Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Ron Lutz On The Secret to Servant Leadership EP 32

Episode Date: June 1, 2021

What is the secret to servant leadership skills? In this Passion Struck Podcast episode, John R. Miles interviews Ron Lutz about improving your servant leadership skills. And applying it to your life. New Interviews with the World's GREATEST high achievers will be posted every Tuesday with a Momentum Friday inspirational message! In today's discussion, Ron Lutz and I will discuss some of the mutual experiences we had working together at Lowe's Home Improvement. Primarily, a joint project we worked on was the first in the company's history of applying the agile methodology to our software development projects. We discuss the keys that made this project such a success and why agile software development takes involvement not only from the software team but, even more importantly, the business team it is supporting. Ron talks about how this initiative saved the company over $400 Million and the keys that made the project such a success. We explore the importance of serving others versus serving ourselves and why becoming a servant leader is so important as we approach this all-digital future that we're entering into. Ron shares words of advice on how you be a servant leader both in your career and personal life and so much more. Enjoy!! What You Will Learn In the Show About Servant Leadership How Agile Software Development Saved Lowe's over $400 Million What It Means to Speak With Your Feet How to Be a Builder of Businesses Overcoming Innate Risk How You Know, It Is Time to Transition The difference in a Servant Leader From a Traditional Leader The Most Important Characteristic of Servant Leadership How to Apply Servant Leadership In Your Personal Life Learn About the Veterans Empowerment Organization He Serves  Quotes From Ron Lutz "And your notion, that agile solution made perfect sense to me at the time, in terms of our dynamic need relative to the business, we were trying to stand up, it worked flawlessly." "For every week that we could take out of the build cycle, that was half a million dollars of incremental sales per week." "I turned around one day, and I said, Wait a minute, am I truly fulfilled? Am I actually giving all the value back to Lowe's that I feel like Lowe's deserves? Frankly, am I staying true to who I am?" "We need to know ourselves very well." "Every voice along with the continuum matters. Everyone's activity is a value add an activity; everyone should have the ability to be able to say if we did this, it would have this cause and effect." Follow Ron Lutz: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronwlutz10/ Advisory Cloud: https://www.advisorycloud.com/profile/Ronald-Lutz Follow Passion Struck Instagram -https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast/ Follow John R. Miles -- Navy veteran, multi-industry CEO, and Author John R. Miles is on a mission to make passion go viral by helping growth seekers to overcome their fear, self-doubt, and adversity. He loves taking his own life experiences, lessons from his time as a CEO and Fortune 50 C-Level Executive, and the truths he has learned to help make other's lives better. His new podcast, Passion Struck, provides inspirational interviews and powerful guidance for people to take their lives to the next level. Watch as these high achievers weigh in on life's biggest questions and challenges as we journey on the path to becoming passion-struck. -- Follow John R. Miles Here: Website - https://passionstruck.com/ ​​Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/john_r_miles ​​Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Johnrmiles.c0m ​Twitter: https://twitter.com/Milesjohnr ​​Medium: https://medium.com/@JohnRMiles ​​John's Website: https://johnrmiles.com/​

If we can get ourselves to a mindset of humility, a mindset of others first, understand the big picture, but all that begins from those things internally that motivate you and drive you, then how do you pivot and change those to where the tied list all boats, right? And that's really the encouragement I would give to you. Hello, Visionaries, creators, innovators, entrepreneurs, and leaders of all types. Hi, my name is John Miles, and I wanted to welcome you to this episode of the Passion Struck Podcast, where it is my job to interview high achievers from all walks of life and unlock their secrets and lessons to become a passion struck. The purpose of our show is to

serve you the listener. By giving you lessons, tools, and activities that you can use to achieve a passion-driven life. Now, let the journey begin. Thank you for joining me today on the PassionStruck podcast. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself serve. And now, shall be served. And this is such an important lesson and something that we will be discussing at link today in

this episode of the Passion Start podcast. And my guest today is my long-term friend and former peer Ron Lutz. And in today's discussion, he and I will talk about some of our mutual experiences that we had working together at Lowe's, but then we're gonna spend much more time talking about the importance of serving others versus serving ourselves. And why becoming a servant leader is so important as we approach this all digital future that we're entering into. And he will share words of advice on how you do that both in your career. And we both talk about how you can do it in your personal life.

And so much more. But before I get into the heart of this episode, let me tell you a little bit more about Ron. Ron is the co-founder of the Meridian Executive Leadership Group and a certified executive leadership coach. With a focus on C-suite executives, senior leaders, and management teams. He has a long history of leading Fortune 50 companies and private sector organizations in executive and C-suite responsibilities. He was previously Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Customer Officer, Omni Channel, and Customer Experience Executive. customer experience executive. And those who all know Ron know that he is recognized for developing end-to-end strategies from concept to execution,

bringing innovation concepts to life that deliver relevant customer experiences. He has been published in numerous industry focus articles, such as Chain Store Age, Retail X, customer experience age, the Atlanta Business Chronicle, and has been featured on High Heart Radio as a guest speaker. Ron serves on the Board of Directors Executive Committee of the Veterans and Powerment Organization,

which he'll talk about further in today's episode, and they provide transitional housing in 360-degree rehabilitation and care for homeless veterans in Atlanta, and they're hoping to take that much further than just the metro area of Atlanta. He is also a board of advisor for the CX executive program at the George Washington University in Washington, DC, and is an ardent supporter of organizations focused on the rescue of abuse, and traffic, women, and children. So excited to have Ron on the show and let's get igniting. I am absolutely thrilled to have you on our show

and it has been too long since we've gotten a chance to do this. Thank you so much for joining us. John, thank you. It's an honor and a pleasure. And I absolutely am stoked to be able to share a little bit with you today. So thank you. Well, for the audience out there, Ron and I have a history.

And that history goes back, I think at this point about 14 to 15 years. We were both here at Lowe's. And I tell this story sometimes. But prior to meeting Ron, I was out meeting with a bunch of executives and trying to learn what was working and what was not working with. The way we were doing software development. And I remember talking to a friend of both of our Scott Butterfield who was the head of corporate strategy at that point in time. And he said, John, you know, we are absolutely fantastic at delivering solutions that by the time they're completed are absolutely, absolutely. It was a wake-up call for

me and it made me realize that I had to do something to change and I wanted to adapt this thing called Agile, but I needed a business partner who would go on the journey with me because what so many people feel to realize is they all think Agile is something just for the IT group, but if you're going to go in on it with both feet, everyone is going to be involved with this. And so Ron had this project that he was working on at the time, and I'll give him a chance maybe to talk about it here in a second, but he was probably the most dissatisfied customer or one of them that the Loz IT group had, because we had consistently failed to achieve the

solutions that he needed in the timeframe he needed, which was causing his resets of stores not to occur as quickly as they needed to in the way we were re-merching. And so I came to him and said, no, we haven't worked together. This is new. You don't know that much about me,

but I have this new way I wanna do things and I need someone to partner with. And he went in with both feet. Maybe that's a good starting point for you to just share when it ended up happening in that experience. John, thank you. Wow, that's a great recall of a solution we needed desperately.

Now, whether there was a little bit of trepidation in that you're right, John, we had not had a chance to work together. But I was at the point of, I'm looking for someone on a white horse to come in and try to save this because we were facing about over $400 million of expense that we needed to justify and place correctly in terms of projects and all for the stores, enterprises stores, and your notion of an agile solution made perfect sense to me at the time

in terms of our dynamic need, relative to the business we were trying to stand up, it worked flawlessly. So we were able to take and leverage the technology, along with other process changes and people changes and so forth and so on. Take a business that half the amount of days out of a project, simply because we had better information,

a better way to visualize that. So if you can think about, we had at that time, about 1,500 locations and we wanted to cascade through all those stores to do projects and resets and we had planned it was going to take us about 18 months. Now, your technology and the systems and all the process we put in place, we cut that almost in half. It saved the company a ton of money. More importantly than that, it allowed us to stand next to the customer quicker with the latest and greatest and I'll not forget the transformation that allowed us the journey. John allowed us to go on. So that was a springboard for me a little bit of background in terms of as John said, I had responsibility for all the new store

builds and the re-emergingizing for this Fortune 50 company. And we brought success to that. We were able to stand up service providers, launch our resets much more quickly. So it allowed us to do more. To do more in front of our customers, more for our stores in the marketplace. From that and that success, we rolled out an internal network of service providers

for our stores. And I like to tell the story, we roll that out. I'm not forget the date. February 6, 2006, John. And that began a journey of exponential savings, more efficiency, and our largest competitor, right, the best form of flattery if someone copies you that. So our competitor rolled that out three years later.

And quite frankly, it transformed the retail industry. And you may not know this, John. I'm probably concerned. I didn't get enough. And I'm currently consulting with the largest retail organization in Japan right now. They searched me out because they too wanted the efficiencies and effectiveness of doing open store remodels,

remurches, taking time out. So it has legacy. It's living on. So we'll get into that a little bit later, but it's international, John. So you never know when someone brings an idea, thought, a viable solution, you got one of two choices. You either can embrace it or deny it. And fortunately, you're a pivotal piece in helping me understand that I need to embrace that. So, so that I want to thank you, John, perfectly.

Well, well, you, you as well, because if it wasn't for that, I don't think we would have changed the way we were implementing solutions at Lowe's and by others seeing what we were able to deliver using those new processes and new approach. It started a whole new era, I think, in the way that we were moving away from these long waterfall projects and doing things different. Like did it cause a bit of disruption? Are we around this? Yes, but I think the importance is, instead of looking at this fear and preposition

and I'm not going to do it, you kind of embraced it and went both feet in. And I think oftentimes, you know, that's what people fail to do is, you know, sometimes they'll give it lip service, but then don't speak with their feet. And you did both. And, you know, not only that, you led my example with your team. And we'll get into more of that in the rest of the show. So I wanted to go into now, you were this historically Fortune 50 executive. You're managing these, you know, to put it in perspective, these extremely large-scale teams,

because I don't think many of the listeners, unless they've been with a big retailer like Lowe's, really understand what it takes to get a new store off the ground. And we were at a point where we were doing what, 100, 120 stores a year, if not more. So the true magnitude of not only that, but then having to re-emergentize the other, at that time, 700, 800 stores that we had, it's a tremendous amount of coordination. And you were there at that point,

but I said that as a context, because I wanted to give the listeners an understanding of the breadth of your job, but wanted you to then talk to them after you kind of left that role, where did your career go from that? Yeah, John, you're right at the sort of the peak of our activity.

We were doing 175 major remodels per year, and that's touching about 80% of 120,000 square foot store. And we also were doing likewise 160 new store builds at the very same time. And then we layered on international expansion. As you may recall, we put our toe in Canada at the same time. And subsequently after that, we were in Mexico. But again, John, I will share that the impetus of being able to do that many stores and have the processes in place to bring that forward was

because we did stand up a way that allowed us to be more efficient. Agile approach technology was a big, big piece of that. Just giving some context prior to all of this, John, it took us roughly 56 days to, by the time the contractor gave me an empty shell, empty box, right, the store. I was able to hand the keys over to the store manager prior to this process. It was 56 days, which is phenomenal, frankly, by any measure in the industry. We took that down to 35 days. 35 days because our processes were so much more streamlined, our people embraced how we were cascading the work across the store. So, so what did that mean in context of scale? That roughly was putting, for every week

that we could take out of the build cycle that was between half and a million dollars of incremental sales per week, right? So that was significant in the growth of the company. So from there, John asked to answer your question. We took that same sort of macro process and said how do we take new store bills, the merchandising, and better affect

the everyday life of the stores? So we built this internal store service process, utilized bringing resources in-house versus going external with third-party groups in totality. We had roughly about 7,000 of those folks across the enterprise and stores that were part of this effort. As we delivered efficiencies, John, the day I was known as a builder. I recall one of my mentors that loads way back way back in the day, said, you are a builder, a builder of businesses.

And so why is that important in this conversation? It allowed me the experience to engage a lot of different people at different levels in their journey of maturity relative to business acumen. And so I was the guy that if there was a gap of something that we needed to solve, then they allowed me to enter into that sort of greenfield, understand it and then build a structure

and people around that international expansion as one that I mentioned. We did a JV in Australia, we put some of our operating folks over there. So what it allowed me to do is just really engage it. A lot of people in different places and it was fantastic. I was humbled by it.

Well, that's great. And I thank for the listeners who are out there. One of the things we often do is say, no to what could be life-changing opportunities. And you could have easily said, no in this situation, or picked a different way to doing it. But what advice would you give? No, there could be someone out there

who was in a similar position, or could be an entrepreneur or a small business owner. What advice would you give them if you there could be someone out there who was in a similar position or could be non-trapener or a small business owner. What advice would you give them if you were in their shoes? John's fabulous question there is, there is risk. There's an eight risk and anything that you're tempted to do that's new and different. Maybe plowing new soil as the old saying goes, I was faced with, this hasn't been done before. There wasn't a retailer that had this in the marketplace. This was new territory for us.

So if you're lucky, if you're an individual that's really trying to grow themselves, you get a little bit concerned about how much risk do I really want to take, right? And I would just encourage folks that, look, we're in a time of evolution, evolution relative to our journey of development, our journey of becoming all that we truly,

truly can be internally. And I would just say it embraced the risk. Go through your normal calculations, as well as I really mean to you, but risk is a bit of a bull. And I would just say embrace that. But more importantly, approach everything from who you are, your core capabilities, your core strength. And we'll talk a little more about that here shortly, but know who you are.

I just think you've got to trust yourself. Trust the opportunities in front of you. Yeah, and one other thing I would add to that and I think it's great is that from my experience on being the technology partner for many of these roles, I think there's a feeling that when you're doing this it's a technology solution and my belief is that couldn't be further from the truth. The real technology to me sets maybe the foundation, but where I think the majority of the effort goes into is changing cultures, changing minds, and changing workflow or processes around the technology. Oftentimes, technology is easy part, but it's really getting people

to ignite a new way of doing things, getting them on board, and getting them to commit to it, and then executing on it that is really the difficult part. And no matter what you do, you're going to have to change culture. And so that really takes a strong leader and those amongst that team to pull it on. And so don't overthink that technology is going to solve everything. It's really that heavy lifting that is going to do it and executing on it. So Ron, so you spent this time with Lowe's and then you end up doing a career pivot down the line

and you start getting into more, I would say being a consultant. Can you talk about that change and what caused it to happen? John, so after about 13 plus years or so at Lowe's, we were in a growth mode. We were building, not only just in terms of physical stores, our internal processes and a lot of really cool and wonderful things. And we began to move

into an operational mode versus sort of constant growth. And when I look at my first and how to who I am, the things that really get me going, it is about transformation, it is about change, it's about growth. So I took a step back and I looked at where I was and you know, it was a good time to step away. I thought, you know, I'm going to step away at a, I guess, a reasonably early age. And I had this word in the back of my mind, it was called retire, right? So I gave that about nine months, John. And I was doing some work with some private equity firms and a few things. It was like Wayne Gratsky, right? You know, success for him is anticipating where the puck is going. I missed being on the ice and in the game. So there was an organization in Atlanta, privately held

company, a retail services organization, and they were going through some change, some leadership change, second generation change. They needed someone to help them sort of build that strategic roadmap, that strategic plan. What did success look like for them? Where could they go? What were the possibilities? Well, I gave you a little bit of history being the builder that I am. It was a great conversation. So after about six months of dialogue, very fortunate to join the organization. And they asked that I would just evaluate who they were, their customers. But my comment to them was to be part of that, I truly wanted to be part of the culture, part of the organization. So instead of consulting, I actually became an employee of the organization. So I stepped in as the executive advisor, spent the first almost year looking at culture,

structure, clients, customers, good, the bad, all the things that they were, and what we needed to potentially work through. So I spent four and a half years there changing culture, the bad, all the things that they were and what we needed to potentially work through. So I spent four and a half years there changing culture, reorganizing, looking at possibilities, capabilities, strengths, redefining that, opening up several new verticals of business with them. So 2020, the year of that we, it's an infamy with COVID and all the impact of COVID, the organization stepped away from 2020 with one of their best years, exceeded plan, both on a top line as well as profitability. But more important, we changed the culture to where people believed in each other, stood shoulder to shoulder,

delivered and executed against solutions, and was very proud of people in the organization. And so at that point, in my mind, it was time to step away, because I delivered against the four things I committed to back when I started. And I met with the board and the balance of the executive team. So like, you know, if not that I am an athlete, but if you're an athlete, you sort of want to go out on top, right? So this was the right time for me that we were doing fantastic work. So I stepped away from that back in actually in January. I was doing some parallel path work going on at the same time,

some consulting work as well as some coaching, but that pivot for me was about, I needed a breath. I needed to step back and reevaluate what was important. And I developed some non-negotiables for myself. And then when the opportunity was right to engage with the company in Atlanta, I was, it was very clear to me. It was the right thing for me to do. Stay true to my strengths. And I think the company is better today than they were four and a half years ago. They will tell

you that. So I'm very, very, very proud and humble. That's great. And I wanted to focus on both your departing from there and departing from Lowe Because I think oftentimes, the listeners who are out there might be in a position, maybe they've lost the lustre for what it is they're doing. Maybe they're coming in and they don't feel charged about waking up every day and they're going into this job where it just doesn't excite them anymore. And I think oftentimes as I work with clients,

that feeling is pervasive for a long period of time prior to making those moves. It might not have been in your case, but I think oftentimes, you know, we have this internal voice inside of us that tells us when we're bored, when we're not doing the things that we need to do. Did you ever think as you were going through

either one of these that you started that journey early or did you recognize it and then plan for what was going on? I wanted to just get a sense of that. Yeah, John, I think it was yes and. So the pivot from lows to, because I said I stepped away for about nine months. That particular situation in lows,

that it is snuck up on me, right? It was, I turned around one day and I said wait a minute. Am I am I truly fulfilled? Am I actually giving all the value back to Lose that I feel like Lose Lose deserves frankly? And am I saying true to who I am and it wasn't awakening for me John because it I wasn't necessarily prepared So I needed to take that time away and I needed to sort of reevaluate truly What were those things? What was I going to go next? If I needed to go somewhere else or what was what was the next step in the journey for for Ron?

Now, roll the clock forward. The step away from the recent situation, it was totally different. It was very planned on my part. I gave the organization almost six months notice because I knew I needed to do this. We were delivering. I felt that the value I was adding had been delivered. It had been delivered, John. And I think, and I'm going to go back to the fact we need to know ourselves extremely well,

so that you're not surprised by that. And you're always delivering against in terms of the magnitude of which you're capable of. And so this second situation for me was a much different pivot than the first. And I know you, so for those who are listening, Ron is also a certified executive coach. And I know that's something he enjoy is doing. As you're working with clients, I'm sure you run into people who I think we have this tendency to think of ourself and our personal narrative is maybe something that's a little bit more grandiose at times than than what it really is and getting into the brutal reality of who you are is a top voice because I think we listen to so many of the external inputs but don't listen enough to the internal and philosophical inputs. So what advice would you give to a listener around that topic and what you advise?

of the listener around that topic and what you advise. Jonathan, we're now at the place that is enormous passion for me. I will tell you that. And that is walking alongside them in their journey of moving them from where they are to where they think they want to be or where they want to go in terms of coaching. Look, make no mistake.

Everyone deserves to be the best selves they can be. But the critical piece of that is helping people get to that realization of what that could be, John. And when I work with individuals, what I find is that if we are able to help people recognize their own core strength, recognize their own capabilities and bolster that, and then apply that to where they're going. And, John, I know you've heard this.

Many leaders will say, you know, I need some, I need coaching, I need executive coaching because my team has changed or my 360 wasn't what we wanted it to be or my resiliency is what fill in the blank, I need coaching be cause, right? And what happens is, you know, 12, 18, 24 months, like that same person will come back and say, great, that was that was tremendous help. Now I've got X and I need to achieve Y. Or it was purely a business model. Repeat business is not bad, right? However, what I've learned

over time and I really was around self reflection of myself is that the old adage is I need to teach people how to fish versus that giving them fish. And it really is about taking the focus of developing them. So they've got a sustainable way forward. They recognize themselves with enough clarity and enough strength. They recognize the environmental pressures that they're under that they have the ability to pivot and change.

I'm going back to your question, John. That if there's a fundamental thing that I would encourage younger executives, newer leaders and managers is that spend time, spend time knowing who you are. Spent time truly getting to the core of what motive issue, what makes you tick, and then taking that with a structured process

and being able to be nimble and pivot when you need to, because I think the strength in that will be, as you look in the mirror, you'll understand what you need to change, when you need to change. I have a little quick saying is that people chase what they don't have, John. My mission, my passion in this is I want to give them a mirror into their core so that they can make decisions and be strengthened by it. Did you know that Forbes Magazine recently cited that 70% of individuals

who do personal development masterminds and one-on-one coaching benefited from better work performance, increased communication skills, and overall better relationships. And we at PassionStruck are obsessed with self-development, coaching, and mentorship. That is why we've created a free resource to help you unlock your potential. Because people doing great things in business and life are just like you, only they've had a coach along the way and we've got that covered too.

Let us show you the systems and frameworks that we teach, growth-minded individuals to help them step into their sharp edges, execute on their passion journeys and get predictable results time and time again. Go to passionstruck.com slash coaching right now and let's get igniting. One of the things I say about passion struck is that our purpose is to help the underdogs out there,ashed their potential. And when I refer to underdogs, what I'm referring to are the battered, the broken, the bruise, the board who are out there who think that they've entered whatever this position is in their life and that they're stuck. And I think what we're both trying to tell them

is that that doesn't have to be a permanent position. It can be something that you can work your way through. You just have to start taking action on that journey. And as you said, start really understanding what that interview is. And this brings me to an interesting point is one of the ways we reconnected, and it's probably been nine, 10 months ago,

is I had been doing interim or fractional executive work. And I had just started writing the book Passion Struck and as part of that exercise I started going out to old peers and friends because you know I was again trying to figure out where I wanted to go from my own path moving forward and did I want to build this Passion Struck brand and so I went out to you and I knew I caught you off guard by the question but I think this is something that the listeners can do as well. I went out to about 10 different individuals who I respected and I asked them for honest feedback about when you think of me, what were those things that came across? And how I performed. One of the things you had said was that you thought I was a visionary, but someone who pushed the organization to

go to the next level and delivered results. But you also said that I was a servant leader, and it really meant a lot to me to hear that from another person. And I know for you, servant leadership is a core of who you are, but for someone who's listening, because I know this is something you're very passionate about. And you explained, you know, what the heck is different about being a servant leader from a traditional leader, and why does that distinction matter? John, yes. Thank you. And by the way, all those things, John, I have an ultimate amount of respect for you and what you stand for as a person as well.

So it's working shoulder to shoulder now having this opportunity is pretty amazing things. Servant leadership. It's an often news term that people here in the marketplace, let me just say the most important, let me give you an example if I made John, then I'm going to come back into some detail. So the previous company that I was at, we did a lot of manufacturing work as well as strategy work and so forth into the retail industry. And I would often, it would be a routine for me that I would make my way out to the back of the manufacturing floor where as much orders were being palatized and ready to go out and be shipped to the retail.

And I would find a person on the line back there and my comment to them would be, you're asked what you're doing right now. The most important thing for the customer in that store because when they open that box, you are the first face they see. Because the work that you've done will impact the work that they're experiencing and how you've done that and the quality of your work, quality of packing.

And they would look at me with this sort of astonishment. I think we often lose sight depending on where we are and the life cycle of delivering for our people and our clients. Truly, where are the touch points? What matters? I will tell you, John, every voice matters. Every voice along the continuum matters and environment.

Everyone's activity is a value add activity. Everyone should have the ability to be able to say if we did this it would have this cause in effect. What I'm going with this is if you look if you envision an inverted triangle typically if you look at all organizations you'll see a triangle you'll see the CEO whomever at the top and everything, cascades down, right? So servant leadership, as you flip that on its head, most important people are those that are connected to however you're delivering.

If it's about delivering to customers, whatever that is, they are the closest. You've got to embrace and value their comment. You're gonna allow them to be part of the change management, allow everyone on the continuum to give rise to things that they believe would improve, but it goes farther than that. What's important to your people? What community service is important to them? What are those things that motivate them? Do you know them well enough? Do you

know the strengths that they have? Do you know the kind of coaching and leading they need? Do you know what motivates them in a way that makes them more productive, but beyond that that makes them happy? Joyful. Are you touching the emotion of that individual? So it's not it's not about how can I get more out of them? It's more about how do I make them more engaged if they feel that they're part of the family, the fiber, and what you're delivering. So certain leadership for me is purely about giving back to the people the voice that they need, that in turn makes the organization better, but in turn makes the person have a desire to be part of the network and what they're delivering against.

Hope that helps. I think that's a great answer, and there are two to make this even more real for the listeners. I think there are two great examples that you can use to see this. So one example in a company that's famous for their service leadership culture is Google.

And if you look at Google, one of the things that you will know about them is the benefits and on a me that they give people in that organization. And it's been part of their celebrated culture that servant leadership is a major part of it. And if you want to look at one of the most famous leaders of all time, it would be Gandhi. And Gandhi is often labeled as the most famous servant leader in Indian history. But if you think about how he led that country, he was doing just what Ron just said

and he put the people first and he started thinking about what are the actions that he could take, that not only unite the country, but get them to start thinking differently about how they could be viewed on the world stage and also in their own hearts and minds. So I think those are probably two good examples for you. And Ron, I know when you think of servant leadership, they're people say that they're

nine or characteristics, nine or ten characteristics. They're things like listening, empathy, self-awareness, healing, persuasion, man-eating building, foresight, stewardship, you know, in a commitment to employees' growth. You had to pick one or two that you have utilized the most out of that bunch. What would you say, say they are? The empathy, John, is one that comes forth. I think you really need to understand the issues that everyone walks. You need to understand where they are.

What life has brought to them and what they're walking through. So empathy is one that that comes forefront for me often. Another key factor is in terms of how do I look at at serving leadership beyond empathy is self-awareness. Because we as leaders often can we sort of can influence right? We have a shadow that we cast through our words, our actions, but have you. I think self-awareness for leaders is extremely important. Anyone who has aspirations to be a leader, one needs to sort of check themselves out the door to understand themselves and really connect and what sort of leadership looks like and know yourself well enough on how to show up that way. Because it's an expectation of you as a leader every day to embrace that. And when it becomes second nature, your people will know that. There's an expectation of you as a leader every day to embrace that. And when it becomes second nature,

that your people will know that. There's an innate quality of, when you connect emotionally with people, there's no great. There's nowhere to hide. Either you are or you aren't. So self-awareness is a very important key for leaders, I believe.

And I think you brought up a good point earlier about lows, and maybe it's good for the listeners to think about this aspect. I remember during the time we were both there, the leadership made a constant effort, especially Larry Stone. He remind us, Larry was the President Chief Operating Officer, and a little bit of perspective on him as he actually started as a mailroom clerk and worked his way all the way up from there to store associate, store manager, regional manager, pedastores, and then eventually into that position.

But he would always remind people, in almost every meeting I was around, that the cash register wasn't at the headquarters building. And what Ron was saying is that, regardless of what your job is, you could be in the call center. You could be that person in the Garland Center. You could be at the store associate,

who's doing remurching. I guarantee you that a customer does not get their viewpoint of a low-sum deep owe, really, whatever industry you're in, Dell, et cetera, by headquarters. They get it by the individual interactions that they have. And that is why if you go on store visits, and I'm sure between the two of us, Ron and I have been on 500 or more, you

can pick out a good store from a bad one within about five minutes. And I think it all comes down to this whole philosophy of servant leadership and how they're serving the most important person who's in that store, which is the customer. Because if I shop at my store here locally in St. Petersburg and I have a bad experience,

my view of all of those is dictated by that store and customer service that they're providing. Or if I'm talking to a customer service agent, it's the same thing. And I remember when I ran the call centers, one of the things I tried to instill into those employees is that your job matters. It matters so much because you are actually

talking to customers, which you do far more frequently than I do, and every interaction that you have can create a positive or negative opinion for them about what looses who we are our values. And so I think to take it to a different level, that's kind of where Ron was going with empathy and his other thoughts. Now I can tell you what I saw within Ron was when we were working on this project together, you know, it's very easy to be that executive who kind of says, I'm gonna delegate this task and then walk away, but instead we were on

the daily scrum calls and the difference between a big project like that and these smaller ones or the smaller sprints that we would do is in these bigger projects you would wait till this monthly staring committee meeting came about and then the executives would hear what was happening and at that point you'd lost a month or four. What was so great to see on this was you know the folks that Ron had on the project would come to us every day with the stop points and he was able to take steps which he did to empower

them to do their job better. And he would, if they came up with stock points, he would help come up with solutions along with me to solve them. And I think that's what a real leader needs to do. And in the service leadership culture, that's a small way that Ron displayed that that I got to see was him making sure that those stock points on those projects were taking care of so that the employees could do what they wanted to do and what he needed them to do, which was deliver the project. So I think that's a good way of explaining how this works. So Ron, I wanted at this point to see on this podcast, you know, we're trying to help

people in their careers, but we're also trying to help them individually. So if you're looking at servant leadership from an individual standpoint, how can a person apply this more to their own life if it's not something that comes natural to them or they're wondering how they can become better at doing this? Well, I think part of it, John, truly comes down to the individual themselves and what's important to them. I mentioned a little bit ago,

I had a list of non-negotiables and I would encourage anyone that is trying to find themselves or to strengthen who they are. And those non-negotiables, in other words, are said, what are things that are most important to you? And there's really two categories, professionally and personally. And I would encourage you to make two lists of those, right? And keep them separate if you can. And as you look at those, the list of what is most important to you, then how are you going to achieve that? Now, if someone said I'm just going to use that as an example, because I had this happen a few months ago, a young man that I was working with, and one of the most important things to him was to become promoted within six months in his line of

work. That was very important to him. So then the next step you take is what are you going to do to achieve that goal? Well, the first place you've got to take is what are you going to do to achieve that goal? Well, the first place you've got to start is where are you currently? And what's the delta the gap between those two? And then chart a course on how are you going to work to that? So what happened, John, over the course of the time that we work together, is go change. Instead of the goal being, I want to be promoted within six months. It was, I want to empower my team to excel at their responsibility. Now, the mindset shift here was he took it away from himself and he put it on the team in terms of how do I empower, improve,

equip, give them the tools they need to excel and exceed against their responsibility. I mean, that was a clear example of moving to servant leadership. It wasn't about him and he longer. It was truly about the team. Now, what happened, he did get promoted, but he brought much of his team forward. His team was in the forefront of that, and I would just encourage you, if we can get ourselves to a mindset of humility, a mindset of others first, understand the big picture, but all that begins from those things internally that motivate you and drive you, then how do you pivot and change those to where the tide lifts all boats, right? And that's really the encouragement I would give people.

Well, and you just hit on two things that I get so excited about. And one of those is this whole topic of values that you brought up. And I talk all the time why we have to focus on values, on values, or those non-negotiables in our lives instead of beliefs. Because so many people live their lives according to beliefs, that they're hearing from external forces instead of coming up with a personal contract with themselves and laying out those non-negotiables or values that they're gonna live by. And I think the other thing here to keep in mind is that you're in charge of your own life and so you can apply service

permanent leadership in the way that you live it. And ways to do that are, regardless of what you do, you have an ecosystem around you. You have, you know, friends, you have loved ones, but you also have, you business partners, piece of court groups and other things. And what Ron said has been one of the most significant changes that I see in people going from unsuccessful to having success in their lives. And that is when they go from being motivated by ego and themselves to starting to serve others with their passion. And that matters so much because when you're serving others, it changes the whole ecosystem

around you because you're serving them instead of serving yourself first. And I think that those are two great things that you hit on. And so Ron is big on that serving others not only in the corporate world, but in also some of the things that he does from a philanthropic standpoint. And we didn't cover it earlier on, but Ron is an army veteran, a veteran like myself. And so one of the organizations he's giving back to is a veteran organization. I'm going to have him tell you more about it. But I know a lot of the listeners on the show are veterans. So I would encourage you all to figure out ways to get back to other veterans. With that Ron, can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing? Oh, thank you. Yes. I appreciate the opportunity to do that. Veterans Empowerment Organization, BEO for short, I'm forced to serve on the board

of that organization. It's based in Atlanta, and the primary purpose of the organization is to bring homeless veterans off the street and give them an opportunity a 360 program to get their dignity back, but frankly, John, we house about 150 veterans. We provide housing for them, we provide the opportunity for them to become,

they need that, whether it's emotional care, whether it's health care, whether it is, cleaning themselves up relative to addictions, provide those services, then we move them into life skill development and get them prepared. We get a two year program, we bring them in and just try to give them the opportunity

to stand on their own two feet. We have families there as well. Families often find themselves in a difficult situation, but we're building this process so that we can make it transportable, which I'm extremely excited about. We're funded, we're certainly a nonprofit, very blessed to have tremendous donors.

Matter of fact, we have our gala, that's our annual gala. It's this upcoming Saturday, it's a virtual gala. So if you're on here and you're listening, so go to veo.hero.org and anyway, giving back to veterans who have served our country, served us, seeing the joy, John, seeing the purpose, seeing how they have confidence in themselves, where they're going and helping them stand up right again is just a it's a tremendous opportunity. For sure, we've got a tremendous staff that takes care of our folks. I'm thrilled. I'm honored to be part of the organization and flight that's all across the U.S. that we as veterans and as those who

enjoy the benefit of being free in this country, we owe a significant debt to those who have served us. I'll continue to fly this flag until we have more and more veterans off the streets. Yeah, do you happen to know, because I know the percentage is, I can't remember, the last number I heard, I thought it was in the 20% range, but of all homeless, how many are veterans do you happen to know? Oh, the other veterans is 28% yeah. 28% of all homeless are veterans.

Yeah, it was something that was all you opening for me is through my local church. They do a cold weather shelter. And luckily here in Florida, we don't need it that often. But when we do, it's a great thing to have. And they'll bring a few hundred of the homeless into these shelters. And one of the things that I enjoyed the most was some people go and they're afraid to talk to the individuals because I think when you think of homeless, they're very different mindsets that you have about them. But the interesting thing that

I found the more I talked to is that they were just like all of us. And then something happened that caused things in their life, a spiral out of control. And I remember talking to this gentleman one time who was so thankful that he could be in the shelter because he was freezing and you you know, he was probably in his early 50s, but he was a veteran and had been a doctor in the military and then had been a leading surgeon when he was in the civilian world and ended up going through a very bad divorce

and it caused him to start doing drugs. And unfortunately, he became so consumed by the drugs, he lost everything. And at this point, he didn't even have a car. He was living basically day to day and it just showed me, how quickly your fortunes can go from this person who's looked at so highly in society to now being looked upon so poorly.

And so your organization and being able to help someone like that return back to their life is such an important way of giving back. So thank you so much for doing that. You're welcome, John. So Ron, I'm going to give you an opportunity now because I know you've recently launched a new venture to talk about that a little bit, maybe given a shout out that a person wants to find you how they can locate you either socially or through that. John, yes. So, Meridian Executive Leadership Group is our website. We focus my partners and I focus on, again,

helping people move from where they are, where they believe they need to be. But our primary equipping here is, as we talked about during this podcast, is helping people find themselves, anchor within their strengths, determine what they are, and then allow them to sort of self-navigate with our guidance and be coming to that next level of where they are.

I'm very blessed to have the partners that I have in helping me found this company and tremendous backgrounds, but we all share a common belief of servant leadership. We share a common belief that people deserve to be the best selves that they possibly can be. What's interesting of some clip that I heard is that as people are unpacking and talking about how they want to improve themselves and get to the next level of leadership and as we begin to coach them, I ran across this saying that people flourish when they recognize that the key to unlock themselves is in their own hand. So at the end of the day, we need to take control of who we are. And having people like us to walk alongside you with a little bit of experience to help you get there is a really a good thing. And this isn't about promoting that we need more and more business.

That's not what this is, John. This is about helping people achieve the optimal opportunity within themselves and sort of explode that and allow the person instead of I want to be promoted in six months to say I want to make sure I empower my people to get there. But it's Meridian, exactly a leadership group, that's our website.com and I'm on there and would welcome and if I can help anyone along that journey of life and getting them in the next place, it's an honor to do that. It certainly is. Okay, well thank you for that Ron and all the listeners. I would highly encourage you if you have any of those needs go to Ron He's a fantastic resource won't be disappointed at all now Ron

I'm gonna move you in the last segment of the conversation and this is a fan favorite that it's lightning round So I'm gonna just ask you five or six questions and have you come up with You know a quick answer to each. So the first one would be what is the thing you miss most about working at lows? Oh, the people that were around me that were building some of the solutions that we've done. Okay, what is the one thing you were most proud of about your time at the company? Really understanding. That's where I got my first taste of servant leadership. Now, I can talk John about businesses that we built,

the money that we saved, the ROI, the profit, and all those efficiencies, which is fantastic, but for me, this sustainable part was truly understanding for me what servant leadership meant to me. And I learned that at home. Okay, and what is the most important life lesson a person can learn? Truly spend the time with yourself.

Spend the time with yourself. Spend the time to understand what drives you, what motivates you, develop that list of non-negotiables so that you can chart the course for what success looks like in your own definition, but it's going to start with your internal self. Okay, and as you think about making these different pivots that you've had to, what was the one thing you were most afraid of? Fear failure was the thing that came up more often than not. How do I push forward and remove myself from that paralysis?

And if you could meet anyone who you've never met before, are alive or dead, who would that be and why? For me, it's interesting that you mentioned Gandhi a little while ago, John, because that's a person on my list that I would have liked to have spent time with, but close second Mother Teresa. Well, Ron, thank you so much for being on the show today. What a great conversation. And I enjoyed being able to reconnect with you so much. And John, it's been my pleasure.

And I've been honored to be on the podcast. So thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. I had so much fun doing that episode with Ron Lutz. And I hope you learned as much as I did about how he unpacks servant leadership, what his passions were, how you can also unlock them in your own life, and his journey in the fact that you need to recognize with your own

inner voice when things need to change because I think we all know when that is, we just fail to act on it as quickly as we should. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did. And thank you so much, as always, for listening and watching the Passion Start Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. The purpose of our show is to make Passion Go viral. And we do that by sharing with you the knowledge and skills that you need to unlock your hidden potential.

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