Navigating the Complex World of Veterans' Benefits | Dr. Paul R Lawrence | 607

Peter Winick. How clearly do you understand the needs of your target audience? Most people who write a book have some preexisting knowledge of their audience. Maybe they worked in the profession themselves, or they may have consulted to their audience members or even conducted research. Today, I want to introduce you to someone who held virtual town halls with 5.7 million people before writing his second book. My guest today is Dr. Paul R. Lawrence, former Undersecretary of Benefits and author of Veterans Benefits and You. In this episode, I speak with Paul about how this book came to be, how he held town halls during the pandemic to help ensure US veterans and their families understood the benefits they were eligible for. We then talk about the experience of learning what questions were top of mind for his audience, how that impacted him while he was still in government service, and how after leaving government service, he wrote a book to convey the information his audience needed most. He wrote it and spoke to them in a way they wanted and in a way they actually will use to get the information. I'm Bill Sherman. You're listening to Leveraging Thought Leadership. Ready? Let's begin. Welcome to the show, Paul.

Hey, Bill. Great to be with you.

So you and I were talking earlier and you made the comment that the book that was hardest to write actually has had the greatest impact. Can you explain that statement and sort of tell that story?

Sure. In my consulting life, I had co-authored a number of books working with another co-author, interviewed a lot of people to get thought leadership out about primarily public administration. So when I was in government, I accumulated a couple of experiences. And so one, when I got out, I wrote about my time in government, my first book, sort of post-government, called Transforming Service to Veterans, which told my story of being in government, what it was like to manage, hire, fire, move, all the kind of stuff you wonder about, how it's actually done. But then I decided to write a book since I was the Undersecretary of Benefits about benefits. I realized that all these questions I was getting when veterans would talk to me, I would do town halls or visit with people. I always like, what are my benefits? How do I use them exactly? So I realized there was a need for this book explaining this all out. And it was the hardest to write because you had to be simultaneously, simultaneously in-depth and thorough, but short and easy to read. It had to be comprehensive and you had to be right. So unlike before, while I was telling a story that I lived or some experiences I knew of, and this was You must get this very, very right and you must make it easy to read. So it was very hard to do, but it's actually the one that's sold the most.

And let's stay there for a moment and unpack it. So you've trained academically, okay? Worked as a consultant. Both of those have very formal, complex writing styles with a lot of jargon, right? And you speak specialist to specialist often. Whereas reaching an audience of potentially all veterans in the US, you're talking tens of millions, right? And so how do you make complex ideas and the benefits process simple and accessible when you have a larger audience? That really does change the style and tone of the writing because you're not writing expert to expert. You're writing expert to someone who has a need and going, how do I do this?

Right. Well, first, sort of granular. If you think about what you do as, you know, an advanced person, you write large, long, complex sentences, right?

Right.

Lots of work. So obviously the first trick is short sentences with easy-to-understand concepts. But what I learned from being in office when I actually had to talk to people about this, right? And again, there's about 18 million veterans in the United States. So this is a big bell curve of the entire population was by and large they wanted information quickly. How do I do something? I want the history of this. I don't really care about the court cases.

I tell me, is this something I don't need footnotes? I don't want to download a 50-page PDF answering the question. Yeah, yeah.

Just I earned this benefit. How do I use it? Most importantly, how does it affect my life the way it's supposed to positively? And help me, you know, pursue the American dream, as we say. And then, and then make it easy for me to understand. Don't make me research it. And that's why I put 'em all in one book so you wouldn't have to go 6 different places. So it was hard because it was too easy to want to explain something that was complex in a very hard way to understand, right? So you sort of had to figure out what's really, what's about what I'll call the 90% rule. Most people, when they go out and apply for a benefit, 90% of them will go through this process. Some will have rather complex needs, they'll have to get that help somewhere else. But if I get 90% of the people rowing in the right direction, that was, that was really my goal.

And I think that reaching the 90% solution that solves the problem for most people and also makes it quick and easy is really the goal. And that's one of the challenges of thought leadership. Often you know too much. It's the curse of knowledge, right? You know all the nuance, you know the back history, and you want to share that where somebody says, yeah, just answer my question in 60 seconds, thank you.

Yeah, no, and I'm sure you've heard this term. It was used a lot in government, especially in the military: BLUF— bottom line up front. Just tell me the answer. I'll figure it out. If I want to know more, I'll ask you more questions. But I just want to know, is this something that's going to help me or applicable to my life? And also what I worried about, Bill, quite frankly, was a lot of folks had veterans in their life who were older, uncle, neighbor, and the like. They often weren't asking questions for themselves so much as for somebody in their ecosystem, their family. So I realized what they probably need is information that can help them. So I spent a lot of time on benefits that you would draw on when you got older so that folks could say, hey, I see something I can go help somebody with as well.

I want to circle back to something that you alluded to, but I think is very important. You said, when I was the undersecretary, I wound up speaking to a lot of veterans. And answering their questions. I want to unpack that because there's a story there in terms of how you wound up talking to so many veterans when you were in that role. Right? Right. So how did that happen?

Well, pre-pandemic, if you think about this, so I was in office from April of 2018 to the end of the administration in January of '21. Pre-pandemic, I'd travel about 2 times a month and I'd go to cities where often that had an office, right, were processing veterans' stuff. And then I would speak to in the evening veterans groups at like a VFW hall or American Legion post. So I had a lot of interaction with veterans in small to medium-sized form. So I began to figure out these are their questions, you know, how do you deal with people who are unhappy? How do you sort of figure out how to get them solutions? But when the pandemic came in about March of 2020, you couldn't travel anymore. But there was a need to get information to veterans, especially answer their questions and also talk about them. You remember what facilities are open, what can you do, what's available, and all that kind of pandemic stuff. So I very quickly figured out you could do what I ended up calling telephone town halls. Through the miracle of, you know, outbound calls, we would focus in on a state, advertise you can call this number and participate in this, or you'd call out to veterans' numbers and they could accept the phone call, press 3 if you want to join it, or whatever. And so at any one point, somewhere between 10,000 in the small states and more than 100,000 in the big states, veterans were on the phone, you know, asking questions and listening to the answers. So I did this sort of state by state for the most part, about 110 times in 2020, sort of every night, every afternoon you could imagine it because there was a need to get information because remember, everyone was at home trying to figure out what to do. So you call, you got people about 4:00, 5:00 their time, they were available and you got people on the phone. You could talk a little bit. And then I answered questions, you know, press 1 if you want to answer a question. So took about 15 questions every time. So you can see almost 1,600 questions. So reaching out, engaging, and then taking unfiltered questions where you try to help people help veterans deal with their issues.

And so over the course of those telephone town halls, how many people did you have in total?

Right. We estimated 5.7 million people at any one time when you added them all up were on the phone listening and engaging.

And literally hundreds, if not thousands of questions over the process.

Yeah. So about, about 1,600 questions were fielded. But also, if you couldn't get through, an operator come on and you could ask a question. And so those questions were then farmed out to people who could answer them. So, you know, you're right, thousands of questions probably got answered. And what was really important was obviously, you know, when someone calls up, they're asking a very personal question about an issue. So you can't really answer their questions. You can give them general information, But somebody has to look at their information, we call it the file, and see kind of what's going on. So what you were promised was the minute, you know, you sort of had your call on the air, you know, talked about, when they hung down because you could see their phone number, somebody would call them up who could pull up their file and really figure out what was needed. So often their situation was resolved in detail during the hour of the phone call, if not within the next 24 hours.

One of the things that strikes me is if you had set out to write this book as a consultant without experience in government, right, you wouldn't have been able to say, yeah, I wound up doing town halls with 5.7 million people, answering 1,600 questions. That the government's ability to do scale is earth-shattering, literally, in that way. And so you really were able to build out in some ways sort of the frequently asked questions list, as well as also an outline for the book in some ways by just going through that experience.

Yeah, I know, exactly. The scale is definitely true. I mean, the order of magnitude of what government does is hard to imagine, right? I remember filling out the forms and the questionnaires when they were vetting me for this job. It's like, what's the most amount of people you've ever been in charge of? And I had worked at big companies and I'd say, yeah, well, about 2,000, but I was probably rounding up. And I walked in this job and I was in charge of 25,000 people and it was one of the smaller government agencies, right? And so you have the scale thing, certainly have the resources to talk to some of the 18 million veterans in our country at that. Or their families in this case. But it's also kind of at the other end of the scale, answering these questions and trying to figure out what people were complaining about often or talking about really took me into the understanding the nuances of what the subject was. It's all enough to know generally, hey, here's the issue. But if you have to answer a question and often it's the same question every day in my journey, you go, wait a minute, something's really wrong or something's not right here. What is it about this organization, the way they're presenting information, the way they're dealing with the customers, the veterans, that needs to be improved. So it was simultaneously large and sort of potentially overwhelming, but also detailed and often frustrating when you'd go, how come the same question is coming up? Why is the system unable to resolve these issues without, you know, obviously very high-level intervention?

Well, and there's two different scales of touchpoints that you had. One where you said, hey, we went to a, uh, Veterans Hall, you know, in pre-pandemic times. And then when you have small states, 10,000, large states, 100,000, I mean, those, those are massive numbers on a call. And the ability to get real-time feedback at that scale And then be able to, like you said, you get 25,000 people reporting into that structure to be able to follow up and ask questions. That's a great tool for voice of the customer, you know, from a bottom-up perspective on its own.

Well, it was very powerful, and I'll tell you, honestly, there was nothing— it was nothing more powerful than the next day or whatever, meeting with leaders and saying, listen, last night I talked to 47,000 veterans in Tennessee. And I got to tell you, they're complaining about something you're telling me is okay. We have a disconnect.

Okay.

And what that led to was not just employees, not just, you know, veterans calling in to listen. It led to employees listening, saying, oh my goodness, what is he listening to? What are they, whatever? And how quickly can we resolve the issues? So, for example, in a state— make up a state— Indiana, while the people would call and complain, there would be employees at the Indianapolis office calling into the operator and said, I heard that question. I will call the veteran and take care of it. They're in my state. I will resolve that issue. So it led to this and it led to engagement at levels that I really hadn't contemplated.

And it sounds like there was a bit of serendipity to begin with in terms of figuring out how do I reach veterans at a time when I can't get on the road and travel, but then became not only a tool for leading the organization, but also then helping the organization serve more effectively.

Right. No, it really had these incredible unintended consequences, of course, of the pandemic because facilities were closed, right? So you'd say, hey, what if somebody had a medical appointment? This was less about their benefits, but VA also provides healthcare, which is really the big thing, right? Are these facilities open? How would you find out? Right. Then, of course, people wanted to know, are you still processing my application for benefits? Right. Because employees weren't coming in. What was the situation? What could you do? So, yeah, it began to sort of stopgap, get information the best way we could figure out, then to suddenly, oh my goodness, what customer service things can be done to the point where, you know, you had these sort of amazing kind of things happen as people resolve the issues. At a speed that they probably had never seen before.

If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps as well as thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. So let's step back for a moment. You're doing this in real time. I'm guessing that as you're running the department and working with your team and working with veterans, you're not going, oh my gosh, this would make a great book.

No, I had— I always contemplated writing the book I alluded to first, Transforming Service to Veterans, because I don't think anybody writes a good book about their experience in government. They tend to forget, and it's not revisionist history about, gee, I did wonderful things when I didn't, though there's some of that. The books I read about people who actually get into positions of government where they manage— not the big policy people who like want to save the world, but How do you— they tended to forget how hard stuff was. Oh, we had this huge, huge problem. This is what they would write. We had a huge problem. Got 3 or 4 people together, had a meeting, and it was resolved. It never works. Yeah, it's much more complicated.

It doesn't work that way in small organizations. It can't work that way in government.

So I wanted to write a book about how do you actually resolve problems and how do you do it. So that book was there, the reflecting on what I had heard after I left office in '21, early in '21. On what I had done in '20 really made me, you know, just have this like profound, you know, in-depth, in-depth, in-depth analysis of the obvious, which is everybody was asking me these same questions. Why aren't— why isn't there information about it? And that's what led to the book.

So how long did it take to write the book once you decided, okay, I will write it?

Yeah, if you start like, okay, the first day I put pen to paper and really began to think about it. Took about 4 months. But again, you know, figuring out the outline and what you were going to do and whatever, that was actually pretty straightforward. It was more how much, what level of detail, how much checking, you know, on the precision of the answers and the accuracy. And this was all just me because I figured, you know, you really can't outsource this to anybody. I know I, answer the questions, I learn the information, I've got to go through and be able to explain it.

And so, it sounds like you had the outline quickly and then it was a matter of building it out and also making sure that it served your audience. Mm-hmm.

Well, a couple things. The outline was the benefits, but there's a lot of setup, right? Am I eligible for the benefits? A lot of people don't realize what kind of discharge you got. How you served in the military, whether National Guard, the Reserves, a lot of things like that. And then there was a lot of things on the way I wanted to include that really weren't part of the benefits, right? There's a lot of information about homeless veterans, what you can do in the programs, because that's something that just everybody is aware of and concerned about. So I added some things in there about things maybe you just didn't know about that's available, um, to help. So yeah, there were a few things along the way I picked up And then how do you get help at no cost? Who could help you go through these processes? So I wanted to include something, no kidding, here is an appendix with everybody's name, everybody's phone numbers, everybody's email. No kidding.

It's all right there.

Here you go.

So you have this book now. You've also served in government. Talk to me about impact and the difference of impact. Because you've led the organization responsible for veterans benefits. Now you're reaching out to veterans and saying, hey, here's how you make the most of what you have earned. What impact have you seen and how is it different?

Um, so it's, it's a couple kind of things. One is sort of obviously people purchased a book and you look at sort of the response, right? And what I looked at was the two things I really wanted people to say. This is easy to read and it helped me in my situation. So I can see that and people will write you on social media and say that. Okay, so that felt really good. I've also had people do what I've told you about. I gave this to somebody in my network or whatever. I helped them. That was really good. And I've had a lot of people ask me to talk to their veterans group and companies. And this is something I feel strongly about. Everyone has an affinity group, right, in a company often. And the veterans as a whole, I don't think really appreciate what the power they would have if they were better organized. Right. So they often get together for happy hours, but they don't do a lot of stuff compared to the other veterans group. That's obviously a generalization, which is not always true. Right. And so they'll often call me and say, hey, will you talk to our veterans group and explain benefits to them, answer their questions? And help them as a group be better veterans and access it. So that's been really exciting. And I've had people contact me on LinkedIn, said, hey, will you help me with some research? You understand some issues. Will you write a chapter in my book about things? Will you help me? And I've even had people call up and, and want to hire me to be a client in some of the issues they're dealing with. So it's had a wide range of impact, you know, beyond just sort of getting information to folks who I thought, you know, really would would appreciate it.

So you've written books on the more professional side, the transforming government, you know, process, written chapters, that sort of thing. And then you have one which is a very popular audience nonfiction book. Where do you see yourself going from here in writing? More on the research and academic side, more on the policy side, or more popular?

A little bit of the latter, more popular, but that will involve some policy stuff. What's happened over the last year working through this book and related stuff is I really beginning to think a lot about veteran employment.

Okay.

And I think there's really an opportunity for more research around that subject. So I think it would be a more popular book, but obviously with some policy recommendations. A good example. Veteran unemployment is the lowest it's been in like all of history, yet a lot of veterans aren't participating in the labor force. My sort of, uh, back of the envelope thing, there's a million veterans who are not working who probably should be, right? And so you can't explain that away between they're old, they're sick, they're injured, whatever. They're just not in the labor force. So I do think we have to bring more awareness of why this is and better understand what it means, because, you know, A job is so very important to meaning and purpose and connectivity, which is what we worry about veterans, not the least of which is the contribution to the economy. Imagine we had a million more people working. What would be going on in our country? So that's a little bit into the weeds, but I do think there's something about writing more about this and better explaining it and offering some solutions and some insights and some solutions.

And I can see that expanding to an additional audience. In terms of those in HR or employers in general to get them to think about what are they doing to attract veterans as applicants and what are they doing to hire veterans?

No, absolutely. You picked on it. I see several audiences. One is obviously the hiring, the companies, right? The companies need to figure out, hey, every time you do a survey, veterans always come out as top employees. But yet there's somehow a disconnect. A lot of them don't hire enough of them, right? I think there's something for veterans to learn in terms of like, hey, you can't show up speaking military to a civilian organization and expect them to crosswalk there for you. I think there's something too in terms of maybe some of the policies inhibit veterans from working. Hey, why should I work if I can get benefits that essentially don't force me to work, right? And I think there's some more understanding, which is, you know, what's going on that folks are not working. That's— it's hard to imagine what they're doing, right? And so I just think there's a whole— there's a wide range of things that can be put out there so folks better understand.

And it seems like there's been a through line and passion for you starting early in your career in understanding these questions, tackling issues, and then making things work more effectively. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I definitely, I definitely think that's what you do as a consultant. So it wasn't hard to imagine once I got to government, that's what I was going to do.

But even now, you're still tackling those questions and, and looking at it with a larger lens rather than, hey, let me write the next how-to handbook, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I definitely think serving in government and, and sort of, you know, the job serving veterans is you realize there's a lot to do. Processes that are stipulated by law need to be done better. But the goal, if you think about it, right? So think about how this is supposed to work. You join the military, have a great experience in the military, then you come out and all these things, benefits and the like, supposed to set you in a better place, right? Even accelerate beyond what your, your civilian peers are doing. So, for example, one benefit is called the Home Loan Guarantee. You could purchase a home with no money down if you're a veteran. Well, you know, if you're civilian, you got to save up down payment. You purchase a home and you're a couple of years ahead of your civilian counterpart, right? You can go to college for free, GI Bill, right? That puts you ahead. So the goal should be making sure veterans are really using these benefits and getting ahead, right? Even to the point one day when people look back and say, wow, they're successful and stable and maybe wealthy, if that's what— I wish I had become a veteran. I wish I had joined the military. So when you have folks that aren't doing that, you wonder, well, why aren't they working? Why aren't they taking advantage of all these things they've earned? You really kind of ask, scratch your head and say, again, the goal wasn't to process their benefit. The goal was to get them to a much better place.

I like how you frame that. I also like the implicit sort of emphasis on utilization, that a benefit which is unutilized really isn't a benefit either to the individual or to a class of individuals, right? If we're offering something that people don't want, well, that's a stupid benefit, or they don't know how to access, well then we've set up too many hurdles along the way. I like how you say it's about putting someone ahead of where they would have been if they hadn't served.

Right. And also, it's time to think about how the country has changed, right? So think about the original GI Bill, 1944. Virtually nobody in America has gone to college, provided a college education. Now I think it's what, 60% of the country's gone to college, and veterans were— but now, of course, people are wondering, well, do we really need college? Maybe I'd rather get a certificate, or maybe I'd rather work in the trades. And so maybe someone should look back and say, you know, maybe this benefit needs to be tweaked in a way that is different than what we had in mind in 1944. So I also think there's a modernization kind of thing that people need to think about as well.

Well, and that's interesting because I Didn't the VA home loan guarantee also come out of the World War II era? Yeah, very good.

Yeah, there were 3— there were 3 or 4 things that came out of it. The home loan, but everyone calls the GI Bill now. It's the education thing. So the home loan is in there and there was even— you could get money for to start a business. So you could imagine in the new world there could be seed money. Hey, I don't want to go to college. I don't want to do things. But what I really want is $50,000 to start my business. Right. I have this vision. How about that, right? Maybe, maybe that's not a bad idea.

And I love where we're landing here, that the context of the time has to align with what are you offering, right? And just because it was a great benefit a century ago almost doesn't necessarily mean it's the same priority now. Those are questions worth asking. And that's the role and the challenge of thought leadership is what's of value to someone who serves now, whether they sign up at 18 or they put in 20 years, you know, and they come out, what's of value to them going forward? Like you said, to get a step ahead.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's too easy to want to update something without taking a step back and say, is this even the right something?

Right, exactly. Or to treat something as, well, we've always done it this way. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's like, well, but is it the right thing? Is it reaching the goal? And you articulated that goal of let's put veterans ahead of where they would be otherwise, right?

Right, yeah.

So as we begin to wrap up, Paul, I want to ask you question. You've practiced thought leadership in a number of different forms, as a consultant, within government, as an author. What's been your greatest joy in that process of thought leadership?

Well, I think the really interesting thing— so you ask, it's like joy. So there's instant joy. I think it's pretty cool when you get the first copy of the book, when you finally see it all put together and you can have it and say, wow, all this period of time, a year or more or whatever, This is what it looks like. Wow, this is pretty neat, right? So that's definitely a joy, though. That's kind of an internal sort of thing. What I think the biggest joy is when someone gets it and they have it and they come back to you and say something like— often it could be electronically or verbally— I read something you wrote. I read this chapter. This really helped me understand something, or because of what I read, it really helped me. You know, do something, right? A lot of my advice early on were about, hey, if you got a job in government, this is what you should think about. So people would say, I read this chapter where you described kind of how I should do my work. That was really helpful. So it was the sense that what you had done had engaged their brain and somehow had made them, again, sort of better off because they spent some time reading your work.

Fantastic. I think you wind up describing there two different intrinsic joys. One where it's like, hey, I, I crossed this hurdle on my own. You open up the box and you actually have that hard copy. It's like, okay, this isn't just something that I've been doing on my computer for the last 4 months. It's real. But knowing that you can make impact, that you can connect someone with the idea that they need. And make an impact on a life, certainly individually, let alone at scale. That's got to be one of the biggest joys overall.

Yeah. Yeah. And I can even sort of— you bring it home, right? I've had people tell me, because I read your book, the book about benefits, I applied for certain benefits. I'm now getting thousands of dollars every month that I would not have been getting were it not for this book. Right. So I regularly joke when people say, oh, you should buy the book, I say, yeah, less than $20 will more than return what you can imagine if you are eligible for these benefits and you do apply.

Fantastic. Paul, I want to thank you very much for joining us today in this conversation about your journey in thought leadership and specifically your work on taking the expert knowledge that you had within veterans benefits and making it accessible. To a massive audience.

No, thank you, Bill. And thanks so much for drilling on veterans. I appreciate you care about— caring about veterans.

Absolutely. Okay. You've made it to the end of the episode, and that means you're probably someone deeply interested in thought leadership. Want to learn even more? Here are 3 recommendations. First, check out the back catalog of our podcast episodes. There are a lot of great conversations with people at the top of their game in thought leadership. As well as just starting out. Second, subscribe to our newsletter that talks about the business of thought leadership. And finally, feel free to reach out to me. My day job is helping people with big insights take them to scale through the practice of thought leadership. Maybe you're looking for strategy, or maybe you want to polish up your ideas, or even create new products and offerings. I'd love to chat with you. Thanks for listening.