Transforming Engineers into Effective Executive Leaders
Are you an engineer crushing complex problems but unsure how to lead people? This episode of Stop Being the Best Kept Secret explores the powerful transformation from technical experts to effective executive leaders. Meet our guests for the show, Ron Higgs, the Founder & Principal, Wolf Management Solutions.
Ron Higgs is a U.S. Navy veteran, executive coach, and LinkedIn Top Leadership Voice who helps data-driven, detail-focused engineers confidently step into leadership. With over 25 years of experience in aerospace, startups, and COO roles, Ron understands what it takes to transform engineers into trusted decision-makers who lead with clarity, vision, and impact.
This episode is all about Transforming Engineers into Effective Executive Leaders. Ron will share how engineers can develop strategic thinking, inspire their teams, and master emotional intelligence to lead from the front. If you have ever felt stuck in the weeds or unsure how to guide others, this episode is for you.
Key Highlights
• Ron Higgs’ Introduction and Background 0:00
• Ron’s Naval Career and Leadership Insights 3:59
• Leadership Lessons from Aviation 10:09
• Effective Communication and Feedback 30:14
• Risk Management and Problem-Solving 34:15
• Handling Resistance and Building Buy-In 42:27
• The Role of Coaching in Leadership Development 47:15
• Final Thoughts and Encouragement 49:38
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Transcription
Curt Anderson 00:00
Hey, happy Monday. Damon, how are you, brother, I’m doing great. Curt, ready to go. Great week started. Great man. It was a good sports weekend, wasn’t it?
Damon Pistulka 00:10
My goodness,
Curt Anderson 00:14
you know, Ron, it’s been so happy Monday to everybody. Welcome to stop being the best kept secret. We have a dear, dear friend, repeat offender on the show today, Ron Higgs. And this guy, I tell you, you know, when you if you Google integrity, you’re going to see our dear friend, Ron Higgs. If you go to Ron Higgs LinkedIn profile, you’re going to see this big fighter jet going across his banner. And guess David. You know who’s inside that banner, inside that fight? I believe it’s Mr. Higgs. It’s Mr. Higgs himself. So Ron, how are you dude?
Ron Higgs 00:44
I am doing great. Thank you for that introduction. I always enjoy hanging out with you guys. It’s always so much fun.
Curt Anderson 00:51
Well, I tell you, I’ve got two dudes in Seattle right here, and so I don’t know, Damon, anything exciting, anything new going on in Seattle right now? Or Yeah, we have a little
Damon Pistulka 00:59
baseball action happening in Seattle. Lots of lots of
Curt Anderson 01:04
fun. Yeah, so, Ron, you know what I checked out the last time you were on the show, it was actually like, Father’s Day. So we were talking baseball. Then that was, like three years ago, and so we got Ron back on the show. Ron, what’s new and exciting? What’s happening in your life since you’ve been on few changes? And we’re going to dive into a really fun, exciting topic about leadership, what’s what’s new and going on in your world?
Ron Higgs 01:24
Well, I think since the last time I was here, I changed directions a little bit by focusing more on coaching now than I was before. I was a fractional COO, thinking we were talking before fractional OS integrator, doing that work, great work. Loved it. While I was doing that work, I found myself doing a lot of coaching, coaching of the executive team, one on one, and as a whole, I found that I like that more. There’s a lot of things about being a COO that can be frustrating, time consuming, things like that, and not necessarily fulfilling, but the coaching part really, really fulfilling. And I decided, because there are a lot of coaches out there, I looked at my background and the things that I know how to do well. And I’m an engineer. I’ve led engineering teams throughout my entire career, so I decided to focus my coaching on engineers, technical professionals, so I transform them into effective executive leaders, and that’s what I’m doing now. It’s, it’s, it’s going, okay, really, really love it. And that’s what’s new. Well,
Curt Anderson 02:29
absolutely love it. You know what? Damon, I don’t think I asked Ron this question last time you were on and So Ron, forgive me if I’ve asked you this in the past, but Damon, I’m going to go there. You ready? Down? You ready for this one? Do it? This has got something to do with music. Doesn’t, right? No, well, no, not, not. There’s he knows about he knows about that. Now you’re South Jersey guy, if I remember, is that, right? Yes, I am. So growing up in South Jersey Camden. Are you Camden area? Yeah, you got it. So when you’re a little guy growing up in South Jersey, great cheesesteaks, by the way, right? Oh yeah. Who was your hero? Who did you look up to? Who did you admire? Who’s like a great role model for you when you were a little guy growing up in South Jersey?
Ron Higgs 03:13
You know, I told you this before. I had close family friend that we called Uncle. Uncle still. I know we talked about Uncle still in the last on the last show. So you could go back and look at that. But I’ll give you another answer too. I was a science fiction geek and nerd man and Star Trek. Love Star Trek Captain Kirk. Loved Captain Kirk. I wanted to be Captain Kirk.
Curt Anderson 03:39
Well, who did you know, Damon. You wanted to be Spock, right?
Damon Pistulka 03:43
Yeah, I would definitely be Spock.
Curt Anderson 03:47
Damon would make a mean spot. So Captain Curt could so, you know what, I went back. You must been out a few times because I went back and I’m like, I don’t think I asked you. So alright, so uncle and then, Doc, Captain Kirk, great answer. Absolute love. You know, because people call me, you know it’s Curt, but people still call me Captain Curt all the time, so that that resonates with me. Brian, so Alright, thank you for sharing that. So again, just for folks that are catching you for the first time, thank you for serving our country proudly. You’re a naval veteran and tell us a little bit about your navy background and how we’re going to roll up to how you’re applying your navy experience as a fighter pilot into your leadership coaching, your leadership coaching practice now. And also, if anybody saw the movie Top Gun, like, weren’t you? You’re like, one of those, like, were you goose? Or, like, Were you one of those dudes, or what?
Ron Higgs 04:36
So I was a naval flight officer, so the guy in the back, so Maverick goose, right? I was at a back and I flew s3 Vikings, which is not a sexy airplane that they didn’t make any movies about, lucky enough to go to test pilot school and actually become a flight instructor in Test Pilot School. But that aircraft picture that you see on my LinkedIn profile, which I’ve changed a little. That That’s actually me in a test, in the back of a test follow school fa 18, which is great, so hard for me to sum up an entire naval career in a couple of sentences, but, but I’ll tell you this Curt, as a young guy, I want to be an astronaut. And I looked, how do I become an astronaut? I ended up long story as to how I wanted to go and do all of that and how I accomplished it, but I ended up going to the Naval Academy. Got accepted to Naval Academy, graduated from high school, 17 years old. Three weeks out of high school, I ended up going to the Naval Academy prep school. First I basically had to enlist in the Navy, go to this prep school, spend the year there and then spend four years at the Naval Academy, went to flight school. After that, did a whole bunch of great things, including flying in the first Gulf War, became went to test pilot school. I actually became a candidate to be an astronaut. Got disqualified when I got to NASA, spent a career. The rest of my career in the Navy doing program management and acquisition, which is working with defense contractors on naval aircraft systems and aircraft weapon and sensor systems. And I also worked on satellite system. I will stop there. So great career. Loved it. I tell you what I got the most out of that. I got to see the world. I got to see a whole bunch of things that I dreamed of seeing when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I used to look at atlases and encyclopedias. So I’d go in an Atla, I’d go to an atlas, and I’d spin it, and I’d find a country, then I’d go to the encyclopedia and read everything I could about that country. And I remember seeing the pyramids of Egypt and going, Wow, I would really love to see those ones. And so when I got to see them, because of the Navy, special moments, those, the Eiffel Tower, all sorts of other things. And so I owe a lot to the Navy, but mostly I owe relationships. The people that I met in the Navy are people who are and remain my closest friends to this day,
Curt Anderson 06:59
guys, absolutely so bachelor’s degree from the academy, Master’s degree all over the flew all over the world. I mean, just what an amazing, incredible experience. So for young folks out there that are considering going into the service or a career direction, Ron, do you recommend folks going into the Navy or what, absolutely?
Ron Higgs 07:19
But it’s gotta be for you. I also wanted, I wanted to be an astronaut, but I wanted to serve my country, even at the time where the country was that, you know, could have been, let’s say, could have been nicer to people that look like me. I still wanted to serve because in terms of looking at history and looking what people sacrificed, and understanding what people sacrifice for us to be able to live the way we do. I wanted to be a part of that. So if you really want service, if you really want to serve the country, then find the best way to do it. The Navy, of course, is a great way to do it, but everybody has to find their own way and what works best for them? Yeah,
Curt Anderson 08:02
yeah, great answer. So again, thank you for serving. God. Bless you. And everybody out there. Do yourself a favor. Connect with Ron on LinkedIn. He puts out great content, wonder information and just bottom line is just a great guy, right?
Damon Pistulka 08:15
David, he’s got a weekly newsletter, and yeah, I agree 100% man, it just feel fortunate to be able to hang with Ron once in a while, personally, in in in real life, and and to get to do this. But I gotta say, Ron, your your background image is rocking it right now. Thanks.
Ron Higgs 08:34
Yeah, maybe little change to it based on some recommendations. I think I told you guys before, a couple of years ago, somebody recommended that I get rid of the airplane, and then my man, Curt here, calls me and says, Hey, what happened to the airplane? Yeah, telling a bunch of people, I always pull up your profile for people to show them. Hey, this is a great profile, and I pulled it up the airplane, yeah.
Curt Anderson 08:56
And so we’ve been doing LinkedIn webinars for years. Like, even, like, you know, yeah, covid before covid. And when I met Ron, I like that. Like, I religiously put up your profile for every LinkedIn webinar that I did. In one webinar, I go to pull it up, and I’m like, Man, wait you check out this. This banner. This is, like, textbook perfect. I’m like, Oh my gosh, you changed it.
Damon Pistulka 09:23
This is, I think this is that. This is actually
Curt Anderson 09:27
an improvement. Well before Ron, if you remember, you had the little arrow, and you go, this is, you know, Higgs, or you had me, or you had a little something to remember that.
Ron Higgs 09:38
Yeah, I did. And I tried to work that in there. It just didn’t work with this one. And I had a little help with this one. You know how it is Fiverr. I’m like, here’s what I want, you know? And I got a whole bunch of different ones. I tried doing a tried doing it myself. And I was like, What are you doing? Right? Just hire somebody to do that. Yeah, that’s, that’s what I got. And I’m very pleased.
Curt Anderson 09:59
Well, I’ll tell you. The airplane, which is awesome. It is epic. Is that, I mean that I’m I mean that since, you know, look at how cool that is, and just think, and again, like, the closest I’ve come is watching the movie Top Gun, you know. And just when you think of like how fierce that is, and there’s Ron right there. So again, when you’re looking for somebody of integrity, you’re looking for coaching boy this, you know, and we’re going to dive into leadership lessons. And Ron is not the guy that talks to talk, or, yeah, doesn’t talk to talk, he walks the walk. So I got that straight. So all right, Ron, we’re going to talk about transfer, transforming engineers into, like, high level leaders. And you’re going to share a little bit. You’ve got a keynote cup coming up, so we don’t want to steal all the thunder, right? But we’re going to share some leadership lessons that you’ve learned along your journey in aviation. Let’s go there. Why don’t you start with us? What’s where’s a good place to start? What’s like the first lesson that you would like to share with folks? Well,
Ron Higgs 10:53
the first one, and I’ll equate this to aviation, and what I realized later in life was looking back and reflecting on how I do things, why I do things the way that I do. I realized that aviation had a big influence on the way I think and in the way I do things. And so, hey, how can I, how can, how can I better articulate that? So the first thing is understanding the mission. I think all of us as veterans take an oath to support and defend the Constitution United States. So, you know, ultimately, that’s what the mission is. The military does a really good job of explaining to us, at least in the Navy, hey, this is the mission of the Navy. This is the name. This is the mission of all these different parts of the Navy. Because you remember the Navy, you know we have seals, we have ships, we have submarines, amphibious ships. We have all sorts of different things. We have aircraft. We have all sorts of things. So knowing the missions of naval aviation, knowing the mission of that carrier battle group that I’m in, knowing the mission of the carrier itself, and then all in the air wing that’s on the carrier, all of the different squadrons, and then my aircraft. So the military does a good job at alignment to the mission. So every time I launched off on the mission, whether from land ownership, I could equate that, and I can track that and align it back to supporting and defending the Constitution United States. And so one of the first things that I did when I go somewhere new, it’s like, well, what’s the mission? I really try to understand the mission statements. And a lot of people don’t really say sometimes it’s fluff. We’ve all seen mission statements that are really short, in general, mission statements that are, you know, bought too long to put on a t shirt or something like that. But ultimately, how many times have you been in a place and had people look at each other and go, What are we doing, and not understanding what they’re doing and how it aligns to the mission overall? So that’s one of the first things I learned in the military, was to align all the actions, micro actions, everything that we’re doing, to the mission of the company. That was number one,
Curt Anderson 13:04
let’s die. I want to, if you don’t mind, I’m going to dive into that statement. Junkie. I love geeking out on the statement. I know you are as well. Let’s what does it if you’re comfortable with me going there and want to stump you or put you on the spot. But what do you feel designates a great mission
Ron Higgs 13:20
statement. I think it has to be short and impactful and really describe at the heart, what are you trying to do? And it has to be more than money, right? We’re trying to make money here. We’re trying to make a profit. Well, that’s not, not really what you’re doing. So for me, I go, I transform process and data driven engineers into effective executive leaders. That’s pretty clear, right? For me personally,
Curt Anderson 13:49
for my Curt and Mike, right? Clear consent. We always say, like, Hey, if you’re on an elevator, yeah, the door opens. I’m about to walk off. I say, Hey, Ryan, what do you do? And you like when I leave, I’m like, Oh, well, I know exactly what you do, right,
Ron Higgs 14:02
pretty clear. So I think clarity is number one everybody. I don’t think anybody should read it and go, Yeah, I’m not really sure what that means.
Damon Pistulka 14:13
No jargon, that’s for sure. Yeah,
Ron Higgs 14:15
exactly. It should just be plain and simple, yeah, impactful and something you truly believe. And if you want to change the world, that’s great. We want to change the world. How do you want to change the world? Yeah, yeah.
Curt Anderson 14:28
Okay, just jot and down some notes. Okay, so for friends out there who are maybe like, Gee, I haven’t thought about a mission statement. We don’t have a mission statement. Maybe that’s why people are rowing in different directions. Yeah, we have advice, suggestions on how people could kind of get that process started, especially for folks out there, like, mission statement we don’t like, that’s corny, that’s goofy. Like, how do you how do you help that company, that leader, really embrace and own their mission statement?
Ron Higgs 14:58
Sometimes, I. You just have to start asking questions. You ever hear that? Ask, why five? Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 15:07
the five whys, yeah, right.
Ron Higgs 15:10
And when somebody gets annoyed and, like, when you get an emotional reaction, there, you’ve got it. Because, seriously, I did this to a nonprofit. I just kept asking the CEO, founder, CEO, I’m like, Well, why? And I asked him, Why again? And he just slammed his head down. He goes, because of this. I go, that’s it. That’s he’s like, you ask a lot of questions. I mean, he was annoyed, but I kind of want him in the beginning, get
Curt Anderson 15:46
him annoyed. That’s the key to a good mission statement, right?
Ron Higgs 15:50
Well, and it’s but it invokes some kind of emotion, yes, right? Maybe not annoyance, maybe joy, maybe something like that, but maybe the way I ask it, use it usually somebody being annoyed. But there’s the discovery process and going, Yeah, that’s it. That’s what we’re all about.
Damon Pistulka 16:06
Yeah, yeah. And getting to that level too, because you have to ask those questions to get down to that level. And why? Why are you really doing this? Not just well, why? Like you said, we want to make money. Well, that doesn’t make sense. You’re not doing stuff just for money. Well, we want to help people. Well, what, who do you want to help? You know, how do you want to help? Why do you want to do that? It just, it’s those mission statements are so important, because then that becomes the rallying cry for everyone, right? And and when you hire somebody, you go, this is our mission statement. Does it connect with you on an emotional level or not? That’s one of your should be one of your main hiring points.
Ron Higgs 16:43
And when you’re working for a team, I think it’s important, especially in teams, to to let people think for themselves, even right, you know, think right, share right. Think about it, write it down, share it with everybody else, because I’m sure you’ve heard, and I can’t remember the name of the bias this is. But when you ask the CEO, hey, what do you think the mission really is, and in the day, start talking, what they say maybe influences everybody else around the table. So if everybody sort of writes down what they want, and then reads it, throws it out there. They’re not necessarily influenced by a specific person. So if you’re in the team concept, it’s really important to get everybody thinking for themselves and see where the common themes are. Yep. Love it.
Curt Anderson 17:40
Okay, excellent. So starting point for leadership lessons with from your aviation career is start with a solid mission, like you just said. Damon, like that, that rally cry, war cry, however you want to describe it, like, how are you getting everybody pumped up, juiced up to make the world a better place? Ron, what is number two?
Ron Higgs 18:01
Well, number two has to do with thinking about what if so it’s fairly easy, and I’m not going to downplay this, and I’m just over simplifying this to learn how to fly an airplane. A lot of our time spent in flight school was was talking about contingencies. What are you going to do? So if you’re in a little, small, single engine aircraft, what are you going to do if you lose your engine right now? What are you going to do if you run out of fuel? What are you going to do if the weather is bad at your landing destination and all of this stuff? So it’s, it’s like a would have, because remember, when you go flying, there are a bunch of variables over which you have no control. You can’t control the weather. Sometimes the aircraft doesn’t cooperate, which means you may lose a system or two of the electrical system on the airplane, or something may go air traffic control may may throw your flight plan out of the window by telling you to do something else based on some other traffic that’s around weather certainly could, could cause you to maybe not be able to get to your landing destination, not to be able to see maybe have to divert and do all these other things. So we spend a lot of time thinking about what if so? When things do go wrong, as they inevitably do, it’s Expect the unexpected, more or less. Because how many people have you seen in your career? You have a plan, and then things go according to plan, and then they freeze. I mean, they can’t handle it. They freeze up. They’re like, oh my goodness, the plans out the window. What are we going to do now? Well, you should have thought about that. I think it’s an Eisenhower quote. It’s like planning what it’s I think he said plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. Yeah, so again, learning how to figure out there are a lot of variables over which your control, over which you have no control. So let’s think about this. What if we. Lose an engine. What if we get bad weather? What if we do a bird strike? What if this? And we look at this in terms of risk, so risk has two pieces, you know, the severity and probability of occurrence. It’s so you look at it and go, well, the probability that we’ll be hit by lightning is actually high, but severity if we do get hit by lightning. Aircraft get hit by lightning all the time. You have all these systems to keep keep the aircraft flying and all sorts of things, right? So it’s actually not as severe as you think it would, but an engine fire pretty severe, but might not occur. You know, those are rare. So you’re thinking, hey, what if you’ve got emergency procedures and all sorts of things? Just start thinking about all the things that could go wrong. So I translated that in leadership roles to what if I lost my number one engineer, and as a COO What if we lost our top salesperson and they took some relationships with them? What if we lost this client that represents a significant percentage of our business, maybe we should do maybe we should spread out. We maybe we shouldn’t have all our eggs in one basket. So again, thinking like that, internally and externally, right? What can happen externally? What kind of taking a look at politics? What kind of laws can they pass that can have an impact on how we do business. What if this competitor starts doing this first before we do whatever it is? So the bottom line is to start that kind of what if thinking, and I think it just builds, builds resilience for when things inevitably don’t go according a plan. Love it.
Damon Pistulka 21:41
Yeah, that’s that is the those contingencies are so important to think through them. And in your example of flying a plane, because you said it’s easy to fly a plane relatively but it’s planning for the contingencies is where the value comes.
Ron Higgs 21:59
Yeah, often run an aircraft carrier, and what we call Blue Water ops, which means you’re too far away from land to go find to land someplace, to land anywhere but the carrier. So lots of things you have to think about in terms of because your airport is moving. And you may fly 1000 miles, you know, 500 miles away from the airport and come back and it’s not where it’s supposed to be, things like that.
Damon Pistulka 22:28
Well, I think Ron is still the only person I know that’s landed on a carrier, on fire.
Ron Higgs 22:35
Uh, well actually that was not Gary, my aircraft fire was not on a carrier. Yeah, that was on land. Okay, hairy moments, but yeah, two engine aircraft, one engine on fire, awesome.
Curt Anderson 22:52
All right, so what happened?
Ron Higgs 22:56
Let’s see, we had a generator. First sign was the generator stopped working on one of the engines. It’s like, well, that’s weird. The generator just tripped off mine. Let’s try to do the emergency procedure, which is, reset it, and it wouldn’t reset. And it’s like, oh, well, that’s odd. And hey, let’s look out to the right side, and I’m on the right seat where the engine is. It’s like, oh, hey, I know why the know why the generator is not working because it because it’s on fire, so right under your fuel source. So
Curt Anderson 23:26
how many and how high? How many feet in here are you?
Ron Higgs 23:30
We’re at altitude on our way down. Let’s say we’re 20, 20,000 feet heading down the Key West, actually. So we had to execute some emergency procedures and land immediately. But that was sort of, but it’s the training. We trained for it all the time, because in the flight simulator, you could do all these things. Yes, the flight simulator is like, Hey, you have an engine fire, and then this happens, and then that happens. So it was, I’m not going to say it was routine, but we did everything that we were supposed to do, and landed safe well.
Damon Pistulka 24:02
And that’s how this translates so well to leadership, because when you have thought about these things, when you have planned for these things, and then they do happen, you go, All right, I’ve kind of been here before. I know what we need to do this is we’re going to do A, B and C, rather than go, oh heck. What are we going to do now? That’s that you take away that, Oh, heck. What are we going to do now? Stuff, right? And you go, Okay, we’re going to try this. And if it doesn’t work, we’re going to try that. We’re going to try that. Well, you’ve got steps to steps to follow at that point. And in in when you talk about people, clients, external factors that affect a business and a leadership team, these are huge things, because it can put you out of business, or it can just, you know, it can launch the business actually, if something happens like that, and and you can discover opportunities that you couldn’t realize before.
Ron Higgs 24:51
Yeah, another thing that it’s unfortunate, but it does happen when you. You have to have plans for when things go really, really wrong. So one of the places, when I my very first consulting gig, I asked, it was a brewery, and I asked, you go, what if somebody gets hurt here? What do you guys do? What if somebody gets killed on job accidentally. So there’s an industrial accident, they get hurt. What’s the first, first phone call you make to who? Yeah, so we had something in the Navy called the mishap plan, and unfortunately, it’s what happens when you lose an aircraft and people and or both. And it’s a notebook, you just open it up, but it’s a step one do this because that is such an emotional event. Yeah? You can’t afford to make it up on the spot when there’s a lot of emotion. Yeah? So again, some pre planning. Think about this Curt you have the manufacturing audience. What if somebody gets hurt on the manufacturing floor? Injured? What happens? What’s the first phone call you make? Who lets their family know? Do you talk to the new you know, you’ve got people in the news that are scanning the first responder frequencies. They may show up and ask, what goes what happens? And if you say, hey, well, Damon, you know, got his hand. Damon got hurt on the job. You know, Damon’s family may see that on TV before somebody had a chance to call him, and you don’t want that. Yeah. So, again, there’s things that that, again, I think about, and I brought with me from the Navy and aviation into the corporate world that have that that has helped me and guided me a lot. And that’s that kind of thinking is one of Yeah,
Curt Anderson 26:47
and good stuff here. And so, man, just thinking, you know, it’s one thing if you make a mistake on a shop floor or whatever. But, you know, being 1020, 30,000 feet in the air, you know. And you know, of course, that movie came to mind Captain Sully when he landed in the Hudson River, you know, like, just being like you said, like, you have to be trained to be Johnny on the spot, like you have split seconds, and lives are at stake, you know. So it’s a lot different in a manufacturing floor, but you know, you’re bringing a good point. Because, you know, for folks that are catching this, maybe they’re catching it down the road, there was a big, explosive tragedy, I think, last week, at a large manufacturing plant. So you just don’t know those contingencies. Ron, what I have for you is like, gosh, you can run through, you know, hundreds or 1000s of contingencies or what ifs right. How do you how do you help your clients determine the top, important, crucial, what ifs Does that make sense?
Ron Higgs 27:41
It does, but it just depends on what industry they are and what’s important to them and what their priorities are. So if you’re a marketing agency, I think it would be different from a manufacturing agency, right, which is different from someone doing sort of retail electronics, or even coaching, like I’m doing right or components or things like that. So what is important? What do they consider important? And I think if I’ll bring up Eisenhower again, that Eisenhower matrix, urgent, important. And I think Covey has a big Stephen Covey has a version of that mid of that matrix as well, but the urgent and important in how to prioritize, the thing that I found the most difficult about that, and it’s a great matrix, and it’s a great way to make decisions, is that everyone has to have the same definition of urgent and important.
Damon Pistulka 28:41
Oh, that’s a great point. Yeah,
Ron Higgs 28:43
I worked for a I worked for someone CEO who everything was urgent. And then when everything becomes urgent, it’s like, well, we’re, we’re redoing the website in our timeline is, you know, six months. How is anything attached to the redesign of our website urgent? We got to stop everything we’re doing, and we got to focus on this. Now, really, I mean, that’s, that’s not urgent. And so where he thought something was urgent, and the rest of us are like, I don’t see how that’s urgent. So again, if you, if everybody doesn’t have that definition, right, same definition, there could be issues. So originally, what you asked me, again, that’s how it relates to those problems. So what is, what do they define as urgent? What do they define as important in every organization is going to be different.
Curt Anderson 29:40
I love that. So alright, guys, hey, we’re top of the hour. You’re just joining us. We’re here with our dear friend Ron Higgs, Ryan, we have a question here and for friends out there, taking notes, you know number one. So Ron’s running through the leadership lessons that he’s learned through aviation and what he does for high, high level coaching for his executives that he works with, particularly in engineering. Right? And so number one is mission have that clear, concise mission statement, that rallying cry, you know, what are you guys doing to make the world a better place? And number two, we’re diving into risk management. Ron, we have a question here from our friend Amal. As an engineer, my main challenge is communicating technical ideas clearly to non technical teams like finance, marketing, sales, how can I teach professionals? Or how do you teach professionals to make their communication more business friendly? Thank you, mall, that’s a great question. That
Ron Higgs 30:31
is a great question is one of the biggest challenges we see with engineers, and being able to do that in Amal is ahead of the curve, because he actually realizes that. And some people don’t where they launch into technical speak, because in a leadership role, what you have to do is learn to communicate, and you have to be able to communicate very complex concepts in simple terms. So for me, I learned this. It’s a personal story on how I learned it right, because I come from a relatively uneducated family, and so as an engineer, if my mother or my grandmother asked me what I was doing, what I was working on, I owed them a better answer than saying you don’t, you wouldn’t understand. I would never say that to them. And so I was like, I need to be able to explain this to my mom, I’d be able to explain this to my grandma like my mother was a medical assistant, so she she had that education. My grandmother at the time was uneducated, like the little black girls at the time, didn’t get to go to school when she was when she was that age, and I had to be able to explain it to them, and that’s how I learned to simplify concept. Simple, I mean complex concepts. What emerges hit on there is, one, being able to simplify those concepts. Two, being able to understand big picture wise, the rest of your stakeholders, especially the non technical stakeholders, because in a leadership role now you’re working not just with engineers. You’re working with finance people. HR, people, production people, you know everybody else. HR, folks, they as soon as you start speaking all the tech stuff, you to tune you out. So one you need to figure out how to understand those concepts. But the real success is being able to look at that person and saying, Oh, you’re a finance person. This is what finance really needs to know and explain it until in terms that they can understand and what matters to them. As a finance person, that’s huge. That’s huge. Okay?
Curt Anderson 32:45
Damon, huge double. Get your microphone out, right? Yeah, which is a major drop of Mike moment right here, man, that was, this might have been a big, I don’t mind I, you know, I can’t afford a new one. Yeah, yeah. So, no, I love when David throws it. So we need to take a pause right here. Yeah, what you just said? I’m guilty as charge where, like, I struggle to explain people like, what I just did it yesterday. You know, you winners. You know, like, kudos to you, Ron. And again, I started off the show. When you Google the word integrity, you’re going to see Ron Higgs, because he has the wherewithal, he has the intelligence, the wisdom to say, like, I need to explain this that my grandmother understands this dude, I couldn’t, I can’t tell how much I admire and like, Thank you for just helping me, because I want my mother, you know, my grandmother’s gone, I want to be able to explain this to people that won’t understand in their terms. So, brilliant advice for them all. I absolutely love that. Like, what is the motivation for the finance? Person in finance? What’s the person in marketing? What’s the person in sales? And again, like, sometimes it’s hard for us to speak their language, right? If they can’t speak ours, we can’t assume, like, well, I know how to speak marketing, or I know how to speak sales if I’m engineering, but I think what, what I love, what you’re seeing, right, is come together and like, Let’s speak each other’s language so we can mutually understand this brilliant
Ron Higgs 34:15
and too often, I think you have those silos and companies too. It’s like, well, wait a minute, we’re sales, we don’t talk to the engineering people, and especially if we can go down a huge rabbit hole here, but especially if the two people leading those departments don’t get along at the executive level, you know, right? And those two people don’t like each other, they’re like, Hey, I saw you talking to one of those. Fine. We don’t talk. I mean, I’ve seen this. I have seen this in lots of places, and it’s ridiculous.
Curt Anderson 34:48
Yes, it’s i Yes, yes, unfortunately, too frequently. And you know what? I’m going to go back to your number one. And that’s why, when you have that rally, rally cry, when you have that side, we had a. Coming on here. Damon that taught us about the word saga and the companies that thrive and separate themselves. What he described and he studied, like cultures, like, you know, company, like people from 1000s of years ago that would travel overseas and like, why did they thrive? Because they had a common saga, and they could overcome these challenges, whether this that the other thing where it’s not ego, or you hurt my feelings, or I don’t like, you know, I don’t like so and so down the hall in sales. So it goes back to your number one is having that mission statement, that war cry, that everybody can really come around, right?
Ron Higgs 35:35
So, right, we’re all working on the same thing. We’re all the same, yeah? Raw
Curt Anderson 35:40
rowing in the same direction. So Ahmad, great boy, keep the questions. Comments. We’re here with Ron Higgs, connect with Ron on LinkedIn. Ron, so we’ve got clear, concise mission statement. We’re talking about the risk management piece number three. Let’s dive into number three.
Ron Higgs 35:55
Yeah. Number three is, you know, feedback and continuous learning. So we flights have several, or let’s say, four parts. There’s planning, which we cover with the mission, right? Because we know we do planning, and we brief, that’s communicating what we’re doing on this mission. And we fly, then we come back and debrief. So there’s that cycle of plan, fly, plan, brief, fly, debrief. So every flight, before you go out, you brief it in depth. Who’s going to do, what? How it’s going to be done. You fly, you come back and you go over the flight. Even if it went textbook perfectly, you still go over it. Why? To capture lessons learned, one about the thing that we’re doing, whatever it is, and then about ourselves, about so we get constant feedback on performance right there, while it’s still fresh, Hey, you didn’t do well here, or you did really well here. You didn’t do well, and people start to create, you create that culture where people crave feedback, because that’s your opportunity to do it. So feedback on the flight. It doesn’t matter. Everybody’s equal in the debrief. So if I’m flying with the Admiral and the admiral did something wrong, it is my responsibility to tell the admiral, or something like that. So you can’t be intimidated by rank. You can’t do everybody kind of throws their rank and ego out the door, and you have a debrief and talk about how things went. Capture lessons learned. Learn how to be better. Because what we also did in military units is we’re only at a unit for finite amount of time, 234, years, whatever it is, soon as you come in, you’re being trained to replace someone, and after a little bit of time, you are training your replacement. So you can’t stay stagnant. You can’t have the attitude just like, Well, by that person smarter than me, they might take my job one day, so I have to sort of hold them in arms length and not tell them what to do. Well, when you go in a military unit, you know you’re moving up the ranks. Yeah, somebody is definitely coming to take your job as you are going to take somebody else’s job. But we depend on each other for our lives, so we want people to be as good as they can possibly be, because that’s the good of the unit. Everybody sort of defaults to what’s best for the unit, so we help each other become better, and that’s part of it. So again, that whole piece of continuous learning and feedback really important,
Damon Pistulka 38:32
because that’s that’s one of the things that’s really cool about the military, right? And this, I think, is something that employers should realize about people in the military is that, that we’re continuously developing people, continuously getting figuring out, okay, I’m getting up to speed on this position, and then I know, because in the military, I’m going to be training somebody else. Because I don’t stay here forever. I it’s, it’s not a forever kind of thing. It’s they will be moving on. And, yeah, that’s a huge thing to develop those skills of being able to get learn quickly, assimilate with the group, to be able to really understand how things are working in here, and then ultimately train others Exactly.
Ron Higgs 39:14
And there’s kind of frighteningly little time between the time you training other people come in as well. Just when you think you got it wired, it’s almost time for you to go, you know, move to the next move on to the next thing. And that was a difficult part of my transition. During my first job, I just would give people feedback, and I guess they didn’t like it.
Curt Anderson 39:41
Well, there’s man, just major drop the mic for me again, because it’s not a matter of like, there’s no fear of you being replaced, because you are going to be replaced. It’s not a matter if it’s just when you know good of the unit and alignment of the mission are toothed. Things that I’ve got. And again, just Gosh, as leaders, you know, so much easier said than done. And I, you know, when you have employees, when you have staff, and you know, everybody’s kind of moving into rowing in different directions, it is challenging to pull all that together. But Ron, absolutely love this. So it’s like, really focusing on the feedback side. It’s the process in the people, right? Those two
Ron Higgs 40:21
Yes, for sure, I did. I’ll give an example if we have time. Yeah, there’s a place that I worked as a COO and we had a project. It’s like, hey, let’s, let’s take a look at this project. How did it go? We closed it out and we finished it. Let’s go back and take a look at how we how we did. Turns out, you know, we charge the client $15,000 turns out it cost us $45,000 No, it all math. And so we were able to identify, Okay, well, here are some errors maybe in the proposal process. Here’s some errors in the charging, how people are charging their time. Here’s some errors here. So they had never done this before, and it’s time to point out. It’s like we can’t keep doing business this way, right? Yeah, but it’d be a company if we keep doing business this way. So what needs to change as a result of this? And lots of changes came out of that. Re we redid the whole proposal process got people a little bit more motivated to charge their time. Because, you know people, you charge your time to different projects, and people say, Well, I don’t have time to figure out that. Well, it’s like, well, let’s incentivize them to do so. Yeah, there’s things. And then the CEO like to work on projects too. It’s like, okay, well, your billable rate is $1,000 an hour now, so let’s take that into account when you want to work on a project. So there are lots of things that we that came out of that just by doing a post mortem on one project, we were able to go through and change several processes that led to better outcomes in the future. Wow,
Curt Anderson 42:13
a $30,000 upside down and just the profit opportunity that you created with future projects because of catch of just pausing and saying, Hey, we better take a peek at that one. So Damon, how’s this question? Do we have a good question here for Ron?
Damon Pistulka 42:32
Yeah. It says, hey, Ron, how to convince experienced managers as a budding leader in a structured industry if I propose a plan to work out they are reluctant to accept, even after submitting the supporting documents to prove the plan is valid. How to tackle them?
Curt Anderson 42:50
That is a good question. Arvin, thank you for what a great question that is. So thanks guys, excellent questions can come in. We’ve got Ron Higgs here, Ron, what do you say for our dear friend? I
Ron Higgs 43:00
don’t know if I could give him a good answer, because that really all depends on the culture. Yeah, of that organization. So are you? Are you in one of those cultures where it seems like he’s proposing up? People are reluctant to accept it. It’s like, well, is do they think for some reason, you haven’t proven yourself? Are They Now, I will tell you I was maybe in a similar situation, and this is what I did. I got stakeholder buy in. So before I went to my boss with that plan, I went to everybody else and said, Hey, is this going to work? Is this going to work? What do you think about this? What do you think about this? Because I really think we can make a huge change here that’s going to save us a lot of time and a lot of money, yeah, and and be more beneficial for the client. Yeah, right. So look at all the stakeholders. I went to the contracts people. It’s like, hey, is this going to work? I went to the other engineering group. Other engineering groups, like, hey, is this going to work? I went to management group, is this going to work? Then? Or management group, sort of another division. Then, I went to my boss and said, Hey, I have an idea. Mapped it all out. I was able to answer every question that he that he that he asked because I anticipated what he was going to ask. And he goes, Well, what did the finance people? What did the contracts people? What do you think the contracts people say? Well, I know what they’re going to say, because I went and asked him, What do you think this group is going to say? I know what they’re going to say, because I went and asked. And he goes, and my boss, you know, I had it was very thorough before I even went to him, and he said, Okay, let’s take it up. Okay, let’s take it up to my boss, and we took it up to the next level. Had that same conversation, took it up as many levels as it did, and it never took more than one meeting to get buy in, because I did all of the legwork upfront. Anticipated the. Questions and talk with all the stakeholders. So they all knew it was kind of, gosh, I don’t know if that helps you.
Damon Pistulka 45:07
Oh, that’s great advice. It’s really advice.
Curt Anderson 45:09
Absolutely brilliant. And this is a guy, and Ronnie, I believe you, you were at Boeing, weren’t you?
Ron Higgs 45:14
I have worked at Boeing, yes, yeah.
Curt Anderson 45:16
So, I mean, like, you know, this is a guy, come, you know. Like, again, doesn’t talk to talk walks the walk. Yeah, the guy you know, naval experience, worked at Boeing. Vast experience here. So Ron, brilliant advice. Yeah, I guess Damon, my my response to Arvind, I can’t match Ron, because, like, you know who can match Ron? I would just do what, Damon, what our wives do when they want something done, they like, they plant the seed as if it’s our idea, and then we feel good about it. They’re like, Yeah, you know, Hey, should we get a new car? Hey, should we do something in the yard? Hey, you know. Then we, they make it think it’s our idea. Then they, you know, right? Damon, is that
Ron Higgs 45:52
how that works? Yeah, that works, yeah. Actually, is brilliant advice. It’s more brilliant what I could have ever come up with. And I usually say this, you know what visionaries are. Everybody knows who the visionary is, right? The visionaries are all the idea people, and all the people with the ideas. But there are some visionaries who are like, stronger visionaries than others. And so you’ve got those visionaries that it has to be there that some of them welcome other ideas. Some of them are like, no, it’s got to be my idea. I mean, they, they want a quarter market on ideas, and that’s how you deal with those folks. It’s like, oh, I got a really strong visionary. Okay, so now I have to convince the visionary. I have to do to the visionary. What my wife does to me is convince me that it’s That’s
Curt Anderson 46:38
right, because I, you know, I’m gonna speak for you guys. I’m not. I’m just not the sharpest tool in the shed, and so that’s what happens. But hey, Arvind says A big thank you for the insights again. Arvind, shoot Ryan, connect with Ron. Yeah, connect with me. Arvind, so great questions. Guys, Ron, we’re going to start winding down any other thoughts, tips, suggestions. Again, we’re covering a clear, concise mission. We want to really dive into that risk management we’ve got. The third component is, like getting good constructive feedback, is our system and our process working? Well? Do we have the right people, right team, right people in the right positions? What else anything is you want to close us out? What else would you share with our friends? You
Ron Higgs 47:16
know, as a coach, I’ll just say this, sometimes it’s just great to talk to someone and get a different perspective. And I think most of my value as a coach is just being that outsider. Because I say, Hey, I have a dispassionate view of what’s going on. When I was a fractional COO, I would say, I have a dispassionate view of the company. I look at the company for what it is, and I don’t necessarily take I haven’t been a part of the building of the company. I don’t not necessarily concerned about relationships with people and all that stuff. I’m just telling you what I see from a dispassionate view. And I think coaches can help. And I really love talking to people, even if you’re out there. When I have conversations with people, I usually ask, Hey, what are you worried about? Like, those questions are great for me. So now I know in my marketing and in my coaching, hey, let me make sure that I can address this in my coaching. Hey, I haven’t thought about that. Let me make room for it and for my marketing. I can make my marketing stronger. This says, Hey, are you experiencing these problems? Because I do. It’s important for all of us to keep up on what’s really going on, what’s on these people’s minds. So again, I appreciate those questions, because now that helps me learn what’s on my prospective clients minds. So reach out. I’m always happy to talk to someone I’ve got a 30 minute slot for to. I call it the discovery call just talk about coaching, talk about some of the issues you have, and what I did it out of that, again, is keeping up to date on the problems and issues that my prospective clients are facing.
Curt Anderson 48:59
Absolutely love it. Damon, what are your thoughts? I know like you two are, yeah, I’m a little jealous. I’m just like, Dan bigger. I’m a little jealous. I have not gotten together with Ron. You guys are buddies. You catch sporting events together. What are your thoughts with Ron’s wisdom, his brilliance, his integrity. What do you what
Damon Pistulka 49:15
do you think I really, really Ron, thanks for being here today, and I always enjoy getting your perspective, because the Navy your own background, and in addition to the Navy really helps you when you’re you’re going to be a coach to these executive leaders and understanding some of the things they can do. It’s just, it’s really, really great to be able to spend some time on this
Ron Higgs 49:38
same here. I love hanging out with you two guys. Curt, can’t wait to meet your person. Damon, hope we get to have a beer soon. So yeah, good stuff. Yeah, I really appreciate you guys inviting
Curt Anderson 49:51
Well, we will make that happen soon. So Ron, hang out with us for one minute. So everybody, thank you. How about you know what God, Damon, we’ve gone for 15 minutes. Yeah. Minutes exactly right now. So if you’ve been hanging out with us for 15 minutes, and especially you’ve been sitting, it’s a great time to stand up and stretch. And how about give a big round of applause for our dear friend Ron Higgs for absolutely crushing it all sorts of duck and Mike moments, as Damon always love to say, anything that you caught or anything that you missed, if you came in a little bit late, man, hit the little, I would say, rewind button. You know, hit that little button to pull back to the beginning. Ron just dropped all sorts of wonderful information. Connect with Ron on LinkedIn. And guys, I just want to wish you an amazing, incredible rest of your week. Go out and be How do you like the balloon statement? You like that? Yeah, three day balloons. Go out and be someone’s inspiration, just like our dear friend Ron and you too, can make the world a better place. So we’ll see you guys Friday with another amazing guest and Ron, thank you, brother. Appreciate it. Ron,
Ron Higgs 50:49
thanks for having me. James. Bye.