Latitude 40 Leadership

And then there was one. One remaining concept from the 8 leadership lessons from my 25-year career that hopefully will create a lifelong habit. I didn’t save this one for last for any particular reason, but in hindsight, it should be the last one due to its ongoing impact. Leadership is like any other skill. It takes study and practice to get good at it. Leadership lesson number 8: “Be a student of leadership” Many executives merely go through the motions and spend very little time developing their leadership skills. They think that their smarts, dynamic personalities, and gray hair will make them great leaders. What they fail to realize is the fact that, after about 20 years in any career, you’re no longer the expert on everything. If you’re an engineer by trade, you put down the keyboard long ago. If you grew up in sales, you’ve stopped being an individual contributor long ago, and probably have been asked to take over a team. If you’re a CFO, you probably know how to read an income statement, but couldn’t do a journal entry to save your life. As a leader, you need other people to be successful. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower once said “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” People won’t follow bad leaders. In fact, there’s data to support the claim that poor leadership is the number 1 reason for employee turnover. The cost of that turnover is somewhere on the order of 2 to 3X that person’s salary to replace them. It’s not insignificant. It's why we need to study. Most successful leaders are voracious readers. President Harry S. Truman said “not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” He couldn’t have been more right. The number of books I’ve read that are still on my library shelf, and get used frequently, number in the hundreds. It matters less what books are the best, as there is no shortage of business and leadership books for sale on Amazon. What really matters is creating the regimen and discipline to creating a schedule to read. Rather than parking your butt on the couch to watch TV every night, or surfing the internet on your phone, have a book at the ready and read for an hour a day. Creating that discipline will carry you far in your leadership career. That said, everyone always asks me my favorites in my personal library, so I’ll oblige. Here are my top reads in case you need a kickstart: “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” by Ben Horowitz “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin “Leaders Eat Last” by Simon Sinek “5 Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencione Be a student of leadership and create a habit of lifelong learning. https://lnkd.in/gbiPVten

Today’s leadership lesson comes from a weird place. I’m a bit of a movie buff, and some of my favorites didn’t get great Rotten Tomatoes scores. This might be one of those. The backdrop for today’s leadership lesson stems from a pivotal scene in the Kevin Costner movie “Draft Day” Leadership lesson number 7: “Stay true to your values" Draft Day, in case you haven’t seen it, follows an NFL general manager – played by Kevin Costner – through a chaotic roller coaster ride on Draft Day. At the beginning of the movie, as he finishes his coffee before heading to the NFL Draft war room, he scribbled something on a yellow sticky note and stuffed it in his pocket. We don’t find out what it says until the end of the movie, after he’s had some crazy ups and downs, trade offers, and decisions questioned by the owner of his team, the Cleveland Browns. The pressure of that day was like no other. In the end, he stayed true to his values and drafted Vontae Mack, a devastating pass rusher out of Ohio State. The sticky note in his pocket said “Vontae Mack, no matter what.” He needed a reminder of who he really wanted to draft no matter what other options presented themselves. I loved that message. Remind yourself daily of what matters to you. Know your values and stay true to them. Most of the time, values in a business setting are simply words on a website. They don’t get put into practice daily. Here’s where this gets fun. Let me take you back to July 31, 2019 – my first day as NexusTek’s CEO. I walked into a hornet’s nest on Day 1. I had been asked by our Private Equity sponsor to integrate and turn around 6 companies that had been acquired in the preceding 18 months. The executive team was suspicious at best about this new CEO they got. People from each of the acquired “tribes” had their own cultures and refused to interact with the others. There were 4 ERP systems, 58 different variable compensation plans, and customers were churning at record rates. It was chaos from the jump. I’d been there a hot minute, and I didn’t have all the answers. What I did know was this: It was going to take a strong team to pull this off, and so I wrote the following acronyms on the white board in my new office: HAC GAS NA It was my version of the yellow sticky note from Draft Day. I wanted a daily reminder of the caliber of people I’d need on the team to be successful. What do those 3 acronyms stand for, you may ask? “HAC” stood for “have a clue.” I’d need smart people who knew what was going on. “GAS” stood for “give a shoot (the G-rated version).” I’d need people with passion who cared about making the business successful. “NA”….you guessed it. “No A-holes.” We couldn’t have any self-serving, entitled jerks on the team. I lived by those 3 acronyms every day for 5 years. I think we did a pretty good job as a company sticking to them as well, but I know we we

We’re rounding the final turn on the series of 8 Leadership Lessons, and today is number 6. It’s a bit of a play on a classic saying from long ago, only with a business twist. The original version went something like this: “2 things are certain in life – Death and Taxes.” Such a prophetic saying as both things are most certainly true. The third part that I’ve added is what makes it applicable to business. Leadership lesson number 6: “Three things are certain – Death, Taxes, and People Quit” In business, especially in the service sector, people are the lifeblood of an organization. Without them, there is no “product” to sell. When people quit, it sometimes freaks out young leaders as they frantically scramble to try and get the workload distributed to others without affecting customers. In parallel, young leaders often take employee resignations personally. It’s almost like they view it as a failure in their leadership ability. Sometimes, people just quit and there’s nothing you can do about it as a leader.? Sometimes when people quit, it’s a good thing. It’s a good thing for the employee (they get to go pursue their passions, make more money, or get more responsibility somewhere else). It CAN be a good thing for the company (it provides upward mobility for people to step up and prove their skills, creating career paths for other top performers).? It doesn’t have to be something to fear. Just accept it as a natural inevitability, and it becomes infinitely easier to deal with. Nearly 25 years ago, I was part of a data center managed IT services company named Inflow. One of the great things about that company was its openly stated goal of producing 50 C-Level Executives during their careers. Certainly, not all 50 of those would get that opportunity at Inflow. They’d have to go somewhere else to pursue that opportunity. Art Zeile and Joel Daly hired the best knowing some would quit, and they were OK with that. It’s not that they didn’t care about their people or Inflow was a bad company. Quite to the contrary. It was a GREAT place and they cared very much. Obviously, they didn’t want people to leave, but they understood the fact that 3 things are certain: Death, Taxes, and People Quit. 32 people “quit” and became CEOs, CFOs, COO’s, or other C-level executives since we were all part of the little Denver-based startup called Inflow back in the late 1990’s. There may be more, but I think I counted most of them. We aren’t quite all the way to the stated goal of 50 C-Level execs, but pretty darn impressive regardless.? Yours truly was number 33 when I took over as the CEO at NexusTek in 2019. If you do your job well as a leader, you’ll prepare people for something bigger. Sometimes they’ll quit before you can create a role for them. They quit not because you’re a bad boss (unless you are), but because you’re a good one (let’s hope so). Prepare your people for the opportunity that hasn’t come along yet.

Thank you Brandon Ansley for a super engaging conversation on leadership. I had a great time and I love what you’re doing with Boundary Breakers!

The 4th installment of my 8 Lessons in Leadership focuses on “focus” and not taking your eye off the ball. All of us have done it at some time in our past, so don’t feel bad. You’re in good company. “The best job you ever had is the one you have right now” About 20 years ago, I left a very promising leadership role at a $2B technology company to chase the elusive “Vice President” title. I had accomplished a lot in my time there, and I had developed a bit of a chip on my shoulder. Like many of us, I thought I deserved that title after everything I’d done for that company. I’d convinced myself that I wasn’t getting that title there anytime soon, so I chased it elsewhere. I should have been more careful what I wished for. I got that VP title I so desperately wanted at another company……and 6 months later was unemployed because that business was woefully underfunded and went out of business. Bad move. The point is this: if you’re always looking for the next best thing, you’ll miss out on the best thing that you’ve already got. For 5 years from 2019 to 2024, I was the CEO of a national IT services company called NexusTek. From the jump it was challenging, with all kinds of headaches that I had never envisioned when I took the job. It was a combination of 7 different acquired companies with different systems, processes, and cultures. I had to make tough decisions that impacted people’s lives. We closed down offices, let people go, and asked others to pick up a heavy load.& Suffice to say, there were plenty of people there who weren’t happy to see me. There were plenty of calls from other suitors, but I told them I wasn’t interested. Oh yeah…..there was that pesky little global pandemic too. I still viewed it as the best job I ever had. Despite all those challenges, we built something great. We built a national platform of 1,500 customers and 330 employees, and we created the premiere provider of IT, cloud, and cybersecurity services in the US. There were over 180 people who hung with it for 5 years with me through all the heartache and are still there making happy customers and providing for their families. We produced 80+ graduates of the NexusTek Leadership Academy, and 3 of them have gone on to become C-Level executives (towards our goal of 25). I am truly proud of what we built. My time came to an end in early 2024, and that provided me the opportunity to create Latitude 40 Leadership, my next “Best Job I Ever Had.” Thank you to Team NexusTek. You are the source of my strength and I will never forget you! https://lnkd.in/gij6rTeS

It’s time for the 3rd installment of 8 leadership lessons from my leadership journey. The first 2 lessons (“Listen to your Senior NCO” and “Find a mentor”) are easy to do if you’re intentional about them. This one is harder, but it’s also my favorite. It’s had the biggest impact in my life and professional career trajectory, hands down. “Don’t be the 6th idiot” I don’t know if he originally coined this phrase, but as the rumor goes, Denzel Washington used it at an Academy award acceptance speech. Since I’m a huge Denzel fan, I’m going to give him the attribution. He said: “If you hang out with 5 confident people, you’ll be the 6th. If you hang out with 5 intelligent people, you’ll be number 6. If you hang out with 5 millionaires, you’ll be the 6th…..and……if you hang out with 5 idiots, you’ll be the 6th.” In my career, I’ve been very fortunate to NOT be the 6th idiot. Quite to the contrary. I was surrounded by amazing people that I call friends, teammates, classmates, colleagues, and family. That list of people includes: Super Bowl champions, Air Force General Officers, University presidents, Silver Star/Bronze Star recipients, C-level executives, Cancer survivors, Airline pilots, Couples who’ve celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary I could go on and on about these people, and it isn’t just about their titles or career accomplishments. It’s about their strong moral compass, intelligence, drive, work ethic and tireless pursuit towards making themselves better. Surrounding yourself with people better than you are can only make you better by association. Doing so only works if you pay attention and model the things they do. I wish I could say that I planned it this way, but it happened by circumstance rather than intention. When you’re that close to greatness all the time, you think that it’s normal. I was blessed to have amazing people who pushed me to be better. I thought everyone had people like this around them. Looking back, I wish I had been more intentional about it rather than being lucky. As it turns out, I was fortunate to have been along for the ride. By all comparisons, I’m a slacker. We are all products of our environments, but you can influence your outcome instead of just being along for the ride. Take charge. Surround yourself with people that are better/smarter/more successful than you. Watch and learn from them. Don’t be the 6th idiot. https://lnkd.in/gkaJDkZw

In my last post, I shared one of my 8 leadership lessons about “listening to your Senior NCO.” The Senior NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer) is that person you can depend on to tell you the truth about what’s going on in the business and has their finger on the pulse of the organization, whoever that might be for you. This piece of advice is relevant in any organization, not just the military. One of the biggest mistakes an Executive can make is assuming they know it all. I certainly don’t, and I know that every organization has that “Senior NCO” who knows the business inside and out. I figured I’d keep rolling and share another from my list of 8 leadership lessons. “Find a mentor” I got this advice a long time ago when I was a young leader early in my corporate career. The advice was not only to FIND a mentor, but to INVEST time in that relationship whether I needed anything from that person or not. Don’t wait until you need a job. Don’t wait until you have a problem to call your mentor. Meet with them as much as they will let you and pick their brain. Ask them what’s going on in their world. Learn from the things they’re dealing with. The “gray hair factor” is real. I didn’t use to think so, but then I realized:? How do you think it got that color? These 2 men were my mentors. Dick Schulte was a former CEO-turned-executive coach and taught me the art of self-awareness. He taught me how to know my blind spots as a person and how to “show up” as a leader the right way. I didn’t always do it right, but I knew when I got away from my base. I got the gift of hiring him as part of our team at Optiv for a few years. It was amazing getting to work with my mentor in the same business, not just as an advisor.? I miss my coffees and long talks with him. God rest his soul. John Kelley took me under his wing years ago and taught me the art of connection. He was, and still is, a master at connecting with people on a personal level. It didn’t come naturally to me, so I had to work at it. Leadership is all about connecting with other people: getting to know their story, their family, what makes them tick. Our 3-hour coffee meetings always left me feeling like I was the most important person on the planet, even though John regularly met with high-powered people in high places. I was a peon…. but John always made me feel like I was one of those high-powered people. He was genuinely curious about what was going on in my life, and he remains that way today. I am a better leader and human for having these 2 men as my mentors. Who’s yours? https://lnkd.in/g57PUfVS

Occasionally, I get asked to share my thoughts on leadership with groups of leaders and other high potential people. I’ve accumulated a few lessons over 30 years, and most of them come from firsthand mistakes. That’s how leadership has historically been learned – by trial and error. There were lots of errors and a few successes mixed in over my career, and this is one of the things I did right. What is that lesson? This may not make sense quite yet, but it will: “Listen to your Senior NCO” I spent the first 12 years of my adult working life in the United States Air Force. The first 4 years were spent as a cadet at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO, where we learned the theoretical side of leadership, amongst the various other required engineering disciplines. We had some opportunities to practice leadership, but it wasn’t real….. or “the real Air Force” as we called it. Then, following graduation, I paid back Uncle Sam for my college education by serving on active duty as a commissioned officer for another 8 years. That’s when the real Air Force taught me Leadership Lesson Number One (“Listen to your Senior NCO”). For those that didn’t serve in the military, the “Senior Non-Commissioned Officer” is a seasoned enlisted leader who joined as an enlisted soldier/sailor/airman straight out of high school. Then, as they got promoted over time, they became “Senior NCO’s. Among other things, a Senior NCO is responsible for training young, commissioned officers - making sure those young officers don’t do something stupid, and more importantly, learn the right way to lead. They tell the young officers appointed over them what’s really going on in the organization. Senior NCO’s technically “report to” those officers, but they really run the organization day to day. Senior NCO’s have a wealth of experience that those young officers don’t have, and often must toe the fine line between superior/subordinate. It’s an art form. I was one of those “young officers” in the early 1990’s and this man, Chief Master Sergeant Van Ray, drew the short straw. He got assigned to guide me as a young Second Lieutenant in 1993. I’m sure he was thrilled (sarcasm intended). I recently had dinner with Chief Ray for the first time in 30 years. I pulled out my challenge coin that he gave me 30 years ago (a token of respect given from one airman to another), and I reminded him that HE was the reason why I’ve had success in my career. He taught me the following things, many of which still apply today in the corporate setting: Listen to your key leaders. You don’t have to make all the decisions alone. “Praise in public and criticize in private.” I could go on. Thank you, Chief Ray. Your words didn’t fall on deaf ears. https://lnkd.in/gvMF4iSG