Bryan Schielke 0:00

Thanks for joining, Ivan. Really appreciate it and uh looking forward to getting to know you a little bit more here today. Likewise. Likewise. Okay, we'll jump right in here. You've built your career around people, leadership, and strategic growth. What do great leaders consistently understand about talent that others miss?

Ivan Isreal 0:16

I think the thing that great leaders realize about talent is that it's not something that you necessarily are going to get pre-packaged when you have someone come in, right? Talent needs developed. So while you may see an inkling of something, you'd be surprised how many people who didn't show these ridiculously talented qualities in the 45-minute interview or the half-hour interview, whatever it is, they end up being your superstars oftentimes. Talent needs to be developed, it needs to be nurtured. It's like anything else. I'm very much a nurture versus nature type person when it comes to talent. Both of them matter, but I think it's really important that as we as leaders, we're not kicking out people just because they don't show certain things initially, because oftentimes the most impactful people are the people that you didn't necessarily expect to be.

Bryan Schielke 1:14

That's awesome. Yep, absolutely. Very good lesson there. All right, let's go to the next one here. Your background combines mechanical engineering with business leadership. How's that mix shape the way you build teams and solve problems?

Ivan Isreal 1:27

I love that question. And part of the answer is in is in the question, the problem solving. So engineering at its base, at its core to me, was learning how to think and that thinking being how to solve problems. We would have problems that would take a day to solve, that would take three days to solve, right? Being able to dedicate that much brain power into one objective for a consistent period of time is something that you don't run into often outside of, you know, certain sectors and certain fields. And so when you do that and you learn how to iterate in college, where you actually do have to iterate over and over and over, solving problem after problem and thinking about things in different ways, that teaches you how to be a leader in that, at least for me, I felt like I could do anything. Any problem, it wasn't a matter of saying, hey, I'll never forget when I started my business. And actually I started a new startup here uh not too long ago. I'd have people say, that seems like a really difficult thing to do. How do you, how do you know where to start? Right. And so the answer to that is right where I'm at. Right? You can't start anywhere but where you're at. You know, it's it's kind of like pretty intuitive. And then you say, okay, where am I now? And all I have to know is the two questions and I can figure out the rest, right? Where am I now and where do I want to be? If I know those two things, I know that I can I can ideate, I can figure out how to get there. To me, it's like problem solving is like saying, okay, I know I'm in Columbus, Ohio right now. I need to get to Seattle. Okay, how do I want to get there? You know, the rest are just details. And that's how I see problems, right? The rest is just details. Like, do I take plane, train, automobile? Do I leave at six? Do I leave at seven? What am I packing? You know, the rest is just there. So looking at work that way and even life in that way has made it substantially easier to build to do pretty much anything.

Bryan Schielke 3:33

Good for you. That's amazing. Yeah, I love it. Figure it out, right?

Ivan Isreal 3:36

Yeah.

Bryan Schielke 3:36

Yeah. All right, good stuff. All right, let's jump into the next one here. You've worked across government aerospace and private enterprise. What are the biggest differences in leadership and culture between those two worlds?

Ivan Isreal 3:47

Yeah, so I'd say the difference between private enterprise and government are in government, you are dealing with people who aren't necessarily, I know this is it's a bit of a stereotype, but oftentimes they're just looking to stick with the status quo, make their money, get to their pension, right? Work their nine to five or eight to four, whatever, and go home, right? In private enterprise, you more often get the actors who are saying, you know what, I don't want to just work a nine to five. I want to move it, I want to push the needle, right? I want to move things forward, push the envelope, rather. And that is the exciting part of private enterprise for me, is just what comes out of that, right? That's human ingenuity. That's the difference between the United States and the CCP, right? We have, you know, we're not, we're not kind of in this regimented thing, and we're not just looking to do our thing and, you know, get by. I was at a at a fundraiser event in Atlanta, and I ran into some Swedish founders, and they just couldn't believe how friendly the United States is toward entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are celebrated here. That's why we're talking, right? Entrepreneurship is celebrated. Whereas you go to the EU and it's the opposite, apparently. At least according to these gentlemen, they said, you know, you say you're an entrepreneur, and folks say, you know, like, why are you doing that? Why are you thinking outside of the box? But that's one of the things that makes America great. And I think that's one of the main differences between government and private enterprise. Yeah, big difference.

Bryan Schielke 5:35

That's fantastic. All right, good stuff. Uh, let's jump into the next one here. You often speak about looking beyond the resume when hiring. What qualities make someone a game-changing hire, even if they don't check every single box?

Ivan Isreal 5:46

Yeah, I was talking about earlier about the ability to solve problems and having a can-do attitude. The last thing I need when I'm busy doing wearing so many hats, multiple hats as a leader. The last thing I need is someone bringing a problem to me that they have not attempted to solve on their own. Because most problems can be solved with a little bit of thought. So people like that are invaluable. From a very young age, I realized that I found it important for myself to provide value to people, to provide value to bosses. And my way of doing that has always been, and especially once I got to my professional career, is being able to provide value by not bringing them problems, right? By solving problems. Now, obviously, some things you can't solve. Sometimes you might have to talk to the boss. But in general, I would say good, 75-80% of the time, most problems can be solved on your own if you're willing to take the initiative and do so. Absolutely.

Bryan Schielke 6:52

Yeah. Bring solutions rather than just problems.

Ivan Isreal 6:55

Yeah.

Bryan Schielke 6:55

Yeah. Love it. Okay. All right, let's jump into the next one. In today's rapidly changing workforce, how should companies rethink recruitment and retention if they want to stay competitive?

Ivan Isreal 7:06

So, recruitment and retention, I think companies need to get back to the old school way of doing things. Not everything, but there are some things from the past that worked really well. My grandfather, he had a sixth grade education, and then he um was done with school and started working in the tobacco fields in Georgia. And then he made his way up to the Cincinnati area, Ohio, a place called Hamilton, where they had a manufacturing plant for GM called Fisher Body. Fisher Body, they made parts for GM. He worked there from the age of 16 until he retired at the age of he was 60 when he retired from there. So he worked there for a very long time. When he retired, his pension was at the time, it was a substantial amount of money per month. And once he died, that pension transferred to my grandmother, his wife, and she had it until she passed. Now, you never see anything like that right now. Not even close. And that's part of the reason why you don't have retention anywhere near what it used to be. It's similar to a marriage, right? At some point, if one person is breaking the contract, the other person's going to start breaking the contract, right? And so that contract began to be broken by employers. You had a workforce that had a very um high retention rate across the board because you did offer things, you offered a good living. You know, your living didn't have to be subsidized, and once you were done, you were done. You could have a pension. Social Security, nice to have, but you didn't necessarily have to have it. That doesn't exist anymore. So as country, as individuals began to catch on to what companies were doing, of course they're going to leap. They're going to switch jobs, they're going to do whatever they have to do to do what's best for their family, which is to earn more money, right? They'll leave for an extra 10, 15, $20 an hour. Whereas my grandfather wouldn't have done that, right? He had a good job, had a pension, he didn't think of living for, you know, over 40 years. So I would say that's the biggest thing is offering the benefits. Offering, you know, obviously when you're dealing with like a Fortune 100 company, you have a board, you have all these other things that CEOs don't necessarily have control over. But especially as a small company, you see many small companies moving back to that. They're giving their employees stock options, part of not just stock options, sizable amounts of the company, you know. So when they go public, this person's a millionaire, you know, half of the company are millionaires. You have these things going on. I think the more that you offer to people, the better you treat people, the better it ends up. And you have to have some altruism in you, but the thing is, it's good business too, right? It's good business in the long run. It may look good on the sheets this year, but in the long run, the better your retention is, the better you're off your company is, even if it costs you a bit more in the short term to make sure people are taken care of. 100%.

Bryan Schielke 10:23

You got that commitment from both sides, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I love that. Yeah. Old school. Big fam. Okay. Last question here for you. You've emphasized the importance of people speaking up, even junior employees. How do leaders create cultures where people genuinely feel safe contributing ideas?

Ivan Isreal 10:40

So speaking up in general is about having courage, right? You have to have the courage. But from a corporate standpoint, your environment, just ask the questions. As a leader, ask questions. Open up the room to people. Do it on a regular basis. Have that culture of saying, hey, if you not just if you see something, say something. If you have an idea, bring it, have a system for that. You're seeing companies do that nowadays, whereas you didn't used to have that. Nationwide insurance was offered to purchase a company called uh Root Insurance in their fledgling stages. I'm not sure if you've ever you've ever heard of them, but fast forward five or six years later, Root was worth, I think it was like a $3 billion unicorn out of Columbus, and Nationwide was selling off quite a bit of their assets in the automobile insurance insurance industry because they didn't buy that company. But more importantly, they didn't have an internal mechanism for innovators and for people looking to create new things. And that's the big thing is having that ecosystem internal is integral for a company, no matter how big, to stay relevant. So it's not just about encouraging it, it's about survival. And now you see companies like Nationwide, JJ, Cardinal Health, they have internal incubators, right? Because they realize that a lot of this talent was just they would just quit and start a business, right? And you'll still have some of that. But now they realize hey, we're creating our competitors because we don't have an environment that fosters that knowledge, that fosters that hunger that comes from young talent, young people who are looking to change things.

Bryan Schielke 12:28

Yeah.

Ivan Isreal 12:29

Keep those opportunities, right? That makes sense.