 Again, good morning. Welcome to T-Talk. Mr. Stone, our technical director, will introduce our guest speaker. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I appreciate you being here. This is a really good turnout. Thank you. So I'm Rob Stone. I'm the executive director here at White Sands. What I'd like to do is introduce Mr. Garrett Lambert known as Gary around here. Dr. Lambert is the director of the Research and Analysis Center. And some of you may know that that's a tenant activity here on White Sands. So Gary leads a pretty diverse group of analysts over there that function on analytical tasks, and they are actually part of AFC. So without further ado, Gary. Thanks. We'll see the applause level is the same at the end of this, but good morning and then welcome. I don't do well and eat. So if I start sweating stuff like that, don't hold it against me. I appreciate the introduction, Rob. And I wanted to spend some time today. OK, so a little story. So Josie Tate, I don't know where she's hiding. There she's hiding over there. So she's been trying to corral me into give her a title for this talk. And finally, last week, she said, I got to have it so I can send out the note. And so I had about five seconds that I'll do reflections on leadership. And then the next day as I looked at it, I was like, man, that sounds grandiose. That's a little bit over the top. But I want to do today is first provide you a little bit of context both about our organization called track here on White Sands. A little bit about myself so you understand where I've come from and then kind of relate to you based on my experiences. Some things I call them actions and attributes that you might consider as you go on that journey to continue to refine yourself as a better human being and a better leader. So I'll start with track. So the research and analysis center has been here at White Sands a long time. So there's a track whizmer element here. There's another main center up at Fort Leavenworth. So the track Fort Leavenworth or track Fliven. And then there's two on the left and right coast, if you will, two small elements on the left coast. We got track Monterey, which is a very small element that's co-located with Naval Postgraduate School. And they have about seven military or so we call them FA 49s, but basically operations research and systems analysis and then one civilian 1515 GS 1515. And then on the right coast, we got a slightly larger footprint about 30 odd folks civilian and military co-located with a sustainment center of excellence and so forth at. I'll get it wrong for Abbott. I know I got it wrong. Anyway, Fort Lee, I'll just say that for now until I remember the right name. And they're co-located there because they do mostly logistical and sustainment sustainment analysis. So track started here track White Sands started here under the name trade. Tredoc analysis support agency Tresana and a like capability was was formed up at Fort Leavenworth K Aura in I think three October of 1989. So we've been here for 35 years and Tresana then became track TRAC where this time it met Tredoc analysis command because at the time it was commanded by a one star G. And then about four years later in 1993 it became track in this case Tredoc analysis center because it was directed by a SES. And that journey is continuing because we're on our third rendition in today because you heard Mr. Stone maybe talk about it and there's a little story there about what our real name is again. But we still kept the brand and the brand's important because track was known, but the words that the letter stood for didn't matter as much. And so we're currently in AFC the Army Futures Command and General Murray was the commanding general of the time as we were coming over from Tredoc to go to AFC. And we were worried about losing the brand because our name meant Tredoc analysis center and we're in now the Army Futures Command. And so we wanted to keep the same acronym. And so we came up with the research and analysis center of little little hoity-toity I guess and so forth. But it turns out that General Murray was a graduate and a rabid fan of the Ohio State University and we had him at the so now the research and analysis center. Some of the work we do and so we basically our mission is to conduct. To produce I guess is best way to put it produce relevant objective incredible analysis operations analysis to support or inform leader decisions. That's our mission. And so our workforce consists of horses, both civilian and military some contractors who are about 150 folks that reside here at White Sands. And you know the the history we have is 35 years. In fact, we had our 35th anniversary last year. A very proud heritage I would say we had the work we do and maybe some of you know what analyses of alternatives are. So we're the organization in the Army that does the ACAT one. So the high dollar studies that associated with you know how do you replace a Bradley? How do you replace the tank? Go those kinds of things. We also do a lot of specialized analysis and one of the things that's kept me here for so many years. Is it is the work changes all the time the content of the work we've done everything from the gender integration studies. So track was the agency that did that through as they said a ways to other studies and the one that's consuming my life right now. How many of you heard of project convergence by a lot of you. By a lot of you. Yeah, so project convergence started out two years ago. I just say this now because I'm going to refer to it later and it started out really small about 10 technologies army only out at Yuma proving ground. And then last year we said you know what we we got to do we got to make this harder and so we made it joint. And then we kind of had it at Yuma as well as here at White Sands. So some of you might have been involved in that and that was pretty hard to do pretty hard to pull off. So where that I am the lead data collection and analysis dude for the entire effort. So that includes not only army analysis but our joint and in this year coming up in 22 we have other nations involved as well. So we went from 21 and we opted in 22. So now we included another two nations UK and Australia. And then we also included the joint again of course and then we decided that you know we only had couple sites last year. Let's have I don't know 30 front starting from the NTC. There's a scenario B we're calling it. Think you're a focus and let's have you know across the world sites. I think it's on the order of 13 to 15 for scenario a we're calling it which is Indo pay calm base. And so we have over 300 data collection and analysts folks that are in our team from across the entire joint force. I just left our we're in the middle of IPR in progress review and a rehearsal of concept drill over at our location. The Brits were briefing their plan as I left. And so we've got everybody under the tent. And so one of the things I want to talk to you about is teams right in terms of building a team of teams. I'll talk about that later. So the last thing I'll say about track and I'll give you some some background on myself a little bit. Don't worry very short is I mentioned the pride in our history and pride in our accomplishments. It just turns out this week every year there's kind of two analytic symposia or meetings or conferences. If you will it happen they're really fun. By the way to come down there very exciting. Talk a lot about analysis and statistical significance. Any takers but so a or is the army operations research symposium that's going on this week right now up at Aberdeen proving ground. And then there's another one which so that's army only and then there's another one it's it's joint so it's more as it's the military operations research society symposium which is usually in the spring. And it turns out this week one of our former directors here at track White Sands. Miss Donna Vargas was inducted into the Orsa Hall of Fame. First female director ever in track. And also the first female ever inducted in the Orsa Hall of Fame that's pretty cool. So we're very proud of her and her contributions and also finally being put into the Orsa Hall of Fame. And then there's another thing why I call it the Academy Award for analysis for the army. It's named Wilbur B. Payne and an interesting fellow from way back when in terms of the 60s and 70s. That's 1960s and 70s. And he that award is like I said like it's for the best analysis in the army for that year. And we also won that at track White Sands for a kind of small UAS studies. So very proud of the things that as a team that we've accomplished over the years to include most recently this week. A little bit about me. So I'm not you know some kind of super leader or anything. That's why I felt like when I read reflections on leadership dude you're not that guy. So I have some experience though. So I came into the army in 1980. I see the calculators worrying says damn that dude's old. Yeah, I'm old. But I started out as an infantry officer and went through my career. And I think that experience is only a piece of it. And I've learned a lot more about leadership since I left the army in the green suit. I retired from the army in 2010 on a Friday. And on a Monday I came in wearing a brand new men's warehouse suit top of the line, trust me. And and then became the director of track White Sands. And so I've been there since so. To me. My experience is I think both in the army and working with this great organization track White Sands has helped me to see some things help me to observe things. And that's what I want to part to you today. Just just some things that you know I wish I told my 20 30 40. I'll stop there self that if I just done this a little differently you know I could have been a better leader. And so I think what I'm going to show you today are just some things from my perspective that I think are some key actions you could take today. And in your lives today and then also some some key attributes I didn't want to give you a laundry list there's only seven total so about four actions three attributes but I think there's some things I think that will resonate with you. And before I move on I forgot to say so ask questions anytime you want to. Unfortunately for those are on the out stations. We don't have the capacity I think to get the questions typed in so. So I'm not sure if that'll come back up at all the game will tell me in the back that does but you know raise your hand and ask a question during I rather you ask it you know when it's proximate to the crime. Then half the way at the end try to remember why you why you want to ask it. Okay, so I need to control this. It is really hot in here. So my grandiose title so I got a message for you. Okay, and I really believe this. So people are born and leaders are made. There's a lot of the debate nurture versus nature does does our people are leaders born and just if you don't have it and you don't have it. You can't become one and I'm firmly not in that camp I believe all of us are leaders. In fact, think about yourselves in your private lives for example your leaders in your families, your leaders in your communities, you could be a soccer coach. You're in a religious group. You can be a leader in the workplace to not not just by position either right we have informal leaders and so I think all of us have some flavor some taste of leadership. So the question is what are you going to do about it to be a better leader. And so some of the things I want to talk about some things I think to spur your thoughts along those lines. So I said I said start with actions and again these could be turned into attributes but I decided not to just give you a laundry list of attributes of leadership. As far as I'm concerned so. First one has to do with one of the most important ones build the right culture. There's a quote from Jack Welch that says culture each strategy for breakfast. I love that quote, because I think sometimes we spend too much effort on designing a strategy. What's our organization strategy for this year and you know just like I think any of you who have been in the military. No plan survives contact with the enemy and no strategy survives the next day in my opinion. And so what's more important is the culture that you want to have in your organization. And there's a guy named E B Taylor who was a British anthropologist from the 18th century who originally coined the word culture. And you have a definition of it but I'm not going to read it to you because it's kind of long but I think I want to talk more about things I think all you know which is workplace culture. What are the components of a workplace culture well there's things like the character in person it's a character personality of your organization. But it's a series of things like. Your shared values how you communicate with each other. Your purpose. Your work ethic all these different things your values you have not only for you know the work you're doing but you're more ethical or if you want to call them. Personal values right in terms of right wrong ethics and so forth. So. I think if you think about building the right culture is very difficult because first of all you have to know what the purpose is. There's a guy named Simon cynic anybody heard of him. He did a. I think it's a Ted talk called. That very good. Tristan gets a he gets a bonus there so yeah start with why. And if you think about how most organizations or industry or companies whatever you want to call it to find. Their culture and what their organization and what it does they start with what. Hey I do good analysis how. Well I got a lot of smart people and we do some you know statistical list calculations and so forth. When you get to the why it's the last thing they talk about and usually it's kind of muted and it's behind the stuff you know the other stuff you said. But in cynics you know presentation you start with why why the heck are we here what is our purpose why do we exist as an organization. That's where you start and that's where you build a culture to meet that purpose and you get the right people on board so that they can not only. Execute what you need to do but they can do it a lot better without a lot of hands on eyes off hands on so. The fundamental question and you need to be able to answer is an organization is why do you exist what what is your purpose and then from that everything flows. Let me run out of water Gunga Den. So. Some examples and I'll use sometimes historical. Sometimes stuff that I've observed in our organization not to tout it or anything but just that's my experience and so a couple of things to talk about this so. I said to you before you know tracks mission is to produce relevant objective incredible operations analysis to inform leaders that grab you jazz by that. Oh hum. You're a tough crowd I'm going to I'm going to break you. So I always felt like yeah mission is nice but it doesn't say the why doesn't say why we exist so if I was going to change that this is my opinion. Not a track opinion but I was going to get a question. I was going to if I was going to change that is that we exist to ensure that our soldiers never have a fair fight. And our only shareholder are the soldiers. So that's why we exist in track we do the kinds of analysis I was talking about how do we equip the soldiers how should they be trained. And all those things that go into the equation so that we're more effective have overmatch over the other side. That's why we exist. So culture each each strategy for breakfast. So I'll move on. The next one. So create a team of teams. I read a lot of books I like reading and a lot of time traveling on planes and basically waiting for flights to be canceled you know every 15 minutes and all that kind of stuff. And so I spent a lot of time reading and one of the ones I came across and part of it had to do because of a course I got to go to with a group called the McChrystal group. And so if any of you remember General Stanley McChrystal pretty famous at the at the end I guess of his career for obvious reasons but also very famous in the army during his career. And he's written a book called team of teams. And one of the things that's in there one of the central things is you want to build a team of teams not a tribe of tribes. And let me talk about the context for this book and then try to explain some of the things I think that came out of at least for me that might resonate with you. So the problem he was addressing at the time was that he was a joint special operations commander in Iraq. He was there five years as the commander so he was there from 2003 to 2008 in Iraq. And then later he became the commander out in Afghanistan and many you know about that but as he was. And so think about this so the joint special operations commander has the seals Delta Rangers Paras all kinds of different three letter agencies. Every one of them underneath his umbrella and none of them talked to each other. They all had their distinct cultures. They didn't like each other in many cases. They wanted out to each other. You know especially the special operators right. And so his whole problem was he had a hierarchical organization with him at the top and you go down you know one of the blocking line diagrams and then over here you got the seals and all those were silos. No one's talking to each other. No one's sharing information. No one's making decisions at those levels because they had to go up their chain of command. Not the one to General McChrystal but back to you know Washington DC or wherever their headquarters was. The enemy on the other hand was this terrorist network. They had cells with lots of connections small teams very agile. In fact, even with all the you know intelligence we had at the time and as he relates in his book you know our capabilities were much better. We couldn't make decisions fast enough because of all those silos. And so he felt like his job was to take that hierarchical structure you've all seen blocking line diagrams and turn it into something more like what the terrorist network looked like. But turn it on its head in the sense of building these these team of teams where individual teams have a great do a great job of having a purpose a known purpose. There's relationships you know each other to your left and right. And they're able to act more quickly because they're making decisions at their level. And he was trying to figure out how how do you raise that goodness of a small team to the enterprise level like he was at with all those different agencies. And so I'll you know belabor the book but two of the things that come across to me that I think are are that resonate are the ideas of shared consciousness and empowered decision making. In other words pushing pushing decision making down. Powered execution is another thing he called it. Let me talk about those two things for a second. Historian type stuff here. History stuff. So anybody ever heard of Admiral Nelson in the Battle of Trafalgar Navy. Any Navy people in here. All right. Yeah, you don't count. So in 1805, one of the most definitive sea battles in UK history, British at the time was was fought between Admiral Horatio Nelson and his fleet against a combined fleet from the French and the Spanish off cut ease in a place called Trafalgar. And a lot's made of the outcome of that battle. Nelson ended up being killed by a sniper didn't survive. But if any of you have ever been to London and seen going to Trafalgar Square, they put him that high up there for a reason because that's where they think he is damn near to God, you know, because he saved the Empire. And but people talk more about his tactics to the crossing the T right TW and the things that he did that were different and one today because they were outnumbered against the French and the Spanish. But people think that that just happens. But Nelson spent years with his captains. Working with them. Helping to understand how he thought. Working to have build relationships across all those captains. Working to to help them to understand how to make decisions in the absence of direction or orders. And if you can imagine of 1805, no cell phones, little semaphore, if you can see it through the smoke, you know, those kinds of things. And so very difficult to to get information across after contact is made. And so his idea was I need to train all these captains, the line captains to be able to think like me and to execute without me telling them what to do. And that's how it ended up being being the way it was. And so it took years to do that to build that shared consciousness to help them with empowered execution, which was not very typical of that era. You know, it was a hierarchy hierarchy big time for the rest of the Navy, the British Navy, but he was different, but it took years to do it. Just like building a team of teams takes years to do because it's about trust. It's about relationships to as well as that shared consciousness. You don't get that sitting in a cubicle next to each other. You don't get that, you know, just talking or a few sensing sessions is got to be something you purposefully work your way through purposefully. Try to build your teams purposely create an environment with that trust so people can question and ask real truth questions, not just ask the ones that are safe. There's a quote. It's basically the last instructions that Nelson gave to his captains, which was essentially no captain can do far wrong if he puts his ship alongside that of the enemy. That was his final orders to them, other than something like England's watching you today, so don't mess it up. But the French Admiral, Vice Admiral Villeneuve, I think his name was who was defeated. He lived after the battle, but they were completely defeated, said that day all captains were Nelson's because he had implicated them with that notion of shared understanding, shared responsibility, the ability to make their own decisions, and they won the day. So that's one example. When I first came to track in 2006, I was a military deputy there. And one of the things I noticed right away, so I mentioned to you before track is four different centers. Left Coast, right Coast, flippin here. And especially between the two main main centers, so about 150 of flippin 150 year attract white sands. There was divides, and it wasn't just geographical. I always said it's a tyranny of geography. No, it was culture too. Just down, I think Dyer Street's that way just down Dyer Street. If you look to the left before you get to the T intersection at the other end. There's some, I think there's historical buildings, but there used to be a whole bunch of rocket scientists over there. Back in the late 70s, early 80s. And there's the strategic arms limitation talks going on. The last one, the second one ended in 79. And a lot of those are between the United States and the Soviet Union. And so we here at White Sands had had these rocket scientists looking at assessments of the Soviet Union in terms of, you know, what if they went after us in a nuclear capacity. You know, what's the exchange going to look like and all those kinds of computations. Well, once most of those talks kind of changed how that calculus was done and also the treaties in place they had, there was no need for the rocket scientists anymore here. And so one day the leader of that group, who I think might have been Wilbur be paying the award I was talking about, called the trade off commander and said, Hey, I got about 300 rocket scientists here. And that became Trasada, which is now track. From that start, talking again about, you know, the kinds of folks you have in culture, as I said before, and a team of teams. That's where our culture came from. We're very detail oriented modeling and simulation and statistical analysis that we do here. Fort Leavenworth's different. So we're down from, you know, soldier up to about brigade level operations, what we look at, they look from about brigade up to core division. And so their mindsets different because where they came from up there Fort Leavenworth and what the original folks were where they came from and so forth. But here we've never escaped to this day where we do detailed combat simulations as part of our culture as part of who we are. But as I was trying to say is that we had a problem across the organization, not just for those cultural differences and geographical differences. But we had a mindset difference where each of the centers was kind of pitted against each other, especially the two main ones. And it wasn't healthy. And I was my first job was working with a great team who were trying to pull me through for the first year of a thing called future combat system. We were doing basically the AOA for that. They did it every year back then and I could barely spell track. I thought it had a K at the end and FCS is almost beyond my understanding. But it was my first job leading a study and the great team that helped pull me through helped me to understand how we do the work and then working through the cultural differences and all those kinds of things. At the action officer level, it wasn't as bad, but the leadership allowed it to pit each other against each other. So that's not a good thing. And so we started some years later, and this is now when I became the director at Track White Sands. And we had a series of SDSs in place across the different locations that saw out of, I think we call one track. It's one word, capital O and E, T-R-A-C, one word. And we started as a mantra and it sounds silly and corny, but we started being serious about it. And even like things like an analyst down here at White Sands back in the day used to have to go all through their chain of command before they could share any of their work with somebody else in track in a different center. That's insane. Talk about barriers and silos. And so we started the mantra and then we started living what we were saying as leaders and continue to push it down. It's still a problem to this day to some degree. It's a lot less. But cultures are hard to overcome. The differences are hard to overcome. And it's something you can never let your finger off of. The pandemic was interesting for us. So as an organization at the time, March of 20, right, when we started sending folks home, we had an opportunity to still have to do studies and so forth. But we had a fairly mature organization, not a lot of brand new people. A lot of folks that had been in the organization had been together working studies in terms of building relationships, knowing each other, helping each other and going through the crucible of work. And so throwing everybody home wasn't such a bad problem for us because we already had those relationships. We already had those friendships and so forth. The problem is as time goes on, you start losing folks through retirement and so forth and moving. You get a whole bunch of new people in. If the only thing they're seeing is a leader through a screen, I think you got a problem. Because they're not getting any sense of the culture. They're not getting a sense of who's who and they're not building relationships and all those things that make it so important to build a team of teams. So we started trying to bring folks in more early than others probably. And also we had inherently classified work that forced us to. I probably only took about two weeks of telework in the front end and a lot of our folks. One of them is sitting here, Kevin Wainer who ran one of our studies called Strategic Fire Study. We had folks in every day of the pandemic for over a year and a half. And then some and because of the nature of the work we had to do and so forth. So we had that kind of end of the spectrum and we had a lot of folks that didn't come in at all. And so how do you lead an organization? How do you build a team that way? And especially when you start losing people that know each other and know how to operate together and know your culture and know the organization. That became problematic as time went on. And so I'm a believer in telework. I wasn't I think when I started this, but it's got to be a hybrid. And it's got to evolve and change over time because you can't replace the personal touch. You can't leave from a couch. You can't. And so there's got to be some kind of balance associated with that. Yo-Yo Ma is a violinist who's got a great quote, which is music is what happens between the notes. And I think a corollary to that would be trust is what happens between the meetings. It's that moment where you have the proverbial water coolers. Hey, what's going on in your lane? Or you stop by somebody's cubicle. You're walking out at the end of the day. There's somebody else is walking out with you to the parking lot. You've never seen him before. And you learn something about him. That's so important to what we do. And so I think that personal touch. And if you're going to build any kind of team of teams, that's so fundamentally important. And it's something that I think is something that will endure. I'll go on to the next one. Communicate. I had this first as an attribute communications. Like I said, you can change either way. But the act of communication. You can never do enough as a leader. And you've got to find multiple venues and ways to do it. You've got to create a culture of trust where real communication can happen. It can come back up, the truth and provide environments. It's so hard to do. I mean, to this day, I know in our organization, we struggle with getting truth sometimes. Some folks feel intimidated. They don't feel that they're going to be listened to. I get that. And no matter how many times I say no, it's not going to be like that. It's almost insurmountable. And so it's not just the leaders that need to communicate. It's all of us. Because team of teams is not about a real hierarchical thing. It's about having folks get together for a purpose with the relationships they need to have and execute at their level. Make decisions at their level as best they can. Given the guidance in terms of sharing the concepts of those things I talked about. So there's really no, I guess, silver bullet that'll allow you to be able to, you know, I do these things. People are going to get it. And so I would advocate for lots of different ways to communicate. And so some things that we try has to do with town halls, for example. A pandemic hit about a week or two later. I can't remember exactly when we started, but we started doing town halls every week with the entire workforce. So it was all of track together. This was actually better than the way track was before. Because we would do senior leader, you know, SVTCs or VTCs across track. That's a very small audience. And then, of course, what do they do? They turn a talk to their directors. And then directors talk to the division chiefs. And then the division chiefs hopefully talk to the employees, right? And so now the unexpurgated message was getting sent out to the workforce straight from all of us, all the leadership. And everybody had a much better common essay, in my opinion, than probably before. So it was a good thing. But we did those every week for about two years. And we did everything. We try to make it interesting. I mean, you can see how I'm doing here. But we try to make it interesting. And we tried very hard to shake it up a little bit. Like one time, one of the directors, we were supposed to be talking about all the rules about six feet and what it looks like. He did a little cartoon set of cards where he'd show the stick figures. And he'd show each one. And he'd give a little dialogue with it. But basically, it was all the things about how far apart you had to be at a table, and was this good and not good, and pantomime a bunch of things. I think I did a riff off of Gunga Den, the poem for track. We did all kinds of things, but also trying to get people in, get them interested, and they never knew what we were going to do next, but also to put out information, to keep them informed of what was going on, to keep them understanding what the latest was in terms of the rules, or what we were doing as an organization. And I think that helped. We got good press for that from the workforce. But we don't do it every week anymore. We kind of tapered off to every two weeks. And then more recently, probably in the last few months, about once a month, we'll have a track town hall. But that's one way, and not the best venue. Not a lot of people raising their hand, not even sending in anything because they know who you are, right? And so it's still a problem. One thing I used to do better than I do now is I call them walkabouts. Use the Australian term. Military would probably call it battlefield circulation. There is something extremely powerful about a leader just walking in to see somebody, one of the employees, and not going there to get something. Just say, how are you doing? What's going on? What are you worried about? What are you working on? And just do that. It got to a point where I wasn't doing a good job, and I've told my workforce this. It was so bad that I wasn't getting around. I see sort of the same people because of the work we were doing. I wouldn't get out to some of the other ones that weren't necessarily involved in the things that were the priorities at the moment. So I asked for some spreadsheet sheets that show the layout of the two buildings we have. And it has all the names and where everybody is. And I would actually sit there, and as I talked to somebody, I'd write the date. And I'd go, yeah, I did that. And I'd try to work my way methodically through the workforce. But again, you can't communicate enough, but you've got to have that personal touch. You've got to go out there. You've got to see folks. And you've got to do it in venues where you're not always asking, hey, will you have that report I was looking for? They get that enough. So I would say walkabouts are pretty important. One other thing I've tried, and this is probably over the last three years. I can't remember how long I've been doing it now. Every Thursday, I sent a note to the workforce. I call it three bullet Thursdays. It's got three numbers. One is kind of the top priorities, what's going on. But a little, you know, sniglet here and there of different features of the different studies we're doing and the priorities we're working on. The second one is, I guess I call it potpourri, but it's always something a little different. Maybe it's a book I'm reading and when I think about it, a documentary I saw or something, something that happened. It was of interest. Like I just talked earlier about our awards at the Army Operations Research Symposium. And then the last was a quote, and I got all kinds of sources for quotes. And so I throw a quote in there. And it's a way of at least providing, again, some more information at the enterprise level, context, you know, to folks so they can understand what's going on. And a chance to rib from some folks or a chance to champion some folks, you know, put some pictures in there and say, hey, so-and-so, finished baton, you know, and here's our team, those kinds of things. And so it's just another way to pull together as a team. And the last one is notes. And one of the things I really feel is important is a lot of folks, if they have, if they're going to do, give us a little bit of information. If they have, if they're going to give notes to somebody for condolences to say or congratulations on the birth of a child. I'll have the EA, you know, print them out and then you sign them. And I've never done that because the note has content and I want to express that content, whatever the occasion is. But I want them to know that I spent time thinking about them and writing it myself. So I hand write them all. And I highly recommend folks do that because, again, it's about that personal touch. It's not an auto pan. And so I think those are some ways and there's lots of others and I haven't talked about. And one thing I did want to mention, and it shouldn't be on the communication. Maybe it's a team of teams, but, you know, I'm really excited about what General Little and the team here at White Sands are doing to kind of bring the post back to life, right? Through the MWR side of the house. I try to support that. We encourage our folks to do it as well. That's another way to meet each other in a different way. This is tough for me. This is kind of one way. Probably tough for you, but to go out, you know, and hit the club and watch football game together, you know, and meet some folks from across the command and across the different ten minutes. So important. So I'll move on to the last of the actions that I want to talk about. And I came across this. Well, first of all, what I mean by this, learn outside your lane is. Too often, we, if we're going to look at something and research it, it's because we're interested. Or because we're good at it and we want to learn more about it or something like that. You know, as an infantry officer, I look back on my self-education. Army did a good job of different things, but my self-education was pretty narrow. I read military history. I read biographies and military leaders. And yes, I hate to admit sometimes I read doctrine. And so that's kind of what I was doing. And I look back on that and I didn't change it really until later in my career, but you should try to learn things outside your lane. You're outside things that you know well. Read about philosophy. Read about biology. Read about psychology, especially as a leader. To understand not only what's going on in everybody's heads, but your problems with biases, you know, the things that you almost can't get out of. There's a book by Daniel Kahneman called Thinking Fast and Slow. If you ever want to read a book about biases and he called it System One Thinking, which is kind of your on the Serengeti reaction based upon cues and system two, which is that longer, arduous, high energy thinking through a problem. And he talked about it whole host of biases and all his analysis he's done. And if you if you go through all that book and it's worth it, he said at the end, you can't get outside your biases. So as a leader, you need to know what they are. You need to be cognizant of it. You need to continue to remind yourself. But the learn outside your lane really came from a book by is called Poor Charlie's Almanac. Anybody ever heard of Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway? It's a bone stock. There's another gentleman behind him called Charlie Munger, who's a who's very interesting individual. And there's a book that's been pulled together of some of his talks that he's given over the years. And it's a big book with all kinds of pictures and stuff like that good for an infantryman to read. But I have maybe guy laughs. I have. But one of the things in there is talked about the mental models that he uses. If you think about it, you know, a lot of us, if we if we have a what is it? If we see a nail and have a hammer, I got it backwards. But anyway, you usually use the things you're comfortable with to solve a problem. And what Charlie Munger does is he takes a whole lattice of mental models and he then applies them to a problem. But it's looking at from different dimensions. So it might be some kind of mathematical relationship and it might be something about psychology. And it might be something, you know, whatever. It's a whole bunch of broad, different fields. And he's got about he says in the write up about 12 to 13 different mental models that then he doesn't apply them all every time. But the ones that applying different perspectives on the goodness or not of investing in a company, for example, he applies them all together in a disciplined way. That's pretty profound. I'm an analyst. I didn't really think about that until I read that. That's pretty sad. But I think it's all part of us getting outside of ourselves, getting back to the bias thing. You can't help fight your biases until you look at things from another perspective. The same thing with how you solve problems. You keep using the same technique and you apply the same tools every time. You're going to get the same result. And it would probably be too narrow and it won't be a very good one. And so learn outside your lane, I think, is the thing I'd say there. Oh my God, I'm going slow. Sorry. Okay, some attributes. And again, this is just my opinion. I got three. So I'm going to talk fairly quickly about these. So credibility is something that will take your entire career to achieve. And you can lose it in an instant, right? There's a little equation I think it's either a team of teams or another great book, Good to Great, by Jim Collins. And the equation says, basically, credibility equals your proven competence, integrity, and relationships. And I'll use an example of a recent great leader, I think, personally. Queen Elizabeth II just passed away, right? Last week. And it was kind of interesting that our British UK friends were here this week on Monday. So it's fresh in their minds. And it's a hugely emotional event for them. Think about the fact that they haven't had a change of leadership in 70 years. Think about our every two year to four year cycles that we go through. So this is a jolt to them for lots of reasons, obviously. But Queen Elizabeth, in terms of the proven competence, I think that goes without saying a very steady hand as a leader of the UK for over 70 years. Integrity, I have never heard anything that would impugn her integrity in all the readings in the news I've ever seen. And in relationships, and I said this at the beginning of our IPR kickoff with the British, I keep saying British, the UK involved. And it turns out 9-11, of course, is past Sunday. And the day after 9-11, the actual event, Queen Elizabeth parted with 400 years of tradition. And she had the Coldstream Guards during the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, played a Star Spangled Banner. Never done that before. And then they did it again at the St. Paul's Cathedral during services that Sunday. And then she did it again last year. Not to commemorate, but to remember the 20 year anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Think that built a relationship with our country and our leaders? I think so. So just to close on a credibility thing, it's very difficult to achieve and so easy to lose. You know, I'd add a penalty term from a mathematical perspective to that equation I gave you in terms of your proven competence, integrity, and relationships. I put minus 10 to the 100th times a lapse in judgment or something because it's all it takes to completely wash it all away. I'm going to actually combine these two. And this comes from, Humility and Will comes from a book called Good to Great, I mentioned a second ago. And it was called in the book Level 5 Leadership. So you got basic, as you kind of move up the echelon or in the enterprise, you have basic things. Can I lead myself? Do I know myself? Can I lead teams? And you kind of move up. Level 5 was a distinguishing characteristic in the study that this book did, I think, in the early 2000s, where it was almost like analysis of alternatives. So you had the good, the sort of OK companies that they used. And then they had a very, very detailed process to figure out which ones were great. And then they compared the two lists and they said, what makes those great compared to the good? And of course, they kept the same sectors. So if it was the steel industry, you had a more mediocre and good one versus a steel industry company that was in the great. And Jim Collins is an interesting dude. He's a fascinating individual, but he was adamant that he had a team working on this for over a year. Gathering the data, making the comparisons. I do not want you to come back and tell me it's leadership. Don't want you to do that. And they kept coming back. Hey, I think it's leadership. I do not. And they did this for months. And finally, the data showed that they were right. His group that was doing the analysis. And the thing that distinguished, at least at the top level, the CEOs of companies and so forth, that distinguished the good from the great was leaders that had humility and will. Humility and will. And you think about those and you think, wow, there's a duality there, right? You could say humility sounds like meek and shy. And will sound strong and fierce, right? Well, yes and no. But every one of the leaders that were leading those companies and they're very different people. They weren't Lee Iacoco saying, here I am, here I am. I'm wonderful. In fact, the company that he ran as a CEO, use his name. It had an acronym the first word is I says I am, you know, Chrysler's whatever they're making fun of him because it was all about him. But the humility and will piece is about not about yourself. It's about the organization. When you become a leader. You give up your own self interest or you should. It's about the team. It's about the group. And there's a there's a there's kind of a paradigm in the book about window versus mirror. And so a level five leader or a great company leader. When when something good happens is looking out the window to see who to congratulate out there. And then when something bad happens, looking in the mirror for responsibility. Leaders that are not so good. When something good happens, they're looking in the mirror. Yeah, I did that. And they look out the window to see who to blame. And so the duality of that and I think the humility piece especially was hard for me. Being an infantry officer humility is not a not a strong trait amongst folks, at least when I was younger. And I kind of learned some of this later and I'm working on it. I'm a work in progress and I'll tell you that straight up. But I think between the humility and the will is a fixity of purpose. There's a thing called a stock deal paradox paradox. Admiral Stockdale was a prisoner of war many years in Vietnam. Medal of Honor winner because of how he comported himself. But it's the duality is you got to face the brutal facts. But at the same time, you got to have a fixity of purpose or a profound certainty that you're going to get through it. And that's what he had. But facing the facts can kind of depress you. You're in a Vietnamese prison. But having the faith and the fortitude to continue on which he did. Those two things together are very powerful. I'm going to conclude here and I'll stop. I'll end with what I said at the beginning. People are born and leaders are made. Every one of us in this room could be a better leader. It takes some work, obviously, but there's so many opportunities. It's not just by your position. By the way, you're a manager by position. You're a leader by your people. And so all of us have in different walks of life opportunities. And all of us have an ability to have an impact on our communities, our workplace, our families or whatever it is. And our country needs that army needs that kind of leadership. And I would say certainly your organizations, our organizations need that as well. These are tough times. It's a very volatile world we're in. And things have gotten much more interdependent, which that plus the speed of movement of information creates complexity. And so leadership has never been needed more. There's a quote that I'll end with from Aristotle that says, We are what we routinely do. Excellence then is not an act, but it's a habit. And so make a habit of excellence in your lives. Take a shot at just improving incrementally different areas of your leadership. Find the gaps in your leadership swing and so forth. People are born leaders. People are born and leaders are made. And so I think if you have a little bit of work on some of these actions I talk about. Look at the different aspects of attributes maybe in your own personal perspective and keep working on that. And above all, we're all in this together as a command as coworkers, human beings, Americans, you name it. Take that opportunity to be a leader and all leaders should be about inspiring people to go out there and inspire. So I'll I'll in there. I'll give you a little bonus from Theodore Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss and some great stuff. And then I'll take any questions, although I think I've gone a little longer than I thought. But I think we started late. So I'll stop. Yes, ma'am. However, if you look back, we'll comment to today's leaders. If you could only pick one, what would be considered the most significant trade that would hinder a leader's career? A trade that would hinder? I think integrity. And the reason I say that is it's because it leads to other things that are really important as leaders. It's the trust of others. It's kind of tied to competence as well. It's tied to a lot of things. And so I would say integrity there. The word comes from Latin integer, which means whole. And it used to be the Roman soldiers would stand up there with their armor on and everything. And as as the troops in the line would happen, they would strike their armor, you know, and yell something probably, you know, motivational to the leadership. But the point was striking that armor. The sound of it told them if they're taking care of it. Told the leaders that and it was also an attestation of the individual soldier that I am whole. I'm ready. And so I think integrity would be the one I would say. Sure. It seems like there's never enough hours in the day. So as a leader, how do you strike a balance between taking care of the future's focus, thinking and planning versus a current test? I'm not doing a good job. I'll be I got up at 330 this morning to partly do this, but I had, you know, because of the work we're doing. You have to use the fringes of the day to catch up on all the stuff that still comes in all day long. And so I was behind. That's a great question. Part of it is I think process oriented. Part of it is having others help you, you know, do a better job of that balance. I'm not very good at it, but I've seen some who are good and what they do and it's hard and it takes a little bit of effort. But they really focus and Jim Collins, the guy I was talking about wrote that book, but they really focus on what absolutely has to get done and then they cut some more. And so they will not do a lot of different things that most leaders would do because it's not important to the overall enterprise at the time. And so that kind of like discipline, you know, I think is probably one way to do it better. But then you have to have all those other pieces I was talking about. You have to have a team that doesn't need all that care and feeding or a team that understands why you're not doing that. So it's it's complicated. But I'll just tell you, I'm not I'm not a good example of that. Total work in progress there. So thanks for the questions. Think we've. So. So we're doing a lot of things and some of us, you know, programmatic, if you will, like, you know, we have a fairly comprehensive onboarding with we call it the track analyst development program. So it's kind of our norms and standards, how where we fit in the army, what kind of work we do, what a study looks like, you know, those kinds of things. So that piece. And then we also have greening, which allows, you know, especially our young civilian analysts to come in and roll around a Bradley or a tank or something like that. Talk to soldiers and get an understanding context. Those aren't leader developers say but they build a foundation for especially for the newer folks. Going coming to the organization doing nothing about the army. But the leader development I think happens in a lot of different ways. From my perspective and one of them is what I think one of the secret sources of our organization is the strong teaming between the military and the civilian analysts. And in the military are coming usually after you know their company command. And then they're on their first horse assignment typically. So been out of school for a while. Little bit of cobweb is probably, you know, for, you know, the kind of work and the education they had before. The analysts, the young analysts are coming. They're smart. I mean, they're coming in and they just got a degree usually, and they're just really sharp. And the teaming between those do this. The integration of those two is powerful because the one can say here's what the army is like and provide context for army and for our work. And the other one could say, hey, here's a new technique we're using in Python. You know how to do anything Python, but they do that. And so that's another thing I think that because there's leadership there, the military usually pretty season leaders, right? They had a new army for a few years. And the civilian, a lot of us junior civilian, this first job ever just came out of school. So there's a piece of leader development that happens almost naturally and informally that's really magical. Then moving up, though, and I've got, we have got a lot of new leadership at Trackway Sands. We had a pretty large spate of retirements from senior GS-15 level, GS-14 and so forth over the last two years, like significant. And the directors that I kind of came in with are gone, with one exception, one hanger on. But so we have a lot of new leadership. And I'm beginning to realize I'm expecting them to know all the things that the other directors knew. And that's not fair. And so I got to do some work when I get done with project convergence here in two months. Well, I won't be done then. But anyway, to kind of help build that team and get them understanding of what it is that matters to me. What's the CCIR to me? What decisions are theirs? What decisions may not be theirs and how we want to interact? Haven't been able to do that yet. So that's something else I would do. And the last, I guess I would say in the leader development side is, as a study house, we do lots of studies. And we have lots of opportunities, even for junior analysts, to get leadership roles. Even though you're not running the whole study, you can be a leader of a subset of it. For example, you're the lead now for the modeling and simulation we're going to do. You got to deliver. You got to present it. You know, you got to do all that. You got to lead a team to do that. A lot of what track does is that that teaming piece because of nature of work we do pulls in organizations from across the army, across the joint force and lately across the world, right? With our allies. And so our ability to lead to the build and lead teams is really important. And so all of our analysts get a shot at that at some point because they're leading some aspect of it. And they have to figure that out. You know, I always say that when you lead organizations like that, you have no cudgel. You can't beat them with a stick. You have to cajole. So you got to build teams. Last night we were down in Season yours with a whole bunch of the folks from our conference to include our UK friends and others. The joint staff folks were there. Everybody were just having dinner together. And I think we probably made more ground there with that team than we probably did in the previous three days of the hostage crisis here as I always call it. So, but I think, you know, again, every level is different, but our work program allows lots of opportunities for that. And then you got to have something a little more formal. OJT is a piece of it, right? But you have to have more formal, you know, injects with different aspects of the organization. Talk about, you know, what's going right. What's not going right. Talk about shared consciousness types of the things I've been talking about today. So I don't know if I completely answered that. This is some ideas. Sure. Sir, I got a question for you. I'm an 8 seconds question general. I agree with yesterday. One of our continuing issues we have within ACREC seems to be communication. Like my number one case study that we had. I too was an instrument. I came in a little bit after you in 1984. And the standard, the standard comment I used to get when I used to want to force my baby to shift my whole. But as you get, as you grow into the system, you learn that everybody has ability. But you mentioned something I thought was interesting with the barriers inside. And I think we have a problem with barriers and silos. Now, some of it is, you know, within the organization you work in. And others is in, you know. Oh, they're everywhere. Yeah. So, you know, what are some of the suggestions since we got majority of the leadership here? How can we help break down those barriers inside? Well, it can't just be done at work. You got to, I always say, work hard player. You got to, you know, go to some of these other events, you know, or have not even an off-site. But have some of the teams you get together on the outside of work. I think that's really powerful. And you kind of build a team and communicate better in dog years. Not, you know, one year at a time. And it's much more effective as a complementary aspect. But breaking down barriers and silos is really, really, really, really hard. Because every organization feels like, you know, they don't get it. It's always the day, right, across the way. And so you got to first start with that, you know. I'm sure that in our team that we're building here for project convergence, you know, it's over 300 analysts across the world, essentially. We got a lot of problems with barriers. We spent three days just talking about some of those between, you know, the different services. And even within the Army, my God, you know, it's incredible. I don't have any silver bullet for you, but I would say it's, you can't communicate enough. You can't bring folks together enough and work through problems. But you got to set that culture. You got to set that expectation where, hey, we're going to solve this together. We're going to stop worrying about where we're from or who we are and start worrying about who we are now as this larger team or this larger enterprise. And there's so many ways to do that, lots of different things you can do. But like I say, it's got to be both at work and outside of work. And it's got to be continuous, persistent, and supported by all the leadership. You can't have a few, you know, within leaders that are not on board. They're not on board. They need to probably go somewhere else in the organization if you want to get the team together. And, you know, I've talked about some things you could do to help build the teams more. But the communication thing, it's a never-ending task, not a bad task. It's just something you've got to be thinking about all the time. I've worked more with ATAC and I've been on this post for quite a while. In the last two years that I have in the preceding, whatever, 10 something, 12 something. So, yeah, I'm learning a lot about your culture. I'm learning a lot about how you operate. I'm learning even the difference between OT and DTs and stuff like that. But we are fundamentally different because of our, you know, why we exist. And we're in different commands. You know, we have different cultures, different standards, different kinds of work, right? But I've learned a lot about what it is all you do, especially at the range from the test perspective, because of what we have to do in project convergence. And we're starting to make gains together, you know, in terms of understanding each other and knowing, you know, what to render under the ATAC team versus what to render under the DAC team, you know, the data analysis center from DevCom or whoever. And the only way I see making that work is to continue to dialogue, set standards where, you know, we're all in this together and, you know, and then do the work. That's next for us. So pulling everybody together and executing. But I don't think I gave you a very good answer. But it's something that to me you just can't, let's do that and then I'll fix it. And I ain't that way. And then after you have a relationship with organization like every year in project convergence, you know, there's a whole new team next year. You're starting over. So you got to kind of re-walk or retrod some of the ground. Sure. Yeah. With respect to barriers and cyclists, I think that the existence of areas and cyclists say they're indication that we don't have enough collaboration or different objectives or goals. If you don't have the collaboration, we'll end up with barriers and cyclists. We'll start back in the class. Those address notes, those goals. So I would say that facilitating collaboration and establishing collaboration for any purpose. So that you can do the other things and cyclists. I agree. I'm an officer once, so I have no barriers. That you're willing to admit to. Well, that's a good point. I didn't talk about collaboration. I got a little behind time, I thought. But the collaboration is not something I did naturally because of my upbringing in the Army, honestly. When I first came to track, I kind of operated like I was still in a military unit and making decisions. I'm listening, but at the same time, okay, it's on me. And that changed as I started working in the organization over the years. And the collaboration part though has to have the foundation of all those other things we talked about. Respect, trust, those relationships, what happens between the meetings and all those kinds of things. But collaboration is easier in some ways with the tools we have. But the tools aren't enough. It's a mindset. And it's also an atmosphere and environment that leadership has to set so that that collaboration can happen truly. It's not just being able to talk to each other on a team. It's also having to be able to collaborate as a team to accomplish a purpose, right? Round's complete. Yeah, I think they are. Okay, they're done. Gary, thank you for sharing those thoughts with me. I got a lot out of it. I appreciate the time and thought that you put into it. Thanks very much. This was not all because you gave us a good part of yourself. Thanks. And General Little couldn't be here today. He's on a TV audition. I feel his pain. Yeah, Command Sergeant Major Melinda is on behalf of him and myself and the entire wisdom team we would like to present you. Thanks very much. Appreciate it. Appreciate your time too. I really do. It's a hot place in here, but you stuck it like chance. And so thanks for your attention.