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Fast Company
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Fast Company
Stanley McChrystal says character is the most vital leadership trait in the age of AI and polarization
Amid polarization, AI disruption, and eroding trust in institutions, retired four-star General Stanley McChrystal argues that what leaders need now more than ever is character. Head of the business consulting firm McChrystal Group, he has written a new book on character, drawing from his decades of experience. From AI ethics and modern warfare to hot-button issues like Signalgate and transgender service in the military, McChrystal explains why character is the foundation of lasting leadership. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today's top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I wanted to ask you about the changes that are afoot in the military and the Department of Defense. Some folks champion the idea of change. Some folks make dire predictions. For you, who have worked with military and military leaders for a long time, what's your perspective about what's being attempted? I would say first, if I go to 30,000 feet and look at it from a big distance, change is needed, change is appropriate. And I think it's going to mean significant change, adoption of new technologies, changing of force structures, all of those kinds of things. All of that is correct. Even firing generals, if it's necessary, is a good thing—if you are firing generals because they don't have the skills or they don't have the right personalities. So all of those things, I completely sign up for, and I wouldn't recognize a lot of sacred cows that would be exempt from hard scrutiny. Now, having said that, I am not aligned with where the current secretary of defense, how he defines some of the current issues and the direction. He talks about the warrior ethos. But the reality is, what we are trying to do is get the best military we can, and that's not necessarily the strict warrior ethos, because soldiers are a little different. Soldiers are disciplined. They follow the rule of law. When you think about warrior, it's got a little bit of a looser definition or interpretation usually. So that I think is probably a mistake if you start to say, 'You can't have transgender soldiers.' My response would be: One, there aren't many. And two, if a transgender soldier is really good, we need them. We don't have that many extra people that are really good that we can afford [to lose]. So I have a much different definition of what a really effective service member might be. I think I do. And then I also think that if you are judging military leaders on a political ideology, you're playing with fire. And here's why. We've had this extraordinary couple of centuries of the U.S. military being pretty apolitical, not always perfectly, but generally very apolitical. And although there's friction between civilian leadership and uniforms, it's one of the healthiest relationships that you've seen on the globe for 200 years. Once you start to hire and fire senior leaders based upon their political alignment with any particular ideology, you are going to affect younger military leaders. They are going to shape their behavior. They're smart people. They'll look up, and they'll say, 'This is what it takes to succeed in this business,' and they will start to represent that behavior. And a decade from now, or two decades from now, we'll have a very different kind of military, and we won't like it. It will not be the apolitical, very professional force that I knew and that I think is largely the case today. So I think it's understanding the danger of that dynamic that is really critical. The issues around security—this Signalgate scandal using publicly available tools to communicate—is that really a big deal or is that sensationalized? One, I do think it's a big deal. I think using Signal, even though it's encrypted, it's not secure. And so you are transmitting future plans on an unsecured device, which is extraordinarily dangerous for the men and women who are going to go execute that operation. So I do think that was a big deal. It was almost a reflection of amateurism. Now, the other side of it bothers me far more. We had the mistake. It comes out. Everybody knows it's a mistake. They know that the information is extraordinarily sensitive, and they get up in front of cameras, and they say the information was not classified. Now they know that that's not true. They know that's a lie. It is classified, and yet they look at the camera, and they say something that maybe most Americans can't parse the difference. But anybody who's involved knows that people whose salaries you and I are paying in positions of great responsibility consciously and intentionally don't tell the truth to you and I. That's a big problem, and that's the far greater issue here. We can minimize the event that occurred as a mistake, but we can't minimize the lack of integrity. I'm curious how you look at AI's potential impact on the military, and how do we know if we're ahead or behind, especially in that competition with China? Yeah, we've never had anything quite like this. The closest analogy in my mind would be nuclear power, atomic weapons, and we got them first during World War II; we won the race to produce nuclear weapons and then used them first. And when other countries followed us and developed their own nuclear weapons, we got this sort of balance. The problem with artificial intelligence, and I've had the opportunity to do some work and a big war game on it, is that if somebody achieves artificial general intelligence before their competitors, theoretically they could then sprint ahead in a way that their competitors almost couldn't catch up. And you could have a dominant superiority, and we're not even a hundred percent sure what AI will do on the battlefield. We know it will make a lot of things simpler, faster, easier—logistics, planning, all those things—which will make an army more efficient. But as AI starts to do target discernment, autonomous engagement with weapons systems and robotics, we have an incomplete picture. Ukraine's like a glimpse of the future. We have an incomplete picture of how dominant that will be. So I don't think there's any time except the pursuit of nuclear weapons where this idea of losing the race could mean losing the war. And when you think of AI, you have to blur the lines we had for many years of military power and separate from diplomatic or commercial power. Those things are now so interwoven, because the ability to leverage AI in production and things like that could give a country a decisive advantage that immediately shows itself in the military sphere. So I think first, two things have to happen. We need to be pursuing those kinds of regulations and understanding around the world that give us some opportunity to put rules and norms in place for AI. But we're not close to it. But parallel to that, we need to be at breakneck pace trying to develop AI. And those seem in tension, in contradiction, that here we are trying to develop new nuclear weapons and at the same time, we're trying to set up rules to limit their use. But if we lose, if we don't get parity with AI, then we're going to be in a position that's extraordinarily dangerous. And that's, again, not going to be the military; it's going to be this broader national effort. And the topic of character that you're so focused and compelled about. Today that applies to AI, too, and how we talk about it, whether it's commercial uses or military. Well, I would argue character becomes more important, because the power of the individual is dramatically more than it was even 200 years ago. When we think of the old saying about Samuel Colt, who created the six gun, we say: 'God made man; Sam Colt made them equal'—and he leveled the playing field for people who weren't as big and strong, as they could have an effective weapon. AI is going to do that and give extraordinary power not just to nation states, but to individuals. And so those people who have that extraordinary power, and almost all of us will have some form of it, have the ability to do great good or great evil. And so character, I think, is going to become more essential than ever.
Fast Company
12-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
Lyft CEO David Risher on competing with Uber and the future of rideshare
The rideshare market has reached a crossroads. Autonomous vehicles are on the rise, driver unrest is mounting, and customers are questioning everything from pricing to trust and safety. In the midst of it all, Lyft is mounting a comeback. CEO David Risher, who came into the role at Lyft two years ago, is taking a bird's-eye view on the operation and pushing to reposition the company squarely against their competitor, Uber—with faster execution, bold new programs, and Lyft's biggest international acquisition to date. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today's top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. [A recent letter you wrote to shareholders] includes this phrase 'falcon mode,' which has also sparked a bunch of interest. I wanted to ask you to explain, what is falcon mode? So falcons fly thousands of feet in the air. But of course, they can't stay up there always because they've got to eat. So falcons have adapted to become extremely perceptive at seeing very small things on the ground and then being able to dive down very, very quickly, grab the mouse or whatever it is, and then go back up to cruising altitude. I use that kind of figurative language to help my team actually understand my job, which is to try to stay up at the high level. I mean, a CEO doesn't hopefully need to be in the details every single day, but I have never found a successful CEO, and I've worked for some very successful CEOs, I'm very lucky in that way, who doesn't also judiciously decide when to come down and to go really, really deep into the things, to get to the point where you're literally saying, 'You know what, I think this language on the screen isn't quite doing the job,' as an example. How much of that is about you identifying something that's strategic that you could have seen at 30,000 feet that maybe others are missing versus pointing to your team that this is the way you want them to act? I think if you never do it yourself, if all you're doing is telling your team, 'Go look at this, go look at this, go look at this, go look at this,' I think the chance of you having good intuition on that, where to actually go deep, is low. But then on the other hand, hopefully they see you doing it, and they become comfortable themselves. And again, I want to make a distinction: you haven't mentioned the word micromanagement, but that's a word that sometimes people say, 'Well, doesn't that sound like micromanagement?' And for me, the distinction I make is I try, again, sometimes unsuccessfully to be clear, but I try not to use it as a way to propose answers. Of course, sometimes I do. I'm a human being, I have ideas, but I try more to use it as a way to understand a problem space better. A story I tell in the letter is you can understand the issue of surge pricing at a generic level. People don't like prices that are unpredictable, and that gives you a certain amount of insight. But when I drove and I picked up a woman named Anne, and she said, 'Sometimes the price is 20, sometimes it's 30, sometimes it's 40. When it's 20, I take a Lyft. When it's 40, I drive myself, but I'm really annoyed. I get up at six in the morning, just check the price every single morning.' You have these conversations, and you get so much more empathy and understanding for the contours of that problem and why it matters so much at an individual level. And then you can go back to your team and say, 'You know what, guys, I know we've been talking about trying to get rid of surge pricing or at least some of it for a while. Let me give you some examples that I've picked up by going deep that maybe help us understand both why this is a big problem for people and maybe understand, as I say, the contours of this space a little bit better as a result.' And so this is why you get on the road and you drive a Lyft every six weeks for a day, so you're close to the experience of both sides of your marketplace, the driver and the rider. It's exactly it. And it's so interesting. I actually took my first drive, I think it was a week before I joined even. So it's been a little bit over two years now. And at first what I really thought it was going to be is really understanding the driver app and the driver experience. And I learned a lot, but what it's really taught me is how the rider experiences the ride. And it's so different to look at the data versus talk to the riders and ask them, 'Why did you choose Lyft today versus the other guys? What are some of the perceptions you have?' And sometimes people talk about a credit card deal we have with Chase Sapphire Reserve, and sometimes people will talk about a bad experience they had on the other guys. Sometimes they'll talk about how they think they like our values better or they like Women+ Connect, which is a service we have. So you get a sense of both sides of the marketplace, and it's quite efficient. I mean, it's only two or three hours, and gosh, you can learn a lot in two or three hours if you really, really focus on them. You have more riders than ever, you have more drivers than ever, but you're still far behind Uber, which has 75% of the market or something. I mean, we've heard a lot about the streaming wars in TV, and there's arguably a ridesharing war going on. Do you have to beat Uber to become like Netflix in streaming, or is it just about staying competitive? You don't have to be Netflix. If you can be BritBox, and that's you, that's okay. So a couple of things I think about that, every year just in the U.S., so we're not even talking about overseas, just in the U.S., people take about 160 billion rides in their own car, 160 billion. So every single one of those rides, they're getting behind the wheel, their stress level is probably going up a little bit, hopefully they're not texting, but they're certainly tempted to text every time they come to a stoplight, they're road rage sometimes, frustrated. At the very least, they're not able to do very much else with their life, and then they got to park, and then they got to pay for parking, and all these different things. So there are a lot of times where, you know what, it's actually kind of nice to have someone else pick you up. You can do the texting, you can sit back, you can make a phone call if you want to, you can put on your makeup if you're a woman, whatever it is, guy too, whoever. So the point is it's a better experience, and we want to do it so reliably and at such a high service level that we move from, call it, 800 million rides a year, which is about what we do, to a billion to two billion to three billion to four billion. So do I have to compete with someone else to do that? Not really. Now, we have to compete with private cars, and to a certain extent, with people staying at home on their couch. I mean, those are things I have to compete with, but I don't really need to dominate the other guy. Now, having said that, there is another guy in the marketplace. Our share when I joined was about 26% share. Now it's about 31% share. So we've made nice progress there, and that's hard. I mean, every single point of share you get over a bigger competitor is quite hard. I'll give you two stats that I'm very proud of. One is we pick you up about 30 seconds faster than they do. Second is for our drivers, we have a 23-point advantage, 23-point advantage in preference of dual-appers, people who use both apps. Who would you prefer to drive for? So I consider those to be very good leading early indicators that we're doing some things well. The share thing is a little bit of a trailing indicator. It's just an interesting little thing to look at. Leading indicator is more to people like you more, you get better service. And over time, that tends to grow a business quite nicely.
Business Upturn
24-04-2025
- Business
- Business Upturn
eufy Introduces its First Professional Monitoring Security System and Selects Rapid Response Monitoring to Deliver Best-in-Class 24/7 Professional Monitoring Services to eufy Customers
Bellevue, Washington, April 23, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — eufy, a global leader in home security technology and smart appliances by Anker Innovations, today announced the upcoming availability of the ExpertSecure system, the world's first security solution with 24/7 monitoring supported by both Local AI technology and live surveillance experts. eufy has selected Rapid Response Monitoring to deliver professional monitoring for eufy's line of security products and customers. The professional monitoring service can be added to a wide range of eufy indoor and outdoor devices including security cameras, as well as motion, entry, smoke, and floor sensors. 'The ExpertSecure system is designed to deliver end-to-end protection of our customers' homes,' said Frank Zhu, General Manager of eufy. 'Pairing this new system with Rapid Response – a proven and trusted leader in the professional monitoring of millions of homes – was an easy choice to make. eufy and Rapid Response share the same commitment to safeguard our customers with the highest level of protection and care.' Advanced Local AI Performance The system's advanced AI Model, known as the 'Private Local AI Agent,' can perform real-time identification, shape analysis and behavior monitoring to assess risk levels (e.g., familiar visitors vs. loitering intruders), set off proactive light and siren alerts, as well as transmit notifications to Rapid Response to help intercept external threats to the customer's home. The ExpertSecure system's advanced AI can accurately identify suspicious outdoor activity (e.g., trespassing, vandalism) to ensure a faster response to critical threats while reducing false alarms and disruptive notifications. In addition, the Private Local AI Agent can precisely comprehend the scene, promptly detecting dangerous behaviors and emergencies. After rapidly assessing the risk level, it triggers effective responses to prevent potential hazards before they happen. Always On Reliability – HomeBase Professional S1 The ExpertSecure system also marks the debut of the HomeBase Professional S1. Top features and capabilities of this powerful data hub include: High-speed LTE connections and dual 4G compatibility Support for eufy Power over Ethernet (PoE) cameras, HDMI video wall displays and Zigbee smart home sensors 32 GB of onboard storage and expandable memory up to 16 TB Local data processing and storage for users' complete data control 24-hour backup energy during power outages Once enrolled, Rapid Response's professional monitoring service is always on, as well. Rapid Response's Monitoring Specialists each complete an extensive training program to ensure they respond with urgency and confidence when any emergency or threatening event takes place. Pricing and Availability Pricing and retail availability of the eufy ExpertSecure System will be shared at a separate date. The advanced Private Local AI Agent capabilities will launch later this year to further enhance the power and accuracy of the ExpertSecure System. More information on the ExpertSecure system is available at About eufy eufy smart home products and technologies – including home and property security devices and services and smart cleaning solutions – deliver expert protection and deep-cleaning capabilities tailored to your lifestyle. eufy looks beyond functional performance to meet the needs and enrich the lives of the people you care about the most. Care is what makes a house a home, and everything we build is 'Built With Care' for you. Find more information at About Rapid Response Monitoring Founded in 1992, Rapid Response Monitoring is the largest independent provider of professional alarm monitoring services in North America, with three Monitoring Centers in the USA. In partnership with its network of alarm Dealers, Integrators, and Installers, Rapid Response protects the lives and properties of millions of customers across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Employing the latest technology, Rapid Response exceeds all industry standards and delivers monitoring services 100% in-facility from fully redundant offices in Syracuse, NY, Corona, CA, and Henderson, NV. Rapid Response is dedicated to delivering the most advanced and impactful monitoring solutions available anywhere. They are the first and currently only third-party professional monitoring center to earn the Underwriter's Laboratories (UL) listing for the AVS-01 Alarm Validation Scoring Standard (UL-CAVS). Communicating AVS-01 scores to authorities during dispatch results in enhanced protection, reduced calls for service, and increased customer satisfaction. To learn more visit: Attachments eufy ExpertSecure System image 1 eufy ExpertSecure System image 2 Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with GlobeNewswire. Business Upturn takes no editorial responsibility for the same.
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
eufy Introduces its First Professional Monitoring Security System and Selects Rapid Response Monitoring to Deliver Best-in-Class 24/7 Professional Monitoring Services to eufy Customers
eufy ExpertSecure System image 1 eufy ExpertSecure System image 2 Bellevue, Washington, April 23, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- eufy, a global leader in home security technology and smart appliances by Anker Innovations, today announced the upcoming availability of the ExpertSecure system, the world's first security solution with 24/7 monitoring supported by both Local AI technology and live surveillance experts. eufy has selected Rapid Response Monitoring to deliver professional monitoring for eufy's line of security products and customers. The professional monitoring service can be added to a wide range of eufy indoor and outdoor devices including security cameras, as well as motion, entry, smoke, and floor sensors. "The ExpertSecure system is designed to deliver end-to-end protection of our customers' homes," said Frank Zhu, General Manager of eufy. "Pairing this new system with Rapid Response - a proven and trusted leader in the professional monitoring of millions of homes - was an easy choice to make. eufy and Rapid Response share the same commitment to safeguard our customers with the highest level of protection and care." Advanced Local AI Performance The system's advanced AI Model, known as the 'Private Local AI Agent,' can perform real-time identification, shape analysis and behavior monitoring to assess risk levels (e.g., familiar visitors vs. loitering intruders), set off proactive light and siren alerts, as well as transmit notifications to Rapid Response to help intercept external threats to the customer's home. The ExpertSecure system's advanced AI can accurately identify suspicious outdoor activity (e.g., trespassing, vandalism) to ensure a faster response to critical threats while reducing false alarms and disruptive notifications. In addition, the Private Local AI Agent can precisely comprehend the scene, promptly detecting dangerous behaviors and emergencies. After rapidly assessing the risk level, it triggers effective responses to prevent potential hazards before they On Reliability - HomeBase Professional S1 The ExpertSecure system also marks the debut of the HomeBase Professional S1. Top features and capabilities of this powerful data hub include: High-speed LTE connections and dual 4G compatibility Support for eufy Power over Ethernet (PoE) cameras, HDMI video wall displays and Zigbee smart home sensors 32 GB of onboard storage and expandable memory up to 16 TB Local data processing and storage for users' complete data control 24-hour backup energy during power outages Once enrolled, Rapid Response's professional monitoring service is always on, as well. Rapid Response's Monitoring Specialists each complete an extensive training program to ensure they respond with urgency and confidence when any emergency or threatening event takes place. Pricing and Availability Pricing and retail availability of the eufy ExpertSecure System will be shared at a separate date. The advanced Private Local AI Agent capabilities will launch later this year to further enhance the power and accuracy of the ExpertSecure information on the ExpertSecure system is available at About eufy eufy smart home products and technologies - including home and property security devices and services and smart cleaning solutions - deliver expert protection and deep-cleaning capabilities tailored to your lifestyle. eufy looks beyond functional performance to meet the needs and enrich the lives of the people you care about the most. Care is what makes a house a home, and everything we build is "Built With Care" for you. Find more information at About Rapid Response Monitoring Founded in 1992, Rapid Response Monitoring is the largest independent provider of professional alarm monitoring services in North America, with three Monitoring Centers in the USA. In partnership with its network of alarm Dealers, Integrators, and Installers, Rapid Response protects the lives and properties of millions of customers across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Employing the latest technology, Rapid Response exceeds all industry standards and delivers monitoring services 100% in-facility from fully redundant offices in Syracuse, NY, Corona, CA, and Henderson, NV. Rapid Response is dedicated to delivering the most advanced and impactful monitoring solutions available anywhere. They are the first and currently only third-party professional monitoring center to earn the Underwriter's Laboratories (UL) listing for the AVS-01 Alarm Validation Scoring Standard (UL-CAVS). Communicating AVS-01 scores to authorities during dispatch results in enhanced protection, reduced calls for service, and increased customer satisfaction. To learn more visit: Attachments eufy ExpertSecure System image 1 eufy ExpertSecure System image 2 CONTACT: Brett White eufy in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
GE Vernova's CEO on thriving through tariffs and supply chain shifts
Amid tariff whiplash and the rejuggling of global trade, GE Vernova's CEO Scott Strazik is finding a way to stay 'relentlessly optimistic.' Strazik returns to the Rapid Response podcast to share how the company plans to continue its success as one of Wall Street's top-performing stocks, despite looming supply chain disruption and market unpredictability. Zillow turns full-blown housing market bear—just look at its new forecast Apple canceled 'Mythic Quest.' Then it did something unheard of in the world of streaming TV What's behind the rise in interim CEOs This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today's top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. This embedded content is not available in your region. GE Vernova is now one year into life as an independent public company, much to celebrate—your revenue rose to $35 billion. In 2024, GE Vernova was the year's fourth best performing stock. Again, a lot to celebrate. But in 2025, the external environment hasn't been as friendly. The Trump tariffs have everyone scrambling. How do you think about this moment? How do you think about it compared to a year ago at this time? Well, our end markets really haven't changed very much, Bob. I would start there. I mean, we continue to see very strong end markets in our larger core businesses and gas power, in our electrification and grid businesses. So, frankly, there's going to be moments of dislocation between the stock market and our end markets. It doesn't mean that depending on where the tariffs go, that doesn't create an opportunity for us to prove out our nimbleness and managing our global supply chain, and we're going to have to do that. But I think it's frankly an opportunity for us to demonstrate how much we've grown in our first year as a public company to be able to operate in this kind of environment. How do the tariffs practically impact your business? I mean, you're a global business, so changes in global relationships and reputation, all of that requires some adjustment. Yeah, I think even if you take a step back and think about some of the stuff I've talked to our investors about on where we want to make investments, we want to invest in our business where we can improve the durability or the resiliency of our supply chain, and that's simply because we have a lot of organic growth that's coming in our businesses, irrespective of any policy changes. Now, policies are going to change, they're going to evolve. This is going to force us to relook at where we source certain things. It'll force us to revisit our terms with some of our suppliers in different locations, but we know how to do that. So, we don't want to be too fast to respond as we're kind of trying to make sense of everything. But I'd also rather be a company that is quick on its feet. In this environment, President Trump announced the tariffs on a Wednesday afternoon after the market closed. Rest assured by Friday afternoon, our teams were actively working evaluation plans of what our alternatives are. Now, it doesn't mean within 40 hours you pull the trigger in a dynamic period of time. So, we're working it pretty hard right now to figure out what our alternatives are, and with a growing backlog, to the extent our backlog is growing so substantially, that also puts us in a privileged position with our supply base to come and say, 'Listen, this is what it's going to take to keep serving GE Vernova.' It's almost like there's been a pullback around the very idea of globalization that maybe it's not good to be a global organization. Do you think about that? Well, when I think about my first four months of the year. I mean, my first trip of the year was to Singapore and Japan, the first week of January. I had a great trip in the Middle East in February visiting Saudi, Qatar, Dubai, Abu Dhabi. These are all important markets for us. I think we've got opportunities to serve these markets throughout, and we're going to work really hard to earn those opportunities. At the same time, long before announcements with tariffs, the reality is there has been an evolving shift with globalization. There's certainly been a lot of strategic moves towards concepts of decoupling from the Chinese supply chain explicitly. So, we've been working that over a long period of time. Now, the last week certainly has been broader than any one country, and with it, it forces you to really revisit it in an even more intimate way, what you do and where you do it, but we can do that. We're capable of taking that on, and I'm highly confident we can use this moment to make ourselves a better company for the long term. You have announced investing $600 million in U.S. factories yourself creating over 1,500 jobs. Yes. How much does GE Vernova need to be an American company? I would say more we need to be a local company for our local markets. I think in your bigger markets, you're going to have a local supply chain to serve that market, local teams to serve that market. We're a global company where, at this moment, one of our most important local markets certainly is the U.S., and that's why we're investing into that market. But we're not going to not invest in some of these other countries that are attractive and markets too to be local there. There's been some speculation that the speed with which U.S. manufacturing can ramp up to replace things that might have come from abroad, that that's going to take a while and there's going to be disruption. Is that something for your business that you see that you worry about, or is that part of the nimbleness, I guess, that you're talking about on the part of your team? We do have a fair amount of industrial footprint in the U.S. that allows us to build on existing assets. So, the $600 million investment is reinvesting in existing assets, 1,500 jobs to locations that already have the concrete poured. They already have the cranes. They already have the logistics with the railroad adjacent to the factory. So, we can move reasonably quickly. Now, to the extent the policy environment drives us towards greenfield investments to reindustrialize parts of our supply chain, that would take longer, truth be told. And that's a multiyear journey that, at this point, we aren't necessarily evaluating, but we will keep looking in that regard. But first and foremost, we're going to keep trying to eliminate waste in our existing processes and build upon the assets we have, and we feel like that can carry us for a period of time. Now, where we don't have it, as an example, we announced and closed an acquisition of a supply chain footprint from Woodward. That was a vertical supply chain integration of a small part of Woodward's business, but for our gas business, an important part of our supply chain where we thought it made more sense to just have that internal. How much do you tune your long-term decision-making when there's noise and change and pressure in the near term? We need to scrutinize how long the status quo is, for sure. And that can be hard to do in a volatile moment that we're in. But if nothing else, it gives us a chance to really challenge ourselves on what we have been doing, whether there's a different way to do it. And that's the way we talk about it internally is: 'This is an opportunity for us to really revisit past assumptions and think about how we can be better.' Now, in some cases, we may gain conviction with exactly the play we've been running. In others, there may be a better alternative. I mean, do you have, sort of, I don't know, leadership principles or lessons that you use as a touchstone when things do get volatile? Well, we're not going to suck our thumbs and cry on our beer as things kind of change. We want to use change as an opportunity to improve. In that regard, this moment when we're just reaching our one-year anniversary as a public company is a moment when I feel pretty confident we've got our feet on the ground, and we can play into this and use this moment of change to play offense on not just how we want 2025 to go, because we won't change 2025 in any material way certainly from a supply chain strategy, but we can use 2025 to challenge ourselves for the next decade, and that's very much what we're doing. This post originally appeared at to get the Fast Company newsletter:
