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Leadership Levers
This podcast spotlights leaders' actions so they may enhance their organization’s performance and culture.
We feature CEOs and industry-recognized Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who share their experiences and insights on three key challenges: people, performance, and profit.
If you are a leader who wants to learn from your peers about improving performance and financial returns, please join us.
Leadership Levers
From Command to Corporate - Captain Rick Hoffman on Cultivating High-Performance Cultures
Have you wondered how morale & alignment can be the bedrock of combat effectiveness and business success?
Join us as we explore the power of transformative leadership with Retired US Navy Captain Rick Hoffman, CEO of Orion Solutions LLC.
Drawing from his remarkable career in both the military and business worlds, Captain Rick shares invaluable lessons on building resilient, mission-driven teams.
Captain Rick recounts his experience revitalizing the USS Way City into a combat-ready force after 9/11, translating those lessons to his work with executives to elevate alignment and efficiency in today’s business landscape.
His approach offers a roadmap to cultivating a culture rooted in trust, transparency, and strategic focus.
In this conversation, we delve into the balance between leadership and management, emphasizing creating unified, strategically aligned teams.
Captain Rick speaks candidly on today's business challenges - advocating for a culture that supports merit-based and purpose-driven work environments.
His stories highlight the power of enduring relationships and teamwork, illustrating how clear communication and prioritized goals can drive success in both naval and corporate environments.
Don’t miss these actionable insights from a leader who’s mastered the art of aligning teams for peak performance.
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Welcome to the Leadership Levers Podcast. I'm your host, will Gladhart, CMO at the Culture Think Tank. At the Culture Think Tank, we empower leaders with metrics that strengthen culture, drive performance and return. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address organizational change. Our guest today is Captain Rick Hoffman, CEO of Orion Solutions. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.
Captain Rick Hoffman:Thank you Will. Thanks for having me.
William Gladhart:Yeah, I thought we would start by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself your background and your organization.
Captain Rick Hoffman:I'm a retired Navy captain. I commanded two US Navy warships. The Boston street sign behind me was given to me when I visited the city aboard USS Wade City in 2002. Old sailors and put them on the podium or on board the ship to teach young sailors how to use their weapon systems and sensors to fight their ship safely.
William Gladhart:so they can grow up to be old sailors.
Captain Rick Hoffman:What's my company do? We make old sailors and right now some of our kids are in the Red Sea, in the Gulf of Aden, fighting the Houdi rebels. The USS Kearney and USS Hudner are two of the ships that we've done a lot of work training their combat systems. That's what we do.
William Gladhart:Yeah, that's amazing. So we'll be discussing three questions today as a warm-up to start our conversation. Would you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?
Captain Rick Hoffman:Well, a healthy culture is essential for, say, focus on the mission, for getting the job done. In my world I would call that morale. Morale is the sum of how good I feel about my leadership, how good I feel about my role in the team, whether I'm trained, given the equipment to do my job, whether I'm appreciated for the contribution I make and whether or not my efforts are rewarded, and that there's clarity in how I'm promoted and how I'm rewarded. It's harder to know how morale is going than it is to have an appreciation for how important morale is. So morale is the cornerstone of combat readiness. A healthy culture is the cornerstone of business effectiveness.
William Gladhart:I like that. That's a really good way to think about that. What do you see as the biggest challenge that leaders face when addressing a challenge in an organization, or what specific level you're faced in your own leadership in the military?
Captain Rick Hoffman:Alignment. Alignment is the key Having a clear vision and articulating in such a way that everyone understands exactly what the mission is. As an example, when I took command of USS Way City in 2001, she'd been a research and development ship for the Navy to bring a new combat systems capability to the fleet, and so a lot of people had specifically found themselves on that ship because the ship did not deploy. She was not a warfighting ship.
Captain Rick Hoffman:My predecessor, understanding that he had been part of that earlier culture he could not affect change, brought me in one year to the day before we made our first deployment back to the Middle East after five years of hiatus. I had to turn the ship back into a warship. I had to get them out of the idea that they're going to go home every single day. They're going to spend the summer with their families. They're not going to make a six-month deployment.
Captain Rick Hoffman:And I had to get them aligned.
Captain Rick Hoffman:I had to beat down some very, very mature cultures and focus them on making sure that they were ready to fight. The ship 9-11 occurred eight months after I took command and as an alignment tool. The result was my sailors understood what I was doing and why I was doing it, and they were ready to go when we deployed in January. I'm in the midst of a big change right now. I started my company. We've got about 50 employees.
Captain Rick Hoffman:There's some inefficiency. We don't. We're not professional, we're not entrepreneurs. There's a lot we don't know. We solve a lot of problems through brute force. I hired a consultant to come in and look at how we do business, to build some controls and look at our finances, because we're making okay money, but there's some inefficiencies. I have three very senior retired Navy enlisted guys who were the top of their field and have a very high paying themselves and I had to bring them together and say guys, it's not about ego, we got where we got. We need to fix it. Don't go back and say explain how you got where you got, recognize that where we need to go is different than where we are.
William Gladhart:And every one of them gets it and we're completely 100% on board on this one where we are and every one of them gets it, and we're completely, 100% on board on this one. Yeah, those are two very different types of challenges and you know, not only on the military side but also on the running a business, and you know being in that more entrepreneurial mindset what do you think that leaders can do to address the challenge they are facing? Or you know what have you done?
Captain Rick Hoffman:I think that they have to be open and honest.
William Gladhart:That's the biggest thing.
Captain Rick Hoffman:A leader is going to lose the support and the hearts and minds of their team if they're inconsistent, if they don't have a valid interest in the well-being of the organization, if they don't fully realize that their actions, their words, their deeds have an effect all the way down to what I would call the deck plates the guys on the deck plates doing the hard work plates the guys on the deck plates doing the hard work. The other thing is consistency. I made a point early in my Navy career. I had a captain who every single day would come back with some great idea and you'd have to do a 90 degree turn and a 90 degree turn and he never got anywhere.
Captain Rick Hoffman:I chose my team, I said I'm going to establish my priorities today this was the first day I took command and I'm going to not change them without some thought, some conversation, and then it will be deliberate over a period of time. Basically, I establish the priorities, stay focused and keep articulating that, but don't, by any of your actions, undermine that which you said you were going to do or that which you said was important. Okay, so you can't say that people are important and they're not taking care of your people.
William Gladhart:Absolutely, and and you know we, with the type of research and work we do at the culture think tank it's you know we specifically focus on the one behavior or the one thing that the leader can do to take the next steps based on the needs and feedbacks of their employees. One thing I did want to ask you we kind of had a quick in a quick conversation before we recorded was you mentioned that in the corporate world or business world, you get to pick the individuals that you work with, or you get to pick the individuals that might be your right hand man or woman on the job, and you noted that when you step into a role, such as changing the morale or the leadership in a ship, that you get what you get, and so can you expand on that just a little bit? I thought it was really fascinating.
Captain Rick Hoffman:Well, that's right. When I took command of USS White City, I had 400 young men and women who had been there for a while. My executive officer, the number two, the guy with whom I have to pay place. Somebody's got to be in charge when I'm sleeping, and I have to pay place. Somebody's got to be in charge when I'm sleeping. And I have to trust that guy. He was there when I got there and then he was relieved by someone else and I had to figure out first, how do I make them align with my own ideals, my own values and my own focus, my own strategic vision.
Captain Rick Hoffman:How do I know when they're not buying into that program. How do I influence them to make sure that they are effective in pushing my focus on my agenda, and that goes all the way down to the deck place with most junior folks? Not only do I have the value of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to enforce my whim and, quite frankly, the Uniform Code of Military Justice can mask bad leadership. I'm going to get results in many cases despite my failure of leadership, because they have to do it the way I told them to do it. But at the same time, if you use that as if you rely on that first, you need to be aware of it, and many aren't.
Captain Rick Hoffman:But, more importantly, you've got to recognize that it gives you an advantage that you can mask. It's a privilege, as it were, that you don't normally have in the corporate world. So you've got to bring them along and once you get what you get, you gotta make sure that you understand their strengths and their weaknesses and you work around them. You elevate those folks who compliment your leadership team and you marginalize those guys that are counterproductive.
William Gladhart:Right. Well, I think that can apply in any business situation where you're looking to align your team, your staff, your organization, to those same types of leadership values the same direction, getting everyone on the same bus. So I really appreciate you sharing those thoughts. Is there anything else that you'd like to add as a parting thought for other leaders?
Captain Rick Hoffman:Well, yeah, in the Navy, in fact in the military, we place high value on leadership and we forget that there's other issues that may or may not be effective. We also kind of denigrate the idea of management. We're leaders, not managers. Managers are like British nobility looking down on shopkeepers. Well, in my view, management and leadership are the opposite sides of the same coin. You're looking through the same window in different directions.
Captain Rick Hoffman:I don't think I can lead a poorly managed organization, and in the Navy in many cases I couldn't control some of the big management efforts that were happening above me. I don't own my schedule, I don't own pay rate, I don't own promotion. I can influence those things but I don't own them. So I have to make sure that where management's failing externally, I need to make sure I understand that and accommodate that in how I lead the rest of my team, make sure that the guys richly deserve to get promoted, get promoted in spite of the program that the Navy operates. The other thing that currently we've gotten in today's political view we've fallen all over ourselves and politicizing things that I think shouldn't be politicized. As an example, here in Florida we've really gotten really unhappy about the issue of diversity, inclusion and equity.
Captain Rick Hoffman:And I think that equity and inclusion if you look at my LinkedIn page Will you'll see a little paper I wrote. Equity and inclusion are. They go back to your first statement. They are the logical outcome of a good culture. If I know that I'm going to get promoted fairly, if I know what the processes are for me getting rewarded for my work, if I know that I'm going to be hired based on my value to the company and not by some other means, the result of that is going to be good morale. It's going to be cohesiveness in the workforce. It's going to be productivity and efficiency based on collaboration and cooperation, versus me directing actions to take place. The more I direct, the less I can do for myself, the less I can help the company. Micromanagement is a leadership failure, but if I don't trust you.
Captain Rick Hoffman:I'm going to micromanage you If you don't trust me, you're going to need to be micromanaged. Let's not get fogged out about the catch phrases and terminologies, but understand that it's important for everyone on the team to realize the role they play and the importance that they, that they have to everyone else on the team and you can't fake that it's got to be genuine.
Captain Rick Hoffman:It's got to be absolutely, absolutely genuine. I put my team together in 2008. I've got the same four guys in my headquarter staff, but we're still here. We're going to work together until one of us retires and I'm the oldest one in the group, so I'm probably first to go Well.
William Gladhart:I'm sure you've still got lots to contribute to a lot of different leaders and businesses. So, Captain Rick, I've enjoyed having you on our Leadership Levers podcast.
Captain Rick Hoffman:Thanks Will Glad to help. Bye-bye.
William Gladhart:Thank you for joining us on the Leadership Levers podcast. Find all our Leadership Levers episodes on the Culture Think Tank website at www. theculturethink tank. com or listen on your favorite streaming platform. We'd love to hear from you about the challenges you have faced as a leader. Tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experiences in strengthening culture and performance, one action at a time.
