Admiral Richardson, thank you for taking some time to talk to me today. Um, I feel extremely fortunate to have had a chance to get to know you a little bit over the last couple years. Right. And the, I'll say the influence that you've had on the DevOps community, especially when it comes to leadership and senior leadership buy-in.

So I wanted to ask you a question from your fireside chat earlier. Um, the privilege of accountability. Yeah. I love that phrase.

Can you say a little bit more about how that kind of shows up? Yeah. I'll tell you what. Well, first of all, thank you for your kind words.

Um, you just, uh, when you're having so much fun, it's also nice to add some value as well. You know, this idea of accountability is really the key to, to, I, I think everything. And, um, I talk a lot about the concept of ownership, right? When you're kind of with a team and you're sharing a mission, I think it's sort of my preference to go beyond delegation and give somebody sort of the full ownership of a part of that mission.

Then there's a real buy-in and a sharing of that, right? And with that ownership, I would say there's sort of four elements to that. There's responsibility for sure. I think that someone has to know what they're doing.

So there's expertise. It's hard to own something without knowing that. Uh, and then there's authority, right? Which is really important.

And then there's accountability, right? And those last two in particular, I think have to go hand in hand. I mean, how many times have we been held responsible and maybe accountable for something where we weren't given the full authority to do it the way we wanted? And so this idea of, uh, authority and accountability really, uh, convey the privilege of participating in the mission to a full degree, to really owning that, that part of the reason that, that everybody's coming together to solve, right?

Yeah. Whatever that problem may be. Um, and I love the stories that are getting shared from, you know, the d o d and frankly, in industry that I think a lot of people assume is very command and control, right? I think what we're learning is that there is intent, and you set that context, but there's actually quite a bit of empowerment in the military.

Is that fair? I will say absolutely. In fact, uh, you know, just speaking in the Navy's, uh, situation, it's most effective when that happens, right? So, you know, the commanding officer of a ship, you know, we're gonna give her a, a mission.

We're gonna ask her to take her ship over the horizon and execute that mission. It's gonna be a far away, there's not gonna be anybody looking over your shoulder. Uh, and, uh, we're gonna expect her to accomplish that mission and also to bring her team back stronger than when they left. Yeah.

Right? And so, you know, that's an awful lot of distributed, uh, command and control, if you will, right? Yeah. And so, and it, uh, it goes to this idea of the privilege of accountability as well, right?

So, you know, that commanding officer, she owns that mission, right? And, uh, and so the idea of engaging all of her experience and creativity and, and, uh, initiative and all of that to accomplish it, it's really super exciting. And as maybe, you know, that person's boss, uh, I've always found that when you do that, you're just astounded at how much better their solution is than the one you might've given them. Yep.

You know? And so it's really exciting. That's great. Yeah.

Um, I also, I really enjoyed, um, so one of the things that I find to be extremely, I'll say frustrating mm-hmm. Is that often there is a, um, change that is happening, and sometimes a path to getting a result is to say, well, Courtney said we have to do it. Yeah. Or the admiral says we have to do it.

Right. And what I liked about what you shared earlier was there was intent and then you were accessible, right? So not to name drop and say it's because you said so, but support to remove obstacles for whomever needed your help. Yeah.

Yeah, Exactly. So, you know, in, in the way that, uh, I like to talk about this with leaders is, uh, to the degree that you can really remove first person pronouns. Mm-hmm. It's great, you know, and, uh, in the, in the tau Ching, there's a verse about leadership verse 17, which really talks about the different types of leaders.

And they say, well, of course the worst leader is hated, you know, and then there's the leader who's feared, then there's the leader who's loved. The best leader is the one where the people say, we did this ourselves. You know? And so if you can get to that level where you're just enabling everybody to do it themselves, that's sort of, I think the, you know, the, the pinnacle of leadership.

Yeah. Um, it's, it's such a great reminder. And one of the things I think, um, challenge is challenging for all companies is really to recognize that shift in mindset needed for senior leaders. Yeah.

Do you find too, one thing that we've talked about quite a bit at the conference and I think at at previous conferences, is, um, like misaligned incentives. Yeah. How are you, you know, from a system kind of structure perspective, have you seen any things that work or, Sure. And, and you know, particularly in the face of change, right?

So one of the images that it's not mine, you know, somebody gave it to me, me and I borrow it all the time, is this idea of all of these people with their finger over the top of the no button. Yeah. And, you know, they're just ready to press it down. What, what we're really talking about is, are our people who, they're great people, but they've just, they're, they're entire career perhaps have been incentivized to do a certain thing in a certain way.

Now we're asking them, you know, to approve something that's different. And it's like, well, no, that's, you know, that's not the way we do things around here. Yep. And then, uh, so, you know, lining up those incentives, particularly when you're trying to make change happen, and this is really revolutionary change that we're talking about, right?

You've gotta go back to maybe the atomic age or the industrial revolution to find a, you know, a similar situation. And so, you know, it's very violent, it's disruptive, it, it makes people nervous and unsettled. And so to the degree that you can, one, you know, provide a sense of comfort that, okay, we're gonna get through this. And two, you know, just to show you I've aligned your new incentive program so that if you do this, you know, everybody benefits, right?

So, yeah. Yeah. Um, you also said something that I believe is a really great, I'll say, um, evolution of a concept that's been very, um, important to this community psychological safety. Right.

And you said psychologically encouraged, right? Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about That? It comes from actually an extension of, uh, sort of traditional safety, right?

So it, you know, a lot of the businesses that I'm in, we're operating in hazardous environments, and, uh, so they're manufacturing environments or they're operational environments, and, uh, you know, if you don't have your witts about you, you can really get hurt. Mm-hmm. Well, traditionally, the way to track those is that, uh, we want to make sure that, uh, we have minimal, if not zero reports of injuries, right? Mm-hmm.

Osha, reportables, you know, it's a language that, uh, that builds up. And I always thought, well, you know, really what we're talking about is, uh, you know, trying to minimize the harm that we do to our people. And so, you know, I was trying to think about it just by engineering mind on a, on a graph, we're trying, you know, if if positive is actually doing some good for somebody and negative is hurting them, all we're doing is maybe trying to get up to zero. Yeah.

I said, I'd really like to cross over into the positive so that not only for sure we're not gonna do any harm to them, injure them or something, but let's make sure that they go home a little bit better than they came to work that day, or that deployment, or whatever it might be. Let's get up into the positive. And so this is really just a, an extension of that concept in the idea of psychological safety. Certainly, we wouldn't want to, uh, you know, kind of tear into somebody for an idea that they might have shared.

They share that from deep within themselves, right? It's a piece of themselves that they're exposing. It's a very vulnerable time. And so, you know, certainly you wouldn't wanna attack that, that psychological safety, but what can we do, particularly as we're sort of addressing a post covid workforce to encourage, you know, their contribution psychologically, encourage them to identify themselves more and more with the thing that we're trying to do together, right?

Yeah. And so I think that that's, it's a challenge for leadership, right? I mean, it's a really different way of thinking about things where, uh, just as we said during the talk, not only are you gonna ask them to do something to contribute to the mission and move the ball down the field, but as a leader, I'm gonna hold myself responsible to do something for them. Mm-hmm.

So that they feel like, wow, this is making me a better person, you know? Yeah. As I participate in this, Um, I used to like to share this story. At one point, I, I did a site tour at a furniture manufacturer in like northern Washington state.

Yeah. And the c e o said his role in the organization, and frankly, what he expected of his leaders was to make sure every employee ended their day with joy in their heart. Yeah. Thought what a powerful, you know, intent, right?

Yeah. It sounds very similar. Very Similar. So clear.

Yeah. But it, just because it's simple and clear, it does not mean that it's easy. Right? Exactly.

And so some of these things are actually okay, I understand what the, uh, what, what the goal is, but reaching that goal, right? I've gotta really bring my best leadership self Yes. To that. Especially as you mentioned this, uh, this transferring into very different, um, workforce model, right?

Like in that case, there's a physical presence where you can, you know, you can see your team every day. Yeah. In this new model, it's like, you've gotta figure out other tactics too. It's just so interesting, Courtney, because the default, you know, the starting point is 100% different than it was before Covid.

Mm-hmm. We sort of had an expectation before that, that, you know, for better or for worse, people are gonna come to work, they're gonna leave their homes in the morning, they're gonna slog through some kind of a commute, they're gonna show up, they're gonna be physically present there no matter how that went, and then they're gonna slog back, et cetera. Uh, that was the starting point. Yeah.

That was the expectation from which we all began. Now, I think the starting point is maybe just the opposite. Hey, I'm gonna try and do everything I can without leaving home at all. Yeah.

You know? And so, all right. What does that mean? I think that there's real value for getting together physically together, you know, uh, physically in each other's company.

Uh, I think we're social beings at the end of the day, but, uh, boy, I'll tell, you know, uh, as, as it connected as we are, there's an awful lot of lonely people out there. Yeah. So bringing them into that, well, you gotta compel it. You gotta entice them.

You gotta make sure that they see value in that, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah.

And joy is the thing. I think joy is the thing. I agree. Yeah.

I feel like that that's just a good framing. Yeah. Yeah. That's really great.

Um, well, I wanna thank you again for just everything you've done for this community. And, um, is there any like, last minute, like advice that you'd wanna give the, I think we ended on exactly the right note. Uh, Courtney is that, uh, if you, no matter where you are actually, because everybody's leading and following to a different degree, right? Mm-hmm.

So we're all sort of leaders in some way, and we're all followers in some way. But if we can really try and commit both, uh, to our leadership, to our, maybe our followers, to our peers, to some sense of responsibility for their professional and personal joy mm-hmm. That would make such a huge difference. And you, you kind of attach that to, uh, the mission of the team.

And I think, uh, just as we talked about, we'll be absolutely stunned by the results. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful.

Okay. Thanks again. You too.