GA 571 | What Employee Engagement Isn’t with Craig Coyle

Tie the strategy to your business objectives, roll out the tactics, get buy in from the team, sit back and watch the magic happen. But you have to learn how to take strategy and tie it to tactics.

Today I'm excited to welcome Craig Coyle to the show. Now Craig has got a pretty cool background. He was in the military for several years and he actually flew Apache helicopters and Pretty sure in 570 some episodes he's the first Apache helicopter pilot that we've had on. And so we actually spent quite a bit of time asking about that because, well, was personally fascinated. So after that, really the, the, the, the main emphasis of the, of the conversation was all about workforce challenges and employee engagement and really just helping develop leaders so we can have a strong culture. So we get into lots of different topics, but one in particular that really jumped out at me was there's a Gallup statistic out there that says something to the effect of most frontline or just kind of like frontline leaders or employees fail or quit within 18 months. And so that's pretty staggering statistics. So we dig into that and talk about like what's up with that and what are some things that we can be doing as, as leaders and as organizations to make sure it doesn't happen. And so, so show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com this is episode 571 again gembapodcast.com and look for episode 571. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Craig, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Great. Thanks for having me, Ron.

Yeah, man, my pleasure, my pleasure. Where are you calling in from?

I'm based here out of Nashville, Tennessee at all Music City.

Okay, nice. So we're recording this here in the latter part of February. I understand you guys got a, got a heat wave.

Oh, yeah, yeah. 75 is the high today. So no more 20 degree running weather for me until next week, right? Yeah, exactly right. It'll come right back down. But yeah, that's how we are on the horizon in Texas.

It's like, you know, hurry up and wait. You know, if you, you know it's gonna. 70 degrees today and it was like 10 a week ago.

That's crazy. Yeah, yeah.

So good stuff. All right. Well, hey, man, I know you know how we like to get things going out of the gate is with a, with a quote. So what do you got?

Absolutely. Mine is from Winston Churchill. So a little bit of a history guy, but it's short and sweet. The price of greatness is responsibility. And, you know, as a leader, I think leadership is always attractive. Right. Whether it's for the benefits, whatever it might be that attracts people into those positions. But one thing you can't ignore is that there, there are some significant burdens that come with it. And if you don't pay attention to those burdens, you don't do right by those burdens. Often you or the people you work for have to pay the consequences of that. And I'm sure that's what we'll talk a lot about today.

Yeah, for sure. No, that's a good one. All right, well, hey, tell us a little bit about yourself, Craig. Tell us about your. Your background, how you got into your line of work and, and what that line of work is, and. And, yeah, we'll see where it goes from there.

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I have a. A bit of a unique career path, so I graduated high school and I went straight into the United States military by way of the United States Military Academy at West Point. And the reason why I pursue that path is I just. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the idea of becoming a pilot. And as I explored different options to take that path in life, I kind of quickly realized one of the easiest ways to do it and, you know, one of the sexiest ways to do it is through the military. And so I chose to go through West Point. I grew up not far from there, and my whole goal was always to become an Apache pilot. So fast forward a few years from then. I graduate, I qualify to go to flight school, I end up becoming an Apache pilot. I'm 22 years old, I accomplish all my dreams, and I'm in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and I have to assume these leadership positions that are a byproduct of my dream of being an Apache pilot. And Ron, I fell flat on my face and it was, you know, 20, 22 year old me was really forced to grow up and almost have a midlife crisis to where I had to ask myself what I really cared about and what mattered to me. And my focus really started to shift from doing things for, quite honestly, external validation to trying to build myself up to be the best possible leader I could be for my platoon, eventually for the folks under my company when I was a commander, and then ultimately during my time in the industry as well. And kind of what I realized, what really hit me, really gut punched me when I transitioned out of the military is there. I immediately recognized that the same challenges, very unique challenges that existed within, I call it Frontline Leadership or junior level frontline leadership in the military were pervasive across the industry at least my exposure in the aerospace side of things. And I was really surprised that I didn't see anybody and a lot of these organizations really looking to attack it and solve it and really address what I felt were these really solvable issues, issues that I was responsible for mitigating, addressing, overcoming as a young commander in the military. And so yeah, about a year ago I just decided, you know what, enough's enough. I think there's a lot of people that are impacted by a lot of these areas issues and there's a lot of good that can be done by solving it. And so here I am having podcast conversations and you know, getting on stages. How long were you in the military? Not. I was active duty. Yeah, no, I was active duty for eight years. I finished up as a company commander. So I was leading a company of about 8 to 12 Apaches, about 50 or so personnel.

Wow, that's so cool. What's the coolest thing about flying an Apache?

Oh man, I would have to say there are things you can do in an Apache that there just is not another platform in the world that flies can do. It's just the, the ability to fly as fast as you can, as low as you can, and then blow things up. It just makes flying way more exciting than you'll ever experience it in another platform.

I think you remember the first time that you flew one like, like on your own, like there is nobody there. Like what, was it terrifying or.

Oh yeah, absolutely. So, you know, one of the things that maybe we'll kind of. This might be a great segue, but part of the progression as a professional pilot in the military, as you go through and ultimately your goal is to qualify and become what's called a pilot in command. Because the Apache is a two pilot aircraft. There's always two people.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Okay, so it's kind of like, it's almost like you gradu flight school and you have almost like a permit, but you always have to be with someone who basically has their license. Right. Is blessed off by the senior commander of the organization saying, hey, I trust you with this aircraft. And I remember, you know, I took my pilot in command checkride in the very next flight, my first flight with someone obviously a junior pilot. And I remember going to push the power levers to fly to basically start the aircraft and get going in. My hand was shake the whole time. I'm like, because this is the first time Ever. It's like this is on me now. I'm responsible for this 300 million dollar hunk of metal that's moving thousands of pieces in crazy different directions and beating the air into submission so that I could do what I wanted to. It was a wild ride, to say the least. It was a fun way to spend the 20s.

Golly, that's amazing. That's amazing. Well, yeah, yeah, it's expensive, but you're also don't want to die, right?

So a little bit of stakes at, at the, at play there. Yeah.

All right. Well, hey man. So really today I guess we're going to kind of dive into a pretty cool topic. I want to kick it off with an employee engagement. There's a lot of buzz around engagement and disengagement and that sort of thing. And I want to get your thoughts on why you think employee engagement is critical for really any entity, any organization.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think rightfully so. I think there should be a lot of conversation around employee engagement. And I'll start off with a caveat, but I'll get to why I think it's so important. The caveat is, number one, the most thing important for any business or organization is that you have a sustainable business model. In other words, you have a product market fit. Right. There has to be demand for your employee engagement to matter. Because if you don't have any of employees or you can't afford employees, well, you got a bigger problem at hand. So that's like the number one, like this. If you're in that situation, which probably means you're under 50 employees, but well under 50 employees, you're scaling up. Now if you're on the opposite end of that spectrum, which is probably most of the audience we're talking to today, whether it's healthcare or manufacturing, these kind of larger organizations that have significant product to bring into the market on a pretty, you know, repeatable basis, the challenge really becomes as a senior leader of these organizations, you want to invest your energy into the things that have the greatest return on investment. And whenever I think of return on investment, my mind always goes right back to the idea I learned from 40x4 disciplines of execution of lead versus lag. It's like investment is always going to be or should always be focused and channeled towards whatever is going to move the needle in as many different byproducts as possible. And so you want things to flow downhill properly. And I think engagement is so critical because think of what flows downhill from engagement. If you want to improve production Efficiency. Well, what's something that could help production efficient efficiency improve? People that want to show up and be at work, that's probably a pretty good thing, right? You want to improve safety. Well, what's something that helps, what's something that could help improve safety? Well, people that enjoy what they're doing, are focused at what they're doing, know why they're doing it, it's probably going to improve safety. You want to improve quality, better products, less defects, all those kinds of things. Well, what's probably going to improve quality? People that know what they're doing, why they're doing all these kinds of things. You want to improve retention, which is a hot topic today, especially in the manufacturing sector. Well, you improve retention, you keep people in your workforce for longer. When they enjoy showing up to work and want to be there because they're, they're engaged, they have a purpose. So to me, all these things that from an operational perspective we always focus and, and are constantly staring at in terms of KPIs, they almost all in some way, shape or form funnel down into this idea of employee engagement. Now the challenge is employee engagement is pretty fuzzy, right? It's hard to touch, it's hard to measure, it's hard to grasp. But I would also argue it's also very easy to see and it's easy to influence if people are being taught how to create it. But a lot of people don't get taught how to create it. I'm sure we'll talk more about that.

I am curious to get your thoughts on. If you walk into an organization, you're spending a few days with a company, what do you think you let's say they are top notch organization, everybody's engaged. What are you seeing? Because you said you can see it. What are you seeing when you see engagement?

Yeah, you know, I, I think it's a lot easier to see what engagement isn't than what it is sometimes. And that's where the blurred lines are. I mean, what does engagement not look like or disengagement look like, Right? I mean today it's pretty like you got your phone people scrolling, right?

Yeah.

You hear managers complain about people taking too long on breaks or taking too many breaks like these. When I was working, I would walk the floor all the time and I would constantly hear these kinds of things. And I'm thinking to myself, well, like if people really wanted to be here or they were really invested in hitting their number for the day or hitting their team's quota for the week or the month, Would these be things that their managers would constantly be talking about? Or what are the things that you just hear when you're walking through the halls or when you're in the bathroom and overhear people, you know, just talking to each other? Is it gossip? Is it complaining? Is it negativity? Is it, I can't wait to go for lunch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it all these things, or is it people actually talking about work? I think that's one of the coolest things about our place that I would argue is characterized by high engagement is people love talking about work. It's the weirdest thing ever. But if people are engaged in what they're doing, they're going to talk about it all the time. They're going to love talking about it because they're invested in it. And when someone's invested in it, things are really starting to come to fruition.

Yeah, it's.

It's.

It's so tricky. It's so easy to sit here and talk about it all. But, like, I think Gemba Academy, I feel like, you know, a little biased because one of the founders and run the company. But, like, I. I feel like looking around, people are pretty engaged and they're getting after it and enjoying each other and all the rest of it. We come into the. Everybody works from home two to three days a week, and then almost everybody comes in. The ones that live here in Texas at least come in a couple days a week. And just so I can see it, you know, when they're just out there working and talking and laughing and smiling, you know, you can. You sort of experience that. But. But there's a lot of things that go into that. Like you.

Like.

Like if you had like a. I don't know, like a bad product, for example, Right. And like, the customers didn't like your product, or you couldn't. It was really hard to sell your product or your product was always breaking down or whatever. It might be. Like, I don't care how happy. I mean, like, that's going to be a miserable place to work. Right. But. But that's just one thing. Like, you could have a great product and all the rest of it, but then you could have, you know. You know what I'm saying? There's so many variables that go into having a good, solid culture company that, man, it's really tricky the more you think about, like, what makes a good company good.

Yeah. And the funny thing is it kind of works like a snowball in both directions. Right. Like, generally speaking, and this might be an over generalization. But if you have a couple good things going for you. Yeah. Whether it's on your product or your R D or your customer service, like there's a reason for that. Right. And so generally speaking, principles are things that kind of ring true across different spectrums or variables or all those kinds of things. And I would argue kind of in your example, Ron, like there are probably very similar characteristics and traits and principles at play in every corner of your organization that are bringing everything together. And so you're right. If you have a product that goes bad or if you have a big issue that takes place that maybe wasn't working, those are things you can't control. But the unique thing is, is some of these really great work environments where people love showing up is that doesn't matter.

Yeah, right.

It's a one off. We figure it out. We come together because stronger. Exactly, exactly. And it's just, it's just a blip in the radar.

Right.

Because we're moving in this direction now. There are situations where the opposite true is true as well. You know, organization I worked out for a good time was seeing incredible turnover and not just, you know, labor. Turner. I'm talking like almost 100% turnover of salaried workforce. Oh, wow. On a 1212 month rolling basis. And so, yeah, it's. Those are the kind of ships that are hard to turn around. Yeah, it's really, really spot on there.

So. All right, well, let's, let's talk about like. So I got senior leaders listening right now to this podcast and they're all about it, man. They want a culture that is highly engaged. They want activated team members, all the rest of it. All the good things. Like what are some, some things or some pieces of advice that you could speak to that person.

Yeah, absolutely. I would say the number one thing that I try to talk to every senior leader about is this idea of tactics and strategy. So I'm reading Chet Holmes book, the Ultimate Sales Playbook right now. And there's something really unique that. And maybe it just stood out to me because of my military background. But really small paragraph in the book, he says 90% of the executives I work with are average. So average. Why are they average? Because they're great at Strategy. Okay, so 90% of executives great at strategy. The next 9% are above average. They're good. Why are they good? They're really, really good at implementing tactics. So they're operators. Right. He said the 1% of executives that stand far and above away from the rest are the Executives that are really good at strategy and then really good at implementation, they understand when to be the visionary and when to help implement and how to marry the two things together. And I think what we often miss with employee engagement and culture is it's very visionary. It's very kind of fuzzy, but it's really hard. It's really hard to touch. Now, if you walk the dog with me here and I'll try to do this pretty quickly, culture is ultimately the character of the environment that we're within, which is ultimately the context or the output of the relationships that we have. Right. In terms of the collective culture or environment in our organizations. It's ultimately the summation of all the little relationships between individual and manager or supervisor across our organization. A senior executive barely touches any of those. So how do they influence it? Well, they have to influence that intersection, the intersection between the frontline leader and the frontline worker. Well, how do you do that? It's through leader development. If you develop the people that are creating those relationships and driving those relationships and give them the tools to do it within the context of what, you know, works and creates the strategic results you want to create in your organization, then you're effectively being the executive that understands the strategy. Right. The strategy here is leverage good, sound leader development to create business objectives and results of employee engagement. And then you apply the tactics, which is you create that and you enforce it and you push it through. Push through the system there. So. So I think the key here is that leader development just doesn't have to exist because everybody says it has to exist. It can. It can accomplish clear business strategic objectives, but you have to understand how to tie the dots. And then you have to invest into it in a way that makes it very known to everybody that's going through that system, why it's important and what it does, and then follow through with seeing it accomplish its objectives.

So this next question I've been waiting to ask is, as we were preparing for the interview, kind of going back and forth, what I'm going to talk about. And you, you brought up a statement that, well, there's a statistic, and I'm going to have you state it, that within a certain time frame, many new frontline leaders fail or sometimes even quit an organization. So first of all, like, what is that time frame and what's up with that?

Yeah, yeah, if I remember correctly, it's two thirds of new leaders will either quit or fail within 18 months. So, and that's a pretty. It's a generalized statistic. It's not. It's not focused on a specific industry or anything. I think it's a Gallup statistic, to be specific, if anybody wants to look it up specifically. But yeah, so I think the big thing here, and I think it also falls into we're not taking leadership development. We're not viewing it with enough of an objective or strategic lens. I'll use this example, and it comes from the idea of change theory, if you're familiar with it. But one of the most famous organizations that exists, and the only reason they exist is because of the change theory or the change model, is Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, what is Alcoholics Anonymous known for?

Helping people who have a problem with alcohol.

Exactly. Yeah, but are they teaching them anything new?

I'm not exactly sure what's going on. I've not been part of it, so I don't know.

Fair enough. Fair enough. I don't mean to put you on the spot, but. No, it's honestly, what AA does, is it brings people together to help them go from A to B. Okay, right. To go. To go from I'm an alcoholic to I'm an overcomer. Right. It's helping people navigate a journey of change or growth in a way that helps them successfully do it. The challenge that we have in leader development so often is that we're just given a course or a training or a book if we're lucky. Sometimes we're not given anything at all. But what change theory tells us is that whenever we do something new. Take working out, for example. The first week, you show up every day at 5am you're excited to be there, you're fired up, right? What happens the second week? You're sore, you're sore. The alarm goes off, you snooze it five times, right? And so what change theory tells us is there's this period, it's called uninformed optimism, which is the first stage, right? It's when you're excited. It's, you're the new leader, you're fired up, you're going to change the world. You're going to do everything the last guy couldn't figure out, right? And then typically, within 60 to 90 days, you enter into this valley of despair a lot of people call it, but it's really. It's this period of uninformed pessimism, right? You finally realize how much it's going to take. Like, it's going to be way harder than you thought. You now realize that, and it's up to you to navigate this challenging part of the journey where most people are going to quit. It's why most businesses fail within two to three years. It's the same exact thing, right? It's you're in the midst of it. You're in the midst of this really difficult journey, and you have to figure out how to get through to the other side. So what AA does is it comes in and it provides relationship to people going through this journey of informed pessimism to help them reach the other side. And so I think there's three things that we can pull out of this, that every organization, as long as they're a decent size and. Or as long as they're involved in some sort of organizations or communities, they can. They can partner with other organizations in their industry to do this as well. There's three things that they can do to really navigate this journey for new leaders, Help them overcome it, right? One is there should be some form of a structure in place, right? There should be like, you need to know exactly in your organization what your leaders need to know how to do from a leadership perspective, not a management perspective, from a leadership perspective, in order to create engagement, because that's ultimately the goal of leadership here. So structure needs to be in place. The second thing is there should be some form of guidance. What I mean by guidance is as a pilot, when I went through flight school, I flew with an instructor pilot, right? So I had a list of. A list of tasks and stuff that I had to learn how to do maneuvers, all these different things. And I had someone teaching me the structure, the tasks. What up? The final piece is this idea of community. When you bring all these. These three components together, you create this unique bond, I think, between the three components where they start to work with each other in this unique way. It's almost like a teepee, right? Like pull one leg of the teepee out and all the rest fall apart. The structure leans on the guidance, and they support one another. But the guidance and the structure lean on the community because the community is what's pushing that individual to keep going and to keep going and keep going. And then next thing you know, you're in a position where you realize how hard it is. You know, you have what it takes and you start doing it and you do it and you do it right. And the challenge is, when we're in that valley of despair, if you will, we don't rise to the level of our aspirations. We sink to the level of our habits. Unfortunately, so often our habits are defined by our relationships. So many new leaders don't have relationships with other leaders. That's why this element of community and going through this journey with other people is so important, to give these people, these new leaders, the strength to actually follow through on the commitments of being a leader. Because that's what's going to create the engagement at the end of the day across our organizations.

What, what advice do you have for someone out there? Maybe they are a leader and they're like, yeah, I'd like to be part of a community, but where do I find that?

Yeah, community is one of the hardest things to find, especially the older you get. Right. It's kind of weird. Like growing up, you're given community.

Yeah.

Then, you know, you may go to college or. You know, for me, I was in the military. Every job I had in the military came with a new community. It's just really hard. It's even something I'm navigating right now as an entrepreneur. It's like I no longer have a community that I go to every day, Monday to Friday. Right. So the biggest thing I would say is instead of just looking for community, I think you want to look for the character or the values that you want to associate within community. What I mean by that is it's the quality of the relationship. Right. It's the quality of the people we become the summation of the five people we surround ourselves with. Right. So find people that are where you want to be. Figure out, do whatever you can to get around it. The beautiful thing is, so often we assume that we're going to be a burden. But I'm sure you can attest this. I feel this way whenever someone reaches out to me for advice or help, for mentorship. I love helping them. I would, I'd go out, grab coffee with them, whatever it takes. Right. So I think the big part of it is just overcoming the concept that, you know, we might be being a burden on someone or anything like that. Just find the people that are where you want to be, that are accomplishing what you want to accomplish, that are doing the things you want to do, and just find a way to get around them. Don't take no for an answer.

Yeah, yeah. I even think about just my own journey with Gamma Academy. Like now wasn't quite the same because I had two business partners and the three of us sort of, you know, started the company together. So we had each other. But. But even still, like, I. I remember those early days, like, I, to your point, like I have a. Consider a mentor, older gentleman, is that I go to Church with. And he's just a brilliant business guy. And I just, you know, I, I would call him up, man, I would just start asking him questions, you know, and I was still very thankful for him, you know, in those early days. And I still, from time to time, I don't talk to him quite as much. But, you know, it's people like that that you can. That you can seek out and just, you know, who, who have. Who have done it before. And, you know, you. But you have to approach it with humility. Right. And that's, I think, a hard also for entrepreneurs is you say, well, I know it all. Well, no, you don't. And, you know, seeking out advice from other folks who have done it is super important.

Yeah. And I'll make one point of clarification. I think there's a big difference between seeking out mentorship and seeking out community or fellowship, if you will. Right. A mentor is someone who's been through the journey and can reach a hand down to you and help pull you through to where they are, whereas a fellow or someone alongside you is someone who's in the midst of it with. You can sympathize with what you're going through, but you can lean on each other to push each other forward. Yeah, there's a big difference. I think both are critical, absolutely critical. And they play two totally different roles. But when they work together, right. And then you add that bit of structure in with it, that's when things really start to skyrocket in terms of growth and you can apply this. I mean, if you look at any profession. Right. I was a pilot. It's obviously apparent there, and that's kind of what. What I pulled a lot of this out of. But look at engineering, right? Any professional engineering community, there's structure, there's mentorship and there's community. Right. You look at the legal profession, structure, mentorship, community, even medical. Right.

Six Sigma.

Exactly.

You know, Black belt, green belt. Yeah. You know, ye. Exactly.

And so learning to pull these concepts and apply it to leadership within our four walls can absolutely transform how we do business.

Yeah. That's awesome. Awesome. I'm wondering then if we could get into a little bit on your thoughts on some. Some steps. We're talking more about senior leadership now. Working to. We've touched on it a little bit. Maybe just go a little bit deeper on just really empowering people. In particular, that front line, the frontline workers. Like, what can we be doing to really get them fired up?

Yeah. You know, I think one of the best tools we can use. And this is. Now I'm going to get really tactical for us is the idea of a mission statement. Now, I'm obviously privy to it because I'm a military guy and I lived and breathed mission statements for my entire professional career. But I think a lot's gotten lost in translation when it comes to mission statements in the corporate world from being pulled out of the military context. And the biggest thing I'll say is that in the corporate world, we tend to see mission statements almost as this corporate brand. Right. It's like this is our purpose for existing. This is our feel good kind of fuzzy thing we're going to write on the wall and everybody's going to be happy about it. But that's not what a mission statement is. Right. A mission statement is meant to put people, a small team, on a mission that they can accomplish that gives clarity and purpose to every single thing they do. In the army, there isn't just one big mission statement for the Army. There are mission statements nested from the department of the army all the way down to each squad, small group of five to 10 people. And they all fit within each other. And there's a clear definition of what success looks like, when success has to happen, why success has to happen. If we could understand that concept, I think that's one of the number one. If you don't do that, one of the biggest ways you can improve engagement within a matter of a day or two. Right. In an organization, you have a clear mission for your business. And then each department has a clear mission that fits within that mission. And then within each department, each team on that department has a clear mission that fits within that department's mission. And it very clearly articulates the definition of success and the definition of failure and gives each individual a clear purpose to accomplish each and every day. You're going to be unstoppable.

Yeah.

And if you're motivated to go, I mean, everybody's motivated to win, Right. If you know what winning looks like, it's easy to go.

Do I think you just said. I was about to say it, but you said it like, what does winning look like? That's such an easy thing to say. But it really can be difficult to put your hands on sometimes in a company. Especially imagine a big company, even a small company. Doesn't matter. What does winning look like for each and every employee at every minute of the day? Right. Like, you can lose an hour and you only got six or seven more. Right. And it's, it's, it's it's a, it's a big topic.

Yeah, I think one of the things that, you know is a little bit old school that we need to get away from to really maximize our ability to engage our employees. You know, the kind of idea of like the front office numbers that stays back here, all these people on the floor, their job is just hit their numbers. We worry about the finance. No, dude, if, if we're a team, right. Your mission is my mission. We may have different subsets of that mission and we may come and support that mission in different ways, but it all has to nest within each other. Right. If at the end of the day, the mission of this organization is to grow our revenue by x percent, well, I play a role in that. Whether I'm the guy on the shop floor turning a wrench or whether I'm the second in line of the organization, we all play a role in that. And so don't segregate that mission based on whoever's where in your organization. We're all one for sure.

Okay, last question. So you've got a lot of experience, obviously, military, business world, all the rest of it. If you were to go into a company or an organization, a group of people call it that, and let's just say they're, they're really struggling. Just the, the group of people just, just not getting it done. What's the first thing that you would, that you would do or you would recommend that they do?

Yeah, I think the first thing you have to do is just hit pause and look at, look at everything that's going on. And you have to identify the one to three things that are the most important strategic objectives for you to accomplish. I would say in most organizations that are really struggling, their employee engagement is going to be one of those. Right. Maybe some element of the product or the customer service will be another one. But when you isolate those three things, that becomes your mission. Right? Your mission is to fix those. Your strategy is then going to help you start to identify the tactics that are going to be put in place to implement that strategy, accomplish that mission and go from there. If it's employee engagement, we kind of talked about it, right? It's like look at the big picture, Tie the strategy to your business objectives, roll out the tactics, get buy in from the team, sit back and watch the magic happen. But you have to learn how to take strategy and tie it to tactics. But you can't, you can't start nowhere. You have to understand why that strategy is important and what you're trying to accomplish.

Yeah, yeah, good stuff, man. Hey, if folks wanted to connect with you personally, Craig, what's the best way?

Yeah, let's connect on LinkedIn. You can find me there. It's just craig dash coyle, shoot me a connection request. Let's have a conversation. Or you can check us out@operationlead.com operationslead.com with an S operation. No S. No operation lead.com.

Okay? No one can give fake, fake traffic to all Operations lead. No S people, no S. All right? And we're going to have it all linked up here in the show notes as well. So. Hey, man, I appreciate you coming on. First of all, thank you for your service for the country. Really appreciate that. And then thanks for all you're doing and thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me. What a fun conversation.

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