Craig Coyle [00:00:01]:

Just saw a wake of turbulence from really, I mean to be quite honest, piss poor leadership at, I like to call it the frontline level. As a leader it was kind of like oh here's your platoon, figure it out. I was being forced to treat my growth as a pilot so one day I could be a pilot in command in an air mission commander.

Matt Gjertsen [00:00:20]:

Unless you have been in the military or professional athlete, you don't know what training is.

Craig Coyle [00:00:26]:

Most of them, most of their training development efforts don't move the needle. How do we close that back door? How do we get people to want to be a part of these organizations to wake up and not dread Monday mornings? They're all possible, right? But they don't happen by accident.

Matt Gjertsen [00:00:59]:

Hello and welcome to the Leadership Launchpad where we talk about actionable insights for leaders in aerospace, manufacturing, defense and the rest of the hard tech ecosystem. My name is Matt Jertson, host of the podcast and founder of Built where we are training the next generation of hard tech leaders how to build teams capable of solving the world's hardest problems. This week's episode is going to be a bit different. Instead of the usual show where I bring on a guest and ask them question, this week we are doing a joint podcast. I am going to be talking with Craig Coyle, founder of Operation Lead and the host of his own show, the Frontline Leadership Podcast. Like me, Craig is a veteran and an academy grad, just a different academy. Craig graduated from West Point in 2015. He then went on to become a helicopter pilot for eight years before leaving the army and entering into the aerospace world.

Matt Gjertsen [00:01:56]:

He he has seen many of the same challenges for leaders that I have and in this episode we talk about those challenges, we discuss our similar yet different backgrounds, compare military leadership to corporate leadership as well as break down what potential solutions we think can help frontline engineering and manufacturing leaders today. As always, please make sure to subscribe to the show and share with anyone you think would find this helpful. If you need support developing managers in your organization, don't hesitate to reach out to launchpadiltleaders. Com. Let's dive into the discussion.

Craig Coyle [00:02:33]:

Well, Matt, what's going on? How you doing today?

Matt Gjertsen [00:02:36]:

I'm doing great, Craig. I'm excited about this discussion. We have similar backgrounds. I'm really glad you reached out to me. It's very different than at least my normal episode. So I'm really excited.

Craig Coyle [00:02:47]:

No, me too. And yeah, I guess for both of our listeners we're kind of each being a guest if you want each other's Podcast and we were connected through, through some mutual peers, I guess, that work in the similar spaces we do in learning and development and leadership. And it just so happens that we have very, very similar upbringing. But as you dig into it, like there are a lot of differences and we kind of realized that when we connected. So I guess why don't you start give kind of like the quick 60 second. Like this is who Matt is, this is where he's coming from and this is what he's doing today.

Matt Gjertsen [00:03:24]:

Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. My name is Matt Jertson. I'm the founder of bilt. We are an organization dedicated to training the next generation of hard tech leaders how to build teams capable of solving the world's hardest problems. That is a relatively new thing for me. I've been doing this for three to four years. So my career started as an Air Force instructor pilot.

Matt Gjertsen [00:03:43]:

I was an instructor in undergraduate pilot training. I was then an instructor in the KC10. So I did all that for about 10 years. After I left the Air Force, I went to SpaceX and led the training development team there for a little. And that kind of then led me into startup world. People have probably heard of the SpaceX diaspora, where there's all these people who used to work at SpaceX who are now founding companies all across LA and all across the country. And so now with Bilt, my mission is to really serve those companies and help them grow and scale faster by training their leaders. So that's me.

Matt Gjertsen [00:04:17]:

I don't know if that was 60 seconds, but that was pretty good.

Craig Coyle [00:04:20]:

I think you got that pretty down pat. And what I heard is, what I basically heard is, I mean, I know you're also an academy guy, but you went to the. We call, we call it like the junior college of academies.

Matt Gjertsen [00:04:32]:

There it is. Okay, we're getting started here. Excellent.

Craig Coyle [00:04:34]:

Yeah, we might as well, right? Like, why wait? So also an academy guy, also a military aviator, and then also someone who's transitioned from being in the cockpit to work in an industry. I mean, like, for me, like West Point Apache pilot, I went, you know, the army is a little bit of a different route because in the army we obviously have warrant officers that do a majority of the flying for all of our organizations. So I was on the command path, but also a lot of flying experience, went through similar training pipelines that you had to go through. I transitioned in the industry as well, but I went the manufacturing aerospace path and worked literally on plant floors, partnered with some of the cool companies building cool things, was working in the EV industry, on the composite side of the industry. So I got exposed to some really cool stuff, some really cool technology, and just saw a wake of turbulence from really, I mean, to be quite honest, piss poor leadership at, I like to call it the frontline level. And that's what we're, we're building here. That's the mission that I'm on with, with Operation Lead. So, you know, I think what's interesting is like through the background we have and how we were developed as aviators, I think for both of us, that provides a pretty firm foundation to how we kind of approach and view leadership.

Craig Coyle [00:05:55]:

I'm curious, like, how has that developed for you into kind of the premise, if you will, or the hypothesis that grounds the work that you're doing with companies today?

Matt Gjertsen [00:06:05]:

Well, I'd actually love to turn that back on you because of what you said there around kind of how, you know, because the Air Force, like you said, like all the pilots are officers. Like, it's just the way it is. And so there was very much once, you know, obviously at the academy, we do a lot of leadership stuff and you go to things like squadron officer school and these big, you know, schools that you go to for a long time to learn about leadership. But it's usually pretty displaced in the day. To day was very much about, okay, like, I need to be a better pilot. But how was that different for you in the Army? Like you had mentioned, you have the warrant officers. It's very much a command path. What did that look like in the Army?

Craig Coyle [00:06:46]:

It's interesting because I imagine we probably had a similar, we'll call it, quote, unquote, leader development through the academies because they're essentially, they're mirrored very similarly across the board, to be fair.

Matt Gjertsen [00:06:59]:

It was so it was really interesting. Just one thing to interject really quickly. So I don't know if this is true. At West Point, at the, at the Air Force Academy, every class picks like a person, an officer from history that becomes like their person of their class. So it'll be like spats or doulas or something like that. And on your, on your athletic jacket, you put their name on the side. And I have to admit that 2005's person was General Patton. So we went with an army person.

Matt Gjertsen [00:07:29]:

Very controversial. Don't know how that happened, but anyway, I just had to throw that out there.

Craig Coyle [00:07:33]:

That's actually funny. Well, I mean, the Air Force was originally part of the army, right? Totally.

Matt Gjertsen [00:07:38]:

So yeah, but, but this is like, but Patton's like Army, Army. Oh, 100.

Craig Coyle [00:07:43]:

Yeah. He's more army than I'll ever be.

Matt Gjertsen [00:07:44]:

Yeah.

Craig Coyle [00:07:46]:

No, and what's interesting is because was for. I actually did the service academy exchange to the Naval Academy. And so I kind of got to see a little bit. And, you know, the Navy's interesting because you could do any job in the military in the Navy. You want to be a fighter pilot, you could do that in the Navy, you want to be in the infantry, you could be in the Marine Corps. Right. And so you kind of see how that's true. All these different branches kind of interact together.

Craig Coyle [00:08:07]:

But what's interesting is the way that army aviation is, like, organizationally modeled is it's basically modeled after, I mean, the whole army is modeled after how an infantry battalion, infantry company is designed to operate and run. And so that's kind of how aviation works within the Army. And so, you know, for me, I obviously go through West Point, go through flight school, get. And my first job in the army is I'm a platoon leader. I got 20 disgruntled Kiowa pilots who literally don't have a platform to fly anymore because the army just decided that they were going to get rid of it. And I'm in charge of all these guys who are, you know, 15, 20 year in the military. They're all older than me. And I'm trying to figure out how to get them to do stuff like inventory property and sign over property books.

Craig Coyle [00:08:57]:

And, man, I fell flat on my face. And I think it took some time and some mentorship from some people I was really fortunate to be around to realize, like, I was kind of in this. This, like, parallel universe where on one side I was being developed as a professional aviator and there was so much regulation, so much structure, so much. I mean, instructor pilots, peers, all this Stu, if you look at any profession, any professional industry, you see if you know to look for it, you'll see it. But then on the other hand, as a leader, it was kind of like, oh, here's your platoon. Figure it out. And so I kind of went on, with the help of some mentors, went on this personal growth journey of just consuming podcasts, consuming books, trying to treat my growth as a leader the same way I was being forced to treat my growth as a pilot. So one day I could be a pilot in command and an air mission commander.

Craig Coyle [00:09:52]:

So that's kind of what triggered everything and ultimately is like the foundation of. Of what we're doing with Operation Lead. So how does that relate to your experience?

Matt Gjertsen [00:10:01]:

It's interesting because it. I Think the, and I think we talked about this when we talked last time. I think the, the shift that you made or the process that you went through while you were still in the army is really the process that I didn't go through until I left the Air Force. Because interesting. You know, as an Air Force pilot, it is so much about flying. You go years, you know, it's not until even as a captain, a senior captain, you are maybe a flight commander with half a dozen people to a dozen people underneath you. But unlike your experience, they are all junior to you or vast majority of them are going to be junior to you. And you're not even fully responsible for them.

Matt Gjertsen [00:10:41]:

Because the way the squadron is organized is that there's the flight commanders, but then there's all the jobs in the squadron that have to get done. And so like the people are distributed out to, hey, you're going to go be a scheduler, you're going to go be on the training team, you're going to go be on the evaluation team. And day to day the leads of those shops really like control those people. And the flight commander doesn't do anything. They're just, they're just like signing the OPRs and trying to keep track of when people are deployed and things like that. And this is probably, I mean this is, you know, simplifying it all for sure. But it wasn't until I left and got out into the corporate world and was like, I wait, I have no idea what's going on, I have no idea how to lead. I went to all these leadership schools, but I don't know what's going on.

Matt Gjertsen [00:11:24]:

But then where the experience is combined, I think very much to your point is it was more thinking of, oh, I know what good training looks like because of my time being trained as a pilot, especially my time as an instructor pilot in pilot training. And I think that's where in my opinion, the vast majority of people in the world, and certainly the corporate world do not know what training is. Unless you have been in the military or professional athlete, you don't know what training is. It's just because it's just much more structured, it's much more behavioral. And so that was the kind of lens that I wanted to bring to leadership development or just training in general when I was at SpaceX, after I left SpaceX and now with Built, that's what we're trying to do where it's like using that very operational lens to think through the training of leaders.

Craig Coyle [00:12:20]:

Yeah, I'd love to hear you expand a little bit more on that. Like when you. So you're coming at this from this. This perspective of being an instructor pilot in the Air Force, Like.

Matt Gjertsen [00:12:31]:

Yeah.

Craig Coyle [00:12:32]:

A lot of people listening probably have no idea what that means. Right. What does it mean to be an instructor pilot? Right. Maybe expand a little bit on, like, maybe the core tenets of. Of what you're designed to do as an ip, and then how that. How you transition that into how training actually needs to be administered so that it hits home in organizations.

Matt Gjertsen [00:12:55]:

Yeah. So first off, yeah. To back up a little bit, I think, for people to understand the way the pilot ranks or organized, I suppose, and I'm sure this is very similar in the army is it's like you start off as a co pilot, or we call it a mission pilot. And so it's like you're. You're technically qualified to fly, but you can't fly. And this is on the mobility side. You can't fly by yourself.

Craig Coyle [00:13:16]:

That's right. I tell people that graduating flight school is like, earning your learner's permit. Like, yes. And it blows people's minds because they're like, wait, really? I'm like, yeah, you are such a liability when you burn your wings. Like, you can't do anything by yourself. Like.

Matt Gjertsen [00:13:31]:

But that being said, did you get your private pilot's license? Like your FAA private pilot's license?

Craig Coyle [00:13:37]:

I did, yeah. It's all rotary wing. So obviously the army is different because we do everything rotary wing. And if you get fixed swing, that's a different course. But.

Matt Gjertsen [00:13:47]:

But you want to talk about a license to kill yourself. FAA private pilot's license. Like, come on. Like, when you graduate that you really know you. You can get from A to B if. And that's it.

Craig Coyle [00:14:01]:

Okay, sorry.

Matt Gjertsen [00:14:02]:

Yeah, no, but anyway, so you start as a mission pilot, where you can fly the plane but not by yourself. Then you become an aircraft commander, where now you're in charge of a mission pilot. Then from aircraft commander, you become an instructor pilot. And then after instructor pilot, you're an evaluator pilot, where you're, like, watching over other people. And basically every pilot becomes an instructor pilot. Like, it's just the natural trend. The difference in my experience is I was an instructor pilot in pilot training. And so.

Matt Gjertsen [00:14:31]:

So it's a little bit more focused, a little bit more rigorous because. And even more so, I was what's called a fape, a first assignment instructor pilot. So I graduated pilot training and became an instructor pilot. There was a. You went to, like, instructor school in Between. But basically I came back, I was a senior first lieutenant with probably 400 flight hours. And I'm instructing a junior first lieutenant who has 100 flight hours. And I'm like, let's go.

Matt Gjertsen [00:15:04]:

And we go jump in a jet and go fly around. And so I.

Craig Coyle [00:15:08]:

Scares the crap out of me.

Matt Gjertsen [00:15:10]:

It's terrifying. It's terrifying. It's amazing. It was the best job I ever had, without a doubt. But I think what the lens to think about with instructor pilot versus other kinds of instruction, like some of the key things that I think I take away from it is it's about outcomes and behavior. It's watching people's movements, it's watching where people look, it's trying to understand what they're thinking. You know, I went on a flight once where literally the difference between success and failure for this pilot in trying to land was just a 1 inch throttle movement, right? They were just moving the throttle 1 inch too little. And it's that kind of stuff of being hyper specific that I think is why I say unless you've been a professional athlete or in the military, you don't know what training is, because it really is.

Matt Gjertsen [00:16:04]:

It comes down to those very specific behaviors. And then the one other thing I'll mention, I don't know if this is in your flying world that we would always talk about was the difference between procedure and technique. In that, procedure is the thing you have to fly and technique is a way to fly that. And I think that's another really important thing which you see out in the training world is like, this is the way to do things. It's like, is it like, I don't know, like there's a lot of different techniques I could use to give feedback or to coach somebody. And so I think that clarity of knowing the difference between procedure and technique is also really important.

Craig Coyle [00:16:42]:

Oh, that's. So I have two thoughts on that. I want to respond briefly to the procedure and technique piece because I've never thought about it from that perspective on because that is all the time, right? In flight school, that's all you hear. And then I want to talk about how that IP perspective kind of fits into the realization I had. But specific to that technique piece, one of the things I like to talk about a lot is there's, there's science of leadership and then there's art of leadership. And a lot of times we don't give enough credence to what's actually science. And then we blame things on the art of leadership not showing up when really there's more science we have to put in place so that the art of leadership can show up. And I think a great example of that is like so many people avoid one on one meetings and all this kind of stuff, or avoid crucial conversations or confrontation, all these different kinds of things.

Craig Coyle [00:17:37]:

And there are things you can put in place for a leader in their day to day to make sure that there's room for those things to happen. But how that leader handles them and approaches them should be, absolutely, should be different based off maybe their personality, maybe their temperament, maybe their relationship with that individual. And I think, man, what a great takeaway I have. I mean, it's like I'm getting coached here from ip, just not in the cockpit anymore.

Matt Gjertsen [00:18:08]:

Just really quickly to touch on that and expand upon it a little bit. Because the thing I always say, because people like to talk about soft skills and hard skills, that's kind of like your, you know, the art and the science. And I always say the only difference between soft skills and hard skills is we haven't thought about the soft skills enough to make them hard. Just like you said, we discount the science and chalk it up to the art. But there are things that if you really drill down, you're like, no, this, it's having this conversation, it's mentioning this word. Now to your point, you change it up a little bit for every time. But yeah, it can really be boiled down, Sorry, I mean, and even make

Craig Coyle [00:18:49]:

like, I'll talk sometimes, I'll talk a lot of people like to a lot of people about, about how pilots prepare for emergencies. And I'll say you probably had a similar experience we were given in the Army. They're called the dash 10, right. And it's chapter five and nine. You basically have to memorize both of those chapters, rote memorize. And the whole concept is, you know, I remember from flight school, right, Auto rotate, collective pedals, airspeed trim, right, boom. Right there. Now that's the rote memorization right there.

Craig Coyle [00:19:21]:

How that shows up when the emergency manifests. Could be a thousand different ways. You have to apply it, sure, but the science is almost the principle being applied there. But. And then too, like from the instructor pilot perspective, I love how like intensely focused you get on like focusing on these minor, not minor, but like minute things. And I think that it's just what creates the conditions for that. That's kind of the approach I've taken to leadership is I think sometimes in leadership we get so hyper focused on training a specific skill that we forget that sometimes it's the environment around developing that skill that's actually creating the breakthrough for people. And the way I, I like to break it down, I like to break development down into three categories.

Craig Coyle [00:20:19]:

There's always some form of an initial training, which is usually where we're teaching. Right. It's flight school for us. We're learning how to aviate, communicate, navigate all these things. But there's also a lot of other stuff that you take with you and use the rest of your career. Like we were talking last time about the concept of a pre flight. Well, what do leaders do each and every week or day to make sure that they're enabling themselves to be successful? Right. Or this concept of.

Craig Coyle [00:20:47]:

In the army we call it progression. But you kind of alluded to what it looks like in the Air Force already. But what is the structure? What is the guidance that you have in place? What is the community that you have in place? And that's, you know, the guidance piece, I think is where the instructor pilot shows up, but the instructor pilot doesn't show up without a plan. Right. In the army we've got like a 300 page PDF that gets updated every single quarter, that outlines every single skill and every single tactic that every IP is supposed to be teaching all of the junior leaders. And they don't just do it blindly. Right. Like that's how our annual evaluations are profiled.

Craig Coyle [00:21:27]:

And you know, to your point too, about the mission ready pilot, right. We call them PIs, just junior pilots. They don't exist in a vacuum. Vacuum. Right. Like when you were teaching in flight school, it was probably a class of 15, 20, 25, 30, and they were all in a way working together, pushing each other forward. And so I sometimes think that we get so hyper focused on like, oh, we need to teach these new leaders how to communicate, or we need to teach these new leaders how to plan, or we need to teach these new leaders insert whatever skill that we forget. Like they're on this, this psychological journey essentially completely changing professions.

Craig Coyle [00:22:10]:

And we rarely put the scaffolding around them that actually helps them create tangible breakthroughs in becoming the leaders that we all need them to be. Curious your thoughts on that?

Matt Gjertsen [00:22:21]:

I couldn't agree more with that. It really is all about so much of training and development gets boiled down to the training, which is unfortunate. But whether it's leadership development or not, because it really is all about, you know, I used to talk about the biggest mistake we make when we're training people is that we take them out. We so often take them out of the environment in which they are going to use the skill that they're using. You know, we take a bunch of manufacturing floor supervisors, we put them in a hotel conference room for a day, we teach them how to have crucial conversations. And then we wonder why when they go back to the floor and somebody makes a mistake, they just blow up again. And they don't. They're not able to have these crucial conversations.

Matt Gjertsen [00:23:07]:

The brain remembers everything contextually. It's taking cues from the world around you to know how to act. And so if you learn something in a different environment, it's gonna be very hard for you to remember that when you actually need it. And so the more you can have that initial push, like you said, I really like kind of how you broke it down, but then you have that push. But then how are you integrating that into the environment? Are you making a community of managers where they all get to talk and share once a week about their challenges? Make it so that this is an ever present idea. Do you have a drip email campaign that's reminding them throughout the weeks that go on? I'd be really interested to see, you know, to hear based on this, as you got out into the manufacturing world kind of on both of the things that you mentioned, because I think we struggle with both of these. One, there's this idea that you mentioned of, you know, the flying world has, you know, you got this litany of like, you got all these skills. How do we define those skills? It seems like, you know, to our point, it's kind of a never ending list.

Matt Gjertsen [00:24:10]:

How do we think about defining those skills when we go into leadership development in the manufacturing world? And then secondly, how do we, how do we create the environment to promote the building of those skills?

Craig Coyle [00:24:19]:

Yeah, you know, it's. I actually, I was at a conference, small conference in Chattanooga maybe three or four weeks ago. It was the first time I actually heard people talk about exactly that. It's this small little building that's tied to some workforce development initiatives. But it's essentially, it's called the Smart Factory Institute. It's propped up by Volkswagen usa and it's something that they've had a lot of success with over in Germany. But the company that runs it, they're called Peak Performance, and they partnered with the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga and some of the industrial psychologists, industrial organization psychologists in the academic world. And they were actually looking at what are the list of skills that managers need to be competent in?

Matt Gjertsen [00:25:06]:

Yes.

Craig Coyle [00:25:06]:

And then trying to transcribe that to the whole idea of Industry 4.0, with all the automation and technology advancements and like, what are the competencies that we need to have or managers need to have and what, what do workers need to have? To your point, I think there's a lot of, you know, it's so interesting because in the leadership world, there's so much information, but so little of it is organized. You know what I mean? Like, when you realize that you want to grow as a leader, there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands and millions of books out there. But where do you start? And what's book number two? Right. What's book number three? And I think that's where industry and just, I mean, I think, think the corporate world does need to grow a little bit. So it was really cool seeing that taking place within an industrial context. But, you know, one of the things that you were speaking of that I think's really interesting a lot of times, I think, and it's hard for us because we live so close to this, being both pilots and aviators in the military. But I think a lot of people don't realize that instructor pilots don't just exist in flight school.

Matt Gjertsen [00:26:12]:

Exactly. Yes.

Craig Coyle [00:26:13]:

And you were kind of hinting at, at this, I think, in what you were just sharing. Can you. So in the army, for example, obviously we have instructor pilots in flight school. But what's really interesting is there are instructor pilots in every unit outside of flight school, and they're a part of the organizational units that are in training or in combat, and they have a specific role to play in those organizations. And it sounds like you use that concept as a tool with the work you do with organizations.

Matt Gjertsen [00:26:42]:

Just a quick interjection, I wanted to remind you that I run a company called Bilt where we train the next generation of hard tech leaders how to build teams capable of solving the world's hardest problems. If you are an aspiring technical leader, an existing leader, or responsible for training leaders in your organization, Please check out BuiltLeaders.com to see if we can support you and your team. I will admit I had never really thought of it in those terms, but you are 100% right. And I think the closest corollary, I mean, it could be good managers do this, corporate coaches do this. But yeah, so again, to break it down, like I was, my first job was as an instructor in pilot training. But then out in the world, instructor is a rating that pilots just achieve. And the, the specific thing that they do is, you know, the majority of time they're out flying missions. But if you are A mission pilot or you are an aircraft commander, and you need to learn this before you're elig for upgrade.

Matt Gjertsen [00:27:44]:

You have to do certain things a certain number of times. Like you have to practice receiver air refueling or do certain number of landings or fly certain types of approaches. And if your position of mission pilot or aircraft commander does not qualify you to do those things already, then the only way you can practice them is if you have an instructor pilot with you. And so the vast majority of training that is happening in the Air Force pilot community is happening in operational missions. Or maybe not the vast majority, but a lot of it. You know, you're out there flying a cargo run across the Pacific Ocean and oh, we're going to this airport that has this thing that I've never seen before. Hey, sir, ma', am, can we fly that so that I can practice it? Like that kind of stuff happens fairly regularly or at least intended to. And also it's just an opportunity to.

Matt Gjertsen [00:28:40]:

You're flying across the Pacific Ocean, it takes a really long time. Let's pull out the dash one and like, learn some things. Things and find out some facts. Like the, like, the instructor role is meant to be that consistent developmental presence within people's lives. Which, yeah, we. That again, that's supposed to be the manager in a lot of places. But I don't know if every manager, A, sees that as their role and B, has the first idea of how to perform that role.

Craig Coyle [00:29:12]:

Right. Or if they even have the capacity for it.

Matt Gjertsen [00:29:16]:

That's. And that's the bigger one. That's the bigger 100%. I mean, we just saw as a recording. I think it's been a couple days since Coinbase laid off a bunch of people from their workforce. And one of the things that they talked about was there will be no more pure managers. Everybody is a player, coach. They, like all the managers are going to have individual contributor responsibilities.

Matt Gjertsen [00:29:37]:

And I think that can work. But the bandwidth issue is a real one.

Craig Coyle [00:29:42]:

Yeah, I like to tell people a lot, like if you are running, if you're a leader, or if you're anybody, right. And you are at 100% of your capacity, in a professional context, that means you have zero wiggle room to do essentially anything that matters. Right. And I just released an episode. By the time this comes out, at least on my podcast, it'll be out for a minute. But I just released an episode talking about the Eisenhower matrix, the urgent and important and all those concepts. Well, like, if you're at a hundred percent of your capacity just doing what's like what you absolutely have to do. So either your manager can do their job or the people on your team can do theirs.

Craig Coyle [00:30:21]:

You have no room to be there and be present for the things that only a leader can do when they pop up that you just can't plan for. And there's so much there. We could talk about this in days.

Matt Gjertsen [00:30:35]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think that's fine. Cause we need. Because you're right, it's a challenge. The world shows us that it's not going to stop being a challenge. Fortunately, unfortunately, we live in a world. I can't say it's fortunate or unfortunate. It's always going to be definitionally true that the most successful people are often the ones who are capable of doing the most work.

Craig Coyle [00:31:02]:

Work.

Matt Gjertsen [00:31:03]:

Right. You know, you think of Yang, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Travis Kalanick, you just go down the list and these are people who in for their life, they have decided that work is the calling, everything else is second. Yeah, I'm not making a moral judgment on that. It's just a fact. Right. And so the question for all other leaders is like, okay, if those are the people at the top and those are the people that we're all like kind of mirroring, what do those of us do that don't want to make a choice quite that way, how do we continue to function? How do we continue to operate? Because it's really interesting, you know, when I was at SpaceX, people are surprised by this. There are people, for the majority of people, there's a section of people who join and leave very quickly because it's like, it's just not a match. There's a section of people who join and it's like a tour of duty.

Matt Gjertsen [00:31:59]:

You know, you're there for four years, six years, something like that, building your resume, you're building. And maybe more than building, you know, like, I loved my time there. Like, I look back on it really fondly.

Craig Coyle [00:32:10]:

Just not sustainable maybe.

Matt Gjertsen [00:32:12]:

Yeah, it's not sustainable for a lot of people, but there is a subset of people that just figure it out. And I look at some of these people, they continue to have families, they're continuing to support their spouses, going off and getting master's degrees and stuff. And there is a way, there is a pathway there. And I think a lot of it comes down to you mentioned the Eisenhower matrix. Ruthless and relentless prioritization.

Craig Coyle [00:32:36]:

Right. And you know, you know, it's, it's similar in the military. Right. That's actually why I left the military Because I was looking at major and I was like, yeah, no thanks. Like, I don't want to work 18 hour days. Are you kidding me? Like, and have two jobs and still have to meet all my minimums. Do all. No, I'm good.

Craig Coyle [00:32:50]:

Right. Like, I would like to be present for my family at some point in my life. But to your point, when it comes down to prioritization, the best lesson I ever learned about learning how to prioritize and delegate was not from being a leader, it's from being in the cockpit. Right. Because I mean you quickly, very quickly learn for us, I think you were saying it was going from like mission to. I forget what the second step you called it.

Matt Gjertsen [00:33:19]:

Aircraft commander.

Craig Coyle [00:33:19]:

Aircraft commander. We call it going from just basically a basic PI to a PC pilot in command. And the very first lesson you have to learn when you're going through that progression is you cannot try to do it all by yourself. Like, you will inevitably fail. You have to learn how to use your copilot or you know, obviously in the Apache it's just two people. I'm sure you had to use how to use your whole crew and prioritize. Okay, what are the things I have to do? What are like, how can I always stay 2, 3, 4, 5 steps ahead? How can I use my copilot to make this radio call or plug in this frequency or change this map or set this point or set this target, like all these other things so that you, the person in charge of the aircraft, you know, leading the aircraft. I don't care if it's one other person or six people on your team or a bunch of passengers.

Craig Coyle [00:34:12]:

Right. Like you have to learn, how am I going to, how am I going to get us to accomplishing our mission in the safest, most efficient way possible?

Matt Gjertsen [00:34:21]:

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I really do think, I couldn't agree more, that pilot training is really just a year long course in how to deal with too much information. Like that's because, because there's just, just everything, there's just everything coming at you. So, you know, like, I think we've done a good job of kind of, you know, so we've seen our similarities, our differences, kind of how we made those transitions. How are you taking all of that, you know, the challenges that you saw? I honestly would love to dive deeper. So feel free to take this into like the challenges that you specifically saw kind of in the manufacturing world. World. Yeah, but what are you, how are you taking all that to try to solve these problems today for organizations?

Craig Coyle [00:35:03]:

Yeah, you know, I have a vision that we can create a movement of organizational development that takes off in a similar way that we've seen Lean Six Sigma or Total Quality Management take off. And because I do, I think, I think there, there is a gap behind how we tie a bridge or create a bridge between development and operational execution. And I'm coming like, I don't have any background, not an academic background, not a certificate. I don't have any background whatsoever in development or leadership. I am strictly coming at this from an operator, from a leader, from a commander in the military. And I very quickly realized in industry, like even the organizations that say they care about, about developing leaders, specifically on the front lines, that's where most of my experience is, most of them. And Harvard Business Review has some interesting statistics on this. Most of them, most of their training development efforts don't move the needle.

Craig Coyle [00:36:05]:

They're not tied to business outcomes, they're not tied to operational outcomes. And so kind of my, my vision is, how can we take the concept of flight school, initial training, the concept of pre flight, how you take that training and apply it to operations and every day, and then how we take the concept of progression. How do you build a community that's focused on growth, that's supporting one another so that these new managers can get through the change model, if you will, right. Get through that valley of despair? How do we put these three components together? The same way you see them manifest in professions all across the world, right? Engineers, you see it in the medical profession, you see it in the legal profession. How do we apply that, that organizationally in a way that actually helps create measurable impact in how we're improving operations and how we're improving production efficiency and how we're improving safety and how we're improving engagement in industries that are currently crippled by need for workers? And, you know, obviously all the reports are saying there's going to be 20, 30 million jobs vacant in manufacturing by 2030. How are we applying it in a way that creates measurable impact and retention? Like when we spend millions of dollars on workforce development and people are still just walking out the back door, how do we close that back door? How do we get people to want to be a part of these organizations to wake up and not dread Monday mornings because they know that they're doing something that's meaningful. They appreciate the people that are around them. They know their boss is going to give them clarity and direction and purpose and all of these things.

Craig Coyle [00:37:53]:

They're all possible, right? But they don't Happen by accident. And that's kind of the vision that's, you know, obviously in av we come from aviation and you know, there's obviously whenever an accident happens in aviation, it takes over the headlines. But if you think about the amount of flights in the world that happen every single day or week or month and you think about the amount of accidents that happen, it's like 0000%, right?

Matt Gjertsen [00:38:20]:

Yeah. It's so minimal.

Craig Coyle [00:38:21]:

So the principles are there. How can we just apply them to creating high quality, effective leaders across the board at scale? Because I think that'll have a measurable impact in the industry. And the industry needs it. Right? The industry desperately, desperately needs it. So how about you? What do you see? You kind of hinted at it as we opened. You've got this big vision for BILT and how BILT is going to play a role for these organizations that but have some of the smartest people in the world with some solutions that can really make the world a better place. So I'm curious to hear your perspective.

Matt Gjertsen [00:38:58]:

Yeah, well, it shouldn't be surprising given the conversation that we've had since I kind of entered into this journey a little bit later than you, that was much more centered around my time at SpaceX. Kind of the foundation that I started from other than the like we need to be tactical about looking at behaviors and things that I learned in the Air Force. A lot of my theory of the case came from my time at SpaceX and this idea of first principles thinking and kind of the algorithm that SpaceX has around everything. And so I spent a lot of time kind of trying to think about. If you were to try to kind of this idea that you were mentioning of having a list of skills if you were to think about leadership from first principles. What is the definition of a leader? What's the ground level truths of a leader needs to do do X? And the way I've distilled it down is if you are a leader, there are three core functions that you have to achieve. These are the procedures, not the technique. You have to get people to work together, you have to get them working on the right things and you have to improve the work over time.

Matt Gjertsen [00:40:09]:

These three things form like a Venn diagram where because there's plenty of skills of techniques that can meet multip of those but ultimately those are the three buckets that you have to think about. And as a leader you need to constantly be thinking about, okay, how can I do these three things like what is right for me, what is right for my team what is right for my organization. And so then, because I'm focused on kind of frontline leaders and focused on one catchphrase that I use a lot is I help make great engineers into great managers. They need very tactical advice. They're very concrete in how they think. They don't have a lot of time. And so what's the first things that they need to do? And so that's my book that's coming out in August is called Minimum Viable Manager. I love it.

Craig Coyle [00:41:01]:

When I saw that title, I was like, this guy, he's a genius.

Matt Gjertsen [00:41:05]:

I'm excited. And basically what it is, it's funny because it always evokes an emotion. Sometimes it's negative. The first major HR person that I mentioned it to actually said, that's the last kind of leader I would ever want in my organization. Because it kind of has this idea of like, oh, they're just good enough. But that's, that's not what it is. Right. It's like, it's.

Matt Gjertsen [00:41:25]:

What is the simplest, first thing you need to be doing in each of those three buckets in order to become a viable manager, you know, in order to push your team forward. Because if we're, if we're being honest, the 2026 Gallup report just came out about the state of engagement in the workplace. Everything went down. You know, we're sitting just above 20. I think we're sitting at like 22% of employees say they're engaged. Managers are actually even less engaged. Managers are at 20%. So we're not.

Matt Gjertsen [00:42:00]:

Most managers are not minimum viable managers.

Craig Coyle [00:42:03]:

That's right.

Matt Gjertsen [00:42:04]:

In my opinion. And so the book walks through. Okay, so if the three responsibilities are get people to work together, get them working on the right things, and improve their work over time, the first three things you need to do are build trust. Trust, set expectations, and give feedback. And so then the book gives two very concrete techniques for each of those. So you walk away with like six tools. Not only do you understand, like, the why of this, why this is important, what the research says, it's very, it's very backed in the research and examples from the military, examples from industry. But then here are things that you can just go do to try to do those three things.

Craig Coyle [00:42:43]:

That's so good. I think, think, you know, to your question earlier about when I was talking about there's so much out there within leadership, but there's really no clear path. I mean, you're, you're creating that clear path, which is so exciting.

Matt Gjertsen [00:42:58]:

That's my hope. And then. And then I'm already thinking about, you know, I'm not even. This book isn't even published. I'm already thinking about the next book, which I'm. Which I'm thinking of going to the opposite extreme of, like, maximum viable leader of. Of trying to break. So if this is where you start.

Matt Gjertsen [00:43:12]:

Because kind of like we talked about, you know, we have all these examples of the El. The Yinsen Huangs, you know, like, what are. What's that look like? And I have. I have a lot of thoughts on that. On that as well, so.

Craig Coyle [00:43:25]:

Well, when you're. When you're getting ready to release that book, we'll have to come back for you. Hopefully I'll have a book out by then. I've definitely.

Matt Gjertsen [00:43:32]:

There you go.

Craig Coyle [00:43:32]:

Working on one. I'm just trying to figure out what I want to do with it. So.

Matt Gjertsen [00:43:36]:

Yeah, you got. You got time. Because writing a book is. Is a grueling experience, and so it's not. This isn't coming out next year.

Craig Coyle [00:43:43]:

Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. So. Well, Matt, I think. I think we just landed the plane to not be too overly. Overly aggressive with the aviation puns and terminology.

Matt Gjertsen [00:43:53]:

Let's keep the puns. I like it.

Craig Coyle [00:43:55]:

This was fun. I can totally see us doing this again. And I think both of our audiences will enjoy this little chat style back and forth.

Matt Gjertsen [00:44:03]:

So, yeah, I'm really happy you suggested it. I think it's fun. It's a little bit different. So this been. This has been great.

Craig Coyle [00:44:11]:

Right on, man. Later.