Leadership That Delivers: From Vision to Action

And when I think about developing a plan, I go, okay, this is a complex issue. How do we simplify this, be able to communicate it so that people understand and they're clear of what we're trying to get done? Also, where can things break down and where are the things where we really have pain points? In this episode of Executive Edge, Greg sits down with Yale Peoples, West Point graduate, former army captain wharton mba and ceo of ysp advisory services a leader who has driven enterprise value across fortune 500 and private equity backed companies yale shares how disciplined leadership transforms complex strategy into decisive real world executions.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Tenzing's Executive Edge podcast. Today, we're going to talk about moving from strategy to execution with our guest, Yale Peebles. Yale is a senior strategy and transformation leader with more than two decades of experience helping companies grow, navigate change, and unlock real enterprise value across food, beverage, nutrition, ag tech, and industrial sectors. Yale's worked with Fortune 500 companies, private equity-backed platforms, and founder-led businesses.

And today, he leads YSP Advisory Services, partnering closely with boards and executive teams to provide interim executive leadership and advisory support for acquisitions, integrations. Turnarounds, and big growth moments. With a background that spans Bain, Tyson Foods, service as a U.S.

Army captain, Yill brings a thoughtful and practical perspective on leadership and execution when the stakes are high. Thank you for joining me today, Yale. Thank you, Greg, for having me. It's good to have you on the podcast.

We've talked outside of this. It's been great getting to know you. And I think your backstory is so interesting. So if you could, for our audience, give them a flavor of how Yale Peebles came to be, right?

How you grew up and what your backstory is. Yeah, sure. And it actually is relevant to where I am today or who I am today. So I grew up with Brooklyn, New York.

One of the things that stuck with me early on was my family stressed education. And making sure that you got your education. I do remember one time coming to my mother as every kid would and had bad grades and said, I think the teacher doesn't like me. It's the teacher's fault.

And my mother's told me the teacher has their education. It's up to you to get yours. And that kind of, that stuck with me. And the message there was, you're not entitled to anything.

You have to work for it and you need to go out and get what you want and what you need, right so you be a self-starter so that that resonated with me the other part of the the I think critical part of my background is and most people don't some people know it some people don't I was a pretty accomplished piano player so and I I played piano my parents got me into playing piano but my passion was football and they made a deal with me that said hey you could play football as long as you as you take the piano and I thought it was a big you know I thought hey I hate doing this.

I don't like practicing the piano. But in retrospect, it was absolutely foundational and great for me. Piano kind of taught me the discipline and practice and performing when it matters. And then football kind of got me with the resiliency and teamwork, right?

So it's more, it was like a combination of structure and grit, right? And so I thought that that, I mean, that's also very foundational for me growing up. So that's kind of the genesis of Yale. Yeah, sure.

You don't know too many football players that are piano players, but I bet there's more than we think there are, right? Well, probably, right? Yeah, no, that's great. It's good.

Sounds so disciplined, factored early on in your life. And I think then after you went to high school, and you went to the Fame High School, right? Yes, so I graduated high school of music and art, which is the Fame High School. And the other interesting thing is my school or my piano school actually did what they call national playing auditions.

So that was an international thing where I played every year at Carnegie Hall and got graded by international teachers. So that taught me to really when to perform and how to perform and actually to perform when it mattered. So that's a big stage for a young man. Carnegie Hall doesn't get any bigger than that.

Well, great. And then you went on after high school into the service. So tell us about your time in the Army. Yeah.

So I gravitated to the Army. I liked the structure and I liked the discipline. And I did well there. You know, the typical Army discipline and enjoyed that.

While I was there, I had an instructor, you know, say, hey, you're really doing well. You seem like you're a pretty smart guy. You ever thought about West Point? I didn't have a game plan going into West Point.

It was a matter of, I had never thought of it when the instructor told me about it. I went to the library, did the research, the regulations and found out how to apply. And so, again, going back to that education, if you want it or you need it, you go figure it out. Right, right.

So you want an appointment to West Point, right? You don't get in without an appointment, I think, right? No, I got appointed. My appointment was from Chuck Schumer.

Wow. Okay. Yeah, there you go. So, yeah.

So you went to the prep school, got the appointment, and went there, and you continue to play football, I think, at West Point, right? Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting. I was a recruited athlete at West Point.

And again, coming out of the Army, you go to the prep school for a year. And I went from prep school to, and I played football at the prep school. And I walked on to, for West Point's football team, I was clearly not the fastest, not the, you know, not the, well, I was fairly big, but not the fastest and not the best player. It was all about showing up consistently in the tenacity.

And I finally made my way onto the team. So that's another lesson there is that tenacity beats out talent more times than what you think. Yeah, yeah. It's a certain attribute that's very valuable.

And I think it makes you more resilient, too, that you learn to overcome setbacks and not give up with that tenacity. So super important. So you graduate from West Point and then you went into the armor division. Is that right?

As a tanker? Yes, I was a tanker. Yeah. So tell me about that.

It was five years you were a captain in the armored group? Yeah. So this is pretty, I think, significant. It didn't start off as smoothly as I'd like.

So I was a tank platoon leader, brand new in Germany. And we had our first evaluation, which they call R-TEPs. Most people don't know what that is, but that's an evaluation. And quite frankly, my platoon didn't do well.

We did very, very, which kind of got me to kind of readjust and figure out what's going on. And that's when it kind of started to dawn on me that it's not just about making a plan. You actually, you know, you have to communicate the plan to everybody. And you have to do it in such a way that they don't have to follow steps one, two, three.

They need to know the overall objective. So in case things go off track, which they do a lot of times when you're out in the field, that they know, they have the, they understand what we're trying to get done and they can eventually get it done. So that said, that was significant, but I enjoyed my time as a tanker. Yeah.

And then once, once your stint was up, then you made a decision to go on to grad school and went to Wharton. Yes. How was that? I had a great experience at Wharton.

And so how that came about was, again, parents addressing education. I said, OK, if I'm going to get out of the Army, let me be prepared for the business world. You know, so I went to, I got selected, went into Wharton, did really well, kind of brought up my love of sports again. And I played on what they call the Warthogs, the Wharton rugby team, which is a great experience.

And I majored in finance. And so that kind of gave me an education in business concepts, I would say. Yeah, super. So fantastic background, West Point service.

Wharton, you came out of college. What did you do? What was your first job after you got out of grad school? My first job was with Bain & Company up in Boston as a management consultant.

And that was a strategic decision in which I, one, Bain has a great toolkit, right? And they had a great reputation. And it also was a great place, a great proven ground for it to experience how to solve difficult issues and difficult problems, right? Companies come to And then they don't come to them with simple stuff.

They come to them with fairly complex problems. And that was an opportunity for me to understand different types of businesses, different types of models, and then apply what I learned in Wharton, as well as pick up the Bain toolkit during my stint there. That's great. And then you moved into industry after leaving Bain.

Tell us about your industry, some of your industry experience. Sure. Let me take a step. Sorry, I'm going to take a step back a bit because there's one important lesson there.

I actually was working for a telecom client and I had done this analysis and I thought the analysis was spot on. And I had a meeting with the client and a presentation and it didn't go well. It was kind of, you know, we were butting heads and I didn't understand why. I had a senior partner tell me, and he goes, there are a lot of smart people in the world, right?

They can figure things out. What matters is how you communicate the ideas in such a way that motivates people to action, right? So it wasn't just about coming up with the smart idea because people can do that. It's how do you communicate that and motivate them to actually act?

So that's one critical lesson I got from Baylor's strategy. only matters if people actually execute. Sure. Right.

Yeah. It does no good to take that strategy and set it on a shelf. You need to bring it to life, which is what we're going to be talking about during the meat of the menu here. But so you exited Bain.

Again, I'd like to just touch on a few of your corporate experiences, the kind of companies you work for and the role you played at those companies. Right. Okay. So I came out of Bain and I actually worked for UTC.

And to take a step back to just be, I was fortunate or unfortunate that a lot of the positions I had were strategy roles, but I saw I was responsible and on the hook for developing the strategy. What would also happen is I was also on the hook for delivering some of the strategy and instances. And so that was something unique. For instance, at UTC, I was responsible for developing a plan for a strike that might happen.

And how do we actually move things to different locations and still be able to deliver to our clients? Well, the strike did happen, and then they sent me to actually execute on the plan, which was, right. So it was interesting. And definitely, they told me not to park my car at the plan, to park in a hotel, and then walk on over.

Like those, those types sort of instances of how I, you know, develop the plan and then execute on it is, is what, is what, you know, kind of the foundation of what I, you know, helps me with my leadership, I call it. The principle, right? Not just developing a plan, but develop a plan in which it has flexibility and it's able to execute. Sure.

Yeah. We share an experience. I had to prepare for a potential strike once at GE at Yale and I was so glad it didn't happen because it's one thing to go out and kind of run the day-to-day operations on the floor, but I wasn't ready to grab a piece of glass tubing and, you know, run it a hundred feet down the line and stick it in the machine. And, you know, and keep that going.

And I thought, gosh, my office mates there at the plant, you know, they weren't in any better position than I was to do that either. So glad that one didn't happen. But yeah, the contingency planning has to be there, right? And so that's very interesting.

So you talked about strategy and moving to execution. That's really what we want to kind of dive in deeply here for our audience today on that. Because I think, you know, it's one thing to develop a strategy and it can really look good, you know, and seem sound and you can pressure test that strategy in a room. But, you know, you never know how well it's going to work until you move into the execution phase of a strategy.

And that's something I think you have a lot of experience with. And I think that's where our audience can benefit the most is hearing about that and how you approach it when you're developing a strategy. And a lot of your work, as I understand it, was in mergers and acquisitions, as well as entering new markets, either through alliances or joint ventures. Is that correct?

That's correct. And I can point to one example that was kind of highlighted. It was a nutritional supplement company. They wanted to go into China at the time and did so with a a joint venture with a Chinese pharmaceutical firm, right?

And was in charge of getting the strategic alliance of the joint venture together. So that dealt with the usual things with an M&A type of joint venture, which is due diligence. These guys were doing a pipe. So they were investing a significant amount of money.

And so answering that due diligence question, running the deal and making sure that we got consummated. I thought that that was, oh, good. That's great. We got a joint venture.

We got a sign that was over in Shanghai. beautiful ceremony. And then we came after the deal. We were sitting down talking with our partner.

The CEO was there and he says, oh, Yale will be looking for a Regis office in Shanghai. And I started laughing thinking, okay, the deal is done. And he's like, oh, he's going to get this thing up and running. I started laughing until I realized he was dead serious.

So I said, okay, let me go back and look at this plan because now I have to execute. So how do I go about taking this plan and adjusting it so that it's practical and people can execute it, and that it has the flexibility in case things go wrong. That was a lesson that I learned as well, because things do not go smoothly all the time. And so you have to build in flexibility within your plan.

And the other key is to make sure that you have clear goals and milestones and objectives so that you can make adjustments at certain times within the plan. Gotcha. So So I'm thinking about this, and a lot of times it isn't the case where the person that develops a strategy has to bring it to life in the execution phase, right? You mentioned something to me before about as you're developing the strategy, be thoughtful about the execution and be thinking about that, because that'll help you sort of mentally to think about what could go wrong.

What flexibility is required in the execution phase in order to adjust and maybe change course if necessary to still accomplish the mission, right? And I think that's a really great way to think about it because, you know, it's easy to kind of write down, here's the major steps that are going to happen. But each one of those, each one of those activities has probably 100 sub activities underneath it. And there's all sorts of people you need to get aligned.

There's, you know, communications that have to happen, understandings that need to be clearly communicated. And so tell me about that, how people or how you go about it or how you coach people to go about thinking through the execution portion of that as you develop a strategy. Is there a framework that you use? Do you do a lot of what could go wrong here type thinking?

That's exactly right. Or scenario analysis. What are the things that have to get done right? And then what could go wrong and how do you adjust is kind of how I think through each phase or milestone of the plan.

The other thing that I keep in mind is how do I communicate this to people that would also have to execute on this plan and how do I communicate it simply and practically? Right? Because if somebody doesn't understand what you're doing, there's no way they're going to be able to, or what they're supposed to be doing, there's no way they can execute it. A lot of things when I think about developing a plan, I go, okay, this is a complex issue.

How do we simplify this, be able to communicate it so that people understand and they're clear what we're trying to get done? Also, where can things break down and where are the things where we really have pain points? There's certain things that if they fall through the cracks, it's not a big deal. But other things, if they fall through the cracks, it is a big deal.

So how do we mitigate the risk for those big things? But let's make sure we understand what those big risks are. Right, right, right. You know, sometimes I think that I want to touch on that subject of communication and people understanding sort of where they fit into the picture, right?

A lot of times I've seen failed initiatives, failed programs, you name it, failed years where there just isn't a clear communication of the vision or the, you know, what vision is always where we're going. That's what I like to tell people is, okay, you have to picture this future, right? And this is what it's going to look like in that future. Strategy and execution is how we get there.

Right? Being able to tell people sort of very clearly what they need to do that's important to this execution portion is so important. And I always said, if everybody knows what their role is in achieving this and what their responsibilities are, and they're held accountable for what they're signed up for, and everybody delivers, we should definitely achieve that vision, right? We should reach the objective.

We should complete the mission effectively. And I think too often people just assume people will figure it out, right? But I think it's always important to make sure it's clear that people understand who's responsible for what. There's clear communication guidelines and governance around anything to make sure nothing's falling through the cracks.

There aren't people pointing fingers at each other, right? And then the other part you mentioned, which I think is super important, I want to talk about a bit, is flexibility, right? Things don't go right. No plan survives contact with the enemy, right?

Your plan's great, Mike Tyson said, till you get punched in the face. Exactly. But that's it, right? The planning for perfection is a really bad idea.

Planning for potential setbacks and how will we address them, I think, is a better way to approach any plan, right? So if I run out of material, if this person can't get there on time, whatever it is, what are we going to do to keep this train on track and still deliver on the mission on time and the way it should be. Tell me about a time, Yale, a story maybe when you were glad you had that flexibility or you needed to pull in that flexibility into a plan. I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit here maybe, but I'm sure you have a few examples probably of that, but tell us where you had to change the plan in order to complete the mission.

Sure. So I'll give you one. This one was an integration. It was a post-merger integration between two companies, probably about $250 million a piece.

One was in US, one was in Germany. So you had a different culture, right? And so, you know, went down, you had, and what I'd like to, what I like to do is I have a regular drum beat so that I understand what's going on. So the first thing you want to do is let's lay out the plan and how, and what we're supposed to do in as much detail as we can with clear milestones and objectives so that we're tracking on where things make sure that, and And then the second is make sure that we have a regular drum beat so that we keep a pulse on where things are going and make sure if they do slip, we understand what we have, what we would need to do.

So for this particular one, we slipped in the synergies that we were supposed to get from... From actually reducing some of the back office. Well, we didn't understand there's certain labor rules in Europe that don't allow you to do certain things as quickly as you would do in the U.S.

And so, right. And we knew that, but it took even longer than what we thought. And so we were like, oh, wow, we may not realize these synergies. So then we went back and kind of thought that that might be an issue.

And so what would we have to do to get back on track for those synergies that we were on the hook for? And we looked at different areas that could potentially get reduced to kind of make up for it. Not 100%, but it helped us get a little bit back on track and see if we can accelerate some of the revenue synergies as well so that altogether things came out as a whole. And that's exactly what it was.

Okay, great. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so there's a correction you made there. You mentioned the drumbeat as well.

I wanted to ask about that. So I think of a drumbeat as sort of regular standup meetings, maybe weekly flash reports that provide some visibility into how are we doing? Are we on track? What'd you accomplish this week?

What's planned for next week? What were any setbacks that you need some help with? Right. Is that the sort of mechanisms that you put in place to make sure things stayed on track?

Tell me about your drumbeat. Yeah, so the drumbeat meeting, I use a four blocker, right? So what did we accomplish? And is it on track for the plan, right?

So the overlay, this whole thing is your plan and your milestones. What do we have? What did we accomplish? Are we on track?

The second, what's coming up is on track. The third is what's at risk? Where could we find, where could there be issues? And in the fourth one, which I think is so critical.

Is interdependencies because you have the whole team together. As you're talking through this, what pieces of your particular work stream is dependent on someone else or some other group that you're not working in a silo and that's when you have the conversation of, wow, I might have an issue, but I need some help from this particular department. What can they do to help you get back on track. That is a critical piece.

And so I always make the analogy of a relay race. So if you're running a relay and you got the four of the fastest people in the world and you lose, you didn't lose because they weren't fast. You lost on the stick pass. And that's why it's critical.

That stick pass and that interdependency is what's critical. I drill down on it. That's something I really focus on because that helps on the execution. So keeping people coordinated, cross-functional teams, right, to prevent the silo effect and the finger pointing that can inevitably happen, right?

And understanding, it sounds like it's a big deal to understand those dependencies and to make sure that both parties or multiple parties are aware that if we don't deliver on time, it may not seem like that big a deal to our function, but it's going to really set the overall project back, you know, because some other interdependency that maybe we're not thinking about because it doesn't apply to us. So I think that's where you've really got to use the relay race, I'll use an orchestra, right?

You've got to have those people in the orchestra ready to play when it's their turn and stay in tune and keep the music moving along, right? And I think that's really an important objective, I think, of the person that is overseeing that initiative, overseeing that execution, whether you call that a PMO office or just the person who's ultimately got the A on that, the accountability. It's so important that they're resolving the issue. Clear, you know, you can almost see it sometimes, right?

I know there's not enough communication happening at that interface between those two functions, and I need to step in and make sure they're talking to each other, right? That's it. Yeah, yeah. And it comes down back to the same thing.

If you can, you got to clearly communicate the plan, right? Because if one doesn't have, doesn't understand what the other function is doing, that's where you're going to have the miscues. And I know I use the track one. If you think about your orchestra, if you think about footballer and i say that because we got the super bowl at the left tackle misses their block the whole play the whole play was to you know to get you know you know the whole play blows up right.

So totally it's got it's it's uh and that's a role i think as a leader you really gotta see those see those interactions make sure they're healthy and effective and when they're not step in have a meeting with those two people and say hey look it's clear to me two aren't really working together that well. And I need to understand how we can fix that, right? And solve it, right? That's not an easy thing to do because, you know, very often you're dealing with senior people, but I think it's critical to call it when it's happening and to get on it soon and resolve it before it becomes a bigger problem.

You're absolutely 100% right, Greg. And the other thing is prior to that, when you're creating a plan, the play, you know what's critical and what's not. If you're doing a pass play, the left tackle has to block. You know that has to work.

Or the running back has to pick up the blitzer, right? If somebody else doesn't do their job, that will hinder it, but that's not the critical thing. If the left tackle misses the block, the whole play is done. So understanding where those weak points are and developing flexibility.

So if you know your left tackle may not make that play, you have the running back come and support, right? But you find, hey, if you see that this is what you did. Yeah. Yeah.

So adjustments along the way. Sure. The other thing I want to talk about too is things come up, right? Things happen along the way.

We can call them problems. We can call them challenges. We can call them opportunities to get better, but shit happens, right? Things go wrong.

And sometimes people have a tendency to focus on the problem and just pointing to that's why we're not going to make progress. I told you this wouldn't work. How do you move people beyond that, right? You're executing, your deadline's looming out there.

Everybody's counting on you for those synergies or for whatever it is, you know, the benefits that are going to come out of this successful execution of a strategy. And then all of a sudden, you got people pointing at problems. How do you refocus them? This is like, because this reminds me of a story.

I was in the army and I was walking with a battalion commander and he was doing an inspection of my opportunity and I'm pointing out these, oh yeah, that needs to get fixed. He stopped and he said, I don't need you to point out problems. I need you to come with solutions, right? And so when you have your cross-functional team and all these people and you let them know, hey, I want you to identify the problem, but I also want you to think about the solution.

You guys understand clearly what we're trying to get done, the objective. And as long as you communicated that. So if there's something that's going wrong, I need you to thinking about how you solve the problem. So you want to give everybody an opportunity to contribute.

And that's something that you drill. That's a cultural thing. That's something that you not only just tell, but you show and you tell people all the time. That's critical for a good working team on these types of issues.

Right, right. No doubt about it. You know, looking for the solution. I nerd out on lean sometimes.

And I was watching a video last night on YouTube about this amazing lean factory over in Ireland, of all places. And these guys are in a business where their competitors have a 70-week lead time on these chairs. I think they're for the healthcare industry, special chairs that they're building. And they have their place so leaned out, They're producing them with a three-day lead time, right?

Just blowing away the competition. And that's not because they've got stuff staged. It's because they build them from scratch that fast. And everybody that works there doesn't think about coming to work to do a job.

They think about coming to work to improve, right? So you talk about completely flipping it on, like, yeah, there's a problem here. Like, my workstation, you know, isn't right. These people are completely empowered.

It's a fascinating video to make the improvements to their particular workstation. I mean, this is stuff as simple as where do you hang the tool, right? So that when you go to pick it up, it's there all the time, right? And that's a simple shadow board thing that's used in Lean.

But I think about how these people are oriented not on finding the problems, but always coming to work to improve. And it makes their work better. It's less, you know, hard on their bodies and labor intensive. And it creates great throughput and it's the most organized, cleanest looking shop I've ever seen in a factory.

And so you just brought that to mind. I don't know why I'm going off on this tangent with this side story, but that's the idea of focusing on solutions, not focusing on problems. Everybody can always find problems or a reason why something's not working, but it's the enlightened folks that can look at that from a framework of, oh, there's a way to make this better and it's my job to make this better. And I'm going to take that responsibility.

No, that's exactly right. Greg, that's, that's, that's leadership, right? To be honest, which, you know, your leadership is not somebody that comes up with the right answers is somebody that provides clarity and clarity. And ownership.

If you can provide those two things, clarity and ownership, you'll be okay. It's not going to solve all your problems, but you'll be in much better shape, right? Exactly. It's about solutions, not problems.

Right. Right. So, Yael, is there any other interesting stories that you want to tell from some of these initiatives that you've been working on, either an advisory capacity as an interim executive or whatever, uh, without, you know, obviously I'm not asking you to violate any confidentiality of your clients, but you know, is there any stories you think that would impart some of these lessons that we've talked about here, you know, to the audience and make it real for them? Yeah, that's you.

I put me on the spot a little bit. I'm trying to redact in my mind. Sure. The different things.

Yeah. One that comes to mind, and I think it is about, let me just preface this. I think most people want to do a good job. And I had a particular company that didn't quite have a focus.

And that's an issue with a few companies. They want to do everything. And it was a matter of let's sit down, let's put down, I used a four blocker there as well, and let's have the right people in the room and figure out what it is that we want to do and actually acid test whether that made sense or not. Right.

And I don't know if this is hitting on what you're looking for. And I'm trying to make sure I don't mention many, many names. But literally, the issue was people never, they wanted to do everything. And you can't do everything.

Right. But when you got people in the room and you sat down and said, okay, here's, you know, here's kind of the plan. How do we achieve this? Then they realized, well, you know what, we're all over the map.

We need to focus on something. Right. And so that it got them to, to actually focus and focus on one or two, it was actually two things and, and drive that, that, that. That's critical.

Right. Well, I think, you know, strategy is more about saying no than it is about saying yes, right? And that speaks to focus, right? In some ways, right?

If you're trying to do too much or trying to be too many things, too many companies, a lot of companies have been incredibly successful by staying in their lane and just really going deep and nailing it. But sometimes you want to expand business, but you need to make sure that you have the resources and the right team to go pursue a new objective or a new strategic effort somewhere. And that's all well and good. But I think a lot of times people just feel like they can't say no, maybe to a client or they can't say no to an opportunity that they see in the market.

And they don't quite think about the impact of that and how that ripples through the business and can become more of a distraction than it can be a competitive advantage. So focus is incredibly important. Right. And that too comes down to communication because when you, and the companies that tend to do that, and I've seen it, don't really communicate, right?

They jump from one thing and people don't know what they're trying to do. They don't even know what their focus should be. They're on the map and they're not thinking about, to your point, they're not thinking about solutions. They're just, I just got to get something done.

Right. Exactly. Yeah, you know, it's about outcomes, not activity. So, you know, the smartest people I knew seemed like they could do their job effortlessly, because they were focused on what's the right activities to be working on to drive the best outcome.

And that's where they really focused intently was on on those activities. And they let the other stuff go kind of go by as noise, right? And super important to do that as you're, you know, being a strategic thinker and, and being a strategic leader that that's going to drive value for a company. So awesome.

Yeah. So Yale, I always like to give people a chance maybe to, to recognize folks that, You know, we all have had careers and you've had great success in your career. And I like to maybe inject a moment of gratitude every now and then into this podcast where you have the opportunity to recognize or, you know, think about people that helped you to be successful and help you to kind of become the leader you've become through the years. So, again, I'll put you on the spot here, but it sounds like your parents had a great influence on you, you know, kept you on the straight and narrow at the right time.

But is there anybody else you'd like to acknowledge who's, you know, been in your universe that's helped you to become a better leader or saw something in you that they liked and helped you to move to the next level? Yeah, there are, right? You hit the nail on the head, my parents. I would also say at West Point, Coach Young, who was a coach, a lot of great leadership principles learned from him.

And that he practiced and I kind of emulated things that, you know, in the locker room, you go, oh, yeah. But when you take a step back, you know, that really, that really is pretty good. Their partner at a painting company, Paul DePaulo, was extremely helpful and a great mentor. And then, I mean, there's a long list, but I'm just picking out a few and I know I'm going to forget.

But there was a CEO at, I think he just retired, Simon Medley. And what I learned from him was the way he communicated was just phenomenal. I mean, he spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to communicate, what venue, what to say, word choice, and it was so effective. And I thought to myself, I didn't realize you should spend this much time not on, you know, you got the answer, but how do you communicate this, right?

Right. Which is critical, right? How do people understand? So, I mean, that's what I would, you know, those would kind of come to mind.

Yeah, great. No, it's good to recognize people. And, you know, I always encourage some of the younger people I talk to to, you know, look at leaders that are successful, look at some of the ways that they do things, right? You mentioned communication.

We can use that as an example, right? And try to learn from them. And there's also an opportunity to learn when maybe it's not such a great leader and you see maybe what not to do. I think that's also important as well.

And, you know, I think that's what's helped us all, I think, become better leaders is having those interactions with people that they may not even have been senior to us, right? But you just saw somebody else handle a certain situation and thought, you know what, that's a better way than I tend to do it. And, you know, I'm going to pick that up and take it with me and kind of make that part of my ethos and the way I go about carrying myself through the day. So I think it's nice that you can recognize some of these folks here.

And, you know, nobody does this on their own. So I think we're all very grateful for the people that have helped us out along the way. No, 100%. Yeah.

Well, Yale, listen, it's been great talking to you and hearing your story and hearing about how we move from strategy to execution. I think a couple of the key points I remember is have the execution in mind when you're developing the strategy. It's easy to overlook the hard parts, but you need to look at those hard parts. I think it's key to build flexibility in plans.

You mentioned that. drive the right accountability, have that drumbeat, the transparency, clear objectives for the team when you're executing, and make sure everybody understands the objectives of the mission, focuses on solutions and not problems. And you try to get these people to work together as well as you possibly can to accomplish that. That's what I took away.

No, that's great. That's exactly spot on. I'm glad. I was paying attention and I was able to summarize what you discussed, but that's my job here is to synthesize things like that.

It's been great though, hearing your stories and spending time with you. And I really appreciate you coming on the podcast. I want to thank you for your time and for sharing your, you know, your smarts with our audience. Appreciate it.

Greg, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. And you've done a great job. I'm I'm not sure I lived up to my part of the bargain, but you have covered me.

Thank you. And we're here for each other, my friend. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's been great.

And until next time, I'm going to say goodbye. And I look forward to our next interaction. You take care, man. All right.

Thank you. Thank you, Greg. Have a good one. You got it.

Bye.