"If you don't know your navigational heading, you can't build a culture" - Ben Banks of BNSF Logistics

Dr. Josh Elmore Welcome to the Land and Lead podcast, where we explore the real stories behind leadership transitions, the setbacks, strategies, wins, and moments of growth, all aimed at helping other leaders land well and lead effectively. I'm your host, Dr. Josh Elmore of Court Street Consulting.

Today we're speaking with Ben Banks, President and CEO of BNSF Logistics Ben is a seasoned executive with more than 20 years of leadership experience, 18 of which have been within the transportation industry. Ben began his BNSF career in 2007 as a terminal train master, serving in operations until 2012, before being promoted into sales and marketing department. He held a variety of leadership roles with increasing responsibility within the marketing and sales teams at BNSF prior to his promotion to General Expedited Intermodal in 2022 and General Director Industrial Productions in 2023.

In 2024, BNSF named him President and CEO of BNSF Logistics, capitalizing on his abilities to lead organizations toward innovative and strategic solutions that result in sustainable growth. Ben holds a Bachelor of Arts from Williams Baptist University and Master of Administrative Studies from Missouri State University. He is a Curriculum Advisory Board Member at the University of North Texas, an ordained deacon in the Southern Baptist Convention, a community group leader at the Well Community Church, and an advocate at Grace House Ministries.

Ben loves spending time with his wife and son in Justin, Texas. He is a car enthusiast and has restored multiple classics and enjoys his time outdoors, especially fly fishing and top water bass fishing. Welcome to the show, Ben. Ben Banks Thank you very much for having me.

Dr. Josh Elmore Yeah, happy to have you as we're excited to hear about kind of that journey that you had from being in the organization for all those years, but now kind of in that top job at BNSF Logistics and what that's looked like. getting into Can you share a bit about your background and your journey through roles at BNSF? Ben Banks Absolutely, once again, Josh, thank you so much for having me on your podcast.

A lot of great questions I know you're gonna ask today and hopefully, I can provide some insights based on my experience. But along those lines, as you mentioned, 2007 I was hired for as a train master. And for those that listen to your podcast, I don't know what that is, think of it as something along the lines of an air traffic controller. I didn't operate the trains, but my job was to make sure that as the trains were coming into our terminal, they were headed the right direction, that we handled the gathering and distribution of rail cars, delivering them the final mile to the customers.

And I oversaw a lot of that operation. A little town called Springfield, Missouri is where I started. Did that for about five years, as you mentioned, and then went into sales. Most recently, I led, as you mentioned, General Director of Industrial Products.

And one of my customers was a company called BNSF Logistics, which is BNSF Railway's sister company. So I was familiar with BNSF Logistics from that perspective as being their vendor, really. And then the board decided that they wanted to make a change at BNSF Logistics where they wanted to see if they could bring the two companies closer together. And they thought that I was best suited for that.

So they placed me in that role in June of last year. Dr. Josh Elmore Congrats. And so you were in BNSF.

And so this transition that you made was in-house, but at a sister company. did that look like? Ben Banks So it probably helps to explain maybe the structure. So have BNSF LLCs, the parent company, and then have two sister companies, BNSF Railway and BNSF Logistics.

But exactly what it looked like was I got called into an office and said, hey, we're thinking about ⁓ approaching BNSF Logistics in a new way. We understand you know a lot about BNSF Logistics as compared to anyone else, but the key part of this is they wanted someone from BNSF Railway who understand BNSF Railway's needs, be able to lead BNSF logistics and match BNSF logistics capabilities with BNSF Railways needs. And that my name came up and after discussion with the board, they decided to appoint me in that role.

Right out of the gate, it was an exciting opportunity for me as my first CEO role. It definitely had its challenges as far as walking into exactly what I just talked about, walking into a company that had been doing something in a certain way for about 15 years and the what I'm being brought into is to change that vision, to change that focus a bit more. But as I learned more about it, Josh, really what it was is a refocusing, a return to the original vision that BNSF Railway had for the company.

BNSF Logistics was established in 2002, and it was established to be a company to be an IMC broker to drive business to BNSF Railway's intermodal program. And that worked great till about 2006 when BNSF Railway divested of their, what they call their box program, which is basically a wholesale model container program, meaning any kind of shipper could use a container that BNSF Railway owned. And that was the primary way that BNSF Logistics drove business to BNSF Railway was through that NACS ⁓ program.

It's NACS, if anybody wants to look it up online. They divested of it in 2006. And as best I can tell, that's really when the companies, their purposes started to diverge. After that because BNSF logistics didn't have an easy way to access the BNSF railway network.

So they made a business of their own and were successful in that for a number of years. But over time, the question was, you know, BNSF railway is a sister company of this, BNSF LLC is the parent company, but we're not doing a lot of business together. Is there an opportunity to bring us back together for your first CEO position? You'd probably prefer that you're walking into a situation where the board knows what the vision is and they're hiring you to execute that vision.

That wasn't necessarily the situation that I was in, but I was still really excited about it because I immediately felt the support from the board to say, Ben, go figure it out. Explore this BNSF of logistics, see if it's feasible, bring us back together if it's possible. And they're really relying on my expertise to do that. So that was exciting for me because I love casting a vision.

love thinking strategically. That's not a stretch for me, but it was definitely a challenge in and of itself. But an exciting opportunity too. I would say, walking into the company, what did that look like?

First and foremost, and I don't know if any of my team's gonna see this podcast, I hope they do. Just very thankful to them. They immediately accepted me with open arms, they really did. Some of them may have been behind the scenes, maybe a little bit more cautiously optimistic.

All of them had a good sense though for why I was selected. And they were excited about that. And I think it's important to note too, as we think about tailwinds that I had coming in, everybody was pretty excited about a change, a change in direction for the company. New opportunities with BNSF Railway, everybody understood that this was a missed opportunity.

Everybody had that sense, but nobody on the BNSF logistics side knew how to tap in to the BNSF Railway side and vice versa. And that's the role that I was going to play. And everybody understood that. And they welcomed me for sure.

We had one individual, our chief marketing officer at the time, who really believed that he probably should have been the CEO and he was a very talented individual and understood his challenge with my selection and ultimately he left us to go lead his own company. And that was very tough because he was employee number one in our organization. He was the longest tenured employee in our company and that was very tough for all of us to see that. That happened.

And I know that happens. I've read plenty of books and I've seen it happen. I know that people leave and you have a new CEO comes in, maybe selects their own employees, ⁓ their own team, they build their own teams, I should say. But that really wasn't my intent.

I was going to try to keep as much as I could, intact. But the reality was he left, but it ended up being a great move for us too. Hopefully a very good move for him, but it was a good move for us too because he able to bring in a gentleman named David Ivan, who was the chief operating officer of a company called Vestas North America. They're a manufacturer of wind turbines.

And we were able to bring him in as my chief operating officer and made some moves on my team. But he has done a fantastic job driving us towards our purpose and vision. And one of our purpose statements is to is to provide operational excellence to our customers, but also strategic advantage. And he understands our customer base better than anybody I could have hired into the role.

So I'm very thankful to have him and he's done an exceptional job. really walked into kind of an interesting situation where I'm building a new vision, but I'm walking into a situation where everybody's welcoming it. And that's rare. fully, all the other CEOs listening to this call are going to say, well, lucky guy.

Yeah. I was very, very blessed to walk into the situation I was in. Dr. Josh Elmore Wow, so a lot there from the perspective of the origin story of BNSF logistics, kind of that early purpose of having mandate of driving business to BNSF Railway using NECS Next, is that how it's pronounced?

Ben Banks NACS, NACS boxes. I'm not really sure what that stood for. I don't recall, but that's what they called it, the NACS program. Dr.

Josh Elmore Great. right so those dimensions and then this kind of span of time, what it sounds like 20 years, you said 15 years, is 2008 to 2025, 2024. Ben Banks Somewhere around there, 15 plus years where they, there was a gradual, I say that that's when it started. And they really became kind of their own standalone company that didn't have a lot to do with BNSF Railway outside of moving some company material for them for about, we'll call it 15 years.

Dr. Josh Elmore So I have a couple questions kind of related to everything you shared. first, kind of it's around this idea of getting that kind of blank check mandate from the board that you had coming in and that kind of succinct look backwards and say, where did we come from and where are we at now? How did you?

How did you walk into that with this kind of, instead of blank slate, I'd say, how did you wrap your head around what do we need to actually get done here? Ben Banks first and foremost, if you don't know your navigational heading, you can't build a culture. You can't build your team around that. And everything in my mind is around a navigational heading.

And I'll use that probably with other questions that you ask. I'll come back to this kind of ⁓ sailing terminology, because it's worked really well for us. And it's actually the terminology we use. So within the first six weeks, I took my executive team off site.

And the purpose of that was to establish our navigational heading. Now, in that first six weeks, what I'm doing is I'm meeting with as many employees as I can to understand what we do well. And what are we doing that maybe we don't do so well? What I'm really trying to get to is what is our core from a capability standpoint?

I've been on the outside looking in and I was a vendor of BNSF Logistics. I was not an expert. the first thing that I had to do is just recognize the reality and that is that I don't have the answers to this. To this mandate that I have, yes, it's a clean slate, it's a blank check, all those words are right, all those analogies are correct, but at the same time, I didn't know.

Day one, I didn't know what it should be. So I needed to discover BNSF Logistics first. I understood BNSF Railway quite well. But I needed to understand BNSF logistics So I met with as many people as I possibly could so that when I take my team off site, six weeks into the role, I have a good feel for what their teams are saying.

And then I wanted to hear from them and I'm sharing, okay, you're saying this, your team is saying this as well. And then, I mean, it really came down to just plotting it. We talked about, we're trying to get back to our core, what do we do really, really well? And we talked about, on the Y axis, have...

of impact to revenue. And on the x-axis, we had difficulty of implementation. And then we just started graphing it. If it wasn't in that top left quadrant, we decided this probably isn't our core.

And it's something that we need to unwind ourselves from over time, some of it more quickly than others. And of course, I've got all the right people. I've got my chief financial officer. I've got my chief marketing officer, who used to be our chief operating officer.

So he understands both sides quite well. And I've got our chief engineering officer too. And for those of you don't know, we're an engineering firm, a PE engineering firm, state of Texas as well. We do a lot of engineering.

So that was also something I'd never done before. I never led an engineering team before. I never really worked side by side with engineers before. hearing the voice of the team was essential to this.

And all of us as a C-suite agreeing, here's what's in the left quadrant, top left quadrant. Then from that, we knew that we could start to draw out what is our vision. And then from there, what's our purpose? Why do we exist?

I mean, ultimately, at the highest level is to figure out a way to drive business back toward BNSF railway to complement their capabilities. But in what ways can we do that? That's what this exercise was really ⁓ telling us and informing us. And so that went really well.

We walked out of there initially with a vision statement. Later on, we came out with a purpose statement, all very simple stuff. I’ll state it for you here, our vision statement, the way we talk about it anyway, it's two paragraphs, but I'll give you one line, we're to be the premier logistics provider in the spaces we choose to serve, period. That's our navigational heading.

That's part of it anyway. And then our purpose statement feeds that vision. That's how we're going to get it done. And that is we're going to provide empowering solutions to our customer base.

We're going to provide operational excellence. And we're going to provide strategic advantage to them so that they win in their markets. Those two ideas combined became our navigational heading. Now, the details of that, we call them our strategic verticals, are the ways that we're going to approach our markets and which markets we're going to play in.

The first step is to get out of that offsite, put it in something, in a couple of paragraphs that we could understand and repeat really easily and we knew that others could digest. And then we took it to our board. And we started talking to our board about it, making sure that they're comfortable with the direction that we're headed. And they were very comfortable with the direction.

Now, we still not clearly articulated yet how the two companies would work together. That took more time. I was learning about the company and my team now understands what we're trying to achieve so that they can help educate me as I educate them on the needs of BNSF Railway and the gaps that they have with their shippers. That came over, that probably took about six months, I would say.

Maybe even a little bit longer than that. To really articulate, here's the space that it's core to who we are that we can play in that will actually complement BNSF Railway's capabilities, prove their market share and prove the value that they're providing to their shippers. And then I took that back to the board and we all got aligned around that. And that's when things really got easier for me, because that's really how, I mean, every CEO on the call knows this.

If your board doesn't really understand why you exist, that's a challenge. And one of your primary objectives as a CEO is to get the board aligned with the direction of the company or vice versa. once we achieve that, then we're able to keep moving towards that. And we've got a navigational heading, but how do we get there?

And what we talked about was we got to raise the sails on our boat now. Now we know where we're headed, we're going to raise the sails And we may exchange what those sales look like, that's our strategies. We may change out what kind of sail we're using, but we know where we're headed. And from there, we can build teams around that, we can realign our organization around that to support those core functions.

And that's what we've been doing for the last 18 months since I've been here. Dr. Josh Elmore Wow, yeah, mean, ⁓ comprehensive kind of step wise, listen to the organization, get with the team, fill in the blanks around kind of that heading, and then kind of get it by in from the top iteratively as you get clarity as a leader. Super, super powerful practice.

You know, ⁓ something that strikes me is this idea of, ⁓ you use the word alignment with the board. I also hear in the early comment that you had, kind of going back to that initial bit that you shared around, you came into the there was a recognition of the need for change, and so it was a little bit easier. And so it sounds like you had momentum around people being aligned on the need for change, right? So the board appoints you, but the folks in the organization also see that need.

So it looked like there was kind of spanning the organization levels, recognition and alignment in the need for change. you mentioned this idea that other CEOs listening in are like, wow, like lucky you. How would you say that contextual factor of kind of everybody recognizing the need for change has accelerated your ability to drive change and make things happen? Ben Banks Well, instead of fighting every day, you that initial change management that everybody knows they have to as a leader, instead of fighting, getting everybody's mind wrapped around the idea that we need to change, that can take months.

And even at BNSF Railway when I've been involved in change, you know, a company that's been around almost 200 years, there's still change, there's still evolving to meet their customers' needs, and there's change that's required, and people try new things, and BNSF Railway is quite innovative from that perspective. The reality is I know if people don't believe change is needed, that's the toughest part. From my perspective, in my opinion, to get everybody or at least most of your organizations, including your C-suite, agreeing to the fact that change is needed, that's the toughest part.

So I fast forwarded maybe a year's worth of work here where people just are undermining you and they're dragging their feet. mean, we've all seen that type of thing, but I didn't have that here. The biggest challenges we had were, you we fast forward to, all right, We know change is needed, what change is needed? That's where we had, I would say healthy conflict.

mean, this is five dysfunctions of a team kind of thing. This was the healthy conflict that we needed to have. And we wanted to approach it from a data perspective too. You can make data say anything, I get that.

But speaking a data perspective, thinking about even how we were graphing it, implementation, difficulty of implementation versus impact to revenue, starting at the most, the highest level, starting from a data driven perspective was helpful to help people come to the same conclusions. But once again, wasn't fighting the fact that we need to change, was just specifically what change was required. What are we really, really good at? And then when we think about growth, I mean, we're not going to be stagnant.

We're not going to just provide the services that we're really good at today. But how do we expand into potentially new markets? Well, from my perspective and my boss, chairman of the board, our perspective is that we're going to understand our core and then we can, you know, maybe we just modify a little bit of what we do today in order to enter new markets. And that's what we're doing right now.

But all along the way, there's plenty of, especially the sales team and others who are like, well, we've done this before and we did it okay in the past. We did it well in the past. Yeah, but it's not our core. And why is it important when we come back to operational excellence, once again, tying your vision into your purpose?

Or operational excellence, you need to have something that's scalable. You need to have something that's measurable. You need have something that's repeatable. And if we're just doing a lot of different things that we've done in the past, even if we did them well, if it's not scalable and repeatable and doesn't tie us directly back into what we're trying to achieve to be the premier provider in this space, then we have to shed it.

And that's been maybe more than anything else where the challenge for me came in was just helping people to understand or asking really good questions. I call them the four P's. They don't offer it with P, but that's what I call them. Do we have the right people?

Do we have the right process? Do we have the right protections? And do we have the right approach to market? And then I was telling my CMO earlier today, I've added a fifth one.

Does it fulfill our purpose? So we'll call it the five Ps now. those are the questions I'm asking. Do we have the right people for it?

If not, we get into it with the right kind of people? If we're not really sure that we can, then it's probably something we leave out. Do we have the right processes in place today in order to provide that operational excellence and that empowering solution? If the answer is no, well, can we do that quickly, probably before we launch the product or do it again a second time?

If the answer is no, then we're probably going to drop it. Do we have the right protections? mean, as an engineering firm, we're one of just a few in our industry that know how to do what we do. Well, customers will come and ask us to do a lot more than what we probably should be doing.

They want us to enter that in manufacturing space and we're willing to do that. But I want to make sure that we've got the right protections in place to protect our company, protect our IP, et cetera. And then we have the right approach to market. Are we equipping our sales team to go out there and sell a marketable product that is empowering, that is filled with operational excellence and that is a strategic advantage to our customers?

Once again, always tying back to our purpose and our vision statement. And usually. I'm not gonna paint a picture that it was just been 100 % all the time, but usually when we ask ourselves those questions, we typically come to the same conclusion. Once again, everybody in here calls going, this guy has got a great job, and I do.

I do have a great job with a great team. We have healthy conflict, when we typically, 99 times out of 100, we come to the conclusion together quite quickly. Dr. Josh Elmore Yeah, and I mean, the idea of consensus building ⁓ is helpful.

I would imagine it's facilitated by the alignment around knowing that there's a problem to be solved as it relates to the core of the organization. So you've built that narrative of, look, we're changing fundamentally. Or we're reverting back slightly to what we were at of our organization, however modified that might look. But building into your point, as you mentioned, that idea of, are features that we want to build that can scale and not just kind of for every I mean, this This is the perennial startup challenge where do you build a feature for every customer and then everybody's unique in terms of what they get delivered to them or how do you build kind of scalable ⁓ solutions across ⁓ clients that they can pull off the shelf that helps you scale.

When you're working with the organization and you have kind of this new challenge, right? It sounds like change is not the challenge, different type of change, right? It's a change in how we do things. It's a change on how we orient ourselves driving factors, right?

Purpose, for instance, the things that kind of keep right heading. sounds like people bought into the heading, right? So you got that buy-in on heading. How do you make sure heading is kind of correct.

Is it metrics that you have? Like what are you using there? Ben Banks Yeah, so we put a lot of thought into that for sure. The navigational heading from my perspective shouldn't change.

I mean, that's your your ultimate purpose and vision. It's also the way that we talk about it and describe it is broad enough that you can change your strategies in order to achieve it. You might even change the markets that you're that you're playing in. You might change your approach to a market in order to hit that navigation.

Navigational heading is to be the premier logistics provider in the spaces we choose to participate. Right? So we can choose to participate as we learn this isn't working. You know, for me, joke with my team a lot, the bottom line is always a dollar sign.

So if it's not making us the kind of returns that we want to make, there's all kinds of red flags. We need to do a root cause analysis as to why that is. Even if it's something that we selected as a strategic vertical, we need to be in. And then we're going to go back, work backward.

You did we have, we thought we had the right people. Do we have the right people? Are they trained right, correctly and appropriately? Do we need to get the additional training?

Do we have the right approach to market? Do we have the right processes? Why is it not? But if we come, yes, yes, yes, and still no, it's still not making us money, it's something that we're gonna unwind ourselves from pretty quickly.

And we've done that a couple of times. But the navigational heading doesn't change for us. It's our guiding, it's what we hold ourselves accountable to, is the product that we're providing premier. Now, how do we know?

Well, first bottom line is the dollar sign, but also we were a little bit KPI light. If my chief operating officer was in here, he'd say we were a lot KPI light in our organization. he's helped us, David's helped us tremendously to create KPIs around everything that we do, not only what we do, but also what our vendors are doing for us. How quickly are they unloading a rail train of a particular type of turbine or a particular component of a turbine?

And he's got his team out there, actually with stopwatches and watching how this works. And then over time, we're starting to set expectations with those vendors to say, okay, we were able to do it this quickly last time with these control variables. We expect that we can improve that by 10 % working with our vendors. That's the type of conversation we're now having.

And admittedly, we did not used to have those types of conversations. But that's also telling us either a vendor isn't working or some type of service that we're providing isn't providing a premier level of product. Now the challenge in our market for sure is understanding what our competitors are doing. Across the board, that's a challenge in my industry, especially because most companies are privately held.

So I can't look at their 10Ks. I can't look at how their P &Ls are shaping up. I have no idea, for instance, in 2025 how I compare to our largest competitor. I don't know ⁓ from a financial standpoint.

I know how we compare against our also, what are their turn times with, I have to rely on the customer's feedback, which is largely anecdotal. For all the right reasons, probably NDAs and things like that, but we're trying to get feedback through our customer base. How are we performing? Would you call this premier and why is it not?

⁓ We're having to incorporate that type of KPI, which I'm not crazy about. It's not the best, but it's something. And in our industry, it's probably something we're going to have to live with for some time, till we figure something else out. BS KPIs, bottom line is a dollar sign.

Do we have the right, the four or five P's? Getting to that root cause analysis, that's what's great about David too, is he's a Kaizen lead, he's a Six Sigma Black Belt, he's brought a lot of that to the table for us. And then on our sales team too, my chief marketing officer is very process driven too, and helping us understand our win ratios better, and then getting to the core reasons why we're losing, and why we're winning, which is just as important. And being able to present that in our town halls in our organization is presenting to me, is presenting to his counterparts, but is also presenting to the entire organization in our town halls.

That's how we know if we're winning. winning can be a lot of different things, Are we premier? Is it feeding a brand in the marketplace that we're premier? And what does premier look like?

Is it strategic advantage? Is it operational excellence? Is it empowering solutions? If the answer is no to those things and we know why and we can't solve for going to unwind.

Dr. Josh Elmore It strikes me as a powerful rationale for continuous improvement. Ben Banks Yes, and that's what David and Steve Trowbridge, our chief commercial, that's what they bring to the table. Continuous improvement, understanding exactly what we did, what was the current state, what were we supposed to do.

Sometimes you're you know, we're building SOPs out of this too. And from scratch, if it's something that we've never done before, but that goes back to, at least for now, we're probably not going to do a lot that we've never done before. I mean we've been around for a long time. And so venturing into places where we're having to build it from scratch probably is not who we want to be right now.

Although that's where we're transitioning into as we have discovered how our current capabilities can complement BNSF Railway's needs. It doesn't mean that we're not going to have to shift the way that we're doing things. And I'm actually reading, and I've got to learn it because some of the new products that we're getting ready to roll out feel a bit startup to me. And so.

⁓ I know what you sent me one of the questions and that was, you know, what advice would I share with other leaders? Just be a continuous learner. I'm reading books all the time and this is the one I've got on my desk right now. I I bet everybody else has read this but me.

So I'm working through that too. And what I love about that, it's bridging entrepreneurialism with lean. And that's where David Ivan is trained. So we're learning how to bring both of those together where it's a scientific approach.

It's not just go do whatever. Dr. Josh Elmore There you go. Ben Banks It's you have these iterative learnings along the way and you're measuring them of good stuff that David Ivan's really interested in, but also being able to roll out a new product that, getting to that MVP as he talks about and getting comfortable with putting something out there that may not be premier at first, but you've got a good set of customers who are willing to iterate with you.

That's the key. We don't want to put out something that's going to damage our brand, but do we have customers who are willing, they see the need to? Let's do it together. We're learning together and it's going to be product that's ultimately going to serve them well.

I love that approach as opposed to maybe how some entrepreneurs do it. That's why the Eric Ries is spot on. Dr. Josh Elmore Yeah.

And that's the lean startup for folks that are ⁓ a couple, I just want to return kind of last question around your initial kind of outlay there at the beginning of the podcast. You talked about your and that, you know, when you came in, you know, the research shows that when you are an insider and you get promoted to a role, shuffling the team extensively can hurt the team. Ben Banks Yes. Dr.

Josh Elmore If you're an outsider, it's kind of expected. And so more shuffling to happen. And teams can even potentially feel like if not enough shuffling happens, they may worry, like, when's it going to happen? But being an insider, you were like outsider insider, right?

Ben Banks Yeah, something in between, right. Dr. Josh Elmore So for parent company, yeah. And so you had a slight reshuffle with your CMO.

But you also mentioned this idea that you didn't want to shake things up too much. And There's a research study ⁓ looking at 110 firms from Europe. The concept they were looking at is this effect of factional fault lines. So you can create factions when you build a new team between old members and new members.

And so to what extent, like as you were kind of coming in and deciding how you were going to reshuffle the team, you only one person out, that person who was maybe a contender for your role. How did you navigate that dynamic? And it sounds like people were on board, but how did you ensure that you didn't get fault lines? Ben Banks That's very good.

And I didn't know going into it, I've not read that study, but was very aware of it coming in. I've read enough of other people's experience to know that I was walking into potentially a hornet's nest. ⁓ A couple of things. First, I actually did make an additional shift too.

So the individual left was our chief marketing officer, our chief operating officer. I moved over to being our chief marketing officer. So he led an entirely different business unit. That was a big shift.

But one I talked to him about it first, make sure he was comfortable with his almost entire background, save for a little bit in operations, his entire background is largely marketing and sales. So this is going to be a natural. What I loved about it is that he was our chief operating officer for a time. So he understood in a granular level what we do, which is going to make him be an even stronger sales leader.

Right. So I was comfortable with that. Talk to him about it, his personality has been, I'll do whatever the team needs. And I appreciated that.

So we moved him over. And then I began looking for the chief operating officer. David Ivan was a friend of mine prior. So I knew him really, really well.

He was a customer of mine, but we became friends over time. And so I was excited. I was excited, but I tried to play that as neutrally as possible. Maybe even downplayed our relationship a little bit with the rest of my team saying, hey, look, I know a guy.

I know a guy that could probably do this well. Let me share a resume with them. And the way I lead my team is we call it the round table, and a lot of people do that. That's what we call it, too.

It's round table. We discuss every major issue, ⁓ whether it's pertaining to your department or not. The five of us get together and we talk about it on a round table. the whole goal here is to gain wisdom.

We're trying to gain wisdom from one another. And that's exactly how I positioned David Ivan's hired too is, look, here is a person. Here is his resume. Before I talk to him, before I interview him, I want you all to talk to him and interview him as well.

And then you tell me, if you're comfortable, if it's not, no big deal, we're going to move on. You have my word on that. We will move on. I didn't come in saying, I want this person in that role, I want this person in that role.

It was more of a, handled a little bit more delicately saying, you all are going to help me build this team. Those who are existing here, you're gonna help me build this team. Now the good news was they loved David as much as I did as soon as they met him. But the wind had been knocked out of them a little bit because they were close friends with the individual who left.

And so this was a tough situation, but I knew if they loved the individual, at least initially, that that was gonna make it easier for me. So I tried to play it down as much as I could that we're gonna decide this together. You don't like this person, I'm not moving forward. As I've grown in my relationship with them, I've had to take harder stances on things, but they trust me.

I've earned that trust and competence over time, you know? But at first, I hadn't, and I knew that. So we're going to make this decision together, right or wrong. And they collectively came back and said, yes, this is the best hire that we can make.

We didn't want to lose the person that we did, but this is the best replacement that we could have. And that just dissolved all of that. And it has ever since. I've got very strong team and I'm very thankful for that.

But I think that helped. I know some people, it's not gonna be the right answer for every situation, but that's what I felt in my heart that I needed to be delicate with this move, to your point, because everybody's watching. The whole company's watching how this is gonna play out. And yes, I'd heard the term ⁓ more broadly, when's the shoe gonna drop?

You know, that kind of thing is the metaphor that people would use. And thankfully really no shoe has dropped ever since then. No doubt we've had individuals who underperformed and it's just like anything else. We work through those issues, but my team is intact and David Ivan has been beloved by his team since he's been there.

So, and how do we know that? We ask a lot of questions in our organization, informal and formal survey type questions and questions about me, questions about the rest of the C-suite team. And I know my, the other team. The rest of my team loves David and I think David likes to being here.

So it's been a win for everybody. Dr. Josh Elmore Yeah, involvement in decision making sounds like Ben Banks For sure, especially as you walk in, once again, if you've been a CEO, I should say it this way, if you've been a CEO for long time, you walk in with instant credibility, potentially. ⁓ I didn't walk in with that.

I didn't walk in with instant credibility. I had to earn that trust through competence over time, and I knew that was gonna take time. But also, I knew my C-suite. My C-suite had 120 plus years of supply chain management leadership experience combined.

That's also good too. If it was a bunch of newbies, I might've thought through that differently. There's all these different variables, right, that you think through it differently. But I had a strong, very wise, very skilled team and they came to the same conclusion I did.

So I guess in that sense, it just made me lucky. But yeah, that was the way to handle this situation, I think. Dr. Josh Elmore Wow.

And so As you think about your transition into role since 2024 what are some wins and setbacks? I think we have a lot various bits of information your past answers, but kind of more succinctly based on kind thinking that you would define them as wins or setbacks. Ben Banks I think for me, when you ask that question, it all goes back to people. for me.

quickly I was able to identify as I got to know the individuals who worked here, how talented the BNSF Logistics team was and is. And very quickly I realized, I hope that person sticks around. hope that person sticks around. ⁓ they're really good.

I hope they stick around. And the reality was is that, like I said, everybody knew change was needed. And they were excited for that change. There were some who wanted to move very, very quickly with change and expected change to happen rapidly.

One of it, just was a, I was not enough about the company to make the changes as fast as maybe they wanted to, whether it's in direction or personnel or whatever the case may be. There were some people who left the organization because change wasn't happening fast enough. I'm very confident that those individuals, if they were coming back right now, they'd be very satisfied with the position that we're in right now. that first six months, I lost a few of that talent, and that was disappointing to me.

On the flip side, conversely though, another, we'll call these headwinds, the headwind I had is change fatigue's real. And while everybody agrees change is needed, once again, we have a lot of the discussions, healthy discussions, and some conflict around what change is needed. And then how much of change is needed in that particular area. There are plenty of people, whether they were really for change in beginning or not, over time just constant change brings fatigue.

so I'm trying to balance that, right? As best I can, getting as much wisdom as I can from rest of my team. What should we do here? What's the right timing for this?

How important is this? As it relates back to our purpose and vision, is it a change we have to make immediately? Or is it something we could do over time and trying to just get that round table perspective, but also from our director level and from the individuals on the ground too. How can we possibly, what's the right timing for this?

Do you agree that that's the change that's needed? And equipping our director team to have those types of conversations too. But the reality is, is that I think my company right now is probably on that change fatigue spectrum right now. They're definitely there.

And so I'm balancing people who know we need change. They want it very, very fast with those who are just, I'm exhausted We're doing things differently than we've done in the past. And yeah, we agree it's the right thing, but goodness gracious, can we just have a few weeks where things are the same? And I get that too.

So I would say some setbacks that I have, I don't know that I navigated that perfectly. That's what's the word I'm looking for. ⁓ I don't know that I threaded that needle in the best way. But for tailwinds though, mean, we've seen a tremendous improvement in our net income and we've seen a lot of bottom lines and dollar signs we've seen those types of wins.

I think just people are, they're trusting, they're, that's again, just good people. They're trusting that we're going the right direction, they've made the right changes. So we've unwound ourselves from some product services, service products that we've done historically, we're not doing them anymore. We're doing them in a different way and we're gonna continue to evolve.

And people are trusting that it's gonna turn out okay. We want this to be a company that is there for their kids. Their kids wanna work here. This is not your typical 3PL.

We're not on a fly by night. We've been here 20 plus years already. We wanna be here 50 more. So they're watching and they're seeing the initial results, but it's been 18 months.

But at the same time, could we just maybe slow down the rate of change a little bit? There's a few that would appreciate that. And I don't wanna lose them either because they're tired of it. So that's the maybe where I'm not the best, but I will say to everyone, if you don't feel like you know all the answers either, surround yourself with great people.

Build that team however that looks, surround yourself to get the wisdom that you need. You'll gain it over time. You'll know what to do over time, but just understand it's probably gonna take some. Dr.

Josh Elmore Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, the idea of your wins and setbacks being interdependent, right? So a win that you're doing great, but the setback being that doing great is coming at the expense of having to modify the way you do things and update your practices, which encompasses change.

It's interesting that you had, it wasn't that people were leaving because they were you know, maybe they didn't agree with the change But they didn't agree with that the change wasn't happening. And so they you know, so having the reverse Experience that other leaders may have So, you know thinking about kind of that journey a question I like to ask a lot of my guests is… In the 1980s John Gabarro ran a few studies focused on general managers and presidents as they pursued new roles the results up in the book the dynamics of taking charge.

Gabbro explained that an executive has fully taken charge when they have mastered the new assignment in sufficient depth to be managing the organization as efficiently as the resources, constraints, and the manager's own ability allow. Thinking about this definition 100 % is having fully taken charge in your new assignment, what percent would you say you are at in 18 months later? Ben Banks I appreciate it, because this is an interesting question. You actually sent this to me ahead of time, and I really appreciate it.

So I was able to give it a little thought. I would say 75 % is where I'm at after 18 months, and for two reasons. First, I would say that because I still don't understand fully the intricate capabilities that we have in this organization, especially in our engineering firm. As I mentioned earlier, I've never worked with engineers before, do not have an engineering background.

I'm learning a lot from those folks, what we do, how we do it, what this processes look like. Also, we do some really niche things. can see in a picture behind me, we move what we joke is the big, ugly, and weird stuff. We move really enormous million pound, 800,000 pound transformers and generators and gas turbines and things along those lines.

I've never done that before. The way that, I mean, we design the rail cars, we design the fixtures that hold these large pieces in place, then we actually put human beings out with the rail cars, they ride in cabooses or what we call our camp cars, to make sure that as it's going down the rail, that it's navigating the curves properly. I can barely describe it still, what we do. I just know what they do is amazing and it's very, very, important.

That's why 75%. Now the good news is, is that my team around me is at 100%. Now that we all have the navigational heading where we're trying to go and the benefit that I have is I bring all the BNSF Railway expertise to match our capabilities with our needs, they're helping me connect the dots. I remind them where we're headed, I give them that input and insight that they don't have from a BNSF Railway perspective, they help me connect dots.

So I feel like we're in a very good position from that perspective. The second reason I say 75 % is because we are launching into some new service products. That the industry has not ever provided shippers before. It's taking bits and pieces of what we do that are at our core and then probably going to have to implement some technology, especially AI, to help put these service products together.

These are things I've never done before. And as a result of that, nobody on my team has either, by the way. That's why I say 75 % too, because we're not stagnant. And as we're growing our capabilities, all of us have to approach that with some reality check.

We don't have our arms around it and we've got to learn. Going back to the Lean Start, why I'm reading that book, why you and I talked about earlier, I've got a podcast called Problem Solvers. I'm meeting with a gentleman, Martin Lew, tomorrow that he's a thought leader in AI as it pertains to supply chain. I've got to learn.

I don't, you know, a hundred percent seems like a stretch for anybody unless you're a stagnant organization. I hope to get to 90 though. I hope to get to 90 and I'm not there yet. Dr.

Josh Elmore Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and, you know, that idea of continuous change and updating, going into new areas, it makes sense, right, because you kind of have to skill up continuously. So wrapping up, to the end of our conversation, what advice would you share with leaders currently entering a new high stakes role?

Ben Banks That's easy. First and foremost, go in humbly. Obviously, that's a mindset, but it's also just the truth. You don't have all the answers.

And maybe it's just one, accept that as reality. But number two, maybe that just takes some of the pressure off of you a little bit. You're walking into, even if you were hired internally or being promoted into the CEO role or into a C-suite role where you're running an entire department, you still don't have all the answers. And what that's going to do is going to drive inclusive actions.

And don't ever stop that. Be as inclusive as you can possibly be. Drive yourself towards seeking wisdom because you're going to need it. And you're going to find it with the people around you.

You're going to find it from your peers. You're going to find it in Josh's podcast. So I encourage you to continue to ⁓ go in humbly. But that's also part of continuous learning.

Be a learn it all. A lot of us are tempted to be know-it-alls, right? We feel like we have to be, but instead be a learn-it-all, constantly asking questions, constantly seeking the advice and wisdom of others. Like I said, I started this podcast for that reason.

Like I said, I call it Problem Solvers. There are problems out there. I don't know how to solve them. I want to talk to people who do.

It's not an advertisement for my company. It's not an advertisement for me. It's really highlighting these individuals I have on my show, much like what you're doing, Josh. And I just would encourage anyone read.

If you're not a reader, I don't know what the answer is, but hopefully you start reading. Read as much, because there are some great books, CEO Excellence, The CEO Test, as I mentioned earlier, Patrick Lencioni's book, Five the Dysfunctions of a Team, this Lean Startup book, lots of great material out there where you don't have to go in guessing. I mean, you really don't. Because there are smart enough books that they leave plenty of room for you to shape your own vision within it, to understand your own context within it.

And they're not prescriptive, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. But read, but find ways to continue to learn. Engage your team, set up surveys, informal and formal surveys to get their perspective on how things are going, but also what direction they think we should be going in, all those types of things, but constantly be Over-communicate. Be another one, I would say.

Over-communicate, be very intentional. We rolled out a new leadership model a few months ago in communicating with intent is one of our leadership tenants. Over-communicate and be very thoughtful about the way that you communicate. You feel like you're saying the same thing a million times.

That's OK. That's exactly what you should do. Align the stakeholders. That would be another one.

Maybe I should mention that one first. From their board on down, for me, culture and vision are top down. And you have individuals who help shape those bottom up, but the expectations are set top down. So make sure that you're aligning above you and below you and over communicate as you're doing it.

And then set up a feedback loop. I talk about surveys, feedback loops are good, make them anonymous. I still don't know that you're going to have to earn that trust through over time that everything's anonymous. And that you're really not holding people accountable for sharing their true feelings.

But you got to start somewhere. And over time, if they see that they shared and they didn't have blowback because of it, that's going to encourage more feedback. And we've got to have that. Let's see, it goes back to going in.

All this kind of goes in together, I guess. Maybe it all goes back to going in humbly. It probably all feeds back into that. But you don't have the answers, and that's OK.

You don't have all the answers anyway, I should say. Dr. Josh Elmore Yeah, I mean, ⁓ you know, I hear it being kind overarching philosophy too, and a practice, know, that humility, learn it all. And how do you learn through data, right, through feedback and kind of hearing from others?

One way that I like to do, you know, listening for organizations is, you know, focus groups. And those are confidential, but you can kind of with peers. And so you get, it's that bridge between kind of a survey where it's just me and a computer and I'm giving my feedback and I feel kind of maybe isolated, but I feel protected because it's anonymous ⁓ to the extent that maybe there's no open-ended questions. But then taking that step towards a focus group where you can kind of get more feedback, hear from your peers and feel a little bit more connected to kind of others' feedback.

And then maybe eventually you can have those open-ended table discussions where maybe you can join the conversation Ben, and stuff like that. Those are that stepwise process of listening and building. Ben Banks Yeah, at that point you achieved a ton of trust if you can walk into that room. And I don't know that I'm there yet.

I'm getting there. I'm trying to be sensitive to that. My HR team is very good with the focus group idea. And they really implemented that when we were building the leadership model, our leadership behaviors that we want to promote.

they instituted focus groups and then all types of training that were in smaller groups outside of those focus groups where actually the focus group led their own groups. After that, they've been really good at showing us how to do that. And I'm very appreciative of them for Dr. Josh Elmore Nice, very good.

Well, sounds like your practice is evolving and growing into an organization has same kind of tenants, right? You're role modeling that so others can do it themselves, right? Continuous feedback, great stuff. Yeah, so thanks for joining us, Ben.

Is there anything you'd like to share that's coming up for you or BNSF Logistics? Ben Banks Yeah, I hope so. That's the point, right? And from a BNSF Logistics standpoint, we're very excited.

We're, you know, our core to who we are is really in PowerGen. And that's a big deal right now. If all of you are watching the AI data centers and how that's exploding and all the discussion around that, we get to participate in that. It's going to be very strong year for us from that perspective.

And then as I mentioned earlier, if you want to be a Learn it All, this podcast is where to be. But also Problem Solvers, we'll be dropping another episode probably early February. And just an opportunity for you to hear from some of the best and brightest out there that really trying to solve real problems for us in the supply chain. Dr.

Josh Elmore Great. Well, thanks again, Ben, for joining us and sharing. Ben Banks Thank you, Dr. Elmore.

Thank you. Dr. Josh Elmore Thanks for listening to the Land and Lead podcast. I'm your host, Dr.

Josh Elmore. Tune in next time for more stories from leaders navigating high stakes role transitions.