There's a moment in every change effort when leaders mistake resistance for failure. And that's when teams stop following. Not at the mandate, but when there's no going back.

There's a point in there where the momentum and excitement wears off. It's called the Valley of Despair.

That's Randall Troutman, chief operational excellence officer over at Wenpak, leading transformation inside the $1.1 billion manufacturing company tasked with turning 13 independent business units into one operating system.

Most people walk away at that point. They pack up and throw hands up and say, I knew it wouldn't work.

This episode isn't about motivation. It's about why leaders misread this moment. What separates teams that stall from those that make it through.

There are times in your career where you wonder, do I fit? Do my thoughts match those of those around me? And you can sense when leaders are deep in the Valley of Despair.

In this episode, you'll discover how leaders recognize this phase in real time, why most change efforts quietly die here, and the framework that keeps teams moving when.

Doubt, resistance, and fatigue start to peak.

Some of us slipped down into the Valley of Despair. Some have worked through it, and they were into how do we now anchor the change and move forward?

If your team feels stalled right now, keep watching. 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.

Randall, you've led change on a massive scale, and when things start to get harder instead of easier, what's a mistake you see leaders make in that moment?

As I think about resilience and grit, I'm a big sports fan and I like to learn from coaches and players and to see how things work. Because in sports, the feedback is immediate. You're tracking quarters, you're tracking games. You're on the big stage. There's a lot of hype, and I appreciate the scoreboard, I appreciate the analysis. And I think there are times in your career where you wonder, do I fit? You know, am I in the right team, I in the right organization? You know, does my. Do my thoughts match those of those around me? And I had a conversation with a gentleman about two weeks ago who is. Is at that. I'm a big fan of Cotter's eight Steps. So it's the change model that you go through when you're driving real significant change. And there's a point in there where you, the momentum and excitement of the first couple meetings wears off and the reality of the current situation and the amount of work and energy sets in. And it's called the valley of despair. And you can sense when leaders are deep in the valley of despair. And it's often when I send someone a note that ends with the hashtag, keep grinding. Because it's at that point you understand the scope of the change, you understand the energy that's going to be required. You can see the resistance. And most people walk away at that point. They pack up and they walk away and throw their hands up and say, I knew it wouldn't work, or nothing ever works. Or we tried that around here. The resilience for me is really being, you know, committed to your vision, saying what you're going to do, doing what you say, and, and then pushing through that valley of despair to find real opportunity on the other end. It's not for everybody. I think that's where you see a lot of leaders flame out. I think that's where you see a lot of change. Programs come to a screeching halt. But when you watch people that understand it and that can work through that and look back, you know, after a couple of months and see the real change that took place, not the day to day accomplishments, but the significant, lasting change, you start to identify who has that grit and who's. Who's willing to roll their sleeves up and grind it out day after day until we reach the goal we're looking for.

What a great narrative and story there about change and how it really takes place. And I think it's so important for leaders to have a framework like Cotter's, right, Where you're, you know what to expect. Like if you don't expect, what was it, the valley of death or despair? All right, we don't, we don't say valley of death. Valley of despair.

Yeah.

It's like if you don't expect that to be there, then when it hits, you're going to be a lot less likely to ever make it through it.

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Your background is technically packaging engineering and that's the foundation. But your certifications that we saw in fearless mindfulness and difficult conversations are the things that were really signaling to me in our research. So you spent years mastering the physics of packaging, but your recent work is about the physics of people. So you studied fearless mindfulness. What was the moment at WIMPAC that you realized that all the engineering in the world couldn't prepare you for what was coming next?

Great question, Ben. Thank you. Yeah, background is in engineering. At some point realized I was probably more capable on the commercial side but you know, the time I spent in engineering taught me a lot about process and system and a way to approach problems. And there was a point in my career, and certainly I'm using those tools at Windpack to break down the change in understanding people's behaviors and how it fits into. Folks that have worked with me will hear this all the time. People, process, system, culture and leadership. And if you think about it as a pyramid, leadership's always at the top. And as we go through this and we assess challenges just like you would a technical one, we try to look at where are the breakdowns and is it really in the people that we have? Is it, is it disjointed processes or broken systems? Is there a cultural shortcoming or strength that we have? And ultimately is the leadership capable and in a position to drive change in all of those? So probably goes back to the scientific method anyways and there are a lot of things to apply to it. And you know, looking at the variables and understanding human behavior is a, is a key part of this for us.

What is fearless mindfulness?

You know, as I went through it, I, it, it talks a bit about, you know, overcoming fear and, and being more true to yourself and your thoughts and your visions. You know, when you time in technical as, as an engineer, there's a lot of constraints and procedure and you do things a certain way to get a predictable outcome. And as you, as you branch out of the technical background and you look at what it takes to be a more adaptable and, and people centered leader, it's really understanding how you interact with the world and how others interact with you. And by pushing through, you know, the barriers and challenges we have in our heads, it helps us to overcome and achieve different Results.

Oh, man. Yeah, I love it. It really starts. It's like change from within and fearless, meaning that, hey, you've got to conquer your fear. You got to face your fear. That could be the fear of change. Fear of, you know, there's difficult conversations and I want to ask you. So for a lot of people, like they think operational excellence, just like a fancy term for changing the way people think in a really powerful way, what's the hardest conversation that you've had to have in the last couple years to keep that one wimpack mindset alive?

You know, I'm coming up on my two year anniversary and I, I don't know that I can point to just one single conversation where I felt like we were losing momentum or not getting off the ground. I think, you know, as I, as I look back, the most challenging conversations when you look at change come from not building enough trust in the relationship before you start trying to make that change. Yeah, Winpack is a wildly successful company. We just celebrated our 50 year anniversary.

And incredible legacy, man.

Yeah, Exciting things to come. You know, the, the packaging industry is changing rapidly with, with sustainability and other challenges facing us, certainly geopolitical things that we're managing daily. But I think it comes back to really building that trust with people before you start talking about change, understanding what's in it for me, what's in it for them? What are the business reasons why we're, why we're doing this and why we need to think about, you know, adopting different principles? I know that the conversations get easier and is you start to feel that one plus one equals three synergy, where it's not just my idea, it's not just Ben's idea. Collectively we've come out of there with a solution that's a combination of both and it's much better than each of us could have done individually.

Do you have a time where maybe you didn't have the trust initially and try to drive change or you know, provide feedback and then you took the time to build the trust and got a completely different result with the team or the person?

Yeah, I can, I can go back in my career. You know, I've done personality assessments and leadership surveys over time and the 360s nobody wants to hear. And I joke sometimes that if you're familiar with the disc profile, I'm a recovering D. So, okay, in my career I was high D, you know, low I. A little hardcore, a little bit, you know, to the point and driven and I've had some great leaders throughout my career. That have told me, you know, at some point you have to lead from behind. It's not about leading from. From the front. And, you know, I can point to times where I thought the ideas were mine and, you know, the direction was mine. And. And after a while, I realized that there's just so much more that I can gain from the team by setting the vision and letting everybody bring their strengths to the table. And, you know, I think as you. As you get older and more experienced and, and you develop these points where you can look back and say, oh, this might be exactly what was happening at this company on that project. It helps. I had a leader one time tell me, meet people where they are. And that has always stuck in my head that, you know, it's the building on the shoulders of the past. It's how do you take the successes and, and multiply them, but really understand where people are in their journey, meet them there, and then, you know, build that trust to come along. It was the same person that told me, if you want to go far, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. You know, and so these little things always pop in my head when I feel some resistance about, have I done enough to. To build that trust? And. And can we have this honest conversation?

I love the fact that you love this quote from Col. From Colin Powell. I want to read it here for the readers here, find it. Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers who can cut through the argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution that everybody can understand. So great quote. However, this to me is a little bit weird coming from an engineer because engineers love data, they love nuance. And I think a lot of engineers, they love complexity. So how are you fight. How do you fight the urge of your engineering background to. Instead of being like, technically right, to be humanly right or humanly. No, sorry. Fighting technically right versus being humanly understood. Because engineers, I mean, here you are being tasked to communicate across these 13 different kingdoms, are making them one impact. You got to communicate to people from HR to finance to marketing, to all these sales, these groups. What are you doing to fight the urge on your messaging to make sure that you're humanly understood, like Colin Powell says talks about.

Yeah, it's funny. Technical folks that work with me will know that I use a phrase sometimes. You know, equal and equivalent are the same. And in a technical person's mindset, that's a pretty far stretch. And I knew early in my career I was, I was good at working in the gray and the ambiguity and taking what we know today with what we think and finding some solution in the middle. It was probably at that point I knew I. I probably wasn't going to be the best engineer when I looked at the folks around me who were much better at it than I was. And so I do think the engineering background helps me look through facts quickly and determine, you know, kind of assumptions from. From facts and then also assess where everyone is in this process to help narrow it down to what does HR need to hear, what does marketing need to hear, and does everybody understand their role? I'm a big three points person. Narrow it down to three points. If we can't say it in three sentences and you can't repeat it back to me pretty quickly, I still don't know we have the clarity we need. You know, early in my career, I talked about being a D. You know, there were times where it was, get to the point. You know, I appreciate all the work you've done, but just get to the point and let's talk about the answer. And so I've gotten better at working through the mud and the uncertainty to help the entire team get to a point we all agree on.

So it sounds like to me you're reinforcing it every day with the people you work with. So that keeps you in line in terms of the simplicity. You're like, do I understand this? Can this be communicated? You know, asking the questions?

Absolutely.

It reminds me of the adage of we teach what we most want to know. And the fact that you're so focused on it, you know, it keeps reiterating it. I think it's really interesting the fact that you're tasked with turning the 13 independent silos into a one operating like behemoth. And I think about the Malcolm Gladwell book, David and Goliath. But the key here is like all the different silos, maybe the Davids and the Goliath is your fighting is the overall, like maybe the Goliath 50 years. So you're like tasked with making change in the 50 year organization. And you know, as you do that, I'm curious about, you know, how do you deal with, you know, Randall, you know, we. We've had success here. We've been around for 50 years. You know, here you come wanting to change things. Why are you here? Is there one conversation this sticks out where you really had to tackle that head on? Yeah.

Yes, certainly. You know, I think as we look at our businesses, we've grown organically and through acquisition and you know, one of the things our executive team will say is we've done a lot of acquisition and we need to now focus on the merger.

And we did a lot of a. Nobody going to do the M part.

Of the M and A. Yeah, absolutely. And I, and I think the. Each business unit's at its own place in their journey. So one may be in a, you know, turnaround situation, one may be in. We need to sustain that success. Others are needing a realignment. And so it's really understanding what is going to motivate each business unit to move forward in alignment with the overall one win pack strategy. And so the messaging is different. You know, if you're in a turnaround situation, there's not a lot of, you know, fluff that goes into the direction we're headed and what we need to do. The writings on the wall, a lot realignments are a little bit more difficult because you've got a team that's been successful but maybe not performing at the level in which we need it to. And, and so there are some tough conversations, but there's a lot of, you know, experience you can point to to help build and rally that team. The sustained success are the most difficult because it's, you know, it's hard to come in and say, hey, what if we did this or that? What if we change the way we approach this when there's been such success over all the years. And so in some cases, you need to manufacture a rally cry and understand, you know, if we don't continue to make change and evolve, we could slip from sustained success into a realignment and, you know, God forbid, a turnaround at some point, they are a death of a thousand paper cuts, you know, and so if you don't, if you don't identify the areas where you will be behind the competition, it's easy to slip over time. And so I think as I approach each of them, it's really, you know, celebrating what has gotten us to this point, understanding what the individual strengths of each business unit are and then partnering with other executive team members who are at the same time trying to drive, you know, HR as a business partner transformation and, you know, ERP systems and other things commercial focus and how do we all come together to drive these individual changes through each business unit to end up someday at a more one win pack approach to the market?

Is there a default approach that you take when you're coming in the first time and you're like, like, we know success is a terrible teacher, so things are broke why are we fixing something that's not broke? Do you sort of go to the future like, hey, we're trying to get it, we're trying to get ahead of what the problems that could be or, you know, because it's like, even though we know we should prevent problems, you know, most people don't go to the doctor as much as they should or get the dental cleanings until they're, they're having like a toothache. So how, how do you wake them up?

Like that is you, as you get into a business and you observe how it operates, you know, what it, you know, using some pattern recognition, watching behaviors, seeing what the norms are within the. Within teams. Typically there's a lot of people that have a lot of ideas that see opportunity for change. Some cases they don't, you know, it could be hard work and so they don't want to say it. Other cases they may have brought it up and didn't feel heard. But in any of our business units, I find a lot of people with good ideas that just need a platform or some support to start driving that change. And I think the real key, you know, in any of these current situations is finding those change agents that need a voice, that need some space to go out and make some mistakes. And they're there.

Yeah, that's interesting. So it's not always about, well, hey, I'm going to go talk to the leader of the business. It's about identifying the leaders sort of within the business that may be closer to the work and building relationships and rapport and they've got the ideas for change and maybe they're hungry and all.

They might need is some space to create and make mistakes and, and really drive ownership. And you sometimes see more of that in the sustained success models. But there's just been no appetite or no energy to drive change because we just end up doing well every year. We end up on the right side of it. But that change usually comes from within organizations at the people doing the work level that see the business from a different angle and are dealing with the day to day.

Yeah.

Wow.

So talk about, let's talk about some systems here. I know you're a bit proponent of that. The fundamental business operating systems across the business unit, which for a lot of people. Right. That's the dream, like you say, like you make the acquisition and then you need to bring them into a sort of a similar operating system. But that often goes, you gotta, you're going like deep in the process, you're going deep into business and Having been part of these myself, a lot of them fail or they, or they don't, they don't fail like outright, but they just never quite deliver and they take a huge investment and they just don't necessarily, you know, get done because it takes years. And by the time you get to the end of it, like something else, like you've acquired a new business or you're selling off a business or you're. There's been the greatest disruptor in history of AI, you know, coming on board. What are you doing as a leader to prioritize how to get this done and make it happen. Knowing that all of these businesses are still doing their normal thing to deliver revenue and profit every day. Here you come in with this potential massive disruption for them.

Yeah, it's a great. This is one of the questions that, you know, really caused me to think about the approach differently. I think at the end of the day it's, you know, businesses are in business to, to accomplish a few things. At WinPac, our motto is, you know, it's our nature to protect. And when I look at that, I think about it in terms of our people, our planet and our long term profitability. And so as leaders are out talking to our folks, it's really anchoring, you know, why are we doing this and why are we here? And we're going to prioritize our actions and activities around those three things and you know, safety is paramount. It's the way we do business. We need to protect our relationships with our customers and our brand in the marketplace. But if we have a common theme in rally cry that all Windpackers should be focused on, it starts to create a community that we can then build on. How do we take and learn what one business unit is doing better than the other or help this business unit identify there's some weaknesses in different areas. But I think just to say we want to be a one win pack and it's some unicorn utopia journey that we're on with no end doesn't really motivate people to think differently and come along in the journey. If we can rally around, you know, the protection is who we are, who we are and what we're here to do. It starts to create a sense of community within our people.

Yeah, I love that. Again, it goes back to the human element. Yes, the systems need to be done. It can deliver giant savings and efficiency and profitability for the business, but it's got to be around the human element of why we're doing the first place. If it ties Back to that protection. You can keep doing that. You're most likely going to tap into something much deeper, you know, that that can be sustained. Thinking about, I like to kind of dive into this piece around legacy if, if Wimpact becomes this, the sustainability leader that you're aiming for by 2030, but in that situation, potentially you had to deprioritize other initiatives, would it have been worth it to do that?

Yeah, I think absolutely. Our CEO Olivier Mugley is the visionary for our company. One of the things that drew me to WinPac is we've had three CEOs in 50 years and each CEO has brought something different to the table from, you know, starting in an empty building all the way through to being the innovation based company we are today. At the end of the day the priority is sustainability. So things need to be matched up against that. If it's not moving our agenda forward, then, then it becomes less of a priority. So as we look at operational excellence, as we look at, you know, commercial excellence and HR and employee excellence, all of those have to be rooted in the sustainable movement that we're trying to drive. You know, sustainability is, is a tough situation. It changes rapidly, it's political, it's geographical, it's, it's got a lot of different animals to it. And what I appreciate about what we're doing is we're staying true to our goals and objectives, even if they're getting harder and harder. We're continuing to try to change platforms and technology to be more sustainable, whether it's on the consumer side or the way we do business. You know, the waste in our plants, energy usage, all the different things that we can do. But it, it really is how we make and prioritize our decisions. So I think if something were to be deprioritized, it would not feel like a miss in the fact that it didn't really line up well under what we're trying to accomplish from a more sustainable, focused company.

So when you say sustainability just for the listeners, you and myself, how do you define sustainability for yourself and your team?

There's a handful of aspects to it, but being a flexible packaging company in anything from K cups to fruit cups to flexible meat, protein and cheese products, our packaging is everywhere. And there's a debate as to whether you could have single serve food without packaging or whether you need packaging to have single serve food. But you know, there'll never be a point in our, in our existence in which we don't have flexible packaging. Our charge is to make sure that the Packaging we create and use is the least, it has the least impact on our environment and whether that's, you know, how we make it and what we waste, how we ship it and how it gets to customers and then how our consumers ourselves use and dispose of that product. You know, we need to make it easily recyclable. We need to make our systems more robust. But, you know, if we're focused on doing that and driving change one step at a time, eventually we will end up where we want to be, which is a different place. But, you know, it is a journey. This sustainability and the, the flexible packaging space is ever changing. We have to stay true to the movement that it's not just a profitable and marketable approach, it's something that has to guide us.

Yeah, it's a big deal globally on the sustainability of packaging because the packaging industry has had a bit of a bad reputation for years about polluting the environment and all this other stuff. But we, we, I think, I think leaders probably or people listening realize we have to have packaging for our stuff. So we need the packaging leaders like you all to be taking this stuff really seriously because the packaging is going to get produced either way. The, the big thing is do we have leaders, you know, like yourself, that are stepping in and helping guide that industry a more positive way on it. And it sounds like you guys have got incredibly difficult goals to hit all this stuff.

That's absolutely true.

But, but, but you're getting there. Where. And just a random bit of the packaging. Where, where are you on the organic side of things like organic packaging that sort of decomposes naturally. Is there a future in that?

It everything is application based and the challenge really is scale. So there are things you can do at small scale, regional type brands, you know, low consumer type stuff. But when you look at the North American food system and the way we produce at scale, it's very difficult to maintain the shelf life and the product quality and the presentation in the store without the products we use today. That's why we use them. I think there's opportunities and there's, there's ways to come up with, you know, that would be considered bioplastics and degradable plastics. But the challenge is really how do you scale that at a, at a commercially viable expense to the consumer, to the food packagers and to, to windpack that that allows us to make that change. I think that technology is still pretty far off. The real focus now is in, you know, monolayer materials, cutting down on the number of resins and and products that make up a package so that it's easier to recycle for consumers, you know, out in. In everyday life. Yeah.

So look, we got a ways to go on the dream packaging that just magically decomposes perfectly without affecting the environment versus, okay, this is part of this thing that we all go through with change, and we know when we get to the other side, there's going to be benefits to it. And I believe that sounds like a very helpful model. In this situation where you were working through this with a leader. Did you explain the model to them about change? And what did you. Or what was. What was the. And what was the end result of how this went?

I look back to, you know, Covid changed the game for everybody. And I think it was a great opportunity for leaders that were paying attention to level the field. And at that point, whether you had been in a leadership role for two days or 20 years, nobody had led through a pandemic. And it was an opportunity to really identify who were the great leaders in organizations that were willing to step in. You know, this goes back to the gray and the ambiguity. You know, every day was changing. How do we keep 2,900 people safe and working? And. And, you know, they were essential workers. And there was a point with the. With a team I had at the time where I put the model up on the wall and said, hey, where. Where are we on this? And. And I asked each of them individually to show where they were personally and. And why, you know, what were they feeling, what were they thinking? And it really, number one, gave us a visual roadmap to what we were going through. And, you know, some of us were still in the momentum, running on adrenaline, excited about it. Others had slipped down into the valley of despair. Some had worked through it, and they were into, how do we now anchor the change and move forward? But putting that model on the wall gave us a visual to where we could each understand where everyone else is. But it also gave us a framework to talk about, you know, so as we embarked on our next big change project, we could pull that out and say, okay, what. What is this point going to look like? What is the Valley of Despair going to feel like? How do we have enough momentum to work through that quickly and bring everybody along? And sometimes you have to let people sit there for a while and determine, you know, am I coming along on this journey or am I not? But, you know, at that point, you start to understand who's in it for the long haul, who's willing to to think about it differently. But yeah, I think it's a powerful visual to put, you know, put in front of somebody and say, tell me, tell me where you are. And you know, be honest. I want to understand what we can do to help you. We all are somewhere on this spectrum at any given point, but the visual is really valuable.

And what was the result after you shared that with them and they plotted where they were on the model change model.

What gave us an opportunity to talk about what we needed to do to number one, get all in the same place and you know, number two, put together a couple, you know, three things walking out of this meeting today. What are the three things we're going to do to move forward on this, on this spectrum, even if it's an inch, what are the three things we're all doing together? And you know, some of it's fear. Some folks are just afraid of the situation. Others thrive on chaos and really like being able to step in and, and drive that opportunity to step out and lead. And the key was really how do we narrow down the noise? How do we get all of us on the same point and what are the three things we're going to focus on to move, move forward. And I think that's the value in driving that alignment and prioritization. That goes back to the three things people often hear from me.

Yeah, powerful. A powerful outcome.

Right.

It made the crisis actionable. I love it too, because acknowledges where everybody is, people are feeling different things or different places on that change journey. And once we accept where we are and where other people are, we can start talking about moving forward. But it's like if we're just throwing everybody, we're treating everybody the same where they are, we assume everybody's experiencing the same stuff the same way. We really miss an opportunity for people to move forward together.

Man.

Real, really, really good. So, Randall, starting to wind this up, man. So as a leader who gets paid to be excellent and resilient, which we've, which we already talked about being a big part of your journey, what is the part of yourself that you've had to emphasize? So it's naturally, Randall, what have you had to emphasize? And then maybe what's one thing that you even had to suppress or sacrifice a little bit to be the chief operational excellence officer of a billion dollar company?

Yeah, this one had me thinking.

As.

I've gone through my career, I think I just reached the 25 year mark. There's a point at which I realized, you know, I want to be able to Come to work and operate in a team where I can be genuinely myself. And that takes adaptability, understanding when, when you and the team around, you need a little more of this and a little less of that. But if I believe that if you can't show up as yourself and, and you have to suppress, you know, one of the things you're good at or the way you approach situations, you're only going to be able to do that for so long and, and that's going to come back. And when it comes back, it's going to, you know, it's going to come out strong. And I think I look to be part of teams where everyone can show up as themselves. We're supportive, we understand who we are as people and what we're trying to accomplish. It's not punitive, it's not, you know, it's more of a coaching mentality. I want to build those teams for the people around me. You know, where we learn as we grow, we make mistakes, we, we overstep boundaries, but as we do that, we learn what being a great leader is about. There were times where I felt I need to mold myself this way or mold myself that way. And as the frustration grows, you, you can just sense that maybe I'm in the wrong place. Maybe this isn't, you know, this isn't the time for them or for me or for my career. But I've been very focused on creating the psychological safety and the space for people to bring everything they have to work. And, and from there we figure out how to mold and round the edges to be a, to become a team.

Seems like it's working out pretty well so far.

That's what they tell me.

That's what they tell you. So far, thinking on the personal level, is there something that just to be an executive that you've had to sacrifice, like family time or vacation time or like, you know, me time just, or sleep or anything like that. That's been. Been something that you had to give up sort of intentionally to like get the, get the C level job.

Yeah, I think your family, certainly it's a family affair and it takes a lot of commitment from my wife and my kids and understanding schedule management and who needs to be where doing what so that the job and the work life balance are in sync. I think that's number one.

Yeah.

I think the other piece is at some point in your career you start to become, you know, more focused on the collective and less focused on the individual. And you reach a point where it's about Purpose and giving back, and how do I then manage what I personally and what my ego wants to accomplish, and what do we, as a collective and as a team want to accomplish? So there are times where I feel like I'm sacrificing that inner drive, that sense of urgency, the desire for accomplishment, with the patience and persistence and development of a larger organization.

Yeah, that's. That's a wonderful insight right there. I think a lot of people miss that because maybe ambition and personal drive got you to the C level, and maybe then those results got you into a higher level position. But then when you, to have success at that level, like you were saying earlier, you go fast as an individual, but you gotta go slow and more thoughtful to bring everybody along with you. And ultimately that's. And that's a big change for, you know, for a lot of leaders who have had success, you know, like you say, leading from, like you were saying, leading from the front. You get there, you're like, wait a minute. What got me here won't get me there, man. Randall, this has been a phone today, sir. What's, what's your parting thought for our listeners? Feel free to take it any direction you like.

Yeah, I think it's a great question, and I knew you would ask something like this, so I don't know that I have anything profound, but as I was preparing for our conversation, I thought back to inflection points in my career and quotes like the ones that you mentioned that I have on a wall here, and some dating back to my first leadership position. And so I have a quote on the wall that says, you know, sometimes events conspire to make you a leader. And there are times I think people are faced with, you know, are we going to do it? Are they going to do it? Do I need to do it? You know, this situation requires someone to put some organization to it and help get the team organized and set free. And I think there are some people that naturally step into that role, and they're the usual suspects. I think there are others that just need a little bump or maybe be asked to do it or given some faith that, hey, I need you to take the lead on this. I need you to put this together for us and lead it the way you would. And so I think as leaders, as you work your way up, you need to find ways to multiply your influence. And the only way to do that is by surrounding yourself with good people and giving them space to learn and operate and make mistakes like I've been afforded in my career. From some great leaders and, and it's to read the situation and understand what the, what everybody needs in that moment and see if it's something you're. You're able to provide or if not, take the back seat and go on to the next one.

The very idea of sort of the world or events conspiring to make you a leader or make you a better leader is pretty interesting to me. It's almost like there's like a karma or a universal. Like it's, it's like the world is. Things are happening and is going to give you an opportunity to lead. And I think if you go about your day like that and you're taught that as a young leader or even as a teenager, you're going to live your life differently because you're going to prepare, you're going to be, you're going to notice when these things come up and it'll be your decision to decide if you're going to lead like you say or let someone else do it, but just to go about your day, hey, there are going to be opportunities for me to step up. There are going to be ways for me to lead. And part of my job is being a human on this planet is paying attention to that.

Absolutely.

Really cool, man. Great place to land the plane. Randall, thank you for joining us on lead the team. And I guess we got to keep an eye on wimpac big things.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

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