The Leader Fast Lane - Episode 10 - with Ken Parker

In this episode, I talk with Ken Parker, Vice President of Learning Innovation at Public Strategies. Ken has four decades of experience in technology and education and has keen insight into issues facing higher education today. We talk about when values are tested in leadership decisions, how difficult moments clarify what matters most, what distinguishes a learning organization from one that just provides training, what hiring for fit means, and how leaders should think about AI.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Greetings, and welcome to The Leader Fastily, the podcast where accomplished leaders from higher education, public service, and beyond share real stories, practical principles, and hard-earned lessons listeners can apply immediately. No buzzwords, no shortcuts, just real leaders sharing real lessons you can apply right away. I'm Lane Mears, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Leader and Culture Development at the Texas Tech University System. Today I am joined by Ken Parker. Ken serves as Vice President of Learning Innovation at Public Strategies, where he leads initiatives that combine generative AI and learning science to create personalized, transformative learning experiences. His work helps organizations reimagine workforce development and elevate human potential across diverse industries. With more than four decades of experience at the intersection of technology and education, Ken has guided both Fortune 500 enterprises and high-growth startups. He co-founded Risk Metrics Group, which revolutionized financial risk management before its$1.55 billion acquisition. And NextThought, an education technology pioneer acquired in 2024. Earlier in his career, he developed mission critical systems for Martin Marietta Aerospace and JP Morgan, contributing to Wall Street's early advances in quantitative risk modeling. Ken holds a master's in computer science from the University of Colorado and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science from Oklahoma Christian University. A first generation college graduate, he is passionate about leveraging technology to expand access to education and opportunity. It's great to have you on the podcast, Ken.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Great. Thanks so much, Lane. It is a real honor to be here with you, and I really appreciate what you're doing is creating the opportunity for those of us that are older and made a boatload of mistakes to share some perspective, experience, and maybe a few nuggets of wisdom for those younger, aspiring leaders. So thank you. Pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Great. Well, I hope I'm sure that's exactly what we're aiming for is those tips that people can apply, whether they're on the cusp of entering into leadership, beginning their leadership journey, or have some seasoned experiences, but are just looking for more guidance along the way to be more effective. And so I'm sure that'll come from our conversation. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what you're doing with Next Thought and Public Strategies?

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Sure. So I'm a first gen college graduate, and I start with that anymore just to explain my passion for learning. I've had the good fortune to receive a good education that opens so many doors of opportunity for me. And so at this stage in my career, I want to think about how do I use what I know, which is technology and the my passions around learning, to help make great education more accessible and more effective for everybody. And I think technology is the only X factor we have right now. We don't have gigantic uh piles of money that we can redeploy to education. We don't have gigantic armies of great educators that we can, a very scalable intervention. We have to figure out how do we use that in an effective way that really makes a difference. But the scaling power of tech is what's going to let us make a difference on a large scale. And uh spoiler alert, one of the most exciting things that I think await us in the goal of education for everybody is AI. So the same force of disruption that's going to cause great carnage and chaos is also going to create some opportunities for growth and access and impact that are just historically unprecedented. So it is a this is a great transitional moment in human history. And I think one of the great opportunities for us is to reimagine how do we make the world better? How do we help more people flourish and uh create better, better stewardship for lives in our environment and everything else?

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Thank you. I'm I'm looking forward to getting into that, the the more of the AI and its role. I've got a uh we'll have a section of the interview coming up here because I've got lots of questions. And literally every conference I go to, every non-conference I see about it, it's got a heavy emphasis on the impact of AI. And I know there's people that on all sides of that issue on uh doom and gloom versus the very, very positive. And so I look forward to asking you some questions about that from your perspective. But I want to start with uh the topic of human-centered leadership. You talk about human flourishing and stewardship. And uh, can you share a moment where those values were tested in a real business or leadership decision?

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Sure. And hopefully everyone has seen good and bad examples of uh how the values and the culture and the leadership that is promoting those, hopefully people have uh have paid attention and observed firsthand those uh those impacts and why it's so important. Some of the examples where our values were tested in a real in a real way for business leadership, one of the sharpest DevOps guys that we ever had, uh he was an incredibly hard worker, extremely smart PhD. Uh our clients loved him, but he was disrespectful and damaging to the team. He was very critical. He, if he didn't uh view someone as an extremely strong contributor, then uh he would cause great damage. Uh we had to let him go. And on the conversation when we were out walking, it actually uh I was brought to tears just because I thought so highly of him, but the cost to the team was too great. Uh another example, we bought a large company at one point when we were growing risk metrics. Their top salesperson did something that was not illegal, but we thought it was out of bounds for our ethics and our culture. And so we let them go, knowing that it would have a real revenue impact. But we thought that the the importance of our values transcended uh the impact of a single person uh that was great. But uh again, when you put the the values and the priorities above the financial impact, uh it causes you sometimes to make hard decisions.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

I'd like to ask a follow-up about that because I've been in the position that you've described before in some of my leadership roles. I've talked with people across the Texas Tech system who are in that position right now of having a very high performer on their team that does not play well with others and that affects the morale overall of the team, but certainly of individuals on the team. And that is a very difficult position to be in, a difficult decision to make because in some respects, that high performer boosts the performance and the profile of the leader because of the team output. And so leaders can question well, if I if I get rid of this person, it's gonna negatively affect me and the team performance. But if you could just walk us through a little bit more in detail about what was the calculus in your mind in making that type of a decision and what ultimately pushed you over the top to say, we've got to make this change.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Yeah, it's a that's a powerful question because that's exactly the right question. It is rarely just black and white. If somebody does something unethical, illegal, that's easy, that's black and white. But in many cases, they are a strong performer, and we would have sort of a layered approach. Number one is candid, honest feedback and coaching so that people understand that the way that you're handling this dimension is not acceptable. And we need to change that. And you support them, encourage them. And another thing that you will do is potentially, if they're having a negative impact on others, in some cases there would be roles that were largely insulated from other people, and so they could contribute in uh their way, and then you you basically uh create uh an environment and a role that minimizes the chance for issues. That one's risky because there's there's very few roles that are completely isolated, but it is something that you can uh that you can consider as you're trying to help a person deliver their value, their good for the team, and wall off the uh the impact or the the dangers. But to your question of when did we decide, it was basically after we had gone through uh those those strategies, the behavior persisted, the negative impact persisted, and we just decided this is not this is not a good fit. And that was one thing whenever I would have the conversation with somebody and they were uh asked to leave, it was never about you're a good or bad person, it was always about fit, and it's a mutual fit. It's not like you're a bad fit, it could be we're a bad fit for you. And I can't tell you how many times when we would make the difficult decision to ask someone to leave a year later, both parties were happier, found a better fit uh in in most cases. And so it just gave you confidence that this will this will be good for both of us. And it is a mutual, it's a it's a bidirectional relationship. So you just work through a process that's fair, that's clear. One of my guardrails was when we have the final conversation with somebody and say, uh, this isn't working, I'm sorry, we're gonna have to part ways. That should never be a surprise, where they're just shocked. If so, shame on you as a leader that uh you failed on the communication, the feedback, the respect that everyone deserves for a situation like that.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

That's really helpful. Thank you for walking us through that. You you talk about values and fit, which is something that we uh that's our role, the Office of Leader and Culture Development. We work with universities within the system, colleges, teams uh across the system on identifying those core values that guide uh the way they operate and treat people, uh, and then help to help to operationalize those across their teams. Um question for you, based on your experience. So you've got a fascinating background in some really fast-moving environments like tech. How do you prevent values from becoming secondary to speed or scale?

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Yeah, again, an important question. Basically, when you think about values, in the end, uh what you think and say are important, but in the end, all most people observe is the third component. What do you do? Uh and so how do you act? Do you model the values that you're uh that you espouse? Uh what do you reward? What do you punish? What do you celebrate? And so all of those are moments to affirm the positive values, uh to walk the talk, uh, to model it. And then uh you proceed in a spirit of trust and teamwork. One of the things that uh I always thought modeled that is we had a very minimal employee handbook. Um, it was basically what's the minimum we need to say that is often obvious. Don't do anything illegal, protect client data, all of the usual obvious things. But there was a lot of freedom and flexibility that showed the respect and trust that we had in employees. Uh, one of our core values was ownership. So to think and act like an owner, another was respect. Um, and how do you show respect for your teammates, your customers, your vendors, whomever? But all of that had to do with modeling the values, and then you just have good communication and it's bi-directional. It's not like the only feedback communication goes top down. It should uh come bottom-up as well. And one of the things that I always celebrated about claiming our values, communicating our values, communicating our culture, is then you invite people to call you out when you're not modeling those or when people have questions. And so it just creates a healthy environment of communication and accountability.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

That's good. I it's it, I mean, that question and your response made me think about a couple things. Um, C. S. Lewis when he talks about courage, that it's the point of inflection for character. Like it's it's you can say you have character, but when it comes to those difficult moments, are you gonna act consistent with that? Demonstrate courage and and damn the consequences, so to speak. Um and then also uh uh Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that faith is not real until it's tested. I think the same thing with values, uh that um you know we can we can espouse them, we can post them on a wall, but but it's really the the living them out where they become real and core for any organization. Last question on this human-centered leadership. Um, you've led through a lot of innovation, but you've also encountered div uh uh adversity in in your role as a leader. How have difficult moments clarified what actually matters most in leadership?

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Well, that's a uh that's a a tough question, but uh for me there was uh unquestionably a a moment in in my life, in my career that was the hardest of anything I've encountered. And that it's a uh six and a half years ago. My co-founder for Next Thought, uh dear friend of 19 years, Jeff Muhring, uh, he was our president. Uh he and our COO, Greg Higgins, also a dear friend, died in a sudden car crash on a Saturday morning uh years ago. And it was completely out of the blue, tragic accident that just shook us to the foundation. We had just lost our largest client uh the months before. And so at the time we thought that was a crisis. We were gonna have to do layoffs. Um, and when I say large, that client was 75% of our revenue and went away suddenly. And so we were grappling with that and how we were gonna deal with it. And then the crash occurred uh that took two friends, they were both fathers to between them. Uh, they had five sons, uh, they left two beautiful widows, and it was uh it was a tragic moment. Uh recovering from that was, I think, the hardest leadership moment ever. Uh, everybody in the company reported to them as a CEO. Uh, I was outward-facing, they managed everybody in our company, which was small. We were uh 55 or 60 at that time. But we had to rebuild the leadership team and move forward, not quit. The Sunday after that was a dark moment of uh should we even attempt to do this or move forward? And uh the team just did an amazing job uh stepping up and moving forward after uh such a tragedy. So that was a um there were so many wonderful examples of ownership, creativity, uh, support, and love uh for one another, support from our clients and to our clients as we went through two rounds of layoffs immediately after. So it was a real it was a real moment of testing back in uh back in that dark time.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Well, I I can't imagine the difficulty. It sounds like you and and your colleagues and leading the the the company had laid the groundwork for folks to respond that way, to pull together, to support each other, to get a vision for going forward. That didn't just happen in the moment. I'm sure it was based on the values and and relationships that you all had in advance of of that tragedy. All right, shifting to uh building a healthy and thriving culture. You've spent your career at the intersection of learning and leadership. What distinguishes a learning organization from one that just delivers training?

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Yeah, I love it. Um again, going back to the earlier comment, what you uh what you think and say are kind of foundational, but in the end, a learning organization, they walk the talk, they they uh focus on learning, they look for ways to improve uh what they're doing, their impact, their knowledge, their skills. And so one of the powerful indicators is what does the leadership model? Do they uh do they focus on self-learning? Do they encourage and support uh employees' learning? And uh so doing that in the context of a learning company is always kind of a a fun recursive uh approach. But walk the talk on how are you learning and growing. And uh I was really pleased with when the AI revolution started back in 20, the fall of 2020. We immediately formed an AI task force and started looking at how do we use this to improve our own internal operations? How do we use this to support and uh better interact with our clients? So we had a lot of learning to do, and every department in the company uh we encouraged to figure out how this new technology could help them. We do uh spotlights at every company meeting to show the exemplars for who's doing what with it and how do we inspire one another and encourage one another.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

I totally agree that that leaders modeling that self-improvement and continual learning is probably the core factor in in whether the organization legitimately is going to be a learning organization. Um having worked a long time for for uh uh the federal government, that I think that was the deciding factor, whether we as a team, our larger team at USA Idea Mission, had that mindset of being a learning organization or it was just one-off trainings. Um USAID used to do training very well uh prior to COVID, really. But it was something that when we had a a leader, a mission director, that was investing in himself or herself and wanted to continue to grow, that that modeled that behavior that became the norm for the entire organization. Uh and when a leader didn't, then then it was it tended to be those one-off trainings, just a boondoggle, if you will, to get away a little bit and and uh you know have a little vacation. I'm gonna shift a little bit ahead, ahead uh bump ahead in our our agenda. Um uh topic of hiring for fit. Something that we've you've talked about fit earlier in the in the conversation. In a company focused on learning and growth, what does hiring for fit actually mean? Because you're essentially aiming for the way that is now, but also anticipating where the company will be in the future.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

Um, and I think one of the one of the truisms is uh that kind of guides my thoughts on this when you're looking for who to invite on the team, who to promote on the team. On the one hand, uh you want to uh leave room for people to make great growth, to make big changes. But I think uh there are also indicators that can tell you someone's heart, their nature. And so when you're hiring for fit, look for people that walk the talk. Uh what are they doing to learn and grow and hopefully help others? One of the tools that Public Strategies uses that I've learned about the the past year is a great type indicator called Culture Index. Uh, we've all heard of like Myers Briggs. This is another type indicator, not as well known, but it does a great job of helping you ask questions and also define job descriptions. Like, what do we need for this team to be complete, to be uh more well-rounded, to be prepared for this particular type of challenge. And so having tools like that and pick your favorite tool, but they can often be a good indicator for you in the absence of experience, because when you're inviting someone new, you don't have the benefit of working together uh to give you indications on uh and predict how they will perform. So, what other tools can you use, not slavishly or uh naively, uh, but they can be a useful part of the mix. But my interview questions so often indicate uh or or look for indications of what did you do? How do you think?

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Yeah. Just for my clarification, the the culture index, is that something that you conduct with your team in order to identify the current or future gaps that then inform the type of person you're looking for? Or do you actually do an assessment of the candidates as well?

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Both. Okay. You you do it for both thinking about what are our needs, and then the the person will uh will take the the candidate will take the assessment as well. And uh there's different views uh that it can help provide. So uh I've found it to be uh a worthwhile exercise, and um, and the insights it generates, I think, are useful. So, but there are other tools as well. That's just one that Public Strategies has used with great effect. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

I like that. I'm gonna look into that. We often uh a few of us are certified working genius facilitators and trainers, and so we we've incorporated that model into our team and work with teams across the system to identify their geniuses, um, where they might have gaps on their team, and then help teams perhaps develop some interview questions to get at the geniuses or you know, for the for for candidates to see if it but I like this idea of a of a culture index before weave.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

The idea of a of a certified genius. That sounds like a nice uh nice star to put on your resume.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

That's right. I'll claim it. That's great. All right, now we're gonna get to it. AI. How should leaders in this day and age think about AI, not just as a tool, but as something that shapes how people learn, work, and grow?

SPEAKER_00 28:36

So I've been in technology and technology leadership my entire career, which uh now spans 43 years across aerospace, uh, Wall Street, uh, finance, and now ed tech. And I think, and I'm also I try to be a student of human innovation, just thinking about how do disruptive innovations and technologies, how do they affect society? What are some of the lessons we can learn from the past that may help guide us in how we respond to this uh tech trigger uh that's occurring today. And so, with that as kind of a backdrop, I'm gonna make the bold claim that AI is the most disruptive tech trigger in human history. And we could have a whole separate series of podcasts to build that case, but I'm just gonna posit that as uh something that I think time will soon tell uh if it's true or not, but it is a big deal, and so um it's going, as with all tech triggers, uh there's going to be great potential, great impact, uh huge potential for good, but all technologies that are powerful, they bring the bad side as well. And so the same properties that make it so impactful for good, of how scalable it is, how quickly it's growing, how uh how much it can impact uh cognitive work, all of those are counterbalanced by the risks and the dangers. And so it's just it's basically just properties of the tech trigger that is uh that is rolling out as as we speak here in early 2026. Um, in terms of a tech uh transformative force in learning and what leaders might be underestimating about its impact, I would say one thing that uh that I see a lot is a lazy analysis where people are clinging to misperceptions. Well, I don't use AI because it hallucinates, and people feel like they've got this great wisdom, this great insight. And yeah, it makes mistakes and hallucinates. Show me a human that doesn't. Uh, so first let's not pretend that humans are infallible and uh the machines only make mistakes. Uh, they do. Humans do. That's why we put safeguards and we double-check things that are important. And so I see this lazy analysis that people are uh claiming outdated or overblown perceptions uh instead of uh engaging with it uh in a in a meaningful, constructive way and evaluating where's it good, where is it not good. Another thing I see is just people not engaging with it, where people that should be engaging with it. I spoke recently to um a vice chancellor of academic affairs at a large university, and he basically confessed that this is moving so quickly. I feel like I've missed the the train on this. He's, I don't know, a few years from retirement, and I think he had just written it off of that fast-moving train led this left the station. I'm not on it, but I'm okay. Uh, we're still doing okay. And I think that's an incredibly um unfortunate, I think it's lazy, um, because this train is gonna change the world. And if you choose not to get on it, then in many, many cases, your ability to contribute is going to be greatly diminished, and you're gonna potentially be uh irrelevant. Um, so I'm not a tech utopian, as I said, there will be giant issues that are gonna come with this, and again, we could spend a lot of time talking about that, but uh not engaging with it, basically ignoring it, that's a bad strategy, uh, I would argue. Uh, another thing that I think we're going to see, and you saw this response early on, particularly in higher ed and education settings, was uh people trying to govern it out of existence. And again, they would they would wrap themselves in the flag of apparent wisdom and say, you know, the safety and security, it's got all these risks. And indeed it does. But banning it completely is a is a failed strategy, and the people in your sphere of influence are not going to have, they may not have any of the downsides, they won't have any of the upsides either. And so, again, it's this thoughtful, balanced, insightful, experimental approach is what I encourage people to consider and find out, learn about it, find out where the issues are, where the benefits. Um, and you know, newsflash, there will be issues, there will be problems that are going to come up. Uh, there always are with new technologies, but you can think about pretty much every technology in human history, it follows the same kind of pattern. And this one, in many ways, is no different. So figuring out how to thoughtfully, carefully, constructively evaluate, learn, um, incorporate, uh, protect, uh, that's what real leadership looks like, I think.

SPEAKER_01 35:33

Yeah. I agree um on the huge potential benefits, but also the huge potential pitfalls of AI. But the fact of the matter is that it's here and it's going to be more and more used and ubiquitous in in really most every aspect of our life. One thing that I hear in talking with folks at Texas Tech and and uh other universities in the system is the concern about the ethics of it and the uh the use of it by students, by faculty, um essentially outsourcing learning. It's like massive cliffs notes. You can just produce material without having done the work to really understand it and just draw solely on the machine learning from AI. And and so, and I talked to my two boys in in school here in Lubbock, one in high school, one in middle school, that talk about that as well. It's a conversation among the students and and teachers at the the high school and the middle school is how to find and instill guardrails to help students continue to learn what they need to learn while taking advantage of this resource. Um, so I think that's one of the big questions in higher ed these days. Um, I'm gonna put you on the spot here and just ask if you had the position to create some of those guardrails for a university or a or a high school for the effective use of AI while still empowering and helping students to actually learn the material they need to learn, what would that look like?

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Yeah, it's a it's a very relevant, powerful question right now that all responsible leaders should be considering. And there's some aspects of that that are consistent across all environments, all domains. Yeah. Uh but then a lot of the answer, a lot of the questions and the answers are unique to the individual organization and their their uh stakeholders, who they serve, uh who serves with them, their uh their mission, their culture, their values. So all of those are going to shape the specifics. But I think um some of the general guidelines that people should uh evaluate is how do we learn about this? And part of learning about it is the capabilities, but also the risks. What are the downsides? Um and then uh as you start to evaluate that and you contemplate, okay, how can this serve us? Um, and then you start crafting experiments, uh, learning activities. And so you start considering how do we um how do we protect ourselves at the same time we're learning about what this can do, who should help us with these learning activities, and so find people that are your your scouts, your pioneers, um, and invite them to consider exploration. So, what can we learn? And then we'll go. Uh, I love the settling of the West, uh, the frontier kind of metaphor. I think it fits well. So scouts are the ones out really moving fast, scouting a lot of territory. Uh, the early pioneers start to set up uh little shops. They may grow into or homesteads, they may grow into a town. Um, all the while you're learning about the risks and dangers, but it's small scale. Um, if the scout uh perishes while exploring on the frontier or suffers harm, well, it affected one person, not the entire community. And so just thoughtfully, carefully exploring, learning, and then continuing to scale and apply, but balancing the need to innovate and explore with the potential downsides and the risks, and not letting either uh lock you into a one unthinking approach. Uh, one of the other powerful questions that you have to ask up front is what's our end objective? Sadly, I think so often in higher education, uh, whether they would admit it or not, a lot of uh higher ed institutions feel like our end objective is to generate diplomas and graduates. And I think that's a shadow of the real objective, which is we want to prepare lives for impact. We want to prepare them for the future and equip them with the mindset, the skills, and the knowledge so that they can succeed in the future. Well, that's a very different objective, fundamental objective, than we want to generate graduates and we want to uh generate alumni that are gonna contribute money to us so we can continue on that mission. So, really homing in on uh the mission, the real goal, and the same is true down to the individual professor level on a course. Are they working to um get people through their course syllabi that they've uh used for the past uh several decades? Or are they reimagining the skills and the mindset they're going to have to teach, and they should be modeling in the classroom? So the people that are lamenting the loss of the essay as a learning tool, okay, yeah, that's true. Just like spreadsheets uh remove the drudgery of working through a hand ledger with a calculator or with paper, it's just the tools have changed. The fundamental skills have not. This exact kind of question of hey, this new technology is going to destroy people's ability to think. That same exact argument was made 2400 years ago by Plato in the Phaedrus dialogue. It's a fun read. Uh and the technology that they were arguing about was the written letter, the written language, and has just some beautiful quotes. One of my favorites was um if everybody can just have it written down and read it, they won't have gone through the effort to learn it, to be able to verbalize it in their own words, and that's true. Wow. But the statement that's so quotable is Plato said, it will give them the appearance of wisdom without the reality, and that's exactly what AI can do right now when it in a matter of seconds, it gives you uh an essay that's neatly formed a beginning, a body, an ending, and it took you no effort. You didn't learn anything. It may give the appearance of wisdom without the reality, and so the risk. Are not new. The technology is. And the skills that we need to develop are the same ones Plato was encouraging 2400 years ago. Critical thinking, the power of focus, of thoughtful interaction, of all the other elements of wisdom.

SPEAKER_01 44:24

That is fascinating. We're getting to the end here. I want to have a couple speed round, short answer questions for you, then we'll we'll ease into closing. What's one leadership belief that you've changed your mind on?

SPEAKER_00 44:39

Early on, I overvalued tech skills. I thought if you were a smart engineer problem solver, you were the full package. And I very much learned that it's uh it's so much more uh important to be balanced, to be a good communicator, to um to have good interpersonal skills, the quote-unquote soft skills, um English, writing, things that I used to uh dismiss as uh lower value. Uh I was so wrong and have have corrected a lot of my ignorance, hopefully, in that area.

SPEAKER_01 45:22

Interesting. What's the most underrated skill in a rapidly changing workplace?

SPEAKER_00 45:31

Underrated, uh important. I think it's true uh for these of tenacity and growth. You want someone that learns and won't quit. They're that combo is unstoppable.

SPEAKER_01 45:48

All right, last one. What's the fastest way to accelerate someone's development?

SPEAKER_00 45:54

Well, the first step, it it's you could say it's cheating, uh, but the first step is to hire well. Uh, because if somebody is not a learner, uh they're they're a plotter, they're not someone that's looking to climb mountains and be with a team that's uh climbing mountains, then uh you're doomed. Um and so you can't develop someone that doesn't want to grow. But if they do, put them in a great environment with high expectations and uh release them uh from as many constraints as possible, and they will do what they are what they are uh wired to do, which is grow and contribute.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

I like that as well. Uh uh my the fifth episode had an old colleague named Sean Litton that one of the quotes from that one is be slow to hire and quick to fire. Make sure that you're hiring the right people that bring the right fit, the right skill set, the right mindset. But and and so invest that time on the front end so that you've got people like you're describing. But then when you have people that that prove that they don't there aren't a fit or aren't performing, go through the process, but but make a quick decision there. Um great. Well, Ken, uh any any final words for our listeners?

SPEAKER_00 47:23

Uh life is a journey, and so um I love the emphasis here on learning and growth. Uh, we see that in nature. Uh, you sometimes hear the quip. If you're not uh growing, you're dying. Um and so I think uh for all of you, I hope you'll join me in trying to learn and improve and grow and uh do that uh endlessly throughout life. And um I think it'll you'll be rewarded with uh an exciting, impactful life.

SPEAKER_01 48:02

Yep. And it's a life of adventure. The next thing to learn, the next thing to grow is it opens up new opportunities and and uh yeah, it's it's exciting. So thank you so much. Ken, it's uh thank you for joining me. Uh it's been great to hear your leadership journey and get practical takeaways we can all incorporate in leading our teams. To those listening, thank you for joining me on the Leader Fast Lane. If today's conversation sparked a moment of reflection or a lane change in how you think about leadership, take a minute to share this episode with someone you lead or learn from. Join me next time when I will be joined by Midwestern State University President Stacey Haney. You can find more episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, keep leading with purpose, integrity, and clarity, especially when it's hard.