Great leaders aren't separated by vision.

They're separated by discipline.

Especially when things get messy, complex, and unclear.

Bob Hughes, president and CEO over at Deltec, learned this lesson early.

Not in business school, but in the US Navy on nuclear submarine.

Admiral Rickover, who is known as the father of the US Nuclear Navy, had a say in the devil's in the details, but so is salvation.

Bob would later lead a $22 billion merger.

Two massive culture cultures forced together.

Day one, alignment with the merger.

For me, it's not about structure.

It's about shared outcomes.

Most leaders are warned, inspect too much and you destroy trust.

But Bob learned the opposite.

Operational discipline scales trust.

Then came the moment that no leader wants.

He led his team to respond to a massive ransomware attack.

That was the most challenging experience of my professional career.

You can't control the environment, but you can control your response.

In this conversation, you'll hear what happens when leaders stop avoiding the mess and learn to operate inside it.

No slogans, no simple playbooks, just the moments where leadership is actually forged.

It's time to lead the 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 to.

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.

So you helped integrate two $11 billion giants into one, and very few leaders can say they've been a part of something like that.

Most executives fail when they get into emerging cultures just a tenth of that size.

What's the one lesson you used to keep those teams within those organizations moving in the same direction on day one, when it became ukg, you know, day

one alignment with a merger.

For me, it's not about structure, it's about shared outcomes.

And it's about shared outcomes really making the customer the center of the conversation.

Not the org chart, not our own know sort of internal structures.

And so and so that's really the sort of North Star, I think as you think about how to bring teams together and align around a common goal.

Certainly data matters.

I'm a big believer in data.

I know lots of executives are.

And you look, data informs decisions, but at the end of the day, people are who deliver outcomes.

Right.

And so as a leader, we've got to focus on the things that will enable people to deliver those outcomes in a consistent manner.

And so that's things like focus, it's things like collaboration, stewarding, curiosity.

And so I think that plus ensuring that you have a unified and strong culture moving forward together is paramount.

And so, look, culture scales, when teams really understand why they exist, what their purpose in life is.

And then I also have the systems and the processes behind the scenes to reinforce, you know, that mission.

And so that's how I sort of think about it and think about the big merger effort through the lens of customer first, focused on outcomes and balancing this sort of notion of data and, you know, humanity, frankly.

So you got a.

You got a lot of people on both sides of this equation, on both these companies.

And they had their own, I guess, for lack of a better word, mystique about them.

So.

So they were doing pretty well, right?

They were, like, recognized as having great cultures.

And then you're in charge of bringing them together.

And I love the idea of, hey, we gotta focus on the customer first, because if we don't have this customer, what are we even doing here?

But you got all these people that have worked there maybe for their whole lives, got their culture, and now they're sort of being forced to work with all these other people.

Did you guys sit around and say, hey, this is the kind of culture we want to create, or did you sort of put them on a compare and contrast and say, well, Chronos had this kind of culture.

You know, the other organization has this culture.

We're going to make a super culture.

Or what was the.

Like, take us behind the scenes on how you made those decisions, because I'm betting very few people ever have a chance to do something like that.

So I'm curious how you guys handle it.

Yeah, no, we addressed that topic head on from the very beginning.

And as you sort of described step one, we got the leadership teams of the companies together and we got on the table what we each feel is great about our cultures, what's unique about our cultures, and what some of the corresponding challenges associated with that culture.

Culture is.

And so that was sort of step one.

But then to your point, we sort of put that a little bit aside and focused the conversation around.

Okay, with that sort of his background, what do we want the culture of the combined organization to be?

What's important to us?

And where do we see ourselves as a company?

3 years, 5 years, 10 years?

What's unique about us?

How are we going to differentiate ourselves?

How are we going to provide the best customer experience?

Possible over the long arc of time.

And so those are the kinds of conversations we had about providing a great customer experience, about really being an employer of choice, a place where employees could throw their careers and thrive.

And so these are the kinds of cultural discussions we had to design what we wanted to be.

And believe it or not, we actually, as part of this exercise, we actually tried to visualize this too.

So we sort of did sort of a thought experiment.

Imagine we are on the COVID of a, you know, major news publication showcasing how successful we were in this merger.

What would the COVID of that magazine look like?

What would, what would sort of Victory, if you will look like for us?

You know, three years, five years in the picture.

And it's a really helpful thought experiment, right, because it helps us to focus on really where, where we're headed.

And so, and so that, that kicked off, you know, certainly a ton of work.

But that's how we, I think, started the merger in a positive way to align around culture.

So it obviously made a lot of press.

When you guys announced this $22 billion behemoth merger, you did this exercise.

What parts of that came to fruition, what parts didn't or maybe still yet to be realized from the magazine?

Well, I think, you know, like anything, you know, the, you know, strategy and planning is great and then sort of operational reality hits you, hits you square in the face and then you sort of, you know, adapt and move from there.

And that was sort of true, I think in the UKG experience.

And that's true in my experience with, with all mergers is that operational reality comes to fruition very quickly.

And that was the case in the merger too.

And so look, I think a big part of success in the merger and it was and continues to be successful.

I've moved away and now Deltec and doing a lot of great things at Deltec.

But I would say this focus on operational discipline, you know, it sort of goes back to, you know, what lessons I learned in the Navy.

And then, then it's a more larger at scale organizations which is, you know, to really, you know, inspect how does work get done.

Uncover institutional knowledge, who really understands, you know, the systems, the processes, where does the domain expertise lie, Identify critical decision flows, get feedback from all sorts of different constituencies and, and determine the downstream impact of some of, of, of all this.

That's, that's, that's examples of all those sort of in the goo operational work that's just critical in order to make sure that that vision, that strategy comes to life.

And sometimes that Stuff is tough, right.

And sometimes things take longer than you would otherwise hope.

And that's what we as leaders need to stay focused on.

And my perspective is, as a leader, you got to stay focused on the vision, right.

And communicating where we're headed and the strategy so that everyone understands, you know, the goals, notwithstanding some of the, you know, operational challenges along the way.

So what's the lesson you learned driving a nuclear reactor around that you think you couldn't have learned anywhere else?

Yeah, look, it was a super fun experience.

You know, what I, what I, what I loved about it is at a young age, you know, I had the privilege of having a lot of responsibility and working in sort of a high stress environment.

And honestly, I think a lot of that does translate well into sort of corporate life.

And, and, you know, a few things that I learned.

Look, every role is important.

Certainly when you're working on a submarine, every role is critical.

It's, you know, in many ways it's us versus the operating environment, which is extremely dangerous.

And so every role has transferable principles.

You know, titles change, people, people may be different, but, but, but the mission doesn't change on a submarine.

You know, there's zero margin for error.

Right.

And so it's a, it's like 100% dependency on the team.

And the team has to operate effectively together, has to be, you know, proverbial rolling in the same direction.

And so that, that creates a, you know, a mission first mindset.

You know, trust over ego.

Collaboration is survival.

And I think a lot of those characteristics, I know a lot of those characteristics were very transferable to working in a place like Deltec, working in the corporate environment, leadership.

It's about aligning people, right?

It's not controlling them, it's helping them see around corners, anticipate what might be coming, help guide better decision making, help reducing friction under pressure.

And so that's, I think a lot of those mindset principles that I learned in the Navy are how we operate at Beltech and how we build, you know, intelligent systems that support our customers.

And our customers are people doing really high stakes, stressful, important work.

And so I think it's, it's a

good, really good parallel, I believe, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, that you're known for one of these sayings.

You, I believe it's, you get what you inspect, not what you expect, or something along those lines.

That's right.

That's right.

Yeah.

I learned that in the Navy, by the way.

Yeah.

Okay.

So you have been rewarded and you have probably kept a lot of crises from happening on a submarine, but with that.

That's right.

However, you're leading teams now a lot bigger.

You have thousands of people here, thousands of people before, and you're in this field now.

Of all the software development, you know, I guess, as you were before too, to a lot of degree.

Where do you draw the line from?

Okay, I'm, I'm inspecting.

You know, expect what you inspect and then versus making your team feel like you're just micromanaging them and then driving yourself crazy to burnout because you're like, I need to know the details.

I've got to know the details.

You keep going down, down, down, down, down, until you've just, you know, exhausted yourself.

So it's like on one hand, there's a huge advantage to that saying and leading.

When has this come back to bite you personally and how do you balance it?

It's a really good question.

It's a really good point.

Look, you know, it's funny.

I think Admiral Rickover, who is, who's sort of known as the father of the US Nuclear Navy, had a saying that, you know, a lot of people used to love to run around saying, the devil's in the details.

The devil's in the details.

And he would say, but so is salvation.

So is salvation.

And so, and so I learned that sort of early on.

Look, I'm a big believer that operational discipline scales trust.

It really does, you know.

And so for me, this inspection, this notion of inspection, it's about outcomes.

It's about outcomes, it's not about activity.

And so I think that type of rigor enables creativity and encourages creativity.

It doesn't suppress it.

Look, what I learned in the Navy, like, readiness is non negotiable.

And I learned that through my corporate career as well.

Readiness is non negotiable.

And so you inspect your systems so that people can perform to their best.

And so as a leader in business, we inspect things like our signals, we inspect our data, but we don't inspect every move.

We're ultimately interested in outcomes and trying to replace sort of gut feel with, you know, data and customer insight.

And so that's the aspect of inspection that I think is a positive for everyone involved in a company.

And so when I think about, you know, like how we do, I do this in my daily work at Deltec, you know, what does this mean for us?

I mean, it's about the health of our platform, it's about the integrity of our data, it's about our customers, and again, making sure that our customers are achieving the best outcomes possible with our solutions.

And so those are the, the sort of things that we rigorously inspect to make sure that we're doing everything we can, you know, to provide an awesome customer experience.

And we did that, by the way.

By the way.

And all this stuff, in my view, is, is that much more critical given everything we've got going on with AI.

You know, making sure that AI is governed, making sure that AI is reliable, making sure that AI is trusted.

And these, these notions.

It's.

It's critical, in my view, that we continue to inspect, to make sure that we're delivering on that promise.

Is there a place where you've inspected too much or you've gone too deep in the business from your perspective, or you believe it's.

You need to go all the way down, down, down, down to the very granular level?

Yeah, I think it depends.

It depends.

I mean, I do think oftentimes as a leader, you do need to get into those, you know, into the granular levels of things to be able to really understand what's going on, to really identify root cause.

You know, I'm actually, I'm passionate about continuous improvement, and I think that's a discipline and operational discipline as an organization that was sort of born out of the manufacturing world, but has huge parallels with all companies, including software companies.

And just this notion that we can continue to get better in every process a little bit each day, each week, each month pays huge dividends.

And so I think that the best way to really get good at that is to get very granular.

And I think if you look this notion of concern around micromanaging, that's a legitimate concern, but I think it's one that is relatively easy to deflect if you're just very open, honest, transparent and communicative around the why, why we're doing this, why we're trying to get into the details.

And when you sort of can communicate that to people and explain how that relates to making the process better over the long arc of time, I think they really get it and they buy in.

And so it becomes much less about, you know, them feeling like you're inspecting their capabilities and more about the process and trying to make it better.

I think that.

I think you just said the magic thing there for me in that, because otherwise they're going to be on the defensive and it's not going to be a great experience for probably anybody.

But if it's more about transparency and sharing information and knowing what your intent is like, you know, to really improve the process.

It changes everything.

Do you have a certain methodology that you like to apply when you're diving in?

Yeah, it depends a little bit on the domain.

But I'm a big fan of process mapping.

You know, just getting it, like understanding, you know, again, it starts with the outcome, which, you know, in a software business, you know, almost always revolves around the customer and the type of customer experience that we want to deliver.

It starts with the outcome, and then you work backwards.

You work sort of upstream and.

And sort of map the whatever process it is that, you know, we're talking about to understand what are the dependencies, what are the points in that process where a decision has to be made, who's accountable for those decisions.

And by interrogating that along the full chain, in my experience, you always identify, you know, bottlenecks, either single points of failure or places where it's ambiguous or unclear to the people working in the process, you know, what the right next step is.

And so you just go after those bottlenecks in the process one by one and just continue to sort of iterate on that again with the North Star being the outcome.

And I think that that sort of process works really well.

And by the way, that's a.

It's a.

That's an organizational capability.

It's a discipline.

It's not.

That's.

It's not something that just one person is sort of running around, you know, with their hair on fire, trying to preach.

It's.

It's really something that as an organization, you need to get behind so that, you know, this approach can sort of take place at all levels in the organization.

You've talked about a phrase, repot the plants to keep them growing.

Curious.

How do you apply that within Deltec?

And if you had to apply that to yourself today, or you repot yourself as an amateur to accelerate your learning, where would you do it?

That's.

That's a good question.

You know, I learned that phrase repotting the plants from a.

From a former boss of mine many years ago, and it always sort of stuck with me.

And because I think he's right, sometimes.

Sometimes the pots need to be replanted just to, you know, give them a little better soil to grow and to expand.

And so.

So, like, my.

My perspective on this is like, you know, growth requires discomfort.

In fact, I think there was a recent super bowl ad that sort of was some sort of along those same lines, which really resonated with me.

You know, growth doesn't Come easy.

It almost by definition requires being out of your, out of your comfort zone.

And so it's about expanding, expanding, I think, your environment.

And so look, I think Deltec, the way I would describe Delta Deltec is a great company.

Strong culture, really strong legacy, deep institutional knowledge.

The things that we do for our customers.

I would argue we do, you know, better than anyone on the planet.

We have a very highly trusted position in high stakes industries.

And so we're privileged in that way.

It's a big responsibility.

But back to this sort of notion of repotting the plants.

AI is sort of, there's no question that AI is a new sort of environment, a new tool for us.

And it expands how customers win, expands how customers plan their projects, execute their projects, analyze their projects.

All the core capabilities that Deltec has done for years and years and years.

And so it really turns this sort of expertise that we have into intelligence.

And so that's the big opportunity for us.

And I think, you know, I think, you know, as I think about Deltec and this notion, we're continuously thinking about how do we repot our own plants, how do we continue to move people around and put them in new and interesting ways so that we can unlock the power of AI Given how it makes, you know, it makes business operations so much quicker, data, you know, synchronization so much quicker.

And all those great things that you sort of, we all know and it's just a, it's a huge opportunity for us.

And so.

Yeah, what would I like to do?

Yeah, we're gonna reply yourself.

Yeah, it's a good, it's a good question.

I mean, you know, look, I've, I always like, like I'm a, I'm sort of a lifelong learner and intellectually curious.

I love jumping into things that I don't know much about and so, and I like going deep on them because I think that's how, that's where you, you know, you really learn and figure out where things are connected.

But, you know, look at this stage of my career, honestly, I like, you know, one of the things I like the most about what I do is, is the teaching aspect of what I do is working with, you know, newer, you know, managers and leaders to, you know, just share my experience and share, you know, what works and what doesn't and sort of the management approach.

And so I would think, you know, sort of my role and more sort of a teaching capacity would be a lot of fun.

Be a lot of fun.

Are you looking to increase sales, grow your brand and share your leadership message.

Then check out our business podcast program.

Each week more people listen to podcasts that have Netflix accounts.

And one third of the US population listens to podcasts regularly.

So your customers and team are already listening to podcasts.

It should be yours.

Discover our five step profitable podcast framework and what results you can expect for your company by setting up a 20 minute call with my team@BenLeads.com that's BenLeeds.com schedule CEO/Teacher.

Well, it sounds like to me you've already repotted yourself as a teacher.

You're already rolling with it especially deal with us today.

Now for the listeners, right, this, you know, Deltec has got whatever been around over a decade, right?

Mike Corkery was the CEO who you replaced about a year and a half ago.

And they've got a good track record.

And you're coming in from what I can tell is more of the disruptor with the agentic AI mindset.

And you're here to potentially, I guess, continue to sort of change some things and innovate.

How do you think about being a disruptor in a company that prides itself on being, I guess quote the, the system of record.

And so for our listeners, right, you guys provide tons of AI software related services, SAS services to companies that provide serious infrastructure for government.

So there's really no, I mean you're, I guess you're not driving around nuclear stuff anymore.

But it's still pretty, it's, it's still very tight in terms of the, any mistakes and things like that.

So how are you balance the innovation with the responsibility to keep things steady?

Yeah, no, good question.

Look, so yeah, Deltec, you're right, we serve government contractors as well as architecture, engineering, construction and consulting firms.

And the common thread for all of our customers, regardless of what industry they're in, they all live and breathe projects, big complex compliance oriented projects.

And we have a number of solutions that help them to win projects, manage projects effectively, profitably, in a transparent manner and then analyze their performance so they can get better and improve with every subsequent project.

And so we've got a lot of cool tools.

Our customers are doing some of the most complex things in the world, whether it's building, you know, satellites, building bridges, designing cities.

You know, our customers are doing some really, really cool things, truly transforming the world.

So we're honored to support them in that endeavor.

And yeah, Deltec's actually I think 40 year old company, 40s.

Okay.

Yeah.

So has a lot longer than a decade then.

Yeah, so has a Lot of deep domain expertise, but you're absolutely right.

Look, my predecessor did a phenomenal job leading the ship at Deltec and so I sort of stepped into some big shoes, but I stepped in at a really interesting time for enterprise software.

And that's what really attracted me to this opportunity.

Sort of the, the combination of such a well respected, trusted, important, critical set of solutions that Deltec brings to our customers, coupled with this transformative innovation engine in the form of AI that not only can improve how we operate as an organization on behalf of our customers, but also can dramatically change the types of products that we're delivering to the market and help and gives us a unique opportunity, given that trust that we have with those customers, to help lead them into the AI era.

And so that's super, super cool from my perspective and what really, really attracted me to this opportunity.

And so, so what's your philosophy on that, Bob?

When you say like, because a lot of people might thinking, well man, if you were just in the private sector working with private organizations, you could run a lot faster and disrupt a lot more.

And yet the government is giant, they need more innovation than anybody.

Right.

To kind of keep up with the threats and the risk out there.

That's right.

What's your message to your team?

So they can kind of walk that, that tightrope?

Yeah, look, I think that's what's so, that's what's so cool about the opportunity for us is because we have this, look, given our 40 year history, given all of our domain expertise, we are fortunate to have a trusted relationship with our customers, many of which have been with us for decades.

And so I think we have a unique opportunity to help our customers transform with AI.

And so I think that, and you know, for me, trust is a critical component of AI and is something that, you know, that is a big differentiator for Deltec versus, you know, what some other companies are out there doing with AI.

And again, I think it's incumbent upon us to provide the leadership in order to, you know, in order for our customers to utilize and to drive success in their businesses with AI in a manner where there's a human in the loop, where they are staying compliant with important rules and regulations as it relates to their business, given the nature of what our customers do.

And so I think I view it as a big positive for us, this notion that our customers are trying to balance compliance, the mission critical nature of what they do with this great new technology, with this great new technology.

It's a really fun place to Be.

Yeah.

Well, it sounds like Deltec's rocking it, so good work on that.

Keep up the good work there.

There are a few areas of your history that, that I also want to ask more questions about because man, you have got quite a career.

Number one.

One of the things is your M and A experience is, is wild.

I mean you have done a lot of deals, you got a bigger reputation as a deal maker beyond like the basic spreadsheet stuff.

When you're looking at like what's your.

I'm thinking about other leaders out there who maybe they haven't done, you know, been involved in the magnitude of deals that you've been in or, and done.

What are some of the lessons you've learned about like general M and A, like the pros and cons of doing it?

You know, what, what leaders should be thinking about, what kind of questions they should be asking themselves?

Sure.

No, look, it's funny.

I've done, you're right, I've done a ton of M and A in my career.

But I actually think for me it starts with strategy and what, you know, I view M and A as a.

It's a tool in the toolbox to affect your corporate strategy.

But it's not the only tool in the toolbox.

And you know, as a leader, as a software organization, I actually usually start the bidding at why can't we build this ourself?

Because that's, look, we're in the culture of innovating and building things and collaborating with our customers and think about a company like Deltec.

Again, back to our 40 year history, deep domain expertise.

When it comes to a new idea, a new opportunity, you would think, you would hope that our team has one of the best perspectives around what's needed in terms of building new software.

And so that's honestly where sort of mentally I start.

Now that said, there's lots of great companies out there that are doing some really interesting, interesting things.

And so as a leader that the interesting thing to think through is how, how could, how could sort of a new technology or new team bring another type of innovation and growth for us as an organization that's maybe complementary to what we do.

And so, so that's, that's sort of one dimension is sort of the strategic element of it, but two, it's a, it's a little bit of a truism.

But it's so true.

I've learned.

It's, it's, it's all about people.

Look, we work in software with bits and bytes.

We're not we're not, you know, selling widgets.

We're not, you know, acquiring hard assets.

At the end of the day, we, you know, we're a, we're an organization comprised of people.

And so when I think about acquisition, a huge part of it for me, and I've seen, I've seen success and I've seen failure along the way.

And it comes back to culture, comes out to culture and people.

And because software business is, you know, the big asset is people, you know, if you buy, if you buy a company and everybody walks out the door, that's, you know, in my experience, not, not a recipe for success.

And so I think an important thing for leaders to think about as they're contemplating M and A is, is starting with this cultural question.

You know, will that work?

Will, will 1 +1 =3?

From a, from a culture standpoint, not always easy, by the way, but, but, but super important.

Wow.

Can you share with us one of the coolest deals that you've been a part or like a cool moment from a deal making thing that you were involved in and a twist or turn or something along the lines?

Yeah, I, I'd say, look, I've had a lot of fun, successful acquisitions over the years.

You know, Deltec has done a number of acquisitions that have honestly transformed us as an organization.

And we've got, you know, the, the other aspect of M and A that people sometimes lose sight of is the talents that you can bring into the organization via M and A.

It's, it's, it's almost never where the conversation starts.

But oftentimes I've found when you're looking back at, at the success or failure of an acquisition five years, ten years later, oftentimes the first bullet on the page is look at these fantastic people that joined our organization and look at the transformative projects that they've driven since they've been part of our organization.

And we never contemplated that as part of the deal.

And I've seen that just time and time again.

And so that, that notion like excites me more than anything.

And there's, there's, it's, these, it's what I call these sort of ancillary benefits of doing M and A.

Sometimes you get some sort of cool technology that you weren't expecting, but oftentimes again back to where people, businesses were dependent on our culture.

It's, it's, it's a lot of these people.

And so when I think of Deltec, you know, some of my senior leadership team is joined by acquisition many Years ago.

Right.

And it's just, you think, wow, we would.

We think, you know, we.

We are just so much of a better organization because of that.

And that was.

No, that was on.

That was, you know, that wasn't on anybody's sort of playbook.

Right.

And so that's a.

That's a big part of it, too.

Well, I like that a lot.

I think.

I think it may.

It may turn some heads for leaders to hear that, because a lot of times when the acquisition starts, it's like, okay, how can we make them more like us?

How can we make them think like us and use our systems versus harnessing?

Like, wait, they're going to use something totally different.

We need to be thinking about how do we harness the new.

Not make them just like us immediately.

Yeah, absolutely.

You always hate to generalize, but in my experience, my radar goes off when I hear that a, you know, integration plan for a prospective company that we're going to acquire involves us, like, splitting it up and, like, you know, spreading out the resources across the big bureaucratic functions, you know, of a company.

That's a big risk.

Right.

We, you know, as a general rule, like at Deltec, we don't.

We don't absorb Deans into some bureaucracy or overwrite, you know, what made them special.

We try to accelerate the culture, not flatten.

And so we spend a lot of time upfront identifying what's unique about the company, what made them win, what's cool about their culture.

And then we work hard not to disrupt that, because that's a big part of the secret sauce.

Right.

Of what made that company, you know, successful.

And you certainly don't want to break that out of the gate.

Yeah.

Really redefines what a successful acquisition and merger looks like.

You know, it's absolutely.

You just do the bottom line, focus on day one, be missing out a lot of the possibilities on the cultural side, which could take some more time to emerge.

Man 100 now one, one.

Another question out of your background was when you, back in the Kronos days, you got to enjoy a giant cyber attack, Cyber cyber, cyberware ransom attack.

And this is becoming more and more commonplace these days.

And I believe you were.

You were really in deep trying to address that.

How did you address it?

Like, what was that like?

And what did you call on during that time to really help you navigate that challenge as a leader?

Yeah, you know, enjoy is a fun, fun word that you use there.

That was.

Yeah, I would say, unequivocally, that was the most challenging experience of My professional care.

Oh, my goodness, I don't want to repeat that, but learned a, you know, tremendous amount through it.

Look, it in many ways took me back to my submarine training when, you know, the things you train, you train for when things go bad.

And, and so I felt along that path, in many ways, like I was operating in that kind of environment.

And that looks, you know, as a leader managing through that type of horrible events, you know, for me, it's all about.

It's about focus.

Focus before emotion.

It's about putting people first and system second and about driving towards stability rather than focusing on speed and being, you know, sort of frenetic and.

And, you know, so.

So.

And that's what I learned, you know, back to my.

Back to my Navy training.

Right?

Just, you know, being focused on risk awareness, calm decision making in an.

In an uncertain environment, assessing stabilizing and then taking action.

And look, so the.

So the biggest lesson for me in that, in that ransomware attack is like, look, number one, you can't control the environment, but you can control your response.

And so that's what we as a team talk a lot about through that endeavor.

And so, you know, how that showed up in the moment.

It's things like, you know, accept reality very quickly, protect people, extend trust, communicate over.

Communicate, Communicate clearly.

Even when, you know, we don't have answers.

You know, if you're not communicating with your customers, that's a little bit of a communication in.

Of itself.

Right?

They sort of fill in the gaps.

And so you can't let that happen.

And so you got to just keep communicating even.

Even when you have incomplete answers.

Stay present, stay visible, stay accountable.

And so, you know, it's funny.

It's.

It's, you know, like a lot of things in life, while on the one hand, that was a, you know, really challenging experience that I never want to go through again.

At the same time, I sort of have some fond memories that I experienced because we, we banded together so closely as a team, you know, working, you know, seven days a week trying to, you know, recover from that.

From that.

And, you know, that's, you know, it was just a.

It was a good experience in that, in that standpoint, just trying, you know, working together, all rowing in the same direction to get our customers taken care of.

Yeah.

Went from peace time to war time pretty quickly.

Absolutely.

It is interesting.

It's like it really, when you have those moments.

I mean, I've read and I hear about it.

I mean, the teams naturally align.

Executives spend so much time trying to Align their team.

But when there's a really nasty event, the team just gets behind it, usually.

And yeah, there's a level of focus.

How long did you have to have that wartime mindset during that?

And how did you, how were you able to sustain it?

Yeah, look, it, it went on for a few months.

And even once, once you get sort of customers back up and running, they're still, you know, as their opposite often is.

There's a lot of, a lot of things to clean up and a lot of, you know, root cause analysis and lesson learned and systems to improve.

And so it went on for a good number of months.

And look, how'd we get there?

Honestly, we got there together.

I think, you know, we, as a, as a, as a leadership team, you know, I made sure that my team was spending a lot of time together, talking every day, multiple times a day, just to sync up in terms of what's working, what's not working, concerns that people have.

Look, for me, look, as a leader, you don't have to have all the answers, but, but you need, you need trust.

I mean, you mentioned the, the team sort of pulling together in wartime to march together.

But, but, but I think the, the necessary ingredient for that to happen is trust.

And so part of my job through that process in terms of continuing to instill trust was being present and, and being communicative and, and, you know, silence creates fear, right?

It creates fear with our team, it creates fear with our customers.

I also certainly didn't have all the answers, nor did I pretend to, either with our customers or our team.

I think overconfidence destroys credibility.

Right.

But honesty builds trust.

Even, even, even in a world where the outcome's uncertainty, honesty builds trust.

And so that transparency is critical.

And look, again, it's not about certainty.

It's about intent.

It's about progress.

It's about presence.

And I think those are the, those are the, yeah, those are the characteristics that I think helped us as a team really stay together and focused.

And, and, and, and I was just really, really, you know, not well, again, never want to go through that again.

I was really proud of how the team sort of, you know, worked through all that complexity.

Yeah, it's so funny.

It's like a lot of times, like you say, like we were under attack, but we had to do is, we had to be more present, we had to communicate more than ever, not less.

We had to go above and beyond to be out front.

And it's a good lesson.

You gotta lead from the front in those moments.

And you guys did and got through it successfully.

So tip of the hat and wow, what an experience.

I'll sort of land the plane on this or land the sub or dock the sub.

What is one Navy habit you still can't shake, even in the boardroom?

Oh, that's a good one.

You know, I, I still am very prompt.

I show up, I want to say on time, but if I'm honest, I show up a little early.

I start meetings on time.

That's just a very, like, innate sort of thing that I learned in the, in the Navy is, you know, if you're, if you're, if, if you're not a little bit early, turns out you're late, so.

Oh, yes, I've heard that before.

If you're not on time, you're late.

Trying to talk about.

I sometimes have to remind myself I have to, like, relax a little.

Like, you know, if I'm going to a customer meeting or something, you know, I have to tell myself, you know, the whole.

Not all the world operates on that sort of clock.

It's a.

Sometimes that I was dropping my, my 15 year old off, or she's 14, soon to be 15, off at 1 of her high school dances.

And we were on time.

She and her friends were like, her friends were like, oh, my gosh, we're on time.

We might be the only ones.

And one of her other friends who'd not been to a dance before said, is it bad to be on time to a dance?

And they all turned her and said, yes.

All right, so there might be one exception to the rule.

Right.

There's.

I didn't, I did not learn the, the notion of being fashionably late in the Navy.

That's right.

Okay.

That was not part of the teaching curriculum there.

Right.

What's one piece of advice that you followed for years and then realized that it might not be 100% correct?

Well, it's a good question.

I, you know, I would say, you know, there's this, I think there's a commonly held view, you know, when you think about people who are starting their careers or even, you know, kids that are in school thinking about, you know, what they want to study.

You know, there's, there's commonly held advice that you hear a lot that you should, you should start broad.

Right.

That you should, you know, keep an open mind because, you know, you never know what you're going to ultimately end up being interested in.

And so study.

So, you know, you hear people say, study something that's, you know, as broad as possible.

And like, I, you know, I don't want to pick on any particular majors or functions, but you know what I mean?

Like, don't, don't like, get too narrow because then you'll be, you know, pigeonholed.

And I actually think the op, in my experience, the opposite is actually true.

I think there's a lot of benefits in going deep in a narrow category early because that's where you learn so much discipline and that's where you learn the importance of the, you know, what's going on at the ground level and the intricacies of a given topic.

Because I think the skills you learn by going deep in a narrow topic are transferable to other topics.

And so whereas if you start sort of more of a generalist approach, you don't sort of learn how to, you know, get to the root cause, you know, of.

Of sort of topics and really get into the weeds.

And that's what, that's what.

So, so I guess my answer to you is I have always been a big believer in, like, picking something that you like, you know, you like being, you know, something that you want to engage in and then going really deep on it.

And then at some point, if you want to pick your head up and do something else, great, great.

But, but, but don't, don't start, don't, don't try to, don't fly at 50,000ft for the rest of your life, because that's going to be tough.

Well, it ties back to your repot example.

Like you can repot yourself somewhere else.

But I haven't thought about it that way because I do can easily see this mentality level.

I only want to go deep once I really found that thing that I'm passionate about.

But then you'll be going deep for the very first time.

If you have that experience and joy of understanding things at a very granular level, it's just going to help you do that multiple times.

That's right.

That's right.

And like you talked about, like, submarine versus corporate America, so much of that's transferable.

And it's because it's like at the end of the day, in any sort of business, we're talking about people, we're talking about process, we're talking about technology, the intersection of those three things, and that's.

Those lessons are transferable across sort of, you know, markets or verticals or whatever.

And so if you get, you know, so again, sort of get deep, then you learn, you learn at a really visceral level the intersection of those for a particular domain and that's transferable.

That's transferable.

You know, if you're operating a nuclear reactor to, you know, building project management software, that's transferable.

Philosophy and that for raising kids too.

I think that's right.

Try a lot of things which is good for them.

But also, you know, pick something and go deep like understand the fundamentals of it and you know, have that experience.

That's right.

That's been a fun one today.

What's your parting thought for our listeners?

I think look, I've enjoyed meeting you.

Good discussion.

Look, I think hearted thought culture is everything.

Culture is everything in an enterprise software company.

I would probably argue in other companies as well.

And where that manifests itself most is our customers.

That's why our customers see us, they feel us, they interact with our people.

That's why people choose to do business with us.

It's why people buy more stuff from us.

It's because of the quality of our people, the engagement of our people, the expertise of our people.

And so as a leader, I spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about and making sure that we're investing in our culture and investing in our people because that's where the rubber meets the road.

Everybody invest in your people.

Culture is everything.

Bob's made it happen a lot of places.

Bob, thank you for joining us today.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Want to boost your productivity and decision making?

Get vital insights from each episode delivered directly to your inbox.

A great resource whether you've listened to the episode or not.

Go to benfanning.com insight.