David Horsager:
Welcome to the Trusted Leader Show. I’m your host, David Horsager. Join me as I sit down with influential leaders from around the world to discuss why leaders in organizations fail top tactics for high performance, and how you can become an even more trusted leader.
Welcome to The Trusted Leader Show. It’s David Horsager again. And I have a special guest. He’s been a friend for a long time. I started learning more about him when he was building an an incredible high growth company. And more than that, an incredible high trust culture there. He’s since taken the reins. He was CEO there, but he’s CEO at a new organization. I’m excited to hear about what he’s doing these days, but we’re excited to talk about trust, culture, leadership, and a host of other things. Please welcome to this show, CEO of Rampart Communications, Mr. Anthony Diekemper. Hey, thanks for joining us, Tony.

Anthony Diekemper:
Thanks David. It’s great to be here. Great to see you as always. I love your energy. Someday I hope to be as energetic as you.

David Horsager:
Oh, Tony, you are. You’ve stayed in our home, you know, the first, first couple to stay in our home seven, eight years ago when we moved. We let you in without even hardly moving stuff in. You and your wife. We’ve had some fun days together in the front rows of the Yankees games when we’ve been in New York City. We’ve worked together in your former organization. We’ve, we’ve just been friends along the way and you care about a lot of the same things. I think the first place we met was when I was speaking at a big event in Vegas and you stayed at the back, not like all the fans, to have me sign your book just to talk and probably tell me what I said wrong. But anyway give, give us an update on what you’re up to and just your, your, your, your heart in your work.

Anthony Diekemper:
Yeah, great. Thank you. But that was a pretty good recap of our relationship. That’s impressive. I don’t think I could have done that. So,

David Horsager:
And that’s stayed your home too? Not every CEO of I like stayed and you know, we’re, we’re, we’re that kind of friends.

Anthony Diekemper:
We do have a horse soccer suite in the basement.

David Horsager:
There you go.

Anthony Diekemper:
So yeah, so, so these days pretty exciting stuff. I am doing a startup, not the first one, but this is the first deep tech startup I’ve done. So there’s a term deep tech or hard tech. So I’m working with some founders who’ve come out of the, the NSA and they have very, very deep technical backgrounds. And

David Horsager:
That’s the National Security Association for those that are thinking of a different nsa. Cause we have listeners now I know from both, so National security agency, the real one, right? Yeah. So not not other NSA acronyms, which we now know there are several.

Anthony Diekemper:
Good, good clarification. Clarity is a pillar. So, so, so we’re, I’m working in hard tech, which I’ve never done before. I’ve worked in tech before, but this is really challenging. So the gentleman that I’m working with have created the first technology in the world that actually completely secures wireless communication. So it is groundbreaking. And the real interesting part about this, I, I think about you every day. I’m the claims that make about our technology, the very first thing that say every time is we don’t believe you and we don’t trust you. And so we face this trust hurdle every single day in building this startup. And it’s been a challenge, but it’s really incredible and it’s exciting work.

David Horsager:
So in our short time together, we’re gonna go fast and furious. How do you with that exact, because it’s an amazing technology and I’m gonna get to some other things too, but let’s just, that begs the question. How do you build trust the people that you’re a new startup, you got this amazing claim that you can do these things. How do you, how do you build trust?

Anthony Diekemper:
Great question. So I think that the con, the pillar that comes to mind is competence. We have to be able to demonstrate that the things that we’re saying are backed by science. They’re not, they’re not marketing claims. And it’s not relational trust because people aren’t trusting us because they know us, because they don’t know us. So it is very much about competence. We have to be able to demonstrate the things that we’re saying in very clear, compelling ways so that they can say, Okay, we can see the competence behind you claims.

David Horsager:
That’s, there you go. How do you do that when you haven’t done it before?

Anthony Diekemper:
So that, the short answer is we went outside the organization and found some organizations who, whose job it is to validate technologies for the government. So we hired, we hired some of them to come in, evaluate all of our technologies and produce documentation that demonstrated the validation because those are acceptable for the customers, for the government customers that we’re trying to work with. That’s what they needed to see.

David Horsager:
So now let’s, let’s take a little jump here because what I’ve been interested about you is you’ve come through big consulting companies, you’ve run companies, I’ve watched you really care about people. You’ve been a chief people officer, you’ve been a chief ceo. When I worked with you, I think you might have started as ceo, but then I saw you, I thought, how does this CEO in this organization cares so much about people? You, I think I might have been one of the, the, to, to come in and come alongside you a little bit, but you were doing this thing you called cathedral building, which was really building up people you cared about culture. Just speak to that care of culture and people and what you think about that.

Anthony Diekemper:
Oh, great. So for me, you know, I was the eighth of 12 kids and something happens. I, I don’t think you, you had 12 kids in your family, Dave, I know you had a lot, but I don’t think you were 12, but you kind of get lost in the shuffle. You’re, you’re kind of just another face in the crowd, which is kind of sad. But for me growing up, you know, I always wanted to be a part of something. I wanted to be connected. I wanted to feel engaged. And so what I started to see when I got into corporate world that we say a lot of things that I think are just really poisonous. And the one that really bothers me the most is that it’s not business. It’s just, it’s not personal, it’s just business. I, I hate that terminology. We use it all the time and it’s usually used as a way of saying, Look, I’m gonna do bad things to you and I’m gonna stab you in the back and I’m gonna take advantage of you.
But it’s okay cuz in business, that’s the rule. That’s the rules of the game. And I really detest that. The problem is that so many people, and you know this cuz you face it in your work every day, so many people have come to believe so deeply that that’s just the way it is in business. You can’t trust anybody. You can’t believe what anybody says. Everybody says they have a good culture. Everybody says they care about the people, but then nobody really means it. And so your question was, how do you do that? For me, the caring part is, it’s genuinely what’s in my heart is it’s the way that God made me. I know that it took me years to figure it out, but God put me here to care about people. I know that in business that’s not necessarily popular. And so I had to figure out how do you do that in a, in a good, healthy way?
And what it comes down to for me, that the actual how to, how do you put your hands on, that’s having real conversations with people because people are starving for real conversations and they’re terrified of real conversations. So when you look somebody in the eye and say, Look, I’m gonna make a commitment to you. I’m going to commit to you that the things that I’m telling you about working together are real. And as we go forward, you’re gonna look me in the eye and tell me whether or not they’re happening. And I’m gonna take that feedback and we’re gonna figure it out together because we’re all imperfect. We want to, we wanna be able to trust things, but we’re afraid to build trust because building trust puts us at risk.

David Horsager:
Can you give us a a way to think about that? There’s, I can see a lot of people listening like real like, oh no, how, what’s a framework? How could I even start to have this kind? Because what, I know what you mean. And most people are sitting there think they don’t know what you mean by real conversation. , they think you mean, Okay, let’s not talk about sports, let’s talk about our KPIs. I mean, , you know what, when you say you’re willing to do that, like what, how, how can we do that in a, in a way that makes a difference? And by the way, I love what you said about people, we bring our whole self to work. You bring your whole, you bring your faith, you bring your family values, you bring your, to say, we don’t bring those our politics, we bring that to work. So how can we make a safe, healthy place to be the best of ourselves? And I’ve seen you build cultures and care about building high performing teams. But let, let’s start with this one. What’s a framework? How can I get over this? They’re starving for it and they’re terrified of it. Yeah, I love that. But how do we have a real conversation?

Anthony Diekemper:
So, great question. I’ll just tell you where it starts. For me, it starts for me in the hiring process. So when we, our hiring model is most organizations use a two word hiring model. And the, and the model is need and can, This is what we need, what can you do? And if there’s a fit, we can look at your resume and figure it out. We use a three word hiring model. It’s really complicated. It’s can want need. So we wanna know, we want you to know what we need. We wanna know what you can do. But more importantly, we wanna know what you wanna do. And, and I’m, I’ll tell you something David, that it is surprising to me when I ask people the question, Tell me what your optimal job is. If you could paint your own job and do anything you wanted to do, what would you do?
The most common response I get is, but I don’t get to do that. Not here’s what I want to do. And so part of what that means is people don’t even consider that as an option. And so that first, that first conversation about getting real is about tell me what you really wanna do. And people are afraid to do it because they’re like, Well, if I tell you that and it’s not the answer you want to hear, I might not get the job. And that’s not the point at all. The point is, we, we need a, we have a need we wanna fill, but we wanna find somebody who has passion and energy and wants to engage and we want their passion and energy to come forward. So that has to be aligned with what they’re end up doing. And so engaging all three of those things at the same time, it’s not complicated. It’s actually easier than just making it a transaction. And so when you go back to how do you make it real, it’s no, it’s no longer a transaction. You can read a job description. I don’t need to read it for you, but I can’t understand what’s in your heart and what you really wanna do. So that’s the first real conversation. We have

David Horsager:
One, there’s three. Number one in the hiring process, number two.

Anthony Diekemper:
Number two is once we hire you and we sit down and we say, Okay, let’s talk about what performance is. Because performance is not only the work that you do, but it’s how you treat your coworkers. And so if you can’t engage in behaviors that build trust and respect in your interactions with people, you’re gonna have te you’re gonna have difficulties and challenges. If you are not a trust builder, if you’re not somebody who knows how to cultivate relationships, if your interactions lead people not wanting to ever work with you again, that’s a problem. So your behaviors are not only a part of your performance, they’re the biggest part of your performance. Because if you’re good at production and you can’t build trust, then you don’t get to stay on the, on the team.

David Horsager:
And what’s number three? I love that.

Anthony Diekemper:
Number three is development. So the development conversation is, and just had two of these prior to coming into this meeting. Let’s talk about what you wanna accomplish. Let’s talk about your goals. What are the, what are the, what are the things that you wanna achieve in your journey? So it’s no longer just about the job or your performance or the improve improvements they have to make. It’s about your career and your future. And quite frankly, a lot of people don’t spend enough time thinking about for themselves. They think, Well, what does my boss want? Or what does the company want? Not what do I really want to achieve? And so cultivating that conversation is a lot harder than people think it’s going to be. Because to get people to stop and really consider that and make it their idea instead of complying with some organization desire, it, it’s, it’s a lot of work and it’s incredibly valuable.

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David Horsager:
So let’s go back. So we have this, these real conversations, and there are probably many others, but a lot of ’em fit under the, we start in the hiring process. We make sure we give ’em clarity, have this conversation once they’ve you know started around performance like you know, results and how they treat others, basically the values or norms of the company. And we talk about ongoing development conversations, which I know you have. Well, how do you, let’s take that subpoint how do you treat coworkers? That’s kind of the values questions. How do you, how do you cascade to have a high performing culture? How do you cascade a common language, common behaviors, common norms for how we do things here? How we treat people here. How do you get, because you know, when I started writing on one of the companies you were CEO of, it was amazing.
You went from this to this. I mean, you scaled so fast. In fact, one of the days I was out there, you were buying another company or moving another company that day, right? That’s right. That and brought them in. And I thought it was interesting because how you built that one, many of them were scared about the merger and they were like, you know, months later, grateful to get to work with you and have this kind of culture. How did you create this, this norm, I guess, of how we treat each other throughout somewhat distributed organization?

Anthony Diekemper:
Yeah, yeah. So that’s a, that’s a fantastic question. And, and I will say that over the years I’ve had to customize the answer to different organizations. You have to figure out what’s gonna work for the situation you’re in. But I would say that the biggest way is to think about the, the, the two sides of the equation. So if you think about leadership and you think about culture, it’s important. The conversations we have, it’s important the message we send, but the other half of that is our processes and systems. We have to actually embed the desired culture into the processes that we have. So that’s why your evaluation on your behaviors is part of your performance management process. Evaluating for culture is part of the hiring process. And then when you talk about we wanna, we want to develop an expectation around behavior, it has to be a norm that, that, that is permeated through all of the systems that you have and all of the messaging that you have. So it’s basically,

David Horsager:
That seems overwhelming. I’m overwhelmed. It is, how do I do that

Anthony Diekemper:
? So I think the first, how begins with intentionality, if you’re intentional about saying, look, I want to make sure that I’m saying that I want a certain set of things to happen, but then I have to figure out the mechanisms by which that happens. And so it’s, it’s first the intentionality and then secondarily, it’s okay, so where are the places that that begins to touch people? So if you’re asking that second question, you will figure out what those things are. It’s, there’s not a preset list of them. You just have to think through what are the touch points that we have with people and how do we use those to make sure that we’re sending the right messages, reinforcing those, and then really diligently seeking feedback. Because no matter what you do, some of it’s gonna work, some of it isn’t, and there has to be a dialogue around it. So you have to be consistently seeking feedback about the impact of the messaging.

David Horsager:
What do you learn in these days? You’ve got so much you’ve learned. I would love to, I wish this conversation could go for three hours because there’s so, we’ve had so many fun conversations. We’ve talked about building trust in change. I remember our conversation, I think at, at, at your house years ago on that. And wow, if people been through change, I’ve got some thoughts there. And so do you we talked about, you know several different things, but what do you, what are you learning these days?

Anthony Diekemper:
So, I hate to say this, but what I’m learning the most these days is about how to work in the government world, which is not very you know, exciting. It’s necessary for me in this job. So I’ve had to learn a lot about technology and I’ve had to learn a lot about how to, how to make things work in the government world, and that’s all necessary. But, but what’s been fun about that is that there are a lot of stereotypes that I’ve found about sort of dealing with government organizations and, and the kind of people that you work with and the kind of systems that you have to work your way through. And so bringing some of the commercial world and having fun with people into that process and trying to shake things up a little bit. I I think I freaked a few people out so far.
I, I will tell you one thing I did that everybody thought I was nuts. So there’s a, I don’t know if I can use his name or not but there’s an admiral in the Navy who was in charge of the la the Navy’s largest program. And and I said to our team, I think this guy, I think these guys need to know about our technology. I’m gonna email him . And they said, You can’t do that. You can’t email an admiral. You don’t, you’re nobody said, Well, let’s take a shot. So, so we started this, this email dialogue with the, with this admiral and you know, part of the learning there, and this is, you know, a lot of what we talked about with the team is if you don’t, if you don’t take the risk, if you don’t try, if you don’t put yourself out there, you’re gonna miss opportunities. And we will usually do that because we’re gonna tell ourselves it’s not gonna work before we do it. And so, you know, that was some great learnings for the team and really just finding out that even, even though it’s the military, you can still use some of the, the skills that you’ve learned in the commercial world to transcend. So that was a lot of fun.

David Horsager:
I love that , keep it going to take the risk. Jump, move, go

Anthony Diekemper:
Jump

David Horsager:
Off the cliff. Yeah, I mean, you go for it. There’s, oh, there’s so many things we could talk about. Let’s go personal for a second. You know, what I’ve noticed is the greatest leaders, actually before I do that, I wanna ask you about this because this, this makes sense with trust. People are asking, you know, Oh, everybody’s talking about zero trust. Yeah, zero trust policies, zero trust. I mean, David, you talk about building trust, isn’t that so important? And yet what about zero trust? And you know, my opinion on what is meant by zero trust is yet builds trust. But what say you

Anthony Diekemper:
. Oh, that’s a big one. Yeah, so, so in the world of technology, we deal with zero trust architecture every day, which is, Oh, I, every time I hear the phrase I think of you, of course. And it’s, it’s ironic because the idea behind zero trust architecture is that things are so bad you can’t possibly trust anything, right? So you build a, you build an environment, a technology environment where you require a constant re authentication, which is a funny word, authentication, isn’t that a human word? And yet we use it for technology. So it’s, I zero trust architecture has become a necessary thing in the world of technology. I think the irony for me, and I, I haven’t really talked to anybody about this, so I’m probably gonna say this wrong, but I think humans figured out zero trust architecture’s long before the it people did. We figured out how to not trust anybody a long time ago. And so now the technologists are finally figured out how to copy that. But I think it’s, it’s interesting cuz it’s sad. I hate the phrase it’s a good idea for technology, it’s a terrible idea for humans, but I think we have a lot of those humans with that embedded architecture that we have to try and help get outta that mindset.

David Horsager:
So true. And yet I even, I can see how, as an example, blockchain can increase trust because all these, you know, all these things are in place, but so technology can increase trust. Even zero trust technology can increase trust, certainly humanly in, in companies and in technology. So that’s a fascinating, we could talk a whole a whole nother hour on that. Before we go from there, what well we gotta get to the, the, to you. I mean, I just respect you as a leader and have seen you do so many great things, both personally, professionally, and love your family. What, you know, what I’ve noticed about great leaders, they’re imperfect like I am for sure, but they do some things. They tend to have some habits that they might do at home that help them lead well in work. And that it might be fitness, it might be faith, it might be family, it might be time they get up, it might be journaling. But what are some things that you do that have helped you both maybe just stay ground or maybe just lead well in work that you do personally?

Anthony Diekemper:
Yeah, great, great question. So I, there’s a couple different things. You know, for me, one of ’em, probably the first one is just reflection. You know, I, I I’m a huge fan of taking the time to stop and reflect. In fact, I, I build that into our meeting frameworks. I build it into our hiring process. But I think, you know, when you talk to people about the discipline of reflection, so many people have bought into the culture of go, go, go in our society, and we don’t have time, we don’t have time. People say it every day. They reinforce that mindset all the time to themselves. And the reality is, we have time. In fact, I remember as a youth soccer coach, coaching kids in soccer, and as soon as they got the ball, the first thing they did was kick it away.
And, and what you want them to do is hold onto the ball. You’ve got the ball, don’t get rid of it. And you ask him, Why’d you do that? I don’t know. I didn’t have any time. Like, yes, you did, you have time. So the idea that we need to take the time to slow down and just reflect, I, you know, reflection is so powerful, you know, 15 minutes in the morning to just stop and think. There’s so much, there’s so much that’s going on. And when we allow ourselves or our brain works overnight, right? It’s called the nighttime brain. Our brain is sorting information. It takes all the events of the previous day. That’s why we have ideas in the shower. It’s not a coincidence, it’s a pattern. So taking 15 minutes in the morning to stop and think and just capture what’s on your mind, it is amazing.
The incredible insights and ideas and solutions that is one of the, the richest sources of ideas that I have is just that first 15 minutes in the morning and then, you know, five minutes before you get in the car, at the end of the day, you know, we do it in meetings, we do it in, in our hiring process. We stop and reflect, like, okay, let’s stop everybody sit down, spend a few minutes, write down your thoughts, and then, and then we’ll chat. Before we start talking, let’s actually capture what we’re thinking. It’s so simple and it can be implemented in so many little ways, but it’s really, really powerful.

David Horsager:
I love

Anthony Diekemper:
That. And then I think the other one, you know, for me, David you know, just the, the, the habit of, of striving to find gratefulness, you know, that was such a big deal for me growing up in the environment that I was in. It was really hard to be grateful, you know, and you know, some of that story. So really the, the process of, of working hard to look at situations and, and, and in all the context of what’s really going on today, you know, there’s a phrase people use all the time. Those are first world problems, right? We have a lot of first world problems in America. And so it’s easy to get caught up in that. But I think the, the process of finding things to be grateful for in every day and, and framing the challenges we have and the painful challenges even is things to be grateful for, is very real. And that was something that was really hard for me coming out of the, the childhood that I had. You know, being growing up in a violent home, there were so many things to be resentful for and so many things to be bitter about. And so that was, that was a hard process for me. That was a learning process that did not come easily, and it took years and a lot of, you know, loving kindness from my wife Kelly, to get to that point. But that’s super valuable.

David Horsager:
What do you, what do you do? Let’s just get tactical for one second here. What, what do you do tactically to sh to reframe your brain like in 60 seconds? What’s something I can start to do to be more grateful?

Anthony Diekemper:
So I, for me, it’s a series of questions. That’s how I think about it. So when, you know, I know I need to stop and think when I’ve got that feeling like something’s weighing me down and nagging at me, and it’s in the back of my head and I’m trying to work, but I can’t because something’s bothering me, I need to stop and I need to write it down. So it’s a little bit of reflection, a little bit of journaling, but it’s stopping and saying, Okay, let me frame this out. And then let me think about why this is bothering me. So I gotta capture the situation. I’ve gotta ask myself, why is this bothering me? And then I write that down and then I start to think about, so why am I letting that bother me? And I think about all the different alternatives, and I think about if something really bad happens from this, what’s the worst that’s actually gonna happen?
And in very, very rare circumstances, is it anything important? And more importantly, those things almost never happen. And so then to stop and reframe that and say, Well, what is this a result of? This is a result of a lot of good things in my life. You know, you don’t have any kind of success without really big challenges. And so putting it back into its proper context is really a mental exercise. And just a series of questions that I’ve learned to go through. I’ll tell you where I first found that list was actually in Dale Carnegie’s book, How To Stop Worrying and Start Living. I dunno if you have ever read that or familiar with it, but there was so many tactical howtos in that book, and I, I really found that valuable because it, it turned it into a series of very small steps for me that was really, really valuable.

David Horsager:
I’d like to take more time on this, and I’d certainly just like to take more time with you. I think we gotta have you back. We haven’t had anybody back, but it’s you’re the, you’re someone that needs about three episodes at least, but thank

Anthony Diekemper:
You. So my therapist,

David Horsager:
Tony. Tony, thanks for . Thanks. I see the time going and I just had someone throw in the time that we are off air in three minutes, so we gotta do this quickly. Number one thank you for being here. Number two, everybody can find out more about Tony by going to trusted leader show.com. We’re gonna put his LinkedIn and his new company website there. He can find out where he is. If you wanna reach out, he’s someone that you can reach out to and you can connect with, and he’s doing some great things. So we’ll put his contact that he’s willing to share there as well as what he’s doing in his new company. And with that, we leave with something, again, I’m gonna give you 30 seconds to do it, but it is the Trusted Leader show. So who is a leader you trust and why?

Anthony Diekemper:
So this might not be a very popular or a common answer, but you know, when I thought about this, I thought of Bono. So I had a chance to meet Bono years ago back in Las Vegas in the the Joshua Tree tour. And my friends and I got to go backstage after the concert and spent 30 minutes with the band. And this is when they were really, really hot. And they spent 30 minutes talking to us about what their journey had been like. I was amazed. I was a young kid. And they, they had this incredible conversation with us and spent all this time with us. And then I watched what Bon did after that. It was really inspired by his desire to make change. And this is a guy who has continually fought to build coalitions with a lot of people who didn’t, he didn’t agree with, or people who didn’t get along, but he, he built coalitions for change outta people who weren’t necessarily partners. And he did it in the spirit of, of fulfilling his, his desires, see change in the world. And so I just feel like that’s somebody who has so consistently lived out his values, and to be a rock star and have all the freedom to do whatever you wanna do and all the money and the fame in the world, and then spend your time and energy, I just think that’s amazing. And I, I, that’s a real great example in my mind.

David Horsager:
That’s a great example. We have plenty of leaders that don’t have the humility and a lot of other things of, of of Bono. I know some others have had first immediate touches with him and what a, what an example in many ways. So great example. Lots more we could talk about. Thank you so much, Tony. This has been The Trusted Leader Show. Until next time, stay trusted.