e is my biggest pet peep arrogance breaths complacency it keeps you from learning it keeps you from getting better and you better lead with [Music] humility welcome to how leaders lead where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode you'll have something simple that you can apply as you develop into a better leader that's what this podcast is all about my guest today is alen Shaw he's the president CEO of Norfolk Southern a railroad company with a network that serves half the United States population he spent nearly three decades there so he's been working on the railroad for a long long time and he's been doing everything from coal operations to chemicals to marketing so let me tell you if anybody could walk into the room and have all the answers it's Allen he knows this business cold but he does the opposite for him leadership is about supporting other people as they discover the answers and as you'll hear today that emphasis on humility is helping him launch a bold new strategy and is helping him navigate a really tough crisis this conversation with Allan shows you the power of showing up and doing it with humility and what that really looks like when you put it into action so let's dive in here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours Allan [Music] Shaw I'd like to start by just having you give us a snapshot of norick Southern and and the business that you lead today we're a freight railroad that operates in the eastern half of the United States to us that creates a lot of a lot of benefit for us you know we serve about 60% of the consumption in the United States over 50% of the manufacturing in the United States we serve over half of all us light vehicle production our powerful franchise that's really designed to serve the manufacturing base and the consumer we feel like there's there's an incredible amount of opportunity for growth and within about seven months of becoming CEO I launched a new vision for norfol southern which pivots away from that just intense near-term focus on operating margin to one that's more focused on the long term with a balance between service productivity growth and leveraging our unique franchise strengths well I want to really get into that a little bit later but you know it's interesting is I've done my research you spent nearly three decades with this company and tell us about the most fun day you've had on the job in those nearly 30 years I really get my energy from being out in the field and engaging with my craft colleagues and the field supervisors and so I probably the most fun day was the day that I was announced as CEO I went out in the field and I spent some time in the crew rooms and I spent some time in the um the locomotive cabs and I remember walking up to some of our engineers and conductors they were sitting at a picnic table they're getting ready to get on their train and um start moving our customers business and I walked up and they probably thought I was like a local supervisor trained master and they were looking at me and they I introduced myself and they said 'well what do you do and I saidwell I'm the president of nori Southern and they kind of looked at me and they're like oh yeah I just saw that press release so then we had we had a really good conversation on what we can do to make norfol Southern safer and provide better service and help our customers grow and that da that's one of the things that I do when I get out in the field is I ask questions I don't have the answers but I know that all 20,000 norick Southern employees do and and I'm also reminded about this time of year was about a year ago I was out in one of our yards it was late afternoon and I see our crew members sitting around talking to a local supervisor about ideas on how to enhance service for our customers and I was blown away here it is the day before Christmas Eve they've already finished their work it would have been really easy for them to get home that evening to their families but they wanted to sit and talk to their supervisor about about how we can enhance our service and that that made me feel really good absolutely and uh you know being in a a company for the time that you've been you know you have to grow up as a leader and when you look back Allan you know what was the biggest thing you had to work on to get to the point where you could actually run a company of this size and stature you know this I'm sure as As you move up you're used to being the one who solves all the problems and you're used to being the one who has all the details and can answer all the questions but what got you to that leadership level won't make you an effective leader right and so as as you become a leader and you move into areas of more and more responsibility you really are working to pull that information and pull that engagement out of your your teammates right because I don't have the answers it goes back to humility right but I know how to ask a lot of questions and I know how to get my teammates to provide Solutions and work on Solutions because I don't have them but my job is to give them the resources and the space in order to solve problems themselves you obviously had a great track record no question about that but but what was the accomplishment that made it pretty clear to everybody in the board that you were the person for the top job I wouldn't say it was a single accomplishment David what it was is it was moving around into uncomfortable positions I started at norfol Southern in finance I've got an aerospace engineering degree I earned my CFA when I was at norfol Southern so really left-brain type of person and figured I'd just move up through finance and uh for My Career I was really happy being a finance person the um senior vice president of Cole at that time Bill Fox came to me and he wanted me to move into marketing and I told him I said I don't know anything about marketing I'm an engineer and I'm a finance person he's like well look you're smart and you know how to ask questions and so I moved into marketing and he put me in charge of our coal operations team completely out of my comfort zone had to learn a complete new skill set had to really push my own envelope and challenge myself but it also gave me an opportunity to build a much broader Network within norfol Southern I've been very fortunate throughout my career at norfol Southern that people kept an eye out for me and they would typically move me into different roles that required a completely different skill set and that takes a lot of Courage I didn't necessarily want to do it at the time but ultimately it was the right thing for me to do so I moved from coal operations into chemicals marketing and then someone tapped me on the shoulder and told me to go into inter modal operations all completely different skill sets all building a much better Network internally at nns and and externally too with you know our our customers and the communities that we serve and our business partners and so that really helped round me out and that I think that gave me a much better Enterprise perspective of noric seln as well you know I want to go deep into how you're you're leading norick Southern but first I want to take you back what's the story from your childhood that shaped the kind of leader you are today when I was growing up for a couple years years my father was a lieutenant in the Marine Corps and he did a couple tours in Vietnam and so my mom and I and I was four five six at the time we moved in with my grandmother and she was raised four kids on her own she worked as a basically an assistant secretary at the financial aid office at the College of William and Mary so she raised four kids put them through college on a secretary's salary my aunt who was also in high school lived with us at the time so I was I was surrounded by like three really strong women but what I saw my grandmother do is in the financial aid office people would come in and they had some expenses that wouldn't qualify for financial aid my grandmother would give them money out of her own pocket here's somebody who figured out how to raise three kids or four kids put them through college on a secetary salary and still give money to kids at William and Mary who needed it and that really kind of taught me you know to do the right thing over the long term and to pay it forward when did you have this aha moment when you knew that you personally had it within you to actually run a company like norick Southern when I became Chief marketing officer I I felt like I would be in the running for the position and you know this you know for the couple years that you have is up to that transition you know you're thinking about what you would do you're thinking about your vision you're thinking about your strategy and how you would build your team and that's all great right that's really important well boy David on day one when you sit in that seat you realize it's all about accountability and it's about accountability to your shareholders and your board and your employees and your customers and that's that was eye openening for me and Frank that has really informed how I've approached the position over the last 18 to 20 months you know people always say it's really Lonely at the Top do do you find it that way Allan do you think it's Lonely at the Top I mean you do have the ultimate accountability but how do you think about that lonely question I really don't find it Lonely at the Top because I got 20,000 NS employees who are out there willing to help just yesterday I was at our crew training facility outside side of Atlanta and we held a town hall and I got to meet some of the conductor trainees that we had just hired and you know got to talk to them um and so I get all kinds of interaction with my colleagues you know one of the things that I've really tried to be as CEO is authentic and transparent and accessible and um you know anytime I want I can get out there into the field and talk to people or I can go talk to customers and I certainly got a really good team here in in Atlanta that's helping as well so I don't find it Lonely at the Top I find there's an incredible amount of responsibility and accountability but I've got a whole organization that's designed to help you know you took over as CEO in December of 2021 and then a year in and you just mentioned it at the top of our our conversation you made a big change in strategy I'd like to go a little bit deeper on that you know tell us why you felt it was important to change the Strate and I'd like to hear that yeah so I had about 25 years at customer facing roles um at norfol Southern after I moved out of finance and obviously with a finance background the numbers matter right for me so what I've seen us do as a rail industry over the last 25 years David is we've we've seated shared a truck now rail is less expensive than truck rail is safer than truck rail is much more sustainable for a carbon footprint Advantage than truck and rail offers more capacity the one thing that we haven't been able to compete with truck on is service and that's because historically what rails have traditionally done is at the first sign of economic weakness we really dial back on our resources Cruise locomotes rail cars and then when the US economy recovers and it always does it's the best econom in the world rails don't have the resources in place to properly serve our customers and I know that no company is going to be a growth organization if it gets provides its customers with lousy service every three years and so we did the numbers right historically if we were to Furlow say a thousand employees during um an economic downturn you know that might save us $90 million that year but David when the economy recovers and we need to recall those employees only 50% of them come back and I also know that it costs about $50,000 to recruit hire and train an employee so all of a sudden that $90 million becomes a $65 million savings because we got to spend $25 million to go out there and hire 500 people and I also know from my time as Chief marketing officer that in any given year when we don't have a good service product we're leaving about 600 to800 million in revenue on the table that we can't handle because of our our service product and I also know that a slower railroad is a more expensive railroad faster we run the less locomotives we use the less rail cars we use the less Crews we use so there's a really compelling economic reason to invest in service now just like every investment investment comes before the benefits but what I'm doing is we're transforming norfol Southern from a railroad that basically handles Commodities and to one in which can really operate and compete and that consumer oriented truck competitive service sensitive Market that's out there that is just so vast and so huge and is the fastest growing Market that's out there so you have to invest in more customer service you got to do it first for it to happen that money's got to go in you know how did you get your team to buy into this dramatic change because I'm sure you had some naysayers saying Hey listen pal you know you're gonna take us down the road here you know we're not going to be able to uh pull this off yeah you're right you know we've been around 197 years so in some cases people get pretty comfortable with the status quo but again I think it's to me it comes back to numbers right the numbers have got to work the numbers have got to matter and if you're trans parent you show people your work and you show show them how the numbers work out then you get a lot of buying and that's what we're getting now is a lot of buying throughout the organization and other key stakeholders as well certainly customers love this deal right they love our approach and you know building trust with customers is a key component I'll tell you this when I moved into our our chemicals team in about 2009 I replaced somebody who really wasn't all that focused on growth he didn't have a growth mindset and so he was wasn't treating the customers as if there were a growth opportunity it was more of really let's just work on price and I walked into some pretty difficult meetings with customers I they they were really frustrated with me and I knew that I had to rebuild that trust so I did it day by day Little Things by little things and I ultimately got to the point where about three years later I ended up doing a deal with one of the more vocal customers on the back of a bar napkin in which we got a lot more business and it's still referred to at norfol sell is the bar napkin deal and in our archives where we keep all of our old contracts that bar napkin is still there I love it you know how late did you stay up for that one I'm not gonna tell you that you know I don't know if any CEO that's probably had a more challenging beginning than you I was thinking about it because you know unfortunately something that has required a lot of your attention this year because you're a relatively new CEO you've only been at it for a couple years it all started on February 3rd 2023 and you had a derailment which resulted in a major chemical spill in East Palestine Ohio and you had to immediately go into a huge crisis mode when that happens what do you think is the most important job of the leader you know I was CEO for seven months when that happened and I was very very fortunate that two months before I had laid out this new strategy at norfol sou right and so I knew what our Northstar was you have to know what your Northstar is and predefine it and have the organization understand it so as soon as this happened I pulled my team together and I said look we're going to do what's right here we're going to make it right we're going to take a long-term view just like we do with our strategy and I want to response so that five years from now 10 years from now we can be proud of that response and more importantly the citizens of East Palestine can be proud of that response and so I immediately went to East Palestine I wore my NS gear had an NS logo on I went to Red Cross shelter I went to North his family assistance center I introduced myself told them who I was who I was representing and made sure they're getting the citizens were getting everything they needed and then I just kept going back and I kept going back and I still go back I go back a couple times a month and what I do David is I sit down and I have listening sessions I I visit the schools I visit the businesses the the churches and family rooms and I sit down with a group about eight to 10 people and I say what can we do to help you know our our goal throughout the whole process was the environmental remediation and we're we're done with the most intensive phase there it's investing in community recovery and then investing in the community over the long term to help the community Thrive and that's that's what we're doing and one of the things that I see is that the first couple months those conversations as you can imagine were really really difficult you know look I know we're a safe railroad I also know that we can be safer you got to approach this thing with humility you got to listen you got to ask questions how can we help folks were very vocal understandably they were very concerned very nervous about the situation but we started keeping our promises and what I saw is that you know there would be about 300 ands people or our contractors up there any given day working on helping the community and the environmental remediation and David when those folks would come home because they don't live there we got 15 NS employees up there but most of those folks didn't live there they would want to go back and in some cases I heard of NS employees cutting their vacation short to go back and what that told me was that the NS employees knew that we were having a positive impact on the community but also the community was having a positive impact on the NS employees and so it really is about being visible being humble being accountable and keeping your promises you know you showed up and there was a lot of emotion a lot of emotion I mean you were on National Television every day it seemed like and so you have a lot of you know very upset citizens there what was the toughest thing could you can tell us a story about the toughest thing that someone might have said to you or that you had to respond to in a way that you knew was the right way to do it the toughest thing was one of my first meetings I was in um in someone's family room and he had invited it was an actually an in employee so when this immediately happened I sent out an email to to the 15 NS employees who Liv there I knew it' be tough for them right because they're NS employees they're living in East Palestine but I promis them that we would do the right things one of them wrote back he was worked in our mechanical Department he's a a union member wrote back with a really heartfelt email said he he trusted that we would do the right thing because he knew norfol sel's values he invited me to his home so I met with him on a Saturday he had eight of his neighbors in there and they just had a lot of concerns right they got small kids right there was a lot of misinformation going on that was really really difficult right because I want to solve their problems for us and so as this gentleman Jeremy verasovich was walking me to his car or to my car pardon me from his front door I told him I was like I want to hire you out of the union ranks and I want you to report directly to me and I want to give you a immediate budget of a million dollars and I just want you to be in this community and figure out how we can best put it to work and so this was right before Valentine's Day which obviously is like a big day for florist well no one was buying flowers in the aftermath of the Derman so Jeremy came up with this great idea where he went to a floral shop with a couple NS employees they bought a 100 floral arrangements and then delivered those to residents of retirement communities in the area that's one of the things that I did you got to stand there you got to take the heat you got to listen and then you figure out what you can do to help it's the folks in the community will guide you as to what we can do to invest in their [Music] future we'll be back with the rest of my conversation with with Allen straw in just a moment you know the 2024 Olympics kick off this week in Paris can you believe it so it's a perfect excuse to listen to my conversation with Olympic gold medalist Scott Hamilton I love his insights about failure and how it can show you a path towards Excellence failure isn't scarring or disfiguring or anything else I think we put such a an identity on failure that we avoid it we think it's it's going to be something that we have to carry with us for the rest of our life and I try to encourage people that failure is 100% information only information if we can break it down to information instead of this horrible toxic scarring disfiguring entity that we have to carry around with us for the rest of our life I think we can move forward towards Excellence or towards the best version of ourselves that we can be and and so I'm I'm a big fan of failure I've fallen on the ice minimum 41,600 times but it's it's getting up 41,600 times that allows you to understand the process of learning the process of growing and the process of getting to where you want to be go back and listen to my entire conversation with Scott episode 69 here on how leaders lead and find out what he did with his gold [Music] medal I really like to get into the minds of leaders and how they make really tough decisions and uh 3 days after this incident a decision was made to to have a controlled burn of the toxic materials take me through how you made that decision well I was I was part of unified command that was under the leadership of The Incident Commander which uh was the fire chief chief dreck and you know as you know the firefighters the First Responders they're the heroes here they're the ones who rush to the scene they're the ones who devote their entire careers to protect in the communities in which we live we were all together in unified command uh we had federal state and local leaders I was part of it and there was a lot of concern about the potential for an uncontrolled explosion which could shoot vcm and trapnel throughout the area and unified command made the decision to execute the vent and burn it worked there was air monitoring up by the EPA and Ohio EPA throughout the process and outside of the evacuation Zone it always showed that the air was safe and the water was safe I know the visual was it was tragic and terrifying I was there but ultimately it was the right decision and I'm kind of happy that Governor dewine's office has said that it was the right decision and the fire chief has said it was the right decision now go back to how you make decisions I've become pretty close with uh General Stanley mccristal you remember him as for absolutely yeah with jck and he and I were having breakfast the other day we started talking about how you make decisions when you don't know what the right answer is because you know that it's going to upset somebody what we decided is it really how you get through something like this is you got to follow your North Star take that long-term view of what's going to be in the community's best interest your employees best interest your shareholders best interest your company's best interest over the long term right follow that Northstar make sure you've got your Northstar defined for yourself and your company before you get into a crisis and then just follow that have the courage to follow that even if you know you're going to take on some near-term criticism you know I was fascinated when I learned that you had hired uh General mistal to create a Leadership Model for your organization what's something from a leadership perspective a lesson that you really believe is key that you want everyone on your team to have humility um so when I was in um when I was in Norfolk I was close to a couple of folks in the Navy SEAL Community as you know the East Coast seals are a little creek amphibia space there in Virginia Beach during Co I read mist's book team of teams and I asked one of my buddies in the Seal team I saidis this right I mean do you guys really do this and he said yeah and it's all about trust it's about collaboration it's about humility and frankly if you spend any time around a Navy SEAL you're gonna see how humble they are those guys have got every reason in the world to be arrogant but boy ego gets washed out of that program really really quick and so I hired mst's team to come into nor to really kind of tear down internal silos and work on that trust and that internal communication and that collaboration and that humility right arrogance breeds complacency humility allows you to learn allows you to innovate it allows you to walk into a family room in East Palestine and say I don't have the answers I've got the resources you help me figure out please how we can make this better how we can make it right and now you're you're trying to be become the the gold standard for safety in the rail industry and what are you doing as a leader to make that more than just an aspiration but a real reality how are you really going about this that's different recall that my first job I worked in the nuclear department at Newport new ship building installing nuclear reactors and aircraft carers so effectively I was a contractor for the Navy I wasn't in the Navy but I got a real good exposure to Amir rickover's Nuclear Navy and just the DNA of that safety culture and earlier this year actually even before the derailment in East Palestine I knew that I wanted to hire a safety consultant and look I could have easily hired any number of the safety Consultants that have done just fantastic work in the rail industry right there's a reason we're we're the safest form of transporting goods across land but I wanted to be next level I wanted to be inspired I wanted to look outside of North in the rail industry and through a Mutual contact Kevin Shear who you'll know I was introduced to Admiral Kirk Donald a former four-star Admiral who used to run the Navy nuclear propulsion system and I asked him if he could put together a team act as an independent consultant reporting directly to me of folks with navy nuke experience and he's done that and so I've got this David I got this awesome team of like three former Navy Admirals and a bunch of other folks who who are career Navy in the nuclear program who are going to be on our property for two to three years helping us enhance our safety culture so that's one of the ways that we've approached is we've looked for the gold standard of safety in the entire world and brought some of that DNA into Nori Southern how hard is it for you Allan to really get your company to open up to these Outsiders coming in trying to tell you how to do do the job you know that's got to be a challenge I mean I can just imagine it is you know um historically norfol Southern has been somewhat insular however we got to evolve you know our Top Line is transforming very quickly 10 15 years ago 35% of our Revenue came from coal now it's about eight or nine and the opportunities for us are completely different it's not Commodities it's more truck competitive our customers their expectations are evolving our competition whether it's other rail or truck they're evolving they're getting better each and every day so I I knew that we had to transform and I knew we had to get better and I knew we needed outside perspective and I think when you bring those folks in you want to make sure that they're humble right they're they're not coming in to kick trash cans and talk about how terrible we are what they're doing is they're coming in they're bringing a fresh A New Perspective and those are to be race because you can't innovate without being humble and looking outside for inspiration you know I understand that even after six months from the East Palestine incident you were making trips there every week or two and you're you mentioned earlier you're still going there you know what's your thinking behind that I mean I mean you're running this huge organization I mean East Palestine is important to you I know but I mean that's a very small portion of your business the people you impact you're spend a lot of time how do you rationalize that I think about it in terms of personal invol look that Financial commitment that's important right and that's a big component of it it's your personal involvement too right and so I go up there periodically I'm going to be there next week and I check on our progress I engage with the community ask them how what we can do to help I want to make it really clear we're doing both right I'm intently focused on this transformation at Norfolk Southern to Pivot us to a customer Centric operations driven service organization because that's where our future lies and frankly our response and my personal involvement in East palestin is just a continuation of that strategy where we've got this long-term vision for acting in the best interest of our employees and our customers and our shareholders and the communities that we serve it makes a lot of sense and you know I admire what you've done I admire the fact that you've shown up and you continue to show up and and I'm sure you're using this situation is a way to gain learning that you can spread across your entire organization so makes a lot of sense to me in spite of everything that you've done you did have to do what I never had to do and I'm so thankful for it you had to go testify before Congress and you received a lot of lot of criticism in spite of doing all the things that you did and stuff does happen every now and then and you got to deal with it and you dealt with it well how did you handle the criticism that was tough too I talked to Wick Mormon who is one of our former CEOs in the early days of this thing and he and I talked about it he made a point he's like you know what just each and every day do the next right thing look I know we're a safe railroad I know we can get safer I know we're doing the right things in East Palestine I know we've got a great strategy so got a lot of confidence in that and really that that allowed me to really block out the noise and just focus on each and every day doing the next right thing because if you focus on that ultimately you're gonna come out on the other side we're taking a long-term approach we're following that North Star that we had established and we're just going to follow that and yeah there's going to be a lot of criticism I understand it you know I've got a certain level of responsibility and accountability but I got to do the right things and follow that Northstar and follow that strategy that we laid out whether you like it or not you're now a crisis expert okay because you've lived through one and if you were going to really summarize you know the top three things that you know a leader needs to do in a crisis what would it be you gotta be visible you absolutely got to be visible you got to be transparent right I mean you know one of the things I did is I read a book about how Mary Bara handled the crisis that she encountered right when she took over transparent visible and accountable and keep your promises and so that's that's how you get through this thing and now you have 300 team members who dedicated to everything that's happening in East Palestine for the other 19,700 uh team members that you have how do you keep a pulse on what's happening in the business day today well I walk around a lot I'm pretty visible we've got an our building we've got what we call um network operations center and David it's effectively it's our mission control it's on the fourth floor it's like where all of our trained dispatchers are it's 247 365 and the days that I'm in the building even before I come to my office I go into the network Operation Center with a cup of coffee I just make my rounds and I talk to about five or six different people allows me to keep my finger on the pulse of our operations and how we're doing and then when I'm tired of being in the office and I tend to get pretty cranky if I'm in the office for more than a couple days then I get out into the field and I have conversations with my craft colleagues Crews engineers and conductors and local supervisors and they're going to really tell you about you know what's going on in your franchise and in your network and then I also try to spend a lot of time with our customers look I I know two things right I know that customers give us 100% of our revenue and our operations team delivers 100% of our Revenue so that's where I really focus my time yeah you know you you've said and I agree with this that crisis is an opportunity to accelerate change and Innovation what are you working on besides the safety to put this philosophy to work what are you really excited about in terms of what's coming down the path what I'm excited about is how the macro Trends in the US economy match up with our strategy right so you know you think about e-commerce and how that's been accelerated by the pandemic and you look at e-commerce and most people think of e-commerce is that UPS van or that FedEx van coming through your neighborhood on the final mile to deliver the package to your front door what most people don't realize is that package probably moved from a warehouse in Chicago to a fulfillment center in Atlanta on a Nori southern train right and so we're part of that and e-commerce is four times more Intermodal intensive than traditional brick and mortar retail I'm excited about the trend towards sustainability rail is three to four times more carbon efficient than truck you know I'm excited about the manufacturing supercycle that we see right now right there's a lot of factory Construction in the United States and particularly in the east in our service region you know there's about $650 billion dollar of manufacturing Bill going on this year across the world and about 200 billion of that is just in the United States and you know we have what we call the battery belt which is associated with EVS it kind of runs from Michigan and Indiana down through Kentucky and Tennessee and then into Georgia and that's our service region right and so we've got this phenomenal franchise operated in the East that's built actually built for growth and it was built for growth by my predecessors and all these macro forces are pushing more and more business towards rail that's why I'm very confident in our strategy going forward because of the strength of our franchise the strength of the US economy and the strength of our employees Alan this been a lot of fun and I want to have some more with what I call my lightning round of questions are you ready for this oh yes sir I've heard about this all right what's one word others would use to best describe you authentic you know when I'm engaged and I'm approachable out there with my craft colleagues and our customers and I'm wearing boots and I'm wearing jeans and I'm hanging out in locomotive cabs and I'm hanging out in crew rooms who would play you in a movie Kevin Cosner you know I really liked him and Bull Durham he seems like an authentic guy and I've got a real love for the Rockies in the west as well and he's seems to spend a lot of time out there you can be on Staring Yellowstone with him if if you could be one person for a day beside yourself who would it be Doris Kern's Goodwin I love her right uh she is my favorite author and she does some amazing profiles of leadership and how people overcome challenges including Team of Rivals and leadership in turbulent times where she profiles you know Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and FDR and LBJ I find her stuff fascinating your biggest pet peeve e is my biggest pet peeve arrogance breeds complacency it keeps you from learning it keeps you from getting better better and you better lead with humility what's something you'd only know about railroads if you're in the industry that we're service organization I remind people this there's one product that we make and that's service and there's one product that we sell and that's service what's one of your daily rituals something that you never ever Miss I get up about 4:30 in the morning I go swim a couple miles grab a cup of coffee and then come into the network Operation Center if I turned on the radio in your car what would I hear well you would probably hear some nxs some Red Hot Chili Peppers a mix of that and then basically anything that my kids have been listening to lately I think one of the cool things is my um I got a couple College age kids I got a senior in high school and a seventh grade daughter and they're getting into my music as well so um was pretty good all right that's the end of the lightning round I got a few more questions we'll wrap this up here I understand that your father was exposed to Agent Orange in in Vietnam and and eventually leading to a seven-year battle with cancer how has that impacted your approach and belief in doing the right thing and and how you've handled the situation in Ohio well because I can understand why people would be scared of chemical releases I understand that completely right and so for me I can't reassure them but I encourage people to listen to The Experts right the usepa andio EPA all have like the highest standards and they're doing the tests right and there's been thousands and thousands of tests and millions and millions of data points and they've all come back and said the Air's safe and the water's safe I have a lot of empathy for people who are scared and you know one of the things that we've been working on is setting up a um a long-term Healthcare fund for people in case something does happen you know speaking a family and you obviously read a lot about leaders and and like the topic how do you take all that you know about leadership and apply it at home so it's really interesting as I noted I've got a couple kids who I'm fortunate to still live with me and I got a couple in college who are paying attention and I'm accountable to them too they want to make sure particularly as visible as I've been and the media they want to make sure that I'm doing the right things I got to make them proud of me as well right and so I think it just it continues to go back to that Northstar just do what you think is going to be right over the long term and when you're in a CEO job it's all about accountability and doing the right thing and keeping your promises you know you relocated your headquarters from norick Virginia to Atlanta and as I understand it you moved your family right right before your son senior year in high school you know how do you balance decisions like that where you know you got to do something at work that you know it could really impact the family how'd you think through that that was tough it really was tough for me and candidly David I I wasn't gonna be that guy I was gonna let my son graduate from his school in norfol which he really loved it was over Christmas break his junior year and I remember sitting downstairs watching a bowl game and my son Grant came downstairs and he said Dad I want to move to Atlanta for my senior year and I saidh right you're like the captain of the football team you're one of the most popular kids school you're you love your friends and he said yeah that's all true but I don't want the family to be a part and I was like wow well go convince your mom right then we'll move so you know basically it was their decision and Atlanta's a fantastic community and the entire NS Corporation has been welcomed with open arms and I haven't gotten a day of static from any four of my kids or or my wife about the move to Atlanta just because it's been so accommodating yeah well that's a great tribute to you and your wife that uh you know your your son wants to be with you that's just a great great compliment you know last question what's the best piece of advice you would give an aspiring leader challenge yourself go outside what you think your boundaries are and expand your network you know that's that's how I came up through the NS organization is I got a bunch of different experiences and in areas out well outside of my comfort zone and I built a network and I knew who I could call to help solve problems and I knew people knew that they could turn to me to help them solve problems as well so get outside your comfort zone and push yourself people can generally push themselves a lot further than they think they can well you obviously uh cast a a wide shadow in your organization with your customers and uh it's great to have a reputation for you know wanting and doing the right thing and I want to thank you so much for uh taking the time to to be on this uh show with me appreciate it it was my pleasure David I look forward to talking to you [Music] again well it's no great leadership secret that the best leaders are humble but this conversation with Allen shows you what humility really looks like in action it looks like showing up with support not answers spending time on the front lines asking questions and of course keeping your promises when you mess up and that happens to us all I love how Allan said it arrogance breeds complacency so if you set the standard of humility on your team you'll help everyone and I'm everyone be more driven and collaborative now here's how you can apply this idea this week spend some time walking around and asking questions listen to your customers and the employees who serve them that's a fantastic way to stay connected stay grounded and be humble so do you want to know how leaders lead what we learned today is that great leaders show up in difficult circumstances and do it with humility coming up next on how leaders lead is Tom Baltimore chairman and CEO of Park Hotels and Resorts I don't think you really grow until you push yourself out of your comfort zone and also push your team out of their comfort zone is how I think you really can achieve you know extraordinary success or or Surly outsized success so be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of of the very best leaders in the world I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader that you can be [Music]