Speaker 1: Welcome back friends to our podcast, unlocking Your World of Creativity. And oftentimes we as creative, we definitely wanna be seen as the idea people. And boy, aren't we creative and we look at things differently, but we also want to be known for our productivity, our reliability, and creating client satisfaction. And those two don't have to be in conflict. And that's what we're gonna listen and learn with our guests today. Major General. [00:00:30] Robert Mixon, general Mixon, welcome to our show.

Speaker 2: Hey, thanks Mark. It's an honor to be here.

Speaker 1: Well, thank you for joining us. And general mixing his decades of leadership in the military in the US Army commanded the seventh entrance in say that fast infantry <laugh> <laugh> and the fort costing Colorado base until his retirement. But now he's consulting profit and nonprofit companies on leadership principles. [00:01:00] And maybe we could start there. General mixing, when we think of the military and particularly the army, creativity may not be the first word that comes to mind. We do wanna think about following rules and executing orders and implementation, but where does the creativity come in, even in a military setting?

Speaker 2: Well, thanks, mark. If we look back on the military, my military journey of 33 years, and it's hard for me to believe it's been 15 years since I retired from [00:01:30] Division Command. But along that journey, what I learned in the military was that there was a tremendous amount of creativity inside our organization, an operation. For example, there's a concept called the, there's a concept called the commander's intent, which I'd like to cover or briefly describe. When we have a mission, we're given a mission. Then [00:02:00] the commander gives us his or her intent, which is a distillation of the mission into some key components. And the key components of the mission are the end state. What does success look like? The key tasks we have to perform for that end state to come to life. And then the purpose, the why that evolution of mission and intent is now the Army calls it mission command. It was very descriptive in terms of what [00:02:30] were we supposed to do and when was it supposed to be accomplished and why we were conducting this mission. What was not in there was the how we were charged with developing the how. And that's where the creativity opportunity really emerged. In my army experience, I found that the best commanders were the ones who were specifically not gonna give us the how

Speaker 2: <affirmative> they were gonna ask [00:03:00] us to come back with recommendations, with options for how inside that mission command and commander's intent framework. Yeah. So I think that's really a remarkable element of the military culture that some people don't realize is out there. But it certainly helps nurture creativity and innovation among military leaders. And it certainly transfers into our corporate lives because I took the commander's intent with me, right [00:03:30] into corporate experience in manufacturing companies for profit, not-for-profit.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. Well, and in your book Cows in the Living Room, you were talking about developing and these effective strategic plans. And I think of a strategic plan or in maybe a creatives vernacular, the brief, the guidelines, here's the plan of action with the why and the purpose all behind it. But the tactical thinking does require some creativity.

Speaker 2: [00:04:00] It really does. How should be nurtured among your junior leaders? And if you're prescriptive and you tell the how, then you're really growing followers, not leaders.

Speaker 1: So interesting. And I guess the conventional wisdom out in the lay public like myself is that these are inside the lines. Inside the box, don't distract or detract from the plan. But it sounds [00:04:30] like there's more thinking to that.

Speaker 2: And I think one of the great boxers in history said, no plan ever survives the first punch at the face. <laugh>. I think the same is true in the military and in all aspects of our lives. The plan is a basis for change. And if we are not adaptive as leaders, as organizations, and we are rigid in our fixation on the plan, then I think our chances of success are very low

Speaker 1: [00:05:00] <affirmative>. And yet I wanted to pivot to some of these adjectives and descriptives of, yes, a military unit, but then I think leaders and managers at all levels thinking about how to improve processes, how to be more productive. So on the other hand, we think of creatives, they're not all that productive. Sometimes we aren't reliable to meet deadlines, but how can we improve in that area? What have you seen in terms [00:05:30] of a leadership function and performance?

Speaker 2: Well, I have the big six principles that I've learned over time from what smarter people than me. And those six principles are essentially the, I think, foundation of where creativity can arise. And so I'll extrapolate them if you're okay with that.

Speaker 1: Absolutely.

Speaker 2: The first one, set the asthma. The asthma is a term learned in the military. Basically it's your cardinal direction for the organization, [00:06:00] for the team. So you set the asthma, which includes your mission intent. I just talked about your values and your culture. So you establish that upfront. Then the we need to become more effective listeners. I don't see that across our society today as a very common trait. We need to listen to the intent, as I think Steven Cubby said, the intent to understand about the intent to reply. Yes, the third principle's, trusted, empower, empowerment [00:06:30] is the embodiment of trust. But if we don't nurture that aspect of our culture, then we'll end up with an environment of distrust, which is toxic. The fourth one is do the right thing when no one's looking, as we say, the Pentagon, that briefs well, but it's very difficult to do because we have to value the process over the outcome and do the right thing.

Speaker 2: The fifth one is what in charge take charge. And I'd like a lot of people relate with the military. [00:07:00] It's not being loud and profane and directive. It's being the calm and the chaos. It's being the one who promotes feedback and discussion, honest discussion, and even promotes vulnerability in many cases because leaders need to be willing to be vulnerable if they're gonna be genuine. And the sixth principle is balance the personal and professional, which means we've got to take our careers very seriously, our mission very seriously, [00:07:30] but we don't take ourselves that way, and we have to promote balance among each other. And it's not all about time with work life. It's about having the values that you really believe in guide your actions, and that's where balance lives. So those six principles now become the foundation, as I mentioned earlier, of promoting and nurturing a culture of innovation, a culture of creativity. Because when you have those ingredients present in [00:08:00] your culture, in your ecosystem, now people want to contribute. They want to do things perhaps a little differently. The better, faster, cheaper pathway now becomes more obvious than the way we always did it. And so that's where I think a great organization can establish the plant, the seeds, and grow the seeds of creativity,

Speaker 1: <affirmative> and those pillar pillars that you were talking about, [00:08:30] these six of cultural attributes. Maybe you can give us some perspective general mixing, because over time we have gone through, I'll say phases, but you may have seen it more consistently where the hiring of veterans into companies was a challenge and seeing the translation of a military experience of a veteran into maybe the workplace, the business and commerce [00:09:00] was hard for hiring managers to see. Has that changed? Has that improved?

Speaker 2: I think the efforts to improve it, mark, I don't know that we've moved the needle far enough. And I say that because veterans could provide tremendous resource to any company, an organization, but you've gotta look for them and you've got to promote their development as part of the hiring process [00:09:30] and the onboarding process, we tend to not know enough about veterans because we don't have enough members of our population who have served <affirmative>. And if you think about it right now, the demographics are that 95% of adult Americans have never served in the military in any capacity

Speaker 1: That's far. That's a big number.

Speaker 2: Far different paradigm than it was 20 years ago, for example. And so we have a whole host of employers and organizations [00:10:00] that don't know what they don't know. It's not their fault. I mean, it is what it is. So I think one of the things that I would encourage employers to do is get smarter about veterans and their background and their qualifications and learn more so that you understand more about what it is to serve in the military and how that sort of translates, or you can help them translate it into [00:10:30] a corporate role and responsibility. One of the things that veterans really, I think, bring to a workplace is a sense of duty, a sense of doing what needs to be done. The big six principles I just mentioned, for example, routinely, I think they're gonna be reliable. They're gonna be used to getting the mission accomplished. Sometimes when it runs beyond five o'clock, they're going to be team players. They [00:11:00] understand that there's no eye in team. They're organized into teams from the day they first put the uniform on and go to bootcamp. So they bring some, I think, behavioral attributes to the workplace, which can be very, very productive and very, I think, valuable to the overall productivity and performance of an organization.

Speaker 1: <affirmative>. And I loved reading in your background [00:11:30] that after you left military service, you continued to support and work for veterans with disabilities, with mental health challenges, <affirmative> and so forth. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about that nonprofit work.

Speaker 2: I was privileged to be part of an organization called CDs Monarch, and now it's called CDs. Life Transitions is the bigger organization, which I joined in 2009. And [00:12:00] under the vision of the ceo, uh, San very entrepreneurial visionary person, we established a program called Warrior Salute for Veterans who were transitioning from the military and struggling. They were struggling with traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress, some cases military sexual trauma, but they needed some help to, they needed a bridge to get from their military journey into successful independent [00:12:30] living because of these challenges. And so since CDs had a core mission of providing life and job transition for men and women with intellectual disabilities, there was an opportunity pathway for the Warrior SL program to leverage some of those skills that CDs already had and send car's passion for giving back to our veterans. And the program today has been in being now for over 12 years, we've served over 400 veterans in that program, located [00:13:00] in Western New York there in Rochester.

Speaker 2: We're looking to expand it to other parts of the country right now. We're looking to establish the program here in Florida, and we find that the 90% success rate that we have is remarkable among veteran programs. Now we do that in partnership with the da, for example. So it's a community based program that has links to other programs, but I've been proud to be part of that effort. I'm a father of two soldiers, [00:13:30] one still in active duty and my daughter-in-law. And so I've got skid in the game, and I believe that we owe our veterans all we can provide them to help them transition successfully, having done so much and made so many sacrifices for us.

Speaker 1: Well, first of all, thank you and your family for your service, but I thank you even more for this continuing service. [00:14:00] If I can walk out a little bit more on this issue, I'm so interested in the potential contradiction between how many of us Americans have never served, and yet how little we often recognize and serve those who have. And so I really admire this organization's mission, and thank you for that.

Speaker 2: Well, thanks, mark. We have a long way to go. And the requirements, the [00:14:30] needs of veterans for our help as a society are not going away anytime soon. We just ended 20 years of war. We didn't end it well, but we ended it. And we now have a generation of veterans that are gonna be among us for the rest of our lives. And these men and women are going to, they're gonna need our help. They're gonna need our help from service organizations, but they're gonna need our help in the workplace. They're gonna need [00:15:00] our help in the school system. They're gonna need our help in the neighborhoods. And I think where we can help is by going back to that second principle I talked about by listening actively listening actively seeking to see where we can support them as a community in every aspect of life and not, they don't look looking for handouts. Well, I'm talking about providing them with opportunities. And we've talked a lot about opportunities in our society recently and how we need to create more opportunities [00:15:30] for all Americans <affirmative> in every walk of life. So I think we need to open the aperture for veterans in this framework as well.

Speaker 1: <affirmative>, well, in general, Nixon, there may be creative listeners who wanna get involved in that. So before I turn the page to your current work, I'd like to maybe pause and have you tell us where could we connect with this organization and see if we could contribute to the efforts?

Speaker 2: [00:16:00] Well, CDs Life Transitions has a very active website. CDs life transitions.org or Warrior Salute has a site inside that web website, family, again, warrior salute.org. You can just go there and you can find more information. You can find out how you can help. There are a number of ways you can help. It's obviously a not-for-profit organization and in many ways depends on support from [00:16:30] individuals and communities, both in a financial way as well as in an offer to support in other ways. So that's where I would suggest people go to learn more about CDs and its Magnificent Culture and History and Warrior Salute as well.

Speaker 1: We'll definitely connect with that and we'll put all those links in our show notes so people can refer to them.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Thanks Martin.

Speaker 1: Well, as we move to [00:17:00] the present now, perhaps I could respectfully move from General Mixon to Robert Mixon, the owner of Level Five Associates. I love the fact that you're bringing this values based leadership, but tell us about the, I'll say curriculum even or the approach that you're taking to translate some of these values into modern day dynamic company leadership that we're living in now.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate that, mark. We Level Five Associates [00:17:30] is a company that is really almost an army of one, if you will. But our goal is to provide individuals and organizations with leadership tools that work, that are values based and based on the right values. So the big six principles for the core of our offerings to individuals and organizations, both in executive coaching, one on one, which I do a fair amount [00:18:00] of strategic planning, that's what the Cals and Living Room book was based on. It was a handbook in that regard. And in leadership development of high performing teens, I wrote the book, we're All in about the journey to a world class culture a few years ago, which really provides people with at least a snapshot of what does a world class culture look like. But in order to have a world class culture, you gotta have world class leaders, leaders who get it.

Speaker 2: And so I work conduct workshops [00:18:30] for teams and individuals over a period of time, usually half day workshops on each of the big six principles where we focus on discovery, learning on practical application. I'm not very esoteric, so if you wanna talk about the right brain, left brain, then I'm not your person. But if you wanna talk about tools that work, we can help because I've screwed up most of these principles one form or another. And through the mistakes I've made, I learned, I learned, and I learned through [00:19:00] the patience of some other leaders who underwrote my mistakes sometimes when I didn't deserve it. I can say that. So it's a process of engagement where at first we seek to learn about you, then bring in some of the packages that we talked about or programs that we talked about over a period of time to work with individuals and leaders and give them practical application tools that they can employ every day.

Speaker 1: Well, and under this practical, I [00:19:30] guess heading, you're very prolific in writing about some of these principles and these tactics and these plans and programs. In fact, you've got a biweekly blog. It's got a couple of thousand subscribers, but you also put out an ebook a couple of years ago called, who Saw This coming, and What do we do now? I couldn't help but think over the last even two years, and you who saw this coming <laugh>, Robert?

Speaker 2: No, nobody that I know bark. I believe we were [00:20:00] all truly genuinely surprised by the perfect storm. And I think the perfect storm was a convergence of what Covid represented in large part, but also a number of other factors. Social unrest, global tension, economic turbulence. All these factors sort of converged at a point in time. And I don't think any of us were completely expecting [00:20:30] it. I don't, and I don't think we were completely prepared for it. <affirmative> so many of us were more unprepared than prepared. Yes. But what it forced us to do was go back to the basics. I think the most successful individuals and teams since that time have been able to go back to the basics and rely on those fundamentals, on those values. The big six principles, they, many leaders have told me that they went right back to the big six as they face this incredible uncertainty [00:21:00] and said, okay, let's set our asthma again.

Speaker 2: Let's reset our asthma. Let's review our mission, our intent, our values, our culture, and let's capture it saddle up here. Let's promote and practice active listing with the intent to understand, let's respect each other, which listing represents, let's nurture, trust and empower people to make the decisions at the right level. Let's do the [00:21:30] right thing. Yeah, let's demonstrate the right thing. Let's reward the right thing. Let's promote being calm in the chaos. Promote the capability in our organizations to learn. One of my best leaders I've ever known, Colonel and General Don Holder, taught me that there are two ways you can ask a question when something goes wrong. One of the ways you could say is, what were you thinking, Robert? The other way is, so Robert, [00:22:00] what did we learn? The difference in those questions in the tenor and way those questions are framed is night and day.

Speaker 2: If you're gonna promote positivity in your organization, that's what taking charge is. Taking charge is promoting positivity, promoting a learning culture. Amy Edson from Harvard came up with the idea of this psychological safety environment where the best organizations live because they promote a culture of learning, not a [00:22:30] culture of blaming. And she used Google as one of those classic examples of that culture. And the six principle balance is critically important in the world been through over the last couple of years. We've got to generate and sustain balance in ourselves and in others. Balance is not a matter of time, it's a matter of energy. You have four energy batteries inside all of us. The physical, the mental, the emotional, [00:23:00] and the spiritual. If you don't nurture those batteries, people are unhealthy and they're unproductive often. A lot of times we allow people to become burn out because we're not watching.

Speaker 2: We're not listening as leaders for those warning signs, and we don't seek to help people until it's too late <affirmative> to help them. So I believe that what we've learned in the last couple years is that it's time. It's time to go back to the basics and restore and reinforce those [00:23:30] big six and to bring them to life in ourselves and our leaders and our teams and our organization. And that way people know that we care. Yes, I know Seal saying that. Someone told me once, I don't care how much until I know how much you care,

Speaker 1: Right? Powerful. Well, in this kind of retrospective thinking though, what did we learn from this has a kind of rear view mirror feel to it, but here we are looking at a new year, looking ahead. [00:24:00] There's an entrepreneur who's trying to make a business plan. There's a senior manager who's been tasked with a five year forecast. I don't even know how that works sometimes <laugh>. But the contingency thinking of it as I think back to your military analogy, and that is we've got a strategic intent, then we've developed our tactical plans, but we've gotta do the what if this happens, how [00:24:30] will we what react and respond? How does that apply in a future looking business way?

Speaker 2: Well, I very much believe in strategic planning. As I mentioned earlier, mark, the healthiest and most successful companies are the ones who think strategically and act tactically. Well, how do you do that? Well, first of all, I think you build a plan of what do you want the organization to look like in three to four years? And that end state, [00:25:00] if you will, I mentioned earlier in the commanders in tent, how the end state is captured, but you start with the end in mind. And then I like to use the reverse planning sequence to come back to now. So if three years we look like this, and I would say we look like this in terms of our productivity, profitability, success or service performance, some type of metrics, because that which is measured gets done. If we use hope as a method, I tell you, [00:25:30] I've tried it, it doesn't work.

Speaker 2: It doesn't work at all. So we have to have metrics that we establish as our three to four year in-state objective and then work backwards to now and build a plan with milestones in it that ensures that when we get those key tasks accomplished by when that end state will come to life. Then at the same time, I think we have to develop some contingency plans. We need to have a plan B and a plan C. And again, this is a plan as a basis for change, but [00:26:00] you start with that strategic roadmap and then you have some contingency plans that are based on what ifs that the conditions would change. I like to build a set of assumptions under which the plan is based, and if these assumptions change, then I've gotta change the plan <affirmative>. And that really is valuable. A lot of people will make a plan without assumptions, and then they're constantly shifting because people make their own assumptions. If you don't establish 'em as a team, they'll make up [00:26:30] their own.

Speaker 1: So, well, and you're probably seen, I have somebody in the room who is talking about those what ifs or what if the bridge is out, what if there's potholes? What if that path isn't available to us? Are seen as you're so negative, you're so pessimistic, you wanna be the devil's advocate, but you're derailing our strategic planning process <laugh>. But they have a place.

Speaker 2: They do. And in the military we call it red teaming, and I think it applies [00:27:00] very much in the corporate world too.

Speaker 1: Whatever we conduct. I'm gonna build that term.

Speaker 2: <laugh> red teaming is the sort of a systemic devil's advocate process in your organization. You know, either assign certain people to be the disruptors or the what if people or you promote that behavior yourself. In terms of planning process, we had a red team in the military who they were assigned to portray [00:27:30] the enemy and portray the enemy having a plan of its own and trying to implement that plan on us while we were trying to implement that plan with them. So that action reaction counteraction was what we put into our war gaming process. And I think military organizations have set a good standard that the rest of us could learn from in that war gaming process. So you establish the strategy, the plan with the end state, you establish assumptions under which the plan is [00:28:00] built, and then you have a red team component as you go through the rehearsal of your plan, which is I think a very valuable component if you practice it and then someone portrays the opposition, your competition, your environmental disruptors that put those factors in there, and then you have an action reaction, counteraction process to refine your plan.

Speaker 2: [00:28:30] Now that sounds very complex. It's really not. Once you practice it a few times and maybe you get some help to do it, I mean, sometimes we look inside and that's all we only look inside and we could probably get some help from other people who have made the mistakes before we made 'em or made more than we have and could come in and say, wait a minute, maybe you need to think about this. Or maybe you do consider that. So I think there's a lot of ingredients to this formula, but [00:29:00] that this is how learning organizations thrive.

Speaker 1: Love that. Well, Robert, what a great conversation. And before I ask you a concluding question, as I did before, how can we get in touch with you and follow your work and learn more about what Level Five is doing?

Speaker 2: Well, thanks, mark. My website is www.levelfiveassociates.com. Spell out the five. Okay. Level five associates. There you'll see our products and services. You'll [00:29:30] see a little bit about me and my background. You'll have a library of the blogs that I've written over the past several years, lakes to the books if they're so inclined. And I encourage people to go there and take a look and they can contact me there. There's a contact form there, or you could write to me at Robert level five associates.com. I read my emails, I can assure you that my phone number is area code (585) 797-8554. [00:30:00] And I also listened to the phone and the voicemail and I respond. So outstanding. Please reach out if you'd like to talk.

Speaker 1: Well, and it sounds like anybody who calls is gonna get some good insight. And I guess that's where I wanted to conclude with us, Robert, is that is, yeah, we've looked back on experience and learnings and all the ways that we can apply these experiences, but let's look ahead over the horizon for you. Instead [00:30:30] of saying who saw that coming <laugh>, what are you looking for both in business and maybe your own personal creativity?

Speaker 2: I believe that this period of uncertainty that the new year offers us, I think maybe a weak term, but the New Year offers us, is an opportunity to be more agile. And I'm working on learning to think differently and [00:31:00] more creatively every day. I love to interact with other leaders and organizations and learn from them. I think we are going to see a continuing vacuum in our leadership ranks in many parts of our society that are troubling to me, certainly in the political arena. But I think there are other aspects of our leadership framework that are in jeopardy. So more than [00:31:30] ever, I think it going ahead, we need to connect with each other in a meaningful way. And I mean that by having the courage to establish and promote our values, the right values, doing the right thing, and to not fall into the trap of allowing our values to erode.

Speaker 2: We need to be more unified than divided, and we need to have conversations that may not be comfortable with each other in [00:32:00] different venues. And I intend to promote that type of work both professionally and personally. I intend to support the veteran community in any way that I can. We're working now on a project to bring affordable housing to veterans here in Florida, central Florida. They're even using the term now attainable because it's almost not affordable. But we're gonna figure this out and we're gonna figure out how to provide safe quality housing and all the other services with it [00:32:30] for our veterans here in Florida. And I think we need to do it around the country. So those are my sort of cause related efforts going forward here, mark and I intend to keep level five operational as long as people want to work with me and what we do and grow.

Speaker 1: Oh, fantastic. Well, thanks for sharing that forward looking vision and all the work that you're doing. And as I said before, thanks so much for your service, not only in the past [00:33:00] in your military service, but in your service to veterans. Now. Those who have served our country deserve our support, and I appreciate

Speaker 2: It. Thanks, mark. I enjoyed the conversation and I wish all of you well.

Speaker 1: Yes, thank you. Well, my guest has been General Robert Mixon. He has served both as a commander in the Seventh Infantry Division, but also as the leader and founder of Level Five Associates. And so much good work and [00:33:30] so much good insight on values and leadership from Robert today. So listeners continue to come back to our podcast. We're exceeding now 120,000 downloads. We're on our 220th something episode, and it's all because of your listening and your support and your interaction. And Robert has also encouraged us to continue to create connections and community, and that's a part of this podcast. We want people to get ideas and make connections and really collaborate [00:34:00] where we can to improve our creativity. Yes. But also as Robert Smithson, improve our leadership in the community, in our country and beyond. So until next time, I'm Mark Stinson and we'll continue to unlock your world of creativity. See you, sir.