Over the years we have made a point, as a Vice President group, to periodically select a book that is required reading by the entire group and then discussed what we've learned from the book and try to figure out how it would apply to improve NISC. Some of the great books we've read over the years are "Good to Great" by Jim Collins, "Five Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni, "Leaders Eat Last" by Simon Sinek, "Built to Last" by Jim Collins, and "The Ideal Team Player" by Patrick Lencioni. Presently we're reading a book entitled "No Ego" by Cy Wakeman. I need to give Dan Wilbanks the credit for offering this book up and suggesting that we read it as a vice president group and as I make my way through the book it's clear why Dan thought that this book could be important reading for our entire group. Now over the years as we have read these books I can't say that there has been a single book that I would call a silver bullet, a book that has all the answers, a book that we necessarily agreed with every statement or conclusion within the pages of its covers. But I will say that we have learned something from each book and based on our willingness and our hunger to learn we have and are establishing the culture of NISC based on best practices and best ideas of other successful companies characterized in these books and based on our own experience which spans the 50 year history of NISC. Now the single most impactful thing that we learned from the book Good to Great is that the predominant characteristic of a successful leader is humility. Humility. And it would stand to reason that the opposite of humility would be ego. Buddha is quoted as saying ego is the source of all suffering and the book no ego very clearly sets a bullseye on waste, inefficiency, and drama in an organization and, you guessed it, it says the source of all of those negative things is ego. Now the author gets right to the point when he states that facts common sense self-reflection and accountability make Eagle very nervous. For me, the facts of our organization are often delivered by way of the quarterly employee Pulse survey. I want you to know that we read every comment and we share the results of the survey with our management group, The employee base as a whole, and also our Board of Directors. Sometimes the results are encouraging and the trends are positive and the comments affirming. Other times the scores are disappointing and a harsh commentary on the ineffectiveness of our leadership, pointing out areas that we are sorely lacking with comments that are pointed and discouraging. But every survey, good, bad, or indifferent, has helped us construct, evolve, and refine the culture of our organization. There's one thing though that I have noticed over the years of doing these surveys that I believe is the most important thing we've learned from this effort. Often we will specifically ask open-ended questions about how we can improve NISC and the responses from the employees will inevitably fall into two very distinctive but telling categories. The first category of employees I would call the Ego Category and the second category the Accountability Category. Let me tell you what I mean. When asked how we can improve this organization, employees that would fall into the Ego Category make comments like "higher pay, better benefits, more employee activities, larger offices, more paid time, of more holidays, more flexible work schedules, and the list becomes quite extensive. And it's curious to me that with this type of employee every one of the suggestions that they would offer up is all about them, their ego, their comfort, their enrichment, and their development. Now don't get me wrong every one of these topics is very important to each of us as NISC employees and monitoring our competitiveness and market conditions in each of these categories is one of People Services most important responsibilities. Now responses from what I would call the Accountability Group of employees. They offer up a consistently different list of suggestions. Suggestions that are focused on making NISC better, stronger, more efficient, and more effective. Suggestions like additional staff members, balancing the workload in critical areas, better onboarding strategies, better communications at all levels of our organization, suggestions pointing out waste and inefficiencies or frustrations with fellow employees not fully pulling their weight. Suggestions on new technologies new tools or processes which would improve our productivity and consistency throughout our organization. So the question is this. Which suggestions should be given priority? It's a bit of a chicken and egg debate. Shouldn't we concentrate on those things that are not ego-driven first so that NISC is financially strong enough to be able to improve the employee compensation, benefits, and policy considerations? It's clear to me that the accountability group of employees understand the concept of a rising tide raises all ship or in other words, if NISC does well, well then the employees will also do well. I hope that our historic actions regarding pay, benefits, and policies demonstrate that this is true and it's truly something that we aspire to do, It's not just happy talk. So the question is this which employee group do you fit in to? The first that is ego driven, self-centered comfort, and benefit. Or is it the second group that believes in accountability and a selfless servant leadership? We'll be discussing this book and its principles during our November Leadership Forum and also during upcoming employee meetings. I look forward to learning more as I listen to the impressions and observations and opinions of our employee group after they have had a chance to read the book. One thing I know for sure is developing strong leadership and a strong resilient culture in our organization it's hard. It's messy work and getting the right employees in the right position in our organization or in the right seat on the bus, as says Jim Collins would say, requires the active, relentless, egoless, selfless, participation of all of our employees from every discipline. Each of us is impacted by the effectiveness of NISC leadership or lack thereof. So it makes sense that we should all be engaged and take an active role in building an organization that is efficient, fair, accountable, and honors the opinions and perspectives of our employees while at the same time being courageous enough to call out those times when ego-based, unrealistic comments hurt and tear down what we have worked so hard to build. Thanks for listening. I appreciate you, Vern
