Episode 44: All The Difference: What the Military and Building Products Industry Have in Common

Misura Group | Hire Smarter™ Podcast

Title: All The Difference

Tony Misura (host)

Guests:

• Stuart Kliman
• General Leslie Smith

Tony (00:00)

Good morning. Super excited for the latest episode of Hire Smarter with Tony Misura. I have just some amazing, amazing guests. I’m, I, I,

 

Like I leaped out of bed this morning with enthusiasm to make these introductions. Stu Kliman, great relationship with Stu. Several years in the building products industry. Previous to that, collaborating on the book Getting Yes. Previous to that, worked at the Harvard negotiation organization. Just terrific. And General Leslie Smith, US military. guys, you guys.

We’re going to talk about the book in a minute, please, Leslie, just kind of give us a background of kind of where your history has been and kind of how you guys came together.

Les (00:40)

Yeah, that’s a great one. So Tony, thanks for inviting us on today. And Stu, thanks for letting me hang around with you. Even though I’m your big, I think I’m your little brother in this space because I’m learning. So I’m Lieutenant General Leslie Smith, originally from Atlanta, Georgia. My last job on active duty was as the Army’s Inspector General. I was a number 66. What that means is I was responsible for inspections, assistance,

an investigation for 1.3 million soldiers and civilians. And tough job, tough opportunity. We had some things we went through, January 6th, George Floyd, COVID, a housing crisis that we had, and hopefully we’ll get a chance to talk about that, because it causes to change a lot of things in the Army specifically, but the other military departments were there. And then I met Stu and… ⁓

 

and Susan as we were working on another mission. But day to day, I’m the Vice President for Leadership and Education at the Association of the United States Army. So all the problems I saw as the Inspector General, my job now is to help fix those problems and create those bridges. So when we talked about this book, All the Difference, it was just a perfect fit based off what we found. And I know we’re going to dive into this, so we’re so happy to be here today.

Tony (01:55)

Terrific. Stu, my long-time friend, I love our conversations and the fact that we get to share our unique perspectives, particularly around this book. Stu, share with us your background.

Stuart Kliman (02:09)

Yeah, Tony, first of all, deeply, deeply grateful for the invite ⁓ as well as for the friendship. Just to be clear, I wish I had written Getting to Yes, and I wish I had founded the Harvard negotiation project, but I work closely with the co-authors. I work closely with the founders. Yeah, well, you know. But coming out of ⁓ kind of working on kind of the think tank that kind of

came out of Getting to Yes, which I know a lot of your listeners have read. I founded and built what became kind of a mid-size consulting and training organization, really built on the ideas, the fundamental ideas of Getting to Yes related to working together and trying to find joint gain through collaboration and really finding new ways to compete and new ways to innovate through bringing people together.

right, individuals, groups, teams, associations, countries, kind of you name it. So I did that for about 30 years or so, and then decided to continue my journey by exploring lots of other things. So I met you, I had a nice four or five year stint in the building products industry where I learned a tremendous amount about the industry, Tony, that you know and love and you’ve made your world in.

I still continue to play a small bit of role with a firm called Building Industry Partners, which ⁓ is a private equity partner to the building industry. And now I do a variety of other kinds of things. I’m head of business development at a health tech startup. I’m chief strategy officer, believe it or not, on kind of an AI meal planning and grocery startup, which is tremendously interesting.

And I’ve got the privilege of working with Les and our co-author Susan on trying to launch this new book. lots of wonderful things going on.

 

Tony (03:58)

Terrific. So when people ask me about Stu Kliman, my comments are there are consultants and individuals that do a great job changing organizations. And then there are some that change entire industries and they work collectively across multiple organizations and companies at the same time. And that’s really that’s just, you know, that’s the best way I can describe kind of your impact in what you bring. it’s. Excellent. So.

Stuart Kliman (04:22)

Very kind, very kind.

Tony (04:24)

Gentlemen, all the difference. I’m just, I’m riveted by not only the content and the approach, but I guess more deeply the approach and how you’re taking on these challenges. What was the root of this? What was the inspiration?

Les (04:38)

Yeah, I will tell you as I started to mention before, we were on another for profit startup that did not succeed. But then we found out that we liked each other and we started talking again. I remember and I haven’t told you and Susan this too, but I still have our little sticky notes that we you guys came to the DC and we were in my downstairs office here at AUSA and we just fill the wall with.

What do we think this thing looks like? Is it strength to strength? What are we trying to get after? And the result of that is all the difference. And the timing could not be better than ever before with all the differences that we see. And then in your space, in your field, why it’s so important to take all the difference. And if I could, the other part tied to that too was, you know, in the military, you don’t get a choice to pick who you want.

to be on your team most of the time. Sometimes you do like an 80 camp or something, but most of the time, whoever enlists, whoever comes in, comes to your unit. And so leaders have a responsibility to take all the differences in people to make them succeed in what they do. And contrary to popular belief, soldiers, sailors, evergreen ring, coast guards, guardians, they are supposed to follow orders. Yeah, legally they’re supposed to, but they’re not robots.

just like in your industry. They’re not robots. They have thoughts, they have viewpoints, and this book kind of helps, not kind of helps, it does help with working through all those differences to create value, as Stu has taught me.

 

Stuart Kliman (06:08)

Yeah, well, mean, absolutely less. mean, Tony, ⁓ for me, Les and Susan and I just started talking. We started talking about what we’re seeing in our lives, in our practices, in our worlds. And I’m sure we’ll get into, Susan, Les and I are very different people. And so the process of creating this book was itself a little bit of a learning lab, an experiment. We’ll get to that.

But one thing that ⁓ we found in common across all of our different contexts was that leaders were confronting a workforce in front of them that was and is ever more filled with difference. In the workforce today, we’ve got, in any given team, in any given context, you’ve got

four or five different generations. You’ve got people who have different relationships to technology. You’ve got different folks who have different experience sets and different relationship networks and different capabilities and different histories and stories and ways of thinking and ways of processing information, ways of thinking about that information. And as Les and Susan and I came together, first of all, we thought that was a very, very interesting moment.

⁓ that the workforce is ever more filled with difference and it’s only going to get ever more filled with difference. And as we talked with and watched leaders, we saw many, many, leaders really struggling with how do I manage, how do I lead through difference? How do I take advantage of difference? Many were seeing difference appropriately as a legitimate

leadership challenge you people sort of debate kind of some of the some of these questions but i think less and susan i quickly came you know to the realization people are right when they say differences are differences a challenge you know people sometimes people like to say by definition differences good you know that’s not actually the point of view that we’re taking in in the book we’re taking a different point of view which is that difference is like gravity.

It just simply is, it is around us, it’s in our workforce. And that difference is either the source of tremendous dysfunction, value drainage, lack of execution, right? Or it is a source of tremendous value. And we saw leaders who were not able to deal with this context. And so their organizations were losing.

They weren’t able to help their people and themselves manage all that difference. And so they were having execution challenges. Or we did see some leaders who were brilliantly figuring out, how do I tap into all of that difference to create value, innovate new ways, and win? And so for us, we got excited about kind of a reframe of leadership.

A framing of leadership, is the leader standing in front of a workforce filled of difference and being confronted with the question, how do I ensure that I’m avoiding the badness of this and how do I create the goodness of it? And that’s, think, ⁓ what aligned us and what excited the three of us and what energized the three of us to go on this journey.

Tony (09:25)

Whether it’s the building products industry, whether it’s the military, whatever industry we’re looking at, in 2026, the dynamic changes and challenges that we have are significantly greater than what they’ve been in the past 20 years, 10 years, certainly even the past five years. Is that the consensus as we look about the right? So you’ve come up with a concept

⁓ that’s got six kind of key elements to it. Can guys dive into them?

Les (09:56)

Yeah, so let’s back up a little bit. I think that the target actions are the cool aspect that we want to go to, but we really want to talk about those landmines. And the landmines are so important because if you step on the landmines, you can’t get to the target actions, Tony. the landmines are, you step on them, they’re like, ⁓ well, stop, go, do not collect $200. And I think the landmines, as we talk about so much,

are the key critical point that can help us get to strengthen the 10th grade value. Can we stop?

Stuart Kliman (10:29)

Yeah, talk to us talk about the the landmines as a metaphor and I’m going to you and what you brought to the table

Les (10:34)

So in the Army, I was in charge of the Army’s explosive ordnance and WMD soldiers. We were in 16 states, they’re still in 16 states, 19 installations, and three to five countries. When we come do this brief for wherever you want us to go, those landmines are things that will stop you from doing your mission. And the enemy places them in locations that you can’t see them. And when you step on them, you know.

And so these landmines will stop you as we mentioned before and I have a picture that we showed that talks about people being around you know when generals travel places they have personal security detachments and There’s a picture showing me walking with Iraqi counterpart but on the perimeter are people that are looking out for not only landmines but other threats associated with what we’re doing and you know, I think it’s important that we we start with those landmines and

because they stop us from where we want to go.

Stuart Kliman (11:28)

And I just to less that even the landmine metaphor and the notion that we’re going to talk about in sort of landmine recon is a nice example of the three of us authors tapping into tapping in a different, as you can imagine, Tony, were I to sit at my desk and write this book by myself, absent my wonderful colleague here, the notion of landmine as a metaphor would probably not be in this book.

Right? But it’s a compelling, compelling, I believe, compelling metaphor. And we talk about defusing the landmine. And so tapping into the experience set and the way of thinking about this problem that my good friend, the general brings to the table is part of the muck of creation. Right?

And so it’s just, I just want to point that out as an example. And as we go through this, can, I think as people read the book, they’ll see, oh, well that was where they tapped into Stu and his capabilities and the different kinds of capabilities that he brought to the table. And that’s where they tapped into Les and that’s where they tapped into Susan. And so again, I do view our collaboration as itself kind of hopefully a testament to kind of the power. So I just wanted to go off on that tangent just for a minute, because I think it’s kind of interesting.

and interesting kind of double.

Tony (12:47)

Yeah, think I think yeah, certainly how you’re actioning right how you’re actioning this through the book I I guess you know, there’s lots of books out there that Run through the theories of what the heck leaders are supposed to do right like right like ad nauseum, right? I can reach for all of these different books that say hey Well perfect in a in a perfect state when my emotions are in control and I don’t and I’m not subjected to all these biases and all these pressures and

My gosh, like Leslie, like the situations that your military leaders go through. Right. Or, I mean, so, I mean, let’s the theme of this book and the whole drive is why the hell don’t we do what we know we’re supposed to do?

 

 

Les (13:26)

Right. yeah, this is good. So let’s back up a little bit. So I want to talk to you about how we get to all the difference. So we first were talking about strife to strength, right? And then you do these things called proposals. You have to go to different editors. And once Harvard Business Review and we’re thankful to Josh, Jeff Kehoe and his team, they said, yeah, that’s about right. But let’s look about talking about difference.

 

If you remember the poem by Robert Frost, I chose the lesser path. Right. And that has made all the difference. And then it just hit us in the face. I mean, we didn’t plan this way, right? so so this thing about difference, we are doing this as we write the book. And every time that we present, we present it once and then we got some others coming up, just like we’re doing with you today. We’re seeing this managing of difference.

 

Tony (14:01)

Ha ha ha.

 

Les (14:17)

And that’s why those landmines are so important. So the first landmine is certainty. We think that’s the costliest landmine. It’s when the leader is convinced that they’re right and they stop listening. So I hear you saying, but it’s just like blah, blah, blah, blah. I’ll you an example. I’m retired three-star general. I’ve seen a lot of things. I don’t need to listen to you. If I say that too many times, what’s going to happen? What do you think, Tony?

 

Tony (14:40)

I’m going to stop contributing. Exactly. Yeah. I’m going to turn my brain off and become robotic to whatever your directions are.

 

Les (14:48)

Yeah, and you know that the input doesn’t matter. They stop offering it, because it’s like what he’s a general, so he’s just going to go what he wants to say. You know that, although we think that’s the costless landmine, I think still is going to take the next one about inconsistency and we’re going to see as we talk about these how they flow together across the board.

 

Stuart Kliman (15:08)

Yeah, I like that. We’ll kind of jump on. So let’s just talk about certainty is one of the landmines. agree. Costliest landmine, as Les said, when a leader is so convinced they’re right, they stop generally listening. The next one we talk about is inconsistency. And that we define as the gap between what a leader says they value and what they actually believe, and then how they actually behave, especially under pressure.

 

So the notion of a gap between, now you’re gonna see sort of my language versus Les, between what leaders espouse and what they actually do, that gap between espoused values and practiced behavior is a big landmine for a lot of folks, right? Because teams notice that gap immediately, even when the leaders don’t, right? There’s gaps about which we are aware.

 

And there’s gaps about which we’re unaware, right? We go on kind of blissfully through life, espousing a set of values, you know, in the field, at the mill, as we’re putting things together. But our teams see us behaving in ways. They see us falling into the gap, right? And they talk about it, right? And it undermines their willingness to behave in ways consistent in which you’re asking them.

 

And you know people leave, you know, as they see that they lose trust and faith in the you know in the whole enterprise. So, you know, there’s certainty and inconsistency unless you want to grab that.

 

Les (16:34)

Let me pull that thread a little bit before we go to next one. Inconsistency, So I’m a simple guy. I say your audio and video have to match. So if I say, for military guys, physical training is important, they never see the leader there, it’s not important. Or if I say families are important as a leader in industry, and I’m working my people every day, every weekend, when it’s not really required, I’m being inconsistent in the things that I do.

 

and take it to the next point of reactivity. So we talked about certainty. I’m always right. Inconsistency, the gap between what I say and then what I do and then reactivity. know, when an emotional trigger, somebody steps on your toe figuratively and it pulls somebody out of their bed sets and they react to a stimuli completely different. You know, they hear some bad news. One person says, that’s okay, we’ll deal with it. The other person just going off to the top end.

 

I’m gonna fire you. You you’re a piece of blah, blah, blah, blah, right? We’ve all seen it, right? And people are in the back like, hold on now. It shouldn’t be that hard. But that’s sometimes how people react to situations. And then what we have to do as leaders to understand how we’re reacting to different stimuli, these different opportunities. And you can’t pull it back once it’s already gone out.

 

but you can respond to it. But if you know about yourself ahead of time, then you know how you react to different situations, if that makes sense. Stu can’t make me angry about much of anything because I like him as a person and I love him because of his business mind. And he can’t make me react a certain way. Now other people maybe could get to me.

 

But I know I have to return to respect and we got to talk about that as part of the book As one of the target actions to just to do that then lastly still take the last point

 

Stuart Kliman (18:28)

Yeah, so we’ve talked about, you know, again, these four landmines. And again, kind of we use the language of landmine recon, right? Again, from from less as you can imagine, right? You you got to have the leaders need to be on landmine recon, right? That’s the purpose isn’t just to know that landmines might be out there. They’re sort of to be aware and see them and understand them. So, you know, certainty and consistency and reactivity. The fourth one is justification. And although we said certainty is the costliest,

 

I think less than Susan and I think that justification is the most insidious.

 

Tony (19:01)

Right, right. I have a reason to believe this way. Yeah

 

Stuart Kliman (19:03)

That’s right. It makes the other three invisible by converting a leadership misstep into someone else’s fault. It locks leaders into defending choices rather than learning from them and in some ways transforming a trust building moment, taking accountability for falling on a landmine, running into a landmine.

 

So transforming a potential trust building moment into really a cycle of blame, right? So justification in many ways is the fuel that powers the other three landmines. And frankly, the reason capable leaders keep stepping on the same ones, right? And so those four landmines together, to your point, Tony, those make it hard to behave in any kind of

 

prescribed way right so as you said there’s all these books out there with prescriptions and we have our framework we have our six target actions in our prescriptions but the three of us felt it was really really important not to write a book. The kind of put our heads in the stand about what you know hey what is this you know great way of behaving without actually talking about why it’s hard and frankly you’re speaking for myself you know for years I’ve said to folks.

 

I’m really not interested in the question of how should a leader behave when it’s easy.

 

Tony (20:29)

Right. Yeah.

 

Stuart Kliman (20:31)

I’m very interested in the question of how should leaders behave when it’s hard, when it’s difficult, right? And how do you help people manage that through? And when it is difficult, that’s where those landmines are most in play, right? ⁓ I can cross a field when there’s no, I can send a group of soldiers across a field when there’s no landmines, right? What’s the leadership action there, right?

 

Les (20:54)

Yeah, and the insidious thing is that you don’t know until you run into it. And that’s why it’s so important for you to be on the recon. We know we talked about watch. When you’re on a watch, you’re just reactive. When you’re in a recon, you’re looking to see. Just like you do on an airfield, I got to actually go out and walk the airfield to make sure that there’s no foreign objects there. You don’t just watch and see when the plane gets what I’m in. There’s one right there.

 

Yeah, and you know the other thing from your industry, it’s almost like safety. It is like safety. You can’t just react to something that you got to be on the offense, I would say, to look for those things that could possibly cause you problems. That’s how we see that related to what you do and what we represent in the building industry.

 

Tony (21:39)

How do leaders create the right environment to do this recon and to really be prepared to work collectively as a team, to stay in each other’s blind spots and to recognize where mistakes have happened?

 

Les (21:52)

Yeah, that’s very good point. We’re to talk about that in the target actions. And I have talked about this from the beginning. We all have our different viewpoints of how I say is by building trust. And trust is built in the simple times when there are easy times. And it’s built when you’re training yourself hard, when you’re challenging yourself before something tough happens. But the target action is going to talk about that. And that’s kind of how we do it.

 

is via those target actions. Can we jump into those now?

 

Tony (22:19)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, go ahead.

 

Les (22:22)

Go ahead, Stu.

 

Stuart Kliman (22:22)

Yes, so so you know ⁓ again language that my my wonderful ⁓ co author less brought brought to the table is this notion of a target action, right? So we’ve got landmines. gotta we gotta know what our target is. We gotta know how to get there. We gotta kind of traverse, you know, traverse the landmines. Good less. Yeah.

 

Les (22:39)

Let me back up a little bit. And I’ll take Target Action 1, then we’ll go back and forth like we do, because we’ve kind of worked through our piece. But what we had initially was a bullseye, right? And it was we were going to shoot the target, and then we backed away from that based off the metaphors of what that looked to. But we couldn’t get away from focusing yourself to get to strengthening those teams.

 

to create the value and to bridge perspectives. And then what we found was in these concentric circles, they may not be sequential, they may be simultaneous, but you gotta start with number one. And number one is knowing yourself, right? And self-awareness is that foundation, right? Difference doesn’t derail the teams that unaware leaders do.

 

We’ve seen them all, right? Remember I tell you I was the Inspector General. I could tell you within the first five minutes, and I proved the point again when I was up in St. Louis talking to, and Scott Air Force Base talking to leaders, that you could automatically walk into the room and see which leaders understand how to, they know their people and they know the requirements across the board. So if you know yourself,

 

You got to understand your triggers, your blind spots and those defaults before they can lead through difference. And then unlocking your best self, knowing who you are empowers other people. And, you know, a lot of times people talk about emotional intelligence and then we’re going to talk about that in a second. But the more you’re able to share with others about knowing who you are, what things you don’t do, I give you an example. I’m a big picture guy.

 

You know, go this way, challenge the system and process. I want you to achieve these goals, but I’m not at the level of this is step one. This is step one. This is step two. That’s what I expect other people to do once I give them the vision. But I have to surround myself with people that are like that. And I have to know that about myself in order to set the conditions for that. So. Let’s talk about landmine risk.

 

with this target action, especially certainty and justification. You got to make sure that we’re looking at your inner work to recognize your own habits and your own reactions are keeping us out of line in order to know ourselves. I think that’s starting with that. That’s the first step in getting to that creative value target that we’re talking about.

 

Stuart Kliman (25:00)

Yes, so what once once is we call it again target action one know yourself that really is you know directly connected to target action too. So you know what’s what’s interesting here Tony is our target actions are not only external ones. They start with the first two, which is know yourself and return to respect, which are about you and you know less talks about your inner self right and so.

 

That is kind of what you’re trying to do in many ways based on your knowing of yourself. You understand that you have these certain triggers and behaviors which are causing you to lose respect for those around you who have different points of view or behaving differently or in surprising ways. So you’re hitting your triggers.

 

You know, respect is not agreement with those folks, right? It’s the baseline that keeps dialogue open when differences at its most difficult, right? So it’s a direct counter to reactivity, right? Creating a space between, again, you know, what I would call stimulus and response, right? And, you know, that’s really what we’re trying to do. And, you know, when a leader, again, to Les’s point, gets pulled off center through different

 

or a spark or a sharp response, know, ⁓ respect collapses in the room instantly, often before the leader even realizes that it’s happening, right? And all of that, as you can imagine, imagine that you are in room or in a business with a room full of people, all of whom

 

are viewing the world, understanding the world, bringing to whatever the problem or challenge is, different kinds of experiences, capabilities, ways of reasoning through whatever. And you are a leader who doesn’t know yourself and in the space of that and is unable to work their way through whatever is going on with themselves to have

 

respect for the reality that there’s going to be all of those differences, different points of view. Very, very hard to then outwardly put the kinds of behaviors that Les and I are talking about in the rest of the target actions into, you know, into place and think about the likelihood in that environment of being able to tap into mine all of the differences in the room for

 

creativity, innovation, speed of execution, new ideas, very, very unlikely, right? And so that’s the connection, right? This is all not about, you know, it’s great to behave this way. These are the key behaviors that will make an organization that is filled with difference able to thrive, right? And that’s really, that’s where we’re going. So those are kind of the first couple of actions. Les, how about three?

 

Les (27:51)

Yeah, so once you talk about and we’re going through this because they can’t they build on each other, knowing yourself, returning to respect. And once you do that, you have to activate honesty, Tony. And that’s about telling the truth when it’s hard. Activate real listening where trust begins and every other target action ties on top of that. Let me give you an example. As a commanding general for Leonardwood, Misura, we’re responsible for, you know,

 

35,000 soldiers, sailors, and Marine training every day. But we are also responsible about 100,000 people, including their families. We had this thing called a government shutdown. You’re familiar with that. You’ve seen that before. What happens when that happens. But as a leader, we had the responsibility to brief the people about what was getting ready to happen. And now it wasn’t the fault of the military guys. It just stuck to happen.

 

There were some of my peers that chose to send the chief HR or the deputies on the stage to talk to leaders. And I told my folks, like, there’s no way. I have to be the person that stands up there and talks to them. Now, was it uncomfortable? Yes. Did they ask me some hard questions? Yes. But as a leader, I had to activate honesty, right? So people would understand.

 

What were the things that were there and those things that need to happen? And I can only tell them what I knew. I couldn’t tell them how long it was going to last. I think it ended up lasting two weeks. But I was honest with them. And I showed Stu and Susan some pictures of me getting off the stage. And I didn’t ask somebody else to go around and walk around with the mic. I walked around with the mic to have the people ask me the questions. And that changed a lot of the conversation.

 

So let’s talk about the landmine risk associated with that. So in order to activate honesty, we cannot be inconsistent. Like, we say, I’m going to be there, if I say I care about my people, I must do that when I’m activating the honesty. And it’s really important that we take the time to do that. So we talked about knowing yourself, we talked about return of respect, and I just finished activating honesty and Stu’s going to take the next one about seeing the full story.

 

Stuart Kliman (29:59)

Yeah, let me just to build on what Les said, you when he talks about kind of landmine risk, which I love that that language just on inconsistency, again, to double click on what Les said, you know, for me, the most obvious way of framing that is, you know, when leaders say they want honesty, but react poorly to it. Right. Yeah. Boom. Right. You know.

 

Les (30:20)

I want you tell me the truth.

 

Tony (30:22)

All is blocked. Actions are way more important than words. ⁓

 

Stuart Kliman (30:26)

Right,

 

right. mean, it’s just, you know, it’s unbelievable. know, Les talks about he’s going and he’s talking to all these people, right? So for what purpose, right? What is, because a little bit to your earlier question, right? You asked about creating the culture. So you’re creating the culture through these behaviors, right? That’s how you’re creating the… One purposeful decision at a time. One purposeful leadership behavior at a time.

 

Tony (30:45)

Right.

 

I want to act

 

Stuart Kliman (30:54)

I am creating culture when I say I want honesty and I react poorly to it. I am creating culture when I say I want honesty and I react well to it. That is our culture creating motion in a moment. I think it’s much more complicated than that. so I’m trying to do those things. And as I’m talking to people, know, less than I write in book together and less says something. And I’m like, I think you’re right. Right. You know, whatever. Right.

 

That is a great example of not trying to see the full story. So the next target action is seeing the full story. Great leaders who know how to tap into difference, who can create new forms of value through difference, understand that the stories, the ways of thinking, the data or information that people are focusing in on, the way they’re processing that data and thinking about that data, the logic leaps that they’re making,

 

is gold, right? People are bringing those disparate and different perspectives to the table. And by definition, the human condition is we have a narrow understanding of the world. We have a narrow understanding of the perspectives of the folks around us. And I think somehow people miss that, right? Going back to the landmine of certainty, I think that my understanding of what’s going on is the right

 

is the right level. you know, seeing the full story, what am I missing? Asking, what am I missing? And actually meaning it. I think, Tony, one of the first conversations you and I ever had was the power of true, true, true, serious, deep curiosity, right? And curiosity comes, you know, it is necessary for implementing the notion of see the full story, right? Just one metaphor for you.

 

I think about all of us going to a football game together. We’re in a big stadium. Something happens on the field. I’m sitting in tier six, row seven, seat three. I have a particular understanding of what happened on that field, right? What about the guy who’s in a different section of the building, right? What about the other person who’s in a different section?

 

They understand, they have a different perspective and they actually have some different data based on what they saw. They’ve got some different conclusions from the people around them. Think of if I as a leader, right? If I as a leader was not only able to bring to the table my own perspective, but I was able to step into the shoes and understand the perspectives of the people on my leadership team.

 

And then I was able to step into the shoes and bring to the table the perspectives of everybody who’s at the lumber yard. And then I was able to step into and bring the perspectives of all of my customers and all of my suppliers. That’s multiple perspectives. And imagine that I was a superhuman processor and I was able to take all that information and data into account as I’m generating my reason. That’d be pretty powerful.

 

this next target action is, I muster up the curiosity? Can I work hard in the face of disagreement or whatever to try to see the full story as much as possible?

 

Tony (34:10)

So absolutely super fun for you to mention that as I was going through my prep, got in bold here, know, curiosity is the 50 pound hammer because one of the early lessons you taught me and I just, you know, if I was going to get a tattoo, it would probably be that, you know, just that, right? And it’s great to see, it’s great to see that, you know, reinforced here in your thoughts. you know, we’re really talking about these landmines end up really being, you know,

 

exhibition of ego, right? And ego at the bottom core is fear. So this perspective to be able to sit in 360 different seats in a football to watch that game and what it’s impossible, you can’t do that. So is there a hack guys to get leaders to drop the fear and to just embrace the fact that

 

You need these multiple perspec- that one person can’t do that? Is it?

 

Les (35:03)

Yeah, that’s a very good story. I’ll take that and I’ll still jump on that too before we jump into the night togetherness. I perceive, actually not perceive, I know our responsibility with this book is to teach generations about what all the difference is. Because every generation sees it differently. So we have the responsibility to teach the young guys about how am going to deal with this difference as they grow. You got to teach some of the older guys about

 

How do I embrace this difference? As you heard Stu talk about, artificial intelligence, machine learning. Will my job still be valid? How do I bring the pieces and parts together? Again, those leaders who can take the differences and see them as a strength, not a weakness. There’s some people that wanna make the differences in people as a difference, but that destroys value because you have people working in silos, they operate that way. They may be comfortable in what they do.

 

but it hurts the organization overall. I why does Chick-fil-A say, it’s my pleasure? Why does, whatever you name the company, you know, like I sit on the national board of boys and girls club, it’s whatever it takes to support the boys and girls that are there that we’re supposed to support. It’s because they get in, they see the full story, they understand why that’s so important. But it starts with us showing the people.

 

not by what we say, by what we do in our actions every day.

 

Stuart Kliman (36:24)

Yeah, mean, incredibly well said. Tony, before we head to the next target actions to your question, the answer of can you just tell people to not be fearful or not have that is no, right? That said, we devote time in the book to that question in a particular way. And it’s really about learning and getting better over time.

 

right and so the you know I’m confident Tony you would agree with me on this when you look at the best leaders in your in your world. Right I guarantee you you are going to find people who have spent time. Implicitly explicitly reflecting on their own practice as leaders and thinking about what works in terms of.

 

creating more business value and where have they run into challenges and what do they want to do differently next time? So I say that to say that the way you get better at any critical capability like leadership is through reflection, personal reflection and learning, right? And so yeah, you don’t get better at these target actions. You don’t get better at managing these landmines, frankly,

 

by reading the book, you get better by having some language and a framework and some things to experiment and try, and you’re giving it a go. And then you’re taking a little bit of time and saying, how’d that go? What did I learn from that? Right? So, you know, I bring that notion less, I’m sure, know, less talks about in the army, they have after action reviews. That’s right. The reason why the better, right? Yes. Right. Yes. Right. That’s learning.

 

Les (37:59)

I’ve tracked you well.

 

Stuart Kliman (38:03)

So I know, you know, so I’m sorry, let’s go ahead.

 

Les (38:06)

Now, please, and a leader has initiated. That’s the key. And it’s if the leader does it, then it in turn, you know, talks about it. We didn’t talk about this earlier. Think about this, Tony. What if in the building industry, once people look at this book, that they could increase their value by 10 % in the company or 20%. What would that be worth to them?

 

Tony (38:26)

correct I mean

 

Stuart Kliman (38:27)

It’s

 

a very

 

Les (38:27)

It has a value proposition to it.

 

Stuart Kliman (38:29)

Yeah, just, again, double click on that framing. We view the workforce. And again, I think people say it, but they don’t really get their heads around it. The workforce or in Lester’s world, the military, a team, a platoon, whatever it is. It is an asset. That’s what you have this asset in the form of different ways of thinking.

 

different experiences, different capabilities, different understanding of the problem, different relationship networks, that is an asset. And the leadership question is, how do we maximize the value of that asset? That’s the framing. I’m just not sure people kind of have that clear framing. so it’s about how to, and there’s two sides of that. All of that difference can get in our way, right? People can run into each other,

 

bump into each other, conflict, disagreement, tension, or whatever, or it can create value. So let’s just frame it exactly right. Imagine if we had this asset of our workforce, the differences in the workforce, and we could manage, we could lead through difference in a way that allows us to access 10 % more productivity, 10 % more innovation, 10 % simply through the leadership effort to mine that difference.

 

That’s a tremendous opportunity for the building industry, right? It’s a tremendous opportunity for a world where we’re underbuilt, right? We can’t get enough assets into the industry. So I do think that this will help us attract more people into the industry by them knowing that people are going to tap into their predilections and capabilities, right? It makes the whole industry more attractive. If we could build all that so we can increase

 

the assets that we’re using, the workforce, the size of the workforce to enable us to deal with the underbuilt nature of our world right now. But we could also get more value out of the assets we got, right? That’s kind of what we’re shooting for. So, you can tell I get kind of emotional about it. right, so number five, right? Target action number five. So I’m seeing the full story, right? Then we talk about igniting togetherness, right? We’re harnessing the power of the we.

 

Can we as a leader, how do I as the leader and how do I help my people better understand one another’s thinking so that we can take it and integrate it into better answers, better approaches. And so that’s kind of the game there. So igniting togetherness, difference is strongest when it’s integrated.

 

diverse perspectives working towards shared outcomes create more value than any single viewpoint. Together, this is not uniformity. It doesn’t mean we’re all the same. It doesn’t even mean agreement. It’s alignment built through genuine engagement. And so we talk about that.

 

Les (41:13)

That’s what Stu was talking about with the after action review. When folks go to the National Training Center, which is out in California, or the Joint Readiness Training Center, which is in Louisiana, they go through some tough training, some tough times. But the power of the after action review and those leaders who can facilitate it the best, they’re always looking to see which young soldier, which young leader is not speaking up. Then they reach down and say, give me your viewpoint, Smith.

 

Give me your viewpoint, climate. Give me your viewpoint, Misura. And then once they speak up, other people are freed up because they’re hearing ideas. And most, and we all know this, the best ideas don’t necessarily come from the top. They come from the people who are executing the mission each and every day. And then the leader is igniting that togetherness after he’s seen the full story. And then after he does that, that final target action is about committing to action.

 

I get all this information. know all the things that I need to do, but I failed to act. I failed to bring it home and be accountable to bring everything together. so you have to, that audio and video piece, you have to model what you expect, as we talked about. I have a slide that I use when I teach at Georgia Southern. I teach leadership at Georgia Southern too, to the College of Business. And those who lead,

 

must first serve. In order to serve, you must commit to action by doing the things that you’re going to say you’re going to do to not only demonstrate, but you’re going be the first person to do that. There’s a phrase that’s in the Army and the Infantry that says, follow me. In order for somebody to follow you, you’ve got to be upfront. You’ve got to be the one that brings all those prior actions together, which is a direct counter to that landmine of justification.

 

So I’m justified because I’m the general, I don’t have to do this anymore. But no, yeah, you do, you gotta do it. You gotta look the part, right? You gotta be the part, not only be the part, you have to act the part each and every day. And so does that resonate? What do you think? What do you think about those target actions?

 

Tony (43:13)

I think it’s fantastic. think how you laid this out and how it’s incremental, intertwined, comprehensive. I all those things create a great pathway for leaders that want to basically embrace their fear and be the most courageous individual in the room to step forward and set the pace.

 

Stuart Kliman (43:32)

Tony, can I just, I just want to point one thing out to you, which I think will be interesting to your leaders. And it has to do with my friend, with my friend Les here. So I certainly spent my life walking around with a caricature of what leadership meant in the context of the military. I think many of us walk around with a caricature. Sorry, please, please go.

 

Tony (43:52)

You’re beating me to my question.

 

I

 

Stuart Kliman (43:56)

⁓

 

Tony (43:57)

it’s.

 

Les (43:58)

Help it.

 

Stuart Kliman (44:00)

What a great learning, know, think less is such a great clear example of of what it actually means, right? Because think people have sort of the very kind of command and control. He started with it, you around that. I think sometimes in the building industry, people think, you know, is that you know, is that is that sort of the right one? And I think sometimes they have the military, you know, kind of metaphor.

 

in you know in mind and so i just i just wanna make sure people are here in my friend here in terms of who he is and his success and you know what it is as he’s you know as he’s as he’s talking about particularly in this industry i have to say so i didn’t mean to steal your thunder but for me it’s always i’m working with the guy now for two years and it’s still amazing for me to the chance to listen to

 

Les (44:42)

I love it too,

 

Tony (44:43)

like well first of all from a time perspective Leslie like what when you’re good with time yeah okay

 

Les (44:49)

text me yet so I’m good just we’ll keep rolling until somebody sends me a text.

 

Tony (44:54)

Perfect. So here’s the question. What’s the greatest misconception that people have about being a leader in the US military?

 

Les (45:03)

Yeah, we’re robots. We are we’re we’re indifferent. We are not normal people. And it’s funny when they ask, I have two daughters. The oldest one is has an advertising business that she started a couple of years ago now. And the youngest one is an army doctor. So she’s kind of. Yeah. So she’s seeing she’s seeing they both say they ask, what do you think about?

 

your dad, you know, he’s a he’s a three star general. They’re like, OK, fine. But he’s still our dad. Think about what I just said, right? And so the same thing applies as I was talking to those young people, the leaders yesterday is I asked each one of them what they wanted to be when they grew up. You know, no one was like, well, I just want to make Lieutenant Colonel. I just want to be a battalion commander. I’m like, no, no, no. I want to know what you want to be when you grow up. And then I.

 

ended with this because your soldiers want to know. I would challenge your listeners to have them describe to the people that work for them what did they want to do, how do they want to succeed, and then ask the folks that report to them what do they want to do and our jobs to help them achieve those goals.

 

Stuart Kliman (46:09)

Tony, one of the great joys of writing this book was that Susan and Les and I had the privilege to interview 22 leaders from different industries, for-profit, non-for-profit, military, including, by the way, Cheryl Palmer from Taylor Morrison, direct connection to that. And we.

 

Tony (46:31)

Yeah, please.

 

Stuart Kliman (46:35)

And so, you know, each one of us tapped into our relationship network to find leaders who we thought, you know, we could learn from. And, and, and less brought to the table some of his military colleagues. And less, I’ll let you decide, you know, you know how deep you want to go. But, but one of the most senior people retired with most senior people from the military.

 

⁓ I got to sit and listen to all these people, 22 hours, 30, 40 hours of interviews. And one of Les’s colleagues, we said, how do you define your role as a leader in the military? And he said, well, my job is to ensure that every individual under my command can, and he actually used these words, self-actualize into whatever they want to become.

 

What a moment for me, right? Unbelievable framing, right? Yeah, less.

 

Tony (47:31)

Yeah.

 

Les (47:31)

Well, you we have this saying that we had, we stopped it, but brought it back because it’s very relevant. It’s be all you can be. Think about how simple that is. What if we took that same rubric for the building and just said, be all you can be, not what I want you to be, but be all you can be. How can I help you become who you’re supposed to be?

 

Stuart Kliman (47:51)

And just to be clear, not because, certainly that is a great thing to say because you want people to be all that you can be, but it is based on a belief in the military or in the building industry that if leaders can tap into all of those differences such that people can know that their capabilities, points of views, ways of thinking,

 

relationship networks can be tapped into, then the army or my business is significantly more likely to win. It’s not be all you can be because, it’s great if people can be all they can be. I don’t want be clear about that. We are not making a, this is not a book about, oh, you know, it is what does it take to win?

 

The army says be all you can be, not because it’s nice, great, know, they want to attract people and all that. But that is their core theory of winning, right? That’s their core theory of winning.

 

Les (48:49)

And winning matters as the Chief of Staff of the Army, the former chief says, and you got to read the book in order to get the whole story. trust me, I spent a lot of time with these leaders and I saw them operate. When you operate at the three-star level, especially at the Department of the Army level, it’s hard because every day you never know what those things are you’re going to have to deal with. But what the Army and what the nation asks for us to do is to take

 

that 35 years of experience and use it to keep our young men and women ready to execute the missions and jobs that they are going to do that they don’t even know they’re going to do. You know, another time we mentioned in the book about moving to Fort Polk, Louisiana. And if you haven’t been in Louisiana before, I love it, but that’s locations in the middle of nowhere. But the army made a decision to do that.

 

because we didn’t know September 11th was going to happen. But they put things in place so when things happen, this specialized capability was ready to execute. And I’m not going to talk about that anymore because that’s also in the book and that’s why you got to order it and read it. But this, what we put on the screen here, you know, this is what we’ve been talking about, Tony. It’s about knowing who you are, returning to respect, activating that honesty, seeing the story.

 

igniting togetherness and committing action to not only create value but to bridge those perspectives and strengthen those teams. Isn’t that pretty cool?

 

Tony (50:16)

It’s excellent, regardless of where you are in the world or what your challenges are as a leader. the end of the day, it’s about inspiring individuals to identify what their individual goals are, right? Their individual interests for themselves and their families and aligning that with a greater organization as you look to identify those areas where they can contribute in the greatest way and where you can find alignment. I’m just super excited. Like this is terrific. This is really excellent.

 

Leslie, you mentioned something specifically from our industry space I found interesting. want you to kind of put some color around this. You mentioned housing specifically was a challenge for the military. Yes. And the dynamic kind of has created either a different tactical or strategic kind of mindset relative to that. Can you share with us?

 

Stuart Kliman (50:45)

Yes, sir.

 

Les (51:05)

Yeah, so we had, you we went to privatized housing in the army. I think we started first. So each one of our military installations had privatized housing. That means different organizations, you name them. The big ones were they had oversight of our housing, our on post government housing. So that means they had access to all of our basic allowance for housing, which would generate the revenue so they could do the

 

the refurbishment of the houses. They also went and get private equity dollars and others to build new houses. And you know how the business works, how you got to work through that part. But what happened was, I think they lost visibility. A lot of times, crazy time, COVID happened, all these different things that were going on. Then we started to find out that there was mold in places. were leaders that were not doing jobs that they were supposed to do. And then

 

I’ll say his name. Former Secretary the Army McCarthy was the undersecretary of the army. And he physically, and this is in the book also, went to the location to where one of the toughest places was and talked to the families. You know, just like I told you about being truthful, about telling the story. And it’s easy for him to say, well, you know, I’m a big guy. I got a lot of things going on. He left the Pentagon. Actually, he was on another trip. Stopped that trip.

 

came to this location, spent time with the families, then we get a call. This doesn’t happen often. I want all the Army senior leaders in this office, in this conference room, we’re have a meeting. Anytime a meeting starts at four o’clock on a Thursday or Friday, it’s not a good day. So we sat down that timeframe and started to put together a process. So he says, IG, bless you.

 

I want you to go out to all of our installations. You will check every one of our locations and let’s come up with a plan for what we need to do. We had, can’t tell you how many, but we stood up a task force to do that. And then we worked out each one of those different pieces and parts because we took ownership of it. Because of if we didn’t as an organization, we probably would lost our jobs, but we would have lost the trust across the board for folks. And it’s really important that we

 

We maintain that. And that’s why you got to understand this thing about all the difference and why it’s so important and why it’s really important to talk about that as a team across the board.

 

I mean, there’s been a lot of initiatives. We have this thing called the My Army Post app where you could put in work orders. And the next step is to do some of these same type of things for our soldiers, privatizing the housing for soldiers, but also having the leaders own it because the leaders must own it in order for it to work. So you just can’t say, you know, I got to give this to you industry because they’re our soldiers. They live in these places. And I’m talking about soldiers and their families, but making sure that

 

We still have responsibility. So we’ve done, the Army’s done a great job of working with industry to make sure it happens. Is it perfect? No. Can we do better? Yes. But it’s all about the dialogue and discussion to make our installations, because we see them as power projection platforms, because they got to be able to go from where they’re living, to where they got to deploy to, to do the missions that they got to do from an infrastructure perspective.

 

Tony (54:20)

It’s, it’s, it’s reassuring and humbling at the same time that even the U S military struggles with housing. Right. So it’s the, it’s the largest, it’s by 12 % of our GDP. It’s the largest GDP, probably just by percentage of GDP in the U S right. And no matter where you are in the world, the highest turnover rate is on construction sites. It doesn’t matter what country you’re in. Right. So when we’re talking about the challenges from a leadership perspective, and I don’t even want to come close to.

 

suggesting this, but you the military dynamic of the what’s at stake and, know, lives and what have you like, mean, Hey, that is, you know, that is at the absolute top, but somewhere on the next down list, a handful of rungs, I think that beats everything else is the construction site. Right. I mean, that’s proven. Right. So, so it’s just, it’s so, it’s just, I guess the,

 

the critical nature of the problem at hand and for you guys to embrace this directly and to deliver this to the building products industry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for recognizing the challenges.

 

Les (55:18)

I think the correlation is very clear between both because we’re all talking about readiness and capability. So the capability to build places gets after what you’re talking about. And people got to be ready to execute that. We haven’t talked about this either. And Stu introduced me to one of companies. I think we, the Department of War, and the building industry need to do a better job of transitioning.

 

our young men and women who want to work in the space to come work in the building industry after they leave their military service. And even more than that, those young people who might not want to, they just got to know, because they all want to figure out what’s one way to serve. How do we turn the building industry from more than just a job to be a mission for a purpose? You know, what Stu just talked about. Think about that. If people knew how short we were in housing.

 

and how important it was for people to do that. And then they get a skill that they can go have their own business. I’m always looking for a good, what, plumber, good electrician, somebody to redo my bathroom. And it’s amazing how short that is with people.

 

Tony (56:20)

Absolutely.

 

And those organizations that are able to solve those problems or those individuals that have those talents and skills. fact, one of the things that’s kind of fascinating that for years we’ve watched the IT industry take off, right? And the building industry kind of lag behind. We’re seeing individuals coming out of code academies, the IT individuals becoming fantastic project managers in the building product space. instead,

 

Because of the steadiness and the stability and the need and the opportunity in the building product space, it’s kind of, I don’t know, I’m refreshing to see talent coming back this direction because of the macro dynamics at play here.

 

Les (57:09)

Yeah, I agree.

 

Tony (57:10)

Gentlemen, thank you so much. This was really excellent. A great, honor to host you both.

 

Stuart Kliman (57:14)

Such a pleasure. Thanks, Tony.

 

Les (57:16)

We’re honored. I’m looking forward to continuing this work with you.