Another lecture in IHMC’s award winning lecture series.
Glenn W. Sturm is a partner of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP in the Atlanta office, where he practices in corporate law, and technology law. Additionally, Mr. Sturm practices in securities law and focuses on the representation of investment banks, technology, private equity funds and emerging growth companies. Mr. Sturm has chaired the Firm’s Corporate Group and serves on the Firm’s Executive Committee, a governing body of seven partners who oversee standing committees, strategic initiatives and overall operations of the firm. A member of the Florida Bar and the State Bar of Georgia, Mr. Sturm’s experience includes representation of issuers and underwriters in the public issuance of securities, private equity financing, private placements, and mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Sturm is a member of the American Bar Association and its Committee on Federal Regulation of Securities and the 33 Securities Act Subcommittee, and the Atlanta Bar Association. Mr. Sturm serves in the U.S. Army Reserve, and served on the corporate board of directors for Goldleaf Financial Solutions, Inc. (GFSI). He founded Netzee, Inc. (NASDAW: NETZ), an Internet banking enabling company that he took public in 1999, and served as its chief executive officer from 1999-2000. He also served on the corporate boards of directors for InterCept, Inc. (ICPT) and WebMD, Inc. (WBMD). Mr. Sturm’s civic involvement includes membership on the national council of the Boy Scouts of America, the executive board of the Atlanta Area Council, and he was recently awarded the Silver Beaver Award, the highest award a local council can bestow on a volunteer. He also serves as a trustee of the Levin College of Law at the University of Florida. Prior to attending law school, he held executive positions in a leading healthcare corporation. In 1985, Mr. Sturm earned a Juris Doctor, with honors, from the Levin College of Law at the University of Florida where he was named to the Order of the Coif. During law school, he served as a fellowship instructor of legal research and writing and as executive managing editor of the Florida International Law Journal. He was a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, Florida Blue Key, and Phi Kappa Phi. Mr. Sturm earned a Master of Arts in Management from Pepperdine University in 1978, and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Florida in 1976.
Transcript.
[00:00:10.02]
Thank you very much.
[00:00:29.02]
To the dismay of the cameraman, I will actually move around a little bit as we go through this tonight and as we give this talk. I will preserve plenty of time for questions. One of the things that I wanted to talk to you tonight about is you will see a relationship between family and business, because I think there’s a huge relationship between the two things, and successful businesses and successful families. But I’m going to start off with the first slide. This This is a picture I took this year. You’re looking at this and think about how close I am to this ram when I took the picture. I’m close, and that ram has no fear at all. It’s looking over something, and it’s in an area that I can’t go to. It’s a prohibited area. And why can the ram be that way? Why is the ram that secure? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First off, what you can’t see is on either side of the RAM, there are two other RAMs, and they’re watching. I’m taking out. But I really want to know what’s on the other side. What’s he looking at?
[00:01:41.29]
Because that RAM stayed in that position for about 15 minutes? So let me tell you a true story, and this is a background about me. In November of 1998, some doctors did some biopsies on me, and they called me up, so they were negative, and they kept on doing biopsies, and they did them all the way through December of 2008. And on January 21st of 2009, I had a phone call. To show you how smart I am, the phone rang, I looked at it, I was going up to University of North Carolina to give a speech, and I didn’t recognize the number, but I had to… I have to deal with this my land, so I I didn’t answer. He answered the call. I said, Hello. He said, Glenn. I said, Yes. Glenn’s term. I said, Yes. This is Dr. Galloway. He said, Hey, Tarithia, how are you doing? This is a person I ride bikes with. And later on, I said, Well, why didn’t I figure something out when she said this is Dr. Galloway? She didn’t say this was Tareetha. I said, Are we writing this week? And she said, Well, Glenn, we got the biopsy results back.
[00:02:54.10]
I said, What biopsies? She said, The ones we did about three weeks ago? I said, Yeah. She said, Yes. So they came back positive for lymphoma. And I said, What? They said, They came positive back for lymphoma. You have cancer. And I said, Let’s start this all over again. Okay. And so she told me and I flew up to North Carolina, flew back the next day, and they did five more biopsies. Then I did a wonderful thing, went out to Jackson, Wyoming, with my son and tore my ACL while I was waiting for the results of those biopsies. And so things are going really well at this point. And they came back positive. I’m a cancer patient, and I’m on IV chemo, and I’ve been on IV chemo for 14, 15 consecutive months now. I’ve been taking chemo for two years orally, and that’s something. So that’s the negative, right? Well, when they do that, when they get the final diagnosis, they go back and get the original slides of every biopsy. The original slides showed the cancer. The original slides showed the cancer. And that doctor missing it was the greatest miracle of my life.
[00:04:13.05]
The absolute greatest miracle of my life. Because on July 15th of 2000, I had a late surprise. It was the birth of my son. If the doctor had gotten it right, I’d have been on chemo and never would have had him. And last year, which was a very difficult year for me for a lot of reasons, what got me through it more than anything else was my little boy and the support that he gave me. And you will actually see him in a few minutes. So when you’re looking at a problem, you don’t just look at one side of it. I call Daniel the miracle of malpractice.
[00:04:55.05]
And it is a miracle, and it’s one of the greatest things that It’s never happened.
[00:05:00.04]
And some people around IHMC know him because he’s been here and he’s a special little guy. But just like this ram, what’s the RAM looking at? Problems create opportunities, and You look at the whole issue, not just the problem. You look at every aspect of it. Sometimes, you know something? You find what that ram found, whatever it is, you find a miracle. That’s what we’re going to start with. That’s the longest we’ll talk about any one slot, I promise. What are we going to talk about tonight? We’re going to talk about the topics basically are responsibility, results, mission, ethics, trust, leadership, passion, innovation, and time. I use cartoons. You won’t see these cartoons on the web later because I have a one-time license that I pay for them. But we’re going to get going. So let’s talk about leadership. Leadership is very simple. You set… The first thing you do as a leader is you set the example with your own behavior. You set the example. But then you have to do other things. You have to set clear and measurable goals. You have to insist on a candid assessment. We will talk about assessments and things in a bit.
[00:06:18.23]
You got to determine whether your goals are being achieved, and you constantly assess whether they’re the right goals. Do we need to course correct? Second thing is ethics matter. They matter more than anything else in an organization. The proudest I am about my role in my law firm is in the past 12 years, I’ve got a group of 40 lawyers who report directly to me. I’ve not had a single lawyer quit and go to a competitor in 12 years. We’ve had turnover. We’ve outplaced people. I’m going to talk about my biggest failure, which is one of those issues. But part of the thing is ethics matter. Cander matters. Whether it’s your 30-year business colleague or your 10-year-old son, and I’ll give examples of both as we go, they matter. When I became a CEO of a public company, it was funny. I mean, it was a big deal. I found I started a company and took it public. It was 1999, so I was quite a bit younger than I am now. And oh, my gosh, I was the CEO of a public company, and everybody wanted to talk to me, and everybody wanted to interview me, and everybody wanted to do all this stuff.
[00:07:32.00]
And the status of that was so amazing. But there’s a problem with that as a leader. Status isn’t what it’s about. What it’s about is building an organization. It’s about results. It’s about what is your mission. And most failures you’ll see of CEOs, there’s some great books about this, is when the CEO mixes up what their job is with the status of what they’re doing and their title. And so always remember, it’s about the mission. It’s about the organization, and it’s not about your status. I’ve said this once. I’ll say it again. I’ll probably say it three more times. Your behavior as a leader clearly will define the business. Great leaders generally have great businesses. Poor leaders with poor personal behavioral characteristics don’t. Before I went to law school, I was with a company in business. The worst run operation in the country for this company was in Houston, Texas. They sent me there to turn it around. Well, the distribution center at this place opened. The trucks were supposed to roll at 7: 00 in the morning. So the first day I was there, I got to the distribution center at 6: 30 in the morning.
[00:08:54.13]
There wasn’t a single person there. At about 7: 15, the first driver showed And by 7: 30, 7: 45, the manager showed up to make sure people got on the road. Well, you wondered why they had customer service rating problems, right? And so I did something nice. I walked inside, and the office people were all supposed to be there at eight o’clock. I walked in, got inside because I didn’t have a key because it was my first day there. I took the clock and I took it from eight o’clock and I turned it around until it was nine o’clock. So people They walk in 20 minutes late and they look at the clock. Oh, my gosh, I’m late. No, yeah, you were late. Late, period. And what happened was the previous managers would roll in at 9: 00 or 10: 00 in the morning. They didn’t set the behavior. They didn’t set a standard of behavior for themselves, and as a result, the organization deteriorated. It didn’t take three months to get the place turned around just by setting an example with your own behavior.
[00:10:03.08]
Okay.
[00:10:05.29]
One of the things that I think is really important in business is this. You get good results with ideas. You get good results with creativity. You get good results by conflict of ideas, where two people have ideas that are different, and they work at it, and they approach the problems differently. Just like in the cancer, just like the RAM, you look at things from a different perspective, you get better results. But the minute that changes to conflict of personalities, where people attack the person and not attack the idea, that’s when you get organizational problems. And you have organizational terrorists, because what they would do is they become masters of attacking people, but they don’t attack the ideas. So what you want to create in business is in an environment where you have conflict of ideas, but not conflict of personalities. Responsibilities. One of the great things that I learned young was what responsibility was. As a young lieutenant in the army, I was given responsibility to get things done. And I was given resources to do them, and I was given authority. Well, in business, one of the great mistakes is you will give somebody a responsibility for something, but you won’t give them the resources, or you’ll give them a responsibility for something, and you won’t give them any authority.
[00:11:29.02]
If you look at the educational issues that we face today. How often is it that there are handicaps for folks, whether it be teachers or administrations or anything, where you’re trying to hold somebody responsible for results, but they don’t have one of those things. They don’t have either the authority or the resources. You’ve got to have all of them. To have responsibility, you have to have authority and resources. You have to be able to make decisions. If When you take those things away from people, don’t expect good results. Okay, we’re going to talk about big Biggest failures. One of the things about having no turnover, and we’ll talk about this in great detail in a few minutes, is people being secure in their environment and clearly stating people’s requirements. I said, What’s the mission? Clearly articulate the mission, clearly state what the requirements are, and then you measure it. You clearly measure what’s going on, and you talk to people about how they’re doing. Well, my biggest failure was if somebody’s going to be let go from the organization, I do it. I’m responsible. I’ll tell you a story about something that happened this week that I went and had to do something, had a responsibility issue that I had deal with.
[00:13:00.25]
I walked into… We had a woman who was having some problems and it had been going on for a while. I talked to her boss. She’s been counseled, correct? How many times she’s been counseled? Six times. Okay, fine. How long has this been going on? We counsel her for six months. We go through the whole process and everything else. I said, Okay, it’s time to go talk to her, and she’s got to go. We have to do that because it’s an integrity issue organizationally. If you don’t hold people accountable, that means that other people are not going to do their jobs. So I walked into her office with her direct supervisor, and I sat down in front of her and I said, Well, you’re probably wondering why I’m here. And as you know, you’ve been having some problems. I look at her and immediately it’s evident that she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. She had no clue. She had no clue she was being fired. And I got all the way through firing her, and I actually terminated her, told her she was gone. And I said, Has anybody talked to you about this?
[00:14:05.20]
And she said, I knew I needed it be better, but I had no idea. And I looked at her, and I knew she was telling me the truth. Absolutely knew she was telling me the truth. We had failed. We had failed so miserably. This is a human being. This is a mother who is a professional who has a great income, and we had failed her completely. And we had failed the organization completely because we had not clearly set the standards that she had to achieve. We had not measured it and hadn’t communicated it. That was my fault. It’s my shop. I’m responsible. I sat there and I made a decision. I said, You’re not fired. You’re just not fired. I said, Now, let’s talk about it candidly and just where things are. I said, The problem What we got is your skillset, the skills that you have, don’t match our organization. You have great skills in this area, but those are skills that we need about 5 hours a week of. We don’t need them 60 hours a week. We need them 5 hours a week. People are reluctant to use you in areas that you’re not an expert.
[00:15:21.13]
That’s a problem. Has anybody talked to you about this? No. We have two choices. We can either retrain you in areas or we can identify a way to get you fully utilized. And since you’re an expert in an area that is very complicated, I mean, very complicated, it’s a very complicated part of a risk, but a very important part of a risk, which is benefits law. My thing is what we need to do is find the work for you or find an environment for you. So we went to work on it. Well, four months later, she left the firm, and she went to one of the four largest accounting firms in the United States. And 12 months later, she was the head of that section of her risk of practice for that accounting firm nationally, making three times what she was making at our law firm. Somebody said something, but I don’t know. But the point is, if I had done anything other than that, I would have destroyed the credibility that we had about being candid, about being fair, about having an environment where people could trust that they weren’t going to be abused.
[00:16:34.17]
You’ve got to have an environment where people are secure in their environment. My biggest failure was having a situation where I failed by not knowing that we were doing the job. It’s about setting expectations and clearly communicating them. It’s something called organizational development. How many people have heard OD in here? A couple of people. Well, organizational the definition of it, it’s a long-range managerial program aimed at improving an organization. It’s problem-solving techniques and providing a catalyst for itself, rejuvenation. How does it rebuild itself? How does it provide a catalyst? How does it grow? Well, the way you do that first thing, the most fundamental thing is people have to be secure in their environment. So that’s what you got to do. That’s where you start. My biggest failure was not doing it. I think one of the big successes that I had was doing the right thing because it got around very quickly that she had been fired and unfired in about 10 minutes. Wishy-washy, right? Okay. Lessons learned. I think this is probably the most important slide in the whole thing. If you do what’s on this slide, and you can get everybody in your organization to do this, you’re going to have a wonderful organization.
[00:17:52.02]
What have I done today to improve my colleagues’ life or job performance? Think about that. If you can get everybody in your company where you work to ask that question when they go home and have an answer every day, the organization is completely different. Now, how do you get there? You get there by making sure you do it yourself. You set the example with your own behavior. Now, if you’re the CEO of a big company, you can’t do that for everybody every day, but you have done something every day to make somebody’s life better. If you get an organization doing that, the growth that happens is just stunning. Ethics, leadership, and trust, we’ll talk about this. What’s it about? That’s my little guy. The picture here is a bit better because it’s not quite as dark. But if you see how big those eyes are, that’s when my son got turned around academically. He was at a shuttle launch. That was T minus about one second. And the kid, it lit him up. It lit a fire in my son, a passion in my son that is unbelievable. Well, if we can light a passion in your children and you can light a passion about something in your organization, it fundamentally changes the business.
[00:19:24.25]
So what are the ethics of the business? How do you value things? What What style do you use? A lot of companies are bureaucratic. Organizations are bureaucratic. Some have some openness and pretend they’re open. Some have truly collaborative environments. But those are just styles. The question is, why do you have that style? What’s the reason for that style? Why are you using the values? What lens is the value? Is it about performance, security? Is it an opening, collaborative environment used for humanity or for corporate performance? I know people who have a open environment and everything else, but it has nothing to do with performance of the business. Likewise, I know people have bureaucratic organizations. It has nothing to do with the performance of business. It’s about power. Why are you using it? If you’re using a closed environment to hide information, to create fear, what’s the true corporate purpose? What are you doing to improve the business? So leadership, and that’s intentional. It’s like some of the cartoons. What’s leadership really about? We’ve talked about it. You set the example with your own behavior. That’s what leadership starts, where it starts. How many folks do I have in the audience who’ve been in the military?
[00:20:50.14]
Most of the time I wear my follow me pen right here. It’s Fort Bend in Georgia. It’s the standard. You set the example, it’s follow me. It’s about leadership. What does that really mean? It’s not about technical expertise in any one functional area. It’s about gaining the right perspective on facts to find the right destination. It’s finding the right people, the people who can get you there. It’s ensuring they know how to get there. You make sure they understand their role and the accountability. Really Really simple. You give them the resources to do their job. So what we talked about, responsibility equals authority plus resources. And then what do you do? You inspire them and you get out of their way. One of the reasons the US military is so much more successful than most other military organizations is all, generally, people are not told exactly how to do their job once they’re doing things. They’re told what their mission is. When we mess it up is we tell them specifically how to do something when they’re in the field. You lead by setting an example, you lead by telling them what their mission is, and you lead by inspiring them, giving them the resources of getting out of their way.
[00:22:12.17]
Let’s talk about passion, innovation, and creativity. What the army did for me was passion. I had some of the greatest bosses ever. My dad’s a career army officer. I’m very lucky my mom and dad are still alive. You’ll I’ll read some things in a bit about it, something that happened. But the most important thing is they gave me passion. And passion is what makes things successful. If your organization is passionate, if your organization has good leadership, if your leaders set the example with their own behavior, if the leaders inspire people and get out of their way, you’re going to have a passionate organization. In the military, there are hierarchies. In at least in the army. There’s the combat arms, there’s combat service support, and then there are the others. And aviation, when I went on an active duty, was just… They were the guy, come on. They were just like… They We were taxi drivers. And in 1981, an organization was founded, and their motto is November Sierra Delta, Quebec. I’ll tell you what that means in a second. But one of their rules is that they are never more than 60 minutes early, 60 seconds early or 60 seconds late on any mission, ever.
[00:23:38.20]
The November Sierra Delta, Quebec, stands for night stalkers don’t quit. They don’t stop. Winston Churchill’s famous statement, victory will not be denied us. Why? Because we’re going to fight them on the shores, we’re going to fight them on the streets, we’re going to fight them forever. Our family’s motto, which if my little boy was here, he would shrug his shoulders and just say, I hate the motto. And he’s actually getting to be with you. I get this speech in a couple of weeks and he’ll do it. I’ll make him do it. The motto is, Stearns never quit. Okay. Sturm’s Never Quit. Sturm’s Never Quit. So passion, November Sierra Delta, Quebec. That organization is well known now. It’s TF 160. It’s 160 Special Operations Aviation Regiment. They’re an amazing organization. If you ever meet somebody from that organization, you will be just astounded by their leadership. And that goes from the lowest level enlisted person from the senior people. They are passionate people. It’s an unbelievable organization. Okay, so have I said this before, that leadership is setting the example with your own behavior? You might get as a little bit of a theme, but there’s also something else that’s called, You selflessly serve others.
[00:25:08.01]
Leaders serve others. My job at the law firm is to serve the partners who work with me, to make sure they have the resources they need, to make sure they have the authority they need, to make sure they’re not hindered in their performance by some stupid thing. And we’ll talk about those things later. So this is the other slide that takes a little bit of time to talk about. My dad was being interviewed for an award Lord, and his only grandson is my miracle. They were talking about integrity, and there was several four stars and the Secretary of the Army when we were at a dinner. They were talking about integrity. They were questioning my father about something. They go on and on. My little boy just sticks his hand up in the air like this. That’s what he does. Those of you who have met him know he’s still a little boy, but he generally is very polite. He says, Yes, sir, no, sir, yes, ma’am, no, ma’am, or else. But he does this, and he stuck his hand up in the air like that. Then the chief looked at him and said, Daniel, do you have something to say?
[00:26:28.14]
He said, Yes, sir. He stood up, he said, My father always tells the truth. And he sat down. And the people look at me like, you know… Okay, think about that standard to 100% of the time not be accurate, but to be truthful. You can be accurate without being truthful. You can make a statement that is completely factually accurate, but misleading. The truth is different. And my little boy set the standard for me in our interaction that I always tell the truth. Well, I started thinking about that. I thought about an awful lot over the past year since this happened. I I decided it’s a standard I have to meet. It’s a standard, really, if you think about it, that in relationships, whether they’re family, your friends, or your business colleagues, they really expect that of you. They expect the truth. You know something? They’re entitled to the truth. So how do you answer the tough questions? How do you answer the questions you don’t want to answer? How do you answer the questions that are just impossible? Because it’s like, if you take a look at the picture of me, and if you look at the picture of me on the thing, there’s actually a reason why that picture is there.
[00:27:51.29]
I weighed a few pounds more than I do now. Well, if you’d seen that picture, would you have said that I was skinny? No. No. Not if you were honest. What happens if your spouse asks you the question, How do you handle that tough question? What do you really say? Well, we’re going to get there in a second because I want to let that hang for a few minutes, and we’ll get there. You look fine. Okay. Leadership and trust. Trust liberates an organization. If people in an organization trust the leadership, trust their colleagues, it liberates the organization. It empowers an organization. I also believe that when organizations have high levels of organizational trust, it empowers them and lets them make better decisions quicker because they know people aren’t second-guessing them. They know that they can talk to people about their decisions, and they can trust that they’re not going to get backstabbed. So let’s keep going on this. Okay, if you trust people, you let people make decisions, they’re going to disappoint you. They’re going to make mistakes. Well, Beth is my oldest daughter. She did something that was really stupid. I talked to her about it, and then I talked to her about it about 100 times.
[00:29:21.23]
She finally looked at me and said, Daddy, the wambulence is gone. I can’t change what I did. I made a mistake, and you are whining about it like crazy, and there’s nothing I can do to make it better. She said, Dad, the wambulence is gone. Well, it’s imperative, and I learned a lot from that. It’s imperative It’s imperative to have an environment where mistakes are celebrated as learning opportunities and not punished. My daughter learned from that mistake. She’s 27 years old today. She’s the Director of Marketing for a very large company, and I’m just so proud of her and love her to death. The greatest thing for any of us is to have happy children, and my daughter is happy. But she gave me this, Daddy, the Wambulence is gone. When I had the cancer diagnosis and tore my ACL and was laying on the ice in Jackson, Wyoming, I remembered what she told me. I was looking up in the mountains and I’m saying to myself, What else has to happen? What else to have to go through? And I remembered what she said, Daddy, the Wambulance isn’t gone. And it’s time to get yourself up, get going, and get moving, and get on with it.
[00:30:40.11]
So if you make an environment where people’s mistakes are not punished, but they’re looked as learning exercises. It’s amazing. And I can tell you a story if we have time about Coca-Cola and that. Okay, candor creates trust, especially when it starts at the top. If you’re the CEO and you make a you make a mistake, you announced it. You announced you made a mistake, you tell the people you made a mistake, you correct the mistake. Now, if you’re willing to do that, that candor, and you don’t punish people when they’re candid, something’s going to happen. You’re going to find out about mistakes quicker. If you find mistakes quicker, what happens? You’re able to repair them quicker and Sometimes you’re able to repair them completely. Whereas if people are afraid and they’re not candid and don’t volunteer the information, things can get out of control and be very bad. You really have to celebrate the people who make, who announced their mistakes. Two things. Bad news does not get better with age. Cander does. Cander always gets better with age. Another thing about this appointment, Jimmy Balk in the zoo is a very close friend. Something bad happened to me, and he looked at me one day and he said, made the following quote, We’re commanded to forgive.
[00:32:10.21]
If we don’t, it eats us up. It’s all worth it for the gift of Daniel. If you don’t forgive, if you harbor anger, it hurts you more than anybody else. As the leader, you have to get over it. You have to know people are going to make mistakes, and you have to have an environment where that’s acceptable, and you solve problems, and you don’t punish them. The last one is probably my favorite phrase. We must all give up hope for better yesterday. Okay, I got cancer. It takes one week out of three, I get IV chemo. Guess what? I call it my tax. It’s a tax I pay. It’s a time tax. I can’t change it. So what do I do now? I tell my clients about it. Well, I’m going to be at Yale. I’m at Yale next week. I have clients who come to Yale to see me while I’m getting chemo. Now, some of you think that’s weird. Actually, they’re the smart clients because what happens is I move around a lot. I can’t sit still. Well, when I’m hooked up to an IV pole, I can’t move. So I’m locked in a chair and can’t move around, and my clients come and sit down and They talk to me and they get me captured for five hours.
[00:33:32.08]
Well, those are smart clients because I’m not distracted. So it’s some humor with it, but you can’t change yesterday. My daughter said, Daddy, the wave of the wind is Come on. You can’t change it. You can learn from it, but you can’t change what’s happened. What does commitment mean? I’ve been described as being loyal as a lab. By the way, I think loyalty is a very important part of my life. I have relationships with people, and those relationships are critical to me. But there’s something else I’ve learned. It’s a two-way street on this. There’s sometimes being loyal as a lab can be rough, pun intended, of course there is. But I’ve I’ve seen people who have had labs who abuse them, and the lab still loves them. When you talk about loyalty, it’s a two-way street. What happens with me is one of the most important things to me is I provide people incentives early in a business relationship to take advantage of me. There’s a great car dealership in Chicago that when they hire new employees, they put change in the cars that come in for service. You 75 cents or a buck or just something that nobody’s really going to miss to see if it’s gone.
[00:35:07.21]
And if it’s gone, the employee is gone. Okay, it’s that simple. It’s black and white. If the employee takes the money out of the car They’re gone. And so I provided incentives early on for it. It’s like my dog, Gator, who I lost last year. I love Gator. He was just so good to be such an important part of my life. And there was just true passionate love between the two of us. He’s my friend. But one thing about it is if I left the room and left the steak on the counter, what happened to it? I mean, Gator ate the steak. I couldn’t trust Gator, but I could love him. Okay? It’s got to be a two-way street. If you’re loyal to downstream, somebody’s got to be loyal upstream, but providing an incentive early in the process to find out they are. Otherwise, you can get really damaged. Except for responsibility, it’s liberating. I’m going to continue to move because of time. This is something Just you said I want to go through. Children spell love with four letters. It’s called time. Okay? By the way, employees spell relationship with four letters. It’s time.
[00:36:29.27]
Do Do you take time to work with them? Think about young children and how desperate they are for your attention. When you’re a leader, if you give attention to people and you help them, the servant leadership model, what happens? It works. It’s about lighting a fire in passion. So I’m going to show you a quick video. I don’t think most people in the state of Florida, much less United States, understand that this place is a national resource. I believe IHMC is a national resource. I’m going to do this, and then I’ve got to figure out how to turn it on. I got to go backwards. I’m going to watch a video here. Tech Connect is focused around teams expanding the community’s interest and technology. Scratch That is a program from IHMC’s Tech Connect. What is it that you’re designing to teach MIT Scratch to elementary school students, middle school students, to get them interested in programming earlier in life.
[00:37:38.17]
Well, the first two days, I just worked on Scratch. Scratch helps to just start off with computer science? Well, Scratch just begins people off with computer programming. As a job on C C++ are pros. If you learn Scratch down, if you have Scratch absolutely down, Java, C++, you can get them like that. Robots that computer scientists make that help people, like the exoskeleton. It will It really make people happy because they can walk when they couldn’t walk five years ago, when they couldn’t walk. And the doctor said, You’ll never be able to walk again. The doctor had never heard of computer scientists or never thought that computer scientists would think of this. Science isn’t all experiments and fun. It’s mostly experiments and fun, but it’s not all. There is a bunch of calculating, mathematics. You have to have a couple of degrees to get a job as a scientist, especially at IHMC. That’s where the pros, pros work.
[00:39:24.18]
Now, Let me just tell you something real quick.
[00:39:30.25]
That’s my son. Did you steal that from IHMC? No, ma’am. It’s theirs. And that’s my son. My son, I was told was ADD, right? I was told my son was a lot of things. Well, Daniel, they lit a fire in him here. In a two-week process, they lit a fire in my son. And yeah, it is just what has happened here. Tech Connect is teaching third and fourth graders how to write computer software, gaming software. It’s changing lives. It’s changed my son’s life. Okay, he’s an ADD kid. Next summer, he’s got a student ID at Johns Hopkins University, and he’s attending classes there next summer. Why these people turned my son on through their individual leadership, lit his fire about science, and it changed my son’s life. That’s what it’s about. And they did it by doing it with their own behavior, showing their own behavior, leading by their behavior and setting an example that kids can follow. This place is a National Resource. We’ve got everybody in this room. If you leave here tonight and don’t hear anything else I said, tell your friends, tell everybody about it, because what the kids that are coming through this Tech Connect program are doing is just absolutely unbelievable.
[00:41:01.29]
Humble. Okay, simple rules, and then we’re almost finished. Don’t make rules to protect yourself from the lowest common denominator. When you do that, you inhibit good people. You inhibit good people. You don’t make rules to the lowest common denominator. You get rid of the lowest common denominator. Get those people to places where they benefit. Nobody’s entitled. It’s the ban of your existence. Nobody’s entitled. The CEO is not entitled. The CEO who thinks he’s in status is not entitled. You’re just not entitled. Money is a byproduct. Okay, businesses provide services and products. Businesses that provide great services and great products are successful. Businesses that operate purely for money, generally, are not because their motivation is in the wrong place and they’re setting the wrong examples. Never try to change consumer behavior. It’s a good way to catch a lot of arrows. One of the greatest companies in America today is Apple. Apple’s creativity They didn’t create the MP3. They created the iPod. They created a product that had so much innovation, so much ease of use. It was unbelievable. They are just the most amazing organization. But I have had Hundreds of people come to me with products that would change consumer behavior, and it’s a good way to catch a lot of arrows.
[00:42:36.05]
Swim with the tide, the tulip craze, the industrial revolution in the 2000s, the Internet, bubble, the real estate bubble. Swim with the tide, you make money. You swim against the tide, you lose a lot. I’ve got examples of both in my portfolio. Again, topics. Set a clear, measurable destination as they set As they say in the army, inspect what you expect. Ethics do matter, whether it’s my 10-year-old son or your 30-year colleague. Creating an environment that fosters trust and creativity will empower your business. Those are the topics. I’m exactly a minute and 45 seconds over the period of time I’m supposed to have gone. I’m sorry, but there’s one more slide I want you to look at. And then the last one, and it’s perspective. It’s all about perspective. It’s about the RAM. It’s about looking at the whole problem, and it’s looking at a problem that creates an opportunity.
[00:43:45.19]
Thank you.
[00:43:56.25]
Thank you for a marvelous lecture. To your highest knowledge, would the IHMC interact with the National Flight Academy at the naval air station?
[00:44:08.13]
I don’t know the answer to that. I do know that there’s a very good relationship organization. I don’t know what we’re doing with that right now. If you see me afterwards, I’m going to find somebody who can answer that question for you directly because I don’t know the answer. But I’m familiar with your organization out there, and It’s a very, very powerful thing. Yes, sir.
[00:44:37.04]
Thank you. I don’t really have a question, but as a father of three boys, I want to thank you for the work you’ve done with the Boy Scouts. I know that earning the Silver Beaver Award takes an awful lot out of an individual, a lot of time, and I think that’s significant, and I want to thank you.
[00:44:57.21]
Thank you. Let me tell you what we I did to get that. The Inner City Scout program in Atlanta wasn’t working. What I did was I led a group that got it endowed, and we had something happen two years ago where we had five Eagle Scouts out of a housing project awarded the same day. It’s going to last, and those families are all changed. Another thing about IQs. Everybody looks at the housing projects in socioeconomic disparity. Do you realize that genius-level IQs are random? And they’re not random, but they are evenly distributed across socioeconomic levels. Okay? So the greatest waste in America today are the minds that we’re not empowering and the lack of passion that we’re not giving our children by giving the right opportunities. I think Scout helps that. I apologize for being long-winded. Sir. Thank you. Listen, a simple question. Netzee, the company you founded and CEO and all that, could you tell us, please, the current status, how it’s been doing and what your involvement might be? Thank you. Netzee was sold about six years ago. We’re well past the statute of limitations, so I’ll tell you what happened. I acquired work and we acquired six companies at once, and brought them together to take public internet banking business.
[00:46:49.08]
The company today is financially performing huge. A lot of the internet banking applications you see today are developed by the company. But the board and I had I’m in disagreement. I thought we should take a strategic direction, and a couple of the board members felt that that would impede their businesses. I said, Guys, you owe fiduciary duty here. I don’t care about your fiduciary duty someplace else. You owe fiduciary duty here. And you either recuse yourself, resign, or I’m going to resign. So a year into the process, I had doubled I knew every month for the first six months we were public and doubled revenue every quarter after that. I resigned as a CEO, quietly, but I resigned, and the company was sold about 18 months later. See you. Thank you. It’s about ethics. You can’t do that. It was just wrong. I couldn’t have said that five years ago, by the way. Yes, ma’am.
[00:48:00.07]
My question has to do with nonprofits. Many of the nonprofits are working with the groups that you are talking about, and those are the first funds that are under the gun with the new Congress. Those who can suffer the most from lack of resources will probably suffer the most if things go the way we think. So how do you get the leadership of nonprofits impassioned about going after funds wherever they can find them?
[00:48:43.07]
Well, I was going to Can I ask your question one way and tell the last sentence of your question. Okay, well, first off, I think there’s always money, and it’s about results. In the last slide, I said in the military, they taught us to inspect what we expect. Well, if you’ve got measurable results as a nonprofit, something you’re trying to deliver, and you can measure it, and you can demonstrate performance, you can get money. Okay, that’s the first thing. Dealing with politicians. Oh, boy. That’s what it’s doing. Yeah, I mean, I’ve got- You just can’t count on it being there always. I think that’s one of the keys. Well, ma’am, as I said, entitlement is… Nobody’s entitled. Okay, but if you perform, the performance will create the money. I said business are about selling products and services, not about money is the byproduct. You will get the money if you perform. Now, if you got performance and the politicians aren’t going to provide or corporations aren’t going to provide you money, that’s a story that the media will pursue. It really will pursue. I actually own a publication, and There’s a reason why baseball is going back into the inner cities in the major Metropolitan areas up north.
[00:50:23.16]
There’s a thing called bringing baseball back to the inner city. There’s a reason why it’s happening. Because Because there were statistics that were proven, black and white, proof that people from lower socioeconomic areas in major cities who had dominated baseball for years and decades weren’t participating anymore. Why? People weren’t supporting it. And baseball had a black eye, and it was getting ready to be a really big black eye. They got involved. Inspect what you expect, set standards, pursue them, hold people accountable, hold yourself accountable. Yes, sir.
[00:51:08.10]
There’s no doubt about the world economy is the truism for the day. We are in a world economy, and we lean so heavily on our universities to educate our scientists. You’re saying that no one should have perhaps tenure. Are you in favor of doing away No one should need us to have perpetual security. Are you in favor of doing a way with tenure in our university system to approve your tenant?
[00:51:39.29]
Okay, well, any interesting question? I’m a faculty member. Okay, it’s not on the bio, but I teach corporate finance at the University of Florida. I teach at the law school, but it’s a JD MBA program class. I could answer the question. But let me tell you something. I think Tenure is an issue, but I’ll tell you something else. Look at Tech Connect. Look at the first two young men who taught it. Those are high school students. Those are high school students lighting the fire in kids. Now, who lit the fire in the high school students? The scientists here did. Okay? Well, a 10-year-old child who who looks at a 16-year-old, looks at them with admiration, especially if they’re a cool kid. If you get a cool high school student teaching a third or a fourth grade or something, it’s easier for them to teach them if they actually take the job seriously. Well, if you look at tenure, there’s a complexity there because what is being measured? Quality of education, research dollars, what’s What is it? It’s complicated. In Georgia, Roy Barnes eliminated tenure as the governor, and the teachers unions defeated him in his next election.
[00:53:33.24]
What’s the right answer? The right answer is to hold people accountable. But holding people accountable is what? What are the resources they’re given? Do you have two of these smart high school kids in your classroom with you working with kids after school who light the fire, who get light of passion in children? Let’s say we give that to one high school teacher, and the other high school teacher or college professor doesn’t get something like that. The one who doesn’t get it doesn’t get the same results. But maybe the better professor, because this one got the benefit of these two high school students who are so cool and so fast and so brilliant that they’re lighting the fire. It’s hard to measure that, but you got to. And Tenure is an interesting concept. Is it a lifetime guarantee of a job?
[00:54:35.20]
Should it be? I don’t think anybody’s entitled to anything.
[00:54:39.09]
But you also got to look at the resources we give people and the balance. And do you clearly communicate? Do you clearly communicate what’s expected? Do you clearly communicate the requirements? Do you tell people what is going to be measured? And then do you measure it? Or do you just talk about it? Time for one more question. I’ll try and summarize this quickly about dysfunctional. People with equal passions, but on different subjects or topics. Let’s say something like health care. Some want it really bad, some want to get rid of it really bad. Now you express that in some public forum, and your leader now has to articulate to you or back to, let’s say, a community or city or whatever, that we’re being dysfunctional, and so we aren’t going to go anywhere really because we’re house-divided.
[00:55:38.24]
How would you, I guess, resolve that from a leadership point of view, if I can put it to you like that? Well, let me I’ll talk about that for a second. When I met Ken and then met IHMC, I got… Look, if people had asked my high school teachers if I was going to be a good writer or a success in academics or anything else, much less being a professor, they would have laughed, right? Yeah, right. Okay. And Ken talked about science And so I got really passionate about science and really passionate about these children who are so brilliant, who have skills in science and how we need to get science back in our country, where we can build and empower our country. And I agree with that. But then I started thinking about it. I said, I had a friend of mine, and the friend’s daughter was one of the great… Is an extraordinary writer. Extraordinary. But I was a hard time adding two plus two. And she’s extraordinary. This person has the potential to write some marvelous things. She’s published. But she doesn’t have this skill. And so all of a sudden, it’s about how do you raise the tide, not just raise this and knock this one down.
[00:57:09.11]
The idea is to create a better overall environment and grow things, not to divide things. So how do you do it? You create jobs, you create economic opportunity, you create engines of growth and passion. And you set the example with your own behavior. When I was the CEO of the public company, second quarter, we were together. We had an earnings. We had made our revenues numbers, but we were tight on expenses. And I waived my compensation for the year. I just waived it. I owned a lot of stock, and I waived my compensation. I just said, I’m not getting paid. And as a leader, I set the example by doing the right thing. Well, the people who are leading the environment you’re talking about, what are they doing? And the question needs to be… You need to ask them the question, what are you doing to raise the tide? What sacrifices are you making personally to do it? One of the worst things that goes on is the medical programs that are available for Congress and Senate and the medical programs that are available for our Wounded Warriors. Compare them. If the folks aren’t, and you ask them questions, hold them accountable.
[00:58:36.10]
Tell them you’re measuring it. Sorry, but that’s how I feel about it.
[00:58:41.29]
Let’s thank our speaker.