A HIRED CALLING!

Derek Wilson (00:01.646)
So I actually lost a recording earlier, so I'm being very careful about that. So good afternoon, Mike, Dr. Mike Hackney. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Resume Arrelators, a Hired Calling. And so you and I haven't met before, so I want to just give you a brief history of me and then introduce yourself and tell you what I know. And again, this is a new podcast. I'm just setting it up.

Had I been more further along, I would have sent you a survey with some information to fill out kind of like you did for your doctorate when you were creating yours to get more context about your career before I brought you in here, but you're getting to go into this situation earlier, so I'm not quite ready. So my apologies for that.

Derek Wilson (00:46.926)
Sounds great. So Dr. Mike Hackney from your doctorate from the University of Southern California is Rossier's Organizational Change and Leadership. Is that correct? That is correct. And what about your other education besides that? I did undergrad where I was also an ROTC cadet at the University of Alabama. And then I did my

MBA at the University of Arizona Global Campus, so an online MBA, and did some additional work at MIT in robotics and artificial intelligence and business applications for those areas. OK. So I'm going to ask you some boring questions to get through this. And had it been further along, they would be part of the survey. But to get more of your context for this, because

This is a podcast that's going to probably develop into a documentary. And also there's research involved with this as long as they get the same kind of questions. So are you a veteran of the U .S. military? I am. I did a little over eight years active duty and then some unknown number of years in the reserve after that. good. What year did you separate? And what year? What was your rank at separation? So I separated from active duty in

1988, I was a captain. I'd been in the service at that point for nine years. And I took an IMA job in the reserve. I did that for approximately three, four years, Goal 4 -1 happened, I got called back into active duty. And then I went into the inactive reserves. If they ever promoted me after that, I have no idea. Because

They started drawing down a lot of the IMA jobs went away and I never did anything else that was active in the reserve after that time. And that was the Army captain, right? Yes, infantry. Infantry, good deal. They didn't have a TAP program back then, did they?

Derek Wilson (03:01.102)
What's that acronym for? Transitions to Citizens Program. Not that I am aware of. If they did when I was leaving active duty, it was not really focused on officers. And then, of course, everything ends in the reserve with a whimper, unless you're actually in a troop unit. Got it. The work you did at MIT in AI and robotics. Tell me a little bit about that.

Sure. So as a little bit of background, after I left the military, I ended up working for food corporations. And that was the basis of my working career for the most part up to this point. And that's, gosh, around 2018 or so, 2017, I began working with a

a Mexican -owned multinational company called Sigma. And they were looking at the potential for either doing a major expansion of a facility or building a new facility. And this is to make food products. So knowing a lot was going on with robotics, knowing I'd be responsible for coming in with the best possible design. I started, I asked myself, you know, what do I know, what do I not know? And how can I bridge that gap?

So there was a program offered at MIT on business applications of robotics and artificial intelligence, and about a three, four month program, basically like taking online courses. And so I did that with MIT and picked up a lot of insights about the state of the art of AI.

at that time and robotics at that time and how much it had evolved in the last 10 years or so. And I've kept up with it since then. And the one thing I would say is that everything I became familiar with in 2017, 2018 is all left in the dust. The work in robotics, robotics is mechanical.

Derek Wilson (05:29.902)
doing of things. But the mechanical doing of things is influenced by the programming, of course, which is telling the mechanical device to do this or to do that, and the intricacy that the device can use to do whatever it's being asked to do, whether that's manipulating genes, not the kind you and I are probably wearing right now, but you know.

G -E -N -E -S, DNA, whether it's manipulating genes on chromosomes or picking up, or, well, perfect example of AI and robotics in combination. When Starship finally is up and going, the first stage of Starship will come back down into the launch platform.

and it will be caught by robotic arms. Those aren't people that are in a room figuring out how to do that and manipulating something. That is going to be very elaborate programming, a lot of back and forth between the craft itself and the point that it's trying to get to, and it will all be automated. There'll be people there monitoring it, obviously.

but it will all be automated. And that's a perfect example of how artificial intelligence and mechanicals at that level are going to do something that 20 years ago, anyone would have thought was impossible. So what year did you finish the MIT program? 2017. 2017. And so from the time you left,

the military to 2017 you ran food corporations and multinational food corporations. Were you involved in robotics there too? Not to the same degree. In the period of the 90s and into the 2010s, companies are beginning to become more automated and beginning to use robotic devices to do a lot of the

Derek Wilson (07:56.078)
the simple things and Derek, can you pardon me for just a moment? Sure. How these Dick Tracy watches do things. Got one too brother. My wife is out and about. She normally doesn't call and then call again unless it's a problem. So now I totally understand. Don't worry about it at all. That's what editing is for.

We were talking about your experience in AI robotics. Yeah, so so.

robotics and taking away a lot of the drudgery work that are on assembly lines and in warehouses and things like that.

That type of improvement and capabilities enhancement has just been growing by leaps and bounds and leaps and bounds and leaps and bounds. And the biggest, particularly on the logistics of warehousing side, probably the biggest company that has incorporated those things, those capabilities is Amazon. And they have been at the forefront of developing any number of warehousing.

Any number of robotic devices to make warehousing as automated as possible and not have people running around in a pair of sneakers trying to find a this or that to put together an Amazon order. Some of their larger facilities have been completely outfitted. Numerous others have not. There's still a lot of jobs at Amazon. But that's the direction that companies are going.

Derek Wilson (09:43.342)
It enhances safety. It obviously will lower costs as the technologies become less expensive. But in looking at what those technologies do and how they do it, so many advances have been made. If you really want to look at something, go on YouTube.

and ask a query on YouTube to look at Mercedes -Benz automotive construction with robots or BMW or General Motors. All these videos that are now showing how automotive assembly lines that formerly 10, 20 people, one robot is doing that same amount of work. And it tends to be repetitive drudgery work.

For example, welding body parts together on an assembly line, things that were just repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, and in many cases, dangerous. So I've had quite an interest in that. So since you've taken that program at MIT, ended in 2017, 2018, how have you...

So the market definitely has changed. We're aware of that. Have you been on any projects where you implemented new AI and new factories recently? When I was leaving the Sigma company, we were doing a complete rebuild of the manufacturing capabilities at one of our facilities. And while we didn't take it to the levels that I personally would have preferred, but then at the same time, I wasn't the one writing the check.

So other influencers were on that. We did put in new equipment that was much more automated and used a variety of AI programs to control.

Derek Wilson (11:58.958)
the machines were operating to minimize waste because different kinds of variables when you're making food products, different kinds of variables in the recipe or what's going on in the oven or what's going on in the mix in the mixer can definitely change what the finished product is going to be like. And the goal is, of course, to be to be like McDonald's, whether you're in Miami or you're in Spokane. You go to McDonald's to get a hamburger.

you should get the exact same thing every single time. So a little bit of a longer answer to your question, but yes, we did incorporate a number of things into the technologies that we purchased for our production and our packaging lines that were utilizing a lot of AI capabilities.

Got it. So with your time at Sigma, I understand Sigma is a multinational organization. Yeah. About how many employees were there in the United States? gosh, I'm not sure. Approximate, does it matter? Three to 5 ,000 in the U .S. Okay. How involved? Worldwide, well over 50 ,000. Wow. Bar S is one of the largest food producers in the world, I believe.

How involved were you with hiring? Did you have a large team there? And I'm digging into, was there a veterans hiring program? How did your organization reach out to bring veterans in? Can you comment about the veteran experience while you were there? Certainly. So I have to focus on the division that I was responsible for. Don't want to speak for the other divisions. We encouraged

our employees who were veterans or who were in the Guard Reserve, we're hiring who do you know we would love to talk to them. And our advertisements that we would do and our commercials we would do, we would always highlight this is a veteran welcome company to come work at. Probably there were things that...

Derek Wilson (14:22.606)
more things that we could have done to highlight two veterans you're wanted and you're welcome. But in terms of outreach programs and things like that with Team Career Force Base, which is located there in the Oklahoma City area. But candidly, I'm not sure how much of that really occurred to us at that time beyond the things that I just said.

Derek Wilson (14:52.942)
As a veteran in this space and doing hiring of veterans, is there a common barrier or common problem you saw trying to bring veterans in, be it with the veteran themselves and their skills and their resume and their interview technique or with the organization and with your structure and how you onboard and retain people?

So a couple of three parts to your question. In terms of attracting veterans,

Veterans who had, for example, who could be maintenance technicians and had those skill sets and were already at the journeyman level from their time in the military, certainly able to come in at much higher hourly pay rates than other employees that we were hiring. For our hourly workforce, individuals coming in who...

did not have a maintenance technician capability that they'd already established would come in at our company scale. And while we paid pretty well, I don't want to quote a number, but it was somewhere between $16 and $20 as our starting hourly wage. While that was a very competitive starting wage for that area,

Some individuals, if they were an E5 or an E6 at the time that they separated, were certainly used to an annual salary level that was gonna be a lot more than $16 .50 or $18 an hour was gonna pay them.

Derek Wilson (16:43.598)
We were competing with anyone else and I'm sure folks went to where they thought they either were going to see the best opportunities for advancement or they were gonna make the most money and God love them. Once individuals were in our process,

I'm not going to say that we had preferential treatment for hiring veterans, but we certainly looked at the background of veterans in a much more positive way than someone that had maybe had five or six jobs since high school. And, you know, they were still only 23, 24 years old. So we knew when we brought in veterans that their sense of self -discipline.

their work ethic, their capabilities, their willingness to be trained, had already been demonstrated by their military or naval service, and we were very glad to have.

Derek Wilson (17:50.766)
I think there was another part to your question. I'm gonna make sure I cover. Well, so, so it may be a bit of a question, so kind of morphed a little bit. So the income level of salary wage is the barrier for the E5, E6 not being able to come on to an assembly line role. What about senior staff NCOs being able to enter at, you know, manager level roles? Was that possible there or did you have to work up through the ranks to be able to hit the manager role?

So those individuals are certainly competitive to apply for supervision roles. During my tenure with the company, I don't recall us hiring anyone externally as a supervisor. We did hire for a couple of management positions and in three off the top of my head,

all three of those individuals and I was kind of the final hiring authority decision maker, but all three of those positions did go to veterans. And these were individuals that had been staffed in COs or hired either in the army or the Marines, M1 Air Force.

Got it. Thank you. Did you do hiring of people for roles that were at the traditionally would be in CO level roles and also officer level roles? So that's a misnomer in the civilian industry, at least in the manufacturing industries. Hourly employees, whether they're assembly line workers, you know, as a generic category.

or their technicians like maintenance technicians, quality technicians, what have you. Individuals in those hourly roles are paid on an hourly wage scale. Individuals in supervision or management are paid on a salary wage scale. Duties and responsibilities.

Derek Wilson (20:12.078)
for a supervisor into a junior manager are very much what I would associate with what a senior NCO does or what a junior officer does. And those individuals with that experience were certainly very well equipped to apply for those roles. Unfortunately, and in this, in my Oklahoma experience,

This was not the case, but in other experiences in my food career with companies like ConAgra, where our facilities were union, the wage scale was decided by the union contract. There wasn't really a lot of leeway to bring someone in at a higher than the established starting amount per the contract. So,

A lot of it just came down to the personal preference of the individual interviewing. We certainly had individuals who had separated or had retired, who were mid -level or senior -level NCOs who did come and apply for what I'll call an hourly job outside of the technician roles. And then, as I said, we had some individuals that applied for the manager.

But there's no, the differentiation that we're used to in the military really comes down to more, are you an hourly employee? Are you a salaried employee? And then within the salary ranks, then that has its own divisions between supervision management, senior management, technical management, executives, and what have you.

So you were an army officer, right? My question, or this question really is around, did you see the struggle for officers to be different than the struggle for enlisted folks who were applying for work at your organization throughout your organization at your time when you were in this space, as you would be in the hiring processes for the different levels of roles were?

Derek Wilson (22:31.854)
the enlisted veterans having the same barriers, same issues as the officer veteran that you may have interviewed. So I'm gonna talk about my general business experience with companies like ConAgra, PepsiCo, Sara Lee. Generically, I think the thresholds were pretty much the same. The barriers were pretty much the same. Part of this is because so few individuals,

that they were going to be talking to had any military experience at all and didn't know the difference between a corporal and a lieutenant general. Couldn't begin to tell you. So for them, you either were in the military, you would either been in the military or you would not. If you had been in the military, they didn't know the difference between a tank crewman and an intelligence, military intelligence linguist. Just...

isn't in their lexicon of experience or understanding. So generically, whether someone is a recently retired senior NCO or recently separated junior officer, at least in the food manufacturing spaces that I was in, it...

The jobs were available, they were open. There were barriers. One of the big barriers to going into a management job was whether or not an individual had either a technical degree at the associate's level that was appropriate to what they were applying for, or they had a bachelor's degree of pretty much anything which was seen as meeting the degree threshold that the employers were looking for. So.

An E6, E7 that had a bachelor's degree that they had gotten in while they were in the service was just as competitive for a lieutenant or a captain that was applying for a supervision or a first level management role. Got it. Brief change of gears here if you don't mind. Tell me a little bit about your doctoral research dissertation.

Derek Wilson (24:57.422)
I did my doctoral program while I was working for the Sigma Company. And because my background has, my interests have always been in organizational effectiveness and organizational psychology. I wanted very much to incorporate an area that I was already familiar with and interested in.

into my doctoral program.

I did my dissertation on gap closure of knowledge of managers and executives in the food industry to what's going on with robotics and AI. I asked a simple question. Having just seen for myself that I didn't know what I needed to know, because none of this was even talked about back when I was an undergrad.

Having just seen that I didn't know what I needed to know and having had to gone out, having to go out on my own and research it and learn it and figure out a bit of the language so I can talk to technical representatives from manufacturing companies that we might be buying products from, whatever. Are there other individuals out there that have had to, that have run into the same issue who have needed to bridge a knowledge gap? And if they have hit that knowledge gap,

then two sub questions, how did they do it and how did their organization support them? So my doctoral research was done around the very basic question of.

Derek Wilson (26:44.046)
a food industry executive, are robotics and AI a factor for you? And if they are, how have you learned what you needed to know? And while you were learning it, to what degree did your company support you? That third part, to what degree did your company support you, actually became relevant as I was doing the research and I was...

I discovered a very huge differentiation. Some companies were all over it. Some companies didn't want to talk about it. Some companies were looking to the future and they wanted to buy, if I'm going to spend money on technology, what's the technology that I need in order to be most competitive with the people that I'm competing against? Other companies were more of a, yeah, it's...

probably important, but it costs a lot and it costs more or it costs something different or we don't know about it, therefore it isn't relevant. And I found that to be a pretty interesting differentiation with all of the people that I interviewed during my research.

So with this gap and the way the executives were closing their knowledge gap, did you uncover opportunities or a space for increased veteran entrepreneurship? I don't imagine there's increased veteran employment if the AI and the robotics are pushing people out of these roles or it's a different change, right? I suspect there's opportunity for how do we help them solve these AI and robotics problems that they don't understand yet.

and how do better skills translate to this space? So I'm not sure what the transition into the space would be specifically, but I'll look at it generically in two different categories.

Derek Wilson (28:48.718)
If an individual is very technically savvy about applications for robotics and AI, let me step back for just a moment. All the academics in the world can talk all they want about how you write an AI program and how you make AI do certain things conceptually. But in the real world,

How am I going to use AI to inspect a package that I want to put into a box? When individuals are loading boxes at a food company, they're not just putting the item into a box and making sure the count is correct. They're giving that package that last quality examination, is the count correct? Is the package sealed correctly?

is, are the graphics correct? And they learn how to do this very, very quickly. Trying to teach a robot how to do that and do it well and develop the programming, the AI programming, which is going to create queries to the robot that the robot has to answer and then they put the package in.

That's not something that a typical academic can do. That takes a programming engineer and it takes someone that has, whether it's in food or just name any category whatsoever, someone that understands what the end item is supposed to be. So generically, an individual that has those kinds of skills and that kind of technical expertise can certainly be someone that gets

that can go into a space and say,

Derek Wilson (30:48.334)
you're going to need to do this. I know how to do it and let me show you how I've done it for other people.

It's a great way to get into the space if you've got that proficiency. The second category though is the technicians that when a food manufacturing company is going to redo a manufacturing line and they want to bring in new machines, the company may say, I want the machines to be able to do the following things and they're going to have an AI robotics component to them.

Or in the dialogue, the fabrication company that's going to make the new machine may say to them, hey, company, this is the way you've done it, but would you like to be able to do the following? And we have technicians who know how to figure that out and can figure that out. And when you get your new line, you're going to be a lot more effective than you thought you ever could be.

So the number of companies that are out there and there's hundreds of them, they fabricate conveyors, they fabricate packaging machines, they fabricate mixers and loaders and just all sorts of the sub components that go in to a manufacturing line for making any kind of product. They understand that they're competing.

with someone else for the same contract and they need the ability to go to that customer and say, if you want this, we can do this for you. If you haven't thought about this, can we recommend some things you might want to think about? So the opportunity for technicians.

Derek Wilson (32:46.734)
is huge. The opportunity for basically anyone who's coming from an aviation maintenance background, an M1 tank maintenance background, with all the electronics and the components, they understand the language. It's just a different piece of machinery that they're going to be working on. So a lot of opportunities for those individuals to get into that.

Thank you for that. So different kind of a question, same space though. So before, when a factory was gonna redo their assembly line or do a modification of their process, a human being, maybe like you would come in and say, this is how you should lay it out. These are the pieces of equipment you should use. And these are the reasons why. Now, I imagine there's an impact now of AI saying, hey, I understand what you're doing here at this factory. Let me provide you additional ways to streamline.

you're processing. So how is AI affecting the creation of these new factories and assembly lines? That is an excellent perspective.

When a building is conceptualized,

Derek Wilson (34:07.918)
the engineering and the architecture company that is going to work with the building owner down the road, the food manufacturer down the road. The ones that are staying on top of things are looking at what the Amazons and the Conagras and the Frito -Lays of the world are doing, for example, with developing new components and new capabilities.

a lot of which are proprietary, but the components are relatively, they're putting together components that are relatively common. And the programming for them may be very specific, but they're paying attention to what other companies are doing. And so they're asking companies, what is it that you want this building to do?

And then they're using, and I can't speak to a specific, but generically, they're using AI capability in the building design to say, okay, what options would we have to do X, Y, Z? And the AI program might say, you really don't want to do X, Y, Z, you want to do Z, B, D, then X.

And just bringing in perspectives that the company that's requesting the work may not have ever even thought of. So.

Derek Wilson (35:54.766)
I think there's just so many variables that influence that. And the ability of the AI programs to be remembering what all those variables are, capturing what those variables are, and then looking at, OK, within a given amount of space, and you want to do the following, here's some layout designs that we think could work for you. And.

This is how many employees that you will need to have with this layout design. This is how many employees you will need to have with that layout design to get the same output of cases per hour. So on your topic of AI, inspecting the packaging before it gets 10 % out the door, I also worked on a program where we were developing a system to use the cameras to inspect the 55 gallon drums that contain uranium coming out of the mines.

for a couple of things to work with. So I understand this topic very well. And there's so much that could happen there. But so what companies are providing this design service in this space? And is there anybody that you know that's like maybe leading the way in delivering this AI automation for manufacturing in this space? Because I think that is a spot where veterans can provide a lot of skills in helping develop

those new processes of the future because of the way that we do processes live in the field. Being able to now do that with AI provides a layer of risk protection that before we weren't able to accept. Now we can do simulations and go, okay, this is gonna work and how. So what organizations are leading the way in this automation, do you think? So.

I can't give you a laundry list at this point. I can go back and research that. I would say the difference between now and 10 years ago, 10 years ago, there were a handful that were understanding that these questions are going to be asked and they were developing internal capabilities. Today, I would say all of the major players who manufacture industrial equipment that's gonna go into a building,

Derek Wilson (38:16.718)
that a company is going to use, they're using AI themselves to make their equipment. And then they're using AI as part of the design interaction that they're having with the customer. So if I was going to, for example, if I was a con agrar, and I wanted to build from scratch a brand new factory that was going to make Hebrew national hot dogs.

something I know a little bit about because I formerly used to run the division of ConAgra, the Medieval National Adopt. The design aspects of putting that factory in place are totally different today than they were 20 years ago, just because the builders and the machinery developers are adopting AI capabilities. So for veterans that have an interest in that, I think...

The sky is the limit. I hesitate to say this too emphatically, but individuals that have the technical capability to write AI related programming or to work on machines and machine tools that utilize AI to build other things, those folks pretty much can write their own ticket when it comes to going and getting jobs.

So on that note, how do you feel about people focusing on learning?

how to use integrated AI and programs that we know exist now versus focusing it on developing in developing new AI programs, right? So, for example, if an individual is trying to determine, I want to go learn how to be an excellent user of the new Adobe product that has AI in it and be the best user of this AI integrated product, or I'm going to go become a developer of

Derek Wilson (40:27.758)
AI to be integrated into other products. What's a more wise career move, you think? I think it depends on the individual and how much time they have left to work. Once upon a time, there was a computer program language called Fortran. And it used punch cards. And people became absolute experts at that language. It's not relevant anymore.

if they went on to other languages, they stayed relevant. So I don't think there's a right way or a wrong way. I think it's just up to the individual.

what they want to, what the, you know, do they want to swing the bat at fastballs or swing the bat at curve balls? And there'll always be sliders in between. Right. So I wouldn't know which way I would recommend somebody go. But.

If an individual is very adept at developing and understanding the nuances of computer programming and how to develop programming languages, that might be an indicator that they would be good at developing new AI capabilities.

Great answer. Change the gear on you a little bit here. As my research was about better and employment and also I'm very interested in luck. And also my research was about self -efficacy. So I'll ask some questions about that. If you don't mind, you probably get these in a survey as well. Actually, just top level between one and 60, how lucky are you?

Derek Wilson (42:21.742)
Well, what does one mean and what does 60 mean? One means you have the worst luck ever and 60 means you are, you wake up with a shamrock in your coffee and you follow the rainbow every day when you come home, right? So extremely lucky. Well, if I was a 60, I would have already won the lottery a half a dozen times. That hasn't happened yet. So I'm going to say I'm a 35. You're a 35. All right. How often do you chat up strangers in lines and as such?

On a scale of one to five, how often do you chat with people out in public? At least a four. Four. On one to five, I don't tend to feel anxious or worried about life.

Again, what's your scale? Five is I'm very worried or one I'm not worried at all. Right. One. One. You have tried some techniques to boost your intuition, such as meditation or just going to a quiet place. Same scale, one to five. four.

I nearly always expect good things happen to me in the near future.

Derek Wilson (43:34.318)
I try for what I want in life, even if the chances of success seem slim.

Derek Wilson (43:42.702)
I expect the most of people that I meet to be pleasant and helpful. Four. I tend to look on the bright side of things whenever something happens to me. Four.

I believe that even negative events will work out well for me in the long run.

I don't dwell on the things that haven't worked out well for me in the past. Five.

I try to learn from the errors that I've made in the past. Five. So I can tell you that your overall score, you said, is lower than what your actual score would be if we did all these the way through. OK. On the specific level, you think you're luckier than you are the general level. I think that's common. So Dr. Richard Wiseman did research in this space. I'm going to try to bring him on the podcast as well. I'm not saying that we can go out and change our luck, and we're going to win.

on Blackjack in the casino. It's not what I'm suggesting or not what the research says. But the research says that if you do the things we just talked about, you're going to increase your luck, right? By taking on new experiences, talking to people you don't know, eating food you haven't eaten before, going to events you don't normally go to. Those are the things that increase our luck. So I'm very interested in figuring out what this really means for veterans. And how do you think veterans treat their luck? Do you think we...

Derek Wilson (45:07.118)
See yourself as lucky people or unlucky people.

Derek Wilson (45:12.142)
which I think that varies Dr. Wilson from.

person to person, but overall, the kind of people who have gone into the military, gone into the naval service.

Derek Wilson (45:35.022)
whether they've gone in enlisted or officer, have done their time, the commitment that they wanted to do, three years, six years, 20 years.

By and large, when they come out...

They're just so much more capable of taking on the day to day, which tends to overwhelm people that don't have the military experience.

Things that get other people all stressed out and worried and talking and just wasting an awful lot of time trying to affect something that they cannot affect. I think veterans tend to have just a much calmer perspective on what is important and what isn't important.

And 98 % of it isn't important and they don't waste a lot of energy worrying about it. At the same time, they tend to be a lot more prone in my experience to picking up their own, picking up themselves by their own bootstraps or looking for opportunities for making good things happen of their own effort as opposed to just sitting back and waiting on someone else to do it for them.

Derek Wilson (47:04.494)
That's going to vary from individual to individual.

That's why saying earlier, given a flip of the coin between hiring someone that was a veteran versus somebody who wasn't a veteran. And I'm, you know, they both scored the same. Always going to go with the veteran for me. If they if I'm considering I should hire them, I'm going to hire just because I know innately they they just have a much.

better perspective on how to get things done, and they're not going to get rattled.

I don't know how that ties in with the research, but that's my perspective. So what you said does tie in with kind of being prepared and not focusing on the inappropriate things. And it does tie into creating your own luck, right? I do think that we have more impact over our own luck than we actually know. And if we implement these things about not dwelling on the past, figuring out the ways to go forward, talking to more individuals to get more feedback, we're able to create.

better situations for ourselves was we had to be prepared to accept to capitalize on those things, right? Which turns, thank you. And it turns to my next topic really, and my research going forward is self -efficacy and how important that is for veterans in the employment space. I mean, from what I've seen recently, the recent research, right? There's a group efficacy problem that we think veterans in general, we think we are as effective,

Derek Wilson (48:43.566)
alone as we were when we were in the service because we have, but in the service, we have a better support network. We have more people around that can provide resources and support and help. And although there are resources that exist when you get out and you transition, they're not as readily as available as people think. They're not as easy to find as people think. And there are some, there are tons of programs that exist right now that can be life changing that people, that are veterans who are transitioning aren't even aware of. I'll use an example of the Coursera courses that are available.

through Veterans Transition Support, BTS. It's an exceptional program. You can do all kinds of legitimate courses like supply chain management from Rutgers, patient safety from Johns Hopkins, tons of lists just like that, and a bunch of AI training that's available for free. But we're not aware of it as to the level that we should be. But those of us who are self -advocates and we go out and we hunt for this stuff, we find it. And veterans inherently do have that ability to go hunt for stuff.

Sometimes I'm just not sure why we don't or we can't find it or sometimes we end up not being able to employ these resources the way that other veterans do.

Derek Wilson (49:59.118)
I agree with you. And I think it comes down to a couple of things. The first one, there's two parts, awareness and tenacity.

The second part is teamwork.

The biggest difference to me between the civilian workplace and the military is the sense of team. Civilian workplace can have teams, certain thing, you know, a fire department, things that are paramilitary, I'm not including in this, an airline crew, things that by their very nature teamwork is absolutely required.

But just generic, go to work every day. Teamwork is something that doesn't exist in the same way, unless it's cultivated, that we find in the military or the naval service that's just automatic, that is innate to everything that anyone with a prior arm.

forces background, you know, is going to think of. It's the difference between the first day of basic training at whatever level and the day that you graduate. You're not the same person and the people around you are not the same. So in the civilian sector, everybody for the most part, no matter how friendly they are,

Derek Wilson (51:47.438)
unless you've got a personal relationship with them, you're not going to find that same kind of teamwork or camaraderie that was just innate to being in the armed forces. In that first bucket, awareness is everything. And having the tenacity, if I'm not aware, to go look for where I can become aware can...

make a can be very difficult. And I can't because I didn't recently separate from active duty. I can't speak to what the systems are now.

I do have a son that recently separated from 10 years of active duty as an E6 infantryman in the Army. And I asked him about his transition and...

They went through the motions, but they didn't specifically really give him a lot of tools that would be useful to him once he was 30 days away from the service. And now it's time to go find a job for him to actually find ways to do things. So I hope the efficacy that people are finding when they're coming out.

is a more positive experience for them than what it was most recently for my son. And he separated about a year ago. What you're describing is what I'm hearing from everybody else in my doing my research, they're not properly equipping people still. So send him my way, I'll do whatever I can to help him out, get him started in any direction that I possibly can.

Derek Wilson (53:40.846)
And on that topic, right? So you separated many years ago, but you know, there's nothing new under the sun. When you separated, did you struggle to find a job that provided you the same meaning and fulfillment that you had when you were in the service? There are none. Doesn't exist, right? So how did you... I think maybe somebody becomes an astronaut, you know, or they become a policeman or they go into something where they're...

doing something for other, and that's a great question because you just made me think of this corollary.

Derek Wilson (54:20.718)
Because overall the absence of intrinsic teams defines civilian and the presence of intrinsic teams defines what we're used to in the armed forces. We find meaning as a member of the armed forces of being part of our team with having our combat buddies, our ranger buddies, our swim buddies, whatever phrase we're gonna use.

It becomes ingrained to us in that basic training. You don't go anywhere without your buddy. He takes care of you. You take care of him, non -gender specific. It's ingrained into us. Then that team of two people becomes a fire team or a section or a crew. And it's, we're all about each other and we care about each other.

civilian sector is just a job. So unless there's something in the civilian sector that is gonna have a similarity to caring about others because you want them to succeed and if they succeed, the team succeeds. There's not a lot of civilian jobs that are out there. At least not that I run across. I understand. So I think that that...

that gap where people, veterans can't find employment that is as fulfilling as they used to have, and they struggle to find and fill this space, it causes unrest, mental health issues, all kinds of problems, especially within the career space. You've had a long career and have reached some pretty high levels here. How did you manage that? What did you do with that energy or that need for...

Derek Wilson (56:20.75)
for fulfillment, where did you find it? Created my own teams, created my own fulfillment. So in my particular case, I already had a job before I left active duty with PepsiCo. They had a training program for junior military officers and I was made aware of it. I applied to it. I was accepted. And I started out as a production supervisor.

on second shift making potato chips. Keep in mind my most recent job was being the interim S3 operations officer of a maneuver brigade in the 24th Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia.

Now I'm overseeing approximately 15 hourly workers who are making potato chips in a factory. Not the same. It was the most humbling experience. And at the time I just, why am I doing this? But I learned a lot from it about myself and about business.

and I learned how to take them and make them into a team.

I learned how to take people that have been working the same hourly job for 20 years, doing whatever they did on the manufacturing line and start looking at each other as teammates as opposed to just people that I work with. That's where I found my fulfillment. And for the rest of my food career, whether it was working at a facility as a production manager or as a quality manager,

Derek Wilson (58:13.07)
or becoming a plant manager or then becoming a general manager and then, you know, and other more senior executive roles. It was intrinsic to me that I functioned best when I'm part of a team. And in my case, the Army had trained me to be a team leader at whatever level. So I formed teams, I'm the leader, we're all gonna work together.

We're all gonna be part of the same team. And I learned a variety of different kinds of leadership styles that have nothing to do with the autocratic, I'm the drill sergeant, you're the private, do what I say. Instead, it's the very much the, we're all in this together. If there's a hard decision that has to be made, they pay me to make it. But otherwise, what we can do together and figure out together in a facilitative manner, that's what we're gonna do.

And my job as your leader is to facilitate your success. So for me, my success was because I created that mindset. I didn't create it deliberately. I stumbled into it and incrementally over time became aware that I had it. Then I began trying to improve it. But I wouldn't have had it had I not had the training that I had gotten.

as a cadet, as a lieutenant, as a captain at Command and General Staff College in my military education. So the big difference to civilian is civilian doesn't do that. They just don't, they don't want to spend the money. They don't want to spend the time. They don't have the backfill. And it very, unless you get into a really good situation where you're a couple of, with a couple of other veterans.

We're going to help you transition that gap. It can be very lonely and very difficult.

Derek Wilson (01:00:19.982)
I hope I'm not speaking too much on that or taking us in too much of a tangent here. No, you're all good. I appreciate it. I do realize that I didn't get to ask you about your book and we just hit time. So you want to talk about your book for a minute that you're about to put out or you need to get off of here? no, we can talk about that. Which books do you want to talk about? I've got several. Well, I just saw you're putting one out about military leadership.

on your LinkedIn. But you've also done other books. I'll put a discography here, a bibliography here of what you got. How many books have you written? So I write. So I do write. I kind of hate to admit that I do, but I do. But everyone has secrets, and now you and your viewers will know one of mine. Writing is very tough, and it's a passion.

And my guest yesterday too is a deep reader and writer and it's helpful for everybody in this space, so please. Yeah, certainly. So I write in four areas. I write a lot about airplane safety because I'm a pilot. I write business books or leadership related type stuff because that's just who I am, what I do.

And most recently, I was part of a book called Do More Stupid Things. And the gist of it was, what was something everybody thought you were crazy, but you did it and it worked out okay. And so a number of different kinds of stories from different people where they done something stupid and they'd made good things happen. The book that you're referencing,

And I'm trying to think, and it's funny, I can't think of the exact title here. I can pull it up right here right now. I was just looking at it. Yeah, thank you. Light Changing Leadership, Stories of Military Mindset, Motivation, and Mission Critical Teamwork. So the editor is putting together an anthology of different authors, and I'm one of the lead authors for the book. And it is asking individuals...

Derek Wilson (01:02:39.31)
whether it was in a military situation or it was the application of a leadership capability that you learned from the military and you use later on in life. What are some anecdotal examples of how you became a better person or you utilized a leadership situation and what did you learn from it? How did it work out? In that particular anthology, and I don't want to give it away,

I actually talk about something that happened to me when I was at the infantry officer advance course. And it was related to physical training. And it was related to how I used one of our allied officers to convince the whole world.

everybody around us, that my platoon and my student company could do physical training in Japanese.

Derek Wilson (01:03:42.062)
It was an amazing thing. And basically it was my effort to combat complacency. We're two thirds of the way through the course, everybody's bored, they just wanted to get done. And physical training was just one of those rote things that we did two or three times a week, depending on whether we were in garrison environment or we were out on a field exercise environment. So.

One of the allied officers that was in my unit, he and I decided to liven things up a little bit. It's a pretty funny story, but the moral of it, and I go into some business examples, is as a leader, one of the things that I realized after I reflected on that particular thing, and I've utilized this many times since then, all groups get complacent. All groups get complacent.

If we're not recognizing the complacency exists, then we don't have a basis for getting better. So how do we address complacency? How do we recognize it's there and then figure out things to do to minimize it? You'll never get rid of it completely. But if you're aware of it and you do things in a proactive way, you can minimize the bad things that it can cost.

And that might even be its own podcast down the road if you wanted to talk about complacency and how do we address complacency. The other two categories of books I write, I write academic books. I'm working on a couple with one of the professors from USC. Those are going very, very slowly, a lot of research. And then the fourth is I write fiction. And I use a different name for my fiction. I use the pen name shade.

Michaels. My middle name is Shade. And because candidly, my last name is Hackney. And Hackney, why just T it up for the critics? If that's, you know. So long ago when I began writing fiction, it was recommended to me by an editor. Do you want to maybe look at a different name? And I.

Derek Wilson (01:06:04.622)
I realized where they were coming from, so I did that. So I have two books coming out later this year. They're part of a series called the Omega series and they're political action thrillers, military guys, good guys, Pentagon, White House, Russians, Chinese, terrorists, page turners, something you can read while you're in an airplane going from point A to point B.

Very cool. It takes a lot of creativity to create these non -fiction books. I'm sorry, to create the fiction books. And I'll do my best to figure out how to put the links in here for your books whenever I figure out how to do this graphic insertion here. no worries. You're a very busy man and you have a lot to share and I appreciate your time here. Anything else you want to share before we get off of here? I would hate to think that we've already bored the audience to death, so I don't want to prolong the misery.

But Dr. Wilson, it's been a pleasure to be a part of your program and thank you for inviting me. This has been a great experience for me and I thank you for your time, what you're doing for helping educate veterans and getting better jobs and the work you've done here. This is going to help people understand what it takes to get a better job in the food industry and how to move up. And we'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Have a great day. You too.