Brett Crozier On Bravery, Impossible Decisions And What It Takes To Be A Leader

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1:32Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

2:22Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. You may have heard my two interviews with the great Admiral Stavridis, also former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. I liked both of his books, but in his new book, To Risk It All, he actually profiles today's guest, whose name may sound vaguely familiar. The events that we'll talk about in today's episode sound almost like they were eternity ago, but it's weird to think it was almost exactly three years ago as the world was melting down. Captain Brett Crozier captured the attention of the nation and the world. when the ship he was captaining, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier with over 5 ,000 sailors, was besieged by one of the earliest outbreaks of the pandemic.

3:19There were no tests, no masks, no ability to socially distance. And at the time, the authorities and the military, Every capacity of society was overwhelmed. And Captain Crozier had to make a career-altering, a life-altering decision about whose interests he was going to put first, his career, bureaucracy, or the safety of the men and women who served under him. And we're going to talk about this courageous decision. We're going to talk about the pressure that he faced, how leaders navigate decisions like that, what it was like to be relieved of command, but then also to be cheered by his own sailors as he walked off of that ship, supposedly in humiliation.

4:11This is one leadership moment in Captain Crozier's life, but certainly not the only one. He spent 30 years in the Navy. He was a helicopter pilot, then a fighter pilot landing on aircraft carriers. He trained in the Navy's nuclear power school, which put him on track to command an aircraft carrier. And then he commanded the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the most prestigious carrier in the U.S. fleet, the most powerful Navy in the world. So lots that he can teach us. I was very much looking forward to this conversation. And he has this exciting new book called Surf When You can lessons in life, loyalty, and leadership from a maverick Navy captain.

4:48It's a fantastic book. You can follow him on Twitter at Brett E. Crozier or at surf when you can on Instagram, surf.when.u.can or at B. Crozier. His publisher is Atria Books. I think you're really going to like this one. Enjoy.

5:15I thought we would start sort of at the end here. We don't have to get into the specifics of it, but a general question that's fascinating to me about your story. And actually, I gave a talk at the Naval Academy a few months ago, and I talked about this idea because I think it's relevant not just to midshipmen, but I think to all people, which is that, you know, let's say one is on some sort of track for leadership, right? You're working your way up through a company. you want to be the CEO someday. In your case, you go to the Naval Academy, you work your way up through the ranks. The whole system is about getting you to buy into a way of thinking, a way of being essentially not rocking the boat, right?

5:56In the Navy, they cut your hair the same way, they make you sleep in the same quarters, they make everyone the same. That's how you create culture and commitment and even kind of replaceability, all of these things, right? Sure. And then the system, life, being a good person demands at times that we buck all this. So we expect people to make these, like we expect a politician to be a party politician all the way down the line. And then in the moment of crisis, throw all of that away, even though we have effectively trained them to do the exact opposite of that thing their entire life. Yeah. I think that's a, yeah, I think it's a very fair assessment.

6:43Um, you know, and it was, you know, I'll be, you know, I'll bet I was guilty of the conformity and I'm gonna say guilty because there's a reason why the military is built that way. Yeah. I mean, you're the game, so to speak, is when you're in combat and you're making quick decisions and you want people to follow and provide feedback, but also be as efficient as possible in the art of being a warrior and ideally killing the enemy before he kills you. I mean, that's what the military is training when it comes down to brass tacks. So as a leader, obviously, you can't spend more than a couple of years in the military without kind of buying into that and kind of following along.

7:20And I think, you know, I wouldn't say, you know, throughout my career, there wasn't moments where I was in a situation where I felt like I just had to go along to get along or that I was ignoring, you know, my true values probably up until the very end. And even then I felt like I wasn't necessarily bucking the system. I just felt like I was at a crossroads where I had to either conform and follow along or stay true to my values as a leader that I had developed over time. I mean, we know that life is not black and white and decisions are not, you know, they're made in shades of gray. And it's, you know, we're silly to think that it's any decision when you're that senior is an easy decision.

7:57There's some that are easy, but most that really matter that are consequential require some thought and introspection and also kind of looking back at what works for you and the impact across the wider audience. So I think ideally you have the tools to get there and then you have the tools to analyze when it comes down to making that decision. I think Tim Cook is sort of a good non-controversial example of this. Like Steve Jobs doesn't want a bunch of Steve Jobs working for him. He would never have accepted that, right? There can only be one. We sort of lionize the innovators and the rule breakers and the mavericks, but that's not really what we select for when we hire.

8:37And that's certainly not what we train for. And then you get the top job and then people are sometimes like, well, he's not Steve Jobs. And it's like, of course he isn't. If you think about what the system was selecting for, it was selecting for the exact opposite of that in so many ways. And I'm not saying he's not a good CEO. He seems like he's actually, in many ways, been a much better CEO than Steve Jobs and has overseen all this growth and shareholder value. But it is this sort of paradox, like, you know, you have to go along to get along to move your way up through the ranks. and then maybe we tell ourselves, okay, but when push comes to shove, I'll throw all that away to do the right thing.

9:23But how and have you built the muscle to do that? Probably not. Most, I mean, most of us haven't. Right. And I think it's also important to understand the landscape as it is now too. I mean, it used to be that when you were a captain of a ship and you sailed over the horizon, you were on your own. I mean, back in the days, you could pull into ports, so you could plunder and pillage and all that stuff. And, you know, as long as you came back successfully with gold in the hold, you were doing okay. Sure. You're not really that autonomous anymore. I mean, you have, you know, you were connected at almost all times with people above you all the way back to D.C.

9:59who know where your ship is in most cases, or they have the ability to communicate and in some ways, unfortunately, micromanage. And so I think, you know, you could argue now that even more so, you need more of the Tim Cooks because, or that's the system set up to support more of the Tim Cooks. because we just wanted to kind of continue to follow the path. And if it's a tough decision, we're going to be able to help them out and we're going to micromanage from 3 ,000, 5 ,000, or 7 ,000 miles away. And never should we expect them to be in a position where they have to make an independent decision on their own because we're always going to be there to help them micromanage, be micromanaged.

10:33I think that's a valuable point. I'll be honest, even when my first deployment as a helicopter pilot, I was on a ship, and we'd set sail and we had to just, the way it was set up, we would check in with our, our mother squadron, as it were, back in Hawaii, like once a month, like via a slow message. And, you know, I'd, I'd write letters to my wife and you'd have to number them. So by the time they mailed and got to her, she read the letters in the right order. Um, nowadays, of course you have internet, you have email. Um, you know, I could, I could email my wife and say, Hey, what'd you have for dinner and she could tell me or she could say, Hey, where'd you put the hammer or where's the tool that I need?

11:12And, and so we're so much more interconnected, I think as a society, which is in some ways is great, but also from a leadership perspective, it, it, I think it sets up a, an environment where you want less Steve jobs because, you know, the Tim Cooks of the world will always have those backstops and support along the way. And again, they're both phenomenal folks and, you know, I'm not criticizing either. I just think that that's an important aspect of how we operate in today's environment. Yeah, that's a really interesting way to think about it, which is that it is sort of a timeless problem that the ranks breed conformity and sameness.

11:48And so moral leadership and innovation is a trait that gets bred out of people. And then you think about today's world, like basically from birth, everyone is monitored and has access to so much more information about what everyone is doing, that it's only going to compound that. So it actually makes this hard thing much, much harder because yeah, you're constantly supervised. People, you don't have the freedom or the space to, yeah, you could be the most sort of politics person in the world, but then yeah, as soon as you get over the horizon line, you're on your own. So you're able to breed both of those.

12:30You can have this sort of, you can have both of those traits, but now, you know, you're, I just think about you just like keeping up with the Joneses, let's say we're getting a little far afield from where we were before. Keeping up with the Joneses is very, is very real, but now you know so much more about what the Joneses are doing. There's even more things to keep up with them about. Yeah, I think, I think you're right. I think that there's, I mean, really, there's so much information out there now. It's, you know, I think it's incumbent upon us, whether you're a leader at a nonprofit like I am now, or when I was captain the ship or, you know, whatever you're doing, you really have to spend time to think about, you know, what's important.

13:10You have to spend time on analyzing the information because, you know, any given day, there's more information than you need to make a decision, but you can't even get to the point where you make that decision. If you don't step away, at least think, you know, try to think of the big picture stuff. And, and, you know, throughout my career, I found it to be more challenging as I got more senior, not me personally, but I just felt like, you know, there's, you know, you, you, you have so much analytical information. And I think the expectations are that you analyze everything to the point of indecision at times.

13:37And I think sometimes you just need to have true values of what's important to you, important to the ship, important to the mission and make your decision when you get to the comfortable spot. and not get, you know, analysis, you know, paralysis by analysis, as we say sometimes, because you're just trying to decipher all that. You know, and I, and I think, you know, I look back on my career and what I really learned and I think about how, let's go back to Apple, you know, you know, you have to have time to think, you know, if you want those big decisions on where you want a company, an organization or your family, I mean, you have to step away from it all and then be able to spend some time thinking.

14:12And if you don't, you're just, you know, you're kind of a rat in the maze, just kind of running and sucking it all in. And, and, uh, you know, I joke, obviously the title of the book, the book is surf when you can. And I, and I love surfing. Surfing for me is a way to think. It's a way to get awesome. It's a way to, um, you know, step away, leave your phone on the beach as it were, and, and, and think about what's important. And, and I don't, I don't think we do that enough in society. In fact, I think we do it less and less as we move along. And if we're not careful, you know, we just become a mere micro process sort of information and what you need are folks you need to kind of step away and I I make better decisions for my family my career um when I do that and I think it's I think it's incumbent upon all of us and and in the military for the most part you know they they allow for that over analysis but also that could be detrimental and you know that kind of where the culmination of my career with the the theater Roosevelt and COVID was I felt like we were at a point where we were overanalyzing.

15:11We were treating everything as if it was a irreversible decision. And you can talk about type one and type two decisions, but, and because of that, we were failing to take action. Um, and then, you know, I felt that's kind of where I stepped in and just said, Hey, we've got to do something. And this is, I'm willing to take a risk here, but I think this is the way forward. And that wasn't something I'd been trained to do. It wasn't something that, um, you know, that there was a, a class I could go back to the Naval Academy and say, Hey, this is why I learned this. It just came down to, there was so much gray and so much information and then it came down to, well, then what's important?

15:42You know, end of the day, what is important to you as a person, as a leader? And for me, it was just getting the best care I could for my sailors. And it was, you know, kind of where I got to for that decision point. But it took stepping away from all the other, the fog of war and everything else that was going on to try to see that, to me, to make that. There's a General Mattis quote that I've been including in some of my talks recently where he basically says like, the biggest problem for leaders in the information age is a lack of space and time for reflection. They're just always sort of making decisions.

16:12They're always sort of going, going, going, and they're not stepping back and thinking. And I think it sounds like the theme of our conversation so far is paradox. So that is true. And then simultaneously, what is also true is we can use our ability to get endless amounts of information to discuss things endlessly, to dance around the fact that ultimately at some point, ideally very, very soon, somebody's got to make a fucking decision. And we all pretty much know what the right thing to do is here. We're just looking for more information or conversely, we're looking for a way that we don't have to make the decision.

16:55I'm reading this biography right now of Pontius Pilate, which isn't someone I thought I would ever read a biography about. And it's actually really, really fascinating. And it's sort of giving me a new lens on it. But basically like three times he is basically of the impression that Jesus is innocent. And I think we could just look at this from a historical standpoint. He's basically like, this is not my problem. He hasn't broken any Roman laws. He's broken some Jewish laws. He hasn't broken any Roman laws. So like, why is this my problem basically? And he tries multiple times to kick it to other people or to find a way to sort of make a non-decision decision.

17:35and then ultimately makes the decision that people want him to make, but is contrary to what he has already independently expressed as his view, which is that this man is innocent. And that's sort of the, that is leadership right there. Like the struggle of leadership, which is, you know, in your heart of hearts, what you should probably do, but you know, if you do that, it will be bad for you. And so you're like, how can I not take the weight of this? that's the very human response. Yeah. You're balancing your conscience versus conformity, right? And you can err to the conformity side when you're trying to look at a big picture of what's best for the organization or what's best for Rome, I guess, and the time, or you can follow your conscience.

18:22But it's harder sometimes to follow your conscience because if you're in this analytical world, you're trying to then build the case to support that, right? And as we know, on your conscious side, you have to be careful because sometimes your consciousness is more influenced by emotions and, and things that aren't as analytical. And, and those are all important parts of decision-making, but I think you have to be careful that when you make those decisions based on what you think is important from a conscious perspective only, you can't ignore the, the more pragmatic look at those, uh, the other influence and factors as well.

18:54Um, you know, otherwise, yeah, cause there's many days where I don't want to go to work and I should just want to surf and that's i mean i know my conscience says is you know just go surf and you can get to work late but but we have to balance all that pragmatically with you know i think much more information but there are times when you know you're when at the end of the day is is conformity or conscience and in my case you know that one decision was you know i i felt comfortable with my conscience because i knew it was also relevant to how i had led up to that moment it was important for not only my ship but the organization um but again it's you know nothing's black and white.

19:28So at the time for me, that's kind of how I balanced it. And, um, and you have to be careful not to reverse engineer the information that maybe wasn't there to begin with, but making that understanding the difference between the two. And in that moment for me is ideally not something anyone else has to face. Um, yeah, ideally those all align your conscience and conformity and the organization are all, but, but we know it's not the case in life because that's how that's an interesting distinction, right? Yeah. You go, just trust your conscience, trust that little voice. But we all know that voice lies to us, right?

19:59I love writing. I know that's what I should be doing, but there's a voice that comes up with reasons not to do it, right? Stephen Bristfield calls this the resistance. When one has to make a tough decision, let's say to hold someone accountable for something, there's that voice that says, well, that's mean. There's the voice of empathy that feels like, I would like to let this person go or to let them get away with this thing because it will be hard for them. And what the conscience is ignoring in that is how the consequences of that still fall on other people, right? Because now they're going to do it again or whatever, right?

20:45I like what you said, which is that sometimes what feels like conscience is actually just emotion. And to be able to distinguish between those two is the million dollar question. Are you doing this magnificent act of self-sacrifice in principle, or are you just freaking out or are you overreacting, you know, or are you actually doing the easy thing even, but you're making it seem like you're doing the hard thing. Right. No. And that's what makes, I think, particularly as you get more senior as a leader, um, decisions get harder. Particularly big decisions like that get harder and you're going to have people on both sides.

21:26I mean, that's the also thing about being a leader, making big decisions. You're going to have criticism on both sides. If it was an easy decision and they wouldn't need you to make it to begin with, it was probably going to be made before I ever got to you. Um, you get the shit, the shit floats to the top. Yeah. By the time, you know, you know, when I was a CEO of a ship or a squadron, generally my decisions were supposed to be big ones. If it wasn't, I hope I had delegated them appropriately and I let someone else make them. But, um, you know, some of the big decisions come to you by design.

21:52That's how the organization ideally is how you set up. But it also means that they're not easy decisions and there's going to be people on both sides that either agree or disagree with you for all the reasons we've talked about. You know, the criticism I took at the time from a lot of people was that I made it more on emotion and conscience. And in fact, I spent a lot more time on the pragmatic side with the analytical analysis before I made the decision I did with a big group of people. So it wasn't like I sat in my room and sent a, you know, the whole story, I sent the email that that ultimately got attention but got me fired it was it wasn't made in haste although i can see that that's the perception is you know is that he made that because he was trying to you know he was worried about his sailors well of course i was worried about his sailors why wouldn't i that's what leaders are supposed to do yes but all the other stuff was also based on a very methodical analysis of the situation you know in that case it was covid so it was transmissibility rates and our risk to crew and all the other types of things that would go into those decisions surrounded by doctors and lawyers and, and, uh, in the end, you know, I make the decision, that's what leaders do and they have to own it.

22:58Um, and it just, but it also better align with my conscience in the end too. And that's, I guess it, you know, maybe that's why I, to me, it felt like if it was a total gray area, I could have gone either way to me when it came down to it, I erred on the side of my conscience, which was what I thought, again, was my fundamental principle of being a leader to take care of my sailors, but I could have gone the other way and said, I'm going to conform with the organization and we'll figure this out. And that could have gone horribly wrong as well. Isn't that the terrible reality of your chosen business, which is that you have to make decisions for which very real and often life and death consequences are borne by people other than you, right?

23:42The commander that only thinks, let's say, about the wellbeing or the safety of their troops is probably not gonna do so great in battle, where by definition, you are having to risk the few for the many. And so again, there must be a tension there. You have to care a great deal or why would these people trust you and you would have no authority over them. And at the same time, you could be paralyzed by that care. and and and so how how how do you balance that both in theory and in practice it must be extraordinarily difficult yeah i think i mean again as you're making decisions based on risk right i mean those are the decisions you make and when the risk one way or the other is great enough then that's those are the generally the questions you get as a leader i think you have to look at the environment that you're in to really quantify that risk correctly.

24:39If we wanted zero risk, then airplanes would never take off. Ships would never go to sea. We'd all walk around wearing helmets. And there's times in the military where you see that and we take extraordinary precautions to prevent something like someone falling off a two-foot stepladder that they have to wear a helmet. And it seems silly. There's times in combat then on the other side of the spectrum in wartime when you're not worried about somebody falling off a two-foot ladder. You're worried about losing one, two dozens, hundreds, thousands of folks. And I think your calculus has to change. And I think all risk comes down to time, money, and people, right?

25:14In most cases. So you're worried about the time you have to make the decision, time for operations, money, if you're talking about an organization and the money for investment, and of course, people. So if you're on the spectrum, the far right of a wartime environment, that calculus probably changes. If I'm a CEO of a or a general in charge of a division or something, I'm not probably worried about money, right? Because that's probably, I'm worried about time because I want to take the objective and I'm worried about people, but I'm going to accept risk to people knowing that that's how, unfortunately, in war, people die.

25:46If it's peacetime, well, I'm worried probably more about money because I'm trying to manage a budget. I'm always worried about people because there's, you'd argue, why are you risking people's lives in peacetime if you can avoid it? I mean, aside from the inherent risk, it always exists. um you know so and then time you know in peace time you have more time so i think as a leader you have to understand where you are on that spectrum you know between peace and war and i think that allows you to balance the calculus correctly between time people and money and you know and if you're in combat well then there's going to be risk to things that aren't going to be at risk when you're in peace time and i think that's understanding that landscape and correctly identifying where you are should help you make that decision and that's ultimately a risk decision as a leader.

26:30No, that makes a lot of sense. What actually matters? Like, what are you measuring here or conserving for or protecting here? And that did strike me as the strange reaction to what you did. You weren't in the middle of a war zone, right? And so people were like, oh, you've compromised the safety of this or that. It always struck me as strange that you could compromise safety by focusing on safety. You know what I mean? Like you put the sailors at risk by not wanting to risk the sailors. Okay, that makes sense. But I think as a general thing, that is something that great leaders know how to do and bad leaders struggle with, which is like, what's the main thing here?

27:13What are we doing here? What is the main thing that I'm responsible here for? Because there's 50 other things that are kind of important, nice to have. There's also a bunch of things that might be nice, but are in direct contradiction or conflict with the other things. And if you try to do all the things, you get none of them. And so you have to be like, leadership is really about prioritization, you're saying. And yeah, it struck me in that moment, at that time in the world, what was more important than the well-being of the sailors on the ship? Basically nothing. It's not like you gave out trade secrets or something.

27:53It was a strange, It was a strange sort of bureaucratic reaction to what was obviously the most important thing you were supposed to be thinking about. I always thought that was weird. Yeah, I think I learned from a mentor once who said, you know, leaders do two things, right? They prioritize and they make decisions. Yes. And you've got to prioritize correctly to make good decisions. Can't go the other way. And yeah, so that scenario to me was clear what the priorities were. We weren't at combat. We weren't on that side of the spectrum. was a peacetime environment. Um, but I can see from a, a senior position in the government who is still trying to understand what's going on with this pandemic and like the rest of the world, we're trying to figure it out.

28:36Um, you know, in their mind it was adding, you know, it was, it became a different prioritization for them. Right. And, and suddenly they were forced to deal with it in a way they were trying to avoid making it a priority. And, and, you know, no one likes to, to be influenced by, uh, somebody else's decision. I mean, we like to control our destiny. so to speak and i think they felt resistance because i was maybe inadvertently i and my i wasn't worried about world events i wasn't even worried about the pacific i was worried about my sailors on the ship that was it and i also i mean i kept in mind the impact across the the rest of the navy but in a way that i thought it was appropriate because had we lost sailors i think the impact would have been much different we would look like imbeciles for not taking any action so my decision was to prevent that protect the sailors protect the navy but i can see where if I'm having to deal with the pandemic across the larger world sphere, then maybe they don't like the priorities that I put in place.

29:31Although I think I'd still stand by them, I guess. There was a, I think one of the things the pandemic brought home for me is something sort of, again, a distinction between good leadership and bad leadership or the right decision the right way. It's like when one is making decisions that other people have to bear the consequences for, there needs to be a humility and a sort of a clear sense of prioritization. Like I remember early on in the pandemic, I wrote this down as a note and I saw it the other day, but I remember there was something about like the mayor of Las Vegas, like opening Las Vegas up like sort of earlier than some of the, you know, the public health advisements.

30:12And they said something like, hey, like, would you want to be in a, you know, a maskless, windowless casino right now with all these things going on. And she said something like, well, I don't gamble. Her point was basically, in Shrek, he goes, some of you are going to die, and that's basically your problem. And I think you see that in leadership where one makes decisions that are best, where you really lose people literally and figuratively is when you make decisions for which the consequences are borne by people who are primarily different or in different circumstances than you. It's like, hey, we're undergoing belt tightening here at Acme Corp.

31:01Of course, the CEO's private jet is absolutely necessary for the continuation of our operations, but everyone else, there's going to be the austerity measures. I think where leaders get in trouble is when they make decisions that they are primarily exempted from or when the bill is primarily paid for other people. And it's probably a good sign if you're like, hey, am I making the right decision or the wrong decision here? It's going sort of who is bearing the brunt of this? Is it me or is it them? And in your case, you took a lot of heat, they got, you know, extra precautions and protections. And if it had been the opposite, that probably would have been a sign.

31:43I'm covering my ass. I'm ignoring something inconvenient. You know, I'm, I'm conforming rather than, you know, leading by conscience. Yeah, no, I agree. I, you know, and I think the other thing I, you know, I learned, I think we know from watching it play out too, is that, you know, there's no one really smarter than you, right. In the world. I mean, there's people that have more information and there's people that can, they can think quicker i get that and there's folks that just have a natural intellectual ability but end of the day particularly when it comes to leadership that you know particularly when you come from the military which is a culture of conformity you you can't assume that people making decisions above you are any smarter or making any better decision i'm not saying you have to be a rebel and it's not worth your time to contest everything but um i think in society too sometimes we don't want to question you know decisions that are made because we assume somebody knows what they're doing.

32:31And I'm not, this isn't a anti-science thing. It's just that I think people need to know how to think for themselves. Um, and not just absorb information or absorb opinions, but it's really about, you know, coming to your own analysis and the best of your ability to help understand the situation. You still might agree or you might disagree and it might not make a difference, but at the end of the day, if you want to have an opinion, you should at least spend the time to analyze information and make your own decision and not just accept, I think, decisions made above you. Um, and I, I think in the military, that's how we're built.

33:01We're, we're expected to follow the orders above you for good reason. It goes back to how you fight in combat. Um, but I, you know, I think as I spend more time now outside the military, even in the nonprofit world, and you recognize that sometimes we're, we're just accepting decisions that, you know, aren't necessarily made with the most accurate information or they're not made with the right analysis. And, and sometimes it takes pushing back and saying, ideally an environment where you can provide that feedback that, you know what, there's actually a better way to do this and still achieve the goal, which is, I know I'm giving you a lot there.

33:31I just think that I learned along the way. And I think we saw society through COVID that, you know, people are making the best decisions they can, but they're not always the best decisions being made. Well, it's all, I think one way to do this is like, what are the incentives of the person above you? What is the reality of their environment? what pressures are operating on them that would inform their decision. And you need to know this for two reasons. One, you need to know it for as you're saying, because sometimes they're wrong and you want to question them. But two, chances are, at the most fundamental level, with some exceptions, you both want the same thing.

34:08You want what's best for the country. You want the best for the sailors. You want to do what's correct. But if you don't understand the logic of their environment or the incentives they're operating on or how their world works, you can be coming to them with information or coming to them with information in a way that they're just not able to do anything with, right? Like that you're not understanding how their world operates. And so you're coming and you're saying, hey, you know, this project is over budget. You know, in their world, perhaps that's very normal, right? That's different than saying, hey, I have documented evidence of fraud that if this fraud is revealed, it will be damaging politically for everyone involved.

34:55In that case, you're effectively presenting the same thing, but by doing it differently, one is likely to elicit action and the other is more likely to be brushed off. I think sometimes we're so convinced that because what we're doing is right, if we just say it clearly, it will be heard. But there's obstacles as you're running things up the flagpole and you've got to figure out how to get around them or to get through them if you want to be heard and you want to affect change. Yeah. I mean, as they say, there's no hill worth dying on. Maybe that you just, you couldn't live to fight another day and approach it a different way.

35:35Yeah. I think, you know, as a leader, then it means that you have to make sure you're ideally communicating that in a way that folks that are following your orders or your decisions understand where you're coming from. But also as a leader, I mean, you're never going to be at the top of the pyramid. So you, it's incumbent upon you to understand as well above you, you have to go out of your way to try to understand the decisions being made by your leader, ask questions and ideally in an environment where the rationale for those decisions are understood. Um, harder as you get a bigger organization and you're spread across the world, harder than a big fortune 500 company when you're talking, you know, people in multiple sites, but, um, yeah, you can't, you're right.

36:10You can't make decisions leader and not be cognizant of the impact or the, to the organization above you and understand that they might have different influences or different calculus with the decision they made to begin with. Otherwise, you're just Don Quixote fighting windmills and you're not going to ever be effective. Well, I think about this with my publisher, right? It's like, I'm not the only author that they have and they have a finite amount of resources. So of course, I think I'm entitled to all the resources and should get all the best shots at everything. But I have to understand the organizational culture that's happening there, the constraints that they're under, the politics that are happening, et cetera.

36:50And if I want them to give me those things, I have to... It's like one of the laws of power is you appeal to self-interest, never mercy or gratitude. And understanding like, hey, this is the most convincing way to get this point across. Again, as opposed to, well, I'm pure and so I'm just going to say it like it is and then that will of course be well received like many a reformer has died on that you know with with that plea and on their lips I you know it's funny I uh I bought this old truck a couple years ago and weird story but the the person I bought it from quickly folded the business and then moved on I never got it registered so as a result of this I spent like 12 different trips to the local DMV office here in Southern California and it was like a master class in watching a bureaucracy and organization and most of us when we talk about DMVs anywhere we kind of cringe and we have nothing but bad things to say I got to tell you over the 12 different trips to solve this problem so I could finally register this old truck in my name it was fun almost to watch almost just like you're just sitting there in the bush watching a tribe out there and you created a new appreciation because you just watch hundreds of people come through the DMV, most of which have an attitude or holier than thou or expect their priorities to be number one.

38:12You watch the people come and go that work at the DMV. They obviously have their own challenges in life and are just trying to do their job. You watch these continual interactions, which generally were more angry at the DMV clients. But it was a great experience for me because when it was all said or done, not that it still didn't take me 12 trips to solve this weird dilemma. But it gives you another appreciation again for just, you know, the importance of relationships and understanding that, you know, where people are coming from and spending the time to understand what's motivating people to do what they're doing in a way that it can either benefit you as a transaction relationship or more importantly, just I think, how you get along in life and understand that, you know, that everybody has something motivating them.

38:57And it's not about trying to take advantage of that to your benefit, but maybe there's just a way you can both cooperatively get along and get through whatever challenge it is. And that was, anyways, so I don't, yeah, so I'm not opposed to going to DV anymore. And I figured that was, you know, I choose to do it by mail now, but I learned, I think I learned through that 12 trips. These are people who can't just magically snap your fingers and solve your problem. And when you start to see them as almost tragic figures caught in a cycle or a loop or a culture that you are not the main character in.

39:35It does give you the ability. I think this is one of the beautiful parts about stoicism, just the kind of the acceptance or the understanding of, hey, this is what's happening. This really has nothing to do with me. And the more personally I take it, the more upset I get about it, the more miserable I'm going to be. And by the way, it's still going to remain exactly the same. Right. Yeah. And in the end, it's just, what I learned as a kid and it's true with stoicism, it's just the golden rule. If you're just going to treat others how you want to be treated, it's just a better way to go through life.

40:10You're going to find it more enjoyable and it gives you initial perspective on what someone else might be going through and need some help. I thought the best story in the book, and it struck me as kind of an illustration of what you also went through, was the story of the sailor who thought they heard something go over the side. They came to you, they said, I think someone went overboard. You did the first thing you're supposed to do, which is a count of the soldiers or the sailors, the shipmen and the sailors and someone was missing. And so this aircraft carrier has to come to a complete stop.

40:42As you look for someone that I'm sure you almost certainly know is not overboard, you're flying helicopters, you're having to do what you think is almost certainly an overreaction because the costs of underreacting are so high. And then that sailor comes to you, probably expects to be chewed out when the sailor is found in their bunk, listening to music. But you have a sort of a modicum of grace and actually gratitude for what they went through. How does a leader balance this sort of tension between, again, the theme of paradox here, underreacting and overreacting both are sins uh and yet there's probably one side you want to err on more generally yeah yeah so i mean i think right at the bat i tended to try to err on the side of kindness meaning that here's a kid who's 18 19 been in the navy only a couple months and and single-handedly brings the entire ship to a stop um we launch helicopters and we're looking for what we think is someone And it happens.

41:53People fall overboard, not all the time, but occasionally and oftentimes we can't find them. So, so the gravity isn't, wasn't insignificant. But, but you also know, here's somebody who's only been in the Navy a couple months and still figuring out, you know, how to get around the ship in many cases, but did exactly how you train them to do and made the report. And then we started the, you know, started this reaction that you'd expect. so you're right you could i mean in one case you could be frustrated i've seen people react negatively like i cannot believe this you know what's wrong with this kid take him off the watch let's retrain him let me scold him and if you do that right he's never again going to try to speak up he's never again yes even if you're steering towards a shoal uh or he sees an enemy subbrain he's probably going to second guess himself um you can also look at it like hey there's this is actually pretty good training like we need to practice this anyways uh it's a good drill to do it worked out well in our training thing um and you can also i think as well what i try to encourage on a ship even that size is that people need to speak up um you know when they see something and you know i had this whole adage of nkr like speak up when something is not quite right nkr and uh obviously not quite right is not spelled nkr it's nqr but when you say it that way the the the goal is that somebody is going to call you out for it.

43:11Right. And I, I always kind of believe that. Oh, even for the acronym? Yeah. For the acronym. So it's, you know, acronym should be NQR. Right. But so the first couple of times you do it like in a brief or in a wardroom or with a couple hundred people, you know, some people know what you're doing. Others just think you're, you don't know how to spell. Captain doesn't know how to spell. Sure. That's the acronym. You said that's what it is. I'll go, I'll, I'll defer to you. Um, and I think it's important for any organization, right. Not only to encourage, but expect people to speak up when things aren't quite right.

43:40Um, I think that's how you get better. I think it's, you know, steel sharp and steel kind of mindset. You need that internal feedback loop. Um, and so I, the first couple of times you do it, no one calls you on it eventually, you know, junior sailors brave enough to raise his hand and say, captain, you know, that's not how you spell not quite right. And, and nothing made me happier when they did that. Cause I was like, man, this guy, this guy or gal gets it right. They're willing to speak up and do so respectfully. And then you acknowledge it. You said, yeah, actually, you're right. You're absolutely right.

44:08And then it became like this almost internal joke. I would say it and people would understand what I meant, which is really, you know, for us to be successful on a ship with 5 ,000 people, I need everybody to do their part and also be able to speak up when something isn't quite right so we can take appropriate action. So now you go back to the sailor that thought he heard something falling over the side, made his report. Something wasn't right. Heard somebody splashing the water. we do all we can to stop the ship and look for the potential sailor that had fallen overboard not to find them eventually so again to me it was another reinforcement of this to me was a win right like yeah i did i want to spend another two hours driving the ship around keeping everybody up we're going to be tired um or is it a win because it's another example that this culture we're trying to build that is not only encouraging but expecting people to speak up uh is is manifesting himself all the way at the very junior level.

44:59And so to me, I was, you know, I was secretly kind of pleased that he was, didn't hesitate. And so therefore when confronted with him, I, you know, I wasn't angry. Um, was I more tired than I would have been? Yeah, of course. But, but I saw it as a win and I remember thinking, all right, if I was in his shoes, I could be, I was probably be terrified. I probably expect to get my ass chewed. Um, and I felt like, you know, as a leader now of all times is to show grace and appreciation for him doing exactly what you wanted. and that is to speak up when something was NKR in this case. I've been talking about this book recently, but have you read Walter Lord's book about the sinking of the Titanic, A Night to Remember?

45:38I don't think I've read that one, no. It's incredible. I'll send it to you. I think you'll really like it. But one of the things that's so interesting about it is like multiple people knew, not just about icebergs generally, but specifically where they were going, the speed they were heading, you know, and there was a number of warnings about it, a number of like telegrams about it. And what happened is they were received, but no one took the ownership of going, hey, this isn't quite right. No one wanted to be the person that said, hey, to the captain, we should slow down. I'm worried about this, right?

46:18So there's a kind of bureaucratic ass covering of, I think I heard something. I don't want it on my conscience, so I'll mutter it to a superior, but I'm not actually going to advocate and fight for it too much because I don't want what could happen at the end of your scenario, which is it turns out to be nothing and you get yelled at. And so, yeah, we say we want a culture where stuff filters up, but then we actually create a culture where we smash those things down and then we wonder why we're not getting the information or the feedback. They're not waking you up because you yelled at them last time they woke you up or you were grumpy the next day.

47:03And you don't know what that could potentially cost you, but it could potentially cost you everything. Yeah. And then I think in the military, our number one commodity is trust. I mean, at some point we're going to ask folks to go into harm's way and, and fight to take the hill or sail and, you know, enemy against enemy convoy and we're going to lose thousands of people. So to me, you know, trust is a byproduct of solid, clear communication as well. So if you want to build that trust, you have to have clear communication and open communication such that they know that I'm going to tell them the truth and I'm going to be receptive to when they tell me the truth.

47:36And if you do that, you, you build that trust that I think is necessary, um, for combat or peacetime. And so I look at that scenario again. all right so this case he thought he heard someone fall over the side what about next time and we're in combat and he thinks he sees an enemy submarine well i'd love to know about that and and i can't have someone second guess himself that well i don't want to get yelled at it could be wrong you know so you have to in those cases you particularly have to i think err on the side of of grace or kindness because you really want to promote it and i did i wanted to promote that even though obviously we we took huge effort and impacted 5 000 people for a couple hours we maneuver the ship.

48:11That's okay. That's good training, but man, to have, and it's well worth it to encourage and I guess reinforce the importance of clear communication and making sure they speak up when they see something. When it's not just minimizing downside, right? It's also, you say you want a culture of innovation and change and creation, and then somebody has an idea and it doesn't work out and you make them feel like an idiot, right? You go, well, how could you have possibly thought that would work? And not only is that person likely to never have a new idea, but everyone who witnessed that is likely to keep their idea to themselves.

48:51So there's this kind of invisible graveyard of potential ideas or new ways of doing things that you have killed. We do this with our kids too, right? Your kids come to you with something and you get mad at them because they told you they did something bad or that you're lecturing them or whatever. And then they don't come to you anymore, right? What they learn is, hey, if I hadn't told mom or dad about this, I wouldn't have gotten in trouble. And then they have the terrible secret or the thing they're ashamed of or the thing you could have helped them with. And they sit on it because you lectured them.

49:34You said, hey, I told you so. And, uh, and then you've, you've now closed that door, that window that you wanted to be open in the future. Yeah. I, you know, I've, uh, I've been lucky enough to have three boys that are all very inquisitive. Uh, and I just, you know, the thousands of questions that we asked around the dinner table and in the garage and, and, you know, it'd be very easy when they ask questions when they're younger to, and maybe they're asking the same question again and again, and it'd be easy as a parent to kind of discount it. Like quit asking me questions or dad's tired kind of thing.

50:03But man, you start doing that. You'll never. Yeah, you never again are going to, because I would be the same thing. I mean, if I ask somebody a question at work and I get a response like you're stupid, well, okay, then I won't ask you next time. I mean, and so for kids, we're much more impressionable. Obviously, you know, I think it's incumbent upon it to hear it. Okay, you're asking me the same question again, but let me answer again and make sure, you know, see if we can figure out how to answer it in a way you understand and build, you know, build that curiosity. I remember once I read some word in a book and my parents, I pronounced it weird.

50:35I forget what word it was. But I remember my parents made fun of me and laughed at me because I mispronounced this word. And that was the last time I took a risk to say something like that, right? And you don't, obviously, this is a fairly minor trauma, but you don't realize the cost of the little bit of sarcasm or the excess of frustration. You're closing doors, again, that you're probably going to want to be in the future. Or you are disincentivizing character traits that you want to have in a person or a subordinate. Curiosity, confidence, questioning. You want them to do those things. And then here you are saying, effectively, don't do that thing or I'm, you're going to get zapped.

51:28Yeah. And you're, and whether you're a parent or you're running a company, you're right. It's the same thing. I mean, you know, that, you know, obviously Steve job and Tim cook, go back to that example, but in a company, you want those good ideas. And often as a leader, you know, if you're, if you're, if a company's relying on me as a CEO or a CEO to come with all the good ideas, well, that's companies probably not built the right culture. You know, those kinds of ideas, those, you know, the earth change, life-changing ideas that come from a corporation probably aren't coming from the top. They're probably coming from an environment where that culture allows for innovation and risk-taking in a comfortable environment where you don't feel like you're going to get fired if you're pursuing something that doesn't pan out.

52:04And good companies spend millions of dollars to pursue things that don't pan out. I mean, because they want to encourage the culture as much as anything of innovation, which I think is important. But it all starts with parenting. And then if you fire the team who was invested in the project that didn't work out, you know, unceremoniously, you don't find new roles for them. What you have, you have just said, hey, if your thing doesn't pan out, you're out, right? So you've incentivized sort of bureaucracy and bloat and covering. And, you know, you have, you say you want a culture of innovation and risk, but then how do you react to innovation and risk when they don't pan out?

52:51that's really what people are going to hear and listen to yeah no absolutely uh and you're right and go back to the military i mean we're we try to be innovative but it's the environment is such that it's not always as conducive to innovation um as you'd like and you have programs we try to encourage it and we we have a program where you try to incentivize it with monetary incentives to to create new ideas and um but it's still in a culture where you know you're just trying to conform and not rock the boat. And so it's just never, never seems to take off internally. And we have, we've learned to leverage external partners and defense industry to have a, you know, ideally more creative environment where they can take more risk and money.

53:32Um, but it's sometimes tough within the military, I think that I, my insurance. Um, so speaking of the not quite right thing, do you know the, the green M &M story, the, the Van Halen green M &M story? I think I've heard it loosely, but yeah. So famously, Van Halen, and who knows if this is true, but the story is Van Halen's rider, their tour rider, said, we want M &Ms in our dressing room, but no green M &Ms. And so for many years, this was taken as like the ultimate sort of rock star excess and ridiculousness. Like they need someone to pick out the green M &Ms. But the actual purpose of that was when they arrived at the venue and they walk into the dressing room and there's a bowl filled with green M &Ms along with all the other colors, they better go check the pyrotechnics because that meant this was not a venue or an event staff that was checking all the details.

54:35that they had skimmed the contract as opposed to read it very clearly and followed it to the letter. And there is something, everyone wants to be sort of relaxed and chill and not be the stickler for things. But often the little things are emblematic of the big things. And when you notice something that's not quite right, you're not being petty. What you're often providing is a very important signal to the leader or the market or the team that like, hey, let's double check everything. If this thing that we've talked about 26 times is still an issue, I'm sure the things that we haven't talked about are also an issue.

55:20And I'm not going to set sail until everything's covered. Yeah. And it's great. That's why we always talk about a ship. A clean ship is a healthy ship and a clean ship is a operates well so if you come on a ship and one of the things you look at is if the decks are polished and the ship is clean and dusted i mean it has little or no bearing potentially on its war fighting effectiveness but it shows whether or not that they're getting some of the small things correct now it can be done in excess right you could spend more time than you should cleaning and now you're actually practicing your operational mission but that's often why they always you know as a when you're the number two on a ship the xo as we call it you're like the deputy your goal is to make sure it's as clean as possible and that's kind of becomes your you know your way to make sure the crew is focused and you're communicating clearly it's not just about you know whether the decks are shiny or not the floors are shiny it's about are they understanding what you're asking them to do are they achieving that goal um and so it's often a market price you have certain parts in the ship that are going to be even cleaner than normal because you want all your guests to see that But I actually go, I think about as a, as a fighter pilot, you have to have some level of OCD and it's for good reason.

56:27And every time I would get in a cockpit, all your switches should be in a set place. And, and I'm going to double check them all. But if I find a switch, you know, one of 50 that's in the wrong place in my mind, I'm like, all right, someone else should have caught that. I mean, it's easy enough for me to make the change and switch it and has no bearing on the safety. but but now in the back of my mind it's just you know one strike okay something something is not right like for some reason the the plane captain didn't prep the jet like they were supposed to or say your windscreen isn't clean and you get a couple of those now you're just it's heightened your awareness because you recognize that you know you're all these things you thought would be in place now you are the final checker like now it's coming upon me so i will approach that i start out my whole mission differently because i've had these indicators that things were not where they were supposed to be.

57:13And even if they seem inconsequential, you know, even if there's no bearing on whether the switch was in position A or position B, it's an indicator of me that, hey, this particular sailor didn't follow the procedures. And so now I'm worried about, well, did he check the oil correctly or did they make sure all the circuit breakers are in or did they double check the bombs on the wings? So I think there's a lot of merit to that. And I hadn't heard that. I'd heard the green M &Ms being the preference, but I hadn't heard the follow-on as a it's a good litmus test for contract adherence, I guess, as it were.

57:45Well, it's like, you're always looking for canaries in the coal mine, right? Sort of indicators of things that you, you really couldn't find out except for in, you know, extraordinary circumstances. I remember I had this accountant once and he kept saying the name of my company wrong. Like he kept calling it Brass Creek and the name of my company is Brass Check. And I kept going, Hey, you know, it's, it's Brass Check, not Brass Creek. And I remember I was getting tired of correcting him on this. And it ended up being actually a big issue because then I remember I was applying for a mortgage and they were like, well, you have to have...

58:17This company has to have existed for three years. And I was like, it's existed for 10 years. What are you talking about? And they were like, well, no, it only... Because he'd actually filed the paperwork under the wrong name. So I should have fired him just from the instinct alone. Like, hey, you're doing this thing wrong. But then I remember he made this sort of big mistake on some taxes that I had caught because I was in this heightened state of, hey, he's not hearing me when I am saying things. And I think you look for those, hey, if the ship is dirty, chances are they're not spending their leisure time also thinking about the big picture important stuff, right?

59:01Like, uh, they're, they're just not doing what they're supposed to be doing because they think there's no consequences for it or more, more, you know, reasonably, they just think it's not that big of a deal and no one's, no one's watching. Yeah. Yeah. It's, and I, uh, I started working at this large veteran focused nonprofit for better homeless. And like the first thing I did in the first two weeks was just start making people clean. Cause I just felt like there was, they were, they were going through a lot of challenges post-COVID. And as you can imagine, the homeless challenge is complex and there's no one solution to it.

59:35For my organization, I remember just walking around with my guys and just kind of being very adamant that we start cleaning. Like there's just things that just are out of place. It just either shows neglect or indifference. And I can't assume we're doing all the other stuff right that are more, you know, consequential if we get it wrong. And does it matter if that piece of that board sits there in the courtyard one way or the other? Probably not. But why, if we're trying to rise to this vision of a clean, well-run organization should we even accept it at that level. And so I did. I spent a couple of weeks and I was accused of trying to bring my Navy captain boat skills to the nonprofit world, but I did it with a smile on my face.

1:00:12So I think they understood the goal. Well, as we wrap up, the last thing I wanted to talk to you about, one of my favorite stories from Marcus Reel is Marcus is an old man and he's seen leaving the palace one day. A friend stops him and he says, Marcus, where are you going? And he says, I'm off to see Sextus, the philosopher, to learn that which I do not yet know. And the man's amazed. He says, this is the most powerful, wisest man in the world. And he says, taking up his tablets and going to school. And I liked your chapter in the book about, I liked your mantra about basically learning as if you're going to live forever or this sort of continuation of study and knowledge, always staying a student.

1:00:54Why is that so important for a leader? Well, I think you got to be humble enough to recognize you don't know it all to begin with. Just because you're in a position of authority doesn't mean that you don't expect to still learn. I mean, I think I learn every day. I mean, I learned stuff today. I'm in a new environment, new line of work where I'm learning a bunch of new things. But I think as a leader, you have to be humble enough to understand that there is still a lot to learn. You can't just rest on your laurels and you can't expect that what worked in your previous job will work now. Oftentimes, particularly in the military, you're not put in that leadership position because you already have all the skills necessary.

1:01:32You're put there because you've demonstrated you have the ability to learn, you have the ability to think. And when you get in that position, you're going to continue to learn and think. And I think that's true in nonprofit or corporate world. You don't come in as a CEO because you already know how to run the company. You're probably coming there because they expect you to learn and you're going to help grow the organization. But, um, you know, otherwise there would be no one to replace the outgoing. Um, so I think it is important to learn every day. I think, you know, whether it's from your kids, whether it's from your wife, whether it's, you know, whether it's at work, whether it's from veterans that are homeless coming off the street.

1:02:06I mean, all of them have something that you can learn from. And if you approach life that way, um, I think not just cause it makes you smarter. I just think she gives you better perspective and you understand people better. And I think life's really about learning how to get along and work with people. And as a leader, it's about understanding people so you can be, you know, be the most effective and motivate them to do things. It's like, it's like both viewpoints are self-actualizing, right? So it's like, if you feel like you know everything, there's nothing that you can learn. And if you feel like you know next to nothing, there's so much you can learn, right?

1:02:43And so if you approach it with one way, you'll continually get better. And if you approach it the other way, you really have no hope but to stay exactly the same. And I think, I mean, learning is fun too. I mean, I spent, sure, I spent a third of my career in a classroom or a training environment. So 10 of my 30 years were in a classroom learning something, you know, the other 20, I'm still learning, still OJT, but each and every day of the 30 years I learned. And, and I, I enjoyed that. I mean, I just, you know, even now I like learning new things and whether it's you pick up a new book, whether it's you watch a new show, whether you have a conversation with someone that you had never met before.

1:03:22Um, I mean, you have to, you have to love the journey too, right? You don't learn just to get to the end state you're learning and you ideally enjoy the process of learning. and I think if you approach it the right way, you know, each and every day is an opportunity to learn something new. I think about that with the tragedy of most people, like the sort of the lesson we pass on to our kids. Like if you were to ask a seven-year-old, like what is the defining feature of being an adult? It's that you don't have to learn anymore, right? Because that's what they see. They see that they have to go to school every day and you just get to do whatever you want.

1:03:58and that is the opposite of school, right? And so we say we wanna raise lifelong learners, but is there even a shred of evidence or demonstration that that's the journey that we're on? Sadly, in a lot of cases, it's not. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, yeah, you're right. Many people reach that point where they're just comfortable with their career and they're just wanna do the same thing each and every day. But I think we should learn how to embrace it in a way. I mean, obviously growing up, you're going through a bunch and school environment is different than how you and I are learning now. And when you can control your curriculum, as we say, it's definitely much more enjoyable.

1:04:39And I think it's important. You know, I think my kids saw me go back to school numerous times. And I think that was important, not just because I was demonstrating, yeah, you got to study, but the importance of learning new things. My wife did the same thing when the kids were older. And I think there was a lot to be learned from that for them that, you know, it's not over when high school's over or college is over or flight school's over. I mean, there's, it's a journey and you should welcome it. And your perspective, you know, what you're going to learn later on in your life might be something that you never thought you need to learn when you were 18, 20, something, you know, things I'm going to learn 10 years from now, probably things I'm not even thinking about now.

1:05:13But, but I enjoy the process. It doesn't have to be going back to getting a master's degree. It's like, are you taking guitar lessons, you know, are you learning another language? Do they see you reading a book? Or are you just watching sports all the time? Where are you getting better and learning? Not only does that make you better, but it does, I think, provide a pretty powerful example. Yeah. Anybody can learn to surf, Ryan. Anybody. Yes. You can't be too old. No. And to see your parents struggling to master something and to come out the other side of that journey. One of my favorite books, it's by this woman named Nell Painter and it's called Old in Art School.

1:05:58And she basically retires after many years. She's one of our great history, great historians. And she goes back to school to become, she goes back to art school in her seventies and becomes a painter. Like her sort of her second mountain is becoming a painter. And you just think about what a powerful example that must've been not just for the people that knew her, but like the people in that class, right? Like something I remember when I was in college, it was always kind of annoying when you had the people that had gone back to school because they always push back against the professor. You know, they would always be like, well, that's not what I know.

1:06:35And I remember being 19 and finding that annoying. And then someone pointed out to me how hard it must've been to be them, like how uncomfortable that must have been and how courageous it was for them. And I've seen it differently ever since. And to be able to teach that to your kids or to people in your life is such an important thing. Yeah, I love it. I mean, again, every day I'm learning something new. A lot of times just through mistakes, I learn that way too. But there's, you know, life, world's fascinating and plenty of things to learn and just got to keep open to it. Well, I think your book is a great example of that.

1:07:13And I really appreciate you writing it. And I think there's a ton we can learn from your story. And I think it's a powerful one. Like we need more examples of people who are willing to risk it all, to quote the title of Admiral Stavridis's wonderful book, like to make the decision that's not good for them or is risky for them, but has the likelihood of benefiting or protecting other people. we need a lot more of that. We have too many politicians that think that their main job is to win elections, not to make hard decisions for people. And we have this with coaches and athletes. We need people who are willing to take risks.

1:07:57Even if we don't always agree with the decision, I think we need to respect the stand in and of itself if we want to see more of it. So I think your book was wonderful and it's been an honor to talk to you. Yeah, thanks, Ron. I appreciate the time and the feedback on the book and enjoyed the discussion as well because I think it's the process of writing a book was for me learning and also a way to kind of think, hence the title, just about what I had learned over the years and what I still have to learn along the way. Are you going to go surfing today? I think today I'm going to run back to the nonprofit world and see what I can do there to help out.

1:08:32but I did get surfing in this weekend and it's the weather's warming up. I'm in San Diego. So water's, um, getting warmer, which is, makes it nice, but nice.

1:08:47Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode.

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