My first real job started at 14 as a cart guy and a bagger and worked my way through school and college, made my way through there and enjoyed every bit of it.

And then most recently, about two and a half years ago, I became the president of the Giant Company, which is probably one of the best jobs in America.

I kind of fell in love with retail.

When you have as many stores and as many team members as we do, there's always somebody that's doing an unbelievable job.

And I think it is finding out those best practices and then magnifying that and getting that to be a multiplication factor versus an and that's what we really started to see the results really take on.

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Welcome back to lead the team with number one bestselling author and in demand corporate trainer Ben Fanning.

On this podcast, the world's most innovative senior leaders share their top success strategies to motivate your direct reports, cultivate your top leaders and accelerate your career.

Let's get started.

Here's Ben.

Hey there everybody.

Welcome back to lady the Team.

Today I have for you John Ruane who is president of the Giant Company.

He's a true veteran of the retail grocery industry and has held over 20 positions during his career.

From carts to the C suite.

A little bit more about the Giant Company.

They're a retailer that serves millions of customers across Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia with more than 35,000 dedicated team members supporting more than 19093 stores, 133 pharmacies, 107 fuel stations and over 180 online pickup pubs and grocery delivery service and hundreds of zip codes.

Now the Giant Company is changing the customer experience, giving back and creating an impact in local communities for a better future.

They're a the Giant Company Family brands include Giant, Martin's Giant, Heirloom Market, Giant Direct and Martin's Direct.

The Giant Company is also a company of Ahold, Del Hayes and two key points specifically about John that we're going to kick this thing off with are points that he Leads by being a lifelong learner and recognizing that even though their business is selling food, it's always about the people.

John, welcome to lead the team, sir.

Hey, thank you, Ben.

I appreciate the opportunity.

So it's so bold, right?

Leading.

Want to let everybody know right off the bat, I'm a lifelong learner and recognizing that your business is about selling food, although even though the business is about selling the food, it's really all about the people.

Pick one of those and give us a little bit on how it's been impactful for you.

Well, I would say a little bit about maybe my history here at, at the Giant company and what led me here as well.

So lifelong learner started many, many decades ago here, starting at the age of 14.

It was my real first real job.

I would say I did a lot of other things before that, but newspapers at such.

But really my first real job started at 14 was a cart guy, cart person and, and a bagger and worked my way through school, high school and college paying, paying my way through there and enjoyed every bit of it.

Was really worked for four different companies in my career.

I spent about a third of my total career in store operations and I spent about two thirds of my career in the support centers.

Doing multiple functions, particularly around the area of merchandising.

Was most of the time I spent in there being everything from running particular areas to running a center store, fresh departments combination all together as a chief merchant.

And then most recently, about two and a half years ago, I became the president of the Giant company, which is probably one of the best jobs in America.

Well, definitely you can just see right there, lifelong learner because you were learning every part of the business.

What, why speaking about that though, like why groceries?

So you got started early on and you just kept with it.

I started early on.

It really was not my ambition.

My original ambition was to be a physician and I did a lot of the work to do a lot of science background, a lot of art classes.

But honestly, I kind of fell in love with retail.

Didn't have plans on staying in the beginning.

I moved from my first organization that I worked part time to another organization and really fell in love with the company and the culture.

And I continued to move forward in a learning process as well and at the same time was able to progress in my career and just really got intoxicated with the business, with people, with the pace of the business and really enjoyed every minute of it.

Wow.

So the deeper you got, the more you fell in love with it and you're like, wait a minute.

You know, maybe.

Obviously, being a physician is a lot about the people you work with.

And it sounds like you discovered that with the grocery business.

So what do you mean by your business is selling food, but it's always about the people?

Okay, so we have a lot of companies sell food.

One of our differentiators that we have here at the giant companies is how we treat our team and how we treat our customers.

And we've made a lot of progress, I think, in both of those areas and how we treat our customers.

Obviously, there's lots of ways to measure that, but net promoter score is one of the things that we value highly here.

And we've been able to move the needles very significantly in a short period of time by really focusing in on best practices and looking at the stores that do it great every day and just celebrating the successes of those stores and getting other stores excited about it too.

So over the last year, we've made geometric progress in those areas.

We want to continue there where it's never good enough.

We always want to make it the best experience possible.

Or like we like to say, we want the customer's expectation experience to exceed their expectations every time they shop with us.

And I think we're well, well on the way with that journey.

Well, congrats on moving the needle on the metric by doing something positive for people.

I think sometimes you think, hey, we need to do something new merit to impact the numbers.

And it sounds like you went in there and started working with the team.

Was there one thing, Roger, say, what's one thing that you did that you believe contributed most to moving the needle on nps?

I would say the biggest part of the success of that was just understanding I, I.

When you have as many stores and as many team members as we do, there's always somebody that's doing an unbelievable job.

And I think it is finding out those best practices and then magnifying that and getting that to be a multiplication factor versus an addition factor and then celebrate when you celebrate that.

So one of the examples was our chief operating officer visited the store managers who had the best results, and they shared with him on video how they were doing it.

We created some, some work, work around that and shared that with the teams, and that's where we really started to see the results really take on.

Wow.

So spreading what's working versus just focusing on what's not working.

Yeah.

And I, I also think that, I think one of the things, the mistakes that that people sometimes make is we try to Answer the question without doing that work first.

We, we, we fill, we fill the blank in versus listening more to what the team is actually doing because they're on the front line.

They're doing it every day.

And I think that they actually, you know, are most connected to our customers and can help us on that journey.

For sure.

Yeah.

And imagine how much more engaged those people are when they got to share their idea, their way with the executives and the rest of the company.

And I love the idea of videoing it and letting them share it.

Yeah, no, it definitely was a big plus.

I mean, I mean, it seems like in the corporate world the default is.

Well, we're going to take that and we're going to put in a PowerPoint and then we're going to send it some other executives and then we're going to hope this thing happens.

But it sounds like you're really in the stores and I'm thinking about your operations background too.

You really are getting to the front line, seeing what they're doing and then sharing it.

Does this video.

So it's just like you all filmed it or let them tell the story themselves.

And then that's the, that's the communication piece that went around the organization.

That's it.

And what we like to say too is we don't like what we call.

We don't like programs.

We do like culture.

And it's really about impacting the culture and have sustainable change happen where people really believe it and want to do it because it's the right thing to do.

And I also have the belief that, you know what, doing the right thing, you can have a lot of fun in this business.

It really is, it is a great business and you can really have a lot of fun taking care of customers and take care of the team.

Groceries business notoriously is profit sensitive.

Right.

Because there's.

You guys are kind of in a structure where you've got expenses, you've got assets, you've got, I mean, think about vegetables, have a short lifespan and you're just so sensitive to, to margins.

How do you all navigate the pressure and the challenge of being in an industry that's just, just fraught with challenges sometimes From a, from that standpoint, it.

Is, I like to say it's a very complicated, yet a very simple business.

Okay.

So I think the way that I look at it is you have to start with the customer first and you have to really.

You can't just give the customer what we want to sell them.

You have to give the customer what they want to buy.

And that's one of the, one of the things we do fairly well here as an organization.

We're really in tune with the diverse demographics that has to do with income levels and ethnicity levels of all the stores we service and really being in tune with the communities specifically need from us.

And we have our merchants really fired up about how to do that in the best possible way.

And I think that our customers really appreciate that, recognize that we're, we carry the products that they want us to carry for them.

Our merchants are really driven to find the things that are on trend and making sure that we stay ahead of the curve.

And things like produce as an example.

You know, produce is a, it's what we, we use the terminology shrink in the grocery business.

But you know what, if you're going to be in the grocery business, you're going to have shrink.

So now it's just about being smart about how you do it.

We also have, as you can imagine, tremendous amounts of data on everything we do.

And we're able to measure that and make really good hypotheses around what the best bets and best decisions are for the team, for the customer and for the shareholder too.

Oh, a real balancing act.

It's a balance.

And so what, what do you.

And I enjoyed reading about your company a lot.

What are you doing to be competitive or be different from the Amazons?

You know, these online retailers who might have a different approach on how they're doing things here.

How are you guys thinking about this into the future and, and the niche that you're going to be filling?

Yeah, so we see ourselves as an omnichannel retailer at, with the, with the, the way the world's evolved.

Obviously Amazon or Walmart, just to call out two, two huge retailers have done really good work in these areas.

But what we also have is we have the store experience.

So we have a really well run, clean, fresh stores.

We have unbelievable staffing that's inviting customers in and making them feel welcome.

And so you have the whole experience at the giant company where you come shop in our stores, you can shop online, we can deliver it for you, you could pick it up as well.

And it's all, it all works out really great for us.

Yeah, it's very much in line with, hey, it's a people business.

Yes, we're doing groceries.

But when you're, and I, and I picked up on this on a lot of the reviews of your organization and your strategy, when you double down with people, that's a really.

And I don't really believe, like, hopefully in a perfect world it wouldn't be the ultimate best niche because you would go, you would find, have a great people interactions, no matter what retail store you're going.

But it's just not always the case.

And it takes, I think, a real, a real visionary leader to be able to put that forward and actually execute on it.

No, I completely agree.

And you know, you mentioned earlier on the life, lifelong learning and one of the, one of my more recent fascinations, even though I've been a leader for a long time, has been how to be a better leader and studying how to be a better leader.

And to me, it's really about making sure that we're really clear about expectations and that we take the time to educate, train, develop, nurture our team members so that they feel empowered to really do a great job for us.

Very good.

So thinking about your career, you mentioned studying leadership.

Are there specific ways that.

Or I'll say systems or people or books that have been meaningful to you in your own leadership development journey and also want to call any other mentors you've had in your past?

Yeah, so I would, I would lean heavily on both of those areas.

I have become, I guess it's, it's a fairly recently acquired habit, but I have become a really a fan of learning through auditory means.

So I read, listen to a lot of books.

I'm not a great book reader, but I'm a great book listener.

Last year I had, I read 98 or listen to 98 books.

98, 98 books.

It's my, it's my workout and my drive time, education process and, and I like many different areas, obviously leadership.

Some of my favorites include Cotter Leading Change, Collins, Good to great.

I also love the great business people of our times.

Sam Walton's book Built from Scratch by Bernie Marcus is one of my favorites.

My Life in Full by Indra was a great book.

And then also I love things about management.

It's one of the ones that I'm reading right now is emotional intelligence, habits, understanding people better.

That's a great book.

Love it.

And then my other, my other real passion is about history.

I love, I love history, particularly American history is something that I'm really passionate about.

Yeah, well, it's really so positive that books used to be books on tape, but now, I mean, they're, they're so much easier to digest on the fly.

If you can listen now, for me, it sounds like you might be too.

I'm a higher, My retention is much higher for auditory than it is for reading.

And I do plenty of reading too.

But I mean I remember a lot more from listening.

One reason I like doing a podcast.

But you know, it's really important, I think for listeners to, as leaders, one, notice your commitment to learning.

I mean y'all 98 books.

But secondly, finding the.

The way that you can get through them and absorb them the best.

And when in your lifestyle you can get to that.

Because I don't feel like me, but it's hard for me to read a book before bedtime because I just.

I'm not too good after seven.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No one you go.

So you said it was your commute traveling and worked out.

I try.

I try to get at least six workouts in a week and I use that hour every morning.

So I have those six hours.

Plus I have a lot of windshield time traveling from stores and other places too.

From a workout perspective, how do you approach that?

Do you use a trainer?

What kind of working out?

No, I do it myself.

I probably should be using a trainer, but I've been doing it fairly passionately for three years and definitely built a habit there.

It's helped me a lot physically and mentally, I think, to be able to do this job and keep your head, you know, nice and clear and straight.

I think it's just.

It's just good for.

For me and it keeps me strong in many ways.

So something that I did for me personally, but I also, I think it has some good benefits for the business too.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of leaders miss that.

They.

They're so focused on nurturing and taking care of their customers and their team that they don't put their own mask on first to use like an airline deal.

It feels like you're stealing time from the business, but you're.

No way.

This is good.

I need this for the business.

I think Kadish said it best.

You got to take time to sharpen.

Saw one of his things.

Right.

So you have to have to do that.

And I do it at 5:30 in the morning.

So we've got plenty of time for the business to 5:30.

Well, that's where it starts.

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Who were a couple of mentors along the way that have been beneficial to you?

What were some of the key lessons?

Yeah, I, I've had.

I've had some really great mentors in my life.

I've.

As I said, I work for four different companies and I, I also say this very often.

You learn what to do and what not to do.

And I've learned lessons both ways, but from the people that really were super helpful to me, I learned early on I had worked with a great person who, who ended up having an amazing career.

But at the time when I met him, he was a director and I was a manager, just breaking into the corporate world.

And one of the lessons I learned was he, we were in a board meeting and he was getting all kind of kudos for, for a great turnaround and the work he had done.

And I watched him give all the credit to the team.

Even though, you know, I recognized, and I'm sure he recognized that he had a sizable amount of the effort to make that happen.

But he shared that with the team and really built his team up and made his team feel powerful and inspired by that.

And I always remember that that's about 30.

That's probably more than 30 years ago.

It is more than 30 years ago, but that's something that inspires me.

And I was able to work for other several great CEOs that have just been amazing.

Some of the ones that I worked for, just inspirational things would be, in spite of the fact that the CEO, they would take the time to walk the building, sit down with people, ask them what they're doing, what they're working on, or knowing what they're working on, and thanking them for, you know, great work using communications, written communications, or just.

Just a thank you as they, as they get through the building and the stores to recognize, you know, good performance because it doesn't cost you anything to be nice to people.

When you have focused on going to your first example, when you focused on giving the credit away like that mentor, what's the impact that you notice in your team?

I noticed that the results continue to multiply.

I noticed that when you share the wealth, people feel really inspired you inspire them, and now they start to create more things on their own.

One of the things I learned when we kind of touched just a little bit, one of the things I learned early, earlier, fairly early in my career was don't tell people exactly what to do.

Tell them what you want the output to be and then ask them to come up.

Because a lot of times their ideas are better than the ideas that I could have created on my own.

And I think that that kind of culture creates that ability to inspire people to want to break out, to want to think of new things and to want to own things and push forward.

I just think it creates a really, really positive culture.

Yeah, love that.

And on the flip side.

Well, on the flip side, on another point, I love to hear what you noticed when you are walking the floor of the store, when you're giving thanks personally like that mentor.

And what's been the impact?

Because I, I believe that it'd be so easy for you with, I mean, some 35,000 team members, 193 stores, to just be at the home office dealing with the details and the emails and, but instead it sounds like you're getting out, doing as much in person as possible.

What, what's the impact you notice at a store after you, after you do that?

Well, a couple, couple things I do is I, I, when I do visit stores, I never tell anybody where I'm gonna go.

Half the time I'm not exactly sure when I leave my house, what's, what's in store for the day.

Oh, but, but a few things that go with that one would be, I try to, I try.

I definitely will make sure that I say hello to every person in the store and thank them personally for the work they're doing.

I'd speak to the store manager, and I have a lot of data in advance to understand any things they've done, like store records, department records, personal accomplishments.

They've had Holland seniority with the company, anniversaries of years, etc.

Just to thank them for those things would be one thing.

The other thing that I try to do or I definitely do is when you, when you have a role like, like mine or, or a head of operations, a lot of times people are threatened by that in some way and they, and they always want to know, like, what did I see that was wrong?

And what I, what I tell them is it's more important that if something's not right, that they recognize it, because I do and they also do and that they don't.

I don't think that they need me to, to point it out to them, but I actually tell them I'm here to find things that you're doing right.

So that we could take those things and use it other, in other places.

And I think that they actually Appreciate that.

And it's not always the way that this business has been.

This has been a tough business.

It surely wasn't that way when I came up in the business.

It was more of the opposite.

As a young store manager, the culture was a little different, but it's one of the things you learn of what to do and what not to do do.

And I think when you, when you, when you beat people down, it's not going to be good for the company, for, for the team member, for the customer, for anybody.

Sorry.

Even good for me.

And that's not my style and it's not something I choose to do now.

If things are wrong, we're going to address them and we're going to get them fixed and we're going to get fixed really quickly.

And one of the things I always ask people is what help, what help do you need and what could I do to help you right now?

If you need me to get 20 people here, we could do that.

Well, so supportive.

And I, I love the idea though of being the do it right leader.

And people might hear that and say, well, he's telling people to do it right.

No, no, he's on the search to find people that are doing things right and well and then those can be shared with the rest of the organization.

Like the very first example you gave today and, and spread continuous improvement.

That's right.

Yeah.

It's a lot of fun.

It's a lot, a lot of fun and a lot of inspiration too.

So something that the listeners should know about the giant company.

It's been around since 1923.

Right?

Yeah, we just last year we celebrated 100th anniversary.

Great proud retailer here started.

Our headquarters is in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, literally about a mile and a half where our corporate office is today and started as a butcher shop and has grown into this big, massive, multi billion dollar organization.

All right, so sounds cool.

Yet the world is changing and has been changing and so what are you thinking about this?

With balancing honoring the legacy, celebrating the 100 years, but also, you know, innovation, adapting to the new world that we find ourselves in with technology.

You've already given us a little bit of preview of that.

But from a leader standpoint, on that 100th anniversary, what were you communicating to the employees?

If I had to call out one heritage element would be delivering value and freshness every day.

That's, that's how we built our business.

Now how that's how that's evolved over the last seven, eight years has been the, the emergence of E commerce and how customers are looking for more convenience, which, which we've done an amazing job with our pickup points and our delivery.

We continue to drive innovation through our assortment every day and we continue to evolve.

I mean it's, it, the business changes every single day.

There's something new happening, new trends.

Obviously the last several years there's been a tremendous amount of food inflation.

We know customers that puts tough demands on customers making choices about how much they can afford to pay for food versus fuel versus rent and all these other factors that really squeeze families.

So we're really super conscious about that.

We do our, our best to make sure we keep costs down and prices down.

We have a very robust program around discounts for customers.

We have a gas loyalty program that's kind of world class here where customers can get free fuel as well as they can save a tremendous amount with their bonus card savings.

What do you think would surprise consumers that go to grocery stores?

Like, like what do they not know or what would surprise them about the grocery business?

They probably wouldn't actually understand the real complexity of how the products come in from all over the world, how they're sourced, how you have to be pretty precise on how you do that to make sure that you're not too short or too long to just in time for freshness, perspectives, etc.

And then managing all that, those pieces and being able to squeeze out a profit because it is, it is, it's a tough business and there's a lot of overhead business as you could imagine, you know, between running the stores and taking care of the team and all the other expenses, a lot of, a lot of expenses over the last years have grown geometrically in terms of, you know, costs of repairs and maintenance or those types of things have gone up very dramatically.

The cost to even build stores has gone up amazing over the last 10 years.

So it's really getting to be a very tough business.

But we, we, in spite of that, we continue to grow and we continue to produce great results.

Part of the things we, we pride ourselves on here as part of the whole Delhi's family at the giant companies, we deliver, we deliver our forecast.

I think we've assembled a great team of leaders here that are really proficient.

All of my chief, all my chief merchants, operators, marketers, HR and finance leads are amazing.

Assembled a great group of people who are professionals and really work well together super collaboratively, transparently play well together and win well together.

What's the one trait you wish you could instill in every employee?

And why do you think it's important.

When I think about it, I think a lot about this actually.

I think about, you know, not everybody's built the same way, but I have, I guess, instinctual desire to want to win.

I, I don't know, I think if I had to tell you where it came from, it probably came from my mother who had pretty high expectations of me, not only academically, but also with work and other things.

And, and what I try to, what I try to instill in people is the fact that if you're going to be here, why not win?

It's a choice, you know, you can win, you could tire, you could lose.

And winning is so much more fun.

It is, yeah.

And then I hear effort and a competitive edge and gross.

The grocery biz is a competitive business.

Right.

And the more you enjoy the winning and the competitiveness of that, I think that would help you have a prolonged career.

Oh yeah.

Just in my, in my little corner of the world over here, we have 3200 competitors in my market place to win 3200 with only 3200.

But it's our job every day to make sure that we're getting, you know, we're taking care of the customers a little bit better than, than, than most.

You know, we have some world class competitors here too.

I mean the best of the best.

And it's, it's not easy, but just keeps us, we have to, we have to remain sharp.

And when's the time you had an unexpected twist or failure in your career and had to lead to your success or growth on, down the road?

Yes, I would say in my, in my journey.

I work for four companies.

The first one was just onboarding.

It was, it was working for an independent owner.

I learned a lot from him.

The second one is I worked for another great company, saw the rise and fall of that company due to an LBO at the time and really, and really saw, unfortunately that company at the time didn't make it because of just some bad decisions I guess at the top where we just had too much debt load.

And then I worked for another company that really was probably the most disappointing part of my life.

Just before I came to the Ajolt Delhez companies and that really, I guess, I guess what I would characterize it as.

It didn't feel like the company really wanted to accomplish what was best for the team and the customer.

There were different motivations and objectives and I kind of knew that.

And my only regret would be that I didn't separate myself from that quicker because if it's not right for you, then you shouldn't be there.

And so that was a big learning for me.

I, I, I, it was some painful.

But, you know, I also believe that led me to come to the Ahold Company, which became Ahold Delhais, which I came in as to run the sales for the New York division for Stop and Shop and had a really enjoyable experience there.

And they asked me to come and run the fresh business for all of our hold.

There was about 835 stores, about a $9 billion time.

Well, and I had like five or six amazing years doing that, which led me to be the chief merchant for five years at the Giant company, which led me to this role here today as the president.

So, so out of bad things come good things.

You just have to believe in yourself and continue to persevere.

You can't give up.

Yeah.

So what, so what helped keep you going or kept you motivated during the transition?

I just, I think it's just something in me that I, I don't give up.

I don't quit.

I'm gonna grind.

I'm gonna grind it out.

I would say this to you.

My commute when I first started was 105 miles of the toughest roads in America, maybe excluding Los Angeles, but this was from Central New Jersey to Fairfield, Connecticut.

105 miles one way, and which was about a little less than an hour and 45 minutes in the morning and about four hours at night, which gave me a 4:45am to 9:30pm day.

But you know what?

That's.

We do what we need to do.

And luckily for me, I didn't plan on it, but luckily for me, I was, I was asked after that time to come and do something different, which, which make now my commute is four and a half miles.

So that thing kind of works its way out.

Feels so good.

It does.

First time in my life.

First time.

What do I do with this time?

Well, it's time to work out.

That's right.

It's time to do these things.

Yeah, it does.

Talk about dedication and doing the work that you're aligned to.

And just the word that comes to mind for me is just gritt.

You got to be gritty.

You gotta be.

You got it.

Well, I'm, I'm not a fancy guy.

Not a guy who, you know, I, I earned, I earned it the hard way, and I'm happy about that.

And I'm, I don't think I, if, if you asked me, what would I change?

I don't think I changed it.

I think I'd keep it just the way it was for me.

I think it, it gave me a lot of experience.

I know.

I know a lot, a little bit about a lot of things, what I tell people.

And I've probably done most of the jobs in the, in the organization.

And I think that gives me a broad perspective that I can help people see things maybe slightly differently and, and really focus in on the big priorities.

In a world where it seems so easy to jump around jobs and companies, it's.

I think it puts more value on those who stick around and have the courage to move around inside the organization and do jobs that like, if you're jumping from company to company, ends up happening to grow a lot of people is, well, I've done the same thing, but I've done it in a lot of different companies versus, hey, I've been in one company and I've done a lot of different things inside this company.

So it just gives you a different perspective.

And I think that's uncommon now.

It is.

And I actually been.

I've been very fortunate.

I mean, I did a lot of hard work and that's some of it.

But I was also very fortunate to be in organizations that provided me the ability to continue to move forward in some cases maybe laterally, but also learn something new.

And I was able to take each of those things and looking back and utilize what I had learned in the prior role, to take it to a new role and give it a fresh pair of eyes.

And it really was really helpful for me.

Yeah.

So are you knowing how valuable that's been for you generationally now rising leaders, how are you talking to them?

Because they might get frustrated.

They say, you know what, I want to move up now or I want to go to this other.

I want to go to this other company.

And maybe they are impatient.

I'm not saying that's happening, but I can just envision where they're impatient and may not be willing to take that.

So how are you communicating that to your tier 2?

So a couple things, I guess.

I guess the watch out would be.

And as.

As I.

I learned this lesson early in my career too, from one of my mentors, which was, you don't want the job until you can keep the job, meaning you have the skills required to keep.

And it sounds pretty easy, but it's really true.

And I've seen a lot of people get into positions that they didn't really have either the ability or the leadership or the attitude to really Perform the job and it doesn't sustain itself, and that's not good for anybody.

So.

So what I think we do is we have, we're really committed here to building a great team.

That includes making sure we identify talent that.

So people that have the ability and the aptitude, but also the desire you have to have both, because not everybody wants to have a career that they continue to move forward.

So we're doing a ton of work in that area identifying potential for people.

And then when we do identify potential, we do two things.

We give them all the resources they need to grow personally and we also create career pathings so that even if it's not a promotion, we'll give them a different role to open up their perspective.

And so we're really focused on that here, which is.

I'm excited about that.

That's something that I guess we've always should have done that, but maybe it wasn't happening to the extent it.

It should have been, but we're definitely going to make that happen to a very large degree here at the.

I think it's important for listeners.

And that really resonated with me.

You could have said, like, I'm just developing them, but you use the terminology opening their perspective, which is different than say, I'm going to train them in this way to be a leader, when in reality a different approach is opening a perspective isn't something you're necessarily going to easily be able to get in the classroom.

It's going to be by working with a different group of people in a different situation and kind of force you to dig a little bit deeper.

That's true.

And all different types.

You know, not every, not every situation you.

You walk into is going to be perfect.

And that's why we need leaders too, is to walk into situations where they have to make change happen and they have to find ways to lead the team in a different way.

And I think that's one of the things that really makes us better.

You know, one of, one of the things that I've really keyed in on is where I see where we have any type of gaps or small dysfunctions in organizations.

It's usually, to me, what I found is usually not the people, it's the leadership of the people as not being crystal clear.

And we owe that to people to really get them keyed in on what's important.

And if we're chasing, I call it shiny objects, I don't know what other people call it, but we have to chase the things that matter to our customers and to our team.

And we have to be, we have to be on point with those things and really make them the focus so that people align on that because that's going to sustain really good growth for them too.

John I think that's a great place to land the plane today in this interview.

Real a lot of fun today, this idea of doing the hard work to get clear ourselves as leaders on what's important and then communicating with our team and avoiding shiny objects syndrome, which who hasn't seen that?

What's your parting thought for our listeners today before we sign off?

Appreciate the time with you today.

Looking forward to continuing the growth here at the giant company.

Really looking forward to, I like to say leave it better than I found it and and hopefully leave a generation here of people that are going to whose results are going to make mine look bad or not as good.

I would love to have people that follow me that are going to be amazing and just do amazing work.

Thanks, Sean.

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