right we imagine this this is our vision of what we're going to build and the way most Innovation Works in a hardware mentality is their sort of Stepping Stones look we build a little bit we make some progress we build a little bit and eventually you make the thing you said you're gonna make but it never quite works the way you said it was going to work and so what you do now is you spend all of your time circling and trying to fix it and make it do the thing you said it was going to do right whether it's a ship or a website right that's how Innovation traditionally is done that's normal but software mentality has completely changed that you still have an imagined Vision right but then you don't try and make it you say what's the fastest simplest thing we can do with the high highest probability of success just do that done now what's the fastest simplest thing you can do with the highest probability of success do that what's the fastest simplest thing you can do with the highest probability of success that improves upon the thing that we did and you do that and eventually you have all of these step changes that go super quickly that eventually you end up building something that you didn't even imagine the unimagined vision so for example Amazon only imagined being an online bookstore but then they did this iterative process Tesla only imagined being an electric car now you can buy Tesla batteries to power your house that wasn't in the imagined vision Netflix only imagine taking on the video rental the new streaming was coming but they never imagined they'd be making their own content that wasn't even in the vision you talk to the founders none of those ideas were there it was this iterative process that they just kept going and going and going and going think of it like your iPhone think of it like your cell phone right um your phone is Hardware it's very expensive right and when you buy a new phone it doesn't actually work that well and then they have a software patch that comes out constantly sometimes they're minor sometimes you can tell sometimes you can't tell and sometimes it's a bigger overhaul sometimes it changes the whole the whole Vision the whole view of the thing but the point is they keep updating very very quickly iterative very very fast and eventually the software package is so big that you have to buy a new piece of Hardware because the old Hardware can right your iPhone 7 doesn't work anymore not strong enough but the software package right and it's this iterative thinking that the Chinese regime is so damn good at America is brilliant at zero to one we are brilliant at inventing we are brilliant at imagining and building stuff and the the Chinese regime is brilliant at two to a hundred they steal zero to one and they're brilliant at two to a hundred and we're all angry that they stole zero to one you're thinking old you're thinking Cold War 1.0 you're thinking Hardware that invention is not is not is not the game it's not who can invent something first or quicker that's not it it's who can improve and do that iterative very very fast moving software mentality that's the game we're in you know just a funny analogy is during the space race and the you know in the Mercury and Apollo programs when we had an engine we we needed an engine that had X needed had x amount of thrust we we had the engine right and if we needed an engine with more thrust what Americans did is we invented an entirely new engine and then we needed an engine with more thrust so what we did was We Invented an entirely new engine that's how we do things the Soviets they had an engine with thrust and they needed to double the thrust you know what they did they just stuck two together and then they need it four times the thrust you know what they did they just stuck four and if you look at Soviet Rockets now they're massive at the bottom and if you look underneath there's like eight engines underneath it's like they're like 50 year old engines we are the inventors but invention is not the thing anymore it's Improvement constant constant improvements the software mentality um that we have to we have to get better at what what Dawns on me and it's obvious in hindsight as many things are in our strategic framework we have a list of command guiding principles and one of them is plan to check act and that discussion you had of taking the simplest quickest highest probability of success thing to move towards that Vision we have described as having a knowledge threshold and taking a step to approach that knowledge threshold discover more and you move on it seems analogous to me in that discussion and the learning that we talk about continuously here rightfully I believe is learning more about what we do so that we can see a better way to do it even if it is a small incremental step can I be a little bit of a bastard for a minute please what's a knowledge threshold like well you don't know what you don't know but why didn't you just say that okay like no no this is this is one of the problems with with change management which is they use words we don't understand I don't even know what change management means right and like I love when people say we do this and what we mean by that is that well then just say that you know okay and no no it's important no it's fair what we're asking people to do is change the way they do things but if we make them feel stupid because we don't understand the words they're not going to change right I've made a whole career like I'm this is my dirty secret I'm going to tell you the Dirty Secrets my whole career I'm an idiot right so I'm not joking either right like I don't understand very complex things and so where I got comfortable is raising my hand and being the idiot who asks the question I don't and says I don't understand or that doesn't make sense forcing the teachers to re-explain things or forcing the consultant to re-explain things so that I can understand it because I don't understand it and I'll say it back in like really simple terms right because I use little words because they're easier to understand and then finally understand and then I just say those words for the people and everybody understands right good lesson and and so like there's Pro I had I had tremendous pride in being the idiot right I I I I like asking questions to make things so simple I can understand them 99 times out of 100 it's just language and just to double back you know when we talk about this iterative thing notice how I did that yeah um the old construct is that the Soviet Union was Circuit City and we're Best Buy the Chinese Communist party is Amazon and we don't get to tell Amazon to play the way that we got really good at we have to adapt and play like Amazon right and the game isn't how beautiful our stores are anymore the game is how do we sell stuff online quicker faster change constant change um and uh and I think when we use Simple language and simple metaphors and simple analogies so people go I understand it then you can just let them be and they'll figure it out and I think that's part of the reason why going back to your original question you know one of the reasons which I think sometimes we can't help ourselves and people come in and sort of like micromanage um it's because it's because we've we've made the the the Playing Field Complex enough that people actually don't know or are afraid to try something different or new because they're not sure they even understand and so they just sort of don't um and I think when we use when we make things simple to understand people go oh I can totally do that and then we can then we can literally just create a context create an environment where where we can give them top cover and give them a chance to try things and you know uh and try again if need be sometimes language language is so important yeah thank you thank you for that I see Chris coming up okay so I've got two questions from the audience they go together a little different perspective so uh wait for the the second one here first question have you ever held a position in which you were responsible for the performance of a group of professionals and if so any advice for holding people accountable when motivation alone fails to produce results second one different perspective was the best way to inform your management that they are not good leaders how do you do it in a way that encourages Improvement and not hostility hypothetically speaking man am I glad am I glad I delayed that sip okay um so effective confrontation or difficult conversations is a skill a teachable learnable skill that we need to do better at teaching and learning and telling somebody that they're a bad leader is a confrontation it's what it is it's like a leader telling somebody that they're a bad performer it's a it's a confrontation and you can have confrontation up or down the hierarchy that's fine but you have to know how to do it effectively so that the person is more likely to listen and internalize it rather than just wall up or fight back right and it starts with empathy right so that person's a bad leader and then usually where our minds go is they're an idiot right um where they're they're overbearing or their egos out of check or whatever it is and those May that may be the case but keep adding to that list or they're scared they're putting put in a position where they don't know what they're doing but they're being held accountable for that those numbers even though they feel like a duck out of water they've got family pressure at home um the pressure from their bosses is overwhelming like we don't know that's the point we don't know and you have to you have just like we want people to do that with us they're human beings too uh most of them uh um and so we have to be empathetic we in other words we have to go and say I don't actually know what's causing the fact that they're um that they're they're struggling to leave right um they're not bad people like a friend of mine was working for a bad leader and she said she came to me she said my boss is a horrible person I said oh my God does she beat her children and she went laughing I went to she did she go home and kick the dog she goes I don't know it's just I'm like oh so you don't know she's a bad person just know that she's an ineffective leader that's that's all we know right so we have to be very careful labeling the person versus labeling the behavior um and then if you learn to have an effective confrontation you can go to somebody and it's got to be specific here's one technique there are a few but here's one technique which I can teach you it's called FBI feelings Behavior impact right it must be specific because if you go like you're always late somebody gives you the one time they're not late and now you're like yes that one time but right so if you make it specific even if it's repeated Behavior it's fine so let's say somebody is aggressive in meetings or doesn't let anybody else talk immediately right um and that even if it's repeated Behavior you walk into someone's office and say can I have a difficult conversation with you so you're prepping them that this is going to be uncomfortable for you and for them right and you can say I'm not sure how to have this this is really hard I'd rather not have it but I think it's important that we have it for the good of the team and so I'm going to do it I'm going to stumble and fumble but I need your help to get me through this because I need to tell you something uncomfortable and difficult can I do that a U.S permission right and then you FBI FBI is a technique where you tell it doesn't matter the order you have to do all three we've gamed it out with one and two and it doesn't work you have to do a three when you yelled at us in the meeting on Thursday it really was demoralizing and it makes it hard for us to go back to work and work hard when we feel that way and I fear that if you continue to yell us at meetings that that that performance is going to struggle and then you shut up and if they're defensive or they start pointing into other things you say I hear you but when you yelled at us and the meeting on Thursday it was super demoralized and you repeat it and it's a technique designed to get people to listen right and what you have to do is hold space remember we're empathetic we're not there to accuse them we're not there to fix them we're there to help them be aware of something that they may or may not be aware of and then we hold space you go into listening mode um where again and sometimes you just repeat that that thing but all those three things the the behavior the feelings and the impact um it's a technique to get people to listen but but prepping you know prepping somebody that this is going to be hard and that you don't want to do it and then asking permission to go forward it's it's a way for somebody to just settle because otherwise they feel slam and if it doesn't work if it just if it's just fire you'd be like I'm sorry maybe this is the wrong time let's try again another time you just disengage right you don't have to come to Total conclusion and I'm a great believer that we always have to be honest but we don't have to be honest in the moment I know that sounds weird it does sound weird here's what I mean right because sometimes rational thought and emotional thought don't go together you don't want to mix emotions with with with logic it doesn't go together right so I'll give you a real life example I've went to see a friend of mine's play she invited me to go see her play uh and she was in it and um it was easily the worst thing I've ever seen in my life uh uh and had she not been my friend I would have walked out I mean it was excruciating uh and um at the end of the play I went and stood in the the lobby and you know and she came out and she's still in makeup and costume and she knows I'm an honest broker and she knows I'll be honest with her and so the first thing she says is what'd you think now is not the time right because her adrenaline is jacked up she's still full of excitement I can't tell her well let me give you my notes because she'll get upset sure because emotions are high right but I don't want to lie I can't say oh my God I loved it that's a lie so I said oh it was so fun seeing you on the stage doing your thing it was such a joy to come in like to be a part of this thank you so much for inviting me all true right two days later when the emotions had settled I called her up and said can I tell you what I thought about the play She Goes absolutely and I went through my notes and we had just a rational conversation and so very often when someone is emotional and we react with rational thought it's not going to go anywhere you know we we at our office we always say if the reaction is above a five it's about something else so if your spouse screams at you like why do you always leave the fridge open and you know when you're getting milk it's really not about the fridge right it's about something else so don't start saying what what's a big deal it's open to what like it's you're missing the point right and we do that at work all the time we do that at work all the time so when you're gonna when you're gonna have a difficult conversation with someone about something that they will take personally that is about their performance or their attitude that is emotion that's an emotional conversation you can't be all rational about it like you got to separate those things sometimes um so you have to be honest but it doesn't have to happen in the moment that's how you talk to the boss what was the other question accountability uh well why don't we do some other questions that was a long answer sorry what's that what about it yeah yeah right so you still have to play the finite game by the finite rules you still want maximum success now now now now but you also have to consider how we're playing this game does it have an impact on the on the bigger game it has to be in the back of your mind let's just change the analogy slightly right so the gate agent at the airline plays a finite game I have to get this plane off on time right have to do it otherwise you get mad the airline's running late it has Ripple effects I gotta get it off right but you want them to be aware of how they treat their customers you want them to be aware that we'd like the customer to come back it's not just about this flight now there's the hope that there's going to be another flight that you'll come again so we don't want them screaming and yelling at us to get on the plane even though we want them to get the flight off in time we want them to be nice to us and treat us with a little bit of respect so that we come back so it's just that mentality that there's that this is part of a bigger game right and that's why I like fastest simplest because we're not talking about massive overhaul all at once which may be too disruptive and too high risk because as you said you know uh um we have a thing to do here and surgeries of surgery is a little different because you kind of want them to practice before they get to the surgery you know by the way it's very disheartening that what surgeons do is called practice um that's just upsetting to me uh uh uh doctors have a practice I'm like oh you know um but but sometimes if they discover something new it happens all the time like great surgeons who who have who have an understanding of facility sometimes we'll try new things when there's an emergency and when they don't understand it's like we've never done this before but I tried it for the first time in it worked you know um and in extreme situations we're actually okay like if you've tried all the traditional cancer treatments and it's not working you become super experimental right but you don't start experimental you get to experimental and so in extreme stress it's actually a great time for creativity and we saw this in covet right covid put so much stress on our lives and our organizations um and that chaos is ripe for creativity I I like you know and so whenever you have extreme pressure it's actually a great time for for that for trying something new chaos is a great thing because it's already disrupted you know you can't disrupt it so you might as well try something new and and do it with the information of others like hey what what if we did this like the shared accountability is a big deal don't just do it by yourself like that's a mistake like make sure you talk to a lot of people and we're all we all go yep that's and a couple people like I don't know you know that's kind of scary like I know but I think it's on me I'll try it you know if it goes Haywire don't worry you guys are safe I'll take the I'll take the rap you know I think but but making it a group effort is definitely a big deal because now we're all trying to make it work and if it fails we'll all try and fix it live okay thank you um could you share your thoughts on our Command vision statement our vision statement is deliver on time every time to preserve our national security um I would do it in the opposite order the vision is to preserve National Security how you're doing it is on time every time but so now it begs the question Define National Security right so part of it is the projection of American power we get that the more that the more boats that are in the in the in the water the more effective we are at projecting power so that's obvious right but as I said before I think projecting National projecting a a ensuring National Security I think in this modern day in Cold War 2.0 speed so I think having a a being able to make like good enough has to be it's like it's very very scary for Americans to do good enough right because we like great we like perfect every time but the Chinese Communist Party is putting stuff out here that's good enough it's that software mentality here's your new iPhone it's good enough good enough but don't worry we'll fix it very quickly it's not like good enough and then nothing it's good enough and then constant Improvement right and to find ways to to find that balance where Perfection cannot be the standard anymore because when it was Soviet Union and us they we both had the same standards because it's a different game we play it's best buy on Amazon now so I would just do in the reverse order which begs the question what is what is the national interest could you share everything your discussions yesterday evening could you share an example of how to make that personal for a Workforce yeah so um uh this is the question is how do you connect people to to their jobs how do you connect people to the to the vision of the organization um and very often we try and Inspire young people in our organizations we have this big logic train like you're here fixing this small component this valve right and if you fix the valve then the system can work but the system can work the ship can run and the ship can run the ship can sail and the ship can sail it can project power Go Over the Horizon Project American power and preserve freedom of democracy really hard when you're working on that little valve that day to get to freedom and democracy yeah uh because the logic train is just too long it's true it's just too abstract and so the way to connect vision is you want to make that logic strain chain really short and you want to connect it to a human being right so I had the opportunity to go to uh RAF mildenhall Air Force Base in England and they had a senior maintainer taken off the line to look after me and drive me around and at the end of the day they gave me the opportunity to fly the kc-135 simulator which was tons of fun and I said to my escort I said you want to come in the same with me and in 20 25 years in the Air Force he'd never stepped foot in the Sim because he's a maintainer right so he came in the Sim and I flew around and I had my fun and we said to him do you want to drive and we put him in the driver's seat in 25 years he's never driven the kc-135 simulator and we asked him you work on the kc-135 right he said yeah we said what's your system he said uh electronics and so in the middle of the flight we turned off the electronics and for the first time in 20 years he understood directly the impact and importance of his system in the life of that pilot instantly right so it got me thinking we should be putting maintainers and Sims all the time so they can connect to their jobs and so I raised this to the Air Force and again the bureaucracy immediately says we can't do it there's no funding for to do Sim time for for maintainers right and that's when creative thinking sits in and I sat in a room full of pilots and I said how many of you would occasionally give up the last five minutes of your symptoms so that a maintainer can connect directly to your job and 100 of the pilot said I'll happily do that because their lives at risk and they definitely want that connection also meeting people it's a big deal right so I know when a CEO comes around and thanks you for your work that matters that really does matter and I would encourage the Navy to actually have the more Junior folks also occasionally come and meet you and tell you the impact that your work has on them when they're actually out at Sea so you can meet a human being that you're helping you're not helping the ship you're not helping the Nimitz you're helping Charlie you know because that's Charlie's job and Charlie's job went a lot easier thanks to your help and there's data on this there was a group of volunteers uh in a university who were working to raise money for a scholarship Dialing for Dollars right you know in these Hard Times only your generosity can you know like you get it uh and donations were pretty flat and so they hired some consultant they rewrote the script and it had a minor effect and then some social scientists did an experiment where they brought in one of the recipients of the scholarship to come and meet the volunteers and spent you ready for this five minutes with them five minutes that was it and now those the the performance skyrocketed and morale skyrocketed was they weren't doing it for some abstract student getting some abstract scholarship they were doing it for Stacy who we met um I met a Wells Fargo small business loan guy who works in a branch in St Louis I think and uh he heard about this research and he did it and he brought in people who'd received small business loans from their bank and so it wasn't just hit your numbers it wasn't just you know abstract we're helping small businesses do good job they met they met the small business owners who two years ago got the small business loan and got to talk to them and ask them questions about what it did for them and now they it became deeply deeply personal and so the more you can connect a human being to the work that you do it's it becomes essential you're not working for abstract ships you're working for human beings aboard those ships and you should get to know some of those people when possible and you work with each other I want every person to be obsessed with the person to the left of them and the person to the right of them talk to Marie and talk to the soldier none of them run into firefights for the for the Forgotten country zero it's got to the left and guy to the right every time it's those human connections and so the more that you come to work every day completely preoccupied not how am I going to be the best at my job today but how am I going to ensure that you're the best at your job today and you're the best at your job today and that we both go home happy and fulfilled and the person who eventually takes over from me will be even better at my job than me which means you know maybe you take notes or take photographs of how to set up a machine so that all of those years of wisdom that you've collected the person who takes over from you you handle the notebook and say this is how you set up the machine here are the photographs of how due to how to do it and how not to do it and it's that Brain Trust that keeps growing and growing and growing and everybody's responsible for sharing the lessons they learned and making sure that the person to the left and person to the right feels like somebody's got their back and that's how we know it works in in out in the in the front lines and well this is the new front line if you ask me my mind stretches even to people that I contend with maybe there's a struggle over policy or a struggle setting policy I have counterparts at headquarters have counterparts at other shipyards and in every case as soon as I had a sandwich with them yeah or traveled to see their workspace every case the the villainy goes away in its partnership that that grows human beings are really good at we have imaginations and the more we don't know someone or a disconnect from someone we tell we can make up stories about story right and in this internet day and age where we only see people from afar or connect from people from afar and we don't actually meet people I mean look how divided our country is you know between the left and the right which is a part of you know it's disgusting and it's you know it's except for the fringes which you know on both sides which are dangerous which there's danger on both sides most of us are rational normal people that would rather this country function and I'm a great believer that um uh one of the reasons that we are so divided is because we no longer perceive the existential threat outside our own borders and human beings are just we're just funny weird animals that one of the ways we know what we stand for because knowing what you stand for is abstract but knowing what you stand against is tangible because I can see my enemy and so it's more it's easier for me to know what I stand for when I can see what I stand against so it's easier for us to be American when the Soviet Union existed and we fought like cats and dogs and the political parties hated each other and we had disagreements and the military was territorial amongst the services and that that was always the case but at the end of the day that existential threat outside our borders was way worse than anything inside our borders and because we're completely blind because we got it because we don't understand Cold War 2.0 because we completely blind to the genuine existential threat that exists outside our own borders we start looking for it inside our own borders where we now label each other traitor you know which is crazy yeah um and I think that the more we are aware that there are real threats that outside our borders like it's probably better we get to know each other and as soon as you sit down and break bread with someone you realize they're trying to make a living they're good family people they got kids they got family issues they want the best for their kids you know they're trying to make it work like they kind of all have very similar issues and there's a lot of empathy but we can tell stories about each other and that's part of what the cross-pollination is and by the way we do that at work you know between management you know you know you know if you're sitting at HQ and you're here we start telling stories about each other and if you're on this side of the the the factory versus that side we tell stories about each other and this is why that sort of like getting to know each other in the force sometimes forced socialization is the best thing we can do and by the way the leader the leader is the one who goes first has nothing to do with rank or hierarchy the leader is somebody think about what leadership is I lead I go into the unknown or do the dangerous thing first and if I go others will follow right and so the first person who walks across and says I don't know you and I have horrible opinions about you and I have a story about who you are and what motivates you that may or may not be true but I decided to come and knock on the door and just get to know you because I wanted to prove myself right or wrong um you know if one person does that other people do that yeah thank you okay so question is uh how do you avoid burnout in the workforce when there is constant urgency and constant need for long hours and overtime to meet the mission and deliver the ships so um I'm gonna sound like a broken record and um which is it's fine I can infinite games right if or you're playing is finite mindset which is this one this one and it's just a series of moving targets like this one this one this one you're going to break the workforce and uh and uh and then eventually the it becomes the Damage Done is tremendous um and um again where you can create environments for healthy conversation where somebody feels safe enough to say I'm really struggling and I'm overwhelmed and I don't want to let the team down and so I'm afraid of taking a day off because I'm just frazzled and the team will say don't worry we got you like they have you have to be able to say it to your team because we will take care of each other and I'm also a believer that it has to be Equitable so it is totally fine for the organization to say you have to work this Saturday or you have to work this Sunday but I'll give you next Monday off right you can't take away somebody's weekend and not give it back somewhere right um yeah it has to be equitable the thing what we do is when we we take and take and take we don't give back you know that's that's where it creates burnout and it creates and it's a lack of empathy um um and and mental health is a real thing and I think doing things that release stress are important you know um um silly games or breaks and you know punching bags hanging in you know like you know competitions you know fun competitions I mean all that stuff to relieve stress is really important I mean it's really important for the leader to lead the way it's really important so during covid um when I went through my cover depression because at some point everybody will suffer the trauma um and nobody escapes trauma um I went to my team and said I'm off my game uh and I just need a little patience I'm not going to be that reliable for for right now and I'm just I just need you to be patient with me because I'm just I'm struggling a little bit and by me doing that it created an environment that now my team could come to me and say I'm struggling too and I could be there to help them but if I pretended that I was happy and everything was good every day and everything was confident everything was strong and what I'm doing is creating an environment where everybody has to pretend that they're happy and strong and confident every day and eventually things will break and that's where I was saying before which is when you affect change you accept the the there's a small dip in performance but we do that willingly so that we prevent the massive catastrophic dip later it's a trade-off there's going to be a decline somewhere but I'd rather have a small decline now than a massive decline later like small pain of exercise now so I don't die later die early all right let's have one more there's a sailor in front of you yeah morning I'll keep going on the USS Ohio my question is is in the Navy like you talked about Navy is yeah yeah right there where people are joining because they want Adventures we want to do the things culture culture within this race and maintain but people won't want to stay sure yeah okay did you guys hear that okay yeah so so you can't okay you can't just change a culture right and you don't want to change a culture um if you have a broken culture you can give it culture but you don't have that it may be fuzzy but it's not broken right um and we have to remember the nature of warfare is changing which is we've been playing whack-a-mole for 30 years and we're really good at whack-a-mole uh but we're not playing whack-a-mole anymore like whack-a-mole is done right and that finite finite finite finite whack-a-mole game you know it's not necessarily about killing bad guys and breaking stuff it's sometimes preventing war from happening in the first place that's what cold war is cold war is prevention that hot war is Fort fought by Army and Marines with navy and Air Force and support that's what that's how that works and sometimes when we start we definitely I don't I can't speak to Navy but I saw it happen in the Air Force a few years ago there's an inferiority complex because we're all in the armed forces and we don't want to be in support we're you know well I mean like that's just the nature of the Beast like you play different roles at different times right but cold war strategic War is an is a navy and Air Force War the Army and Marines are not involved they're waiting for hot and so we're moving away from whack-a-mole to strategy right it's a it's a it's a much more thinking person's Warfare um uh and you tend to see Navy and Air Force tend to Value education you know more you know because that they need that kind of idea set and so there are components there are times like when it goes finite like okay we're in a battle that of course you want to have the training and you want your pilots and you want everything to to be about the projection of force and breaking their stuff of course of course but that's a component it's not your whole reason for being and so I would be cautious about saying we have to go from this this thing of Adventure and escapism to converting everybody to being a Frontline uh shoot the gun Warrior which is that is only a component of what you do it's not who you are you want to embrace who you are and of course the different subcultures will do their things as well you know this very well a Submariner is a different person than somebody who lives on the surface it's a different mentality not better or worse different some people love it here some people love it here and if you hate it here you might love it here right and vice versa that's why we want to try and put people where they belong which is why we kind of try and make things more volunteer like does this appeal to you I think it does no it doesn't we don't force people to go into water for six months right uh because things will break the Navy knows this so I would focus more on how do you amplify the positive aspects of your existing culture and learn to be aware of where you the week when your culture is in a weak State and how you rely on others and I do not believe in strengths and weaknesses good and bad I believe we have characteristics and we have attributes and depending on the context those things are either helpful or unhelpful so I'll just give you one one example so I am chronically disorganized right like if I fired my assistant for example and she came to work the next day I'd be like didn't I fire you she goes no I'll be like maybe I didn't you know like I joke with her that she has the best job security um but but I am chronically disorganized and I used to think that was a weakness Simon what's your biggest weakness I'm very disorganized right used to think it was a terrible weakness and used to have Shame about my weakness right so I when I was young in my career I was a young entrepreneur and I went to this networking event this guy met me he's like Simon you're fantastic you're wonderful I want to hire you and he gave me his business card now if I was organized I would have he called him from the taxi on the way home or emailed him the next day from the office except I lost the business card almost immediately okay and I'm like I'm an idiot right I'm disorganized I found his business card two weeks later the bottom of a briefcase bottom of a bag I was like oh so I emailed him I don't know if you remember we met two weeks ago at this event blah blah blah blah and he wanted to work with me more because he thought I was busy so is being disorganized a strength or weakness the answer depends in that context it was a massive strength where I got to sort of Fame demand where there was none versus when somebody asked me to do something in a timely fashion that I can't do it then it's a weakness and so what I've had to learn is who I am I become hyper aware of who I am what I'm good at what I'm not good at who I am and then the context in which those things are either strengths or weaknesses and when it's a strength I'll volunteer for those things when it's a weakness I'll ask others to help me in those things and the same goes for organization you want to know who you are and in certain contexts you have natural strength and then other contexts you need help and that's why we have a Joint Force because the Navy is not the best and the Air Force is not the best and the Army is not the best the Marine Corps is not the best the Coast Guard is not the best best and space force is not the best but in combination you're the best um so I'd be very cautious about changing culture to fit a short-term demand culture is enduring you've had the same culture of 200 and 400 500 600 years as sailors you don't want to change it just a bit to fit whack-a-mole because that'll go away it is going away you're welcome we can keep going how about some questions from the balcony balcony anyone yes great question great question so the question was with a lot of turnover a lot of people retiring recruiting more difficult than it used to be what would be what would be the pitch to get people to want to come here especially when there's opportunity in other places right um okay so it goes back to what I was saying before which is it's that navy-ness that you embody it's that sensitive Adventure trying something new and getting away so literally you have to recruit to that and you have to retain to that the recruitment strategy could sound it's not like here's the job here's the hourly pay here's the benefits right that's that's um that's very uh unemotional and I heard that with the apprentices they gave me these wonderful explanations of why they joined but then when I said why would you stay they said the benefits right now the benefits can absolutely be on the list but I would hate for them to be the first reason um and so you want to speak to that neediness you know which is do you want an adventure you know um um do you hate routine if you want the opportunity to do the most difficult thing you've ever done where the pressures are high and this and and the stakes are higher we we might have an adventure for you right because the stakes are high here and the pressure is high here and some people like that you know um and you could go do your skill somewhere else and maybe make a few dollars more you know but at the end of the day it's going to be routine with low stakes and for people who like that then they should go do that but I think you have to recruit to what the job is actually like and what the culture is actually like um whether where it's hard it's it's hard like we said it's routine is difficult here and creativity is expected and cooperation is expected if you're a highly creative person who likes to cooperate and work and you like working on a team in a high pressure high stakes environment where it really really matters how good our work is we might have a job for you and because that's what it's like and and by the way it should be reminded of the people who work here which is look this is this is a this is the most difficult creative thing you'll ever do in your life you know where you're expected to think on your feet and when you find some a problem you expect it to figure it out like we we ask a lot of you um and some people like that they want the freedom of creativity and I think that where you guys thrive is and this is how I describe you know naviness which is fiercely dependent so that you can be fiercely independent you know you rely heavily on each other so that you can be a self-contained machine that can fix anything that comes your way without having to ask for any outside help you know outside of the organization because you're so good at looking after each other and relying on each other fiercely dependently you can be fiercely independent um I would just speak to the truth of that the minute you start going to benefits is the pitch you've lost because then you're making it only about the benefits and then they'll just compare benefits and take something out make it about what it feels like does that resonate with the people who like working here I mean because if it's if it doesn't resonate then I'm wrong and we have to try something else but if as I say these words and assuming you like working here because if you don't like working here it probably wouldn't resonate but but assuming you like working here and you like the people you work with and even though it's frustrating and even though you know there are things that you definitely want to change and the things you could easily complain about overall you're like no it's a good place and when I start saying these words like lack of routine demand to be creative necessity to work together are you sort of nodding your head and go yeah those are the kind of things I like you know if if that resonates then maybe we're onto something if not I have to come back you can come back anyway yeah does that resonate I'm just curious that's cool yeah yeah I agree all right yes thank you so I feel like a little bit of a grinch coming on the side here so hey Simon thank you so much you have given us tremendous amount to think about as incredible incredible talk thanks Rob thanks command University for putting this on and uh let's have a big round of applause for assignments thank you thank you sir very much it's been a great uh great to have you here thank you very much appreciate it thanks Robin okay all right everyone thank you that's the end today so please uh be safe and happy holidays thank you all

Channel: Joe Shipyardworker

Views: 4,426

Keywords: PSNS & IMF, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Simon Sinek, Admiral Theatre, Bremerton, leadership

Id: 9453pwbR__Y

Length: 84min 14sec (5054 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 13 2022