David Horsager:
Welcome to the trusted leader show. It’s David Horsager. I’ve got a special guest, a special friend we’re on a university board together. He is the CEO of Ardent Mills. He was with Cargill for 33 years. The biggest independently owned company privately held company. I believe in the world for sure in the us. He was, is president of horizon milling. He is president of Cargill ag horizons, us a whole lot of other things. He is an amazing gentleman, a father husband, and just a friend he serves in his community. And I’m just grateful to know you as a friend, please. Welcome Dan Dye.

Dan Dye:
Thanks David. It’s an honor to be on the show. I just so appreciate the work you’re doing around trust and all the different aspects of that. I it’s making organizations better, making leaders better, making people better. So thanks privilege to be with you today.

David Horsager:
Well, we’ll get into leadership, Dan and I there’s so much we could talk about in a short time together, but think thinking about our audience, what are a couple things people don’t know about Dan dye or they, they ought to know, or, or maybe you should just pull the curtain back and tell ’em?

Dan Dye:
Well, you know, I mean, I’ve had the, the, the honor to be part of great organizations. You mentioned Cargill. I spent 33 years there. And then eight years ago we started our at mills, which is a joint venture that Cargill has ownership in, along with ConAgra brands and CHS. So that’s kind of a unique part of, of my journey. I’ve spent the last eight years leading art at mills and we’re you know, we produce flour. So I, you know, really enjoy baked goods. I’m a, I’m a big fan of our products. We’re now expanding into some other emerging nutrition space, like quinoa and chickpeas. That’s been really fun. So from a business standpoint or career standpoint, I guess that’s a little bit about me. I think other than that, you know, I just you know, my faith, my family are really centered for me.

Dan Dye:
That’s really what, what drives and motivates. And, and I, I just enjoy my work. I love, you know, I love the opportunity to be with our team. We have great great team across art mills. And it’s just been, it’s been a lot of fun being part of a new organization, you know, a little later in your career to be able to do that. So, you know, I, I think you know, we won’t pull the curtain back too far, but those are, those are a few things, probably a little more on the professional side, but you know, personally I’m a grandpa and that’s, that’s an incredible gift as well. So I have two young grandkids and enjoy that aspect as well of life.

David Horsager:
Did I see this right? Because I’m gonna jump into the journal you wrote in a little bit here, but you run. Do you still run kind of every day? Is that a big thing?

Dan Dye:
I do. I, I don’t run every day. I’m getting a little old for that, but I am still, I still run or walk or I find for myself it’s a great way. Not only to just keep in shape and enable me to eat some of my you know, great products that we make, but I, I find it to be a great place to listen, to shows like yours or books on, you know, audible on books and, and think, and pray and just reflect on things or just get a little time. And I think even during the pandemic even more so that’s, been helpful. So, yeah, I’m a I used to play basketball quite a bit even later into, into a number of years ago, but I, I focused more running, walking, hiking, those kinds of things to get a little exercise and clear the mind.

David Horsager:
That’s good. I I love to, I love to walk. I, I I, you know, when I was losing weight a while back, that became a thing kind of this weird thing of walking with weights, that’s what the trainer had to be doing. It was actually significant. He, that trainer believes that a Nordic skiing or cross country skiing is the best possible ice. He, he coached like 53 national champion swim teams. So a lot of people think swimming is he himself said, even though he was a Southern California guy said there something great that happens when you get your hands above your heart. And so there you go. Anyway, there you go. So before we get in a little bit deeper to your leadership, you know, since we started on personal habits here, I found this to be true. At least you’ve got, what is it about 2300 employees? Is that right? Something like that, about

Dan Dye:
2,500, we’ve had a couple acquisitions, bought a couple new businesses, about 500 across us, Canada and Puerto Rico.

David Horsager:
So Cargill was massive, but 2,500 employees, that’s still significant, but I find that people like you that are leading the team well and certainly have led through a pandemic well the leading themselves. Well, so you still have this exercise piece, anything you’re doing personally, other, other just habits that think with that’s been a significant habit for me to be able to lead well,

Dan Dye:
You know, I think this reflection time you know, in, in addition to what I mentioned while running or walking, I try to spend a little just focused time of just kind of silence and prayer reflection you know, and, and for me, again, I said that faith components, that’s a, that’s a really important starting point and habit for me, I find that it helps me to, to be others focused. It helps me to, to think a little bit differently maybe about what’s, what’s upcoming in the day or, or a big challenge or an issue that I might be dealing with. I think that’s, that’s been really important. You know, the other thing I, I, I really try to do as much as I can is listen to and learn from other leaders. I, I just think there’s so, so many great leaders out there, and there’s some that aren’t so good, so you can learn from that as well.

Dan Dye:
But, but just trying to, to watch others lead, you can do that again through books and things, but I think often it’s you know, connecting in again, I found during the, I, I connected in with a few different leaders that I respected and kind of knew, but I just wanted to better learn from them during difficult times. And I think, you know, sometimes we think we’re kind of a little bit on an island, but the fact is there’s a lot of folks out there leading different kinds of organizations, not just other businesses, even leaders in education leaders, in nonprofits, leaders in numerous different fields that we can learn from each other. So I think that’s another, you know, personal habit I try to have is constantly listening and talking to and learning from others.

David Horsager:
I love that. I was just thinking we just have out a big, our trusted leader summit, as you know. And I think the gift of what we get to do is we’ve got senators using this in government. We’ve got, you know, police chiefs, you’ve got companies, you’ve got everything from, you know, a John Deere type to a, to a banking type, to a a schools to across industries and, and even pro sports teams. And it’s like that the cool thing that I get a backup and see and learn from is something that someone might have only thought of in in agriculture they could use in banking. And then this healthcare organization brings this idea. And, and so while our whole focus and expertise is around trust how people apply it, we learn so much from each other. And just, you know, of course we have a, we know, we know even, even about trust some thing we’re experts at, we know a sliver of monumental more to learn.

David Horsager:
So, but I love the idea of not just being stuck in, I we’ve seen that in hospitals, especially where they’ve got just kind of hospital consultants that come in and they bring some other perspective and it changes everything. And you see that in industries that get just, just focused. So I wanna jump to something here. I, I, I wanna, I, one thing I gotta remember that this just popped in my head of where we actually met decades ago and how that happened. I’m gonna try, I’m gonna keep that a secret. I wasn’t even thinking about it, but I’m gonna try to remember to come back to that at the end. Everybody can can listen for that little surprise at the end, before we get there, though, you, you know, we were talking through this you know, pandemic through the crisis and by the way, people that think, oh, the pandemic’s over, or if they think crisis is over, I just think they’re dead wrong.

David Horsager:
There’s so much change gonna be had. I’m not saying the pandemic isn’t coming to an end. I am saying if we CA don’t learn how to deal with crisis, there’s more ahead in the next decade. Blockchain is gonna throw our country and world for a loop. If we’re not ready for it, there are other fast changing crisis type events that are gonna happen. And we have to get good at dealing with more rapid change. And I think you wrote something, I was very impressed by it. It was almost like journaling to your people. You call that leading through crisis. You let me have a look at it. It’s basically like journal entries. It seems like every day as you were going through the pandemic, very inspiring, very valuable. Tell us where that came from and what happened. Your first entry was March 14th, 2020.

Dan Dye:
Yeah, no, I, I you know, I find that, like you said, leading through crisis is it kind of culminated here in the pandemic and, and put everybody in that situ, right. But I think you are exactly right. This is not over. I mean, just even recently, you know, we’ve had the war in Ukraine, we are facing Mo you know, a lot of change from a lot of different angles. So to think that we’ll get through the pandemic and things will calm is, you know, I think false thinking right now, I mean, there’s gonna be one crisis or another, and just the, the amount of change we face. So when we first, you know, made the decision to close our offices and everyone was gonna work remote, it was actually, it was Friday the 13th that that happened. And on Saturday morning, March 14th I was out for a run and I kept, I kept thinking in my mind, man, I’ve gotta really be thoughtful about how to lead.

Dan Dye:
This is different. You know, you don’t go take a, a course on leading through the next pandemic and figure it out, right. It was thrust upon us. In our business, we had this massive, all of a sudden demand for our products. People were baking at home. They were, you know, flour was gone off the shelves, the bread was gone. Our customers were saying, Hey, we need more flour. I mean, it was just a massive shift in a very short period of time. And I, I remember thinking, Hey, I know I have to think about how I’m gonna lead differently during this time. And I, these words kept, you know, and I’m a list guy and you’ve kind of come to see that. So know I had this list of words that started with C and it was about BA we’ve gotta be calm. We’ve gotta be consistent. We gotta make sure we have compassion for our people, cuz this is gonna be hard and all those things. So I, I had these five CS that I wrote down and, and came through.

David Horsager:
They’re almost like our eight trusts pillars, by the way. They’re

Dan Dye:
Very similar. They’re very similar. And so, so, you know, I started that on that Saturday and just said, Hey, these are things that we need to, to lead their learnings. I’m I’m thinking about personally, I just wanted to share ’em. So I shared it with my leadership team and then actually it was every week for the first 15 weeks of the pandemic. I had a new list. I challenged myself to a different letter. So I got, I got through, I probably did about I out about five since then, but the first 15 weeks it was every week because it was just, things were changing so rapidly. And so, you know, each week I was thinking about what I was learning and what I needed to do different as a leader. And I just wanted to share it, like you said, it kind of became journaling.

Dan Dye:
It was one of the ways I was managing and, and coping and again, learning from others as I had have conversations. And you know, I just remember one time one, one of the weeks, it was probably in week 12 or 13 or somewhere. I don’t know it was along the journey a little, but I just kept thinking, man, this is a tough time. And I had a few HS in my mind and, and you know, it was all of a sudden that that was right for that moment. It was hope it was help. It was healing. It, those kinds of things would, would just kind of think things I had to focus on as a leader leading through crisis. So it turned into, I think there’s been about 20 of ’em. I haven’t shut the door on it yet because we’re not done yet, I guess. But you know, I, I in fact, my most recent one was around the journey, Jays, the journey

David Horsager:
Room. I just have that in front of me, the join just juice and joy.

Dan Dye:
Yep. It was, how do we, how do we keep the juice? How do we keep the energy going? You know, how do we join together, not split apart? How do we, how do we do what’s just, and what’s right. Because as, as you pointed out earlier David, we’re in the midst of a lot of different crisis going on throughout these, these last couple years, and that will continue. And, and, and the last one of those was finding joy in this journey, as hard as it is, there’s learnings, there’s silver linings, there’s positive things happening. And we tried to really make sure in our organ, we kept people feeling, Hey, you’re doing really good work. You’re helping to feed people. You’re helping to manage through this crisis and, and making a difference in other people’s lives, find joy in that and helping each other, all those different things. So that was kind of how that came about is it was my way of, of trying to learn and trying to you know, trying to develop myself as a leader, knowing this was new ground. And, and it just kind of ended up being this, this flow of like you said, journals things I, I wrote out and you know,

David Horsager:
It needs to be a book. It needs to be a book. I love it. I think it’s, it’s powerful. But I think what you did is you, you know, when I saw the, the read through it, you taught, but you also gave vision. Like here’s where we’re headed now. Oh, we need healing with our people now, oh, we need hope we gotta come on leaders. And you’re, you’re writing it to your SLT senior leadership team the whole time, Hey, this is where we’re headed. This is what we’re about. This is what we need to be thinking about. And I, I think if people would’ve done this, I think it’s a huge takeaway for others. Is that keep mentoring your team, keep sharing vision with your team, keeping coming with different angles. The other thing that made me think of is, I don’t know how many times on this show I ask some of the greatest leaders in the world.

David Horsager:
What’s a habit that has just been, you know, important to you. And people will say what what’s, I I’ll say, what’s that personal habit that makes you a better leader. You know, what’s, you’re doing off stage that makes you better on stage. Right. And you’ll hear people, many people say, well, health, they, they are on top of their health. They go for a run or walk, like you said, they’ll, they’ll say I keep my home life, like with my, you know, family or faith or whatever. But one thing I, I, I can’t tell you how many times those people have said journaling. Yeah. And I feel like this right here is like, you’re journaling with a little bias to sharing, like you’re journaling what’s happening, but a little bit in your mind, it, it just seems to be going to, and how could this help them? How would, what it was so relevant I could see as you threaded through all these different in essence journal entries, how even, you know, there was a time when yes, we always need healing, but in that moment, oh, we really needed hope. Let’s say in that moment, we really needed this. But yeah. How did, how did the journaling process change you?

Dan Dye:
You know, I think it was a lot of reflection. It is, it is a bit of a habit. I’m not a, I’m not like a, a very conscious like journal, or just in general. I do a little bit of that. I’ve done more later in life, but what I do do, and, and a habit of mine is if I’m in a really tough situation, pre you know, pre pandemic, a, a tough personnel decision, for example, or maybe a, a key strategic decision that needs to be made in the business. My way of managing through that is I get, I get, you know, sit down with a computer or write down on and just, just process in words. And that really helps me to think through all different sides of things and so forth. So when I was doing this, it was helping me by processing, you know, my different emotions, my challenges, cuz it, it, you know, you’ll see in there, there’s, you know, one of the vs was vulnerability mm-hmm and, you know, I was feeling vulnerable at times.

Dan Dye:
And, and I remember, you know, that this was a learning process for me. And, and I found out I was, you know, I would, I would end up sending that out to, you know, my kids and, you know, other business leaders that I had been, you know, in contact with who were going through their own journeys and they’d share stuff back with me. And so it really helped me reflect on my own leadership journey so that I could be a better L you know, better leader for my team, but just a better leader overall. And I think, I think sometimes for me, I, you know, the power of words, that the importance of, of words and, and I can be a little too wordy sometimes. And, and but, but it helps me to process. It helps me to, you know, think through the different circumstances, different things people are going through and then try to try to capture that. And that’s, that’s one of the habits that I have that, that I, I think is helpful for me anyway, to come to grip with. Okay. Here’s what I’m really thinking and feeling. How do I express that? And then how can I lead better as a result of that?

David Horsager:
What, what did you see happen? Cause I, I saw you, I read about, you know, talking about a little bit, this power of vulnerability, but what did you notice the more you were vulnerable or what did you notice around some of that vulnerability, you know, being vulnerable as a CEO, a lot of it say, oh, we gotta keep like this. We gotta look like the CEO gotta, but you kind of pushed the boundary on that. What did you notice?

Dan Dye:
I, I found that during the pandemic it was really important to be very personal. And so, as you saw in there, there were several very personal, for example, I, I, I had a, my W’s, one of ’em was wisdom and it happened to be father’s day, week. And my father who recently passed away was big influence on, on me, but he was still alive at the time. And, and I shared a very personal story of my dad and his influence on me and my leadership in there. And I found in the pandemic that people wanted that vulnerability and personal touch, cuz they were feeling things and, and were having challenges at work. But they were also having challenges at home mm-hmm and, and they were dealing with their team that were having challenges and trying to figure things out, whether that was at our plants where, you know, 80% of our people worked at a plant that were, they went to work every day.

Dan Dye:
They, they didn’t never have a, a option to work remotely. Right. We had a produce flour, we had to keep food on people’s tables. So I, I found that, that, you know, being personal, being vulnerable that opened the door and I would start to hear stories from my leadership team about how they had connected with some of their teams. And they had, they had opened up a little bit about what they were going through. And, and I, I, I give a huge amount of credit to one of my leaders on our leadership team. And, and I’m not saying that this series of things helped to do that, but it was part, I think, of his processing, but he talked about, Hey, I had to take a pause and I had to get some support and utilize some counseling and some help, you know, for a, a senior leader to, to come out and be willing to say that.

Dan Dye:
And he was willing to say it in the organization so that then others would take away some of that stigma, Hey, this is, this is hard. This is an easy to go through this. And we’re all kind of going through that. So I think that was probably the most important change or thing that I saw shift was others were, were, were willing to be a little more vulnerable as well. And then it opened up more conversation, you know, our, our senior leadership team, you know, for the first month or so we were, we were having crisis meetings every single day, you know, for an hour. So we were together more, even though it was remote more than we normally would be by far. And it really brought an intimacy in a, in a sense, cuz we were also in each other’s homes, you know, we were for the most part working remotely initially. And so we were, you know, we were going through this together. So I, I think that vulnerability really can draw that personal side out, which I think is so important.

David Horsager:
I wonder if it really was like a lot of people say, well, the pandemic, we need to be personal. I wonder if we haven’t needed to be more period or if it would make a difference. Anytime I do think there is a move, certainly there’s a move in companies to be more human in many ways you know, throughout the pandemic and, and beyond. But I, I wonder if some of these things, I guess, are there any takeaways for you that you’re like pandemic or not? We kept meeting together more as a team because we noticed that help. Yeah. Or we kept what was a learning that you kept with us that doesn’t matter if we go out, you know, beyond the pandemic, but in the midst of the world we’re in any S yeah,

Dan Dye:
I think there’s, yeah, definitely. I think one of the one would be this willingness to just be open and, and like you said, this, this more personal side and keeping that going, staying closer in touch with your team even when you get beyond it, I’ll tell you the other thing, David, and I hope this does stick. I hope it’s, it’s getting a lot of attention, but I think it’s so important. And that was how we look at our, our plant workers, how we look at what we called essential workers, you know, and I’ll, I’ll never forget. One of our team members spoke. We had a, some of our, our essential workers that had been working in our plants speak to one of our leadership meetings here a year or so ago. And they, they talked about having that piece of paper that they carried in those first few weeks that that said they were allowed to be on the road, cuz they worked at a, a flower mill and they had to be their, or cuz it was an essential, critical infrastructure industry job that they had and how proud they were of that.

Dan Dye:
And even though they knew they were taking risk and it was hard and they had to wear mask and they had to do all these new things. They did it. And, and I think to your question, my hope is, and my belief is that we need to treat these essential workers like essential workers long after the pandemic. And, and we have to make sure that we recognize that people do the work right in organizations. We have to treat our people the right way. And I know at art mills we talk about real, really focusing on having a people first values based culture. And that’s really amplified in the pandemic. And I believe we’ll amplify even further going forward because we’ve seen the value and the importance of everyone in the company, right? Whether you work remote in a plant or whatever, we all have to work together. We talk a lot of together. We make art mills. And so we, we really I think have learned that we have to treat people well, no matter what right before, what does that look like? What now I’m going forward.

David Horsager:
Like gimme a specific like, this is what that people first actually looks like. What what’s that look like today?

Dan Dye:
I think it’s, I think I’ll give you a very specific example for the first time. Ever, we, we closed all of our mills on Christmas day and Thanksgiving day. This last year we normally run 24, 7, pretty much 365 and, and some mills maybe are ABI. And other than maybe a few, a few volunteers, cuz we had some, some critical things. We, we were able to do that because we said, you know, you people need a break. You here, our, our, our team members are so valued. Another thing that we did was we, you know, we did some appreciation, pay things long after it was kind of popular at the beginning of the pandemic. You know, we did one recently and, and again, it just shows that reinforcement. But I think most importantly, it’s how you treat people day in and day out and really you know, showing you care about people and how we, you know, how we treat them.

Dan Dye:
And I’ve, I’ve had people tell me, you know, this is different than any other organization I’ve worked for because of how I’m treated. I, I feel valued as a person. So you know, those are some things that we do. I, I could go on cuz I, I think we really try to, to bring our, of values to life. One of our values by the way is trust. As you know, and so we really try to bring those values to life, trust, serving simplicity and safety and make them real. And, and we put safety first. That’s another way I’d say, because we tell people your safety is more important than our profitability. It’s more important than the, you know, production match at the plant. It’s more important than anything we do. We want our people to be safe and because we wanna put people first,

David Horsager:
I love it. Let’s take a jump here because I think it’s really interesting how you have thought about in your life and certainly in this position about partnership and collaboration. I mean, you, you’ve got this, you, you think of, you know, these kind of come competitors in ways or, you know, you’ve got CHS and ConAgra and, and Cargill and I mean, that’s quite a conglomerate to put together to make this thing called ardent mill or own to have partial ownership to different you know, different significant organizations. Tell us, tell me how that came to be. And then what do you think just quickly that we can take away as far as thinking differently in the future about partnership?

Dan Dye:
Yeah, I, I think partnership is just so important. We, you know, we try to do things on our own independent, you miss opportunity to learn, to grow, to develop obviously in a competitive landscape that we all face in the business world, you have to manage around that. But I think in partnership, Arden mills is a great example of that to your point. So it really came about with, with, you know, a desire for both organizations to commit and grow even in the flower milling space, but recognizing to really drive innovation and change the, there was actually value of, of doing that together as one organization versus two different organizations. And so the partnership idea kind of came out of, Hey, this is kind of a unique way that, that we could grow, help serve our customers better, which we’re going through. A lot of consolidation recognized that the trends in our business flower to it is relatively flat.

Dan Dye:
Can we find different ways to be innovative and change and, and really partnerships I think can help really drive innovative and new ways of thinking. So, you know, we, we came with that you know, with the joint ventures where it landed and it’s really been exciting and successful. I mean, they’re very different owners and yet we have a great board. We have a great you know, business that, that works well together with all of our parent companies and has business relationship with all of them, which is kind of unique as well. You know, so CHS, we buy a large amount of wheat from them. Conagra’s a very important flower customer, you know, Cargill, we have a lot of customers we go to market together with. So there’s just a lot of different ways we work together. And I think that shows the power and the strength of partnership

David Horsager:
Really strong and very unique. How did you deal with, you know, a lot of the organizations we work with, they’re going through an acquisition or a merger and they’re trying to put two cultures together and they’re trying to keep trust or build trust. We’re one of the biggest pharmaceuticals in the, a world we’re working with right now. And you get a global pharmaceutical and you’re putting two almost the same size together, significant challenges and opportunities with the merger, especially of culture. What, what do you do to create one strong culture with all the different voices in the heads of your board and partners? What, what have you done? Because it seems like a pretty strong culture.

Dan Dye:
Yeah. I mean, we, we were fortunate that we were, we had actually a little extra time to do integration work because the part time from the department of justice approval process, which, which was painful, but the positive part of it was it gave us a little more time to think about integration. And one of the things we did right from the start, we established our values. We established a vision, a mission for art mills. That would be unique. We didn’t use words from the parent companies. We used our own words. Another thing we did was we established Denver as our corporate headquarters that gave us a sense of everyone kind of moved, you know, that was gonna be in the, in the corporate headquarters, had to move there and come there, come together and be a part of that, obviously a lot more remote today.

Dan Dye:
But at that time, a lot of people moved to Denver that helped give us a cultural identity as an organization of where we were together. And, and it brought us, you know, in this excitement of new and, and so forth. But I think those values really set the set, the tone. And one thing you’ll appreciate this story. One of our values, the first value we established was trust. And one of the things that was a bit of a mantra that we had in that integration planning, because we were direct competitors, you know, going into this. And so we had to, like you said, bring different constituencies, different mindsets, different cultures together to create this new culture. And our, our mantra became trust on day one. And we said, we know that on, you know, May 28th, 2014, we’re competitors and May 29th, 2014, we’re supposed to be one happy family.

Dan Dye:
We know the only way that we can do that is to have trust. And we have to assume positive intent. We have to have trust across the organization and, and really driving that value at the very beginning, I think really helped us create culture that that would be our culture and have that trust for this new organization. And I think that’s that those values have served us so well. And, and I talked, like I said earlier, people first values based culture. And so establishing our values and then driving those deep in the organization, we’ve done some other things we’ve brought in some leadership principles that bring the values to be more behavior based. We, we now have what we call our promise, which is really again, makes it more personal and intimate around our values, but those things have really helped to shape that culture to have a brand new company with our own identity. In fact, we’re just now launching some new work around our branding around being art and art. The word itself is about passion and energy and excitement. And so building on that brand as a new organization and now building on it even further eight years later,

David Horsager:
I love it. What are you curious about these days? What are you learning now? What’s new,

Dan Dye:
You know, I think there’s so much change. Like we talked about earlier. I think for me it’s trying to stay out of the immediacy of the pressures of today and really start to think about some of those, those future, you know, realities that, that are gonna be, you know, with us a little bit further down the road. So I think having you know, really thinking about how organizations are changing I think one of the things that’s new that I think will not be a, a very simple and easy one that I’m trying to learn about now is this whole different way of working. You know, if you think about remote work for us, you know, like I said, about 80% of our people work in a plant, but 20% work in an office setting or whatever. And we’ve gone with a, a, a really, a pretty much a hybrid approach where we’ve got a lot more flexibility and I’ve read a lot and, and studied a lot and thought a lot about what’s the impact of this on culture, you know, and there’s some people that say, Hey, if you’re not all physically together, your culture’s gonna be diminished.

Dan Dye:
It’s gonna be hurt, destroyed. And I’ve said, how do we actually strengthen our culture through the us new way of working? How do we let people know? We care so much for them that we’re gonna let them have some flexibility in their personal lives and work maybe from somewhere else or whatever, but, but we’re, we’re all gonna be in this together working towards the same goals and outcomes, but doing it in different ways. And so trying to learn about some of this I think is really fascinating. And, and it’s, it’s so different from when the pandemic hit, when we were forced to work remote boom overnight. And so we had to adjust now, it’s been this slow, you know, painful process of trying to figure out what you’re gonna look like in the future, and it’s gonna be very different. So I’ve been trying to learn all I can about that and really understand, but, but actually my commitment is we’re gonna strengthen our culture through this, even though we’re hybrid and we’re not all together in the same ways we actually can add to our culture in different ways.

David Horsager:
I’m excited to come back and hear what you’ve tried. That’s worked because this is a big question for the leaders I’m talking to. It’s like, how do you keep trust or build it remotely? We got, we have this balance between you know, accountability that we feel like we’ve lost in certain ways with caring for employees and employees feeling cared about in the midst of being gone enough, connectedness enough accountability. You know, in, in some cases, results only hasn’t worked as well as people thought. And yet it gave some you know, gave some legs to being able trust people remotely. And, and, you know, it’s a big mix. So

Dan Dye:
It is, and it’s not an easy one. Like you said, I, I, I wish I, you know, there’s a formula, right. But there isn’t and each organization’s gonna be different, but I think we have to be together some, right. Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s so much value in those personal connections. It’s find those right balances and ways to do it, you know, differently. And, and so far, I mean, before the pandemic, we had a number of people that work remote. We had people that traveled a lot, you found ways to, to connect, we have to just reinvent and, and continue to learn. And we’re, we know we’ll have to change and adjust as we go.

David Horsager:
Yeah. I love that. About the way you do it. Do you have a favorite book or resource? How do you, how do you stay fresh as a leader? How do you stay relevant

Dan Dye:
Rather than learning from, I know Canada, the best source and resource for me is the Bible. I find great principles there, and I, but I love business books. I love you know, new ways of, of thinking. I listen to a lot of, of books. You know, I like, I like, you know, your work. I like you know, if you think about you know, people, you know, Simon Sinek and others, and, and talk about the infinite game or, or, you know, some of Patrick Lyon’s work and different ones that do different things about thinking about business in a, in a little bit different way than just the nuts and the, the bolts of it. Right. And so I’m, I, I really like to read about culture and organizations that are successful at leaders that are successful and, and just, just better understand all I can.

Dan Dye:
So I, I, I don’t, I, I, you know, I, I really enjoyed Jim Collins work. You know, I actually had a chance to meet him here recently in at a conference I was at that he spoke at and I, you know, I, I really liked, you know, bill to last originally and then good to great and his other work. And those have been ones that I think earlier in my, my leadership journey were very impactful and very helpful. And I still draw on some of that today. And and, and he continues to refresh in some of his work. So those are a few examples of things that I try to stay, stay abreast of. And there’s so much out there. It’s just trying to, trying to learn as much as you can

David Horsager:
Cur it, cur it down to what what’s the bite size piece for today. Well,

David Horsager:
Yes, everybody can find out more about ardent mills, great organization, ardent mills.com. We’ll put it in a show notes, trusted leader showed.com. We’ll link you up just so you can see what he’s up to and his public linked in there. You’ll find more about Dan dye, if you want to. And, and we’re so grateful that you could be on share, inspire. There’s so much more to you and so much more to all that you’ve done and are doing. And I’m just grateful for that and grateful that we get us served together. I get to see you once in a while being on the board together and you know, a host of other things. So we always finish with this question, Dan, it’s the show trusted leader show, who is a leader you trust and why,

Dan Dye:
You know I’m, I’m really blessed to have been around a lot of, of great leaders. But one leader that I, I just will call out just because that, that level of trust is a guy Greg page. He’s a former CEO of Cargill. He’s a he, he just was a great leader that I trusted. It was a, at different times in my career that I could look look to him, him. He was, he was the CEO at the time we created art mills. So, you know, that, that trust I had to have in him as, as we made that change. And he’s been a great influence. And, and I would also say, and I don’t know if it’s fair to have too. But I, you know, my dad was just such, such a great, trusted person that I, he wasn’t in the business world. And yet I learned so much about trusting other people about leadership about caring for, and loving other people and how important that is and everything that we do. And so, you know, if I had to only have one, it’d be my dad, but Greg would be one from the business world that was just a, a great leader. Someone I, I, I trust and has helped me to learn to be a better leader,

David Horsager:
Two great examples, you know as you know, my dad has been a huge, huge role in my life. And you hear about leaders today, great leaders. They, they, their dad is often either was really great or really not great. And they learned something in either case I’m grateful to have one. As I say, it wasn’t my fault that I had a great dad, but grateful for that. You know, we usually end on that, but I did just remember wh where I should have really started. And that is way back when I was in college. I came out to interview at Carll. I didn’t know what I was doing. Clearly. I kind of got thrown. They said, oh, you can come out and do this. I didn’t know what the job was for hardly. I was not prepared well. But I did that, that did get invited into your office to shake hands and say, hello, you were already a vice president.

David Horsager:
And that was the first time I believe we met. And that was at Cargill. And, you know, my brother, my older brother worked at Cargill. And he’s a 11 years my senior, but I, I think the first time I met you were kind enough to, you know, take me out of the interview for a second and, and say, hi, and connect. And I think that was my first kinda real interview, which I didn’t really actually brought prepared enough or know I was doing, but it was a treat and you were very kind. And that was back at Cargill days.

Dan Dye:
Yeah, that’s, that’s good. Good, good memories. And I, I remember your brother Kent working, working with him for a number of years, and then when he was at the Minneapolis great exchange. So that, that connection with your family goes back a long, long way. So you, you have a good memory to, to, to remember that specific moment, which is great.

David Horsager:
He was my first internship Kent was, and, and you think you talk about another great leader and I don’t, you know, shout out to him too much. There’s some you know, he’s I’ve got five siblings and I’m the youngest, but he is a great leader and was a great leader. And I really, I learned a ton. My first internship my sophomore year of college was on the floor of the Minneapolis commodity exchange. Cool. yeah. And so learned a whole lot. There’s a whole more here. Dan dye, president of Arden mill, AR mills, and just grateful for your work and all that you do. Thanks for being on the show. That has been the trusted leader show until next time, stay trusted.