The Breakdown Ep 39 - Christian anschuetz on community and innovative thinking

- Do it do it. All right, welcome everybody, it is Monday, May 21st. We have a great show today. We have Christian Anschuetz joining us today. He's the chief digital officer at Underwriter Laboratories. He's also a Marine Corps veteran and he's doing a lot of other stuff as well too. So, we're actually not gonna do the intro today. We're just gonna kinda dive right into this one. Christian, welcome. - Hey, glad to be here. - Awesome, so you just got back, you just recently evacuated from the forest fire it sounds like just yesterday. - Yeah, boy, we really leapt right into the highlight reel, huh? (laughing) Yeah, so one of the things I do in addition to working for UL is I'm the chairman of just a really cool non-profit veteran cause. Non-profit, it's called Project Reload. Look it up, projectreload.org Really, really cool concept. We essentially are demand drivers for companies who want to pull in veteran talent and we do that by making some really deep emotional connections with executive participants, where we teach them leadership. But we do this in a unique way. We do it in partnership with the Department of Defense and on military bases and we basically run pseudo military operations over two to three day period and they get to know the veterans very, very well and they get really understand their character, which is so critical. And I just got back yesterday, which was what, the 20th? We had the first mission for the year. It was fun filled, it was exciting. We had air strikes, artillery of all sorts and et cetera and I get to observe that and be part of a lot of those activities and somehow in all that, there was a forest fire. And so, we're bivouacking out on the field. You know, we've got all the military tentage, we've got the approved combat shelters, the GPs, and we all of a sudden are wondering why we're getting smoked out of our little bivouac and we hadn't started any fire. We did a little recon and a quarter mile away, there was a fast moving fire moving towards us. So we did that DD now, DD now, we just got the heck out of there and evacuated the site. I think the site is no more. The porta johns that were there are probably no more but we got all of our gear out of there. It as pretty exciting, though. - Giving a whole new meaning to the term Sunday Funday. - Yeah, oh yeah, the whole thing about Project Reload is that we build team, we create a real tribe and we do it at like light speed, right, over a three day period and the thing that makes is happen more than anything is the adversity. Now lots of times we script the adversity, that's all part of the curriculum, this, we had so many things go that was unscripted this time and the forest fire, you know, being kind of like the main one. I mean it didn't put a wrench in all of our plans, but it just was perfect. I wouldn't have changed a thing about it. Talk about a group of executives and veterans that really came together as a tribe like that, there's nothin' like having to pull up tent stakes like really fast under the threat of a fast approaching forest fire to kind of like really make people depend on one another, count on one another, and bond with one another. - It's very real. - Yeah, it was very real. It was very fun, actually. It doesn't sound fun. Yeah, it was fun, it was a lot of fun. - I mean everybody loves that adrenaline rush. Yeah, so backing up a little bit I do wanna get a little deeper into Project Reload, so you were in the Marines. - Indeed, Semper Fi, yeah, Semper Fi. - When, or what did you do in the Marines? - So I started off as a, I went to the Marines after I graduated from the University of Michigan, so I was a 2nd Lieutenant, Butterbar. I went into what was the first Stinger Company, or Stinger Battery, Stinger Battalion, essentially, you know what stingers are? - Yeah. - It's a rocket, you shoot the, so we were always attached to the infantry, providing that low altitude air defense and then after the Gulf War happened, so I went in '90, after the Gulf War there was a big draw down. You're too young to know about it probably, but there was and that's all right. - Yeah, it's all good. - And then I went into comm. So I became a comm. And then after eight years I got out. I enjoyed every minute of it. - That's amazing. What do you, so how do you go from the Marine Corps to what you do now, chief digital officer at Underwriter Labs, so what like safety compliance software, how did you go into IT, how did you get into IT Solutions and like what was the track like? - You know, that's a really good question. So how do you go from whatever I was doing, I mean I studied Econ, and then I went into a weapons system battalion, to comm, to getting out and I decided I wanted to start my own company right away and I did that in technology, nobody knew what they were doing in technology and I didn't either so it was easy to bluff my way through it, and I mean it was '98 right, and built a really nice little company and it was fantastic and one of the companies I was consulting for was a really large advertising company. I thought I kind of wanna do advertising 'cause I love marketing and media. People ask me what my background is and I always say I was a trained motivational speaker and they go really, how do you do that? I said well I was a leader in the United States Marine Corps, and that's really, I mean that's where you really learn to do motivational speaking. It's not, everyone thinks the military is command and control. I think corporate environments are way more command and control than the military actually. But I wanted to go into this communication realm of marketing, PR, advertising and I decided I'd just let my company continue to run. I put it under a really good friend of mine who continued to run that company up until just a year ago and I got into advertising. One thing led to another and I was the CIO of the third largest communication group in the world, a French company by the name of Publicis and after a while I just said I've done enough of this and I quit. I didn't have a plan, I was just gonna quit and then I heard about this company, it was Underwriters Laborotories but it's UL now, but they were lookin' for someone to lead them in this space and I said yeah, I want to do that 'cause this is a company that's focused on safety and sustainability, you know, missions for humanity and you know, I'm a service minded guy, right? I wanna do something that actually contributes to the world and so I called 'em up and I said I'm the guy you've gotta hire. And that sort of direct action you know, doing my thing, and I became the CIO and then after awhile I became the chief digital officer. - That's amazing, all you gotta do is ask sometimes. - You know, for the veterans and non-veterans here avoid underestimating yourself and never forget that direct action is the best action. If you need something, you want something, then go get it, don't wait for it. There's no one gonna come and deliver it, you know, it's not gonna be landed in your lap. If you need something, you want something, go for it, it actually does work. And by the way, when you're doin' that feel free to ask for help, 'cause people wanna help and if you need help and you're going for something you'll find people that'll try to connect you. It's happened to you, I'm sure of it. - Absolutely, especially in this community. This has been-- - A great one. - Yeah, I read that at Publicis that you were, I don't know if the words in charge, but like leading, 17,000. Is that correct, in varying departments and industries but like maybe that wrong, but-- - That was, that was, yeah I had a big role. That was the, I was providing the, as CIO, I was providing technology solutions to 17,000. 17,000 actually reported to the CEO and that was actually early in my career when I got to be the CIO of the large organization, it was 64, 120,000 I don't even remember now, it was a lot. But no, we had a huge scope of responsibility, and we had a large number of people working in our departments. - Which is, I think, maybe I'm wrong or being presumptuous, but I think that your experience in the military is probably what allowed you to come in and see a situation and trust that, when you have a common goal, to trust people and say you know, this person has value, like they, nobody wants to go out and let people down basically, so I mean, I don't know, I think building a team is difficult especially when it's thousands of people, I've never done it, so I don't know. I don't know where I'm goin' with this. - Well I can say this, you know, so much of what helped shape me does go back, it's not hyperbole, it was my family, my parents, but beyond that the very next thing that helped shape me was my time in the Marine Corps. It was in the Marine Corps that you really learn like how to, I mean you actually learn leadership. I mean they spend, they put that book in your face and you have to memorize stuff, but while you're memorizing that what you're really doing is you're observing the people that actually model it and they set such a great example that you want to aspire to and it starts to shape and change your behavior. And so much of my post military success has been related to the skills and the understanding of people and this ability to really trust people to perform and hold them accountable when they don't. When you trust people they'll give you everything they've got and if you hold 'em accountable then they kind of know the bar they have to get past and you combine those things and you take care of the very, very few people that actually don't earn the trust or don't maintain it and that can't handle accountability, you let those people go. But everybody else, by just focusing on those two things, it's kind of like they blossom. And so my success in terms of, you know, the roles, the jobs, the company I started or whatever, it's been very, very little about me, it's been, my only role has really been find the people, trust 'em, hold 'em accountable or let 'em go. And then they just take off and do amazing things. - Right, so there's like, don't try and tell people what to do, or you know, lead them. Give them a mission or a common goal and it's very much about Project Reload being like, I think it applies anywhere, is you need to motivate people to want to accomplish something greater than that very little tiny task that they're doing at that moment, something much bigger than that. And that's like, I think that's probably what Project Reload, to an extent, is getting people to come work together around a common mission, a common goal, and yeah, there's a lot to be said about that, 'cause I feel like people get caught up so often being a micromanager, like especially in the startup space. When it's your baby you don't wanna you know, like, let go. You know, you're starting an app and you have these three people, like, I did this, like, you know, you start an app and then you're like I have complete control. I don't really wanna go talk to customers today but I don't want you to either, or maybe I do, or like, you know, write this press release, but let me read every word of it and then change it-- - Only I can do this and I don't have time to do this. That's a great way to cause yourself to stumble. You know, one of the things we do at Project Reload is we again, we make these connections, we drive this demand for veteran talent based on the character and skills, and soft skills that they exhibit during these missions, yet we are really, really effective at providing some really basic and at the same time, basic but immersive leadership experience and it starts off, the very first day it starts off with us going through a mission order and talking about commander's intent. And there's nothing more important than being really clear on your intent because I can't tell you how many organizations I see that have, they're successful because they have just really, really great talent working hard and being successful but they're not working together, and so there's so much of, like there's so much friction there, there's so much left on the table that if the intent was conveyed to them in such a way that they knew what they were going for and sort of the why of it that they would find better ways to work than you know, be stuck in silos and fighting with one another over turf and whatnot. There's a lot of things the military does that if it were applied smartly to the corporate environment which would unlock an incredible amount of potential in companies. - Well I guess I can segue into that, like how does a big corporate entity, like that's, this is kind of a shift, but you know, a slow moving organization, I read a Forbes article that you were featured in that said that you had increased revenues I think it was like 365 percent that year by bringing people who were very focused on, remind me of what it was, experience-- - Experience design, yeah. - Experience design, bringing people to, you know, go talk to customers, go actually interact with the product, go in like see how it's made, go like learn everything about it and in doing that, it's not a huge thing, it's basically go outside and go and take pride in your job for a second kind of, and I mean there's an ROI, when you invest in your employees and you invest in innovation, there's a return-- - There's a payback, and the example you're citing was one customer which was a very large customer that because we went and we immersed ourselves in their environment and we simply listened to them and simultaneously observed them, we were able to give them something they'd never thought of before. We wouldn't have thought about it, but together, we kind of conceived of it together, you know, co-created it and it led to really great financial results. The thing about innovation in large companies I think that's really important for us to consider is that there are roles like Chief Innovation Officer, I've heard of that role, I've heard of like the innovation division of a company, you know, maybe that works for some companies and if it does that's awesome. I think if you look at like the company I'm with now, UL, which is a fantastic company, one of the things that makes it fantastic is the 14,000 people that work for 'em. And every single one of them is and has been innovative. So the key is actually creating the mechanisms that allow them to communicate, express, and then start to, you know, figure out how you pinpoint the things that are most likely to come back and result in a financial return because it creates a unique value for the customer. How do you create the mechanisms that pull those forward, you know, identify them and then pull 'em forward and then do something with 'em? It's, I think it's wrong for companies, it's wrong for our company to thing that there's a group that's responsible for innovation when we've got 14,000 people that do it all the time. - Yeah, that's wild 'cause I mean, on the other side, how do you not create complete chaos by having 14,000 people all thinking they can, I don't know-- - Life is chaos, though, and if you've got 14,000 people that believe that they have, when they have a good idea and they can find a way to express that idea, and even be told no, but they feel like they can raise a voice and they can come up with something new and unique and innovative and someone will at least listen to them long enough to give 'em a no, what do you think that does to people? It motivates them, they want the chance to even be told no. No is a great answer. I'd rather have a fast no. - It is an answer-- - It's an answer. But what happens most of the time? (talking over one another) God, if I had said something would they think I'm stupid, you know, and we're working really hard to build a culture that is, you know, this great idea, let's figure out how we can invest in it, let's take it somewhere, yet despite that, most of the ideas are, you know what? It's not gonna work right now, but god dangit, that was a great, man, you put your heart and soul into that. I love how you're thinking, keep up doing it, you know, we wanna hear more from you. You know, by you having the courage to come forth and pitch this idea it really shows there's a lot to you. You know, people walk away from a no highly motivated and that's what we want. - That's remarkable. I mean in my, and this is not like a blanket statement, but in my experience in having conversations with people who are working in the innovation space within a large corporation, typically they're like I don't know if we want our employees focusing any time at all on something that they might like fall in love with and it'll crush 'em if it's not like, and my pushback is always kind of like why? If their passionate about something and they wanna make a change and they did their homework and they find out that they can save money for your company or it could be a spin off or like the company could invest in it or any other-- - You just never know. - You just never know. - You just never know. Look, I'll take people's passion any day. There's a simple, simple fact. We see this in people that we have throughout all of our lives. People are the best at things when they love the thing, so the person that loves, I don't know, say music, or a certain sport or their profession of accounting or something, that preference predicts performance and when you can find somebody who's really passionate about something and you can find it aligns to what you're trying to do as a company, that's powerful. If you can find that they're just passionate and contributing, that'll unlock that. In the end, the thing that drives people more than anything is actually just being valued and there's no way to value a person really better than listening to them and giving them positive reinforcement. - Yeah, that's great. I think I don't know, this might be a little bit of a tangent, but in the context of corporate innovation if you wanna call it that, or just anything, I think that there's a stigma or it's just not true that a big company, you can never go sell to a big company because they can figure it out themselves and what I mean by that is, here's a good example. There's this company, so Walgreen's, obviously they own locations around the country and a company came in and said, this person came in and said how do you do your landscaping at Walgreen's locations? Walgreen's said you know, we hire people to do it. He's like how much does that cost you every single year? They're like obviously millions and millions of dollars. He's like I'll manage your landscaping for you for a fraction of the cost and it's just an agreement that we have. Now that company's huge and manages, all they do is landscaping, but being able to go to a big company and say I'm gonna do one thing really, really, really, really well. It's gonna save you guys a ton of money. It's not gonna be super expensive to pay me for it. I think that's just, I try to reiterate that a lot that there are opportunities out there to make changes-- - There are a ton of opportunities. If you look at like Walgreen's, which is a really great company, and they're in that convenience, they're a leader in convenience shopping. I'm not exactly sure what their mission is, but that's, I think that's what they lead in is convenience shopping. That's their core competency. Is landscaping their core competency? How about manage the payroll of the employees that work for 'em? That's why you have ADPs. How about cleaning the facilities? How about just roofing them? You know and construction to build them. So there's all sorts of things that innovative people can do to start companies and I know Bunker Labs, you're helping our veterans to start these companies. You focus, if you can understand what the focus is of a Walgreen's and you can figure out how you allow them to continue to focus even more, in other words, take in your example, take away the overhead of landscaping. If you can figure out how to help them either focus more or refine their focus so that they can deliver more value to their customers in the segment that they're serving then you create that kind of value, they'll find ways to pay you. Because they were paying for the landscaping anyway, right? - Yeah. - So. - Yeah, exactly. - There was money there, there was money being spent. - I wanna hit on this real quick, we're runnin' low on time for us, around strategic partnerships. So partners, so at Bunker we have some strategic partnerships, like We Work is one of our partners, and it makes sense for us to work together. Project Reload, you guys, who are some of your partners and how do you align yourself and go to these people and say like this just makes perfect sense. You like, I don't know how to say it, this just makes sense. - So in, lemme answer the question this way. We've had participant, executive participants from, I don't know, half of the Fortune 10, we're new, we're young like you, even younger as a matter of fact, and so we've had corporate executives from really tremendous firms and we have a whole bunch more in queue for future missions this year, so if you defined our partners in that way then what we, we find our partners because we find that there is an understanding amongst certain corporate leaders, I'd like to say most, that the, we're in the talent war right now, I mean there is simply not enough talent, right? And so we identified those corporate leaders that know they need great talent and we provide them a very, very clear line of sight to the value that they can derive from tapping into the veteran community, right, and the veterans are often perceived in general, for any veterans who are watchin' this, cover your ears, you don't wanna hear this, you know veterans are often perceived as very command and control, often broken, often seeming to needing entitlement, there's a lot of reasons for that to be the case and we undo that narrative and we say look, you need top talent, here are a great pool of underutilized talent resources which are veterans and here are the soft skills that they have and so when we demonstrate that they leave saying we need more of these men and women, so the partnerships really spring up around the need. And it's when you have an executive that knows they need talent and they're willing to say okay, how do veterans fill those talent needs, and we're not lookin' for you know, we're looking to put veterans in good leadership roles and-- - You're pretty good at it if I remember correctly from-- - Our stats are off the charts. We do really well in terms of meeting our metrics. And by the way, if I haven't mentioned it, it's a platinum level 501(c)(3), which means I think in our case, it's 89 percent of all the funds raised go towards the mission and that's goin' up all the time. We've only been around for two and a half years. - That's crazy. - Check it out, it is the coolest thing you've ever seen in terms of, you wanna see some funny stuff, I wish I could show the blooper reel but we can't do that, but when you take these executives out, and some of them have yet to sort of be in the field and you're conducting these military operations, I mean, tactical convoy operations, weapons handling, call for fire, key leader engagements, all this really cool stuff the veterans do, and these executives are immersed in these environments, some really funny stuff happens because you get people out of their element, and, but there's a couple cool videos out there if you wanna check it out. And some really cool videos that will never be released. - That's awesome. Last thing we do is this thing called Hacks and we basically just offer like free or cheap or interesting resource whether that be a book, a podcast, or like a website or something that you use that makes your life more convenient or efficient and like me for example, I'll go first, there's a really cool website called Quick MVP that allows you to kind of create your, for those who don't know MVP, your minimum viable product, you can create like a website that doesn't really work, but you can send it to people and see if they'll sign up or pay for things and it'll bring them to the step of you're about to make the transaction and they're like nevermind, this isn't live yet, so it's this whole process you can go through to build, Quick MVP, I think it's just quickmvp.com, but it allows you to build your site or build newsletters, everything you need to go and test your ideas before you go to spend $25,000 on your next big project, spend a day doing this. - Ferret it out and you'll save a lot of time and a lot of money. I love that, I'll check that out. So what's my hack? You know, I'll actually, three things, but two things real quick. If you're into podcasts there's two podcasts I swear by. One is, everyone knows, it's Tim Ferriss, and the other one is less known, it's Legends and Losers, those are two great podcasts. Both of 'em interview like the highest performers in whatever field or discipline or art and they do that to distill what are the attributes, what are things that kind of supercharge those people to those heights of success. Which then gets me to the hack. I highly encourage everybody to consider the following. The Marine Corps does it now as a primary activity. Learn to meditate, contemplative arts, you know, really in the Marine Corps we always wanted to work our bodies but you also have work your brain and if you really get into the contemplative arts and you really learn how to master your brain it unlocks so much more potential, and it will lead you to be that much more in whatever it is that you're doing than you might otherwise do. - That's awesome. I didn't know the Marines started doin' that. The Air Force has been doin' that for years. That's like half what it is. - Yeah, hey, read the book 10 Percent Happier. Great book, kind of spells it out, it's a really great book that kind of makes it real and not too mystic. - Awesome, thank you Christian, thank you very much. - Pleasure, thanks for your time. - We'll do this again soon, seriously. - I'd love it. - Okay, yeah, last thing actually. Where am I lookin? This one. Bunker Brews, so for those of you who are new to the program, every single month in cities around the country we host Bunker Brews. It's a place for veterans who wanna start businesses to come and mingle with other veterans who wanna start businesses, but also subject matter experts. Christian, you hosted one a couple months ago. - Yeah, they're awesome. - Yeah, so we do them all over, so check the website and check the app and they're usually posted on there. And there's 22 Bunker Labs locations now. - Yeah, can you believe it, you guys are rockin' it. I love it, absolutely love it, and attend the Bunker Brews. They're actually a great way to meet some really fascinating people, make some really great connections, and a real vibrant ecosystem, so I, I'm not part of the Bunker Labs, but I endorse it because I see the value that they bring. Bunker Brews, man. - Thank you for the endorsement. So yeah, Bunker Brews, go to Bunker Brews, it's a great time and free beer. And then let's see next week we're gonna be off Memorial Day, Happy Memorial Day everybody, and then we will be kind of entering a new era of The Breakdown following that, so stay tuned for some big changes. Amy, take us out. - [Amy] Okay. - Thanks everybody.