David Wilbur | The Adrenaline of Risk: A Former Marine Officer's Path to Becoming a Reliability Hero

Get ready to take off with Lieutenant Colonel David Wilbur! In this exciting episode, Andrew sits down with a former commanding officer in the US Marines and F-18 pilot who will take you on a journey through the thrilling world of high-performance fighter aircraft. Discover the adrenaline rush that comes with flying an F-18 to the limits of its capability, as Dave shares his personal addiction to the complexity and risk involved in the orchestration between man and machine.

But it's not just about the pilot - Dave reveals the incredible team of people who work tirelessly behind the scenes to make it all happen, from manufacturers and maintenance personnel to engineers and air traffic controllers. And you'll be surprised to learn how these lessons from the Navy translate seamlessly into the world of business!

Andrew picks Dave's brain on the importance of teamwork and leadership, and how they both play a crucial role in ensuring successful operations in both the military and corporate worlds. You'll hear firsthand about Dave's experiences commanding a squadron of F-18s and the lessons he learned about collaboration and resilience, all while leading in an environment that demands reliability and unwavering strength.

So buckle up and join us for an unforgettable ride with Lieutenant Colonel David Wilbur!

Transcript

Unknown Speaker  0:17  
reliability here at podcast brought to you by the mainstream

Unknown Speaker  0:22  
will have conversations with maintenance and reliability practitioners just like you, people who literally make stuff work on an industrial scale, and also keep economies moving. Why hero because Asset Management timely describes the risky and important work that you do, where a single misstep can cost millions of dollars and possibly lives. And because few things excite you more than making equipment and machines do more than they were ever designed to do. faster, safer, longer, and more efficient. I'm Andrew data. Welcome to the reliability hero podcast.

Unknown Speaker  1:13  
This time on reliability hero, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Wilbert, he will be at mainstream in Melbourne in August. That's next year, he was a commanding officer in the US Marines and FY 18 pilot. So an extraordinary career there. Before he went into the private world where he still is now. He is the founder and CEO of the company. Wlg a really interesting story, we began at, well, the really exciting and interesting space of what it was like to be in charge of an F 18 fighter jet. what that entailed. And then from there, we went a lot of different places, I think you're gonna really enjoy Dave Gilbert. He's

Unknown Speaker  2:06  
right now, as you mentioned, with the energy, which I found, actually, experiences on that as Marine officer and an F 18. Pilot, fine FA teens was the journey to become an F 18 pilot was really one of following the next challenge that landed me in Strike Fighter Aviation, when I left university, because, you know, I was a young man looking for meaning in my life. And that led me into naval aviation. And I found in that process that the flying high performance fighter aircraft out to the edges of its capability created a whole lot of adrenaline. And turns out, I'm an adrenaline junkie, perhaps, but it becomes an addiction over time. And I think the other part of being as a Marine officer, and also flying strike fighter aircraft was just the, the complexity and risk that comes together. In this orchestration between man and machine is, as I mentioned, it's it's a concurrence of the emotions and metal and hydrocarbons and electrons and all these things that come together that ends up just like I said, being being addiction. And it's really quite bizarre when you think about how all that comes together. But it's much bigger than just a guy flying around and or gal for that matter flying around an airplane. When you think about the team of people all the way from the people that manufacture it to the people that maintain it to the people that put it in the air to the engineers that designed it. And the air traffic controllers that are involved in the facilities and everything brought together into in the ability to project that thing into the air with me in it.

Unknown Speaker  3:49  
Maybe pridefully I'd like to be in the center, the center of the show. Yeah, but not really was a passionate thing. But when I talk about being a Marine officer, I really enjoy talking much more about the leadership and the call to lead in that environment that demanded reliability and the term I'd rather use is really resilience. Okay. But at the very beginning at the nub of it, we are just looking for an adventure. Just looking at looking for meaning in my life, trying to find something I was studying at the university as an aerospace engineering student. And as I was seeking as most young people do, is this where I'm supposed to be in the world. The answer was no and I fumbled around a little bit and landed in a Naval ROTC unit where they train officers and walked through the door. And just a few years later was in the cockpit of an F 18.

Unknown Speaker  4:51  
Wow. When you're doing aero at uni, what was the expectation that you would go on to what what were you thinking when you when

Unknown Speaker  5:00  
you signed up for that. I think it was sort of this series of following the next bread crumb of challenge that was in front of me at the time. I love listening to stories of guys that have these amazing careers that talk about that was their aspiration as a young man, because their father showed them military airplanes, and they just have it in their whole life. I, I never had any vision whatsoever, quite frankly, except for I wasn't sure where I was supposed to be. But when I found my way there, I knew that it's exactly where I supposed to be. I love that phrase. The breadcrumb of challenge is that is that little Hansel and Gretel sort of the life you know, it's

Unknown Speaker  5:41  
potentially I don't know, it just came out.

Unknown Speaker  5:45  
How did you how did you come to realize? Or when did you come to realize that it is a team involved in making things happen? And I'm not just talking about with the with the Navy, but also in business as well? Yeah, that's a great question. And it's a big part of the journey, the journey and leadership. And I'll tell you, I'll jump to the end and then come back. But when I was selected to command a squadron, the FAA team that is employed by the United States Marine Corps has two versions, one has a single seat, the other one has a two seat. So there's two guys, the pilot sits in the front. And the WIZO are weapons and sensors, operator sits in the back. And the planes are equally capable the end. In fact, in the FAA, the two seat F 18, or F 18. D, the guy flying the airplane can do everything to the full capability of the airplane by himself. And the guy in the back can just sit there and go along for the ride. But when you think about that, I was delighted because I was selected to command a two seat squadron. And I knew that I would that the capability, my capability and the capability or the my ability to employ this was much better as a team than as an individual. And I believe that sort of in my life, and as I had grown up in this, this institution of naval aviation, as a young

Unknown Speaker  7:13  
pilot in training, I was just, again, amazed by the capabilities of the people in the training system that brought all this together. And I remember walking out several times of the airplane and looking at the guys that were all out there, getting it ready and working on and doing all the things they did and just being, you know, just so impressed by how they did their job was so so much accuracy, and so much precision, so much reliability. And I knew that when I strap that thing on, and found myself at 30,000 feet upside down, or something like that, there was all what they had prepared. That was going to be between me and something other than what I was hoping for. Okay, I just have to look, I have to ask, have you seen the new Top Gun film? I actually have not. But my wife has seen it. And she's told me I must see it. And the reason she told me I must did is because she said the flying is so realistic. And I said, Well, how do you know how realistic? It is? But I don't know that I said that just that way, but I was thinking? No, I think she is more qualified than than some are to to, you know, determine the accuracy of the flying, but I haven't seen it yet. But I went with the notion of leadership. Is it different within the naval corps versus the corporate world?

Unknown Speaker  8:38  
I think honestly, it, it's the same. And I think it's it is the same. And what's ironic about that is I hear that all the time when someone is disparate, we're talking in leadership circles, and someone says to me, well, leadership in the military is very different than leadership in the world, real world, because you have the chain of command, you have the Uniform Code of Military Justice, you have all these instruments, and as a Marine will just do whatever you tell them to do. And that's not completely inaccurate. But it's also ineffective in terms of creating the what the organizational performance that is the result of good, effective, transformational intuitive leadership. And at the end of the day, you have people that are in the face of risk that have to do things with equipment within process in order to deliver on the core competence. They're wearing PPE, they're tired, they're dirty, and all those types of types of things and they respond in that environment to the exact same attributes and characteristics of good leadership. Okay, then so good leadership is good leadership, regardless of where it is. So maybe I know this is not a word, but then what about the followship? Right, if you've got leadership on one side and then and the people that you're leading

Unknown Speaker  10:00  
Is that different from the from the the arm services compared to the corporate world? Because

Unknown Speaker  10:06  
I would expect that it's that two very different reasons for for following and one's a paycheck. And at the beginning, certainly and with younger people, it's a paycheck, it's not a it's not saving lives, or it's not understanding your place in the machine.

Unknown Speaker  10:22  
I don't think that

Unknown Speaker  10:25  
people in the people are people at the end of the day, we're all human beings, and we're motivated by very similar things. And if we can access those deep parts of the why and the purpose and who we are, will get the same result. Now, there is no question that the rules are different. And the tools that are available to get people to behave themselves in the military look very different than what they do in the private sector. But at the end of the day, I do believe leadership is leadership and using those same characteristics of purpose and meaning, and engagement out of leaders will generate the same results regardless of their rules. Okay, so purpose, engagement and meaning.

Unknown Speaker  11:12  
You have to do you have to change the way you employ those with different groups.

Unknown Speaker  11:20  
Well, you, the people will respond to a leader who's authentic I was when I was selected to command a squadron, which is is, is rare, and I was the worst choice to command a squadron. By the way, I was surprised as everybody else. And now you are sending you lucky from Top Gun. Yeah, really

Unknown Speaker  11:45  
watch it, the but they were the first thing they do with us send you to a school. They call it the commander's course, that has a nickname, knife and fork school because it's time to teach you how to behave like an adult. And pick up the you know, the knife and the fork and in the right way.

Unknown Speaker  12:04  
But I there to this one, we sat down in the opening day of this two week course to teach us to be behave ourselves as commanding officers, a general officer was opening with a keynote. And at the very beginning of this keynote, he said this, he said, Marines, whatever you done, to bring you enter this room today has prepared you for the challenge that you're about to face. He said, But if you stop being who you are in leading with authenticity, the Marines will see right through it, and they will not respond to your leadership. I don't even remember what his name was. I don't remember anything else. He said after that, because and I don't remember anything that happened the rest of that time, because I was so mesmerized by that statement thinking I have to be authentic and for they will not respond to me. And who am I? What is my authenticity? What is this leadership that will represent the true me. And I will tell you that he was 100%, right. And I listened to that and allowed that to guide me as a commanding officer. And it goes back to that engagement that we're talking about. I engaged them, I cared for them. I loved them, quite frankly. And they respond to that leadership just like people who in the real world. So maybe that's one of the keys for people with as they they train that the younger folks coming through is to remind them that the that they are important as they are and it's not a matter of rebuilding in, in, in my likeness, but maintaining your likeness as you go forward. And I'm not sure that's something that happens a lot anyway. I think so as a young officer, joining my first gun Squadron, as we call it, this the operation last one, the airplanes are no longer red and white, they're gray

Unknown Speaker  14:05  
and they carry bombs and stuff. The I had a that your primary job is actually not to be a pilot. Your primary job is gonna be a leader and in your spare time fly the airplane. And so I they assigned me to what's called the airframes division in the maintenance department that maintained the metal and the and all the structure of the airplane and several other things. And I had just walked in the door and I had no idea how to lead and I had a division chief.

Unknown Speaker  14:36  
And I went to meet my division chief and I asked him to close the door and we sat down I said

Unknown Speaker  14:44  
I don't know what to do. I you know you you understand this machine. You understand the Marines help. And he said, Well, if you'll just listen to me, I will teach you and pay attention and I'll show you what to do and I did

Unknown Speaker  15:00  
exactly what he told me to do. And as that was a model of leadership that was going to going to lead me all the way through my career, because at every level, that position that I was put in, I did exactly that same thing, I found that guy. And I followed him until I had what I needed to effectively lead. So how do you think it is for young men and women to actually ask for help? Because

Unknown Speaker  15:27  
I think it's right. I think it's probably always been hard. But maybe it's it's getting harder.

Unknown Speaker  15:33  
I think so. But, but part of what we've found now, because we're talking a little bit about some of the things that I'm spending a lot of time on right now is dealing with helping leaders come to that realization is they don't know any better. They're not given permission, or the language of leadership, that it's okay to do that. And most people come into a leadership role thinking, well, now you're in charge. And people just have to do what you say. And that's absolutely the opposite of leadership. That's more management, that's more direction. Leadership is very different than that. And people are never taught that. So believe very strongly that, like any technical skill that's out there, leadership must be taught, and coached and developed just like I was coached and developed by these, these men that were senior to me, Junior and RAC more often, but senior and to me and their experiences. And I listened to them, and I asked him for help. And they saw me as their leader at that point, not a follower, okay, with with maintenance and reliability when things go wrong, and semi things seemingly unrelated. What's the chance that causes are actually related back to notions of culture and leadership?

Unknown Speaker  16:52  
I'll tell you that when I took over that squadron that I mentioned, we were the squadron was, for all intents and purposes had been shut down due to an audit,

Unknown Speaker  17:05  
a logistics and maintenance audit. And too many programs were found to be off track, and the air and they sort of deemed unsafe to fly, if you will, we started flying again. Or we attempted to start flying again, just a few days after command, we thought we got ourselves prepared. And we had to shut down the production schedule on day one, because we failed to meet the threshold for minimum material readiness. And I felt like I needed to do some leadership. And I needed to inspire the Marines. And we had to power through this. And I had to explain to them the why behind what was going on. I had a big formation out on the flight line around the airplanes, and I gave one of the most motivational, compelling speeches I can come up with. And they all walked away, happy skipping and I was walking with this group of 200 Marines back into the building, I thought I'm the only one in this group that cares that we've failed to make our mission. Yeah. And I realized at that very moment that we didn't have a problem of operating discipline or design or theory, we had a culture problem, how leadership we have value system prop. I walked in, we got the staff together, I sat down with my operations officer in the maintenance material officer and others and I said we have a we're about to embark on a cultural change journey. And they said, How do you do that? I said, I have no idea what we're gonna figure it out. And we did. And we didn't change. We didn't buy new equipment, we didn't write new procedures, we didn't buy new tools, we only changed out a small percentage of the people in the organization. And 18 months later, we were selected to fly in combat operations. We performed at eight times the operating specification of a unit flawlessly, and we brought every everything home and all of our people. And at the end of that we were awarded the highest award for in the type model series for sustained superior performance without changing anything and the result reliability constructs. Just Culture and leadership. We went from shutdown and unable to make a flying schedule to the Hanson award. Were you able to save money whilst going through that process? And I know Ali asked that in terms of because often when a company needs to save some money they might go look, let's shave maintenance a little bit. Rod Yeah, you guys you can bet Zito not Makita tools, whatever it is.

Unknown Speaker  19:37  
They might so was was finance part of that process? Want to say yes, but I don't know. And the reason is, is you know, the budgeting and the p&l requirements in in a fly in a military flying Squadron, very different. But we did have a budget we had to operate within and we had a certain finite resource that was the lifecycle of the airplanes, and all those type

Unknown Speaker  20:00  
types of things. And we exceeded all of our goals as well. Do you remember any any specific cultural changes that you made things that you

Unknown Speaker  20:10  
can say, you know, I went through Plan A, B, and C.

Unknown Speaker  20:15  
While it was very dynamic, I can tell you that, but the very first thing that we came up with, and I'll never forget it in that meeting, was that three weeks after that moment, we were deploying from our garrison location in Beaufort, South Carolina to a desert location in the United States in Yuma or El Centro, excuse me, our Center of California. And we had 10 airplanes that we were taking out there, and we were going to write an eight aircraft flow, so that that schedule, that we build the fly and go get the training sorties that are required to, to train and prepare the pilots for readiness, I told the Operations Officer, we're going to take all the airplanes we can, which hopefully that'll be 10. But you're only are allowed to write a for airplane flow. And you're only allowed to fly airplanes for 14 hours a day. And he threw his hands in the air. And he's like that, this is the only opportunity we have this year to go get this type of training, because we can't draw up live ordinance in South Carolina, we have to go out there. I said, we're no longer going out there to check train pilots are going out there to change the winning mindset of this organization. And if we can just execute half of what you have in mind and say we did what we set out to do. That's what I'm after. And he said, Okay, and we almost didn't make it. We almost couldn't do the for airplane flow. But when we came back, I stood up in front of the Marines. And I said, Well done, you did exactly what we set out to do we achieve 100% of our flying stories well done.

Unknown Speaker  21:50  
And I know that that was a moment of inflection on that organization, because they had a success. So how difficult is it? Turning the mindset around for that? I'm not saying that guy's the rogue guy, but you know, the, the people who want they got to know Dave, Dave, we're going all over, we're not taking eight full flow, we can do a 12 flow, you know, to calm people down and have them work within the process that you know, is the right process. I think it's the important part there is for them to understand the why. And when I said we're no longer training pilots, we're we're reshaping the mindset of an organization. At that point, the argument changed a lot. And they understood the purpose. Now they understood what measurement looked like, different what they had in mind to begin with. And they came on board now, I don't think I think they're going to be at least complicit at that point, because they couldn't win the argument any longer. But when they came back and saw the results of what we had achieved,

Unknown Speaker  22:55  
it was a part of the convincing.

Unknown Speaker  22:58  
Have you have you been part of

Unknown Speaker  23:02  
certain initiatives that you're most proud of? Is there a moment that you can look back on your career, and this is, whether it be creating Wlg or as a fighter pilot, that you say this is?

Unknown Speaker  23:14  
I don't know, this is my

Unknown Speaker  23:17  
this is my moment. This is what I you know, I'm gonna stand on the Hill for

Unknown Speaker  23:22  
Yeah, we haven't talked about any of that. But I would attribute my marriage to that only because as a fighter pilot, a fighter pilot in quality husband are typically not synonymous with each other. And I was pretty proud to be a fighter pilot, and she was pretty doggone lucky to be married to me, in my mind when I left.

Unknown Speaker  23:46  
And we got in, and then I came face to face with that reality.

Unknown Speaker  23:51  
I worked harder than I worked on anything to keep her. And not to make that melodramatic, but it was the most important thing in my life, and we have the best possible marriage we can have today. So I think that's probably the thing. I'm the most proud. Do you think she also had the thought that she was you were pretty lucky to

Unknown Speaker  24:13  
know, she thought she was lucky to be married to me to understand the question.

Unknown Speaker  24:19  
No, no, no. Okay, well, thank you.

Unknown Speaker  24:23  
listener, asset management as a as a title as a phrase. It's pretty it's a pretty, I guess, a time description of what you are part of is there. And it's the implications are incredibly important. Yeah. Is there a way to make it more important for the for the fellas upstairs, the people upstairs the asset manager, yeah.

Unknown Speaker  24:48  
I think that so, when I think of asset management, I nest that under, you know, this notion of the reliability of the organizational performance

Unknown Speaker  25:00  
And it produces results that they care a lot about those results end up being productivity, profitability, safety,

Unknown Speaker  25:09  
you know, cost control all those things that end up on the scorecard. But to be honest with you eat reliability has become unsatisfying, really, for me, because what happens when we talk assets and reliability, we presume that people are something to be managed and something to be contained. And we sort of rule out the art and the rhetorical side of the human nature. Resilience, on the other hand, which is what veterancy has focused our research on and our services on, actually is found in the source of resilience is that adaptive capacity of the human beings in the organization. So I think that convincing the leaders upstairs have asset and performance and asset management and reliability. Really boils back down boils down to how you describe that ecosystem of people process and equipment. And how that ecosystem in a resilient format will produce the results that they're that they're held accountable for. Okay, have you think the corporate world is now going in general, obviously, with with the notion of resilience? Are we are we less resilient now, for us, that the word of the word resilience and coupled with human factors in order to understand again, where that source of

Unknown Speaker  26:36  
resilience comes from is really getting a lot of traction, we've been asked to speak a lot about this. It's getting or getting a lot of feedback and a lot of questions and a lot of desire. There is a sort of a transformational shift in the way you see things going from trying to bound people in the world that we think about designing reliability. Now, let's be clear. Reliability is a is a rite of passage or an entry into resilience, you can't have an unreliable system, and just hope for resilience or you're just winging it. But it's not enough, it's unset, it'll only get you some percentage of the way there to the performance that they're looking for. And so we've seen a real shift in that, or an appetite is probably a better word in industry, particularly the heavy industries that we're involved in, where they're understanding that, that asset management and the reliability that they're driving by, you know, by trying to box people in, is it getting them there, it's not changing the results, it's not moving the needle, and they want a new, some new ideas and how to generate that performance. Okay. And again, that's that's leading from the top. Look, I know, we're getting close to time, but how important is it to admit human error in the workplace? So that if you're, if you're letting the team down, how do you? How important is it to Okay, everyone to know that I like they put a little twist on it, they're well, so in, let me just tell you a quick story then. So the in the squadron transformation that we're talking about right now, we were on our way, we were seeing change, we were feeling change. And the other part of this change, this transformation that I would say was critical to it was a purpose that was anchoring us in the future that we all wanted to be a part of. And that was to be selected to be the squatter, and to be called into combat action. And as we started getting closer, and we had to be ready, we had to have, you know, we had to look good and look prepared to go. And we were getting ready and working hard. And I was manning up for ship flight to go out and do some excellent training in air to air combat. And my technician was on the side of the airplane and he was troubleshooting some problems. And he looked up at me and he said, they bought the airplanes down the airplane is it can't go that it's broken. And it was too late for me to jump in the spare aircraft. And this was a big deal. And you know what I did? I looked at him and I told him, I got it. You go away. I'm taking this airplane. I had the authorization to do that. I can I signed for the airplane. I own it. I can go fly it no matter what. And he walked away from that airplane. I got out I got up in the air the airplane did okay. Except for the pilot. The airplane did what was supposed to do. And but I thought that entire time What have I done?

Unknown Speaker  29:33  
I just told this marine that we we live by a mantra we called the harder right and we did the right thing, no matter how difficult that decision was to make. And I just violated this shared the shared value that we had created for ourselves as part of this journey. And so I thought how am I going to recover for this? What am I going to do? How am I going to admit that I made this mistake? And I got back to the Linna

Unknown Speaker  30:00  
was taxiing back from this flight kind of preparing myself they gonna get guests who was waiting for me at that parking spot, that young Marine. And what's worse is he was a bit one of the biggest disciplinary problems we had in the in the unit. And he was out there and he met me at that airplane and he said, you know, you listen to me, sir, that is here getting between me and this vision of success that we have as an organization, you can't do that. And at first I thought, How dare you? To me that way? How do you know who I am? And then I thought, this is brilliant. This is exactly what we're waiting for. We have accountability to every single person that shared among everyone. And this kid is not as young man is not afraid to walk up to even the commanding officer of the squadron and say I'm holding you accountable. I went back to the Sergeant Major, I was so excited to Sarmatians Great. This young Marine just came out and gave me a wire brushing on the flightline. He looked at me he goes, What's his name? And I go, Oh, no, no, no, no, this is good. So after mangoes No, sir. I want his name right now. But I didn't Well, part of the admitting to my mistake was that Molnar ability to recognize that the mistake was something that was against a shared accountability that we had in the organization. And when he held me accountable, it really indicated that we had reached an amazing place in that culture. Yeah, I really like that phrase anchoring us in a future that we all want it to be part of. Yeah. Now, what about Dave when the mistake is not your mistake, the mistake is someone else's mistake and have having them accountable. In an open sense.

As flight kind of preparing myself, they gonna get a guest who was waiting for me at that parking spot. That young Marine. And what's worse is he was a bit one of the biggest disciplinary problems we had in the in the unit. And he was out there and he met me at that airplane and he said, you know, you listen to me, sir, that is here getting between me and this vision of success that we have as an organization, you can't do that. And at first, I thought, How dare you? To me that way? How do you know who I am? And then I thought, this is brilliant. This is exactly what we're waiting for. We have accountability to every single person that shared among everyone. And this kid is not as young man is not afraid to walk up to even the commanding officer of the squadron and say, I'm holding you accountable. I went back to the Sergeant Major, I was so excited to serve me. This is great. This young Marine just came out and gave me a wire brushing on the flightline. He looked at me he goes, What's his name? And I go, Oh, no, no, no, this is good Sarge. mangoes. No, sir. I want his name right now. But I didn't Well, part of the admitting to my mistake was that vulnerability to recognize that the mistake was something that was against the shared accountability that we had in the organization. And when he held me accountable, it really indicated that we had reached an amazing place in that culture. Yeah, I really like that phrase, anchoring us in a future that we all want it to be part of. Yeah. Now, what about Dave when the mistake is not your mistake, the mistake is someone else's mistake and have having them accountable. In an open sense. Can I tell a quick story again? Oh, yeah, I love your stories. But every single one makes me think you have to say Top Gun.

Unknown Speaker  31:57  
This is a this is i This is a really meaningful story to me. So one of the things that we did in terms of admitting to mistakes because that the ability to admit to your mistakes is such an important organic value of a high performing organization is that every Friday the Fridays that we could I say every Friday, but it was by designed to be every Friday, we had Friday afternoon confessionals, we call it and we would get all their crew in the reading room. And we would sit down. And I would always be the first guy to admit something I'd done that I wasn't supposed to do that week. And it was that was non attribution. It was Monte Carlo, whatever you set up there would never be repeated. Or you would never be disciplined for what you said, now we would hold each other accountable to it. As it because of the second part after you said I did something I wasn't supposed to do you said this is what I'll do to to not do that again and learn from it. And of course not everybody said that at one time a guy stood up and he said

Unknown Speaker  33:00  
I had a hypoxic episode in the airplane flying home from a mission last night. And a hypoxic episode means he became ill he became hypoxic, and he could have been incapacitated and should by all right, probably should have been. And of course, that leads to a fatality and a loss of looking at life is hypoxic is, sort of you just lose all your oxygen to your brain. The first thing is you start acting like you know, like an idiot, quite frankly. And after that, well, you've seen in the in, in maybe Austin or Joan, when they do the pancake and their next thing, you know, they're just throwing their hands around. That's kind of the first indication. And what had happened was the asset itself meant that we were having problems with canopy seals and these canopy seals developed small leaks in them. And the canopy seal holds the outside air pressure in its place and keeps the pressure inside the airplane. So your body thinks it's a, you know, natural, natural atmosphere. Well, he recognized and quickly put his mask back on which by the way, in accordance with the rules, you're supposed to have your mask on all the time when you're flying. It's just not the way things are practice. So he admitted to what had happened. And the rule said we needed to write a hazard report to the community that said we had an hyper hypoxic episode, or a physiological episode that went out is supposed to go meet from me as the squadron commander, the rest of the world and the minute my boss saw that message hit the street. The phone was ringing. And he said Get over here to my office right now. Because he didn't like the scene that my squadron had released a hazard and shown that we made a pretty, pretty significant mistake. So I got to his office and he said, What, who what happened? And I explained what happened and he said

Unknown Speaker  34:48  
that that marine that pilot was flying without his mask on? And I said Yes, sir. He was and he said you have a culture problem in your squadron. It's the SOP that I wrote myself.

Unknown Speaker  35:00  
We will all wear our mask all the time. And I said, Sir, if you believe that this, everyone in this group is fine with our masculine all the time, I'm not the one that's misinformed. Here you are, of course, NOM escalating things. And he's getting redder and angrier. And he looked at me and he said, I want to know his name.

Unknown Speaker  35:20  
Tell me this guy's name. And I said, No, sir, I will not tell you his name, you can relieve me of my command, if that's what's necessary. That's your decision. But my decision is, in order to preserve the culture that I have created in this organization, I will be accountable for this mistake, not the person that made that mistake. So he got mad, did what good Marines do yelled scream, spit, and then drew me out of his office. And I laughed. And by the time I got back to that squadron, what do you think, was already the word in that? In that ready room? They already knew about it. And they were all okay, that they were all first off worried that I'd been fired all these things. But you want to talk about something that galvanized my viewership in that organization, who was when I was held accountable, and there were other stories, there's actually a better one, but the, the that that galvanizes, your leadership of that organization? So related, but unrelated. In a? Let's take it to

Unknown Speaker  36:26  
a more practical sense. If you're trying to create a team and there's, and you say, for instance, we're going to wear red shirts with rainbow

Unknown Speaker  36:37  
twill on them or something like that.

Unknown Speaker  36:40  
And half your team say, Oh, I'm just not doing that. Now, did I refuse to know that? I've got a, you know, an emotional issue with what you're asking me to do. And the other, the rest of the team say yes. Do you let it run? Do you just say, Okay, well, we're not actually all playing on the same team? Or do you find a way to? Or can you find a way to make everyone part of that same experience?

Unknown Speaker  37:05  
That's a great question. I think that you have to make the effort to do everything you can to make everyone a part of that experience.

Unknown Speaker  37:14  
And another quick story that comes to mind, but it's a little bit different than wearing red shirts. When we were deployed into combat, we were working hard. As I mentioned, we were flying harder, we're in surge operations for longer than the procedures and the protocol allowed us to do, but we were hitting on all cylinders. And after several months of this, you can imagine the fatigue that starts to set in we're rotating Marines to r&r but most of the pilots weren't afforded that opportunity. But we started I started seeing issues of tool control, because I would get so a took what's called a missing tool

Unknown Speaker  37:54  
that I had to sign off as it's okay to keep flying the airplane. And you can just imagine, if you find a wrench at 600 miles an hour, it's not the outcome is not typically good. And the wrench is somewhere and we use shadowboxes for our tools and all those things. And I would always tell them go find the wrench go fine. And then they keep coming back where the airplane is gonna be down. So I signed off one, I said, don't bring me another, they bring me another sign. Ultimately, after a bunch of convincing and fear of not making our mission, I signed that one off as well. And I said we this is a problem, we've got to get this under control. Three o'clock in the morning on Manning up an airplane to go out on a combat mission is on preflight the airplane on the ground, I pick up a filter wrench laying on the ground. So angry, I didn't know what to do, I did what I probably absolutely shouldn't have done, which was go fly the mission. I put the wrench in my pocket. And I came back from the flight and I looked at the I got with my maintenance control team. And I said, What's this? And the guy goes on? No problem, sir. Just hand that to me. I'll take care of that. And I go, No, no. What is this? And he goes, sir, it's a fuel filter. And I said, Okay, give me the quality assurance officer, the maintenance manager, you know, the maintenance chief not and I got a little chat about why I'm standing here holding a fuel filter wrench. Well, I'm making a short story a little bit longer, maybe use more of our time. But the the problem was is we had you know, we were drifting away from that real discipline that we have. So I actually have a

Unknown Speaker  39:25  
culture climate survey done of workshops and surveys done on my squadron in combat. The general commander of the wing said asked me he's you've lost your mind, why are you doing something like this? You're in combat. You don't have time to mess around with these things? Well, we did it. And what was fascinating to me was the guy that did this evaluation. He came to me with the results and he said, first off your squadron is one of the strongest cultures I've ever seen. However, they're tired and he said the you know, I'll ask

Unknown Speaker  40:00  
The one I asked one question as a part of my survey of this organization, any organization and I know immediately what the culture of that organization based on one question I said, Well, what do you want to do the question, of course, he said, is the physical fitness test administered fairly?

Unknown Speaker  40:20  
Of all the things he could ask is the physical fitness test administer fairly and he? And then when you think about that, it if everyone is on the same standard, like we talked about earlier wearing the red shirt with the tassels, or, and everyone does that, and it is a standard across the board, and it's a non negotiable, then everyone sees that consistency and fairness across the board. So while your question was more about what do you do about the laggards or the naysayers, when they don't want to wear the red shirts with tassels, you do what's needed to do to create consistency. And then when they say I'm not wearing the red tassel, or the red shirt with tassels, the peers hold each other accountable. They said, You'd better get that red shirt on, or you're not going to be invited to play on this team. Interesting. Fantastic. So you said day some terrific things are just some great phrases. I just love the wire brushing.

Unknown Speaker  41:27  
It's a great one. Is there. Other Other words that you live by? Is there a mantra? I mean, looking at the veggie website, that's and some great stuff there. But is this one phrase that you live by day to day?

Unknown Speaker  41:43  
Well, I would refer I think, to our purpose, and it's not just some set of words that we came up with. And we test it each and every day. And our chief operating officer walks us through it each and every week in our in our team sync up meetings, where he asked everyone, what did you do this week to fulfill our purpose and our values. And when you think about all the things that we've just talked about, in the last few minutes, our purpose is to make lives better, and grow leaders. And every time when I'm thinking through the decisions that we're making as organization and what we do to serve our clients, what we do to recreate this enlightenment that occurs in these organizations that translates to bottom line performance.

Unknown Speaker  42:32  
At the end of the day, if you've been successful, the people are in a better place in that organization. And it's the result of enlightened leadership. Okay, fantastic. But the other one I liked that you said is the harder right. Yeah, you know, we actually

Unknown Speaker  42:50  
the plaque, the plaque is around here somewhere, but we put that the Marines put it on our plaque. And so we create a plaque that when we came back from that deployment, they put a plaque with all our names, and it's a beautiful design and everything, but they wrote on there, the harder right, it was so important to them. And we and again to your accountant or accountability question.

Unknown Speaker  43:13  
It everyone in every decision could be tested uniformly against did you make the right decision, despite, you know, stepping over an easier choice. And when you look at all the things that go on in an organization, and typically the easier, more convenient, maybe less costly, all those types of things, that decision that's the right one is going to be harder, harder to make for multiple reasons. Okay, Dave, what a pleasure to spend some time with you. Thank you very much. We'll see you in September for mainstream in Melbourne.

Unknown Speaker  43:51  
A Gu is obviously there's, there's a lot more to say. So with that, thank you very much for your time. Yeah, now. Thank you. It's been it's been great.