008––Brad Douglas, CEO of Heartland Credit Union Association

I have the honor to work with many credit union groups and individuals all over the United States and now the world. And I say honor because credit union leaders really understand and embody what the sensei leader is all about. It's about service and dedication to the people in their organizations and in their communities. And one of the finest leaders that I've met recently is Brad Douglas. He's the CEO of the Heartland Credit Union Association. And that's who we'll be talking with today on Walking the Walk.

Welcome to Walking the Walk. The program for people who want to become better leaders and leaders who want to become better people. Start walking the walk with your host, renowned leadership speaker and author of The Sensei Leader, Jim Bouchard.

I met Brad Douglas last year when I presented at the Heartland Credit Union Association Conference in Kansas City, and Brad was introduced me— to me as their new CEO. Brad graduated summa cum laude from William Jewell College. He went on to earn a law degree at the University of Missouri and then moved into a successful career of both nonprofit and private sector leadership. He served as director and chair of the Community America Credit Union in Kansas City and as a regional administrator for the SBA, among other adventures. All that's impressive enough, but what really struck me about Brad and what we talked about most when we met was his love of history. You know, General Patton said once, "Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable," and Brad embodies this sentiment perfectly. Today on Walking the Walk, we'll talk with Heartland Credit Union Association CEO Brad Douglas on how today's leaders benefit from studying the leaders of the past and how history can help leaders cope with the problems of the future. Brad, thanks so much for being with us today.

I'm really happy to be with you, Jim.

You know, I really felt a connection when we first met, especially because of your love of history, and I truly believe that the most effective leaders are students of history. So I wanted to start off by asking you, which leaders from history do you feel really helped shape your leadership style? And which would you recommend today to aspiring and, well, and experienced leaders too, that they could learn more about?

One of the great leaders, I think, in American history was Abraham Lincoln. And I just think he was tremendous. And I don't know if you've ever had the privilege of reading the book that Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote, the presidential historian wrote about the fact that he, when he became president, he really took the folks that opposed him and put them on his cabinet. He wanted to hear diverse opinions and opposite viewpoints from his thinking so that he could make great decisions. And in doing so, he not only made very good decisions most of the time— not everybody makes great decisions all the time, obviously— but he also ended up earning the respect of his enemies and ultimately their complete devotion, loyalty, and friendship. And to me, that's the mark of a great leader. You can't fear hearing diverse viewpoints or wanting to understand what other people are thinking. I think, Jim, that too often folks in leadership positions begin believing their headlines, right? And, you know, start, start thinking that it's— that they're really tremendous at being a leader when in fact it's just the role that they're in. And they don't welcome different viewpoints often enough. And what I've always tried to encourage in our team, our senior leadership team, is I want to hear feedback that may be counter to what we're doing. I want to understand all the viewpoints. That's the only way that we can make the appropriate decisions about what we need to do going forward. If we don't know the truth, how can we make great decisions?

Yeah, ironically, I was going to say I couldn't agree more, but Consensus is not often, well, not usually, I should say, and maybe not even often the best informative factor in your course of action, is it? I mean, too many times a consensus can be built emotionally, consensus can be built on past cultural artifacts, and yet people are still hesitant, right, to open their minds and their hearts to that differing point of view. Specifically, how do you encourage that on your teams? Because I know that you do. How do you encourage people to share with you a differing opinion without— with them understanding that that's not a threat to you?

Well, you have to encourage it. And then, when they actually are willing to step forward and give you that feedback, you praise it. You encourage it. And if you get bad news, you don't take people's heads off. For instance, we had somebody at the start of this fiscal year, which we're on the calendar fiscal year, and there was a very large mistake that was made. And this person has been with our association for more than 20 years, and it was such a huge mistake that was made in terms of calculating our budget, we had to come— we were going to have to go back to our board and completely amend our budget. It was a about $100,000-plus mistake.

And it sounds like fun. Yeah.

So, so that person, when they realized they'd made the mistake, offered to resign and was convinced they were going to lose their job over it. And what I told him and what I ended up telling all of our staff was, look, we're all human. We're going to make mistakes. There is no pattern of making, you know, these kinds of mistakes. From this person repeatedly, and there was no intent behind it to make a mistake. I mean, we're not gonna, you know, hopefully make these mistakes all the time, but you don't take people's heads off for making a mistake. And I said, let's look at it this way. Let's come together as a team and let's come up with some solutions, and let's all meet on Wednesday. I want everybody to think about how we can fix this. And then let's get together. And what really made me proud of our— of the team that we've built here is that they went ahead and all met on Tuesday and came up with a complete plan that they were able to recommend to me. So when I walked into the meeting Wednesday, I thought we were all going to sit down and hash through it. They already had the solution. So instead of bringing a problem and then saying, how are we going to fix this? They walked into the room, said, here's the problem, here's how we can fix this, and here's why it's a win-win for everybody. That's perfect. And as a leader, that's where you want to be. And, and by publicly encouraging the employee that made the mistake and saying, look, everybody makes mistakes, you know, just here's how we can fix it going forward. Here's what we're going to do differently. You know, carry on, keep doing the job that you're doing. We've earned that person's loyalty, hopefully. And in this case, I know for sure we have. And you give them the strength and the willingness to step forward to give you bad news or other viewpoints. And by setting an example in those ways, more and more you set up a culture where openness and transparency and clarity around solving problems and issues becomes really a major integral part of the culture.

That's so important because, you know, we don't— obviously, we don't want to encourage or even, most of the time, tolerate foolish or negligent mistakes. But honest mistakes are made, and sometimes the person who makes that honest mistake really has the best perspective, right, has the best position to offer some solutions to it. But sometimes— here's an issue that comes up. I'd be interested to hear your response to this. When you encourage that type of culture where people are bringing you differing opinions, sometimes it's pointing out a mistake, sometimes it's just an alternative course to go forward. I found that sometimes people get discouraged if their ideas are not always accepted. And isn't that a balancing act that you have? Because, you know, people can bring good ideas, but it may not be the course of action you're going to take now. It may be something you table for later. It may just not be the right, you know, the right course of action at the time. How do you keep those people energized even if their specific ideas or suggestions aren't the ones that are being utilized most often?

That is a great question. I really, I love your questions. I appreciate it. So here's, here's how I, I have done it in the past, and, and I've seen this done with other leaders. First of all, um, don't try to win every battle. Give them some victories. And so if there's something you can do that's not that big a deal and, and they'll be encouraged by it and they feel listened to, um, then, then go ahead and do it. But secondly, uh, what I tell our folks is, look, I ultimately— yes, the decision lies The responsibility of the decision lies with me. But my job, I believe, Jim, that I have— I'm going to go a little broad here. I have 5 roles as a leader. The first one is to get everybody wrapped around the vision and strategy and make sure there's clarity and everybody's on board. And let's go.

Amen.

You get them excited about where we're going. People want to be part of something bigger than themselves. And they want to know they're making a difference if they're not going to be at home with their loved ones, you know, in their work. Secondly, then, and this is what's relevant to the question you've just asked, you go out as a leader and you find great people and you put them in the right seats on the bus, as Jim Collins says. But when you do that, you have to step back and empower them. And I do not micromanage. If I have found the right people they're going to be making the right decisions 98% of the time and 90% of the time. And what I tell them is, when you bring a recommendation to me, it's my job to make sure that you've thought it through. So I'll ask tough questions, hopefully. That's part of the job of a leader is to ask the tough questions. And I'm going to make sure that you've thought it through. I'm going to ask about the pros, the cons. But in about 99% of the— cases, if you've thought it through, I'm going to go with your recommendation. And when you empower people like that, they become energized, they feel you trust them, and they go. The third thing though that you have to do, and this is number 3 of 5 things that I think a leader has to do, is you have to hold them accountable. And you have to make sure that they're going in the right direction and that they're moving fast enough and that they're— that we make sure that the goals we've laid out for each person individually at the start of the year are being addressed. Fourth, I manage the board, and that's a completely different topic and conversation, I'm sure, for another day. And I manage those relationships. And then fifth, my job is to bring opportunity to our team. So I spend time out networking across the industry, across the country, and regionally in our region. We are actually a credit union association that serves about 200 credit unions across Kansas and Missouri. And so my job is to, when I hear of folks that want to do business with us or that want to help us or provide services for our credit unions, I, if I think it's valid, I put them in front of our senior team, our leaders, and let them validate. I don't just go in and make the decision myself. I may give them some direction, say, hey, this sounds interesting to me. Let's really explore this. But then I let them do their job. There's an example going on right now of a large regional insurance company that's very interested in working with us. And providing insurance to our industry across the region. And we've told them we already have a long, decades-long relationship with our existing insurance provider, but they're very interested in trying to provide what they think might be a stronger solution for us. And so we're gonna have that conversation, but they keep wanting to talk to me, and I keep telling them, the real people you need to talk with are the people that I empower. It's our senior team. They're the ones that are actually where the rubber meets the road. And if they work with you and analyze this and do due diligence with this and come to me with a recommendation that this is something we ought to take a look at, that's the point where I get to dive in. So, back to your question, how do you encourage them? I give them a lot of power and authority. It's my job to put the right people in those seats and then sit back and let them do their jobs.

So, they're going to sort it out. Yeah, excellent. You know, as you were talking too, and not to lose sight of the theme of history today, as you were talking, I was reminded of another one of my favorite quotes from General Patton who said, "Never tell people how to do anything. Tell them what needs to be done and they'll surprise you with the ingenuity." And it sounds like that's exactly what you're doing there.

Oh, that's— I've heard that quote many times and I absolutely think that's right on. As a leader, you should be focusing on what do you want as the outcome. Where are we going? What is it that we want to do? I actually have to spend time thinking that, you know, we've got such great people on our team that it's hard to stay in front of them. And I have to make myself sit down and block off time where I'm thinking 6 months out because you have to be thinking. And there's no time to go in and tell somebody how to do their job unless they're coming in and specifically asking for some suggestions. Right. You know, and then always be there for them. I, you know, I have an open door policy. And if people need help, our job is to make sure that we empower them to do it. So you help them and you drop whatever you're doing to help them. If they need me to go in and fill out folders, you know, with marketing collateral, I'll stop what I'm doing and do it because I want them to understand nobody's above helping the entire team and making sure that we need to get where we want to go. And that starts at the top.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

So Patton's quote that you just said, you know, you don't tell people how to do it. You tell them where you want to go and then they will blow you away.

He's so often misunderstood. It's interesting because, you know, he's held up, and I think largely because of the movie, which is an excellent movie, but it's a little bit slanted, you know, where he's held up as an icon of authoritarian leadership, where to me he's not an authoritarian as much as he's authoritative. And right, but I want to walk back one more war actually, because one of the, one of the just great joys that I had in Kansas City, I know you and I touched on this when I met you, was visiting your World War I museum, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a, it's a treasure.

It is, isn't it? One of the things I was struck with though, and this is an interesting parallel that actually came up with on the plane home from that trip. Uh, one of the challenges that I hear most often in the CU world today is the advancing technology and keeping up with that, particularly competing with some of the commercial banks and their installation of technology. And in that museum, there was a powerful— because we were crossing eras during World War I, right? The technology was accelerating at such a rapid pace, and they were keeping up with it through that war. It was very, very interesting. But then I thought, you know, over time, it seems that people have always faced that challenge, right? This constant struggle to keep up with technology, employ the technology that's available, and how to keep, you know, honor the traditions of the past that can still serve us so well. And like I said, CUs are facing that right now in a very, very tangible way, right? That technology is there. You need to keep up with it, but still some people are hesitant. And my thought was, you know, can we really learn the lessons from the way folks handled that in world, especially during World War I? And how do you apply that? What lessons can we apply to the CU world in adapting technology today?

Well, number one, there has to be a commitment to it, and it has to be, um, something that, that widely is accepted. And you want to be a little bit ahead of the curve. We're moving so quickly today in technology and the development of technology that you're gonna have to be willing to take some risks. So number one, you have to commit to it. Number two, you have to be willing to take a little bit of risk In our case, that means putting some money towards it and helping credit unions maybe put some money towards it. As you mentioned at the beginning, at the top of the show here, credit unions are very philanthropic. We actually run a charitable foundation out of Heartland that helps credit unions. If they have a technology need but they don't have the money, we can supply that. One of our strategic outcomes that we want for them through the foundation is capacity building. We can provide that, but you have to be willing to be all in. So you've got the commitment, you have to devote resources to it, and you have to move quickly. You can't dilly-dally around for 2 years because by then what you're working on is irrelevant probably. So in the credit union industry right now, you know, there's the whole challenge of distributed ledger technology or Bitcoin technology.— and it's widely recognized that it's going to be a game changer and it's already beginning. We want to make sure that we're not left behind in that. Otherwise, we become a poor solution or alternative to the for-profit banking world. And so industry-wide, we're committing quite a bit of resources to a working group that has then now come up with— has now come up with a proof of concept that they're beginning to work on. We have to be willing to take that risk. What we have done is we have devoted quite a bit of money to it. I mean, there is some risk there. Is that just going to be money down the drain, or are we going to see some sort of proof of concept that can be usable for our credit unions? When you apply that to World War I, they did not have time. They had to devote incredible resources and be all in. And in order to be as successful as we ultimately ended up being in World War I.

I hope more people from all over the country will visit that museum. I mean, what just an incredible testament to how people can adapt so quickly, right? And just— right, they altered, they altered the, you know, they altered the future. There's no— that might sound trite, but I can't think of any better words to express it.

You know, you mentioned at the top of the show that oftentimes leaders forget to look to the past. And I feel in some instances that that's incredibly true. World War I is already a forgotten war because there aren't very many people left. I don't think there's anybody left now. I think the last person just passed away that was around when that happened. And as Americans, and sometimes not even— broader than Americans, we forget the lessons of the past. And we start making the same mistakes. And, you know, I'm thankful that I enjoy not only American history. I've now, as you and I discussed when you were here in Kansas City, and by the way, you did a great job for us.

Thank you.

You really got people thinking and we really appreciated having you. But when you, when you forget the lessons of the past, you're, you're doomed to make some of the same mistakes. And I enjoy history, and I hope that more people do. I hope my kids do, you know, and I think they are. I think they have a curiosity and are beginning to understand, wow, these people were just like us. You know, they have technology we do and some of the conveniences we have, but otherwise there was a lot of similarity. And I think it's fascinating to look back and understand what, what was this leader faced with. What was Alex— I'm into Alexander Hamilton right now because, you know, music's a big part of my life, and I'm getting ready to read the book and everything. But I've been, I've been reading about him, and, uh, just some of the things that they were going through at the time and some of the battles they had are so applicable to what you're seeing, for instance, on healthcare reform today. You know, there are lessons to be learned even 200 years ago.

No, absolutely, absolutely. Especially the fundamentals, you know. I do believe— this is a topic for another day, I'm sure— but, you know, we're at this crossroads between, you know, how much exactly do we want our government to do for us and how much control do we want the government to have in our lives. And that's, you know, not— I'm not saying that from an emotional and ideological point of view, uh, and I'm not trying to convince somebody one way or the other, but that's a question we're facing. And you're absolutely right, they face that same question in at the beginning. But you know what, one of the things that— another thing that keeps coming up in the CU world is a leadership gap. And I always say, you know what, for you guys, and it's, it's a little bit different, not totally unique, but kind of special compared to other industries, that your leadership gap happened because you have great leaders that just stick around a long time, right? And so, right, right. And so the middle opportunities sometimes aren't there, and people go on to other industries. They often circle back in the CU world, which is kind of interesting But as you mentioned, you know, with younger people, sometimes they— well, I hate to say it this way because it sounds like I'm pigeonholing them, and I'm not really. I'm so encouraged, especially in CU leadership, from what I'm seeing from the younger generations. But we do have to recognize that there's sometimes a gap and that we need to prepare aspiring leaders very, very quickly, and that there is not just for younger people, but I think culturally we have that ignorance of history, right? That can be a great disservice to us. So how are you addressing that leadership gap, and how are you preparing younger people to step up quickly these days, right, and take the reins and move into some important positions?

Well, in a number of ways. And internally here in our organization, we are investing in training for our leaders. We are— I have invested in our budget to hire a leadership coach that I make available to all of them. And then right now our senior team is putting together a program for our mid-level managers to help develop their leadership skills. And we're going to put together a curriculum that allows them to begin to develop, because I think one of the great mistakes that leaders forget to— that they make is they forget to deal with succession planning. And one of the things I enjoy most about being a leader is not only empowering people that are working with you on your team, but also helping them develop into the leaders they're going to need to be when you're gone. And when you decide, you know, when I decide to step off and step out of the way, I want to make sure that I've developed folks that can step right in and the organization and what we think of as being a powerful mission doesn't miss a beat. It doesn't miss a step. Secondly, in terms of doing this for the industry, you're right. The industry is really suffering from a leadership gap, and it's exactly what you say. A lot of the folks stay in the— working in the credit union world is fun because it's a culture of people helping people.

For sure.

And so they stay a long time, and they love the impact that they're getting to have. And then all of a sudden they look around and they think, There's nobody out here in Hays, Kansas, or in Goodland, Kansas, that can step in. I've got a staff of 3 or 4 people and none of them want to do this and none of them have been prepared to do this. What am I going to do? And so what we're doing is we're trying to provide 2 services through our organization. One of them is we are taking— we've developed a program we call Credit Union Lead, CU Lead. And we are making it competitive and credit unions can apply to have up-and-coming young leaders in their organizations apply. And if they, if they are selected, and usually there's a class of about 25 or 30 each year, they get to go into a year-long program that teaches leadership skills and teaches them about the credit union culture and history and teaches them how to be leaders in the credit union world. And we bring in leaders like you from across the country or from across the region each month. They— this CU Lead training class comes in either Kansas City or they'll go into Lawrence, Kansas, or they'll go to St. Louis. But they are allowed to come in and hear from these great leaders. And so we're trying to train that next generation. The second thing that we're doing for our members is we have developed a human resource solution called Open Door Solutions. It's a company basically that we are providing as a service for additional fees. It's a fee-for-service. So it's a legitimate separate business that we're running. And in that, we also are working with our credit unions to provide succession planning, counseling, guidance, and leadership development. So it may range from literally talking about succession planning on boards or in a CEO's leadership team. Or it might be counseling the leader himself or herself on how are we training, how are you training the next generation, and literally sitting down and telling them how they should be doing this. So those are the different types of things that we're doing to try to make sure that we're not forgetting to address the need for developing the next generation of leaders.

I knew you had some black belt in your blood, you know, because you're talking training, training, training, training, training. And you know, that's the mantra we keep trying to sing all over the country. And that's That's exactly it. And yet those programs you're talking about, the risk of sounding self-serving, yes, I'd be honored to be part of those programs in any way, shape, or form, and love to discuss curriculum. But it kind of turns on this next question though, and I'm anticipating the answer, but I want people to hear it in your own voice. How important, when you're talking about this type of training, how important is the mindset, the character development, right? The interpersonal skills as part of that training. I understand, you know, when people challenge me, "What's more important, the hard skills or the soft skills?" I usually say, "Well, they're both very important." And sometimes one or the other will gain more weight. But I've studied so many organizations that ignored the so-called soft skills. Just as in martial arts, we see the soft skills usually are the most powerful. But what are your feelings about that? How important are these ideas? Like I said, philosophy, the character building, the ethics, the interpersonal skills. And I imagine that's a critical part of your training that you just talked about.

It is. It is a critical part. So the short answer to your question is it's extremely critical. And I'll give you an example in my own case. I don't come from the credit union world. I have never run a credit union. I don't have to sit there and worry about loan ratios. I've never had to do that. I accumulated a lot of experience outside the industry and then was brought in to bring in some outside thinking to our organization. And I feel very fortunate to have been given that opportunity. But in my own case, where I'm stronger is on the soft skill side. And because, you know, I rely heavily on people who have come up through the credit union industry and are teaching me what's important in terms of the hard skills. But I can provide some value on the soft skill side. And again, it goes back to what we talked about earlier in the conversation. If you're empowering your young leaders and helping them feel energized by what you're doing and that they're part of something bigger, to me, the hard skills are almost like blocking and tackling. You have to be able to understand moves, right? Whether you're talking about wrestling or whether you're talking about judo or karate. Or being a sensei. One of the things that I enjoyed about your talk was being a sensei is much more about what's between the ears than it is are you really good on the mat. Yeah, absolutely. I was a wrestler and I can tell you it's far more important, and I watched my son wrestle, and it's far more important to walk onto the mat with your head straight than it is on understanding that you know all the moves and you know the hard skills. You're not going to be successful if you don't have the mindset and the ability to think things through correctly and to understand the soft skills of being a leader. I think it's, in many ways, Jim, it's more important than the hard skills.

That's so gratifying to hear. And I'm hearing more leaders talk about that. Thankfully throughout the country, throughout the world. And one of the things you just touched on— we almost have to wrap things up now. We absolutely were going to do another episode with you if you're willing. I'd love to hear more about managing the board especially. But you just touched on something that came up on our recent trip to Cuba, and it was with a group, a contingent from Jamaica. We were doing a workshop on our aspiring leaders track, and one of the strategies that I share is learn first to be a good follower. And it was interesting because there was a little cultural divide there, because— and they explained it very clearly, it was a really interesting discussion— that in the, in the culture in Jamaica, uh, people felt that it was their total responsibility once they accepted a position of authority to be the leader, right? Period. And it wasn't to be subservient. That's where the, the translation problem happened, right? I said, no, I'm not talking about subservience at all, not in the classic sense, not in the strict sense. But it's about being able to, like you said, leadership is a role, right? And so is followership. And we need to be an effective leader, to me, needs to be able to switch those very quickly. But back to the idea of keeping with the aspiring leaders theme, I think too often today there's expectations in our culture here in the States where someone's been through the business school, they've been through some level of training, And then their expectations are very high, right? Their demands are very high. And I keep saying, first learn to be a good follower. Understand what that means, right? And understand because you'll be able to switch those roles. Are we singing in harmony there?

Yeah, we are. And I think you hear it in different ways from people who understand leadership. And to me, Jim Collins said it extremely articulately, and that is humble servant leadership.

Amen.

What that means is you don't have to be the guy out front all the time. You don't have to be the one that says, "I am the leader." There's a great cartoon that my kids used to watch, a Disney film, 101 Dalmatians. There's a little scene in there about two hound dogs. It's just a little side scene from the movie. You've got two hound dogs and one of them says, "What's that noise?" The bigger hound dog says, You know, what's that noise? And the other hound dog says, it's cricket bug. And he goes, wait a minute, I'm the leader, I'll decide what it is. It's a little cricket bug. You know, and you don't need, you don't need, again, sorry for that poor impersonation of Two Hound Dogs and 101 Dalmatians, but—

That wasn't bad, you were okay.

You don't need that. To always have a voice. If you give your leaders below you in the organization a voice and empower them, let them shine, be a servant to the organization and think, what is best in this moment for this organization? Do they need me to step up at this moment? Is that the best way to move the organization forward? Or is it something that our, you know, Haley can do on our team, or is it something that we can let one of our credit unions shine and do? One of the things that I have been gratified to see is we have completely changed the approach for our foundation that I talked about a little bit earlier. And in the past, our foundation, in order to, to help credit unions, was basically just providing scholarships for folks to attend training. And we still do that, but we wanted to broaden out and have an impact in the communities of our credit unions. But instead of stepping out and providing that money directly to the charities or communities directly from us and getting the credit for that. I've been so proud of that foundation board and our leader, Andrea Robinson, in that foundation stepping up and saying, let's give the credit union in that community the power to be out front in their community and build their community themselves. We tell the charities or the people that come to us for money, look, you need to partner with the credit union. We're going to provide the resources to the credit union, and then they get to say what happens in their community. And, and to me, that's a win-win. We get to have an impact, but our credit unions get to help build their communities and get credit for that in their communities. So it's a win-win for everybody. And when you can provide that sort of humble servant leadership, which is the way I'm characterizing what we're talking about, I think that the organization moves forward and that you have a much better chance of success.

You know, that's a perfect way to wrap it up. And that's a wonderful program you have going. It reminded me of one of my favorite quotes. And I know I probably said this at your event. I say this all the time. Nothing that I share is new. This is not rocket surgery and it's not new. And Lao Tzu, 2,500 years ago, right, he said, when people are not in awe of your majesty, "Then great majesty has been achieved." And that's exactly what you were just talking about. That's a wonderful—

Oh gosh.

Yeah.

What a great quote. I love that.

He was a pretty smart guy, Lao Tzu. So we need to pay attention, right? These folks in the past, I believe they, a lot of times, especially when you go that far back, right? They were uncluttered by all the distractions we have today. So they had a very clear observation of humanity. And to me, that's at the heart of what I do. We need to get back to that humanity in leadership, no?

Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more, Jim. And I love the principles that you're teaching. And we would welcome you back out here in Kansas City anytime. And come back out and we'll have some barbecue. And—

There we go.

All right. And you and I will go together to the World War I Museum. I try to get there every year or two. It is just such a treasure. And as you said, it's a way we can walk into the past to learn about what we're doing today.

Well, that'll be an honor. We'll make it happen. And I'll tell you, I couldn't imagine someone who embodies what Lao Tzu talks about more than you do. So it's really just been a pleasure to meet you, and I think we've got some great adventures ahead together.

That sounds great. I look forward to it.

Okay, Brad, we're going to have you back to talk about managing the board, right?

I love that topic. You can talk for days on that topic. So yeah, let's get together and have a chat about good board governance and good board and Building high-performing boards.

There you go. Brad Douglas, the CEO of Heartland Credit Union Association. Thanks so much for being with us today.

It's been my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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