Most leaders get corrected with a meeting or an email.

But Marcus Perez got corrected by a commander who took the controls of the helicopter, dropped it toward the water, and told him, if this engine quits now, you're dead.

That moment became the most powerful leadership role he's used ever since.

Went to a field site to pick up a private brand new in the Army.

I started buzzing fishing boats.

I got pretty low.

Needless to say, I broke all those rules.

But at the end, behind me was my boss's boss who radio called in.

I knew I was in trouble.

But instead of punishing his commander, used the next day's flight to teach the leadership rule that Marc Castill uses to lead thousands.

I remember in that moment thinking, you know, a boss's job is to teach as much as it is to hold people accountable.

Teaching people so they can be accountable is really a key tenet to leadership.

You know, I had a boss who told me once, well, tell him a version of the truth.

And I remember looking at him and saying, the truth doesn't have versions where I'm from.

By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly how to lead people through chaos, mistakes and pressure without losing their trust.

First, you'll hear the inside the cockpit moment that started it all.

Then we break down why it works and how Marcus applies it today in high stakes leadership and how you can use these same principles immediately with your own team.

Welcome back to Lead the Team.

I'm your host, Ben Fanning, and this conversation that you're going to hear is meant to challenge, inspire and ripple out.

It's not just a podcast.

It's a positive movement to build better leaders.

And you can help by taking just 10 seconds to rate and follow on Apple, Spotify and YouTube and drop a quick review over on Apple.

This helps more bold leaders discover the show and keeps the mission alive.

Enjoy.

Tell me about the helicopter mistake that made you a better leader.

I went to a field site to pick up a private brand new in the army.

He'd never been in a helicopter before.

It was a beautiful day.

We were flying over the coast of the Sea of Japan and I thought, never been in a helicopter before.

Well, let's have a little fun.

And so we took off and I had to drop him at a field site on the way to a mission and I started having a little fun with him.

The doors were off.

It was a beautiful day.

I started buzzing fishing boats.

I got pretty low.

Now when you're flying in the field, there's usually an established hard deck which is, at a certain elevation, you're not supposed to go below that altitude for lots of reasons.

Needless to say, I broke all those rules, But I was having a great time.

The kid was having a great time.

It was pretty awesome.

But at the end, you got to climb up to the designated altitude to make sure that you're cleared to land.

I did that, and as I radio called in, behind me was my boss's boss, who radio called in and then said, I'm number two behind that aircraft.

I knew I was in trouble, so I descended.

I let the young man out of the aircraft.

I quickly refueled and went about my business.

Nothing was ever said.

The next day, I. I flew into a field site to get briefed for a mission, and my boss was there, and he said, hey, Lieutenant, how about I go flying with you today?

I said, that sounds great, sir.

He climbs in, we strap in, we.

Off we go, and we're basically taking the same route.

And I'm minding my P's and Q's, staying at the right altitude, doing everything, you know, perfectly.

He says, hey, mind if I fly?

I said, no, sir, you got it.

He takes the controls, and he starts to slowly descend and do exactly what I was doing.

Buzzing fishing boats, having a big time.

And he doesn't say anything for a few minutes.

Then he looks at me and he says, you know, in the.

In special ops, the aircraft are equipped with a radar altimeter that tells you exactly how high you are off the ground or the water.

I was like, that's pretty cool, sir.

Keeps doing it for a few more minutes, and then he looks at me and he says, you think you could make it to the shore if the engine died right now?

And I being a cocky lieutenant, I said, yeah, sir.

We'd probably get the feet.

The skids.

We probably get the feet wet.

Well, we'd be all right.

He said, I bet you would.

Descends a little more, keeps doing his thing, and then looks at me and says, I don't care how good you are, if the engine quits now, you're dead.

That's why he goes, that's why we have a hard deck.

And I knew in that moment this was his way of teaching me.

Instead of fussing at me, he paused.

He kept doing it for another 30 seconds or so, and then looks over and he goes, sure.

It's fun, though, isn't it?

And I got a big smile on my face.

He climbed up, and we continued on.

And I remember in that moment thinking, you know, a boss's job is to teach as much as it is to hold people accountable.

Holding people accountable is important, but teaching people so they can be accountable is really a key tenet to leadership.

It's the learning I took with me everywhere I went ever since.

Shout out to Colonel Binkley if he's still.

Listen.

Somehow listening to this, because it was probably the best lesson I've ever got.

And what a powerful way to deliver that lesson.

How?

Like that.

Having fun with the fishing boats.

Like how, how high, how close is a buzzing the fishing boat?

Like how close are you?

5 or 10ft.

Oh my gosh.

And the fishermen probably don't appreciate this.

Well, I, I, I'm not sure they, or they're not really scared.

It was probably pretty exciting for them too.

Just wondering what the heck we were doing.

We weren't in the area of engagement yet, so I wasn't worried about getting shot at, but it was just fun.

Right.

And, and poor young private, he was having a big time.

So yeah, it was, it was just.

A great learning from a military standpoint.

That's why we have a hard deck.

Because if you have any problems with this aircraft, there's no room, there's no wiggle room.

That's right.

Because you're like going right into the water at that point, right?

That's right.

That's right.

As long as they're good.

Helicopters don't glide like airplanes.

They drop like a giant brick when the engine.

So, okay, it wasn't, I mean, I understood what he was saying about the hard deck, but it was more about, you know, I found out much later that he got lit on fire by his boss for my behavior.

He never said a word.

He never said, hey, you know, reprimand me, fuss at me, whatever, which in the military is pretty common.

He didn't do any of that.

He taught me something.

And he did it in a way that lasted with me for, I mean, that was 40 years ago.

Yeah.

In the movies, when something goes down, like in this, the military, like in Top Gun, when Tom Cruise goes with Buzz the Tower or whatever, there's a, there's a lot of problems.

Right.

They're not very kind to him.

He keeps doing, he keeps doing it and he gets in trouble.

From your standpoint, did you have a, it sounds like you had a pre existing relationship with this leader.

Like you had made positive deposits in those relationship, in that relationship made some trust with him, am I right?

So when this happened, he didn't just lay down the law.

He was sort of taking you through A different way of coaching.

That's right.

I'd been in, in the theater for, you know, I'd been in the area of operation there for almost a year.

At that point, I was pretty experienced.

He knew I knew what I was doing.

He knew that I wasn't just being a cowboy, right?

Just doing whatever I wanted, feeling like the rules didn't apply to me.

He knew there was probably a reason, knowing that I, that, you know, brand new people in country when you're deployed are called turtles.

So he knew that I had a turtle on board and I was just trying to let the kid have a good time.

He knew I knew what I was doing with the aircraft.

I'd been in a few situations, so he knew I knew what I was doing.

It wasn't a matter of reprimanding me because I wasn't a rule follower or anything.

I had built up some trust with my performance.

But I'd like to believe that even if I hadn't built up that much trust, if I'd just been, you know, a responsible, accountable guy, he would have handled it the same way.

Now I, I saw him handle others differently based on circumstances.

But it, I think it was the circumstances too, was, was all a bit in, in.

In fun.

And when you're deployed, fun is hard to find.

So.

Yeah.

And am I right, you're in the demilitarized zone between north and South Korea?

That's right.

That's right.

What was that like, knowing that you've got, on one side, you've got like, almost like Western culture combined with Eastern culture and South Korea, and then you've got North Korea, who has access to nuclear weapons.

And there's no love loss between the United States and North Korea in general.

What was it like being in that?

Well, you know, north and South Korea are still two countries at ceasefire.

They're not at peace.

They're at ceasefire, literally.

And the DMZ is, is basically a, a swath of land between the two countries that's de.

Vegetized.

It's pretty hard to miss.

But at the time, this was like a desert.

It's like a desert between the two, like totally cleared out.

It's, it's, it's dirt and rocks.

You know, there's, there's some elevation there.

But back in the early 90s, part of what the North Koreans like to do was sort of send folks to infiltrate into the south to, you know, sneak and peek, look around.

And so part of the mission was to make sure that folks weren't doing that it was really interesting, right?

Two countries at ceasefire, not at peace.

And so you understand the, you know, the rules of engagement and how they are.

What did you learn about leadership there from your time as a helicopter leader?

Like what.

What's been one of the greatest lessons as a helicopter commander as well as working in that area between two factions of that are not at peace?

Yeah.

I think you'd focus on, you know, the thing I learned particularly deployed, is you.

You focus on the troops.

That same boss, he had three rules of thumb.

One was, crap happens.

He used a different word.

Two, you can say that word on this show.

It's a lot.

That's okay.

Two is, you know, take care of the troops, because the troops will take care of you.

And the third one was just tell the truth.

I can always handle it.

And I remember thinking that's.

That's pretty basic.

Right.

Here we are deployed in an essentially hostile environment, and his.

These are his rules.

And then you reflect back on it and think, those three rules pretty much covered it.

Right.

Always tell the truth, even when it's bad news.

Right.

One of the things I love most about Altera and Harris is we live these 10 core values, one of which is bad news doesn't get better with time, which is essentially just tell the truth, we can handle it, and take care of the troops because they'll always take care of you.

And you learn pretty early that leadership is not a reward, it's a responsibility.

And.

Right.

My definition of leadership is to serve others for their benefit.

And I think I learned that, you know, those formative years in the military, you really understand that, you know, particularly where, as a pilot that, you know, the squadron you're in charge of has a bunch of folks, a handful of pilots, but a bunch of people.

And those people refuel it, rearm it, fix it.

And if you don't take care of those folks, you're going to climb into an aircraft that they've been working on.

You might want to make sure that, you know, you're doing everything you can do to support them.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

So of those three tenants that you received early on have been so helpful for your career, which of those has been the most difficult to keep implementing?

I think that the crap happens one, because, look, telling the truth is pretty easy, I think.

You know, I had a boss once who remained nameless who told me once, well, tell him a version of the truth.

And I remember looking at him and saying, the truth doesn't have versions where I'm from.

So I Think that was pretty direct and straightforward.

I think taking care of the troops is an easy one.

Again, I think if, if your focus is on serving others for their benefit, that's relatively straightforward.

But stuff happens and, and sometimes stuff happens that you don't expect, that you didn't predict, you didn't anticipate it.

And so how you deal with that in the moment, particularly under chaos or pressure, that can be hard sometimes.

And we're all human, we all make mistakes.

I've made thousands of them.

And one of them is sometimes my intensity level can be a little alarming.

And I learned it, I learned a great lesson about it because sometimes right in those extreme moments, the last thing we need is, is more intensity.

Oh yeah.

And what happens if you bring more intensity to an already intense situation.

Particularly where folks aren't used to it?

I had a, a boss here at Harris named Steve Hammond who was amazing.

And I remember we had a goal at I, I ran a business called Pisces, which was a carve out we bought from Optum that was operating room software.

And the challenge when I came back to Harris to, to run Pisces was to grow the business.

And we were still new in the healthcare space couple years and none of our healthcare businesses were growing.

And so the challenge was, can you make this business grow?

And it was very modest growth, 2%.

And so I pushed the team and ultimately we finished the year at 2.01% growth, which was awesome.

But when he came to give me my review, he actually said, you know, listen, sometimes your intensity level is a little much for regular folks and you really need to think about how you deliver messages.

I could be pretty direct, pretty frank.

I use all the words available.

My daughter likes to say, she knows that my intensity level is high when I use the knife hand, so.

Wow.

He said, and, and he said, you know, and I was a little defensive when he gave me the feedback and he said, you know, you just have to be mindful of that.

My response was, well, Steve, you got to remember I'm ex military guy.

I was a pilot.

You know, if people don't do their jobs, people die.

And he looked at me and smiled and said, marcus, it's software.

Nobody's dying.

And it was such a great line.

And I've, I've, I remember thinking, I get it right.

That was really the transition for me from, you know, military leader to civilian leader is, he's right now it is health care.

And metaphorically, yes, we do.

You know, we are trying to help clinicians do all they can do to save lives.

However, everything we deal with, there is an answer.

We just have to find it.

And sometimes the way to find an answer is in the calm, not the chaos.

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Well, it's so interesting.

First of all, I don't experiencing, I don't experience you in this interview as that intense.

You seem very relaxed, very casual, very approachable.

Like people are probably watching now and be like, oh yeah, I'd like to work with that guy, you know, but then you put up the knife hand and I'm like, oh, okay, I can see, I can see it popping out.

And I think it's really great that, number one, even as an executive in that moment, you were open to that kind of feedback about your intensity level because you'd been rewarded for that intensity.

Probably you, you probably survived because of that as a helicopter pilot and to stay open as a leader to that kind of feedback that, hey, all the stuff that made you successful before, especially this big trait, doesn't work the same way in this environment.

You got to change.

That's, that's impressive.

Well, you know, they say feedback is a gift and I think everybody says that, but not everybody believes it, but it really is true.

I think feedback is a gift and you should be open to it to receive it.

Yeah, good, good advice for leaders.

And also going back to your three adages about shit happens being the hardest one to remember.

And I think it's important for leaders to go in with a plan.

I'm curious about you thinking about this.

Like, if you go in with a mindset of, hey, it's going to happen, it's going to hit the fan.

We don't really know how it's going to show up, but it's going to happen.

I suspect in your, when it does, you're like, okay, this is the stuff we were like.

We knew something was going to happen and you're going to stay calmer.

You're going to be able to respond with a cooler head and become more effective versus, I mean do you find sometimes leaders just expect their plan to go accordingly, like it is, and then they get mad when it doesn't like it was gonna happen?

I think it's a great question.

I do see people getting emotionally attached to a strategy, and then that makes it hard to pivot.

Right.

You spend so much time thinking through a plan, thinking through a strategy, how you're going to execute.

You got all this, particularly in industry, large organizations.

There's a lot of moving parts that have to get coordinated, and you've done all the work to do that.

And then something happens that really tells you you need to pivot, but you don't want to because you're so invested and you want that.

You in your heart, you just want it to work.

And I think that's where folks get it wrong because you.

Stuff happens.

You got to be able to pivot, and I think you've got to be able to pivot, you know, with poise.

And it's okay to pivot with intensity, but.

But it's the pivot that matters.

And, you know, we learn that every day in the businesses we run at Harris and csi.

Right.

That these are the businesses.

We buy that because we acquire business and keep it forever.

My favorite analogy is we.

We run our businesses like you drive your car versus how you drive a rental.

Right.

We're going to keep the business forever.

So we're going.

We're going to run it with a long horizon view, and I think that helps us immensely repair businesses and help them grow over time.

Oh, I like that.

Yeah.

You're not doing donuts in the parking lot with the, with the businesses you buy.

Right.

This is ours.

We're going to keep this thing running for a long time.

What's the career risk that changed your trajectory?

The career risk.

Wow.

So I think it was when I came to Harris in 2012, so when I left the military and then I was a coach for a while.

When I left that and got into sort of the private sector, I found myself in sales and then ultimately sales leadership roles, which I quite liked.

I enjoyed, you know, the, the.

The competition, if you will, of, of selling.

Why did you leave?

I mean, Division 1 basketball seems like the coolest thing.

And you were at Missouri, right?

You had like a good major Division 1 basketball coaching gig.

Yeah, and we went to the Elite Eight 2002, and we were preseason number three in the country at one point.

It was pretty fun.

I think ultimately I left coaching because the business of college coaching isn't linear.

There's no Clear sort of understanding of how things work.

It's sort of, it's always chaotic.

I had small children, I was never home.

My livelihood depended on the decisions of a 17 to 22 year old male.

I'm not sure how many people want to do that.

And I just found that, you know, my sort of value system in the way I wanted to live as a husband and father was in conflict with the way the, that business ran.

It's much different today now, that was in the early 2000s, so I got out of coaching in 2005.

It's a lot different now, particularly with NIL and the transfer portal, than it was 20 years ago.

Oh my gosh, man.

Has that changed everything or what?

It has, it has.

So I, I just wanted a little bit more of a stable home life and I still loved competing.

So the sales part of me.

Okay.

Oh, got to, I see it now.

Okay.

I can't do that anymore.

I'm not into that.

But where can I channel my competitive choices into this thing?

Yeah, yeah.

So I was, I did that for a while and then I got hired by a business here in North Florida and we had some assets that were software assets.

And I was asked to sort of make something of this, of the sales strategy because it wasn't working.

And after about three months of analysis and visiting clients and learning, I suggested that we sell the assets.

And we did, and we sold them to Harris.

And the day before the acquisition was final, I met with Jeff Bender, who is the executive chairman of Harris today, and Jerry Canada, who just retired, but he ran the public sector businesses then.

He ran healthcare.

And, and I said to them, are you, are you sure you know what you're buying?

Here are the challenges.

And later in the day, again, day before the transaction closes later in the day, Jeff Bender came to me and said, I think you should come over and run this business.

And I laughed at him because I was a sales guy, didn't know anything about running a software business.

And that's what I said.

I have no idea how to run a software company.

I would be lost.

I'm not a technologist.

No, no thanks.

And he looked at me and said, well, we'll teach you.

And soon as he said that, I was hooked.

And that was almost 14 years ago now.

Wow, what a cool opportunity.

Someone that said, hey, you know, you, you were up front with what you thought you were up front about, I guess, your strengths and your weaknesses in that, like you hadn't done this before.

And then someone will say, hey, I can Teach you that.

So he believed that you had the essence of what to like.

What were you bringing into that?

He's like, I can.

He.

And he said, I can teach Marcus the rest.

But what was that about you that you were bringing that he felt like he.

You could run this business?

To be honest with you, Ben, I have no idea.

You have to ask my boyish charm.

What?

Wow.

I think you'd have to ask him that question because I asked him.

No, I never did look a gift.

Horse in the mouth.

I took it and ran with it.

I. I think I would like to believe I have lots of.

Because I'm a coach.

I still coach a high school basketball team for fun.

Wow.

And I have lots of.

One of my phrases is, I don't get discouraged.

I get determined.

Right.

Don't get discouraged.

Get determined when things go wrong.

I think Jeff probably saw that in me.

As I reflect back now on our 10 core values.

I'm a relatively disciplined cat.

That's just the way I like to live.

I'm pretty determined.

I don't have a problem being decisive or even being unpopular to do it.

I do pour myself into things.

I think love is a big quality leaders have to have.

You got to love what you do.

You got to love the people you serve.

You got to really, you know, invest in that.

I think he saw those things.

Probably be good.

You should get him on your podcast.

He'd be a good one to ask that question.

Sounds like a good fit.

Yeah.

He's like, let me.

Let me ask you.

The first question is, why did you give Marcus such a great opportunity?

He doesn't know.

So you're, like, given this huge opportunity, and you got determined quickly.

Yeah.

And things went pretty darn well.

Well, it was a small business at the time.

It was in the public sector.

It was county clerk recorder software, so marriage licenses, death certificates, and mortgages.

I worked for a very large lending mortgage company, and so that was the software we sold to Harris, and I didn't know anything about any of it.

And you just go learn.

You just.

I think curiosity is another key quality of being a leader.

Right.

And so I was curious.

I'm curious by nature, so.

Wow.

And that.

And that.

That was a risk, and it paid off because it got you into a whole nother level of leadership.

And it looks like, based on your background, you did not stop.

You kept rolling.

And here you are leading ALTERA today.

Altera Digital Health.

What.

What's broken in the industry, and what is your bold fix there?

Wow.

That's a so many things I think in healthcare that are a challenge.

At the end of the day, the consumer in healthcare is the patient.

So if you approach it that way, you can understand where are the challenges.

I think one of the biggest challenges is in the data.

In 2008, when interoperability and EHRs became a thing, the idea was instead of paper records, we'll have electronic records so that wherever you go to get care, all that data will be there.

We'll know everything about Ben we need to know to provide for him the best care possible.

The reality is that doesn't exist today.

Still 13 years later, we still don't have real operability.

This doctor, like you go see this doctor, they don't know what anything else about your healthcare background.

And if you don't tell them, guess what, they're just like starting over.

They're running redundant tests.

Correct.

They're charging your insurance company, your insurance company's confused because they're not going to pay again, money and efficiencies, just overall patient miserableness in terms of getting.

That's right.

And imagine what it does to the clinicians.

Right.

I think the clinicians then, who've invested an inordinate amount of effort and resource to go through medical school now, they're struggling too because they don't know they're ordering redundant tests.

They don't know things about you that maybe not every patient knows their health history or is at least honest about it.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, like an ailing parent, by the way, like the baby boomers are getting older now, the kids are having to get involved and they're not able to communicate because the documents aren't there.

There's not a lot of clarity on that.

That's right.

My 85 year old mother lives a half a mile from me and I live that every day.

And so I think, you know, if you think about what the biggest roadblocks are to great care, start there.

And that's where we are choosing to at Altera Digital Health, where we're really investing some time.

AI is a, is a big lever to pull.

But again, even with AI data matters.

To have great AI, bad data will give you bad results from AI.

So you need trusted data.

Worse, you know, I think with the advent of technology, we are, I think closer than anyone now on being able to create trusted data across any platform out there.

And that I think will change how patients can interact and get careful.

It also then enables clinicians because they need the data at the point of care to make the Right decision at the right time and ultimately for us.

And I know this may sound odd in the industry, but our vision is to measure our success by our clients outcomes.

And so what are the outcomes?

A hospital, a health system or a physician practice, what are the outcomes they want?

And if the outcomes are fewer repeat returns to the ER or if the outcomes are, you know, revenue is, it's a business.

Many healthcare systems are operating on razor thin margins because of the way reimbursements work.

If it is in fact, you know, improving and lowering claim denials and all that sort of stuff.

We want to measure our success by the outcomes that matter to them.

And it's really three things.

Enabling clinicians again with data, with tools that allow them to get back to patient care and away from keyboards and mouses and reporting.

Right.

We have a cool ambient listening product out there now for multiple EHRs that we own that will allow a clinician and a patient to have a conversation and full documentation.

Not just, you know, not, not just listening but fully then taking that information and embedding it in the physician document.

Because a lot of clinicians now spend an awful lot of time, they call it pajama time where they're documenting at night.

My wife is an occupation, she's an occupational therapist and she spends every evening.

Documenting, taking those notes, documenting to be.

Yeah, and then that's huge because huge.

It's accurate.

The doctors don't have to interpret everything and remember everything when they seen 20 patients.

And the best part is, you know, 20 years from now if a 18 year old, 22 year old person is going to be in their 40s and have healthcare problems like it's going to be documented, the real information will be on there, legible.

And then hopefully.

Right.

It's going to free up the doctors to be doctors again, not just a bunch of note takers.

That's right.

And, and that flow of data between systems will allow those clinicians to have the information and it's trustworthy.

Because right now the problem is the data isn't trustworthy because of the way it flows.

So we want to enable clinicians so they can right, live better lives, see more patients, provide better care with the right information.

We want to empower patients.

We, the patient is the consumer.

So let's empower patients to be able to have control of their healthcare journey and understand the costs and understand the, the tests and the diagnoses and the outcomes again so they can have better outcomes.

And then the third is, is really transforming healthcare organizations.

If you, if you Think about any industry.

Industries transform, usually through some change.

Think about Amazon and the way we shop now.

And I think in healthcare, healthcare is slower to change, but at some point care is going to fundamentally change.

How you get care will change.

It's already happening.

If you think about, you can go online today and order products from hims or hers that are.

That you just can have a call with a doctor or input some information and get written a prescription that arrives at your door.

I think over time, healthcare organizations are all going to work more like on demand services, just like all the other things we have in our lives that have become on demand.

What's that?

What are the biggest risk for you right now in this industry?

Because you're dealing with data, you're dealing with AI and you're dealing with probably a lot of people who focus on healthcare and not data and information.

There's a risk of it leaking, of it getting messed up if it, I mean, it's a, it's like you're building this tremendous resource, but it can be used for good or evil.

Right.

In terms of how.

Just like any data and true and it's truth.

Right.

It's not a interpreted health care moment.

This is like the people, human beings, real health care, real vital information and it's a treasure trove for research, for healing them, for their families, for, for everything.

What, how are the risks from your perspective?

So I, I think you can lean too heavily on automated intelligence and nada or artificial intelligence and not heavily enough on human intelligence.

Right.

And what we're choosing to do is really lean in on the human connection and creating the tools and the processes to make that connection stronger and more effective.

And so yes, you've got to really think about data security.

I think again, our focus is not only on security, but on the trustworthiness of that data.

We know that data is correct.

We are working very closely with Microsoft and databricks to make sure and obviously we're in using healthgorilla to make sure that we have this qualified health information network so we can share data across any platform.

But being able to harmonize and synthesize that data exactly for what you've described, that data unlocks the secrets to improving care through analysis, which is what AI can do.

Right.

Hey, a patient presents with these conditions and comorbidities.

If you could look back at all the previous patients who looked similar and had similar circumstances and all the different potential treatment courses and which ones had the highest effectiveness, you suddenly get directed down a path that helps you deliver Better care faster.

And I think that's where healthcare is going again.

Our third priority is transforming organizations.

Healthcare folks want this, they just don't know how to get there because no one has gotten there yet.

And I think what we want to do is again measure our success by our clients outcomes, which means we're in the boat with you.

And so how do you help us understand what your outcomes are, the ones you want, how you measure them and then how do we make improvements to those things?

Yeah, I really like that.

And I feel like you're, you're giving us all a good leadership blueprint to think about the expansiveness of data and information right now and other industries because it's like, it's almost like trying to boil the ocean.

If you look at data, what we could do, it's nice to talk about it from a really high perspective, high level perspective for the Wall Street Journal and get everybody excited about it and try to jack up a stock price.

But it's a whole another deal if you're like wait a minute, what are we going to actually action and what can we actually do?

And I think you're asking the right question there.

Hey, what does the real customer need?

Well, what is that outcome they want?

And then we're going to take all of this, all these tools and technology we have and we're going to focus it like a laser beam, you know, at that problem.

And I think a lot of leaders are, are really struggling and industries are struggling and that's why we're not seeing a lot of the benefits of AI right now in, in, in commerce because there's just too many options.

Sounds like I've got a, well, I've got a way to solve that though.

Yeah, I think this idea of AI and OHAI can do all these things, which it can, it can do all kinds of things, but it relies on two pieces.

One is the data has to be accurate because you can ask chat GPT questions.

And if it doesn't have good data, it will manufacture an answer.

Oh yes, a good sounding one.

That's right.

And it's convincing.

And the second thing it needs is human expertise.

So no AI is going to take the place of a clinician because AI had, does not have the experience that comes with dealing with humans every day.

And so if you have great data and great human expertise, you can really leverage AI in any industry.

But without it you run the risk of going down roads that just will lead you nowhere.

And so we have taken a very human centric approach to using AI.

We've got hundreds of AI initiatives and experiments going on, but they still all come right back to how do we help empower patients, enable clinicians and transform organizations?

And I think in business as a leader, your job is to keep everybody's eyes on the right things.

It's easy to get distracted, particularly in health care with there's lots of noise.

But if you keep focused on, you know, what we're focused on relative to those three things, I think you, you have a great chance of delivering real value.

And ultimately in any business, your job is to deliver value for your clients.

And if we're delivering value, we will be around forever.

And that's the goal at csi, is to run businesses that will last forever.

Forever.

Because we will never divest the assets we buy.

Ever.

You ain't running that car, baby.

You are out of the car.

We are not rent.

That's right.

Well, I think that's a good mic drop because I feel like that's how you lead in general, right.

With your team.

You know, like your companies don't treat it like a temporary asset of anything.

Right.

If you, if you're playing the long game, people like to be treated that way, treat your career that way.

The companies and directionally, you know, you're going to be heading up into the right.

That's right.

Thanks for joining us on lead the team, my friend.

Thanks, Marcus and fun Ben.

So happy to be here.

Really appreciate it.

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