Creating Us - A podcast for Texas Tech University System & beyond
A learning and development podcast focused on bringing the Texas Tech University System Values Based Culture to life.
Creating Us - A podcast for Texas Tech University System & beyond
The Leader Fast Lane - Episode 20 - with Mike Millegan, Founder/CEO of the Millegan Advisory Group
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In this episode, I talk with Mike Millegan, an exceptional leader of four decades across several sectors. An alumnus of Angelo State University, Mike considers his time at ASU as formative and foundational to his remarkable career success.
Hello and welcome to the Leader Facility, 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 in Culture Development at the Texas Tech University System. Today I am joined by Mike Milligan, founder and CEO of the Milligan Advisory Group, which advises companies on technology innovation and business transformation. He has invested in and mentored several successful startup businesses. He also serves on several corporate boards, including Portland General Electric, where he is chair of the Audit and Risk Committee, and Access Capital, where he chairs the Human Capital and Compensation Committee and drives AI adoption and governance policy. During his corporate career, Mike distinguished himself as a multidisciplined and transformational leader, having led several large-scale and scope business units ranging from consumer to enterprise. He established and led a startup wireless business unit which brought new data technology to consumers. Later, he led Verizon Supply Chain Organization while unlocking $1 billion of new revenue and controlling $5 billion of inventory. In his last role at Verizon, he served in dual roles as president of Verizon Global Wholesale and president of Verizon Digital Media Services. He is known as an expert on enterprise and cybersecurity solutions. Mike holds a bachelor's and an MBA from Angelo State University. It's great to have you on the podcast, Mike.
SPEAKER_00Hey, thank you for inviting me. Happy to be here. Always happy to represent my alma mater, Angelo State University.
SPEAKER_01Well, I confess that prior to starting this job, one year ago tomorrow, I had never stepped foot in San Angelo. But my work over the past year with students, faculty, and staff there have had me there probably a total of 15 trips over the past year. And man, I really enjoy San Angelo and the people at Angelo State have been fantastic to work with.
SPEAKER_00There used to be a group of us who went to Angelo State, who later matriculated through the telecommunications industry. And as we reflected back on Angelo State, we would always refer to it as the Harvard on the Concho.
SPEAKER_01I believe it. I feel it. That's great. Well, as we begin, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and uh your leadership journey?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, happy to do that. Uh, you'll probably stop me along the way, hopefully, to prompt some. Um, I would say, like the Beatles' old song, it's the long and winding road. Um, I've lived in uh no less than eight cities, uh, born and raised in Monterey, California. All the people who know me, I would they would tell you that if I were to write a book about Mike Milligan, I will title it Umchartered Waters, A View from the Bay. I so much love being in uh Monterey and going to the ocean every day, and it kind of set up a string of understandings about my life. Every day I used to go to the beach, and every day I would find something different, um, a seashell, a fish, a beach perch, or whatever, and turn that into a new adventure. I never knew any day what I would find at the beach, but I was so excited about going to the beach. Um and it kind of transcends stories about my life, not only going to Texas, going to Angelo State, but also matriculating through my corporate life. It's not that I had a specific plan, but that I did have an adventure daily, and I look forward to that adventure. And every time I opened it up, I found something new and uncharacteristically important in my life journey that would help me to be the person that I am today. So although I tell you I was born and raised in Monterey, California, I was born and raised in Monterey, California, but I was raised a Texan because my mother, who was from Brady, Texas, 88 miles south of San Angelo, the heart of Texas, she lived there until she moved to California in the early 50s. Um her mother remarried, and so California they were off to, but all of her Texas traditions I grew up with. The interesting story is that in growing up in Brady, Texas, she actually was a fantastic athlete to the point where she qualified for the Olympics. Wow. In that particular case, though, if you go back to Brady, um she went to Paul Lewis Dunbar, who at the time, Paul Lewis Dunbar, was in the Brady School for Colors. And the important piece of that is that probably during her time frame, if she wanted to go to school at San Angelo College at the time, she probably didn't have the resources to do it. In any case, she probably wouldn't have been able to go. It was just sign of times, you know, didn't have the support, didn't have the dream, although she thought about it a lot. And then you fast-forward this picture 20 years forward, and then her son in her lineage is basically receiving an athletic scholarship to play at that same school that she wanted to go to as a young lady back in Brady, Texas. Round the world trip, but also I think it uh it signifies kind of the story of our lives. Hard work, determination, focus, dreams do come true if you stay after it. And so again, um California to Texas. After uh being in high school in Texas, I ended up having an opportunity to go to Angelo State University, which, and and I know we'll talk about it later, which opened up a significant amount of just opportunities and dreams for me. Um, from there, I had an opportunity to uh try out for the Houston Oilers.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00Some people don't uh recognize that, but um, I tried out for the Houston Oilers. I also was a part of the only school in the Texas Tech system to win a national championship in football. Of course, we weren't a part of Texas Tech then, but I do want to rub it in a little bit for those who are listening that we had a successful 14-0 season with a lot of great players there. I had a chance to play for the Oilers, didn't last long. I come back to San Angelo to go to grad school. And again, I think we'll talk about that a little bit later, and then started my career in what at the time was GTE, um, then later became Verizon and had a successful tour of duty through those opportunities. So I'll stop there because there's a lot of shortstops along the way, a lot of different cities that I actually had a chance to live in, to adjust to, that helped me to be the person that Mike Milligan is today. Um I'm certainly appreciative of the cornerstone and the foundation that Angelo State has helped to create for me to be the person that I am today.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Thank you for that, man. There's so many questions I've got um about about your background, but we're gonna go ahead and dive in some of the um leadership questions that I've developed just to get it uh dig down deeper on some principles that have guided you, and maybe some of those stories will come out as we go. So I've got a series of themes um that that will guide the questions that I ask. And the first one digs a little deeper on your leadership journey. Uh so looking back on your career, what experiences most shaped the leader that you've become?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um, again, we we probably could uh write the book here on experiences, but I would be remiss not to stop and say, look, uh my leadership experiences were developed long before I had a corporate job. They were developed long before I got to Angelo State. And it was truly about being accountable for who and what I am, you know, not necessarily playing the blame game, um, but also creating a dream of success. And I can tell you, you know, I always see myself today at 67 years old as an athlete. There's just something about me that will never give up on that competitiveness along that journey, that stictuitiveness, that teaming that I learned in being an athlete that created, I would say, the pre-leadership journey that we would that we would consider to be Mike Milligan. Um, so you know, with that, you know, we I've had several occasions, at least from a leadership perspective, if you just think about work itself, that has generated a footprint of what I'm all about as a leader and the journey itself. Um again, if you were to look back at my career, work career, I've probably moved at least eight times. Um, and that may sound unusual in today's parlance, uh, maybe not you because you've been around also. Uh, but I moved eight times, which required a lot of adjustments, which required a lot of applying a different skill set to different situations and different people, adapting to environments that in case in some cases were very foreign to me, that I had to figure out how to work through. I'll give you one for instance. Uh, when I first moved from California to Texas, um, and I was in junior high school, and again, I talked to you a little bit about the pre-leadership journey, and it leads into this. Um, I was at the registration desk, they noticed where I played football, they asked me if I wanted to meet the football coach, and I was about as lonely as I could be on this earth. California was my home, all my cousins, relatives were there. Coming to Texas was like sending me to the desert. And I said, Of course, I'd like to meet him. They send me out there the next day. I go out to meet the coach, and he says, in this Texas voice, which reminds you, I'm from California. He says, So I hear you want to play football, huh? And I said, Yes. And of course, coming from California, yes, is an appropriate response.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00In Texas, it didn't get close. And he said, Somebody got to teach this boy how to say yes, sir. So I went home to my mom, just crying, mom, you have got to send me back to California. I'm not gonna make it here in Texas at all. Send me to grandma, send me to my cousin. I don't care, I'm out. And of course, you remember me telling you, my mother's from uh Texas, and uh gray girl, and she looks at me and she says, Son, yes, sir, is just a word. Get over it, except it was an expletive deletive. Get over it. And uh I basically looked at her and said, Yes, ma'am, that was it. There was no psychological damage, there was no, I need counseling for this. It was done and over with. And by the time people figured out who I was and I figured out who they were, Texas became one of the greatest experiences in my life. That's part of the leadership journey. That also kind of correlates back to the eight different times that I moved to a lot of different cities, having to adapt to different demands. And I would tell you, those moves, each one of them has stories within themselves that helped to shape me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, so that that was very important. A couple other things that I would just mention as leadership journeys that shape me. Uh, at one point in time, I was in California negotiating a union contract, a biggest contract I ever negotiated. We're staying up days and nights trying to work through it. And these cousins that I talked to you about in California that I wanted to go back to live with, I called them and I said, Hey, you know, I'm down in Southern California, I'm negotiating a contract, yeah, I'm management, and we're doing, you know, this job. My cousin is the business manager of the largest um union in California. And he says, You're not one of those guys, are you? Meaning management. So, you know, you could look at this and say, this was enemy versus enemy. And certainly on my side of the table, we always felt, you know, there was an adversarial relationship with the union versus management. But yet now I'm talking to my cousin, who I'm very close to, and he's not the bad guy. And and he challenged my thinking about how I addressed and worked with the union. I went back to the union hall the next day and had the discussion with people. We solved that contract in uh in the next day or two, but it was a different perspective that I had to take on because I recognized these folks weren't my enemies. They were just like my cousin. Yeah, we were having to find ways to communicate so that we could connect on a common goal. And that was that was a journey of mine. And then the last one I would tell you, you know, I was involved in a trip to New York one September in the year 2001. And in that year, I was sitting in the hotel and I said, Hey, there's these planes flying into the World Trade Center. It's it's gotta be a joke or something. And the second one comes in, and then I'm in the middle of 9-11. And that certainly shaped what was supposed to be a two-day trip into a two-month trip of just survival, of just, you know, a common focus. Um, being we had to go to the White House to have a conversation just to be able to truck goods back and forth, because President Bush at the time wanted to make sure that the communication services for the World Trade Center was up on that Monday. Gave us four days to get it together. And so there was a coming together of people from everywhere to solve a very unique problem at a time that we couldn't have anticipated that something like this would happen. Those three those three things shape my leadership journey. There are plenty more, but those stick out as I think about your question.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. I the the last two examples you've used both seem to the this the common denominator seems to be taking what could be an adversarial situationship and just a shift of mindset in realizing that we generally have more on common than than what divides us, and finding that common ground really as leaders, we need to do that in order to be effective. And so I appreciate those two examples.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_01All right, we're gonna look uh shift a little bit to um something you've talked um about already to some extent, your Angelo State and and your personal development. Um how did your time there at Angelo State shape your character and values, would you say?
SPEAKER_00Wow, um, and again, there's a lot of preamble to these stories, so I apologize for for leading up to it, but I think the context kind of gives meaning to um this. Um the summer before um I was to attend Angelo State, um, I was in San Antonio where I went to high school. I was driving the train around Brackenridge Park and I caught pneumonia. I lost about 15 pounds. Um and it was time to go to workouts for fall football season in August. The problem was my mother was moving to Oregon. So she actually dropped me off in San Angelo, 15 pounds underweight. Um she this is before cell phones, so they had no telephone number, no address. She had a medical power attorney, and she hands it off to Coach Jim Hess, and she looks at him and she says, Take care of my boy. And she was gone. Out of there. And I was left to figure it out, massively underweight, hadn't worked out in a month. Um man, this was a dream to go to college, to be able to play football, and now I was in trouble. I was in deep trouble. And I could have fleeed the situation, I could have given up, but that wasn't what was in me. What was in me was the dream. And the dream was going to college, and the dream was playing football in college, and I was there to get over the hump. Now, if I would have been able to find my mother at that time, had a way to contact her, I probably would have quit. But there was no quit in me at that point in time, and I would tell you that that was very much a part of the shaping of my character as we went into Angelo State, and a leader like Jim Hess accepted me, knowing that I wasn't at my strength. Yeah, but I played that year. I was one of the few freshmen that played, and I stuck with it, and it was a foundational building moment. That again, at the darkest moment, darkest time, to be able to have the perseverance, to be able to have a focus, a goal, a desire, um, and to actually see along the way where I was beginning to chip away and achieve that was hugely important in my whole uh character development. Angelo State was a big, big part of that. Um, you know, we know that going to college is a way of sometimes testing, you know, what you believe in and helping you to figure out whether or not your beliefs ring true. And Angelo State certainly was those testing grounds for me. I was 17 years old. I was a young college student coming in. I couldn't even go to Pinkies and buy beer or anything, you know. So I I was kind of stuck on my own there, but I was under construction. And Angelo State created that environment that allowed for my character and values to be tested and shaped under construction.
SPEAKER_01Um one one follow-up. Um I mean the the the the big catchword now is resilience and and and aiming for having this value of being able to withstand difficulties, setbacks, and continue to press on, like what you've described when your mom dropped you off at Angelo State at 17. Do you think your ability to press on, not quit to adapt was was was something that you had innate in you or that was learned as you were growing up, or just you had no choice but to be that way once you got to campus?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, certainly a series of exposures tested, you know, where that metal came from. Um I like you hear me talk about my mom a lot, she's no longer with us, but I also recognize the importance of um, and I'm not just gonna say parents, I would say your community supporting this growth. I talked to you about my cousins and folks like that who, although they were great athletes, they were never able to achieve what I was able to achieve, but they were certainly overly supportive of me being the first one out. And so I don't I wouldn't say it's innate. I would say it's supported and in many cases learned if people want to pour into you that energy that allows for you to begin to gain that skill set to see around some corners sometimes. Yeah you know, to be able to persevere, um, to be able to have that resilience to overcome the odds. I mean, we couldn't we couldn't understand pneumonia and leaving set losing 17 pounds, we couldn't understand, you know, 9-11, we couldn't understand, you know, not being able to track down a parent for three months. Nobody could describe that. But I think the building of that character happened again long before that. Um, going to Angelo State. But I would also tell you, uh as I tell you, as I told you before, I always see myself as an athlete. My athletic ventures built confidence in me along the way.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Yep, good. So one uh we're talking about this this topic of resilience, or when we mentioned character, what role do you think universities play in developing character and not just competence?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so in thinking about that, it's really important to understand that there are different phases that we go through in life, you know, from being an infant to going to, you know, kindergarten to elementary school to junior high school to college. College is kind of that last guardrail that you have in your life where there are some rules that you are governed by. Now, there are rules in life that are more consequential later on down the road, but structure wise, college is kind of the it to me, as I kind of see it. And so, but still allowing you to matriculate, still allowing you to. Kind of grow into that person that you want to be, allowing you to test some of these theories that maybe your parents put into you, you know, owning up into your own accountability levels, being honest and forth with people, putting in the work, you know, because it matters in this particular case. It allows for you to do a lot of trial and error to reinforce these foundations in your life. And I say guardrails because I've had some friends that went to college that never made it through because they didn't acknowledge some of the guardrails that were there. College was just too free and open for them to be able to not have the maturity to understand that if you kind of stayed in a lane, you would make it through. If you got outside that lane, like life, um, there were consequences to it. But college is kind of like that last bastion of, to me, formal type of um guardrails that an individual has. And certainly from an Angelo State perspective, I was on my own. I had to find my way. I was in Texas by myself, and it it was I found a supportive group of people that helped me to get through that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but there's a growing cadre of university staff and faculty around the country exploring this question of character formation as part of the college experience and how to do that intentionally. We at the Texas Tech System have been doing that to some extent, aiming to do it more. But it sounds like from your experience, is that it's the university can't do that for the student. It's a partnership in a sense. The student has to have some sense of I want to invest in myself, in my character, not just my mind, but how I live my life. And if the student has that in them, then the university can come alongside and help form that more firmly within the guardrails that that that student or that university may set up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, look, um, it was clear to me earlier on when I hit campus that if I demonstrated a desire to want to learn, to want to participate, to want to create success, that at Angelo State, I from the pre Dr. Vincent, the president at the time, down, all of them knew me, all of them were willing to engage with me. Even after post-Angelo State, they were still engaged with my life because they knew that I had an interest in taking advantage of their offer to educate me, to support me, to guide me. And it continued for a lifetime. I mean, I can be honest with you. Um, I spoke at Coach Hess's funeral right there on campus a couple of years ago, and thanked him for being the person who accepted this medical power of attorney from my mom and said, take care of my boy. Now, what we don't, what you haven't heard in that conversation, is when I was cut from the Houston Oilers, Coach Hess was the first person to pick up the phone to call down to a business relationship that he had at GTE to get me my first job. That is one of the reasons why you and I are talking here today. Wow. That's what Angelo State did for me. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_01We're gonna shift our topics to leading through challenge and change. So every leader eventually faces uncertainty, disruption, or setbacks. What has been one of the most challenging leadership seasons that you've navigated?
SPEAKER_00Man, there's been uh several of uh challenges that I would say that I've actually um navigated through. Um, you know, I mentioned the uh the 9-11 piece because I think it was important along the journey of just having disruption in your life, not having a playbook, but figuring it out along the way. Um I also I've got a couple, but I've got, you know, at one point in time, um I was the president of GTE Wireless in the Northwest. We basically started with a lot of capital, no employees, no wireless system, no customers. And you talk about a challenge with heavy expectations that we were going to grow revenue through all kinds of governmental and regulatory and uh equipment manufacturer, third-party issues. Uh, but we were able to do exactly that um within a two, three year period of time, grew to 70,000 customers. And then uh Bell Atlantic 9X GTE decided they were going to merge, and we got the message that they were gonna sell our property. Now, here's people who've been in the trenches with me. We they bought into my story about growth and excited about you know having their thumbprints on this organization. And I had to tell them, um, look, we uh we we're gonna be sold. And I also had to do that in a way that they understood that my primary focus was about them, not about me. And so I wanted to make sure they all got placed, they all had jobs and roles, which I did. The interesting part, being totally selfless in this particular case with me, is that um I had the senior VP, executive VP of HR, out to talk to all the people in the new form corporation. I had known him in a prior life. I asked him to come talk to the people. He did. His name was Randy McDonald. And so Randy completes his conversation with the with the team, and then he basically takes questions, and there's a gentleman in the back who gets up and he says, you know, it is great, everything you're doing for us, but I just want to know what are you guys doing with Mike Milligan? Wow. And if I ever, you know, wanted to shed a tear about something, it was about this employee who stood up and said, What are you gonna do for Mike Milligan? And at that point in time, I knew my battles were already won. Whatever happened, it didn't matter. It was a moment that I'll never forget. There's one more that's even closer to me. And that was um, so Mike Milligan has now matriculated. I'm a in Fortune 15 company, I'm in the top 25 of this organization, and I'm giving all kinds of instructions across the world about how we're operating our plant equipment, how we're gonna grow revenue, how we're gonna contribute to the bottom line. And part of this was center closings. So I let my employees do their work, their work. They came back and they said, we need to close the center in San Angelo, Texas. My heart dropped. Yeah, this is like my home. This is, oh my God, are you kidding me? I mean, how am I gonna have this discussion with this team that I'm sending all across the world to make operations more efficient? And they came back and said, We're closing San Angelo. So I obviously asked them 115 questions, dancing through all of it to make sure that they were certain they were. And I said, Look, I'm I'm gonna go to San Angelo and tell the people myself. Yeah, some of these people were people I went to church with when I was in college. I knew their parents. I started out as a temporary accounting clerk in GTE. I worked with some of these people, and I had to go into a room and tell them that we were shutting this down. The even more difficult part about it is that I fly in on private jet, coach Coach Vandegriff picks me up. You know, we're still in contact. He picks me up, he looks at the jet and he says, Nice ride, Mike. I said, We've come a long way, Coach Vandegriff, haven't we? And so we're driving down the street, Knickerbocker, Main Street. On the street are signs. Welcome home, Mike. Oh, we're happy to see you here. I uh I I just I almost lost it at that point in time. So I get in, I have the discussion with the people. I ended up having another discussion with the San Angelo Economic Uh Committee there, and I just told them it's it's something that was necessary and needed to do. But my leadership lesson is that I didn't hand that off.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The most difficult closure in my whole career, I didn't hand it off. I came and did it myself because these were my people. Wow.
SPEAKER_01Well, those are those are two amazing stories of exceptional leadership character. Um I mean, the first one the selflessness of looking after your people before yourself. And and my follow-up question there is just gonna be what what in you because that's something I think leaders have to face from time to time is a situation that there's this inflection point to look out for my own interests primarily or those of my people. What led you to prioritizing your people over yourself?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so you heard me, you'll hear me say it again. I'm an athlete, man. I believe in the team. And sometimes there are better peace parts to the team than yourself.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh I never relish sitting on the bench. That was not my deal. I'm competitive enough where I always wanted to be in action. Uh, but I also recognize that in putting the team together and looking for the better good of the team, that we're always going to be successful. I learned that in 1978 when we went 14 and 0. We had a lot of great players on there, but without the piece parts together, it couldn't work. Also, just you know, not sitting here trying to bring anybody to my side of a religious conversation or not. I just, you know, I've grown up raised southern, I've grown up Bible-based, and for me, you know, being able to help those who are less fortunate than me, it's just my makeup. Yeah, you know, we we have this conversation sometimes um in bigger corporate set settings, and I have to sit around in the boardrooms and say, you guys remember the story about the canaries in the coal mine? You know, all the bright and tough people, they'd send the canaries in. If canaries never came out, that meant you shouldn't go in either.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, I have always going all the way back to San Angelo, my first job as a temporary clerk, it was a counting clerk in a non-management position that only lasted five months. And at the end of that, if I didn't find a permanent job, I just said, hey, it's a good large way of telling me I need to go home to my mama because she was definitely wanting me to come to Oregon, and I was definitely fighting that. And so part of this is just having that humility that Mike sometimes it isn't always about you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01One thing that we uh talk a lot about with teams across the system is this concept of servant leadership. And you know, there's a there's a biblical model of that, but there's a business model of that too, developed by a guy from AT ⁇ T um from years ago. Um but that's an that's an effective leader's job is to look out for your people first before yourself. And it can be difficult, but man, that the I think the research has shown that those leaders that can practice that not only tend to have greater success, but they tend to have greater relationships in getting the work done as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, people want to know if you relate to them. You know, there are no kings in this process here. There there is a team that's making it over the finish lines. Like one of my lessons learned being an O athlete, you know, we would practice for games, we'd win them, and there was always next week. And so we'd go on to the next game. Part of the feedback that I got over the years in 360 reviews on my leadership style is that Mike, your team doesn't ever believe that you come back and celebrate the successes. And so this was 10 years apart. I had 360 evaluation, and the same thing would come back. The fortunate part is that it was the same evaluator in different groups. So he would say, This is just you. This is what you don't do. And part of leadership is learning what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are. My weaknesses, which I can admit to, was not about sitting there and celebrating in the moment. It was about getting to the next task. We got the next game, we got the next opponent, and it's just the way I was raised. And but the people were reading that differently. Like I didn't care about them. I didn't care about the successes that we had and that they weren't a part of it. And I had to change my ways, not personally, but what I was taught to do was to hire somebody who could do that better than me and let them do their things. And I had to do that. So part of leadership is again learning what you do well, what you don't do well. And in the case of humility, people are always looking to connect with you. One person told me at one point in time, he says, Mike, you want to be a great leader? Pick up a psychology book, what child psychology one-on-one. And I said, Really? He said, Yeah, just understand the dynamics of what people do when they're seeking attention and not getting it. And you'll be able to be a wonderful leader. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Well, in your story about the going back to St. Angelo, closing the the center, um, yeah, the the the the stand-up leader, you know, will not only take the accolades, but but take front and center when having to deliver hard news. Um and um I imagine how do you how do you think people saw you they're inside affected by that? How do you think did they they appreciate it that was it was you delivering the message, do you think?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I look being genuine and authentic is important in leadership. If people see you as, hey, Mike's just out for Mike, um, that he has no way of understanding our true issues or problems, they disconnect. I mean, they can play the role just as well as anybody else. I come here for a check and I'm out. Um, we used to do these studies on trust. And we did a study back in 1981, 82, system-wide on trust, just to find out that nobody really even really trusts people in the work environment. People get married and live with each other for 40 years and wake up and say, I don't trust this person over here. Trust is a deep, deep conversation to have, particularly in the workforce, particularly when you've gone through a period of time where you used to have, you know, defined benefit plans or pension plans, and then you got rid of those, and that used to be the golden handshake. If you work 30 years and the prize at the end of 30 years is this pension, we got rid of that, and we basically told people look, it's better for you for you to have this defined qualified, this qualified plan so that you can invest on your own 401k, etc. To come to find out that wasn't really the reason why we offered it up. We offered it up because costs. And so that that trust scenario was broken. And so, what I try to shoot for in the work environment, Lane, is do my people respect what I'm trying to do? Do they respect our level of engagement? Whether or not they're going to ever trust me, that might be a bridge too far, just from a basic human perspective. And I know people are searching for that. I'm on corporate boards. I hear this conversation about trust, and I go through the same conversation I'm going with with you on, and just to basically say it's hard to truly get in these days and times when there are so many multiple messages out there for people in a leadership position to get people to trust them. I can get them to respect the fact that Mike had to make that decision to close down that center. And he showed up to tell us himself. He didn't send an emissary to do that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's great. Thank you for that. On the topic of managing stress, pressure, and expectations. So leadership often comes with pressure that frankly other people don't see. How do you personally manage stress and maintain perspective in difficult times?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, that's um that's a tough one. Um, because sometimes stress sneaks up on you and you don't know it's stress. Because you know, you're irritable, you are short with people, you are. I know I am, you know, when I get under high periods of stress, I am directly focused and pointed and kind of like going after it and trying to get it over with, you know, overall. And so I know that, hey, Mike, this isn't you. Being in tune with yourself, sometimes being able to listen to other people to say, hey, are you okay? I mean, things all right, can tip you off to the fact that maybe there's something that I need to do. Now, personally, how do I manage stress? Um, for events like this, you and I talking, you know, I actually work out in the morning. That's my way of de-stressing before any major speech that I've ever done. And I've given speeches to presidents, I've given speeches to in a room with my Angelo before, I've given speeches to prime ministers, I've given speeches all internationally across the world, um, graduation ceremonies at Angelo State. I've given speeches everywhere, which is not necessarily the thing that I was learning to do. But even with that, I always find a gym, I always go work out, I de-stress that way. Um, and then part of that also is just having an opportunity to maybe being the oldest child. I'm a um a loner at heart anyway. So sometimes just pulling back to my own corner, you know, and you know, get out of my own head, but you know, think about other things that perhaps are more important in life when pressure comes. What's the priority? You know, are there are is this really important? Could this be happening the way it's happening? Try to sort through that. The other part to that is learning how to say no. Yeah, sometimes we allow for pressure and stress to build up because we don't know how to say, I'm sorry, it's not my day to address that. If you come back on Friday, I will happily spend some time with you on that.
SPEAKER_01Because frankly, as I'm sure you could attest to, that when we're when we're stressed, when we're stretched too thin, everything suffers. Yep. Um, our our work, our relationships, uh, our mental, spiritual, physical health. And so we do need to find those ways to have the release.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, I have I have four different monitors and screens right here, looking at me, talking to you. And any one of them have different feeds coming into it, in which, you know, I'm constantly always on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And from the time I was in graduate school in Angelo State, I probably am working full time, I have probably been compressed into five hours at best of sleep at night, like ever. That's all I get. I mean that, and it's like it's not something I know it's not necessarily healthy, but it's just a pattern that I've fallen into when I was in uh New Jersey. I had an international organization. I would work during the day, and then at night, somebody in Europe or some other place had a problem, and I'd be up most of the night. So seven years of just constant grind like that, you don't notice the stress, but others may. And I think you have to have a trusted partner, advisor, a friend who's willing to say, dude, you need to back up a minute and you know, be willing to listen to that if if you're not in tune with yourself.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_01All right, uh, shift into building teams and organizational culture. Uh you've got extensive background in in in a um high level leadership, but uh working your way up there as well. But what qualities do you look for in future leaders?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You know, I asked this question to a couple of people who were very important to me along the way. A CEO of Verizon, one point in time, who was the head of the business roundtable, Ivan Seidenberg. I asked it to a couple of mentors of mine, Harlan Jones, who was from Merkel, Texas, of all places. And then a guy by the name of Paul Minor. Why'd you pick me? Why me? Because I was just curious. It's like, I mean, I seem like I'm living the dream. It's like, I compared to the rest of the world, I'm like, I'm doing okay. This is good stuff, you know? I recognize this is good stuff. And they all decades apart came back with the same answer. And he said, Mike, we picked you because you're a winner. And I had to think about that a little bit. And whether that's me projecting, winning, positivity, etc., they picked me because they saw me as winning. The first job that I told you about with GTE, the one the coaches called to Harlan Jones. Harlan, I go in, you know, young kid, not knowing what the heck I'm gonna do in life. There's not a lot to do in San Angelo at that point in time. And I walk in, I said, Hey, I'm ready to interview. And he said, Um, I don't need to interview you. And I'm stunned. I'm like, what are you talking about? He said, I've been watching you for four years. I think I know who you are.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_00So he'd been watching me play football. And he's been listening to people on the street talk about Mike Milligan. And so for me, it was a consistent pattern of being the person that I am, positive, uplifting, goal-oriented, focused. Um, and I'm gonna translate that back to you know, the kind of people that I would pick, um, to winning. And so when I come out, I used to be a college recruiter. My one of my jobs at GTE is that I recruited on every major college campus in the United States for about three years. You know, you do the speed dating. So within about, I don't know, the first question, the first three minutes, I only had 30 minutes with each student, I could tell if they were going to fit in our environment or not. I got good enough at that where I could determine that. And so part of this is about, you know, vision. You know, does this person have a vision? Does this person have a goal, an expectation within themselves? Is this person willing to team? I love old athletes because of rigor, determination, being able to deal with uh failure, overcoming obstacles. I love, I eat that up. And in fact, there are a couple of articles out there that if you read them, they are how the how the CEO has become the new corporate athlete. And so there are a lot of characteristics of athletes that translate into the world that I'm in very succinctly that they would be the kind of people that I would have. The last thing I would tell you is that I look around to see if they have a followership. Do people follow this person? Have they led any anywhere at some point in time? And if they have, to me, that's good news. Because there's a lot that comes a lot along with other people following, particularly a young person, into roles, opportunities. I have several friends that I helped get jobs. After I got a job at GTE, I had several friends that I brought with me. When I went to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and and things weren't, it wasn't the most desirable place to go, I brought people with me, and all of a sudden other people wanted to come. And so when I talked to to Ivan Seidenberg about why'd you pick me, he says, Mike, because you have like a followship and you win.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So one one follow-up. Um, I know we're getting short on time here, but no problem. So for those people who may not have had the athletic ability or the background in sports, what are there other things that you look for? I mean, is it is it a rigor that they've developed maybe in in another field or what's beyond beyond the athletic background, people.
SPEAKER_00I I mean, I love smart people. I love people who are way smarter than me. I mean, and not in a braggadocious way. I love people who are always I grew up in an environment where there was always another gear. Like, hey, okay, we got to this level, there's always another gear. And I kind of look for that in people to say, are they continuing to challenge themselves? And have they failed at some point in time? And how did they overcome that failure? You and I both know the story of Deion Sanders that playing the Dallas Cowboys. He gets beat for a touchdown. He comes back to the huddle. The guy says, Prime, what the hell, man? You just got beat for a touchdown. He says, What are you talking about? I ain't never been beat before. And what we learned about that was that the secret to failure is basically having a short memory. So I believe in making sure that you know that they fail, but that they've overcome it and they're not drowning in misery. So that positivity is really, and I look for that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that reminds me of the line from Ted Lasso be a goldfish, have a short memory on failures. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01All right, last topic is on is wisdom and reflection. Yeah. Um, do you have a book that has most influenced your leadership philosophy?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this is gonna sound really trying. And I looked around a little bit and I said, Man, I'm gonna answer this question because I have like 60 books.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say, you know, Dr. uh President Hawkins, he loves books. You better have an answer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he loves books, but he's gonna like my answer better because I've known Ronnie since 1977, and I went to grad school with his dad, so I've known him for a long time. He's gonna like my answer better. And to be honest with you, and I'm just straight up honest with you. The book that I pay the most attention to is the Bible. Yeah, Joshua 1 and 9, and all these places that I've been, 23 jobs and 33 years, eight locations, I always came back to be strong and of good courage, be not dismayed, for thy Lord God is with you wherever thou shalt go. And I've sat in dark corners by myself before, in cities where my family was nowhere close, that I had no idea what the hell I was going to do the next day. But I was still encouraged by that. Now, I personally like to read a lot of autobiographies. So we'll put the Bible to the side, autobiographies. And I read a lot about I love music, you know. I'm a I'm a Monterey, California, love music. Um and I can remember uh books, autobiography of Quincy Jones, autobiography, uh Marvin Gaye, and a lot of these people have gone through struggles, but then they attained greatness. How does Ray Charles go from Florida blind at 19 to Seattle and start his career? Nobody knows how the heck he got there. And Quincy Jones, who was a teenager, would basically meet him because he was cleaning up the little halls that Ray Charles was playing in, and they became friends and they built an empire. And I love that dreaming, and I just love that. And from a leadership perspective, having hope, having a dream, being able to bring people along with that as a leader. Oh man, there's nothing better else that you can accomplish in life.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Besides having kids, you know, all that. But my daughter would kill me if I, you know, don't mention that she's the greatest thing in my life.
SPEAKER_01But well, what do you hope people remember most about the way that you've led?
SPEAKER_00I I I look for me, I would say, you know, Mike, he was a coach. He was a coach in all formate formats and in every instance. You know, if if coaches were making as much money as they do today, I probably would have been a coach. But but but back then they weren't making that much money. So I was like, it was not an occupation that I wanted to go off into. But they would say, look, you know, Mike had confidence, Mike had character, Mike basically showed the fact that he cared about you as a person, he cared about the organization. And when I felt like I couldn't do anything else to make a difference in that environment, I backed out and I let other people take over.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00But I was punching, man. I was punching for people everywhere I've been. I've been like an advocate for people all of the way. And they didn't all have to look like me, act like me, talk like me, or walk like me.
SPEAKER_01I'm I'm uh really enjoyed talking with you, and I'm sure lots of our listeners are are inspired as well. Uh I really appreciate your taking the time to talk with me. It's been great to hear about your journey and get practical takeaways. I really appreciate the time.
SPEAKER_00That's exceptional. Thank you for doing this work and to who it makes a difference to, I'm uh I'm appreciative for you reaching out and speaking to me.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Listeners, 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 my guest will be Jesse Rudy, founder and CEO of Redeem International, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting some of the world's most vulnerable widows and orphans from violent abuse and exploitation. 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.
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