The Leadership Exchange
Discussions on Real-World Leadership for professionals. We explore several topics about leadership and getting the best from your team to deliver amazing results while creating a great environment for them.
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The Leadership Exchange
S3E6: Building Trust - The Foundation of Effective Leadership Training with Derek Crager
Derek Crager shares his journey from skilled tradesperson to creating Amazon's highest-rated leadership training program, drawing on his unique perspective as someone diagnosed with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia at age 50. Here are some of the highlights of this episode with Derek.
• Building relationships and establishing trust before transferring knowledge is the foundation of effective training
• Psychological safety is crucial for team members to feel comfortable communicating openly without fear
• Understanding personality differences helps leaders adapt their approach using the "platinum rule" - treat others as they want to be treated
• Reducing Amazon's attrition rate from 83% to 31% saved $152 million in the first year
• Bridging the gap between operations and maintenance teams through communication creates benefits for everyone
• AI should enhance human capabilities rather than replace jobs - "someone with AI will always outperform someone without AI"
• Focus on solving real problems rather than implementing technology solutions for non-existent issues
• Good leaders develop their team members not just to work for them but to lead their own teams
Some of Derek's information below:
Derek Crager Founder & CEO of Practical AI
dc@practicalai.app
Phone: +1.317.796.9825
Pocket Mentor - Revolutionizing Workforce Training
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Hello everybody, this is Steve McKeon.
Lupe Munoz:And this is Lupe Munoz, and welcome to the Leadership Exchange.
Steve McKeon:Looking forward to our conversation today. Lupe, we've got our guest here, Derek Crager. We're going to let Derek give us a little bit more introduction and kind of his background, but let me just start it off by saying Eric is an entrepreneur and founder of a company called Practical AI. This conversation is not necessarily going to be about Practical AI, but really taking a look at training and some of the importance around training and leadership and what leaders need to understand as a part of their responsibilities for supporting teams in and around training, and then definitely talk about some of the emerging technology there in training. Derek, let me go ahead and throw it over to you, because I think you did a great job when we first met, giving us your history and background and kind of how you got to where you're at now. So if you can start there, that would be great Appreciate it, steven.
Derek Crager:Thank you, lupe as well. My background for the audience here I started in industrial construction. I came out of high school, tried to do college and apprenticeship at the same time living on my own, and ended up sticking with the apprenticeship trades and came through the trades. I spent about four years of construction at some big companies a lot of automotive, pharmaceutical, you name it, tv appliance but then I got into what we called in-house. I went into automotive and I was on the floor in automotive for about 15 years, worked my way up from maintenance and repair up through engineering process engineering, engineering process engineering, and then over time I worked myself into the learning ranks because I had a special perspective on learning.
Derek Crager:One thing I'll throw in here a variable in my life and something that I did not know myself for sure until I was age 50, and I'm 58 today was that at age 50, I was diagnosed autistic, adhd and dyslexic. So, looking back on my life, I always had usually an answer, and a lot of times the right answer to make things happen, but I lacked the social skills to convey in the right, I guess, manner and so I was shot down more often than not. More often than not the story that we can get into in a minute was all the way to about 2018, 2019, when I joined Amazon and I was working for a leader who knew how to handle me, knew how to give me enough rope to do the things I do well, and she covered my back on the things I didn't know so well. So that was really a good foundation for me and the feather in my cap my time at Amazon. I was asked to build their first leadership onboarding during 2020.
Derek Crager:And that was the time when Amazon was going from 500 physical buildings to 1,000 in one year. Physical buildings to 1,000 in one year and in about 10 months time, I trained every new manager in RME, which is Reliability, maintenance Engineering. So you know the analytical, the wrench turners among us, but it was my job to train them and it was their job to train their people. And from that time, I think we went from 35,000 skilled trades to about 70,000 skilled trades in North America. And the core thing that I learned is the success was built on building relationships first and having trust and respect, and that was the foundation to our success. And that success turned into Amazon's highest rated training program in the history of the company. And if anybody knows what NPS scores are, we were at a 92 NPS on a scale from minus 100 to positive 100. So lots of good stuff I learned there. I'm excited to get into that during our talk today.
Steve McKeon:Gentlemen, Derek, thanks. I was intrigued when you first told us the story. I think our audience also is going to be really interested in it, and I think the path that you've taken really speaks to a lot of our audience, as we're trying to connect with people that are in new leadership positions maybe new to leadership and just dialing in some of those lessons that we've learned and as we bring in guests like yourself is to make those same connections. So, yeah, your, your story, you know, and career path and growth is is really interesting. You had a kind of that trade school opportunity got you in the industry. Then you worked your way into maintenance and engineering. Now I think would be interesting for audience to hear you know this opportunity came up with Amazon. How did you move into that lane? Because it really is kind of a different lane of work from what you introduced at the beginning.
Derek Crager:I came into Amazon actually I was 50 and or getting there and I thought I was looking for a retirement job. So I asked my wife, we talked things over and I was looking for something that you know, something that I knew. So it was easy for me maybe not easy for everybody, but because I've been doing it my entire life, I thought I would step down and just take a wrench turner position for Amazon and wife and I spoke, and with them having facilities all over North America and all over the world and good insurance and benefits, I figured that I could go in there, work a year in one city, then transfer to another city, then another city, and that would be my wife and I's retirement. It would be a working retirement. But my brain didn't get along with that plan. Gentlemen.
Derek Crager:My wife was excited to start that, but three months into my employment with Amazon, because of my social ambiguity, my lack of skill set with schmoozing, I guess, got me in a situation where they really did really want to fire me. But I was rescued by a fantastic manager. He pointed me toward an opportunity on the learning side, which is something I've been in in the past but I really didn't want to pursue. Like I said, I was just looking to honestly coast, but since it didn't work out, I got into the learning side, worked with a gosh, the best manager Amazon has ever had Kim Shadows. She has autistic children herself and even though she's like four years younger than me, she treated me like a son and she knew to look out for me on the things and give me room to grow.
Derek Crager:So that's one thing the neurodiverse do is we typically accomplish things at two and 300% of norm and people say, ooh, that's cool, yada, yada. But then they ask us to join in parties or present to the C-suites or do things that aren't in our repertoire or our wheelhouse, and then it looks like we're just silly. So those ups and downs he always covered that Autistics in general are brutally honest and that's what really got me in hot suit. Most of the time is being brutally honest, and when you're brutally honest with the leadership, that's not receptive. Well, I don't have to tell you, gentlemen, or the audience here, that it's not a good combination. But Kim Schaaf, she made sure and opened doors and again, the result of that is the highest training Amazon ever had. So there's something in there that she had that we all learned from and I took a lot of that and I taught that to the incoming leaders when they're coming in.
Lupe Munoz:Excellent story.
Steve McKeon:That was a perfect story and I think it speaks a lot to the fact that as a leader any type of leader, or if you're in a subject matter expert field you know we need to recognize there are going to be lots of different people that we interact with and so I think one of the things that you know I learned earlier in my career is you've got to identify that quick with your team that you're leading or a team that you're working with, so you know how to communicate, because you're right, it can be when you get feedback that may be like really direct, critical and harsh, and everybody else is giving you feedback a little softer.
Steve McKeon:That can be a challenge to accept and I think you bring up a really good subject. There is that we've got to recognize that because there's more identification of people with no divergent I don't want to say issues, but experiences that they have. And you're absolutely right, there's great opportunities there to leverage folks in those skills and I love the story with Kim Chavez that you told, that you know she recognized where to let you go and where to give you some coverage and I think that really speaks to you know a really good servant leader that you had to work with.
Lupe Munoz:Such a great topic around training and the importance of training to teams, Derek, I'm thinking from the context of young leaders, supervisors, team leads, whatever titles they may have AI set aside. What do you see through your experience, Because you obviously have a depth of experience on this topic what do you see are sort of the critical elements that a leader really needs to ensure are happening as part of quality training, training that's going to stick and that really is going to elevate people's capabilities?
Derek Crager:You need to know your team, know your people. In a world where we're doing more and more, less and less, it's easy to throw out an excuse. You know, I didn't have time. We need to make time, otherwise we're just going to lose the opportunities there. So it's, I guess you know. Throw in that phrase, stop and smell the roses. Understand the positives that your team has. Get to know them outside of work. I don't necessarily mean, you know, go out bowling every Thursday night or something like that.
Derek Crager:But, as a leader, things that we found out was take somebody for lunch, right and one-on-one, you know. Take them out of the work realm and just get to know them and know them. Ask about their family, you know if they're comfortable sharing, ask about their hobbies and identify. But just do that. Who, what, when, where, how, relationship. Ask those open-ended questions and give them a chance to share with you. Because I think Abraham Maslow said way back when we have certain things that we need in life and one of those things we need is to be heard, and there's so much that our employees and our team will do for us. If they just feel heard, they could push back 180 degrees at full steam, full pressure and do nothing. Or we could listen to them not change a thing and still ask them to do the thing that we ask them to do. And just because they were heard, they're going to go. Ah OK, they depressurized, now they're going to go take care of business, whatever business is.
Lupe Munoz:I love that reference to Maslow's, especially the Maslow Pyramid right. That talks about the different needs that people have, and you're referring to the need to be heard, and purpose of the tool is to understand that needs need to be met before you're able to go up the hierarchy of needs. Where you're able to go up the hierarchy of needs and the peak of that is that people are able to reach their potential and have sort of this self-fulfillment with the work that they do. So love the reference. Derek. Thank you for mentioning that.
Steve McKeon:Yeah, derek, I don't know if you've heard the term I just looked it up again called FICA. It's a term in Sweden that really describes exactly what you talked about. I learned about this from my son, who's working over in Sweden now, and FICA is a social break where typically coffee danishes are provided, but it's a weekly event where the expectation is that you will participate and the goal is where people can interact, connect and chat. A lot of times it is one-on-one, sometimes it can be small groups and you don't talk at all about work. It's really about building that relationship, and so they've got a formal process that he was telling me about happens once a week, called FICA. It seems like the Swedish workforce has kind of cracked the code on that one, but yeah, it was interesting. It sparked my memory as you were talking about that.
Lupe Munoz:I love the start of that. Okay, hey, you have to have that to be able to be effective at training others, right? What other elements do you feel are critical and maybe often missed by leaders in their organizations when it comes to training? Certainly?
Derek Crager:Well, sticking with Maslow's Pyramid. For a second, safety is huge and safety and communication are tied hand in hand. If your employees feel safe, talking to you without the fear of reprisal, without the fear of getting fired, without the fear of getting the crappy jobs, et cetera, et cetera. Part of that communication side is getting your employees to the level that they feel comfortable they can say anything to you. So, as a leader, you need to not wear your heart on your sleeve, I think, as my dad used to say, and just keep the emotion out of it and just listen to what they have to say and understand. As a leader, it's important to get input from your entire team, but also, as a leader, it is not your responsibility to count the votes and do what the majority says, because you're going to know things that that your team doesn't Just communicate that with and say, hey, I heard you, that's a great idea, et cetera, et cetera. Right now, from a regional, global perspective, our mission is to do something else, but we're definitely going to come back to that, that safety side, and my time at Amazon when we first got started there and, to be honest, my time at Amazon when they asked me to build this training program for all of R&D that was coming in. They waited for the last minute. So, guess what? I wasn't their first choice in creating this program. All the smart people said no because they saw that there was not enough time and we had an attrition rate in our department of 83%. Ouch, yeah, right, ouch. It meant that nearly everybody that we hired left their own accord within a year and we actually talked about it internally that we're throwing people in the deep end of the swimming pool and then, just standing there and watch, say, hey, I think this one's a keeper, this one's a keeper. Oh, no, he went down. Sorry, let's just hire somebody else the cornerstone of my program. When I built it.
Derek Crager:We started off really building the program on the fly and it was a two-week program. We would pull them away from their job and we'd find a hotel somewhere. We started out in the Tampa Hotel because I had a regional manager down there who was my SME that I brought him in to help teach and we literally built the program in an agile fashion. Sometimes we would have a sign up or a slide that said the topic and that was it. Then we'd talk about the topic and go back to the hotel at night and say all right, what did we present on today? What was the importance? So we actually listened to the people that were there.
Derek Crager:But I'm getting too far down that training pipeline that the first day of every program whether it was a 10 day program or a five day program the first day was nothing about what they needed to know from a business standpoint. The first day was implementing some sort of psychological or personality or behavioral assessment. We used a couple of companies, one's called Behavior Styles and then another one's called NeuroColor, but they're all in the type of. It divides the class up into four groups. And because we divide the class into four groups, it really didn't matter which assessment we were utilizing, whether it be the effectiveness institute or the neuro color.
Derek Crager:We were showing people that they're different. We were giving them a chance to recognize that three-fourths of the room is different than they are. You know, just throw some basic math. If you get one chance to make a good impression and you treat everybody like you would yourself, which is the golden rule well you're only going to be right 25% of the time. But I introduced what I call the platinum rule. You know, treat others like they want to be treated. And how do we do that? Well, we got to get to know that person.
Derek Crager:So the entire first day, eight hours, we would sit in a classroom 40, 45 people in the classroom and we would talk and we would ask what's the problems, how do we get through that?
Derek Crager:We do breakouts and it was all about getting the team members to trust each other and when we're in this room whether it was Tampa or Seattle or anywhere in the nation or went overseas even later in the program, it was about building a trust network so to let them know they're not all by themselves. So that helped the leadership and at the same time, through example, it taught them as leaders when they are hiring their own team the four personnel, the wrench turners, the techs that they should go through the same thing. And that was the biggest reason that they get, because I received feedback at the end of every day, at the end of every week, on what was their favorite parts of the program, and it was always the getting to know each other and taking the time to understand how we should treat each other, and that was the core of success. It had nothing to do about knowledge from the company Knowledge comes secondary. You've got to train to understand and connect and build that bridge of trust and respect.
Lupe Munoz:You remind me about a leader, I'm going to say in the last year, a leader that and I've seen this sort of it's almost like Groundhog Day, the movie where you see the same thing sort of playing out, where a new leader to organization has lots of potential and this sometimes is encouraged by the company that brings them on is.
Lupe Munoz:It's almost like this focus on, hey, you need to deliver results right away, and because of that sort of edict or expectation, they don't focus on Getting to know the people that they're leading, they don't focus on building those relationships.
Lupe Munoz:And, more importantly, what you said was key, derek, is trust. And you know, one of the things that we're fairly passionate about, aside from leadership, is me and Steve share a passion for operational excellence, and I don't believe that you can even take a meaningful step forward with operational excellence without a positive team culture where that psychological safety, that physical safety exists and people trust their leaders and the organization that they're part of, because it's kind of like building a house on quicksand You're going to be building stuff that that's not very effective and and I have found that personally to be a very, very solid approach. But young leaders they're they're too in a hurry to make impression, a positive impression, with the management, so they're trying to kick doors through through actions and trying to get things done when people are like I don't even know who you are, you don't know who I am and you're asking me to do all these things that are very different for me.
Steve McKeon:I want to just circle back to the stat you gave us where they had the 80, I think you said 83 or maybe 86% turnover in that group, that you had constructed this training mission around and after you got going, I'm assuming that turnover rate dropped off significantly. Where'd you guys see it get down to after you were able to implement this kind of leadership training program?
Derek Crager:Within the first year I think we had a 10-month cycle because we did not train in December and we started in January but within that 10-month period the 83% which had been 83% for a while, the attrition rate, we got that down to 30, I think 1% or 2% that first year and the financial side of that equated to about $152 million year-over-year savings because of that reduced attrition. And it goes to show that if you put the employees first, that the company's going to benefit major and some other things that have benefited by putting that trust in the people on the floor. The internal promotion rate, people on the floor, the internal promotion rate so the people on the floor applying and promoting to management roles went from 5% to 20% that first year. So that was huge and there's additional company savings on that realm as well. And there's some other financial numbers that were there. But the KPIs. So Amazon is all about numbers. You know they build a company AWS just so they could work their numbers because their spreadsheets are so large and at a single facility, depending on the facility, there's anywhere from 10,000 to 16,000 KPIs that have to work with the operations. They don't focus on all of them, matter of fact, they use their technology to identify the problems and then they address the problems as they come. But it wasn't about holding the teams accountable for all of the issues. The good leaders that were there. They reported that they worked on one issue at a time, generally the biggest, and as they had taken those off the board, then overall production would go up for operations.
Derek Crager:And let me step sideways for a moment. Another thing that we taught in our leadership training programs was that R&ME, which is Reliability, maintenance Engineering Team, is a partner with the operations team, which is out there on the floor, and it's important to build relationships not just at the leadership level but on the floor. And we implemented or asked them to implement, suggested rather, it was always their choice to have their floor personnel on the maintenance team go out and talk to the floor personnel on the operations team and they got great insight the operations. They've got so much going on. I would not want to be an operations manager at Amazon. It's just nonstop for them, so it's hard for them to step to the side and offer insights and observations. But if maintenance comes through and says, hey, how's everything going, and operations even says, yeah, sounds good. Or they might say you know what?
Derek Crager:We heard this squeal back over in the corner on line 412. And so what does that do? That's a bonus for everybody. So now maintenance walks over to line 412. They hear the squeal, they check it out Maybe it's a loose belt, maybe it's a gearbox and they address it during a lunch or a break. So you're not taking, you're not adding down time, you're working on it, and it means that maintenance gets to it before it creates a big problem. That means the operations doesn't have a big glitch on their gimbal board. Really, it just boils down to communication, and that communication stems from having good respect for each other.
Lupe Munoz:That relationship between the operations or production team and the maintenance team is historically, I'll say, sort of the stereotypical relationship is sometimes even adversarial. Operators blame the mechanics for not knowing what to fix or they don't fix anything. The mechanics are like the operators are always breaking everything and then we got to fix it right. So there's that conflict that's happening between those two organizations. I think it's sage advice to tell leaders on both sides to say hey, you really got to focus on getting the teams together and operating as one function, as one team, versus two separate teams. And I, being on the operation side, production side, of a lot of roles, I have seen the huge benefit when that relationship's strong and we're talking about training. Today I've even had the pleasure of seeing maintenance teams that realize you know what I really need to know, like, mechanics really need to know how to operate the piece of equipment, because the operator says things and the mechanic they're seeing it from a context that doesn't really relate to how the machine operates. But if they understand the sequence then they're able to see opportunity.
Lupe Munoz:As a matter of fact, recently there was a mechanic that went into operating a filter and they started realizing that during the CIP process for the filter. They're like there are so many opportunities for the operator to make a mistake. He's like I was worried that I was going to make a mistake during that sequence and mess the whole thing up. So you know, we should maybe think about we could easily automate this. These are all automated valves that the operator's going in saying, hey, open this valve. You know, with the press of a button, close this valve. But we could literally automate that whole sequence and not allow the operator to make that potential mistake. And to me it was just kind of one of those epiphany moments that both the mechanic and operators were like why haven't we been doing this more?
Steve McKeon:often, spot on Lupe were like why haven't we been doing this more often? Spot on Lupe and the part that I've seen the best of having a chance to work within some companies that supplied parts to Toyota and just seeing how Toyota has that, where when that operator asks for help because they're not able to meet the tact, everybody comes right. And in organizations where there's this kind of casual meandering by maintenance or engineering out to you know, look at the potential problem and the frustration that gets raised by both the operations and the maintenance side in those environments where, as you guys both had mentioned, when you can connect them, get them working together side by side, and there's that not only unwritten understanding but it's got to be really written understanding right Between the leadership team, like, hey, who's your customer, your internal customer, is this group here? And then it's what you said also, derek it's creating that environment of respect so people can have a civil conversation. I think all that is paramount and critical.
Steve McKeon:I was thinking what I'd like to do next if you guys are open to it. I think is you know, all that is paramount and critical. I was thinking what I'd like to do next if you guys are open to it. I'd really like to understand, derek. You sound like you had a really kind of cool thing going with your last role, but you stepped out to start this new company and I think it really does tie into some of our conversation today. So walk us through that. What was the idea behind? Hey, because you said you were near retirement or semi-retired and all of a sudden you've got this passion project going. That's really interesting and I'm guessing it came out of a lot of your career experience, but probably a lot of the last couple of years as well.
Derek Crager:In chaos there is opportunity. So at Amazon there always seems to be a lot of chaos, but in the project and the role that I was in, I built the program literally from scratch. You know, use my hands on everything. I incorporate a lot of people. I think I counted one time nearly 100 SMEs that honestly donated their time because nobody was assigned to it. I'm a PMP by certification and training as well, so we're used to trying to get things done without sponsorship and help the chaos part and building from scratch. That's my passion. I see and maybe it's my autistic side, but I see patterns where others don't see patterns, and the bigger the chaos, the bigger the opportunity.
Derek Crager:So that first couple of years, oh my God, it was heaven working at Amazon and doing what we were doing. But by the time I got into year four and five it was well, the ship's running smoothly, right. So we've done a lot of continuous improvement on the program following that agile mainframe, and I honestly wouldn't have it as much fun when things become a little too tight like that. There's a lot of leadership, overhead and and such. So I stepped out of it because it was. It was running on its own and I felt like I had done something of value running on its own, and I felt like I had done something of value In the fall of last year, 2024, I still have this passion for learning. I was asked last week on the program you know, if I had one word to describe how I want to be remembered. The first word that came to mind is teacher Having knowledge at somebody's fingertips, or wouldn't they need it? Get somebody knowledge at the speed of light. And now there's a correlation between knowledge and quality of life, no matter where you are in the world. So I wanted to be part of that. So when I saw this AI that we've, you know, it just really came to the consumer market.
Derek Crager:In the last couple of years and I've been a tech, a geek, a lot of my life I was building and selling. I had an online retail store on the internet, if anybody's old enough to remember when that started in 1989. I was online before 1989. And then by 1990, I was selling products on five different continents. And then by 1993, I was so dense and so ignorant I closed my shop because I thought I'd saturated the market, but that was, I think, two or three years before Jim Bezos opened Amazon.
Derek Crager:But I'm digressing a minute. I just want to touch base that the technology bug has always been in my blood. Bug has always been in my blood. So we're a couple of years into this artificial intelligence in the consumer market, whether it be the Chats, upts, perplexities, that sort of thing and I found out that I could. I'm not replacing anybody, but those hundred people that volunteered their time.
Derek Crager:I found out that I can use AI. I can take that core of knowledge and I can put that core of knowledge in a database and then dynamically format it to a one-on-one scenario for anybody in an organization. And then that one-on-one scenario, it's a new way to onboard. It's literally. I took that knowledge and is able to connect with an artificial intelligent mentor.
Derek Crager:Honestly, for what it's doing, it's sentient, it sounds sentient, it's conversational, it sounds like a human. And right now, right, all three of us have our, have our headsets on and you know if, when they're connected to our phone. I made this leap again in. Chaos is opportunity. I made this leap that I'm connecting AI with humans through a regular telephone and a pot system, plain old telephone system, no app, no Wi-Fi, no Internet needed, available to be accessed by 100 percent of the world that's got a phone and they can ask their AI mentor how to do something and the AI mentor will walk them through it. And, lupe, you mentioned the operations side. How many times do new operators come up to the manager or the supervisor or somebody else and they're standing with their hands in their pocket waiting to say how do I start this machine?
Lupe Munoz:I'd say that that can happen quite often and that's very, very fascinating. And just to get a little deeper into how your app works, you have to load it with a lot of the knowledge about there's work instructions, if there's technical manuals for equipment, et cetera and what your tool basically does is it digests all of that and then it presents that as needed, through that app, through the phone, to those individuals based on the interaction of hey, I have this problem and it'll go into that vast pool of knowledge that it has taken in and then give its best recommendation on how to proceed. Am I describing that correctly?
Derek Crager:Yeah, you're describing that beautifully, Lupe and I ask people to imagine their best technician or their best operator, and if somebody says, you know, dana is my best skilled tradesperson, then I ask well, what if all 20 people on your team were as good as Dana? How would that affect your downtime numbers, your OEE, your production, etc. They go oh my gosh, that would be great. What we've done at my company, the future is here, in all honesty and sincerity, we download Dana's knowledge into a database and then we give everybody on the team access to that database in the same manner as they call Dana.
Derek Crager:If it's 3 pm on a Wednesday and you know Dana's on the beach in Honolulu, it's like hey, dana, we need some help. We've got this issue, we've got. Line seven is down. Oh yeah, press this button. Do that reset the pump? Oh, it's back up, thank you. Without Dana there, they might be down all day or until the next person gets up, or you might have to call out to the OEM and ask them to get an expert, which might be another day or sometimes a month before you can get the OEM engineers out there. So it's a way to scale data.
Derek Crager:And just in case anybody is concerned about AI replacing jobs. You know what AI is going to replace? All kinds of mundane jobs like looking up a book at a library, type of thing, but for skilled trades and operators that are on the floor, that's not going to happen. Ai is enhancing that employee to make them irreplaceable. And the best way we can do that and it's a benefit to the employee because if we look at those research that shows, hey, why do you work for this company? Why do you work for that company?
Derek Crager:Right, the pay, which you know we talk about it being a priority. The pay is ranked fourth. You know there's three other things above pay and those three things are I want to do something and I want to be heard. So we are empowering every employee, whether it's on the skilled trade side or the operation side, every frontline worker to truly empower them, line worker to truly empower them. And honestly, when we say I'm empowering my employees, I'm thinking really, what are you empowering them with? The chance to make decisions and take responsibility, but what about the knowledge they need to make those decisions? And that's what we're given right now. Lupe is that knowledge, at the speed of light, and it's in a conversation that sounds just like they're talking to Dana or Steven or Lupe or me, and it's caring and it's supportive and, above all, it's patient, which if you call Dana at 3 am on a Saturday, he may not be great patient at that point.
Lupe Munoz:I would tell you that if someone's asking Steve or Lupe for advice on how to fix something, they are in a dire situation.
Steve McKeon:It depends on what it is.
Lupe Munoz:I'd be like, well, you know, I think you should probably call somebody else would be my AI advice if it had my voice. Else would be my AI advice if it had my voice. But that's fascinating and you echo one of the things that we've heard from. We had a gentleman that was with us that was also talking about kind of what AI is, what the impact of AI is going to be, maybe, and he says, hey, someone with AI is always going to outperform someone without AI. Speaks to that sort of enhancement that you're talking about. So it makes a lot of sense and it'll be very interesting to see what happens in the future. We're close to our time. I did want to ask you for a couple of things there, Erica. One is you know, if you had to go back in time and speak to yourself, what advice would you give yourself and why?
Derek Crager:Hmm, no good, I would say that I would go back in time and give myself advice of how important the why is. It's not just the what, but it's the why, but it's the why. And to to make sure that my eyes are more open and seeing the entire picture rather than having blinders on, and seeing just what I want to see. And I think that's the advice all of us can benefit from, and I just wish I had it years ago, stephen.
Steve McKeon:Yeah, that's a great one, and I recently heard that not only the why but the who right Like, who do you serve? You know, once you have your why established, the other side of it, and it talks to the relationships that you started the conversation with, derek. So I think that's spot on. So, yeah, I would say for anybody listening understanding that why and then the who is going to be critical. Going back to the leadership piece of this and the technology, derek, I think as a leader, I might be afraid to have to learn the new technology or do I set it up correctly? And so I think in our pre-podcast meeting, one of the things that you had mentioned was how you reduce that burden for leaders as they start to look at this kind of technology, introducing it, and also to get people over the fear of, hey, I don't want to give all my knowledge away, because then you're not going to need me anymore. So can you talk about that just a little bit, what your approach has been in that space?
Derek Crager:I think the big thing here. We're really two years into this AI information wave and it really is information. It's really not so much about the technology or the platform, but it's about the sharing of information and having it right now. The internet came along in 1989. It really didn't crescendo until 2006 when everybody had access to their mobile phone and internet access. So that was about a 17 year from the origination.
Derek Crager:Now I don't know if AI is going to take a full 17 years, but the adoption of technology is really a psychological event and we deal with it right in manufacturing and enterprise. We call it change management. You know we're implementing change and honestly, the change could be. You know which way does the paper the toilet paper, you know get mounted on the wall, under or over, and there's always somebody that's going to be pushing against it, somebody for it and then a lot of people in the middle. So the psychological aspect is going to have this AI adoption. It's going to take 15 to 17 years to really engage, just like it did the internet wave.
Derek Crager:So there's a mirror there and the reason I say that is to temper the need to find a solution for a problem that does not exist. So if you're looking to just how do I implement AI and now you're trying to find a problem. That's just the backwards way of doing it. And just take a moment to pause and ask yourself what are your real problems? And you know, submit Occam's razor here. Whatever problems you have, prioritize them and look for the easiest or most obvious answer or most obvious solution and, honestly, nine times out of 10, it's not going to be AI. If it is AI, sure, implement it and leverage it, but don't look for a problem just to implement a solution, because that's really putting the cart before the horse in that scenario.
Steve McKeon:Great advice, Derek.
Lupe Munoz:Thank you for that Fantastic advice recording with is not everyone has, for several reasons, access to AI yet or is able to maybe take advantage of the app that your team has. Until they are able to do that, what should they focus on? You mentioned psychological safety. You mentioned just safety in general and creating trust, but as far as the mechanics of training, what type of advice could give those leaders around you know? Hey, you know you really want to focus on these things as you're trying to develop a better training program for your team.
Derek Crager:Listen, you know it truly is grassroots. Listen to find out what the problems are and give yourself enough time. I want to give a shout out to the manager that I had that pointed me toward Kim Chavez's team. That's Jim McCullough. So, jim McCullough hey, thank you, buddy, for pointing me in the right direction back all those years ago. Jim's back with Amazon, after taking some time off himself. But he is the most fantastic patient manager and I think everybody could learn from his role. He always got to know. He never raised his voice, he never chided anybody. If there was any improvement suggestions, it was always done behind the scenes, one-on-one, it was never in public and it was never to embarrass. And he was always supportive and his goal was always to build up his people to go to the next level and that's a KPI that we should all attain to is I don't want people just to work for me. How do I get them? So they're not working for me and now they're leading their own team. So that's on the leadership side for sure.
Derek Crager:And one point of clarification what we're doing is not an app. It's a telephone-based AI solution, and there's so many AI solutions that you have to throw money at right. You've got to throw server time, whether it's in the cloud or in your own rack in your own system, or you have to buy new tablets or new notebooks or new laptops or new computers or new headsets or 3D gear. That's all CapEx stuff that you're throwing money at a problem and you still don't have the solution yet. So part of the chaos that I saw, gentlemen, was how do we implement AI in the most basic and simple form? Google has the most simple web page in the world, and they're one of the biggest, most simple web page in the world, and they're one of the biggest and most successful companies in the world. Amazon became one of the most successful companies in the world because they made it simple, with one click purchase, and now they own 57% of the retail market, which is my gosh, that's huge.
Derek Crager:So I wanted to do something similar. Follow in the footsteps of giants, stand on their shoulders, so to speak, and our solution requires no capex, and it's not just our solution, but look for solutions where you don't have to spend extra money. Ours is accessible just via a telephone call, and I think everybody could have access to that. One shout out is that every time we sell to a corporate environment. You know we make some money off them. Sure, absolutely. But my heart is still set on helping those West Fortune, whether it be the neurodiverse and such. So every install that we do in a corporate environment, we give away an install for a nonprofit, and we're just looking to build the world together.
Lupe Munoz:Gentlemen, a noble task, derek, a noble endeavor, and we're just looking to build the world together gentlemen, a noble task, derek, a noble endeavor, and I appreciate all the knowledge and experience that you've shared with our listeners and with us. You know, one of the pleasures of doing this podcast is that we ourselves get to be enriched by other people's experience and knowledge and their lives. This very much applies to today's recording, so I appreciate you for that. But with that said, I think we're going to wrap up, and this is Lupe Muñoz.
Steve McKeon:And this is Steve McKeon, and thank you for joining us on the Leadership Exchange with our guest, derek Frazier. Thank you, outro Music.