Nancy Cable [00:00:05]:
If you treat everyone the same, you're failing everyone equally. Leaning into that. You know, not everyone on my team needs a one on one every week. Some people need a check in every day. Some people want and need a lot of direction. Some people want me to just leave them alone and give them the bare minimum of what they need to go do. Some days I'm a therapist, some days I'm working through technical solutions and root cause corrective actions. And that's a lot of the leadership maturity I'm still gaining, figuring out the right balance of emotional and technical and giving people what they need, not just focusing on what I need or what the business needs from them.

Matt Gjertsen [00:00:45]:
Nancy, welcome to the leadership launchpad. I am really excited that we made it through the technical difficulties of whatever this is with podcasting. Thank you for being here. How are you doing today?

Nancy Cable [00:00:55]:
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Matt Gjertsen [00:00:58]:
Yeah, I'm really excited for this conversation. You know, we already had a bit of a discussion a week or so ago, but to start, let's set the table. For anybody that hasn't heard of Ursa Major, I'd love for you to kind of set the stage a little bit of tell us a little about Ursa Major, kind of how it fits into the larger aerospace industry at the present moment and then go and then you can extend that to like your specific role. How do you and your team fit into the company?

Nancy Cable [00:01:25]:
Sounds great. So Ursa Major is an aerospace and defense company. We turned 10 this year. We're about 300 employees. So quickly exiting what we would call startup phase and getting into our scaling phase. So we're an aerospace and defense company with an expertise in propulsion. We were founded on propulsion and have since extended that expertise out into several segments. So right now we support three, three different segments.

Nancy Cable [00:01:49]:
Hypersonics, space maneuverability and solid rocket motors. All very relevant to the political ecosystem of the world right now and all very exciting spaces to be in and that they are propulsion adjacent, which is pretty up and coming segment in the hypersonic space. We have proven flight capability and we actually just announced a success with one of our new Gen products, Draper on flight just this last week in. Yeah. Awesome to see. So really the differentiator there is innovative technology that the defense industry does not have. We are providing brand new solutions that do not exist in solid rocket motors. What we're providing is a capacity solution.

Nancy Cable [00:02:33]:
We simply do not have the stockpiles of solid rocket motors that we need in the, you know, in the current world stage. And so we have taken what the industry has traditionally done, which is one product line produces one type of rocket motor in a very manual way, and come up with a novel way to look at production, which is a mixed model approach to being able to produce anything from, you know, very small, like 2 inch diameter, up to something as large as 21 inches in diameter on the same sets of equipment, with the same people, a lot of the same processes, which breaks some of the traditional bottlenecks and provides sort of like a new capacity management tool for the industry. And then in space maneuverability, our play there is, is really lead times now. You want to launch a satellite, you're sometimes looking at 24 plus months of lead time for just simply getting your propulsion solution to integrate onto a satellite bus. And we looked at that and said, you know, we've always been able to do things really fast with great rigor and high quality. Let's leverage our propulsion expertise into providing things in just a few months that the rest of the industry is perhaps taking years to do. So growing in that sector as well.

Matt Gjertsen [00:03:40]:
Yeah, it's, it's funny because I know Ashley Vance talks a lot about this. The, the author Ashley Vance I just, everybody that wants to go start a rocket company, it's like they want to start a rocket company and then they just get stuck in propulsion world forever and then never get out of it because it's just like, because that is the hard, it's just such a hard part. And so it makes sense if you get that critical skill, just expand on that critical skill and applying it to more and more use cases.

Nancy Cable [00:04:05]:
Yeah, absolutely. And that's what we've done. Even four years ago, when I first got to Ursa, the bulk of our business was around just that propulsion model and delivering just propulsion and realizing that the market and our customers really want and need more than that. It's the commercial market and it's also a matter of national security. So really being able to very quickly say we're not just an engine provider, we can provide a full solution to you, has been critical to growth and success over the last few years.

Matt Gjertsen [00:04:35]:
That's fantastic. And so. So where does your role fit into that?

Nancy Cable [00:04:40]:
Great question. So I am senior director of manufacturing. Right now I focus primarily on our liquid side of the business. So that's in space and our hypersonics, although my swing lane is over into solid missile systems since it's very manufacturing heavy. So I currently run our manufacturing engineering team, our industrial automation team, as well as our build operations team. So Our shop floor techs, you know, the most important people we have actually. Yeah, the most important people we have actually building our solid rocket motors and propulsion systems. So, you know, previously at Ursa, I've run supply chain for a brief period of time, been involved in safety, a number of other different facets of the business.

Nancy Cable [00:05:19]:
As happens in startups, my focus right now is really on scalability. So taking what we do one time, awesome that we had one flight success for one of our engines, but the way that we built that engine is not what is going to scale to doing 500 times a year, to doing this 5,000 times a year. So that's the focus of me and my team is stabilized the processes worked with the product design folks to get the designs manufacturable and go from a few to a few hundred or a few thousand or a few 10,000 over the next few years.

Matt Gjertsen [00:05:51]:
It's such an interesting space because just even after giving my time at SpaceX, it's funny, once you get to be around for a little bit of time, people like yourself, kind of in your role where you think about engineering through a manufacturing lens, you can't help but see it everywhere. Like every time you get a piece of furniture or a light that you're going to install, you're like, why is this screw here? Like, like, this is really awkward.

Nancy Cable [00:06:16]:
And so in my personal life, I'm very hands on. You know, I do a lot. All of my own home renovation, ye. All of my own vehicles, you know, always making things. So the number of times I'm in the shop, like cursing the engineers from Ford, like, you should have made this bumper removable. Like, how come you thought this is crazy, it should be a screw, not a rivet. So yeah, it totally impacts every aspect of life. And my husband loves to make fun of the number of spreadsheets that I do.

Nancy Cable [00:06:41]:
You know, he'll be like, we don't need a spreadsheet for everything, like, but it's the most efficient way.

Matt Gjertsen [00:06:46]:
Are you sure? Excellent. Well, that's fantastic. Kind of, kind of groundwork. Obviously the main reason you wanted to talk was about kind of the leadership side of your role and the people leadership side of your role. And just because, you know, you kind of teed up a really great initial question for me because when we were talking a week or so ago, I want to read it so I make sure you. I get it exactly. Because you said you go to a lot of industry events and help with, you know, women in engineering and you said the most common Question you get is how do you deal with the disadvantage of being a woman in the tech world? So let's start there.

Matt Gjertsen [00:07:25]:
How do you deal with the disadvantage of being a woman in the tech world?

Nancy Cable [00:07:30]:
Yeah, Matt, it's just not a disadvantage. And that's what I always open with. And that's something that I want to bring to, you know, like any young women or young girls listening in 2020. It was during COVID and I got invited to speak at a high school and we ended up having to do it remotely. And there was a group of 20 or so young girls, right? High school age girls. And before I spoke, I had them all go around and I asked them what they wanted to do. And it was a room full of girls wanting to be engineers and lawyers and veterinarians and artists and just this amazing young cohort of women looking to be ambitious in the world. And I had three questions at the end of it that were some variation about the disadvantage.

Nancy Cable [00:08:11]:
And so I just want to break that as a narrative. You know, I don't show up every day to be great as a woman at my job, I show up every day to like, but at my job. And that has my experience through my career, is that, you know, showing up and doing what I do, being solving problems no one else realizes are problems building trust with other people, you know, becoming the technical expert where I'm not, that means my gender isn't an issue. It's simply, you know, not something that I viewed as a disadvantage. And maybe even in some aspects and you know, looking at it as an advantage, I tend to be more emotional. It's some of my male counterparts. That's a great trait for a leader to have. In the aerospace industry where it's still, you know, proportionally fewer women, even in a innovative leaning company like ours, it does get me noticed more.

Nancy Cable [00:08:58]:
And so really, you know, not calling out my gender as a differentiator and never thinking it's a disadvantage, but really leaning into where it can actually be an advantage for me as believe as a leader.

Matt Gjertsen [00:09:08]:
And I think that's such a great thing because it's, it's not as if we're trying to say that there aren't differences between people, right? Like everybody's different and everybody brings different things to the game and, and in any situation, it's just a matter of figuring out where are your tendencies and how are you going to bring them to bear. There is no best type. There's so many different variations in, in what it takes. And I, I'D love to dig a little bit deeper into that element that you mentioned of kind of the more of the emotional, the building trust, the bringing people together side as you've kind of grown in, in the technical, you know, we usually think, when we think of engineering, we think of manufacturing, we think about the technical stuff. But as you said, I think so often it's that people side that's really critical. How, how is that, how is your understanding of that expanded as you become a leader in a technical space?

Nancy Cable [00:10:01]:
Yeah, absolutely. So I think early in my career I said I had a, I had a wonderful mentor who looked at me and said, you know, you'll have my job someday, back when I was an engineer. And I looked at him and said, I don't want your job any day. I went to engineering school, I want to be an engineer. This has always been my dream. This is what I want to do. And I'm so thankful for his mentorship and helping me realize that the things that I find the most value in are not the technical solutions, but it's the technical solutions that unlock potential of people. It's helping other people succeed, it's making their lives easier.

Nancy Cable [00:10:37]:
And so as a leader recognize, you know, I've. It's not all about the technical skills. It's about building a diverse team of individuals who care about different things. Building a team of people just like me would be a disaster for this company. That's not the manufacturing team that we need. And so gaining leadership maturity has meant gaining a better understanding of what emotional diversity means, what technical diversity means, what diversity of industry and background and perspective mean. And then being able to bring that into my team building and hiring practices to say, you know, everybody is different and they deserve to be treated that way. I once had someone tell me, if you treat everyone the same, you're failing everyone equally and leaning into that.

Nancy Cable [00:11:21]:
You know, not everyone on my team needs a one on one every week. Some people need a check in every day. Some people want and need a lot of direction. Some people want me to just leave them alone and give them the bare minimum of what they need to go do. Some days I'm a therapist, some days I'm working through technical solutions and root cause corrective actions. And that's a lot of the leadership maturity I'm still gaining for figuring out the right balance of emotional and technical and giving people what they need, not just focusing on what I need or what the business needs from them.

Matt Gjertsen [00:11:52]:
Yeah. Do you have any examples of that to get really like concrete and practical with it, because I do think that's one of the big challenges of becoming a people leader, especially for the first time, you know, because you. When you grow up and really all through school, it's really. It's probably natural that you're going to be surrounded with people like you, because you have nothing like forcing you together with other people. And so you share common interests, you share common traits. And I think it's really easy to get all the way into your mid-20s and kind of generally, or even later and really generally think that the way you think is kind of how everybody thinks. And then you become a people manager for the first time, and it's completely not true. But you often learn that through, like, you know, confronting it head on.

Matt Gjertsen [00:12:40]:
Like, you make a mistake, you try to do something, you talk to somebody you would want to be. It's the golden rule. You treat everybody like you would want to be treated, and then you find it doesn't. Doesn't work that well. I'd love if you have any examples.

Nancy Cable [00:12:52]:
Yeah, I have a number of examples. Throughout my career, I had the fortunate experience of my first team leading my first team. And my first team was three people, and they were all men, and they were all at least 25 years older than I was.

Matt Gjertsen [00:13:09]:
Okay, okay, deep end. Let's go.

Nancy Cable [00:13:11]:
Fantastic. From the perspective that they were really there for it, to help coach me into being the best version of myself. And again, very fortunate experiences of having three people who are later in their careers and really just committed to success and all three different backgrounds. So, you know, a good first experience with it, but then growing into, I even think about my current team. Now I have one person on my team, and it took some work to get into the groove of having an excellent relationship with him and really utilizing him in his best capacity. I tend towards functioning on chaos. I'm the person who jumps in both feet first, solves the problems, thinks tactically, comes out with a solution immediately. He's an analyzer.

Nancy Cable [00:13:54]:
He really wants to take the time and take the space to be able to make a decision with all of the data, all of the rigor, and do the most right thing. I'm like, can we throw duct tape on it? Like, no. Okay. Can we JB weld it together? Right? And he's like, we will get the riveting process right. Like, we will do all of the weld sampling. But he's very much on that end of the spectrum. And when I first started, he was not someone I hired. He got put on my team.

Nancy Cable [00:14:18]:
And when I first started managing him, it was actually a little frustrating because I was like, I need you to do more of this. Like, go solve the problem, fix it, do it quickly. And being able to take a deep breath and actually sit down and think about and write out, what are this person's strengths? Where does he function best, and how can I then absorb that and make sure I'm putting him in the position to be successful, not just asking him to do the thing I see in front of him? And so for new players, I think it is taking the time to really evaluate with your. To ask people, what do you want to do? You know, I asked him what he wanted to do. He's in a totally different role than what he was in for me initially, and he is just killing it. He's leading people now. He's leading initiatives. He's making big difference in the business.

Nancy Cable [00:15:06]:
But if I hadn't taken the time to think, what is he best at? And I hadn't actually asked him, what is it that you want to do? How do you function best? Where do you think your biggest value is? We never would have gotten frustrated with each other. And, Matt, I think this applies in leadership, and I think it just applies in life relationships. We get a lot of schooling on technical stuff and history, and we don't get a lot of schooling on emotions and people and interacting. Nobody can read your mind. And don't assume you can read other people's minds. Ask people what they want. Ask them what they value. Ask them how often they want to be.

Nancy Cable [00:15:46]:
Ask them what they're interested in. And I think if that is your starting point as a new leader, that's where you start to grow into the success of recognizing everybody's strengths.

Matt Gjertsen [00:15:55]:
And is that something even that, the asking that you had to grow into? Because I. I feel like, you know, one of. One of the things that. So, you know, you. You're a new manager, you're like, oh, I'm supposed to have all the answers. I'm supposed to know how to do this. Was that a. Was that kind of a shift?

Nancy Cable [00:16:12]:
Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I guess, you know, I'm comfortable with it 10 years in, but, yes, absolutely, that's a shift. It can feel uncomfortable. And I think really embracing the methodology of, I have two jobs, hire people smarter than me and work myself out of the job, and really embracing that helped me get over the. I'm the manager. I have to have all the answers. No, I'm the leader. I'm here to provide a Vision, a mission and alignment.

Nancy Cable [00:16:36]:
But I really get success for the company and for individuals by getting a team of people that's smarter than me and eventually working myself out of a job. And so those two tenants, like, getting coached on those and really coming to believe them, like, going through the discomfort of, I don't know, let me help crowdsource the answer. And settling into, like, my team has the answers and I'm just here to make sure they can implement them, was a helpful thought shift for me in being able to prove the discomfort of, like, thinking it's all on me to tell everyone what to do and to have the answers. Nobody wants to be told what to do. Very few people want to be told what to do. They want to be told where we're going and how we're going to get there and be supported along the way.

Matt Gjertsen [00:17:19]:
Especially in a company like Ursa Major, where you're, you're hiring, people are coming there because they want to innovate, they want to do these, these fun things. Those are not the people who want to come in and just like, okay, I got my checklist from the boss. I'm just going to go through them. It's not the right kind of talent.

Nancy Cable [00:17:33]:
It's not. It's not the right kind of talent, and it's not what, you know, it's not what builds a great company. And usually a few years ago I had a manager here was like, you know, we need to hire all A plus people. I was like, okay, I see where you're coming from. And yeah, we want everyone to be good. But actually, like, I did that the first time around here, I hired all A plus people. And you know what they did? They all went and got different jobs because they were A plus people and they wanted to grow up and out. And so I've actually, like, settled into the methodology of hiring people across the spectrum.

Nancy Cable [00:18:02]:
You know, I want people who want the job that they're in and just want to do a really good job here. And I also want people who want the next job, want my job. I want to be coaching the people my job who want my bosses. And so, you know, putting together a team of people who have different interests in where they're going and different experience levels and even different aptitude levels is actually the way to success.

Matt Gjertsen [00:18:24]:
How do you think about that during the hiring process? Like, what are some. You know, obviously, as you said, you know, it's like 50% of your job is hiring people. So what are some of the things that some of the Tactics that you use to make sure you're. It's, as you said, it's not just the right. It's like the, the line from the, the movie Miracle when they're, when the coaches is, you know, watching all the players that are trying out for the U.S. hockey team and he just says, you know, I'm not looking for the best player, not looking for the best players. I'm looking for the right ones. You know, so it's not just finding the right player, the right person, but the right person for that role.

Matt Gjertsen [00:18:59]:
How do you. What are some of the things that you think about during the hiring process?

Nancy Cable [00:19:02]:
Absolutely. So I think there's. There's the team dynamic portion and then there's the individual dynamic portion. On the individ. I tend to skew towards initiative and attitude. Those are two things that I have found hardest to coach. But when you find them, the technical is imminently coachable. I also have the, I will say the privilege of being in manufacturing, which is in this environment, quite literally not the rocket science.

Nancy Cable [00:19:29]:
So on the technical side, right, we have. I work with literal rocket scientists. Our design engineers are designing rocketry hardware. They often need to skew more technical. I need the person who went to Purdue. I need the person with a PhD in, you know, fluid dynamic propulsion. Whatever I don't have, I'm unbounded from that manufacturing. I mean, that's, you know, that's spreadsheet math, that's arithmetic.

Nancy Cable [00:19:50]:
That's all easy. So I have found that skewing towards initiative and attitude and being willing to teach and train the technical skills has looked like success for a hiring profile. On the team dynamic side, before we hire, really doing a gap assessment of not just, you know, what products aren't covered, what processes, what's the future state, thinking about where my team is all going to grow into the future state and then filling those gaps in. I'm also a fan of being very generic in role descriptions and kind of collecting a broad pool of people. And several times even at Ursa, I've been like, man, the role that I need is a manufacturing engineer to own engine level, you know, own engine level assembly and test. And what I end up with is a damn good machining guy. And I also needed him. And I go advocate to hire, you know, hire him because that was another gap on my team.

Nancy Cable [00:20:48]:
Being willing to find someone you weren't looking for and not back yourself into a corner, you know, kind of thinking short term, long term, maybe this wasn't the person I needed. Now I know I'm going to need them in three months. Cool. Let's get that person on board. Plug in with that skill set. When we found someone with awesome initiative and attitude.

Matt Gjertsen [00:21:05]:
Yeah, it's interesting we're having this conversation now because just like a week ago, I came across, you know, there's lots of personality assessments out there and disc and everything. And there's this one that I found that I'd never heard of before. It's called the Game Changer Index. You've ever heard of the Game Changer? So it's not meant to be a personality test. You know, like, they all say they're not personality tests, but it's like, it's meant to be like your. They use the word proclivities. So, like, where do you, where are you most comfortable? Where do you, where do you feel your best? And the way they break it down is. So there's five different quadrant, five different types.

Matt Gjertsen [00:21:39]:
There's the game changer, the strategist, the implementer, the polisher, and then the playmaker. And so the way they describe it is like the game changer is the visionary. They're the one that's like, looking out in the future, doing all these crazy things. The strategist is the one that then, like, kind of takes that crazy vision and like, turns it into something that's like, oh, this is what we need to do. The implementer is the one that then wants to go do it. They're the ones building the future. And then the way I always think of it is like, the polisher is like the quality person that's just like, working to make it perfect and, like, that wants to just keep tweaking it. And then the playmaker is the one that can kind of play in all those places and lets them all talk together.

Matt Gjertsen [00:22:19]:
But just for this kind of world, I really liked it because for each one of those, I could almost imagine them in a different department inside a manufacturing company of like, oh, I know who would go there.

Nancy Cable [00:22:31]:
I. I actually love that. And that would be an interesting one to go do with my team and then think about the team dynamic. You know, the other thing that, that I tend to do, I have a pretty democratic leadership style, which has its positives and it has its negatives. But when we talk about hiring and rounding out the team, know, pulsing my team on how we're feeling, we just went through hiring blitz. We hired like seven or eight people over the course of six months for my team, which is an insane amount of hiring. And so I Actually went back to the team to check in and say like, hey, how are you guys feeling? What do you think the biggest gaps are? Where are you noticing we're not covered? What are you looking for? And deeply engaging them. And it would actually be really interesting to go split the team into those five dynamics and say who's where, what people do we need more of what's the environment like right now? And again, that's a, that can be a hard, uncomfortable thing to engage with, you know, to engage as, with, as a leader.

Nancy Cable [00:23:23]:
But I have found that teams really appreciate when they're engaged and involved in the decision making. Like they've got to work with the people I hire every day, give them a say, let them be part of the process. At the end of the day, it's your decision as the hiring manager. But I found it so helpful and empowering to my team members to engage them and say like, I trust you to choose your new co workers. Help me do that.

Matt Gjertsen [00:23:46]:
I like it. Anything. Since you just went through the splits, any particular lessons that stand out to you? You know of like as you, by the time you got to the sixth one, you're doing things a little bit differently than the first one or any particular lessons that pop out.

Nancy Cable [00:23:59]:
So this time around, I think I've settled into hiring at Ursa. I've done a few of these, but you know, again, to reiterate, like, I've learned I don't always know exactly what I'm looking for, I might think, but let every candidate be themselves and really think through, how could this person, you know, how could this person potentially benefit the teams? We also have a hiring methodology at Ursa that I've ended up really liking. Previous roles, it's just been, come in for an interview, talk, ask your star questions. At Ursa, we actually have people give a presentation and we give them prompts around, hey, give us a presentation on something that you were really proud of when you owned a process, designing for manufacturing, et cetera. And that's been really helpful to leave things open ended and then give our candidates the chance to really showcase their best selves too. We used to do that, I guess this last round of hiring, we used to do that. We used to bring people on site to do that. The lesson I learned and drove was let's do that remote first.

Nancy Cable [00:24:57]:
You learn a lot about a person when they're kind of presenting to you versus just a half hour technical screen. So we do that. The other thing in the Ursa hiring process that I appreciate is we do a culture screen, so we're really big on our. You know, we are really grounded in our values, resilience, results, respect. And so every single person that comes in has lunch with a group of people, and they're not talking about anything technical. They're just talking about, is this person a culture fit for what we do? And learning to respect that greatly, you know, saying no to a candidate who is damn good technically, but the lunch panel couldn't stand to talk to is a hard thing to do. But learning to do that, I think, has meant success in the hiring process for us.

Matt Gjertsen [00:25:41]:
Yeah, that makes. That makes sense. It's. I love that you do that. And so. So this is a group of people that are kind of almost like, set aside from, like, they're. They're not a part of your team. It's like, these are people that.

Matt Gjertsen [00:25:51]:
This is what they're looking for.

Nancy Cable [00:25:53]:
Explicitly. Not a part of, you know, not a part of my team. They come from other roles in the business and, you know, just, hey, spend an hour with this person.

Matt Gjertsen [00:26:02]:
Yeah, we would just see, you know,

Nancy Cable [00:26:05]:
see how you feel. The airport test, as we call it.

Matt Gjertsen [00:26:07]:
I like it. I like it, and I love. Yeah, I've been through a number of company hiring practices that have used that model, and it always seemed really like a really smart way to just kind of get that outside data point and kind of to that point of, you know, it's not just what you do, but it's how you do it that makes a big difference. And that's kind of what you're looking for in those kinds of interviews very often.

Nancy Cable [00:26:28]:
Absolutely. Yeah. And then, you know, I've had the fortune of having peer in my organization. It was like, hey, you know, we're not doing well. We're not onboarding well. So, like, leaning into that. And this was actually another leadership growth moment for me because this is someone I hired. And he was like, yeah, our onboarding sucks.

Nancy Cable [00:26:42]:
And I took a minute and I was like, wow, I did a shitty job at onboarding. Right? Like, I suck. Then be like, no, okay. There's so much going on. This is something he's passionate about. How do I harness his passion and we implement a new, better onboarding and being like, heck, yes, you're doing this. I love that. Thank you so much.

Nancy Cable [00:26:59]:
Instead of sitting here and, like, feeling like, man, I was doing a bad job, now I have new people coming in on my team, and he's got all these structured classes for them. And so, you know, great example. I hired someone who's doing something better than me. And I love that. Feeling proud of that as a leader instead of like feeling like I failed on some initiative is important.

Matt Gjertsen [00:27:17]:
Yeah. Fantastic. Awesome. Well, there's one other thing that I wanted to talk about that we talked about last week that is really specific to kind of your role in the company, honestly. And you touched on this idea that, you know, you thrive in a little bit more of a chaotic environment. You like things to move quickly and your role very much is about taking the chaos and making it controlled. Right. It's, you know, this one off neat experiment that we did.

Matt Gjertsen [00:27:46]:
Okay, now how do we make 100 of them or a thousand of them or how do we do it for a tenth the cost or, or whatever it is. And so especially, you know, innovation, it really is about a balance between those two things. How as a leader for your team, how do you think about that balance between the chaos that drives innovation and the order of that's required in aerospace and in manufacturing?

Nancy Cable [00:28:08]:
Yeah, I mean it's, it's the tactical strategic thing. And I think every company struggles with this and here the scale of it is just a bit more, you know, we're turning new product designs around in days or weeks. We're putting designs onto engines and hot firing them faster than we would even make a program management decision in much of old aerospace. And so one of the things that I have to recognize as a leader. Right. I love to be in the very future, visionary, strategic. This is who we're going to be when we grow up, when we're a billion dollar company. This is what it looks like.

Nancy Cable [00:28:43]:
This is what excellent looks like. I love that and I love the like things are falling apart today. We don't know what we're supposed to build. We have this huge problem, we can't get it done. I love jumping in and I love helping there. And building a team of people who do the blocking and tackling in the middle is the key to success. So I think in my role it's been very powerful for me to be able to build trust with my engineering counterparts by saying, listen, I'm here for your dev thing, you need to get it done. I'm here for it.

Nancy Cable [00:29:11]:
I'm the leader, my team is committed, I'm committed. We're going to jump in, we're going to do all your tactical stuff and then also providing to my team and helping drive with the organization. This is what a good solution actually looks like. Right. Going from a pile of parts, some of which have part numbers, some of which don't. Some of which people bought on credit cards, some of which went through our ERP system. And dang it, we put it into a vehicle and you know what that thing flew to, you know, have. Laying out for my team here are the tools and systems we are going to use when we're building 500 of these.

Nancy Cable [00:29:41]:
And then relying on the people who I have in the organization, both working for me and my peers, to say, help me with this middle part. We know we can do this. We know we can get here. Finding the people who are the best program managers, assigning out their strategic work to the people on my team, who's best suited to do a work instruction template, who's best suited to implement a new manufacturing system, who's best suited to flex over and help with this new proposal, really playing into their strengths and giving them ownership of some of these pieces to get us on the roadmap from the chaos here to the strategy in the middle. And I will tell you, Matt, it is so easy to wake up and realize it is Thursday and I've done nothing strategic this week. That's the environment we're making harder, we're making it quickly. And so I often have to remind myself to look back two years ago or four years ago where we were and where I've helped to get us and just get back grounded in that, okay, am I reminding people enough of their strategic initiatives? Am I spending enough of my own time on the strategy future piece? Again, I think it's the dance every business does, and it's continued growth for me as a leader is like, where am I spending that time and how am I best utilizing my team members to make sure they're doing the fun stuff, not just the daily tactical work.

Matt Gjertsen [00:30:56]:
That actually came up in a recent conversation I had where I think he said it a little bit differently, but it was just kind of that idea of sometimes he would go home at the end of the day and just think, like, I didn't do anything today. That's not my job. My job is to make sure other people are like, to help keep the train moving. It's to provide resources, to provide direction. So that is the job. So often.

Nancy Cable [00:31:17]:
Yeah.

Matt Gjertsen [00:31:18]:
On that idea, though, of kind of stepping back sometimes, do you have any particular habits or practices to, you know, you kind of mentioned like, oh, where were we three years ago? But, you know, to help if you get too absorbed in the tactical, to help pull you back to that higher level.

Nancy Cable [00:31:33]:
My commute is 45 minutes both ways every day. And When I have a particularly hectic day, the thing I actually do is drive home in silence. And I'm pretty rigorous about that and taking. Taking the time to do it. So I start every single morning with a walk. Pre coffee, pre caffeine, which would horrify, you know, 10 years ago, me. It's the first thing I do when I get up to set the tone for my day of take the dog out, go for a walk, think about what you want to do today. And I don't do it every day, but when I have a particularly hectic day, I leave here and I think, okay, silence, and reset on my way home.

Nancy Cable [00:32:09]:
The other thing I do is ask my leaders to keep me accountable. I am not naturally someone who asks for help, but I know my tendency is to get into the chaos and so telling my leaders, hey, I want to get here. I want to be at this big visionary thing. Can you keep reminding me? Can you keep checking in? Can you keep asking me, how's the progress on manufacturing execution? Where's the floor transformation stuff you said you were going to do? Like, explicitly asking for their help to keep accountable is also really helpful.

Matt Gjertsen [00:32:39]:
I love that. Yeah, I think it's something that, again, going back to this idea of as a manager, you think you're the one that's supposed to have it all together and have all the answers. And. Yeah, having that willingness to say, like, look, I need your help with this, to hold me accountable is. Is. Is really, really incredible. This has been a fantastic conversation, Nancy. I really want to respect your time, so.

Matt Gjertsen [00:32:58]:
So thank you so much for being here. I'm sure you're very busy, so I. Yeah, I look forward to future conversations.

Nancy Cable [00:33:07]:
Always delightful to talk to other people about leadership, especially in a technical environment. Thanks so much, Matt. Sa.