Matt Gjertsen [00:00:00]:

Hello and welcome to the Leadership Launchpad, where we help technical managers improve themselves, their teams, and their organizations. If you are a technical leader, an engineer or technician looking to become a leader, or someone who supports technical leaders, this is the show to get actionable insights from people who have been in the trenches and gone through the journey themselves of becoming a people leader. This week's episode is a very special one for 2 different reasons. First off, If you are listening on the day this launches, August 18th, then guess what? My brand new book, Minimum Viable Manager, is officially out. You can go to Amazon and everywhere else books are sold. It's, it's out in the wild. I've been working on this for many, many years, and so I can't wait to get it out in your hands so that you can let me know how, how it goes. Let me know if this If the lessons in this book resonate with you, I am, I'm really excited and we're gonna be having more conversations on this show about this.

Matt Gjertsen [00:01:00]:

But that's not the only big milestone that we are celebrating today. The second big milestone is actually the fact that this show recently blew right past our 200th episode. So thank you so much for everyone who has been listening over the last few years. Thank you so much to all the amazing guests that I've had. And so to celebrate both of these milestones, what I thought I would do with today's episode is kind of do a walkthrough of what I think are some of the greatest hits. This isn't necessarily a full list of all the biggest lessons that I have gotten from this show, but what I did is I just kind of started going back through some of the old episodes and picked some specific ones like, oh yeah, I remember that. That was, that was a really great conversation. That was a really great conversation.

Matt Gjertsen [00:01:44]:

I pulled out some of the things that I learned. So I'm going to go through 10 different episodes and lessons from 10 different episodes over the past 200 episodes. It wasn't easy to pick just 10 because there's There's so many, but hopefully if you're listening to this, it'll give you some ideas of things you want to go back to. And so the first one I want to bring up is episode 28 with Steph Bertmer. She was the head— she is the head of learning and development at Pinterest, as she was when we first talked. And the whole— that she was— we were actually talking way back when this used to be the Making Better podcast, so it wasn't even the Leadership Launchpad, but The particular lessons we talked about were extremely relevant for technical leaders because she talked about leading through change. And the number one most important thing that she brought up that I think is relevant to every single leader out there, especially in hard tech organizations where things are constantly changing, is she really laid down this reminder of people don't know everything that you know. As a leader, it is really easy to forget the extra emails that you get, the extra meetings that you're invited to, the people that you get to talk to.

Matt Gjertsen [00:02:59]:

If you have quite a bit of seniority, you've been in an organization before, maybe you just have a lot of innate knowledge that you've gained about the organization because you've been there for so long. And it's important to remember that so many people on your team do not have that information. And so change can blindside them. It can seem like it's coming out of left field, even if it seems completely natural to you. And so it really reminds me of, of this phrase that I always bring up that I learned many years ago that says managers are not communicated to, they're communicated through. If you are in an organization where things are changing a lot, and I honestly think that's every organization right now, then you need to be extra diligent about being as transparent as possible for your team so that you're just passing as much information as you possibly can. So thank you, Steph, for, for reminding us that a couple years ago now. The next episode I want to bring up, episode 56, was with a good friend of mine, Megan Galloway.

Matt Gjertsen [00:04:02]:

She's the founder of EverLeader. What she does is she works with a lot of executive teams. She has a deep history working in startups and bringing a bringing about cultural change within these startups. And the thing that she really focused on is when you're trying to work with people, when you're trying to get people through a change, what you need to do is really focus on all of the supporting partners in the organization. And I think really what she was talking about, if I were to use my own words, is kind of centers of gravity. If you find yourself as someone who's kind of in charge of making some kind of cultural shift in the organization, it's really important for you to take a moment and think about who are the centers of gravity, who are the centers of influence around the organization. Maybe these are official leaders, but more often than not, especially in technical organizations, they're the informal leaders. They're the principal engineer, the chief engineer, the people who Maybe they don't have that many direct reports, but they're deeply respected by the team.

Matt Gjertsen [00:05:12]:

Getting them involved in change initiatives as early as possible, getting their input so that you can get their buy-in is really, really essential if you're trying to make any kind of cultural change, which, if we're being honest, is fundamental to making any serious change in an organization. If an organization is moving too slow, making decisions incorrectly, it's gonna come back to culture. And so thinking about who are the centers of influence within your organization is going to help make that really move forward much faster. Okay, step forward a little bit. Episode 66. This discussion was with Matt Kuda, who is the president of Voyager Technologies and a former F-15 pilot. Matt Kuda and I actually go way back. We were in the same freshman squadron at the Air Force Academy, so we went through boot camp together, 4-degree year together.

Matt Gjertsen [00:06:08]:

Uh, we, we shared some experiences. And so the interesting idea that I loved from Matt that came from his time in the F-15, and he now applies it as the leader of Voyager Technologies, is this idea that if you really want to be max performing the aircraft, you have to accept that every now and then you're going to over-G the jet. Now, I'm a pilot, so I know exactly what he's saying. To break this down a little bit is any aircraft out there is going to have G limits. You know, how, how hard, how many G forces, how many forces of gravity it can sustain, right? And so when you pull back on the stick, it really pushes the airframe. And depending on lots of factors, there's a certain limit that it can take. Maybe it's 6 Gs, maybe it's 9 Gs. And that might have to do with the types of, the types of weapons that you're carrying on the plane.

Matt Gjertsen [00:06:59]:

It might have to do with the airframe itself. Often it's the limits of the human body these days. Yeah. And so you're taught as a pilot, obviously, to stay within these limits because you don't want to be bending the aircraft or damaging things. But if your whole job is to win the fight, you know, and always be pushing the envelope of max performing the aircraft, then every now and then it's going to happen. Every now and then it's going to slip too far. And so as a leader, if people are always doing it, that's going to be a problem. If you have a pilot that's always just like, oh, sorry, I just blew past the limits, like, that's not good.

Matt Gjertsen [00:07:35]:

It needs to have weight to it. But if you want people to be max performing, then every now and then they're going to be doing that. How, how does that apply in the corporate world where every now and then people might lose their temper, every now and then people might feel burnt out, every now and then people might forget to check something? And that's okay Every now and then, if you really are pushing people to the limit and want people to be pushing themselves to the limit, the fact is sometimes they're going to drop something. And so you as a leader need to be keeping that in mind. It's not about every time somebody drops something you come down with a hammer. It's also not about ignoring it, but it's about keeping an eye on it and accepting the fact that, hey, it's all— it actually goes back really well, maps really well to how Elon Musk talks about, you know, removing things from a design. He's always talking about deleting parts and simplifying And his rule is, if you are not adding back in 10% of what you removed, then you're not removing enough, right? So it's this same kind of idea of like sometimes you're going to make a mistake and that means you're pushing the envelope. So I think that's, that's great advice for any leader.

Matt Gjertsen [00:08:45]:

Step forward again to episode 88 with Holly Betke. She's the former senior director of global people engagement at StockX. That's the position she had when I met her, and I actually met her at, uh, Association of training, of talent development conference down in New Orleans. And I watched this amazing talk that she gave on how to get buy-in on a team, how to make sure everybody's working together and speaking their mind. And the speaking the mind was really a thing because one of the things that, that she said about maintaining the culture on the team and making sure everybody knows the direction that you're going with, the mission of the team is, is as a leader, when you're talking with your folks, You should pay attention for think times when somebody says something that just doesn't quite make sense to you. It doesn't, it doesn't map to what you think the, the team is doing. It doesn't align with the priorities of the team. It's naturally going to happen.

Matt Gjertsen [00:09:47]:

But one thing that you need to do if you, if you hear the same person or every or multiple people on your team consistently trying to make a decision that you just disagree with and you have to override their decision and, oh, that's not a priority, or, oh, no, we're not going to make that design decision, it might be more than just they're making the wrong decision. It might be that there is a fundamental misalignment of what we are trying to do here. Right. And this kind of goes back to some of the conversation before, is people don't know everything that you know. And so if there's a lot of people making those decisions, or sometimes decisions just seem misaligned, it might be a time for you to like kind of push pause and, and bring everybody together and say, hey, I think we just need a refresh on what exactly it is we're trying to do here, what the most important things are. So it's just, you want to watch out for that. Okay. Halfway through episode 101 was with General John Teichert.

Matt Gjertsen [00:10:45]:

He was the former base commander at Edwards Air Force Base. For anyone who doesn't know, Edwards Air Force Base is the main test base. It's the base where we do— we test out new aircraft, we push the limits on things for the US Air Force. So he came into this base, he was in charge of 11,000 people. And one of the things that he realized was that this center of innovation for the US Air Force was not innovating. People weren't sharing their ideas. They weren't stepping forward to try to do new things. And, and he needed to find a way to change that.

Matt Gjertsen [00:11:25]:

As, as I'm sitting here, I'm getting joined. You can't see them, but I have 2 puppies that are, that are walking in. They're super cute. I think they're gonna lay— hopefully they lay down and they don't make, make too much noise. But when I was talking to General Teichert What he really honed in on was this idea of, as a leader, what does it take for people to bring forward their ideas, to feel like they can innovate? And what he said is, he said, and I want to say it exactly, he said, people want to know someone will listen, consider, and act. And I think that consider piece is the really great one. It's not just about making sure, you know, having an open-door policy, people come in and speak their mind. That's great.

Matt Gjertsen [00:12:04]:

But if they do it too often and they don't think anything's happening, it's going to lead to problems and people are eventually going to shut up. And so as a leader, have an open-door policy, bring people in, but make sure you're going through those steps of consider what they're saying and then act. Maybe that act is we're going to do this, or maybe that act is actually we're not going to do this right now. Either way is fine as long as you're closing the loop and making a decision. Episode 1, 2, 4 with Jesse Kleekamp. Jesse and I go way back. We worked together at Vandenberg Air Force Base. We were both state— we were not in the Air Force.

Matt Gjertsen [00:12:40]:

This is when we were both at SpaceX's launch site at Vandenberg. That's where I first joined SpaceX. She moved from LA up there to support the team in an HR capacity. We then continued to know each other down in LA while she was a recruiter, and she is now the head of people. at K2 Space. And I wanted to have her on the show to specifically talk about how she thinks about hiring people and figuring out what the questions are, what the skills that are needed. And she said something really interesting to me. K2 was much earlier in their story than they are today as you're listening to this, so they were a much smaller team.

Matt Gjertsen [00:13:18]:

I need to have her back on to see how much of this jives with now that they're, now that they're a bigger team. But she talked about the rigor with which they identified the job requirements for every position that they opened at K2 Space, which I think is really important, especially for a growing team. It's really easy to say just like hire, hire, hire. But what they do and what she recommends you do is you sit down and you digitally, diligently think about what is this person going to be expected to do for the first 6 months on the job? What are their responsibilities going to be? What problems are they going to need to solve for the first 6 months on the job? That is what you use to determine the skills that they need to have. That's what you need to use, you know, those, those things that they're going to be doing over the first 6 months. That's how you identify the skills that you need to be testing and asking about in the interview process, which I, which I thought was was really, really great. A couple months later, we had on Brian Manning, who is the co-founder and CEO of ZonaSpace. This is a company that is doing kind of— they're, they're looking to replace GPS essentially, or they're making high-precision GPS that can work inside buildings and everything like that.

Matt Gjertsen [00:14:32]:

It's their whole own new constellation. And I wanted— and I specifically talked to him about the shift, the shift of going from being an engineer to being a people manager? What is that like? And the number one thing he said is that if you are making that transition, the thing you need to be comfortable with is that things aren't going to happen exactly the way that you want them to, right? You need to embrace autonomy if you want to have impact as a leader. It's not about direct control. And so what that means is, as a leader, the main area of focus for you is clearly defining the outcomes that you want and then giving people as much freedom as you can in how they achieve that outcome. That might mean it's different than what you would do. Sometimes that might— sometimes that might be bad. Sometimes that might mean the process takes longer, but sometimes it might be good. Sometimes that's how you get to some new innovative process, which I, I couldn't agree with him more.

Matt Gjertsen [00:15:31]:

And that is that that is one of the first things you need to do as a new people leader. On episode 156, we brought on Ian Marrone, the VP of People and Talent at Apex, another space company. And this was a fun one because we kind of, we shifted how we did it a little bit and we were focusing on this idea of coaching and having coaching conversations. The real key was this idea of how you need to shift from an expert mindset where you are providing solutions and answers to a coaching mindset where you are primarily asking questions. And he brought up the GROW model, which stands for goal, reality, options, and what's next. So if you're getting ready to have a coaching conversation with someone on your team, what you do is you start with asking them— you, you don't provide this, you ask them, what is the outcome you're trying to achieve? What is the goal that you want to get to? What do you want this to look like in 6 months? Have them answer those questions. Then the R, reality. Where are you at right now? What is the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

Matt Gjertsen [00:16:39]:

The O is options. Given that gap, what are some various ways you think you could go from here to there? And then finally, what's next? What are you going to do of those options? Which one are you going to pick? And the, the key thing with this, it is about asking questions. That is the only thing you are there for— asking questions, clarifying their answers, making sure you understand, making sure they understand, getting them to dig deeper. Really, really critical and kind of groundbreaking for me, just as I think about my mindset when I'm having discussions with people. Episode 178, another good friend of mine, Paul Cotillion, who again, just like with Jesse, all 3 of us worked together at Vandenberg for SpaceX. When I knew him there, he was the responsible engineer for the helium system. Now, or when I talked to him, he was the co-founder and chief technology officer at Applied Atomics, One of the many companies that's trying to bring back nuclear power here in the United States. And this was a really fun discussion where he was just talking about this idea of how important transparency is with your team.

Matt Gjertsen [00:17:49]:

And he said if he had one thing, you know, he's imagining as his company grows, they have a big factory and they're starting to build stuff. If he had one thing that he would like, it would be to have a big billboard up on the side of the factory. that just says cash on hand and the current burn rate, right? Like, how much time in money does the company have? Because everybody needs to know where they're at so that they can make decisions. Because one thing that I think he pointed out is that it isn't just that you are learning as a company. That's, that's important, but it's not just that. It's also the rate of learning, and most importantly, the rate of learning In contrast to the amount of financial runway you have, right? Things might be going great, but if your rate of learning isn't going to the point where you're going to learn the key thing that you need to learn to make this company work before you run out of money, it kind of doesn't matter. And I think that that's really important thinking, whether you're a founder or whether you're anybody in, you know, kind of especially a startup environment, is just realizing the realities of money, of finances, of why certain decisions, they might just be a head-scratcher. You're like, I don't understand what this is going on.

Matt Gjertsen [00:19:05]:

A lot of times it comes back to something that you don't know and something that's regarding finances. And then the final one that I'm going to bring up, the final episode that I just had so much fun with was talking to Casey Hanrahan, the founder of Terraform Industries. I believe I've talked about him on this. I mean, I've obviously had him on the show. Like, I follow him on X. He's one of these just like amazing thinkers. And the thing I loved so much about this conversation is 2 things. One is, here is this incredibly smart PhD, worked at JPL, founded a company.

Matt Gjertsen [00:19:37]:

He's clearly incredibly technically gifted, and he just says flat out, look, management is the hardest problem. It's still the hardest problem. Like, since— go back to before the pyramids. Getting large groups of people to work together is the foundational problem of humanity. And then the, the quote that I absolutely love from him that he said he tells to all of his leaders is, being liked is optional, success is not. He's very clear that that's not a prescription to be mean to people, but it is a signal that, hey, you need to push people. And anyone who honestly pushes people to their limits— if you go look at the best coaches I think back to my time as an athlete, right, when I was doing triathlon and, and training people and learning about the, the best trainers that are out there. Even if they're not like a mean person— you see these basketball coaches that are throwing things at people— like, even if they're not that, if you're pushing people to their limits, people don't like it.

Matt Gjertsen [00:20:43]:

It's uncomfortable. And you should expect that as a leader if you're being honest About actually pushing people and saying like, hey, let's go, let's go. No matter how motivating you are, you're going to be pushing people into situations that in the moment they don't like. But the question is, is after the fact, do you succeed? Do they do something that they didn't thought was possible? And that is the true test of a leader. I forget where I heard this, but there was one HR leader, I think it was, I think she was from Netflix. Who talked about the idea of be a leader that people want to have worked for. Like create a team that people want to have been from, right? Maybe it's not fun to be on it, but they recognize that once they leave, they are a better person. That's honestly probably the most, like the thing you should be aiming for as a leader.

Matt Gjertsen [00:21:41]:

Anyway, I know that was, maybe that was too much rambling, but I just had to go back and take a look at all these amazing guests that we've had. Hopefully you got some great insights out of those brief descriptions. If nothing else, it gave you some homework to do, to go back and listen to some of those past episodes, which I think there's so many of them. And one final reminder as we close out the show, Minimum Viable Manager, it is out now. This is, you know, this is 2 years of my life right here. I'm so happy with it. I'm so happy with how it turned out, the reviews that I've gotten from people who I deeply respect, people like Hans Koenigsmann, the former VP of Build and Flight Reliability at SpaceX. So I had so many just like amazing technical minds look at this and give me feedback.

Matt Gjertsen [00:22:29]:

I'm really happy with how it turned out. I hope you take a look at it. I hope you enjoy it. If you can leave a review on Amazon, I would always appreciate it. And with that, I look forward to seeing you next time on the Leadership Launchpad.