 Hey, good afternoon. Thank you all. Really appreciate the opportunity to be here. Cheap-ass thanks for giving me the opportunity. I know that I'd asked for three hours and and you weren't able to accommodate all that but but I appreciate the little slice of time little slice of time you gave. Hey, I'll just tell you right up front this is the most important thing I'm going to do all month long. This this time that I spend with you all is the most important thing that I'm going to do all month long and it's not because there's not a ton of important things going on at AFSOC. There's a lot of urgent things that require my attention. All that is all that is true but when you look at this audience right here and you think about the number of airmen that you all will touch and lead and impact in your you know rest of your Air Force career if I can give you just one little tidbit at some point today I mean if just one little thing sticks the number of airmen that will be affected by the time that I spend with you makes this the most important thing that I will do all month long and so I really really appreciate the opportunity to spend this time with you I've been looking forward to this ever since cheap bass extended the invitation for me to spend a little bit of time with you. So let me tell you let me kind of frame this I only have one slide and so this is not going to be a death by PowerPoint it is one slide and it really captures all the stuff that I have kind of accumulated over the last 32 years and it's framed in a way to talk about the distinctions between leadership and management and you know one of the things that's important for this for this group is as you all enter the executive ranks of the Air Force I mean you are now moving into the ranks where you are the institution and one of the things that you'll find is that these are two different things leadership and management and they're both really really important and a lot of times I think we tend to like make opposites out of them I want to be a leader I don't want to be a manager and that's just not the way it is these are two distinct sets of skills and both are important and so I want to talk to you about some of my thoughts on these two things where this came from when I was like 17 years ago 16 years ago somewhere in there I was a brand-new Colonel and I was on my way to National War College which is kind of top-level PME for colonels and I got a phone call one day from the colonels group and the colonels group is the is the group of people in the Pentagon that manages colonels assignments all throughout the Air Force and so the colonels group calls they said hey colonel slide we've got some really good news for you and you know I don't know how it is for chiefs but I can tell you for colonels when the colonels group says we have good news for you that what that means is we have bad news for you and so I'm like you know but I'm a new colonel and I don't know this yet and I said terrific what's the good news and they said well instead of going to a traditional war college you have been selected to be a secretary of defense corporate fellow and I said what is a secretary of defense corporate fellow and they said well you know each year each of the services picks you know a couple of colonels and instead of going to war college we send you off to a fortune 500 company and you spend a year at a fortune 500 company and then you bring the knowledge back to the DoD and I said that actually does sound pretty cool where am I going they said you're going to Microsoft and so as a as a pinned-on colonel I spent a year at Microsoft and at the end of the year I bought two Macs and it's true and I have been I have been totally an Apple guy ever since I spent that year at Microsoft it it was the most miserable year of my career y'all I'm not kidding it was horrible but I learned a ton and the reason it was horrible with you know had nothing to do with you know Microsoft's bad company or whatever maybe a little bit but not a lot but but I did learn a ton but one of the things that happened while I was there was a lot of people you know talked about managers and management and that kind of stuff and I always talked about leadership and you know there was this kind of we're talking past each other kind of thing and they never used the word leadership and I asked them why don't you talk about leadership and they you know and there was this kind of you know deer in the headlights look and you know they go well you know what's the difference and I said well there's a big difference and they said well would you you know could you maybe talk to us about it and so that was the first iteration of what I'm going to share with you today because actually somebody saying hey come you know get on a stage and talk to us about this you know really forces you to kind of focus your your thinking a little bit so these are these are some of my thoughts that have that have come out of that and like I say this is it you're looking at the one slide that I have now it's going to build and we're going to spend about an hour talking about it but I promise you it's only one slide and you know it starts with the idea that leadership and management are two different things they're not the opposites they're two completely different sets of skills and they're related so they're connected together but they are different things and if I had to describe it the way I would say it to you is that leadership is about vision inspiration values and culture vision inspiration values and culture management is about systems processes resources and policy and all of this is important right I have worked for great leaders that were horrible managers right and so every day you're inspired to come to work you can't wait to get there but it's like the first time anything has ever happened oh my god there's an EPR do what you know how do we do EPRs you know and everything's late and there's no process and you know I mean it's a it's you know it's frantic all the time I've worked for great managers that were horrible leaders you know and there was no inspiration there was no desire to come to work but the trains all ran on time you know in the EPRs and the OPRs and whatever else all got process on time because we had structure and process but we had no vision we had no inspiration so these things are they're different sets of skills and they're both important and I would tell you they're you know I put kind of a dotted line in there because the things above that line are going to be some thoughts that I'm going to share with you about leadership the things below the line are going to be things that I'm going to share with you about the topic of management and the reason it's a dotted line is because these things actually affect each other you know you can build management processes and structure that help develop leaders you can build management structures that suppress the developmental leaders and you know so these things affect each other and so that's how I'm going to I'm going to build this out and so when we when we start by talking about leadership the first thing I would tell you is that the first job of a leader is to create more leaders the first job of a leader is to create more leaders and that is nowhere more true than it is here in the U.S. military right because there is only one place that Air Force chief master sergeants come from there's only one Air Force senior master sergeants you know and there's only one place Air Force senior master sergeants come from Air Force master sergeants right and so if we don't build the next generation it just doesn't get done right we don't have the same luxury that a Microsoft has when they wake up one day and they need a vice president and none of their general managers are ready to be vice president they just go to Oracle or IBM or Google or Apple or whatever and they just hire somebody to come be a vice president right we don't get to call the army and say hey look we're a little light on qualified senior master sergeants to be chiefs can you send us a sergeant major you know we don't get to do that we have to build our own bench and so that's why the first job of a leader has to be to create more leaders to invest in the development of those coming along behind you that's why I am here that that's why I'm here is because if I can help contribute just a little bit to you as leaders the impact that has on the rest of the Air Force is magnified you know by 379 or however many there are in the audience today and so as we start thinking about how we create more leaders how we develop airmen and I don't I don't know if you all in the back can see this I hope I hope you can see it it's a it's a cube with different colors and shapes on each of the sides okay as we think about how we develop leaders you know one of the things that we all have to be at this level at the level that you and I are operating at one of the things that we all have to be kind of sensitive to is that good leaders people with people with potential aren't necessarily clones of us right people that we identify to invest in aren't necessarily clones of us right and the tendency is for us to look for people to develop that remind us of ourselves and it may not be a conscious thing right I mean this isn't necessarily about racism or sexism or whatever it's just about you know if I'm interviewing people or if I'm talking people when they say something that reminds me of myself or when they say something that sounds right to me my natural tendency is go hey you've got a lot of potential I really like the way you think you remind me of a younger version of myself and if and if that's where we invest ourselves is only in the people that share that perspective then we're just going to reproduce what we are right and we're not necessarily going to build the air force we need for the future and so I use this as a as an example right so if I you know if this cube is a problem that my team here my team that is gathered together this cube is a problem that we've got a we've got to work our way through as a team and I look down here at Chief Bass and I say hey Chief Bass what kind of problem are we looking at Chief Bass is probably going to say hey sir I think that is a it's like a black square with a white background and there it's a green triangle problem you know I think I think this is definitely a green triangle problem we got and I'm going to look at this and I'm going to say well you know chief I'm with you on that black square with a white background but honestly I don't think it's a green triangle problem I think it's a yellow square problem right because where I'm looking at this all I'm seeing is the yellow square right and Chief Bass is going to say well sir you know respectfully I got to tell you this this is definitely a green triangle problem right because we're looking at it from two different sets of two different perspectives right and if I get a group of people behind me that are all lined up right here and I say hey y'all Chief Bass says this is a green triangle problem what do you think and everybody behind me says no sir it's definitely a yellow square if if we all agree that this is a yellow square and we say hey Chief Bass you know I don't know where you're coming from but you know this is definitely a yellow square and you know you just need to get on board right that will be the last time that we get Chief Bass's perspective on a problem in our organization because all of us think one way and she thinks a different way and we'll make decisions really really quickly you know because we all share the same perspective we've all got the same you know backgrounds experiences whatever and we will miss the true nature of the problem because we didn't take advantage of a different perspective that was sitting right there right and if I look down here at Chief Wade and I say well hey Chief what do you think Chief Wade from where he's sitting might say hey you know I see that green triangle that Chief Bass is talking about but honestly I don't think it's a square I think it's a cube and I think there's some like some stripes on the other side of it and if I ask you you might say yeah I see those stripes that Chief Wade's talking about but I also understand what you're saying about that yellow square sir you know I think and you know when we start getting different perspectives on this problem we're going to understand the problem better and we're going to be a better problem-solving organization right that's the value of the diversity of perspectives that as senior leaders we have to build on every team that we're a part of you know and so what I'm challenging you to do is as you think about how your job is to build the next generation of leaders I would encourage you to find the yellow square people find the green triangle people find the you know purple stripe people and develop all of them and not just the people that share your perspective because it's the thing that's most comfortable to you right this is a metaphor for diversity and inclusion obviously and I know we've had a session on that earlier but what I will tell you is you know diversity is what gives you the benefit of all those perspectives right that's diversity but inclusion is the thing that actually makes it makes it effective right because if we tell Chief Bass hey you're an idiot we all believe this is a yellow square and it's not a green triangle if we create an environment that is not inclusive that doesn't let her know that we value her perspective we're not going to get it anymore and she might check a block and we've got the female block check because Chief Bass is on the team but if she's not included we're never going to get the benefit of that diversity and so what I would tell you is that when we think about diversity and inclusion and how we have to develop leaders diversity is a noun right it's a noun it's a thing right we want diversity because it makes us better right it gives us a better ability to solve solve problems but inclusion is a verb it's an action and so each of us as leaders we have to engage in the behaviors of inclusion so that we can build that next generation of leaders and we can get the most out of the teams that we're on that's why it matters you know too often uh the diversity and inclusion conversation turns into you know a conversation about political correctness or social justice or something and that may all be true but what I'm all about is mission effectiveness and we are the most effective organization when we extract the value of diversity inherent in our force and develop an inclusive environment for people to be able to contribute what they can contribute so the first job of the leader create more leaders and the way you do that is through the deliberate investment of your time not just in the people that remind you of yourselves but in people that can bring all different perspectives to your team okay second thing I would tell you is you know at the at the level that you all are moving into you will increasingly find yourself challenged by a divergence in values from time to time right so we all have what I would what I would call a hierarchy of values that governs our behaviors right and so the Air Force has got some core values integrity service excellence those are part of you know the universe of values that are important to me but I have other values that are important to me just like you all do we all we all have other values right so it might be your faith for you it might be family is super important to you it might be loyalty or courage or commitment I mean however you want to frame it we all have things that we value right and those things have to come out into a hierarchy of some sort because what will happen from time to time is your values will start pulling you in different directions right so I want to be loyal to the Air Force right I've got I mean I'm a senior officer you all are moving into the top ranks of the of the enlisted force you know we are company people right we should be loyal to the United States Air Force but then there's this other thing like hey man I've got this you know airman that's misbehaving and you know he's really you know he's a really good young airman but you know he's just a little misguided right now and I really don't want to crush him and so you feel this loyalty to this individual right and so the Air Force is telling you you know is is causing you to feel like hey you know you need to enforce standards and discipline but your personal loyalty to this really great airman that you really like a lot you know is pulling you in a different direction and so when decisions feel hard a lot of times the reason decisions feel hard is because we've got these values that are pulling us in different directions and so what I'm telling you is the best way to get used to making those kinds of decisions is to sort through in your own mind what that hierarchy of values is you know and you got to be loyal to the things on top first and so the analogy that I use when I think about my own hierarchy values it's just this uniform that I'm wearing just like all of you we put these uniforms together in a particular order the first thing that I had on my uniform was this thing right here it's my name right what does my name represent my name represents my character it's who I am it's it's the heart of my integrity my name I can't you know I can only I can compromise who I am right nobody can take it away from me I have to compromise this right so this is the first thing that I had okay what was the next thing that went on my uniform the next thing that went on my uniform is an American flag and that American flag to us represents the constitution it represents our oath of enlistment our oath of office that everything that we say that we will support and defend the Constitution of the United States that's all part of the American flag right what was the next thing that we put on our uniforms it's a thing that says us air force right and the us air force has a set of values associated with it integrity service excellence these are things that you know these things only fall behind my oath to the Constitution and my requirement to maintain my own character and integrity right so the air force you know that set of values is the next one what came after what came after that what came after that was some you know for me it was a it was a gold bar for you all it was a stripe right and there are there are demands that come along with you know the enlisted force structure and what we expect of senior NCOs and what we expect of officers and these things are all written down and I have to be a good officer before I have to be a good something else on my uniform right because the next thing that came on my uniform was a set of pilot wings and then the thing and so I've got to be you know there's a set of professional obligations that come with that and then the last thing that went on my uniform was a unit patch right and that's my team and when all is right with the world all these loyalties are all in alignment right when everything's right with the world doing the right thing for my unit is the same as doing the right thing for you know as an officer is the same as doing the right thing as an airman is the same as you know maintaining my integrity all these things are in alignment right when all is right with the world but all is not always right with the world sometimes these things start pulling you in in different directions right well the air force needs me to enforce good order and discipline but this is my teammate and I really don't want to punish my teammate you know and when you get these or these values out of order that's when we start to make bad decisions and so I would encourage you to be loyal to your hierarchy of values everybody's going to have a slightly different one I described to you the way I think about it but what what you will find is that hard decisions aren't usually hard decisions they're just consequential decisions hard decisions aren't really hard decisions they're just consequential and so you all have to to make them only consequential not hard you just have to sort through your own hierarchy of loyalties and values we talked a little bit about the first job of a leader is to create more leaders so how do we do that we do it through selection mentoring and grooming okay those are the three components of leadership development selection mentoring and grooming selection is pretty self-explanatory we all know what it means right I mean you all if you're a squadron superintendent you are selecting flight chiefs or shop NCOICs or whatever mean you are involved in picking the people that are going to fill those jobs right and so how you select matters how you select matters you have to do it deliberately and not based on whose turn it is or who's been there the longest I mean you need to be thinking about who's going into those jobs selection is one part second part is mentoring and the third is grooming and earlier in my career I didn't draw a distinction between mentoring and grooming I thought they were kind of synonymous but they're actually in many ways almost the exact opposite of one another mentoring is for the many and it's giving people the benefit of your experiences mentoring is for the many and it's giving people the benefit of your experiences and so what are we doing right here this is mentoring right I mean we could add another 30 people in here it would be the same message because what I'm giving you is I'm giving you the benefit of my experience I'm laying it out there for you and I'm hoping that it will be useful to you but whether it is or not or whether you take anything away from it or whether you agree or not that's totally up to you right and so mentoring is for the many giving people the benefit of your experiences so this is mentoring grooming is for the few and it's giving people the benefit of their own experiences grooming is for the few and it's giving people the benefit of their own experiences when you're picking that flight chief everybody can't be a flight chief right only a few and the reason you make somebody a flight chief is partly to develop them for the future because the first job of a leader is to create more leaders right and so those jobs those key developmental positions those are grooming opportunities you're giving people it's not mentoring you're not telling them hey let me tell you about how to be a flight chief you're making them a flight chief so they can experience it for themselves they're getting the benefit of their own experiences and so we all have to think about as we are developing the next generation part of what we have to think about is for each person what is the path that we see them on right and so if i'm looking at um if i'm looking at a nco that i think you know a staff sergeant that i think has the potential to fill my role as a squadron superintendent one of these days what i'm thinking about is what jobs do they need to have that will prepare them to be a squadron superintendent one day and then start moving them into those jobs deliberately so they get the experiences they need to one day backfill you you can't just wake up one day and look around and go who's uh who's got all the blocks checked i mean it has to be a very deliberate process so selection mentoring and grooming all very important aspects i will tell you that uh the longer i'm around the more convinced i am that you know about 90 percent of everything going on in a unit is captured in that little circle right there pride performance and professionalism those things notice the arrows the arrows go in both directions so each of those things connects to the other two and what i mean by that is i believe that these three things pride performance and professionalism all create a self-reinforcing loop and as leaders you know obviously what you want is a unit with a lot of pride you want a high performing unit you want a professional unit i mean this is what we want right we're all i mean this is what we all want but the reality is that you can't mandate pride right i can't write a policy letter it says effective today all members of aphsoc will be proud right i mean i can it just won't work right and so you can't mandate pride you can't even mandate performance right i can't tell the command hey i want us to you know start performing better and so just come to work tomorrow and be better right that doesn't work i mean this is why in uh in inspections and so forth you know you will typically see performance go up for the first you know day or two but then things kind of go back to whatever the norm for that unit is right is because you can't sustain high performance just because you said to perform better right it doesn't work that way i can't put out a policy letter and say we have to perform better that doesn't doesn't work the only thing in that circle that you and i can affect is professionalism i can absolutely set an example and enforce a standard of professionalism in my organization i can absolutely do it and you can too and what you will find is that over time an investment in professionalism manifests itself in pride and performance and those things all start to self reinforce and pretty soon you have got a high performing high pride extremely professional organization but it always always always has to start with professionalism what is what does professionalism mean professionalism means adherence to our directives it means paying attention to customs and courtesies you know uh it at afsock where my command teammate is chief olson nobody will ever hear me call chief olson anything other than chief olson ever i don't call him quarry i could but i won't because he deserves better than that he's worked too hard for too long to be in the position that he's in for me to diminish it by just calling him quarry he is chief olson he is the command chief that's a just that's professionalism in our workplace you know where he and i come come to work every single day and when people see that they notice and it starts to you know it starts to translate and so what i would tell you is these you know i um i realized that as a you know senior officer that i have the ability to call uh you know folks by their first name and that stuff i just don't and it's not because i don't care i don't like them or i don't want to know them you know by their first name or whatever it's that i value you know those stripes i value the rank i value that the professional accomplishments that it took to get to that place more right when i became a squadron commander it was a flying squadron it was about two-thirds enlisted and a third officers in that squadron and um i'm gonna i'm gonna try and make this pg-13 story it's uh you know the the actual story is is probably you know um you know nc-17 or something like that but the uh but when i first uh took command of the squad of course everybody's wearing flight suits and one of the things that i noticed was all of our flight suit name tags looked a little bit different right so mine had a you know mine was a black leather name tag that says jim's life uh you know lieutenant colonel usaf and his said you know uh koreolson loadmaster and you know his said uh tinkerbell wade um you know hey look i i'm just it's hypothetical you know it's hypothetical uh you know it had so it was a combination of cloth name tags and leather name tags and nicknames and first names and rank and crew positions and everybody had a slightly different name tag and i said hey you know i'm pretty sure we call these things uni forms you know and i i don't um you know i didn't take latin or anything but i'm pretty sure like uni means one or the same or you know i mean why don't we all try and wear a uni form and so here's what the name tag is going to be on our uni form and so we you know everybody gets new name tags and oh the hue and the cry you would have thought that we had just canceled christmas you know about name tags for goodness sakes and my favorite question was hey colonel slyfe don't we have more important things to worry about than name tags that was my favorite question you know why because there's such a great answer for it the answer is yes we do so do me a favor fix your freaking name tag so we can work on something more important than name tags right i mean it's not that hard right you have to put on a name tag one way or the other just put the right one on right but that you know but that was the kind of thing that just you know people get upset about it they don't want to do it in that and but you just have to be you know hey this is what a professional organization is going to look like we're all going to put the uniform on we're going to look like we belong in the same squadron we're all you know this is who we're going to be and i will tell you that over time and it took months i mean it wasn't years but it wasn't weeks or days over months this begins to catch on and uh you know i knew that we had turned a corner when i overheard a tech sergeant gunner telling a staff sergeant flight engineer to get his sideburns cut because he was an embarrassment to the squadron now when was the last time a gunner ever worried about somebody's sideburns i don't know how many of you spend a lot of time around gunners i have spent most of my career around gunners and i will tell you it is highly uncommon uh to have a gunner out there being the cut your sideburns police but this is what happens is this pride in the unit begins to take hold and pretty soon you get some folks that will start carrying the mail and it's not just you anymore right pride performance and professionalism this is a really really powerful combination you know one of the things that i that i uh learned probably about the time i was a lieutenant colonel uh kind of new into squadron command was this idea and it's gotten shorter and more summarized over time and that is to be the kind of person you want to be you have to do the things those kinds of people do and i thought you know this is a really powerful idea and i thought you know one of these days uh if this air force gig doesn't work out for me i'm going to get out and i'm going to write a book about this and it's going to be a best seller and i'm going to be on the speaking circuit and i'm going to be a gajillionaire because of this powerful idea i had right up until i found that 2,500 years ago uh Aristotle said that uh and the way Aristotle said it was uh uh we are what we repeatedly do excellence then is not an act but a habit we are what we repeatedly do excellence then is not an act but a habit and so the idea here is as leaders a lot of times we find ourselves in new new circumstances something that's different something that's kind of hard for us to think our way through and a lot of times what our temptation is is to say i wonder what somebody else would do you know i wonder what chief Olson would do about this i wonder what chief bass would do about this that's the wrong question to ask the question you ought to be asking is if i was a perfect version of myself what would i do about this and then whatever the answer is do that you have to constantly put a perfect version of yourself out there as a model for who you want to become and then deliberately become that person don't ask what somebody else would do ask what you would do if you were a perfect version of yourself you know and what i find is a lot of times when i'm struggling with things i find that it's actually my own imperfections that are getting in the way it's not actually a hard decision it's just my own humanity getting in the way right well this is going to be unpopular somebody's not going to like me uh why do i always have to be the bad you know this is just self-pity right and when i'm faced with those moments i i do exactly this i say okay well if i was a perfect version of myself what would i do well i'd quit feeling sorry for myself and i'd do the right thing for the united states air force well then do that and what you find is that as you practice doing those things you incrementally become closer to that perfect version of yourself those hard decisions get easier over time so to be the kind of person you want to be you have to do the things those kind of people do notice your wallpaper notice your wallpaper so this one is especially important today because uh chief bass was telling me today is culture day right and this is this little bumper sticker here notice your wallpaper is all about culture i am convinced that the single biggest determinant of success in any organization that we're a part of is its culture that's the biggest deterrent there's lots of things that help a unit be effective or not effective with the biggest one is culture and the problem with culture is you can't directly see it most of the time it's contained in the things that are in the off in the periphery right you can't directly see it it's only off in the periphery culture is the stuff that nobody notices anymore in the unit and it's it's like wallpaper right so when you pcs to a new place you are looking for some place to live right whether you're going to rent or buy or whatever you're going to do you are looking for a new place to live and so you've got a set of criteria okay it's got to be in this school district i can't afford more than this much money the commute can't be too bad it needs to be in a safe neighborhood it you know whatever your criteria you've got this set of criteria laid out and so you know you're kind of on a time crunch because you're right in the middle of pcs and you know you got household goods showing up you need to find a place to live you need to you know get this sorted out and finally you find the place you know the price is right the neighborhood's good the school systems find the commute's not too bad the spouse's you know commute to work's not bad all these things line up you're like this is the place the only problem is the dining room has got hideous yellow wallpaper with pink ducks on it and that hideous yellow wallpaper with pink ducks on it you know it is horrible but the good news is we can always paint over that right we can put new wallpaper up we can tear that wallpaper down we paint i mean whatever you know the house is good it's big enough i can afford it and see you buy the house right and then the boxes show up and then it's parent teacher night at school and then you got to go tdy and pretty soon you've been walking in the door and out the door every day for six months and you walk in right past that yellow wallpaper with pink ducks and you're you don't even see it anymore right because you walk past it every single day but then somebody comes to your house maybe it's a co-worker coming for dinner or something what's the first thing they notice the wallpaper and what do they assume you like it right because you tolerate it right you've been there for six months and you haven't done anything about it it must be good enough for you right our units have wallpaper cultural wallpaper all in them and it's the stuff that people walk past every single day and don't even notice anymore but you know who notices that stuff the brand new airman right the brand new airman shows up in your unit and when they see what is tolerated when they see the way people interact when they see the way people are allowed to behave when they see the stuff that's up on the walls literally up on the walls they are reading all of that to try and figure out what is the norms here what is the culture of this organization how do i fit in right you better be sure that that wallpaper is telling them what you want it to tell them you know and so as senior leaders you all look here's a news flash for you when the chief shows up behavior changes when the chief shows up behavior changes when you all walk into a section in your squadrons you better believe that behavior changes and what you see is not actually what is going on and you all are not so far removed that you don't know what i'm talking about you know what i'm talking about when the chief shows up the behavior is going to change and so one of the things that you and me all of us senior leaders have to learn to do is see through all of that to see the cultural wallpaper what are the things that nobody's changing because they don't even think to change it anymore right i went into a unit not terribly long ago talking to me a captain is referring to a lieutenant colonel by his first name now i mean that's bad right and the lieutenant colonel is not correcting the captain again this you know this is not great but the real the real insight was what they were telling me about what's normal here right because if you're not going to change that behavior when the three star shows up you have forgotten that you do it that's wallpaper and so you all as chiefs you have to learn to see the wallpaper learn to see what an organization one of your sections one of your shops one of your flights what are they telling you about themselves through the stuff that they don't even notice anymore you got to notice the wallpaper it's a key part of leadership at the level that we're all at now leaders deserve what they tolerate leaders deserve what they tolerate right which is directly connected to the wallpaper whatever you tolerate in your presence that becomes the standard for the organization right and so in that squadron where the captains refer to lieutenant colonels by their first name that squadron commander tolerates that and so it becomes the norm we set a new and lower standard every time we walk past a problem because when you and i walk past a problem here's the thing and this is unfair but it it it's just the way it is everybody notices when you or i walk past a problem everybody notices and they think that you saw it and you're okay with it because you didn't fix it now you may not have seen it or you may have decided that well this is really somebody else should be fixing this this is not for me to fix or whatever every time you and i walk past a problem we create a lower standard for the organization i don't have any desire at all at all to drive around in a gov with a three star plate on the back on the front so that i can stop people on the sidewalk that don't salute the gov i have zero desire to do that but if i don't i'm creating a new standard i'm creating a new standard i'm telling people it's okay to ignore that rule right and so you and i have to never ever ever allow ourselves to walk past a problem the very best senior nco's i mean you all are going to be moving into squadron leadership roles the very best senior nco's are the ones that fix those problems and don't ever let the commander have to do that those are the very best senior nco's in my career you know the very best senior nco's have been the ones that when i've been standing with them and we saw a problem and i they put their hand in front of each other sir stop this is sergeant business and they go and they fix it do not let your commanders be the problem solvers the standards holders you all hold the standard for your organizations you all should hold the standards for your organizations don't let your commanders get involved in that but they will if you don't but you should be the ones enforcing the standards for the units we all deserve what we tolerate last idea that i'll leave you here and then we'll talk about management for a few minutes leaders ought to be spending their time doing the things that nobody else can do for the organization leaders ought to spend their time doing what nobody else can do for the organization not doing that creates all kinds of problems not doing that creates all kinds of problems so let me give you a kind of a silly example but it makes the point when i was a squadron commander um you know i got uh like all squadron commanders you know well i have an open door policy come by anytime um you know which is you know not actually what you want to happen uh you know but it's what we all say and uh so one day i get the knock on the door it's sergeant mucketuck staff sergeant mucketuck is my mobility nco in the squadron and we're getting ready to deploy the squadron and so sergeant mucketuck comes in hey sir you got a minute sure i do what can i do for you today mucketuck well sir you know we're getting ready to deploy next week we got to get an isu 90 all packed up and ready to go and we've got two isu 90s uh that are kind of set aside that we could load all our ops gear in and isu 90 number one is a brand new isu 90 we bought it at the end of last fiscal year with fallout money and it's in great shape the problem is it just got back from that long uh tdy and so you know the computers are all broken and the you know chairs are missing and the toner cartridges are you know missing from the printers and we need new you know pencils and paper and all that kind of stuff in there and so that's isu 90 number one isu 90 number two um is fully stocked it's ready to go the problem is the isu 90 itself is kind of beat up and it's probably not going to pass the inspection over at the cargo yard you know it's got a hole in the bottom and the back is torn and and you know it's it's pretty beat up and it needs to be replaced but we hadn't gotten around to it yet um what do you think we should do now y'all i have trained my whole career to answer this question right and i i mean i'm like like all of you i want to be decisive right i want to you know i want to make decisions i don't want to keep people waiting i don't want you know i and so i know the answer to this question and staff sergeant mucky tuck just needs to hear me say it right and just like you if i if i don't pay attention i will answer that question in a heartbeat but is this something that only i can do for the organization right because if i tell him well why don't we take the stuff on this one put it now and take stuff out of this one but you know if i tell him that there's like four different things that happen that are all bad right thing number one is what have i just trained mucky tuck to do next time he's got a problem come to me right i'll solve your problem and so pretty soon i am going to be the problem solver for every problem in the organization because i have demonstrated that i'm willing to do it right that's bad because i don't have time to do that number two there is something back there on the desk that nobody else in the unit can deal with except the commander but that is not getting any attention because i'm busy solving the staff sergeant's problem form right and so that epr that requires a commander signature on it i'm not paying attention to that epr and i'm probably not going to get to it until like 1800 or 1830 when i'm really tired and i'm worn out and instead of actually paying attention to what that epr says i'm just going to sign it to get it off my desk because i'm ready to go home right that's not fair to whoever's epr that is and so there's something that only i can do that's not being done because i'm busy solving isu 90 problems number three i'm undermining everybody in the supervisory chain between me and the staff sergeant right there is a master sergeant that is out working right now with his counterpart in the maintenance squadron to get this isu 90 over there to have somebody welled up the back and put a new plywood bottom on it and that kind and and hey i've worked it out this you know master sergeant over there is going to do a favor for us and and so we're going to get this thing sorted out and that master sergeant comes back to the squadron and finds the staff sergeant's getting all the stuff switched between this one and that one he goes hey man what are you doing what does the staff sergeant say the commander told me to right and so that master sergeant's just been totally unempowered right i didn't mean to but that's what i did when i answered that question right so i can't answer that question that the fourth thing that happens is for everybody that i expect to make decisions about isu 90s they have no ownership of this they don't feel any pressure to get it right because now they're just doing what the commander said right and so it takes a lot of discipline to not do something to not make a decision to not give an answer because you're taking an opportunity for somebody else to feel the pressure of having to get it right right and so it really really takes a lot of self-discipline for me to not say take this stuff out put it in this one take that i can't do that instead what i have to go wow yeah that's a tough problem mucky tuck i'm sure you and sergeant schmucket telly will work that out good luck don't screw it up you know because i want him to feel the pressure that hey man if if this doesn't work it's on me that's how people get better is by feeling ownership of the mission feeling ownership of whatever their role in the unit is and if all they're doing is just following the orders of what somebody told them to do they're never going to feel any ownership of decisions right and so don't take their decisions away from leaders should spend their time doing the things that only they can do for the organization management one of the principle things that we have as a management tool is the org chart the org chart is a management tool because it prescribes structure and process right it describes who signs whose leave forms and who is rating whose epr and all that stuff right that's a org chart and what i would tell you about org charts is organizational structure can all by itself can preclude success it cannot by itself ensure success which is another way of saying you can build an org chart so screwed up that nobody can succeed but you cannot build an org chart that is so perfect that everything just happens on its own right only airmen make success happen the org chart should empower airmen to be successful but don't ever kid yourself into thinking that reorganization is going to solve the problem reorganization never solves a problem by itself all you're doing with reorganizing changing the who reports to who and who the blocks and the lines connect to and all that stuff all you do when you reorganize is hopefully make it easier for airmen to be successful but the org chart is not the thing that makes them successful so resist the temptation when you go to a new organization to start with reorganizing this is a common you know new leader behavior is to find that they don't like the way something works and so the answer is to reorganize reorganizing is not the answer reorganizing is not the answer reorganizing at its best just puts airmen in a position to succeed but it never causes success by itself as we think about as we think about organization and we think about how we have portion work in our organizations one of the things i would tell you is we have to decentralize and build our organizations around output the product the mission and not the processes or the functions we have in the air force and this is i've got a whole rant on this that i'm going to spare you all unless you're an afsock airman and i'm going to talk to you tomorrow morning and you're going to hear all about this but we have been on a centralizing spree inside the air force for the better part of 30 years and i will tell you you know we always centralize for the same reasons right efficiency economy of scale we don't have enough to go around so we have to pull the resource i mean all these things that we tell ourselves why we have to centralize and uh when we centralize things that necessarily drives us to organizing around processes or functions right that is not the way the mission happens that's not the way mission had mission doesn't happen around functions right in the air force we gather together all the civil engineers and we put them together into a single squadron and we call it the civil engineering squadron right we gather together all our comptrollers and we put them together into a squadron that we call the comptroller squadron we gather together all our aircraft maintainers and we put them together in a squadron and we call it the aircraft maintenance squadron right that's not actually the way missions happened. CENTCOM never calls with an RFF for a comptroller squadron because we've got a financial management emergency that has to be solved in CENTCOM. That's not the way mission happens. Nobody asks for a maintenance squadron. You know, performing maintenance is not the mission. Doing financial management is not the mission. Doing civil engineering is not the mission. The mission is something bigger than that, but we have built ourselves these functional stovepipes that I think our adversaries are going to be able to exploit to pressure us in the future. If we don't learn to decentralize, organize around our missions, and empower airmen at much lower levels than what we do today. I'm going to not go on on that. I can talk about that for days, and tomorrow the AFSOC chiefs are going to be subjected to that full force, and so I'll spare you for this afternoon. Metrics. Metrics are a great management tool, and I absolutely encourage the use of metrics. Here's what I would say about metrics. You have to be sure that what you're measuring is directly connected to the behavior you want, you know, because when we can't measure what's important, we tend to ascribe importance to the things we can measure. Let me say that again. When we can't measure what's important, we ascribe importance to the things we can measure, right? So Lieutenant Slife goes into the Hurlbert Field Dental Clinic for the first time in 1992. And when I walk into the Hurlbert Field Dental Clinic, there's a great big sign up on the wall. And it's a chart, and the vertical axis is average customer waiting time, and the horizontal axis is the calendar, right? Thirteen weeks ago, twelve weeks ago, eleven weeks ago, ten weeks ago, you know, all the way at the other, at the right side is last week, right? And so it's a plot of what our average customer waiting time was over the last thirteen weeks, right? So you can envision what this chart looks like. And we've got a little dotted line there at five minutes, and it says goal. The goal is five minutes, average customer waiting time. And last week, here at the Hurlbert Field Dental Clinic, we got the average customer waiting time down to 4.87 minutes. And so we're now going to take a three-day weekend, because we have achieved our goal here at the Hurlbert Field Dental Clinic, which is fantastic. But here's the thing. I would think that a metric at a dental clinic might have something to do with teeth, right? Like how frequently do you pull the wrong tooth? How many times do the fillings come out? I mean, something to do with teeth, because that's what they ought to be about at the Hurlbert Field Dental Clinic. But that's hard to measure. And so instead, we ascribe importance to something that we can measure, which is customer waiting time. Well, one of the things you better be sure of is that whatever you measure is what people are going to pay attention to. And so if you want to get the customer waiting time down less than five minutes, I can help you with that, right? Erwin Bass, come on in. Open your mouth. You look good. Out you go. Erwin Olson, come on in. Open your mouth. Hey, your teeth are falling out, but they'll probably be good until next year. Out you go. Next. I can get the customer waiting time down, right? But that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm any more effective in the mission. And so for us as senior leaders, you know, we better think carefully about what we want to measure and make sure it's connected to the mission. And when you do that, measuring is good. You know, you have to measure to have a metric, right? Making goals is even better, right? So not only are we measuring our performance, but we're telling people this is what our goal is. And then the best is when you can compare like things, right? So you can create a competition, if you will, right, where your flights are now striving to be the best. The problem is when we, this gets back to the centralization thing. When you centralize and you only have one of something, it's hard to measure something that cuts across different functions like that, right? How do I know that my comptroller squadron is better or worse than my civil engineering squadron? Well, I don't know. You know, balancing budgets and, you know, doing civil engineering work are two fundamentally different things. And so I, you know, it's hard to compare around the mission. And so what do we end up using for metrics? You know, EPR timeliness, GTC overdue rates, PT failures, I mean, those are things that we can measure and we can compare. But those aren't, that's not actually why we have a comptroller squadron or a civil engineering squadron or whatever. And so the best way to do this is set up organizations where you can compare their performance, measure, set goals and compare. We're in the home stretch, y'all, stay with me. Okay, authority and responsibility and accountability, these words often get kind of interchanged. They're all really, really important. Authority has to follow responsibility. If you give somebody responsibility for something, but you don't give them the authority to do what you've asked them to do, they're going to reject that. And they're going to resent you for putting them in an untenable position. So if you're going to give somebody responsibility for something, you better give them the authority to do the thing that you've asked them to do. None of you would accept it, right? None of you would accept it? Chief Wolf, you are going to be responsible for ensuring all of our airmen's PT tests are taken by the end of next month. I'm going to start scheduling them right away. Well, hold up, Chief. Now, you know, scheduling is somebody else's responsibility, right? And you go, well, but if I'm going to be, you know, accountable for this, I ought to have the tools available to do it. Well, sorry, you know, but I'm going to hold you responsible, right? You wouldn't accept that, and you shouldn't. So you've got to make sure that you connect authority to responsibility. Remember authority can be delegated, right? I can give my authority to somebody else, right? And so, for example, I have the authority to award achievement medals, right? That's my authority. I have said, Chief Olsen, if you catch somebody doing something good, pin an achievement medal on them on the spot, but, sir, I don't have the authority to do it. Yeah, you do. It's mine. It's my authority. I've given it to you to do. And so, you know, Chief Olsen knows that if he walks around and sees somebody doing something good and he wants to stick an achievement medal on them right there on the spot, I'm going to cash that check because I have delegated my authority to him, right? I did that as a wing commander, I did it as a group commander, you know, delegating authority for things like that is a good case study. So he doesn't have authority to do that by the AFI, but when he's exercising my authority, it's the same thing as if I did it myself, right? Authority can be delegated. Responsibility can be assigned. I can say, Chief Wolf, you are responsible for this. I can't delegate my responsibility, but I can assign responsibility to you. This is an important distinction, y'all, right? What do I mean that responsibility can't be delegated? The buck always stops with me in AFSOC, right? When the secretary of the Air Force calls and says, hey, Jim, you know, we've got a problem, you know, in one of your wings. I don't get to say, well, then, Mr. Secretary, let me give you the wing commander's phone number because, you know, this is all on them, right? I mean, it's me, it's mine. I don't get to delegate that responsibility. I can say, hey, to the wing commander, I can say, you're responsible for running your wing in accordance with the, you know, following direction or whatever. I can assign that responsibility, but I can't delegate it. It ultimately comes to me, right? And so authority can be delegated, responsibility can assign. And then the last one is accountability is not the same as culpability. This is a big idea, y'all. Accountability is not the same as culpability. Who's accountable versus whose fault it is are two different things. Commanders are always accountable for everything that happens or fails to happen in their units. Commanders are always accountable. It doesn't matter if it was their fault or not. They're always accountable. Culpability is about whose fault it was, right? And so accountability and culpability, you know, there is, as you all move into squadron, senior enlisted leader roles. One of the things, you know, you will have a command partner as a squadron commander. You need to understand that that commander is always, always, always accountable. And that comes with a weight, you know, because you can't escape it. You can't escape that weight of accountability that comes with command. And so as you move into that role, you know, part of what you ought to be doing is helping to make sure that, you know, acknowledging that the commander is always accountable. But you've got to make sure that if there's a problem, you find out who's culpable and you fix that. You know, you fix the culpability issue knowing that your commander will always be accountable. Two different things, accountability and culpability. This is why, by the way, in the Navy, when a ship runs aground, two things happen in the order in which they happen is really important. The first thing that happens when a ship runs aground is the captain is relieved. The second thing that happens is they do an investigation. The captain is relieved before the investigation. Why? Because the captain is accountable for that ship running aground. It doesn't matter if it was their fault or not. It doesn't matter if the charts were mismarked, if the navigator fell asleep, all that's culpability. The investigation will figure out why the ship ran aground, but the captain is accountable, right? Two different things. Micromanaging and supervising, you know, a lot of times people, you know, I would suggest that none of us get up in the morning and say, I can't wait to go to work today so I can micromanage. You know, nobody gets up in the morning to go be a micromanager, but sometimes we get up in the morning and go, man, I got to keep an eye on that chief Olson today. You know, that cat will get out in front of my headlights if I'm not paying close attention, right? And to me, that just feels like supervision. To him, it probably feels like micromanagement, right? And so you all should not be afraid, as senior leaders, you should not be afraid to supervise where you need to supervise. Do not be afraid of the label of micromanagement. It's just a matter of perspective. And where things are really critical, don't be afraid to get micro-information. Drill in and get the information you need to understand what's going on in your units. Just because you're asking for a lot of information doesn't mean you're micromanaging. You know, one of the things we talk about, systems, processes, resources, and policies, one of the things that we really have to guard against is any system that we build that punishes the excellence so that we can reward the mediocre. Watch out for systems that punish the excellence so that we can reward the mediocre. What does that look like? You know, what would be a system that punishes the excellent in order to reward the mediocre? You know, thankfully, the officer evaluation system is following the enlisted evaluation system. But the officer evaluation system is a great case study in a system that punishes the excellent to reward the mediocre. Wolf, you are my number one chief whose last name starts with a W. I really, really think highly of you. You're a fantastic chief with a W. I know, I'm getting a wade. Chief Wade, you are my number one chief on night shift. You know, because of all the chiefs I have on night shift, you're number one. Chief Sparks, you're my number one chief with brown eyes. Now, when everybody gets to be number one, everybody gets to be number one, who are you punishing? The person that's actually number one, who are you rewarding? Yeah, you're punishing, you're rewarding the worst one. That's a system that punishes the excellent so that you can reward the mediocre. Why would we do this? Why would we do this? It happens all over the Air Force. Whose turn is it to get an annual award? That happens, right? You all know it happens. Whose turn is it to be a flight chief or whatever? Anytime you're basing something on whose turn it is, you're disincentivizing people from doing their very best work and you're incentivizing people to just stand in line and wait till it's their turn, right? So we as, you know, kind of the leadership cohort have to watch out for these systems that punish the excellent and reward the mediocre. Just like that circle on top, I'll give you another circle. Mission, risk and resources. These things are inextricably connected and too often we forget about risk. We just talk in terms of mission and resources. Hey, sir, you can't ask me to do more with less. Sure, I can. I can absolutely ask you to do more with less. It just comes with risk, right? Those three things are always in balance. Mission, risk and resources. The challenge that we all have to take on and I will tell you, I demand this of my wing commanders. The challenge we have to take on is how do you articulate risk, right? I'm going to ask you to do more and I'm rarely going to give you more resources. So you have to learn how to communicate back to me what the impact of that is to risk. Sir, if you do that, we're not going to be able to do this as timely. We're going to, and you put it back on me and give me a chance to either say, I accept that risk or I don't accept that so we're going to have to take some resources away from somewhere else to mitigate that risk. The challenge for us always is to learn how to communicate risk that comes with these trade-offs with mission and resourcing. We're in a tough resourcing environment right now where we don't have enough dollars or manpower to do all the things we want to do. Chief Olson and I have been to every squadron in AFSOC and in every squadron in AFSOC, there are great ideas about what we should do with more money and more manpower. In two and a half years, I have yet to hear an idea about what we should do with less money or less manpower. This is just the environment that we're in. And so as senior leaders, we have to learn to talk about risk in a way that communicates to our bosses what it is we're actually buying in terms of risk. And then finally, we talked about punishing the excellent to reward the mediocre. If we don't hold people accountable, we create a culture of mediocrity. If we don't hold people accountable, we create a culture of mediocrity. So what do I mean by that? You know, if you've got two people and one person is not performing and you don't hold them accountable, what lesson does that person learn? It's good enough, right? Because you haven't done anything about it, so it must be good enough. The person that is meeting the high standard, what lesson did they learn? I'm working too damn hard, right? Because if this person is able to get by without doing half as much work as I am, why am I working so hard? If there's no consequence, right? So if you don't hold people accountable, you're creating a culture of mediocrity. The worst person has no incentive to get better and the best person has every incentive to not work so hard, right? That creates a culture of mediocrity. So what does it all mean? In the 1950s, there was a organizational behavior psychologist, one of these guys that studies, you know, organizations and how they work and he came up with this thing that he called his theory of motivators and hygiene factors. His name was Frederick Hertzberg. Sometimes you hear it referred to as Hertzberg's two-factor theory. What does that mean? What is the two-factor theory? The two-factor theory, Hertzberg's idea was the things that motivate people are actually different than the things that demotivate people. They're two completely different categories of things. It's not the opposite of the same thing, right? And so the things that motivate people are, he calls motivators, right? And so these are things that if you pay attention to them, you'll motivate people, et cetera, et cetera. Easy to understand. Hygiene factors, what a strange way to characterize it. What's a hygiene factor? Hertzberg's idea was like personal hygiene, those things, you pay a certain amount of attention to them to keep them from being a problem, but paying more attention to them doesn't make it better. Right? If I put on, if I don't ever put on antiperspirant, I'm gonna have a body odor problem, right? If I put on antiperspirant once or twice a day, I probably am not gonna have a body odor problem. If I put on antiperspirant 12 or 15 times a day, I'm not getting any better looking. I'm not smelling any less bad. I mean, you just pay a certain amount of attention to it. If I never brush my teeth, I'm gonna have a tooth problem. If I brush my teeth once or twice a day, I'm probably okay. If I brush my teeth 10 times a day, I don't become more attractive. You know, so you just pay a certain amount of attention to it to keep it from being a problem. And so Hertzberg puts these things into these two categories and he says, the hygiene factors are things like pay, benefits, commute time, work hours, cubicle space, healthcare programs, those kind of things. These are hygiene factors. You're never gonna motivate somebody with these things, right? I am at the very top of the federal pay scale, right? You all can look up my pay, it's published, just like all of your pay is published. I will never get another pay raise. I'm, you know, I'm topped out. No matter if I get promoted, don't get promoted, doesn't matter, I'm never getting another pay raise. And yet, despite the fact that I am among the most well compensated military members in the entire, you know, DOD, I have not ever woken up in the morning and said, man, I cannot wait to get to work because I get paid so well, right? It's a hygiene factor. I don't worry about money. I don't, I mean, it's not a source of friction for it, but I'm not motivated by it. It's just not something that I'm upset about, right? How many of you have sprang out of bed in the morning, rushing to get into work because tri-care is such a fantastic benefit, right? It doesn't happen. I mean, you know, we invest in tri-care to make it good enough that, you know, it's not a source of horrible discontent. And that's, you know, it's a hygiene factor. You pay a certain amount of attention to it, and then you move on, but you're never gonna motivate people by those things. You're never gonna motivate them. So these are hygiene factors. What are the motivators? Sense of purpose, feeling like what you do matters, feeling like you're on a high-performing team, knowing that you're valued, right? Those are the things that are motivators. And so when you put that against the context of this idea that leadership is about vision, inspiration, values, and culture, and management is about systems, processes, resources, and policies, what I would tell you is that management is about the hygiene factors. Leadership is about the motivators. Leadership is about the motivators. They're both important, right? Those hygiene factors are important. Pay matters, healthcare matters. Those things matter, but they're not the things that are gonna motivate people. You cannot build an org chart so beautiful that people will be motivated to come to work because they love the org chart that you've built, right? Those are hygiene factors. The motivators are about vision and inspiration and having a culture that makes people know that they matter. That's leadership. And the thought that I would leave you with is this, and this is the end of the slide. I told you it was only one slide. There it is. Management problems are those hygiene factors. Those things can be addressed with either set of skills. You will find yourself from time to time with a horrible org chart, and you can't fix it because somebody else owns the org chart, but you can lead your way through that. You can lead airmen to success, but you can't manage your way out of a leadership problem. You will never inspire with a management approach. Both are important, but they're two fundamentally different sets of skills. So with that, that's 32 years of everything that I've ever learned about leadership and management. I hope it's been useful to you, Chief. I think we've got about four minutes left. I'll give it back to you because I know it's the end of the day and so forth. But I do really appreciate the opportunity to spend an hour and a half with you. This is fantastic. Like I say, most important thing I'll do all month. Thanks for your attention. Thanks for the leadership that you provide to the airmen that make up the U.S. Air Force. You all are where the mission happens. And so I'm happy to engage on any of this stuff. I'm on the gal and I'm 100% honest when I tell you, if you've got something you wanna follow up on with me, I would welcome an exchange with you. You know where to find me, okay? Thank you all very much. Thank you. Test test. All right. Sir, like how many y'all just took probably two pages worth of notes on 32 years of experience. And in the last point, I think that most of us got that if we can be anything, be a leader. So to that answer, I don't think you've ever gotten a coin from the chief master on the Air Force, have you? Not one that I care about as much as you. Oh. Generals have such good IQ, EQ. But anyway, sir, seriously, you could be doing anything in the world, you know, and you have a whole lot of things going on in Air Force Special Operations Command, but we couldn't be more thrilled for you to close us out with this. So sir, it'd be an honor.