Host Intro (Gene Kim)

I've already mentioned Admiral Richardson in my opening remarks. The same questions I asked Ian, I posed to him: how can leaders connect better across and up in the organization — which becomes more and more important the more senior you become?

Admiral Richardson is an amazing leader of leaders, and I'm so grateful for his mentorship and friendship over the years. When I posed these questions to him, what came back was a rather astonishing and beautiful tale and a wonderful continuation of the themes that Ian just shared. Here's John.

Admiral John Richardson

Morning, everybody. It's great to be here again.

I've got to tell you that you're going to help me celebrate a little bit. My family is all out watching on the live stream, and they said, "Hey, Dad, you're in big trouble — the talks before you have been astonishing. So you better bring your A game, and even then it's going to be a struggle." So to all my family, thank you for that encouragement.

But they also said: hey — 37 years ago today, I'm sorry, five years ago today, I retired from the Navy after 37 years. So a little bit of a celebration. Yeah. [applause]

And part of the joy of working in the Navy was getting the chance to work with people like Justin Fanelli and Andy Biehn and Jim Juster and all of those — I mean, weren't those fantastic presentations? Please give them all another round of applause. It was really terrific — the sense of service that they have, and all of the sailors and Marines and service members around the world that will benefit from what they're doing.

It's also made possible by their leaders — particularly people like Admiral Stephany Su Eckles (and Saiko Oana). She has done a terrific job creating the environment for Andy and Justin to work in. It's a great team effort.

It's pretty technical. You saw some pretty technical charts, and this is kind of a technical conference. Anybody familiar with the imposter syndrome? Raise your hand if you've heard that. Yeah, it's a thing that gets around. Let me tell you that when I come to conferences like this, I aspire to be an imposter. I'm like a pre-imposter, up here talking to you. It's a language and concepts I'm still learning.

So I thought, rather than expose all of that vulnerability, instead I would talk to you about what I know — which is how to drive a submarine around. Is that okay? All right, we'll talk about that.

- slide: "From the Deep…" (rolling ocean surface fading into deep blue)

And so I thought we'd use this water column to start our conversation. You can see up at the top of the slide there's the surface of the ocean and all the waves, and it gets deeper as you go down to the bottom of the slide.

01Deep currents

- slide: "Deep Currents" (deep ocean image with a single subtle deep current line at the bottom)

One of the greatest things you get to do when you drive a submarine around is go down into the deep, and get to operate in those deep currents. The first step you have to take is you make sure that the submarine is really watertight — you rig the ship for deep submergence, and then you can go down deep.

And when you're down there, the neat thing is it's very, very quiet. There's nobody else around. You can be assured that you're not going to run into another ship or anything else like that. You get a chance to train, you get a chance to recover, you get a chance to think about things. It's an environment that — once you get the ship rigged — is much lower risk than some of the other ones we'll talk about in a minute.

- slide: (NASA global thermohaline circulation map — red surface currents and blue deep currents, with "deep water formation" labels in the North Atlantic and Antarctic.)

These deep currents — any oceanographers in the room? All right, well then I can say anything I want. These deep currents are amazing. You see the ocean on the top, but this picture of the globe depicts these deep currents that run through the oceans. The red ones are warm currents that run closer to the surface; the blue ones are these massively deep currents. They're giant heat-transfer mechanisms — petawatts of energy that get transported around the globe by these deep currents.

In particular, in the middle of the slide at the top where it says "deep water formation" — that's the Atlantic current. The warm water comes up the East Coast of the United States, then it gets cooled at the pole, and it dives down because it gets more dense, and goes down three to five kilometers deep. The evaporation from that warms all of Northern Europe. If you look at Northern Europe versus Alaska and Canada, it's much more temperate — and that's because of that current. If you think about climate change, there's a big discussion about the stability of these currents and the disruption that would cause if they got disrupted. So the deep currents are what really drives the behavior of the ocean.

- slide: (Anglerfish photo — Mariana Trench predator with built-in lure) - slide: (Two anglerfish, predator and small symbiotic male attached) - slide: (Another anglerfish silhouette with bioluminescent lure)

And there's also some life forms down there. These are anglerfish from like the Mariana Trench — they've got these built-in lures that come off their nose; they lure the prey in, and as soon as the prey comes in, they chomp on them and grab their jaws and it's over. These fish down in the deep never come up. They just operate down there in those super-low-light dark situations.

Deep currents — super, super cool. And if you operate the submarine all the time down there, it would be great. It'd be very peaceful, very stable. But of course, that's not what we build submarines to do.

02Surface waves

- slide: "Surface Waves / Deep Currents" (the deep-currents line plus a wavy surface-waves line near the top) - slide: (Yellow Submarine cartoon coming up to the surface)

You've got to come up and operate at the surface, right? That's how we interact with the world. That's how we do our job — kind of collecting intelligence on the rest of the world. That's how we communicate. So you've got to come up to periscope depth. You bring the submarine up, you bring periscopes above the water and antennas above the water. You still want to stay undetected when you do all that.

So if you don't do it right, you're going to end up looking like this —

- slide: (Aerial photo of a submarine periscope/mast wake from above)

— where some helicopter or something sees the wake of your masts and comes in and takes a picture. Or, if you're really having a bad submarine day, you're in clear water —

- slide: (Aerial photo of an entire submarine clearly visible just below the surface in clear water, leaving a long wake)

— and it's like, really, some stealth has been compromised here. You can see that giant wake kicking up — you might as well be surfing at that speed. And then of course, he's unlucky enough to be in clear water too.

But if you do it right, you get some pretty cool pictures —

- slide: (Periscope photo of a passenger ship through cross-hairs) - slide: (Periscope photo of San Francisco coastline) - slide: (Periscope photo of a foreign frigate dated 18.02.2016) - slide: (Periscope photo of another submarine on the surface, marked UNCLASSIFIED)

This is a periscope picture of a ship going away. You can also do harbor surveillances and coastal surveillances — you can sneak in there and take all of these pictures. Anybody recognize this skyline? San Francisco. So this is a San Francisco harbor. Here's a ship against the coastline — a combination of the two. And here's another submarine that's having a very bad day on the surface, being photographed by another submarine through the periscope.

So these are the sorts of things that happen up in the surface layer — the surface waves. But it's really active up there. The waves can toss you up and down, so you have to be very careful to stay submerged. You've got to control your speed, otherwise you're going to give your position away. The other ships are up there too, so the risk of collision is much, much higher because they don't know you're there. They're not trying to dodge you or anything like that.

03Middle depths

- slide: "Surface Waves / Middle Depths / Deep Currents" (the three layers labeled)

It would be great and simple if you could just sort of come into the environment deep — do all your planning and all that — and then when it's necessary, just go right up to the surface and get your job done, and then maybe go back deep. If it was only that simple, it would be great. But the fact of the matter is that if you don't pay attention to these middle depths, you're going to get into trouble.

For oceanographers, there's been a lot of attention paid to understanding the surface of the oceans, right? It can be measured by satellites and temperature, and you can see it. And there's a lot of emphasis deep in the ocean — who's the person who's been deepest, what's on the ocean floor, all of that. It's only recently that we started to look into these middle depths, and we found some fascinating things.

- slide: (Diagram of surface waves above a low-density layer, with internal density waves at the boundary with a high-density layer below)

One of the things is that just like there's waves on the surface of the ocean, there's waves in these middle depths. They're called internal waves, and they're density waves. And the implication is: if you're driving your submarine around in these middle depths and you don't know about those, you can literally get picked up by one of these internal waves and thrown up to the surface.

- slide: (3D diagram of a rogue internal wave between LESS DENSE WATER above and DENSE WATER below, with a sharp wave crest and a deep trough)

Here's a graph of a kind of a rogue internal wave. Neither situation is good — you could be tossed up to the surface on the crest of that wave, or you could be driven deep into the trough of that wave. So you've got to be very mindful of the complexity of these middle depths.

- slide: (Strawberry squid photo — speckled, bioluminescent, mid-water species) - slide: (Glass/confetti squid photo — transparent, dotted body)

There's also this tremendous amount of biomass in these middle depths. In fact, it's so evocative that they're calling it the twilight zone. If you Google "twilight zone" and oceanography, you'll see that we're just learning that there's more biomass in the middle depths than in the rest of the oceans combined. Whales and everything dive down into that and eat things like this strawberry squid or this little confetti squid. So there's all of these types of life forms in the middle depths.

04Making it relevant

And so that was going to be pretty much my talk, right? I was going to talk about the deep currents and the surface waves and the middle depths. And I was pretty proud. I mean — has it been interesting so far? Yeah. So I was about ready, and then Marguerite said, "Look, it's not an oceanography conference, right? So how are you going to make this relevant? Get busy, keep working."

So let's see what we can do to bring this home and make it relevant. We've talked a lot about leadership today and in the past couple of days. My wife is always one that says: there's a tremendous amount of literature on leadership, but what about followership? There's not a lot of literature out there on followership. So we'll try and make this discussion applicable to both leaders and being good followers. Because the truth of the matter is, depending on the context, we're either one or the other, but we're often both.

05Deep currents = character

- slide: "Surface Waves / Middle Depths / Deep Currents — Character"

Okay, so let's go to the deep currents. That's like your character. Those are your fundamental principles — what drives you as a person. What are your values? What comprises your character?

And just like driving a submarine down deep, these are times where you have to find a quiet time and recharge yourself, and re-identify, reattach with your principles and your values.

Also, what are the principles and values of your organization? What do they value? What does the organization value? What does your team value? And is there good alignment there? I find that a lot of people come up to me and say, "You know what — I'm not sure that my values are aligned with my team's values, and so I'm not sure I belong here." So it's a good thing to spend some time thinking about that.

06Surface waves = connections

- slide: "Surface Waves — Connections / Middle Depths / Deep Currents — Character"

The surface waves — those are like your connections. At some point, unless you're one of those super-geniuses they just put in a cubicle and say "code," you're going to have to interact. There's been a lot of discussion just this morning about the social framework and the connections that need to be made. That all happens kind of in the surface layer.

Wouldn't it be great if you could just sort of say, "Hey, look, here's my values. My compass is on true north, and I'm going to head off in true north. All the connections I make are going to be consistent with that compass reading." But the compass doesn't tell you the terrain. What about the valleys and the mountains and the hills and the rivers and the streams that you've got to cross along that track to true north?

07Middle depths = context

- slide: "Surface Waves — Connections / Middle Depths — CONTEXT / Deep Currents — Character" - slide: "Surface Waves — Connections / Middle Depths — CONTEXT — Creativity / Deep Currents — Character"

The middle depths, if you will, is all about understanding the context. I think every speaker — particularly this morning — has talked about the importance of understanding context. So you've got to study that. You've got to study the contextual environment, the human environment. And then you've got to get creative. How are you going to connect your fundamental principles, your values, with your actions in an effective way, given what you've learned about the context of the situation?

This is a huge transition in thinking — particularly for engineers — because engineers are sort of, "Hey, cause-and-effect, right? I do this and this happens." Sometimes I think we're all a little bit vulnerable to bypassing context too quickly. I'll tell you in the workshop this afternoon — just a little public service announcement — about times that I've kind of screwed up this step of not putting in enough time and understanding the context.

08Deep currents = relationships

- slide: "Surface Waves — Connections / Middle Depths — Creativity / Deep Currents — Relationships — Character"

Another way to think about it: deep currents = your relationships. And relationships among each other — but what are those really deep relationships you have? Andy Biehn and Justin Fanelli and those guys — they have a relationship with the United States of America. They raised their right hand and took an oath to protect and serve the Constitution of the United States. That defined a relationship between them and their organization, the United States Navy.

Many of us take some kind of a vow — to our spouses, for sure. That's a big relationship. Others of us have a relationship with our faith — some kind of a baptismal vow or something along those lines. In any case, these are deep things. You've got to understand these relationships as a foundation.

09Surface = action; middle = plan

- slide: "Surface Waves — Action — Connections / Middle Depths — Creativity / Deep Currents — Relationships — Character" - slide: "Surface Waves — Action — Connections / Middle Depths — Plan — Creativity / Deep Currents — Relationships — Character"

Then at the top there are the actions. And in the middle, there's like our plan. This is the application of our creativity that connects our character and our relationships with our actions and our connections.

10The temptation: start at the surface

- slide: (Diagram showing big down-arrows from "Action" and "Connections" at the surface piercing all the way down through Plan/Creativity and Relationships/Character)

Now, a couple of quick points here. The temptation often — particularly when you're in a new assignment, you get a new job, maybe a new leadership position — you've got a vision of what that leader should do. So you start at the surface and you think about, "Well, what action should I take?" — all that surface action. And then, based on all of that, you've kind of squinted and can see a plan. And then you're kind of left with what you got in terms of how well this aligns with your values and your relationships.

- slide: (Cartoon of a muscular grinning shark, with the words "Surface Waves / Middle Depths / Deep Currents / Mission / Action / Creativity / Connections / Relationships" scattered behind it as if blown back by sheer force)

In my experience, when you do it that way, it gives rise to sort of just chaos. What happens is that often just the strongest personality in the room will dominate. Anybody been in that situation? Raise your hand if you've been. Yeah — and you're looking at this person like, "What? Please just be quiet — give everybody else a little room to talk." But they don't, right? Because it's all staying up at the transactional level, and they're better and louder transactors than you might be — certainly than I was.

But it's all superficial and transactional. It's not necessarily connected with some of those deeper principles. What are we actually here to do? What is our outcome desired? It gets to be just very personality driven, which is troublesome for an organization that has serious goals to get after.

11The recommendation: start in the deep

- slide: (Diagram with up-arrows starting at Deep Currents / Relationships / Character, rising through Middle Depths / Context / Plan / Creativity, and emerging at Surface Waves / Action / Connections — the inverse of the previous slide)

So I would recommend and suggest that you start all of these things in the deep. Enter into these situations and take some time to reassess your values. What is important to you? What defines your character? How does that align with the character of the organization — particularly as you strive to achieve this new mission you've been given, whether it's a new leadership role or a new big task?

Then take some time to study the context. Who's got — what's the history, first of all? How did we get here? That history will almost always reveal that people have a stake in the game. They've got skin in the game; they've committed their reputation to some perspective. And if you're going to be successful — particularly if that person's got enough authority to stop you or block you — you're going to have to consider that. How can I convey this in a way that it's clear that this helps the organization, it's consistent with our values and our goals, and oh by the way, it's also going to help you — and we will all advance together here? That only comes from a deep understanding of the context.

Then let's get creative — put together that plan that finds that knife edge that you can walk, that connects the purposes and the deep relationships that you have, that's consistent with all of those, that is respectful of the context and everybody else's stake in the game and what their history is. I've got a great story about the Sistine Chapel that I am not going to be able to tell you in the minute and four seconds I have left — but if you want, I'll be happy to relay it in the workshop.

And then, after doing all of that studying, then take action — execute your plan, connect with all of those people that are going to help you along the way. I think you'll be much more effective.

12Trust as the coin of the realm

And as you get more and more senior in your organizations and you want to take on bigger and bigger leadership roles — if that's your ambition — this is a big transition. The coin of the realm at very senior leadership positions is trust and confidence. They've already approved the technical merits of what you're going to say, or you wouldn't be in the room. If it wasn't technically valid, you wouldn't be there.

What I was always looking for when I got those briefs as the Chief of the Navy was: is this the person that I can trust to carry this program forward? Do they have what it takes? Are their values aligned with mine? If so — yes, give them everything they need: authority, resources, accountability, responsibility. If not, then we got trouble.

13Closing

- slide: "Questions?" (arrows rising from depth to surface)

So anyway, thanks very much for listening. Quick oceanography lesson, if you want.

A lot of times you're thinking, "Okay, great, Richardson, Admiral, great, thank you so much — but what do I do next? What do I actually do?" And we'll talk about that in the workshop if you come and join us there.

- slide: (Yellow Submarine cartoon with "The Community for Tech Leaders / Enterprise Tech Leadership Summit" branding)

Thank you very much.