Rich Fernandez
Hello, everybody, and welcome again to our Return on Intelligence podcast. I'm your host, Rich Fernandez from SIY Global. And today I'm really excited to introduce you to Pete Schramm. Pete, welcome. First of all.
Pete Schramm
Thanks Rich. Hey everybody!
Rich Fernandez
And let me just tell you all a little bit about Pete. so Pete is by training a mechanical engineer, but before he was a mechanical engineer, he grew up on a farm. and it brings a lot of that, I think, in his bio. Pete, you like to say you learned your work ethic and some lessons in life and work from the farm.
Rich Fernandez
Which then you took into becoming a mechanical engineer. Worked for a number of years, in the defense industry, Lockheed Martin, eventually. And making an interesting, I think, shift into the air technology space. you're a book author as well? I'd love to talk to you about your book today, which is entitled Pathfinders Navigating Your Career Map with a Personal Board of Advisors.
Rich Fernandez
And I think from learning about you a little bit, I know that, your big Y is to help, you know, foster, the potential in people because you love people. So excited to have this conversation with you about everything from career development and leadership to maybe some lessons you learned on the farm basketball court, the defense industry, all the above.
Pete Schramm
Yeah, that's a lot of what not to do. And we'll sprinkle in a couple of, hey, maybe you should try this on for size along the way.
Rich Fernandez
All right. That's awesome. And I know that, you are currently you have, platform called latitude, which really, takes, like the other pieces of employee engagement, that aren't necessarily addressed and tries to operationalize them. So can you tell us a little bit about latitude?
Pete Schramm
Yeah. Of course. So there's the transactional side of HR and compliance side. A lot of people are fantastic at that. And then there's the relational side of HR that a lot of people sort of forget about or check the box. And over the last six years, realized that there was a gap. So I said, how can we connect people in the workplace?
Pete Schramm
And so it started off as a networking concept. First pivot. then we said we should get into mentorship. And then they said, well, how do you measure the effectiveness of mentorship? Well, we should probably build in some surveys. Okay. Now we have a baseline and we can see progress over time. And I can connect with these different people.
Pete Schramm
Early career, mid career, late career. What if there was a way for me to actually understand them? What do I talk about with these people. So the methodology from the book has been broken down. So now on latitude people can map out their careers, build a personal board of advisors. We help them understand what to talk about in each of those conversations.
Pete Schramm
So literally a career companion for people in the workforce.
Rich Fernandez
That's so cool. And I think that's needed the people side of HR. And, and we found that those are trainable skills. So it's it's really exciting to hear that your platform, you know, does that. And I think in your book, I mean that is part of the subject of your book. yeah. I love the title Pathfinders Navigating your Career Map with a Personal Board of Directors.
Rich Fernandez
So could you break that down for us a little bit? Career map. First of all, tell us about what that concept is and then you know how to build or what is a personal board of directors.
Pete Schramm
Yeah, definitely. So we we like to say personal board of advisors. you can go back and forth personal board of directors. It's kind of whenever you abbreviate PBA, PBD. PBA rolls off the tongue a little bit easier. and so that's the piece there. Again, I'm an engineer, so I try and make things really simple. Here's a copy of the book.
Pete Schramm
you see right on the front cover, like Rich mentioned, career map, personal board of advisors. So I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you that I'm going to tell you I'm going to tell you what I told you. So again, from the piece of what am I supposed to talk about with these guides and mentors along the way?
Pete Schramm
What's a whole lot easier if I come to you and I say, hey, Rich, I'm super pumped to talk with you. you know, we had one introductory discovery conversation. You're somebody that I look up to, right? You've been in roles and positions and, seats and situations that I aspired to be like. I'd love for you to, you know, mentor me a little bit.
Pete Schramm
I'd probably go about asking that a little bit differently. But imagine I come in to our second and third conversation with something, an asset that you're able to look at before and after our conversation together. There's something that can be very valuable is this concept of a career map. It shows where I've been, the jobs, the education, certification achievements, and some of the fun stuff to where I've been, where I'm at, where I want to go.
Pete Schramm
And you might say, well, Pete, LinkedIn and your resume already tell you where you've been to. They show those five different dimensions in the book. I call it the four quadrants plus one. So my engineering buddies get really mad at that. They're like four quadrants. It's four things I but I need the fifth one. I'm there too. And it's a little bit of the thumb concept, right.
Pete Schramm
The fun pieces. But what LinkedIn and your resume don't do is forecast that where you want to go in the future, let alone the couple of different paths. Right. See, that you might be able to take. So now you see this, you know, digitized inside the latitude platform. All right. I understand where Pete's been. And I see kind of wants to go this way for these reasons and maybe this way for those reasons and maybe some of this piece over here and where he's aspiring to get to now, you're able to have so much more insight on where I've been, where I'm at, where I want to go, and some of the skills that
Pete Schramm
I've developed and some of the skills that I think I need in the future, and you're able to provide so much more guidance and input and based on your experiences and kind of, hey, the what to do, what not to do.
Rich Fernandez
Got it. When somebody comes for a personal board of advisors or tries to kind of enroll or engage with one, you're already equipped with your career map, or are they helping you construct it?
Pete Schramm
Both. That's that's exactly right. So inside the technology, you're able to put together kind of a revolution, right? We teach people how to fish and then they start fishing, if you will. Right. Put together that first piece. And I don't have all the answers, especially if I'm early career or even some of the mid-career individuals. That's where I come to you and say, hey, you know, I want to go work at Google.
Pete Schramm
I want to be a lead, right? I want to do these kinds of things. And then I share it with you. I share it with the other individuals on my personal board of advisors. So this is kind of think diversity in action, right. Getting diversity of thought and insight and perspective. We're not just checking a box with this thing.
Pete Schramm
We're actually walking the walk and talking the talk. So now I have this thing that is kind of where I want to go, the map of and path and paths of my journey. And now I'm able to get the kind of not crowdsource, but these, these, you know, focused support system of these individuals that care about my growth and development.
Pete Schramm
So to answer your question, part two, personal board of advisors, those few different mentors, guides, advocates. And in the book I talk about a functional mentor, a cross-functional mentor, a champion, an ally, a sponsor accountability partner. There's ten different roles that I go through. And it's meant to be a guide. Right. Could you have somebody else that's on your PBA?
Pete Schramm
That's not exactly one of the roles I talk about in the book. Sure. I just want to get you started in the right direction and help again guide you where you could potentially find success.
Rich Fernandez
That's really fascinating. So, maybe we can play with that a little bit like here and now. on this podcast, if we think about perhaps your own career map, which is like past, present and future, I'm imagining. Right. If I'm understanding that correctly.
Pete Schramm
Yeah. Yes. Of course.
Rich Fernandez
So tell us if you could then about that, you know, because you you made an interesting journey. And as somebody who himself has taken what I call the scenic route in my career. Right. I know you've gone from the defense into, well, from far from a farm to the defense industry to HR tech. so can you tell us about that career trajectory?
Rich Fernandez
And then again, with this concept of the map is five dimensional and forward facing as well as present and past. Like where does it go?
Pete Schramm
So I'll, I'll, just put out there. I'm pretty sure everybody that grows up on a farm plans to start their own tech company. Right? Isn't that the the farm?
Rich Fernandez
I grew up in New York City, so I really can't opine on that.
Pete Schramm
But I think that's the proven trajectory. but but it's really just about finding what's what's inside, right? What's what's in my heart. I have a chapter in there talking about the ikigai, right. Find what's what's your why don't just copy and paste somebody else's journey or, you know, growing up in the small town that I did, a lot of people went into the steel mill or the hospital and I said, oh, I don't know that that or they, you know, as farmers.
Pete Schramm
And so I don't know that I want to do either of those, you know, three options. So perhaps I'll explore other things that could be possible. And so after applying to 200 jobs junior senior year of college, I ended up accepting a position at Lockheed Martin. You mentioned earlier. And so in 2017, I put together this career maps.
Pete Schramm
I had my whole career planned out until the year 2053. So newsflash, it had me staying at Lockheed Martin the entire time. I'm not at Lockheed Martin currently, so the big piece of this is to have a plan and to have, a little bit of structure and the reason there's multiple dimensions in there is the roles and the company column that might change, but those skills that you keep building on will stick with you.
Pete Schramm
Those achievements and accomplishments. You can figure out, hey, I want to develop these transferable skills, right? It can be around revenue generation, team size, business execution, getting into different functional areas from marketing to sales to product, to, to, well, you know, a bunch of different ways, right? I also have two mechanical engineering degrees. Never had a mechanical engineering job.
Pete Schramm
Right. So that's another, unique aspect. So as you alluded to earlier, started on the farm, taught me about the power and importance of a good work ethic. Okay. How can we build on those transferable skills, getting into a supply chain role, right. You're able to interact with different people, figure out the attention to detail on the contracting side.
Pete Schramm
Then I get into corporate strategy. Well, now I need to really start to think outside of the box. Still a lot more, networking and understanding how you tie the dollars to the concepts. And then I was a supervisor in a union environment. So this is where we're getting to the where the literally where the rubber meets the road of honing in on some of those leadership skills.
Pete Schramm
Do I like being a leader? Right. How are we working through some of these conflicts and crucial conversations to another supplier quality engineering role, where I was a nonunion shop. So now interfacing with the customer. So you see there's these couple of transferable skills along the way. And I was successful because I had these couple of different individuals I didn't know.
Pete Schramm
It was called a personal board of advisors at that time. But these few folks that were helping guide me along the way, pick up the phone, call them, hey, Reg, I'm going through this situation or this, you know, project is coming up. Or I was, you know, faced with this scenario, here's kind of what I'm thinking. And option A, B and C, what else are your thoughts.
Pete Schramm
Have you seen anything like this. Anybody else. And I might bounce some ideas off of as I navigate this path, as far as where I plan to go in the future. Well, hey, let's build this business, right? Keep helping organizations. engage the people they have so that they can retain them. And then I like to talk about the third part of the triangle.
Pete Schramm
Engage who we have so that we can retain them in order to brag about it and attract great talent to the organization. So let's grow this thing. Let's help as many people as possible.
Rich Fernandez
And and in the unfolding of your career map what can people expect is that I imagine it's not necessarily a linear process. Right? So that like, it kind of like peaks, valleys or I'm not sure what the metaphor is, but just, you know, it kind of unfolds, in maybe stages. I'm not sure. What's your what are your perspectives on the way this map is going to look for people as they kind of navigate their way?
Pete Schramm
Yeah. Well, I think there's, a couple of things that we know for sure is change. Right? So take if you have shoe laces on your shoe, go ahead and take your shoe lace off and just pull it so it's taut and it's a straight line. Right. That's kind of what we expect right. It's going to go linear.
Pete Schramm
We're going to go from here to here to here to here to here okay. Now if you still have your shoe laces in your hand, crumple it up, put it on the floor. And that's what it's going to look like. Right. So it might start somewhere there. And then it might go around and might go on top of each other.
Pete Schramm
There's upstairs downstairs around. And the important thing is, as your journey progresses and whines and weaves to figure out what are you learning from each of those ways, because you might take steps backwards from one perspective. But as long as those skills and those achievements and experience is are continuously being built on, so it goes on the perspective, right?
Pete Schramm
It's all about the way you look at this. So I might say, hey, it looks like your career's kind of gone in a couple of different circles and ups and downs like you mentioned. But let's think about that a little bit more. Perhaps you went through, lived to work and then a work to live family comes into the picture.
Pete Schramm
Maybe there's health. There's other things that come our way. I didn't really get along with this, leader. Maybe I just needed to take a professional sabbatical. that is now a thing. And some large organizations are quasi encouraging it. Mental health is really important. It's okay to not be okay, right? so it's really, opening up people's minds that there are a lot of opportunities out there.
Pete Schramm
And to see the goodness of each leg of the journey.
Rich Fernandez
Yeah, I love that. The goodness of each leg of the journey. And, you know, when we think about leadership, for example, sometimes there is this perception that it is a linear path, like, you know, like you just keep going up a ladder or like progressing. What's your perspective on that? Like what? What if people are interested in growing their leadership capabilities?
Rich Fernandez
What does their career.
Pete Schramm
Map look like? Yeah. So I think there are certain skills that you can develop as a leader. And those will be something of a ladder where I build on this build on this, build on this can. And it's almost more of a pyramid than a ladder, right? Because I have to have a strong foundation too. There's some of the engineering pieces coming through, right?
Pete Schramm
Strong foundation in order to keep building up. and so that's one dimension of it. And you're like, hold on a second. Peat pyramids, like three, three dimensions. Bear with me. so from the skills perspective, I'm continuing to to grow up, you got to ask yourself, what kind of leader do you want to be? Lead technical teams, non-technical teams, sales teams.
Pete Schramm
Right. Which way do you want this to go? And perhaps you might. You want to get into leading HR teams, right. Perhaps you might explore a few different capabilities. The bigger the organization is, you might be pulled to run capture. You might be pulled to be a program manager on execution. You might be pulled to run a quality manager role.
Pete Schramm
Right? So figuring out, hey, based on do you want to be CEO, do you want to be COO, CTO, CFO, CHRO, CPA right. What does that look like? And then that's where we can go kind of reverse engineer the career map and say, okay, if I want to get there, who else has been there and what steps did they take?
Pete Schramm
And where am I at now and where do I think I'm going to go? And so it's the bottoms up top down. And that's where if you're my champion personal Board of Advisors member, then we're probably going to take the reverse engineering. Let's work backwards from some of the begin with the end in mind approach versus with my buddy, I might say, hey, we're kind of in the same boat, right?
Pete Schramm
We're we're both program managers and we're both thinking to go, what's your career map look like? Gosh, I'll show you mine. and so that's where it can go a couple of different directions and we just iterate, iterate, iterate. And if you don't necessarily know what those jobs and roles and titles are, let's think about those skills that you want to keep building on and some of those other achievements that you want to accomplish.
Pete Schramm
And ask your boss, hey boss, what can I do that would make you look really good? Ask your boss's boss, right? What can I do to really knock this out of the park? And that's whenever we can begin to fill in the four quadrants of the career map.
Rich Fernandez
Yeah, I love that. And, you know, from my perspective, having also been in the business of leadership development for, for so long, what I've also come to see is that it's definitely the things you're talking about. So some of the functional capacities that you build, you know, you select like what's your domain expertise and so forth. and then it's also not just the what but the how.
Rich Fernandez
Like, look to your question, what kind of leader do I want to be when leaders can lead with a, their own brand, of to use your language, emotional intelligence, you know, that really distinguishes them from others. I always use that. I heard this quote, and I used to always share this when we do leadership trainings. Do you want to leave an aftermath, an aftertaste or an afterglow?
Rich Fernandez
And usually it's the people who aren't leaving an aftermath or even an aftertaste, but rather helping people feel energized, connected, motivated, inspired, all those things. Those are then sort of next level leaders, right? Because there's the functional work, the what that needs to be done. But then there's really how are we coming together around this as people, as me, as an individual with my full humanity and all the concerns I have?
Rich Fernandez
As well as how are we coming together as a team? What do we want our team to stand for? What's our team culture? and so I think when you can kind of be a one dimensional leader, that has to wonder how you know that really differentiates things. I don't know, what's your perspective on.
Pete Schramm
Yeah. So I love that. And I think a lot of people can lead, but not everybody is a leader. And I heard something recently where the best well I'd say the most successful leaders are the ones that are able to create other leaders that have created a leader. So what that means is, you know, Rich, you were able to to got your you're a leader, right?
Pete Schramm
You were able to guide me and I was able to create a leader, as well. So now you're like, okay, hey, I guess I am able to do this. And you might say, well, that's not going to happen overnight. Correct? Greatness doesn't happen. You know, immediately what is, you say bold, say it took him, 19 years for, overnight success or something like that.
Pete Schramm
You hear did a couple of different, wait, no, no difference with this, right. It takes time. And it takes persistent and persistence and consistency. Right. We're not just going to stop, you know, whenever, whenever we, Okay. Hey, guys, you know, check the box here. I, you know, finish this project. I'm just going to not follow up, with all, all of my different people.
Pete Schramm
And I think that's the other part, Rich, is that it takes time, right? To really be there and understand and be able to empathize with folks. It is not easy to do, and it is not something that you can just, you know, okay. Hey, let me, pull out my script and say, now you're you're this kind of person.
Pete Schramm
So, I should say this, and then you're probably going to say A or B or C, and then I'll say this. And now you got to seal it out. Every individual is unique. There's it's definitely not one size fits all. So that's why I'm so interested in the work that you guys are doing, because it's so needed.
Pete Schramm
And it's the difference between the folks that lead versus the leaders.
Rich Fernandez
Yeah, that's a great distinction. And I also really appreciate over time and practice, you know, we know leaders are cultivated, developed over time, you know, and it nobody wakes up it and they are very skilled at being a leader from like, you know, that from, from early on in life, they it's a progression maybe, you know, they have some disposition, from a character perspective, but much, much more.
Rich Fernandez
So I remember this great book, talent is overrated, right. And it says that anything can, can be improved upon by practice. And then especially these dimensions where we're not really trained in them in school. Right? I don't know about you, but I never took an emotional intelligence course when I was or, you.
Pete Schramm
Know, I went right after obstacle engineering and before statics for me. Yes. Was the hallway. Yeah.
Rich Fernandez
Exactly. You know, so I think it's I think I'm saying it's all of the above. Right. Like we need all of these things. Yeah. You know, so.
Pete Schramm
It's a muscle, right? We go to the gym, we work upper body, lower body core. Right. Same things that we can and. Right. So we got to keep those Achilles safe and healthy over there so we can get you back out shooting jump shots. That's right. It's the same exact thing right. It's a different muscle that we work.
Rich Fernandez
It really is. Well and then if we think about folks who are responsible for this in organizations which are HR and land leaders, working within their companies, you know, what kind of things can they set up to help encourage this type of, you know, career growth and leadership development?
Pete Schramm
So one of my, mentors, advisors, John put I wrote a book. And in the book he talks about it's it's called weirdos in the workplace. and then he has another book that's focused on weird isms, and he talks about every manager is an HR manager. Everybody's able to influence what's going on with the people. So a couple of tips and tricks for every leader out there.
Pete Schramm
HR now and just, you know, kind of gets in trouble the most if they don't do these things right, that they can really look like rock stars. Whenever you amplify, there's a little bit of process and structure around. One of the first things I'd say is, you know, listen to your people. I don't know what kind of surveys you're doing at your organization, but get some kind of a baseline and don't don't do a survey.
Pete Schramm
If you don't have time or the resources or the support from leadership to take action afterwards. The second piece on the surveys is don't do them. If you're not going to share the results back out. That's doing that is worse than doing nothing right. Been there. Felt that, heard that experience that before. It's not cool. Okay. So then once we have that all right.
Pete Schramm
What's next. And that's when we can start small. So there's a couple of different articles that I've put out on LinkedIn. you know one talks about cultivating talent. Right. Some of the ways that we can look at that. But another one is how can we take leadership says, no, we don't have budget for that. How do we take a no to a yes?
Pete Schramm
Start small. I think there's a quote in the Mel Gibson movie The Patriot. Aim small, Miss Small, right. And if you think about that, let's just start with a little bit of a pilot. And oftentimes those HR tech companies are included. We'll say, hey, let's do a little bit of a pilot like that and test the waters. All right.
Pete Schramm
We can refine a little bit of what's going on. All right. So HR leaders other leaders we talked about surveys. Got a you probably have that taken care of. A lot of folks started doing those in the pandemic. Now let's talk about what are you doing in that ongoing onboarding experience. Right. We think of this as like a welcome wagon.
Pete Schramm
What are you doing over the first 12 months? Onboarding typically takes, you know, a couple of hours, maybe a day, maybe the first week. And then you have those transactional 30, 60, 90 day reviews, to get in there. But more than half of voluntary turnover takes place in the first 12 months. You know, the statistics as well as I do.
Pete Schramm
And a lot of people are leaving sure, salaries, an aspect of it, but they're disconnected. They don't have a map to professional growth. So it's really why I put the book together. Some organizations are rolling this into their onboarding process. So people have the idea and the bones of a map to professional growth literally from day one. So have people say, hey, let's put together a career map.
Pete Schramm
Let's start to map out where you can go, where you can grow from a leader. I'm able to see, hey, this Pete guy, he's a mover and shaker. He aspires to do something or I see Pete. You know, we had a couple of conversations. He doesn't necessarily want to go to the top of the food chain. So for me, I see where I can go and grow in this organization.
Pete Schramm
So I'm less likely to start looking at other places. From a leadership perspective, I'm able to understand, hey, succession planning, what's possible here and then encourage, right? The biggest thing is I'll do workshops and presentations with CEOs and leaders and executives, and they'll say, what? I haven't done one of these career map exercises in a while. I used to be so helpful.
Pete Schramm
What if I had this and I could share it with my people? My gosh, that's a great idea. Let's go ahead and do that. And the other thing is to say, hey, I am a leader and I am super busy, but my door is still open. If you want me to be on your personal board of advisors, please ask.
Pete Schramm
I want to help people. So a lot of times there's that disconnect of I really want to ask you for advice and guidance range, but I know you're super busy and you know, you got that big title. I hope that is I don't know that you'd even give the time of day. Worst thing that happens is you say nothing, right?
Pete Schramm
Second thing after that is you say no. Third thing. Well, there's not really anything else that's bad, right? Because our organizational culture is around connection, collaboration. Most ought to be in some regard. So those are just a couple of starting points that I'd say, that folks can put it into their toolbox.
Rich Fernandez
I like that emphasis. You're saying, though, that there are times there's a times a perception of kind of a show stopper. Right? And you get it right, like, yeah. Do you really want to like, you know, like try to reach out three levels above you in the organization to somebody you perceive that can really be a great board of advisor member or you yourself are so swamped.
Rich Fernandez
I mean, let's face it, today people are completely stretched, overwhelmed, right? Like there's probably way more that they need to do than they can do that's being asked of them at their job. So how about that? Like, how do we navigate that? How do we navigate what I'll call the busyness trap for yourself? And then this perception that, gosh, my my people above me are way even busier than I am.
Rich Fernandez
They're doing important things. How how can I kind of knock on their door and feel okay about that?
Pete Schramm
rich, what do you, typically drive if you're going to take a road trip, your car, SUV, truck right up something. And so before you would take a trip across the country, you'd probably, get your vehicle looked at. Right. because, you know, if you don't, take time to look at what's actually going on with the vehicle, it might break down on you, right?
Pete Schramm
And you might perhaps be burnt out along the way. So everybody, you know has to go, go go go go. But if we don't take a little bit of that preventative maintenance, if we don't do a little bit of that investing planning, then things are just going to stop. We're all, you know, machines in some capacity, right. And there's a little bit of analogy there, but it's the same idea of we have to do this little bit of TLC on our vehicles and those different tools and resources that help us succeed and grow and, you know, get to where we want to go on this path.
Pete Schramm
Same thing. Right? Everybody ought to be taking a little bit of time to invest in the future. Another, you know, kind of analogy that I'll share is, a lot of organizations. I don't care if you're products or services, you're going to invest in IRA internal research and development. And what happens whenever you stop investing in innovation?
Pete Schramm
Well, the competition, you know, gets the better of you, right? You might get passed up in the market. Well, what happens whenever we stop investing in our people and we stop investing in ourselves? Similar thing. Right? We might get passed up in the market. There's another article that I put up around this is, you know, not enough time is not a good enough excuse anymore.
Pete Schramm
And so it's that piece of sometimes you do need to just block off and it's see other opportunity for leaders to say, hey, I am super busy. You're right. But this is something that I'm not too busy for. So I might not have time for absolutely everybody. But I'll bring on a couple of people, sit on 2 or 3 personal boards.
Pete Schramm
Right. And what? What does that look like? An hour with each of you, each quarter, I can find, you know, one hour or, sorry, three hours in, whatever that is, like 767 working hours. Right? That's that's probably possible to do less than a percent. So it's just a way to lead by example and to also say, hey, this isn't easy and it's not.
Pete Schramm
Always remember we talked about the crumpled shoelace at certain times in there. You might not be able to engage with your board as much. You might not be able to sit on as many boards. You've probably been in that situation before. Hey, catch me in six months. It's not really a good time right now, right? But it's a way of walking the walk and talking the talk.
Pete Schramm
And sometimes you need an external voice that shows you and you, forces you to look in the mirror and say, hey, do you realize what you're saying, Rich? Do you realize what you're doing or not doing?
Rich Fernandez
Yeah. And I think the the really interesting thing is that if you persevere, you'll find those right people who are willing to, you know, and and don't get discouraged by people who aren't. I mean, the early part of my career, I worked, in an investment bank, and nobody has time there and nobody has, you know. But there were actually people, as I began to kind of be in their orbit, that seemed more open.
Rich Fernandez
And I remember there was even this managing director managing a very big business, you know, and as I wanted to kind of develop my skills in, succession planning and town management and learning and development, because that's the area I was in, you know, and I basically said, you know, like, what are some of the lessons, you know, if you ever go out to lunch and just talk about because this was a very seasoned executive, numerous other executives were just like, how much time do I need to sit here with you?
Rich Fernandez
And I was like, okay, I'm not going to knock on those doors. But this person was actually very personable. A appreciated the craft that I was trying to learn and offer to his organization and actually, like, took the time to like, you know, there was one day I remember he was like, okay, look, there's a few things we need to talk about.
Rich Fernandez
But here's the thing. Like, I have basically, and I'm happy to talk about it, but I have between leaving the office and getting to the subway, and that's about a ten minute walk. And like in that ten minutes, let's talk about the priority things. I'd love to do that if you're up for that. You know, I wish I can give you more time.
Rich Fernandez
I was like, totally, I will meet you there, you know, as soon as you're ready, leave the office and I'll walk with you to subway and we'll talk about succession planning. not we won't do the succession plan. This was more my own personal tips that he was giving me for, like, here's some things you want to think about when you approach like somebody like me, you know, who's going to do succession planning with somebody like you?
Rich Fernandez
Hugely instructive. so, just finding that right person and not getting discouraged when people don't respond to you, you know, or, you know, like, sometimes shoo you away, to be polite about that. Right. eventually there is somebody, I think, who will serve to be that mentor, that willing thought partner, practice partner, you.
Pete Schramm
Know, to be honest and to take that one step further. Anybody that's listening to this, you know, once rich in the team post this and you have nobody that you can go out to comment on this post, tag, tag myself and say, give us a little bit of who you are and what you what you're looking for and what that, you know, board seat might be if you were able to find someone.
Pete Schramm
And between us and, you know, other folks, we like connecting people. But the part is you have to take a little bit of initiative. So if you're at this point and you're like, okay, I put up with Pete for 30 minutes up to this point, my gosh. All right. Finally he's saying he's trying to add some value now.
Pete Schramm
But really is that you're going to find a couple of no's along the way. you know, not everybody is good. Said I liken it to date and rich. Right. You're going to find some people. Hey, you know, maybe it seems great at first, but we're not aligned on, on different levels and meet them where they are.
Pete Schramm
So cool that you were able to do that. I met with one of my mentors. I babysat his kids and we ate sushi together in his house in Virginia. He's like, hey, this is the only time that I got. I'm like, I didn't really eat sushi before, but I guess I'll try it. You know, I talk about that story as well, but it's it's powerful.
Pete Schramm
They're giving of their time and good for you being able to find that success.
Rich Fernandez
And I've found that because I a lot of people did that for me. I'm paying it forward, you know, and wanting to be that mentor. and then as we wrap up here, Pete, any last nuggets, for sharing with anyone who's at any stage of their career and, you know, something useful that they might be able to think about or consider doing wherever they are in their career?
Pete Schramm
Yeah, I'd say, grab a copy of the book, put together, a career map, share it with some of those different mentors out there. Think about, who your personal board of advisors might be and share your story. You know, tag tag me. Tag Rich. Tag tag the show. Right. And show what's possible. And if you're trying to figure some things out, tell us where you've been, where you're at, and kind of what your questions are.
Pete Schramm
That's the thing where a lot of people, you know, don't feel comfortable with the vulnerability. It's not easy. I don't blame you at all. But that's the pieces and we just mentioned just a few moments ago, if you don't take that initiative, you don't know what you don't know. And what's the worst that can happen if you ask with authenticity and coming from a place of, you know, already did your homework right, and you're just trying to to grow in the right ways.
Rich Fernandez
Great. Well, Pete, thank you so much for sharing your insights and these very useful tools. And, joining us today, I really appreciate it. I hope it's, super helpful for our audience. And like Pete said, please reach out to either of us, you know, and let us know how it's going. And, and get mapping. So, Pete, thanks again.
Rich Fernandez
Take good care and bye, everyone.
Pete Schramm
Thank you. Bye.
