MEL #028 | From Engineering Equations to Community Impact through Head, Heart, and Hands with Eric Higgs

HIGGS (00:00)

I think leaders ultimately do a really good job of, the most important part is they light a fire inside of you. Great leaders are also focused on execution getting things done. They know how to light a fire underneath you as well.

ADAMS (00:39)

In this episode, I speak with Eric Higgs, the president and chief executive officer of Boys and Girls Clubs of Middle Tennessee. Eric began his career in engineering thanks to a high school band teacher who nominated him for a youth employment program. That opportunity paired him with a city engineer and ignited his interest in the field. After studying chemical engineering, he joined Procter & Gamble and moved through roles in manufacturing and brand management before eventually becoming a general manager at Kimberly Clark and Bridgestone and later transitioning to the nonprofit sector. In our leadership segment, Eric talks about the core challenge when transitioning from corporate leadership to the nonprofit sector. He had to shift from primarily head and hands-driven strategies to leading with heart while still leveraging data, strategy, and accountability. A key focus became simplifying complex strategies and cascading them through the organization in ways that inspired ownership at every level.

Eric advises engineers to actively pursue leadership roles and develop both management and leadership skills. He emphasizes becoming a student of each new role and organization, adopting learning agility and understanding both the culture and the people. Without further delay, here is my conversation with Eric Higgs.

ADAMS (01:49)

Hi, Eric. Welcome to Mastering Engineering Leadership.

HIGGS (01:52)

Hi, how are you? Angelique is great to be a part of this.

ADAMS (01:55)

I am great. I’m really thrilled to have you here. Can you start by telling us how you got into engineering as a career path?

HIGGS (02:02)

Sure, it’s kind of a windy story, but I’m happy to share it. I think it goes all the way back to high school, right around the time, you you’re exploring what do want to be when you grow up. And I, of course, always said, I’ll be a doctor. And I think I said that mainly to just get people off my back, kind of check the box of acceptable, to be honest. Wasn’t a lot of thought in that, but I had a band teacher, Mr. Richards, people who…

got me on a path of exploration in high school where a letter came to him addressed as counselor. And while he wasn’t a counselor, it came to him. And so therefore he said, hey, I read it and it says to nominate someone you think you’d be great for this program. And it was a program called Student Training Employment Program. And so they were targeting people who were rising juniors and I’d been in a band and that was my thing. And he said, hey, I’d like you to go down and interview for this.

I got the job and what it was was the city of Chicago trying to give young people exploration into what future pathways could look like. So you’d get paired up for a summer job with a professional. Mine of course was an engineer of all professions. And then they did weekly kind of development, leadership development courses and support. And so when that program started, I was paired with a city engineer. I had a project list.

of things that I was supporting the engineer on. And then in those leadership courses, I still remember Les Brown being one of the first people and he’s a motivational speaker. And I still remember his lesson only quality people, OQP, surround yourself with that. And I would tell you that was probably what got me on the exploration pathway of engineering. Now, I didn’t come in exactly majoring in it though. I kind of stuck with the med school thing.

I started out as a biology chemistry major and quickly changed to mechanical engineering. From mechanical engineering, I did a couple of internships, which I did not like. And at the time drafting was a part of the mechanical engineering coursework, which I did not like at all, nor was I very good at it. And I kind of settled on my roots in chemistry and went to chemical engineering.

And that’s how I got into engineering. And from there, I took a job coming out of school with Proctor and Gamble. But that is the windy story. I almost feel like we’re not for some of those things that I couldn’t have planned. I don’t know if I’d be an engineer. I don’t know.

ADAMS (04:27)

Yeah, absolutely. mean, I think, you know, this band teacher, was really, yeah, really saw something in you and tapped you on the shoulder and said, you know, go do this thing. And, and then you had some early, you know, early exposure to engineering, because I think a lot of us don’t. I know I didn’t, I didn’t know what an engineer, I just, you know, there was a scholarship, I had to figure out how to pay for college. I was, you know, good at good at pretty much everything in high school. And I didn’t hate math and science. So I said, let’s try this. I have no idea what it is. But you had some early, early exposure. And then

you settled on chemical. And then, so you mentioned that’s a windy path, but I mean, your path continues to be windy, right? So you can talk a little bit about, so you were at Procter & Gamble and then, you know, can you keep telling us about what your path has been like? And then, you know, what I’m most excited about is what you’re doing now. So.

HIGGS (05:16)

Yeah. Well, you know, I do think and you know, you know, I’m the CEO of Boys and Girls Clubs in Middle Tennessee. And I think hindsight is always 20-20. And I really think that my pathway, which is different than, you know, everyone else is no different than anyone else’s, really starts about the younger you are, I think the narrower your view of the world and exposure and experience widens that lens of what the world’s possibilities are.

And I really feel like my life has just been one where I’ve had the fortune, but also sometimes it felt like a little bit the misfortune of having to learn things by experiencing and doing them. Sometimes the hard way, but sometimes in very inspiring ways. So when I started out in engineering and taking the job at Procter & Gamble, on the spot, I was learning what makes a good company. I had interned and there were some great companies that I had interned in, top companies.

However, I never asked the question when I was there, or I never felt like I was on the path that says, well, if I’m going to be given 20 job offers, how do I pick the best one? I was more of the mindset, oh, I just got to make sure I get a job than that. And so when I got these job offers, I found myself trying to figure out, well, wait a minute, I can choose by location because I had jobs in New Orleans, Chicago, Green Bay, Wisconsin, San Diego, or.

I could start to ask some questions on what would really make it a good choice. And so I wound up choosing Procter & Gamble because of what I read in the book, which was it was known for developing people. When you left Procter, if you did, you were sought after. I was, just found that intriguing. But the other part was they invested so much in training that if you stuck around, you didn’t have to stay in one career path and they would invest in the training. So that’s what made me pick Procter & Gamble.

I wound up in Green Bay, which was the time not exciting for a Chicago kid who loved the Bears, Packers and all that stuff. But what I found was in manufacturing, was a manufacturing job. The number one skill that you were really honing on was how to lead, how to build teams, how to align people around agendas that need to get done in business and then have them rally to get it done. And I felt like I was getting a master’s course in that.

And it really from there, started to set me on another windy path of saying, okay, I love this, I’m growing in manufacturing, but I found myself in a manufacturing job in Canada, where we were sent to rebuild the plant. So we were the technical experts bringing that American stuff we were doing in the plants over to a Canadian brand that we wanted to kind of build on.

And literally three months into the assignment, it shifted from a rebuild the plant to a sell the plant. And I said, how on earth do you switch strategy like that in three months? And it led me down this path where it said, who’s even making the decisions? What information is there looking at? And I came up with this a hundred lever dashboard, which I really think kind of guided the rest of my corporate career. And I said, it feels like in manufacturing.

There’s 30 to 40 % of those levers that I’m afforded the luxury of really building mastery around, helping to pull and that. But I said, it really does feel like 50 % of them are more. I don’t even get it. I don’t have a clue. I don’t know how to look at consumer knowledge, branding strategy, pricing strategy in a market or out of market. And that led me on a pathway. As my mentors told me in Procter & Gamble, it was brand management.

So to get afforded the access of those other levers, it took me on a pathway of brand management. I actually got my MBA part time before making that leap and then decided to not go down the plant manager route of, you know, continued growing manufacturing responsibility, but down a pathway of brand management. And I started over as an assistant brand manager. So there you’re doing everything from pricing analytics.

to what’s happening in a particular store on a particular part of the brand business. So just to get real specific on Bounty Paper Towels, I might’ve been responsible for the Bounty One Roll Print business, where we sell one roll of paper, only the prints, understanding exactly where it’s priced versus competition, how’s it growing, et cetera. And you’re learning all that stuff from the ground up.

And I’ll be honest, I think I found a niche that I didn’t know existed because it combined the analytics, the problem solving, all of the things that I had come to love about engineering and, you know, the scientific process of coming up with a hypothesis, you know, running small experiments that then hone in. I learned all of that at brand management and it was unbelievable. It also then coupled with a creative side that I had kind of suppressed.

because in the manufacturing side, know, yeah, there’s some creativity, but not like I was experiencing there. And so I found myself just through experience loving what was called brand management and marketing. And I grew in that. And so I moved from assistant brand manager to brand manager to associate director. That was all in Procter & Gamble before, you know, eventually moving on and becoming the what was that called the

general manager for the Kleenex business. So essentially I ran North America’s Kleenex business. So to this day, you can’t show me a box that has facial tissue and be not tell you something about that business from 10 feet away just by looking at that box. I can tell you when that threat was made probably.

ADAMS (10:45)

I’m going to remember that because I know, you know, I guess we meet we’ll meet up a couple of times. I’m involved in the Boys and Girls Clubs as well. And know when we have our state meeting, I’m going to have to bring a box of tissues and I’m going to quiz you on what you’re going to say about it.

HIGGS (10:58)

Well, be prepared to be even more frightened because I’m going to ask you a few questions about, you know, just habits around things you might be purchasing in other categories. And I’m going to tell you what brand you buy, probably the size you buy and what you buy.

ADAMS (11:14)

Yeah, so you got deep into sort of like consumer psychology and all that kind of stuff. That does sound fascinating. And I know you’ve got some additional twists and turns to talk about. one of the things I wanted to, you I was fascinated that you, you you’re here in manufacturing, you’re at this plant in Canada, and you know, something, a change happens and you’re like, wait a second, you know, how, you know, what caused, what are the factors that cause these things to change?

And you realize in the role that I’m in now, I really can only maybe have some impact or even be aware of a small percentage of those. And I want to get in on more of that. I want to understand more aspects of the business and maybe even be involved or have some control over some of these other aspects. And that leads you to the brand side. But you mentioned that you kind of started over. And so I’m just curious.

Apart from going back and getting your MBA, I’m curious, what else did you do to get yourself up to speed on this completely new side of the business? There’s some stuff that carried over, the analytics, problem solving, but then there’s this whole new domain that you’ve got to learn in order to have an impact in that. Can you just talk a little bit about your sort of skill acquisition strategy?

HIGGS (12:27)

Sure. I will tell you this is a score for the engineering training. Ultimately, no matter how smart you are coming into an engineering program, I’ve always heard.

engineering students consistently say it was really hard. And I had to, you know, oftentimes go back to the basics of I’ve got to be very disciplined. I’ve got to be, you know, forever open to learn. I might come in thinking I’m good and know this, but I’ve got to become a student and really understand this from the ground up. I got to really understand the root of what’s going on. And so when I switched over, I got some very sage advice from an engineer who had switched over.

to manufacture from manufacturing over to marketing. And at the time this guy was like a global, was a business unit president at Procter & Gamble. And he and I both shared some Duke heritage. I got my MBA from there. And so the advice he gave me coming to marketing is he said, Eric, you should be a student when you come in because they had these weird practices that just were odd to me.

For instance, when we were talking about creative development, we got into doing commercials, we’d hire these agencies. And I was just like, why do you always say thank you very much for the work, even if the work’s not good and you wanna give comments like, okay, change everything. And I said, and then why does the ABM always have to start? I feel like you’re kind of hazing me a little bit, what is going on? And so he explained a couple of practices. He said the agency knows that

the highest ranking person ultimately is going to make the decision. So if we start with the highest ranking person and give their opinion, nobody’s going to care about anybody else when they speak. So we start with the person with the least tenure on it. But what it does, Eric, if you think about culture, and he was telling me to be a student, not just in the business and the hardcore work, but also the culture of an organization, he said, that gives you tremendous power because if you lead with smart thinking.

you have shaped everyone else’s thinking after that with the comments that they make. And it totally reframed things. And I think from just a lesson like that from someone who was very successful in a new career path, I realized you have got to become a student every time you make a pivot and change. And that student mindset has to be about the business, about the people who came before, what made it successful, what made it not successful, but also the culture of how it ticks.

And so I think that that is still a skill, this learning agility. It’s one of the things that I value most. I look for most when I’m thinking about hiring people as well. Yeah.

ADAMS (14:59)

That’s great. I mean, you know, and a procter and gamble is really known for such great training. And as you said, you know, you were very smart. You were, you were very keen early on to know that, I want to be in a place where they’re going to train me and where I’m going to be well respected. Even if I decide to leave and even just those like, you know, and not just the like manufacturing and

not just sort of the nuts and bolts, but even these nuances that you’re talking about, about the order of giving presentations or speaking, giving feedback, things like that. And it makes a difference. And it’s amazing that you were able to learn that. And I’m sure you’re imparting a lot of that to the people that now work for you. So talk a little bit more about the work you did in the industry. And then how did you make this leap over to the nonprofit sector?

HIGGS (15:48)

Yeah, so you kind of get why I moved over into the business side and those other levers. But still the thing that I was inspired by was if you’re going to go do good business, which that’s how I call it, this good business, you still need to be motivated about getting up in the morning and going to do it and rallying the teams. There had to be something inside of you. And I’ll tell you a little short story that really rooted this for me. I went back to my 10 year reunion.

One of my good buddies, you know, in college, we were study buddies. He was going to his classroom, and I was going back to mine. And he was going back as an engineer working for Motorola, driving the concept car that had the first Motorola phone built into a BMW. And he was on the project team. I was like, man, that is cool. He got to drive the car around and that stuff. Living in Chicago, by the way.

I am a Chicago kid who happens to be living in Green Bay working in a plant and my claim to fame was I was launching a new upgrade on Charmin toilet paper, making it 25 % softer.

ADAMS (16:53)

of a contrast there, yeah.

HIGGS (16:55)

I just remember trying to explain that to people who were not in the business because it was great. mean, it was, it was a lot of science that went into it. remember the quack chemistry that we had on the particular molecules that were going to be used in this. So I mean, it was real hardcore science, but try explaining that to your classmates from high school. And so not that I was ashamed or anything, but it did hit the says the work you do has to be purposeful. It has to be doing something more meaningful to the world. And so that was my mindset.

When I took on these businesses and moved on, I said, I want to do good business, but it needs to benefit the community. And how do you get those to intersect one another was always my challenge. So on Bounty Paper Towels, when I actually became the brand manager, we launched this purposeful approach to back to school. We didn’t used to be on the back to school list. Paper towels weren’t, facial tissues were. That was a purposeful way to grow the business.

go into customers like Walmart and actually say, no, we want palette display because this is going to be on school list. And I did it everywhere I went. I tried to, even on the tires with Bridgestone when I was president over there, we weren’t just selling tires. We were enabling the fleets that were moving the world. And people said, Eric, I think you’re stretching too much there until COVID hit. And then the fleets that were enabling the world.

where the UPS customer I had, the FedEx customer I had when they pulled up to your house, giving you essential things to keep the world going around. So if you could do that, you’re more motivated for work. And I almost felt like I had to put that dick saw puzzle piece together to be satisfied at work. So when the opportunity presented itself to lead the Boys and Girls Clubs of Middle Tennessee, yeah, it’s.

There’s a whole lot that’s different, but there’s a whole lot the same. And now I’ve started to think like, well, one, it’s who I was. It’s what made me tick. I would not have been successful in business if I could not have come up with those jigsaw pieces of, we’re not really selling facial tissue, we’re selling care. That was my Kleenex mantra. We want to make care more contagious than the common cold and all those things. I felt like now every day, the business was going to be about the community and serving young people who are our future.

And so I made the decision to move over with that. And I really started to think like, hey, if I had 10 more years to live my career out, how would I want to do it? And I thought, well, that’s some nobility there. And my wife finally helped reframe it when she said, what if you had 10 more years to live? Which pathway would you choose? And so it’s been five years now, you know, already been five years in this assignment and you know, it’s been an exciting pathway, lots of challenges. It’s a really hard job.

but it does come a lot of fulfillment too.

ADAMS (19:44)

All right, Eric.

What leadership situation are we going to be talking about today?

HIGGS (19:47)

Yeah, great, great question. I think I’ll talk about, you know, really leading in nonprofits because I hear that a lot. People ask, is there a big difference between what you’re doing in the for-profit nonprofit? You know, on the one hand, I start to dismantle some things right away. And I said, well, since most people think of dollars and cents when they think for-profit and, you know, that huge task of being a general manager, I tell them the only day

that a for-profit and non-profit are different is tax day, to be honest with you. Every other day, it’s all out the same thing. You really do have to be about maximizing the use of resources in an efficient way to go out and get the resources that’s needed to keep the organization moving. And so in that regard, it is exactly the same. I tend to think about the exercise in non-profit and profits really the same, but

It’s not equally distributed every day around these three important things that I think it takes to run any organization. And that’s the use of head, heart, and hands. And I found myself in corporate a lot of times, people want to know, is it rooted in good thinking, head? Is it sound business and landscape analysis and analytical data to

and that and really a lot of great things start with the head, with the thinking. And there’s often, depending on where you’re at, a shift between the heart and hands. But most businesses start with head, heart, head, hands, and then let’s put a little heart on it. I think great businesses, know, still tend to be rooted in the hand, but they bring that heart in, like I was trying to do. Bring that heart in.

ADAMS (21:21)

Mm-hmm.

HIGGS (21:30)

so that you can inspire the hands to get things done. And I will tell you in the non-for-profit world, and I think it really does make a whole lot of sense. I think that it has to be heart centered. I think it has to start in that heart and then smart thinking put around, how do I go get the resources or how do I enable the hands that are going to support? So all three, if you think about those as kind of three essential skills,

or three essential must haves, they’re all the same nonprofit and for-profit needs all three. I think you’ll find yourself pulling on others more so than others right away. If I had found that when I’m trying to lead here, if you cannot pull at that heart string, it’s impossible. Whereas in corporate, if I pulled at the heart string with smart thinking and that, it was like a multiplier. It was a multiplier for me. In this case here,

Finding a way to make sure that it’s centered in that heart so that everyone gets it right away is important. So for instance, I always had strategy in my business that I led here, but I knew the one that we worked on here that we launched about five years ago, which was our growth strategy, we call it Dub 100 by 2026. And those things were short for dub, short for doubling, the number of youth we wanted to serve to 10,000.

And the analytics behind that were when you think of Boys and Girls Clubs mission that they want to enable all youth, but especially those who need us most, the analytical side of me said, well, how many is that in middle Tennessee? And it had never been quantified. So we quantified it and we estimated 40,000 needed us most. We were serving 12 % and we felt, hey, most brands that you recognize and know, they’re at least 25 % of the addressable market.

Why shouldn’t we be? So that’s where double came from. But it started in the heart of this unmet need of not meeting the needs of over 40,000 young people. And then the hundred was tied to having them 100 % future ready. The 100 % future ready was deemed by five readies in our programming, ready to read, ready for class, ready to graduate, ready for career, and ready to thrive in the community. And under each of those,

There are programs, there are outcomes associated with each of those, but again, it pulls at the heart, underscored with analytics and good head thinking, and then hopefully inspiring people to put hands to make movement.

ADAMS (23:51)

I love the way you frame this, this head, heart, hands. it makes it so clear and to kind of understand these different components and compare and I do think that people who maybe don’t really understand the business of nonprofits don’t understand how much

Of course they have the heart, right? People want to start nonprofits, people are coming to it from the heart, but don’t understand how the head and hands are really force multipliers. And that’s one of the things I like about the Boys and Girls Clubs is because I think as sort of the overarching federation of the program, they do a good job of helping the individual clubs and individual entities track their data, collect it. They kind of already have frameworks to do that, and they even know kind of which metrics.

really speak to both operationally speak to helping to run the organization, but then also what speak to the donors and the people that support it. So I think that’s really helpful, but there’s a lot of nonprofits who just don’t have that and are really trying to push everything with heart. And I think especially right now, and I don’t know if you’re seeing it, I’m sure you are, but there’s a contraction in philanthropic donating. And so…

Now people are really wanting to see more of the metrics, see more of how it’s working, how the return on their investment dollars. And so I think the nonprofits that are able to do that are ahead of ones that can’t. And then just in terms of your strategy for Middle Tennessee, so your branding expertise is really coming out just in terms of how you frame it. It’s very clear. I can see how it eases communication for you.

with your stakeholders because you have such a clear vision. It’s clear to remember, clear to understand, et cetera. I’m curious about, given that you have all this business experience, you clearly understand the head, heart, and hands. What about the folks working for you and throughout your organization, do you find yourself having to maybe do some training or some…

some messaging around helping the rest of the organization understand how all those pieces fit together and how they can’t just be lead with heart.

HIGGS (25:55)

Yep, I do. And there are very talented people, very smart people that I am blessed to have on this team. So I feel great about that. But yeah, I have tried to take the fundamentals of, you know, how do you develop strategy, then deploy that strategy, and then check and adjust as necessary so that you are sure you’re going to get to the input. So every single year.

You know, we’ve come up with a process now where about four times a year, all staff meets. So we come together as an all staff. We do a check-in, but we’re also checking in on the strategies that says, okay, everybody knows Doug 100 by 2026. I actually got to a point where I would elect someone out of blue to present what it was, what the history was, and all the nuances you just heard me say, because if you can make it that internal and deep.

that everybody, irregardless of level or station, wherever they’re at, then I think you’re on to something. That’s a big part of strategy deployment. Do people understand it and get it and feel it and start to own it? So yeah, I’d say I’m deliberate about that. But I’ve learned, because I wasn’t prior to coming into the role, to be a bit more patient as well. And also to not be afraid to simplify things and kind of strip out some of the stuff that might be rooted in the

business science and theory and all that will strip out some of that stuff. I find myself sometimes thinking back to being when I was a church board leader and deacon for my church, we wouldn’t do these planning off sites. And the pastor asked me to lead it because they felt like we were stepping all over each other. The choir was scheduling something when I just had something going on and it was just a mess. When I went off site, yeah, I had all these tools from Procter and Gamble and none of them were working.

They were just too complex. And it taught me to strip things down to the core. At end of the day, a calendar is what makes sense. Then have everybody take post-its and put all of their desires and wishes on these 12 big calendars on the wall. So I gave them unlimited freedom, post-it notes, put them all down, put all your ideas up. And after those 10 auxiliary leaders looked at the mess of those calendars, my question was simple. If we pull all of this off and God said, yes, let it all happen.

When would our families who attend church go to their kids’ programs, go check in on their mothers and fathers, take vacations and date night? And so you’re able to strip that back away and say, OK, let’s boil this down to something simple. And so planning moved from what used to be this very complicated thing to saying, no, give me your top three big things that must happen to fulfill what the pastor asks you to lead in that auxiliary. And then let’s look at the calendar and say, are we OK?

And it really helped to change things. And so I do try and bring those same principles here. When we meet quarterly, we talk about the plan. You know, we go through our national youth outcomes initiatives data once a year. And so literally live on the screen, I will have pulled up the data. I’ve got analytics that I’ve done, but I’m asking them live, what are they seeing? What are the trends? Oftentimes I’m teaching things like,

Don’t overcomplicate this. Remember, look for the outliers. If everything is a five and you got something as a one, let’s figure out what’s up, put a circle. And so yeah, I think I do explain it, but I will tell you this. It was part of the reasons that was like, besides my wife’s question of if you had 10 more years to live, Don Holmes, who’s the board chair now, he was on the hiring committee. He asked me, what is it that I really

could see myself getting out of the role because I said, why don’t I just join your board? I’m gonna meet my financial obligations to my family and I’ll just join the board. And he said, if you took it, what would you most wanna get? And I said, it’s really the thought of being able to bring some of these tools and helping my teams get access to things that they may not have. I was like, because I know that’s gonna make them better and more effective at what they’re doing. And I’ve had the privilege of working in some of these areas. And he said, Eric,

Thanks for saying that he said, and if that’s where your heart’s at and I believe you, he said, that is not your role as a board member. He said not that it’s bad. It’s just not your core role. You would not be brought on to coach the team and go in there and dig under their strategies and help shape. And that’s not your role. And so if you want that, and I think you would be great, you should consider that’s one of the reasons, another additional reason you would choose this job versus just becoming a board member.

ADAMS (30:20)

Wow, well that’s incredible. I’m glad that board chair challenged you to think about that, because I know the organization is greatly benefiting from your expertise. One of the things you talked about I want to reinforce here for the audience, because I have never met a leader who didn’t say, I’m having a hard time cascading my vision down through the organization. It is a universal problem or universal leadership challenge.

And I love some of the strategies that you talked about. So what I heard you say was, one, simplify. Make sure that it’s something easy to distill down. you got buy-in, you got an input from your team to actually create that vision in the strategy, but then it needs to be super simplified to just a couple of key things. And then you talked about reinforcement. So you’re having your meetings quarterly, monthly, and you’re talking about the strategy, and you’re asking them to talk about it.

And then you’ve got this, you didn’t use the word, so I’m gonna use this word, but you’ve got this like accountability piece where you’re almost quizzing them on it. So it’s like, I need to know this, because Eric might ask me in front of my peers what this is. And so I have to take on some ownership and accountability to not just rote memorize it, but to understand it, internalize it, and even be able to sort of look at the metrics and see which metrics are driving it.

when you’re looking at the dashboards and stuff like that. So I just wanted to sort of break that down for everyone and summarize it, because as I said, it is a universal leadership challenge and it sounds like you have been extremely effective in the processes that you’re doing, that you did that in for-profit, you did it at church, and now you’re doing it for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Middle Tennessee.

HIGGS (31:57)

And

one thing I will add to that, cause that’s a great summary. That last step is the individual accountability. You’re absolutely right. And it culminates into an annual work plan. everybody’s work plan, which we review together in one of those beginning year off sites, they share them. We break off in the groups, they cross share with their teams. They understand. And my big question as we’re going through,

each of the pillars of our goals for the year is, do you see things on your work plan tie into the contribution of any of these things that you see on the goals? Because I told them once upon a time when I was younger, I actually thought, man, I’m getting over, you know, I get to hide under the radar. And I told them what I quickly learned in corporate America, it’s not called hiding under the radar. It’s called potentially your job’s not needed next. And so

ADAMS (32:51)

Exactly.

HIGGS (32:51)

Thing

I found is I wanted to make sure that everything that I was assigned, the role I was on intersected that businesses goals multiple ways. It assured me that, okay, if they’re trying to raise a million dollars and I’m bringing 250 alone, hey, I think I’m in, I got an important job, but I actually think it’s a necessary job. So I feel good about getting up in the morning and going to make that happen and that set. So yeah, we do go through that exercise.

on work plans at the beginning of the year to get them set at midpoint and then formally at the end of the year. The rest of the times and one on ones I’m expecting people’s managers to be going through that with them.

ADAMS (33:31)

Yeah, again, wanted to just to just double click on what you said. So you you just talked about both a top down and bottom up alignment of these of these activities. So the leaders, they said, you know, this is a strategy this we need to work on. You are helping to cascade that down. But it is absolutely the responsibility of the individual to say, I need to make sure that I understand.

how what I’m doing fits with this broader strategy because as you said, rightfully so, there’s no hiding It will eventually mean irrelevant. It may not be in the near term, but as soon as times get tough, and there’s a lot of tough times right now for a lot of different people, but as soon as organizations have to tighten their belt, the first thing that goes are people who cannot clearly show.

how they were contributing to the organization. So it’s absolutely your responsibility as a contributor to understand how that fits in. If you don’t know, need to sort that out with your manager. You need to ask, you need to push, but there needs to be very clear alignment there. So I appreciate you mentioning that.

all right, Eric, as we wrap up, what advice would you give to engineers who are interested in pursuing leadership roles?

HIGGS (34:51)

I would, my advice would be pursue them. Pursue leadership roles, regardless of where you’re at, what function you’re in, because ultimately, you know, if you’re doing it in a business environment, or academic for that matter, there’s a business to any aspect that you’re in. Ultimately, the rewards are going to come to people who are able to motivate, align, inspire others to get

more things done than just one person. So I think it’s an essential skill. I mean, we learned it in engineering. We learned to think like engineers so that we can get processes to come together at scale to get more output or get more throughput. And so I think my advice would definitely be pursue it, pursue those roles, don’t avoid them. And I would just say on your career, really think of it. At some point I stopped thinking that it was about engineering.

And it really did become about people. And so that’s another reason I would talk about the people around pursuing those leadership roles, because ultimately organizations are comprised of people who come together to get things done. When you’re managing others, and I’m gonna forbid you’re not a good manager, people aren’t quitting the organization, they’re quitting you. So yeah, learn those leadership skills, learn those managerial skills as well.

put a lot of emphasis on leaders, but good leaders are also good managers. And I think it’s hard to be the other way around. It’s quite possible you could be a good manager without being a good leader, but it’s impossible to be a good leader without being an advantage because I think leaders ultimately do a really good job of, think the most important part is they light a fire inside of you. And they’re reaching you at a level. You learn those skills, you can put them all together. They’re learning at a level.

that really lights a fire inside of you, but also great leaders who are focused on execution because execution is a leadership skill, getting things done. They know how to light a fire underneath you as well. And so I think both those things have to come together. I guess my last thing is when I think about a book that has consistently been a part of my leadership journey has been the first 90 days. It’s consistent.

First time I got trained on it back in Procter & Gamble and how to use it. And forevermore, it has been one of those tools and resources that I’ve outlined for myself that I share with my teams. I talk about here at Boys and Girls Clubs, by the way. I bring people in with a mindset of the first 90 days and many levels actually present a first 90 days presentation, which as the book talks about,

The hypothesis of the book is that when they went and did this big study, think 85 plus leaders, they found that the success or failure of a leader moving into a new organization could be defined by how effectively they onboarded in the first 90 days. And what it talks about to be effective coming in is many of the things we talked about at the beginning. It’s like, you’ve got to become a student.

You’ve got to go and do some structured learning to understand that organization, the business side of it, the people side of it, the culture side of it, what’s made it work, what hasn’t made it work, all of those types of things. And to do it in such a structured way that you’re now coming back and you’re playing back what you’ve heard. And you also had some time to potentially synthesize some findings that you’re trying to confirm with people, people who learned to do that, that show that agility that I’m coming in to learn.

Yeah, I brought some expertise from another area, but here’s my observations. And in fact, here might even be my hypothesis of some things that need to change. Yeah, that ability is what that book reaffirms. And so I highly recommend it. I utilize it. And I did the same thing with Boys and Girls Clubs in middle Tennessee when I shared my findings with the board. just more, you know, also integrated into a framework that Boys and Girls Clubs of America had.

which were business scans and those. I said, great, I know how to take their business scans and show how it fit in my old world and speak their language because speaking that language and understanding the language of a new culture is also something that that first 90 days talks.

ADAMS (38:53)

Excellent. Well, I’m taking over the role of the chairperson for the Boys and Girls Club of the Tennessee Valley in July, and I know what I’m going to read between now and then. So thank you for that recommendation.

HIGGS
Congrats on the new role.

ADAMS
Thank you. Well, Eric, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us.

HIGGS
Been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.