The Human Side of Leadership | Dennis Richter

Natasha Nuytten: Hello, and welcome to the Human Side Up podcast. I am Natasha Nuytten, your host and the CEO at Clara. Today, I am really excited, actually, to welcome someone who has spent his entire career bridging the gap between operational excellence and deep human insights. He is a man after my own heart. This is Dennis Richter. Dennis is currently the chief people officer at Fullscript, which is a tech company where they're helping doctors practice whole person medicine, which I absolutely love. And his path to that role has been anything but conventional in all the right ways. He, too, is a zigger and a zagger, so I love that. He's come from the U.S. Army to Google to lead people operations at Ad Hoc. Dennis has really navigated a remarkable journey across industries and functions, but really always keeping people at the center. He's a builder, a mentor, a systems thinker, has degrees from Thomas Edison State University in Columbia Southern with credentialing from the Wharton School. He's super well educated, but he's also a soccer coach, a lifelong learner and someone who's not afraid to roll up his sleeves and really reimagine how organizations can grow without losing their humanity. We're going to talk about everything from scaling people ops at hyperspeed to the moments that really tested his leadership the most and what it really means to serve your team from the inside out. Dennis, welcome to Human Side Up. All right Dennis Richter, thank you so much for joining us today on Human Side Up, I am excited to have this conversation, even in the quick little intro we had in setting this up, you've already proven yourself willing to be flexible and open, which is one of my favorite one of my favorite qualities. So thank you for that. And welcome. 

Dennis Ritcher: Thanks. Awesome. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. I'm excited to spend some time with you today, Natasha. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, absolutely. So listeners of the podcast will be very familiar with the idea that we'd like to just start a little bit with your story and who you are to set up the conversation that we're going to have thereafter. And the first question that I try to ask all of our guests is what are one or two words that you would use to describe yourself that are core to who you are, maybe helped you get where you are. And when did you maybe we wouldn't recognize them about you. They're not on your CV. It doesn't say engineer or people leader. When are they and when did you own them for yourself is true. 

Dennis Ritcher: Yeah, no, I think it's such a great question, by the way, because you're so right. There's so many times we get asked these questions. The first thing somebody says is, manager, HR leader, executive. I would say, two words. I'd say the first word. Reflective. It's one of the things that and when did I really start doing that, say, probably at a fairly young age, maybe, in and around the time that I was graduating high school when I was first starting out at the university level, was just trying to have that capacity for introspection and appreciating the journey and not dwelling on too much. So I'd say reflective. And then the other word I'd say has probably been a part of every facet of who I am for as long as I can remember is intentional. Everything that I do, there's some reason behind it. While I love to live in the moment and shoot from the hip, I still want the words that I say to be intentional. I want the actions that I'm exhibiting to be intentional plans that I create to be intentional. So I would say reflective and intentional. 

Natasha Nuytten: That bodes very well for the next few minutes of conversation. That's fantastic. And I love that you came to the reflection piece very early. That's a, some of us come to it a little bit later. And that's very cool. What was it about being in that sort of university setting that sort of unlocked that for you? 

Dennis Ritcher: Yeah, I would say, I grew up in, in one of, one of the poorest zip codes in the U S and ERIE PA. And, I came from not very much and being the first person in my family to graduate from high school, like actually high school, some of the people in my family that, achieved it, but actually to graduate from high school, when I first arrived at Florida state, when I got to that university level was the first time I really started to reflect on, I'm doing something different. I didn't let certain environmental constraints hold me back or be an excuse, but I also, instead of for a long time, letting my background and my past get in the way of embracing where, how that motivated me and how that helped me to another place in my life or another chapter or another gear I used to let it defeat me a little bit and hold me back and I would be more embarrassed to talk about it rather than empowering and owning that narrative. I think when I got to university, I had that moment of reflection and just was like, you know what? This is my story. This is my next chapter. These are all the things that I've been through that have defined me. And there's so many people out there that I don't know that there have probably been significantly more had less. And I wonder how they approach these things. The only way you're going to know that is to have those conversations and to own it. And so for me, it was always important to look back and have an appreciation of the good, the bad, the indifferent, and how that influences the go forward. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. In that, I don't know, minute and a half, I've got 97 questions, so we'll see if we get to any of the other ones I was planning on asking you, but I am very curious about that experience. Given your background, like how did you end up at university? How did you start making the choices that you made that were different perhaps than the folks who before you, or how are they the same? Just with different outcomes. 

Dennis Ritcher: Yeah. I've always enjoyed competition, whether it was sports or just, friendly competition amongst friends. It was always something that motivated me. And I think the one thing that I didn't want was I didn't want to go down the same path that everybody in my family or that everybody around me was going down. I didn't want to be content with what they thought success was or what they thought happiness was. I wanted to find that for myself. I also knew there was so much of the world out there. I wanted to go out and experience it. I'd read about it, studied it, but I wanted to experience it. Cultures, the people, the hospitality, the history, so much of that. I wanted to go out and just take as much in as I could. And I think that those were some of the factors that really helped push me to want to not settle for. Again, that's what was my definition. I didn't want to settle. Maybe other people were content. I wasn't content with that. I wanted more. And I figured the only way I'm going to get there is if I get myself there. Yeah. And there's a certain component of being dependent on others and relying on others that sometimes people take in a very literal sense, right? Somebody is financially supporting me. I'm dependent on them. I think sometimes what people actually forget is my dependencies on most people are my observations of what you do. And if I want to do that, or if I don't want to do that, am I dependent on living vicariously through others, or do I want to go out and do my own thing? I've always been very motivated and focused to do my own thing. 

Natasha Nuytten: Oh, that's great. I love it. One of the things in thinking about what little I know about your background, obviously I don't know everything. You've it's, it has been varied and, having been through the military, that is in and of itself, its own sort of life experience, right? Much larger than just however, year, however many small years a person might be involved versus an entire career. And then there's going into more of a technical world. And then the people, and then back to technical and then back to people. And I'd love to understand what it is you have zigged and zagged. I'm a zigger and a zagger, so all props and kudos to that. I'd be really curious to, if you could explain a little bit before we talk about your leadership experience, how that weaving impacted where you've landed as a leader and how you think about it

Dennis Ritcher: No it's, yeah it's really a great question. I'll tell you, it has impacted almost every facet of who I am outside of being a dad. It has probably been one of the most influential aspects of my journey, both personally and professionally, because even the people you work with still shape and affect how you show up personally, right? That feedback you get from people, whether you're a leader or individual contributor, it does shape and affect how you show up or if you choose to make adjustments. And I think, my military experience, it was a conscious decision I made based on, I found I was going to be a dad at a younger age. And again, going back to that dependency piece, I wanted to make my own way and I needed to figure out how I was going to take care of my family. And so I joined the army and, five weeks into my training, nine 11 happened completely altered the landscape of not only our country, but the world, but also personally for me, my military journey, it made a lot of things a very different reality now. And so when you start to realize, every day for us matters, then you're going to start going into environments where there's different things in front of you that may be affecting how long you're going to be able to do some of the things that you're doing the way you are doing them. I think it gives you a much deeper and greater appreciation to make the most out of every day. And to your analogy of the zigging and zagging, I think I grew up in this environment. And I think a lot of society for a long time was very much wired. You land somewhere and you grow, you pick an industry and you stay there and you don't really deviate from that. I think the one thing that's been most in fashion in the professional landscape, probably at least in the last five, 10 years is that nonlinear career path. I think there's so much more to be said about people who experience several different facets of the world, of different industries to help shape and affect, and then ultimately you figure out where you want to be and what excites you most, whether it's company size, whether it's industry roles, responsibilities, where you want to live, all those kinds of, if you want to be an in-office employee, if you want to be a remote worker, there's so many things that it's all comes down to one of my favorite things, which is choice. And so I think that zigging and zagging has helped me be a significantly more well rounded leader because I've lived a lot of it firsthand, but I've also had a chance to experience so much of it that I can talk from a different angle rather than just saying I read about this in a study or in a book, I can talk about it from a lived experience that almost always resonates so much deeper with people. Now, you hear the inflection in people's voice change when it's a lived experience compared to what they've heard. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, that is so true. And so the business that we are in at Clara, my co-founders and I, like we specifically built what we built because all of us had these experiences that really shaped who we were. And some of us less zigging and zagging than I had for sure. But shaped who we were in such a way that there was so much more than what's on, there was on that resume or that piece of paper. And to your point, it's about having lived these experiences, but it's also, what have you learned from having lived those experiences and what can you bring to leadership or technology or finance or healthcare or whatever industry you're in? It shapes the way you show up with the person on the other side of the table. If they're working with you, it shapes the people that you serve, how you create problems and solutions. And so that diversity, which I know is getting a bad rap right now. The reality is that just from a strictly numbers perspective, business is better, right? When we have these more diverse teams where people are solving problems differently and thinking about all these experiences. But it is very difficult sometimes to see that when we start thinking about who we're going to bring into an organization and, or in particular, when we start moving people from maybe an entry-level position or mid-level position into a real quality leadership position. And so you mentioned something that I think is really important. I'd love to get your take on this in the last few years, I think there has been a shift when we start thinking about senior leadership in particular. There's always been a path, right? Like you do this and then you do this and then you get into that funnel for maybe a C-suite position. And the reality is like in the last, I would say maybe five to 10 years, we've started to see that different types of human companies need different leaders at different times, right? Tim Cook is super different from Steve Jobs, but the company needs a particular thing at a particular time. And I'd love to understand from your perspective in people ops in particular, how have you seen organizations and you've been in all kinds of different ones, how have you seen organizations do that well in identifying and developing talent that might not be traditional into real assets and like leveraging that in the company so that everyone wins? 

Dennis Ritcher: Yeah, no it's, to me, it's what clearly defines successful companies and happy employee bases from successful companies and content employee bases, there's, I'm a fairly simple person by nature and I usually like to bucket folks into two distinct categories, they're either thriving or surviving and the thing is you can take somebody who's been in survival mode in different components of their lives, could be something from an upbringing or a different life experience that they've been through. That builds different muscles, that resiliency, that perseverance, or sometimes it builds different vulnerabilities and anxieties. It takes bold leaders, but I always steer away from just the word leader. It takes bold people to try and do it differently, to build a team that has that diversity of thought, experience, culture, gender, it takes a leader to say, here's what we're doing and why we're doing it. And then to go out and deliver it and then feel comfortable to go out and in essence, evangelize, because a lot of times people, I think, end up on the defensive, why are you doing that? Why did you think that was a good idea? Instead of people getting out there, proactively owning, here's why we did this, I'm proud of what we've accomplished. I want us to be different. And I think the Apple example you use is so spot on. Success is then defined by personality, right? It's defined by the vision and the accountability that the leader sets upon the business. The one thing that everybody wants to know is Steve Jobs and Tim Cook from day to day, do they both lead by example, right? Cause that's what people ultimately want. And I think when I've been in several different industries and I think about the best leaders that I've been around are the ones who make bold declarations, but they're also conscious of soliciting perspective from the team. You have a leadership team around you or a board or someone around you or someone's around you. You may think this is a great idea. How comfortable and confident are you that you may not get it right? And to socialize that with others and say, you know what, that's a great idea. Or, Hey, it sounds great in theory, but I think we're missing the mark. If we only do this, then you still have to make that final decision. You go against the consensus or do you feel like, Hey, I'm going to roll with the team and see how it goes. But I do think that the leaders in the places I've been the ones that have made a bold declaration, understand that you have to stay the course through adversity, right? Political environments, company environments, change earnings and, EBITDA changes. How do you stay the course for the core components of what matter? And if you think about what really matters at a company, most people always say it's the company culture. If you think about what defines company culture, it should be the mission and the values and the principles. Those are your non-negotiables. Just like in your personal life, your non-negotiable should be your morals or your values. What are the things you are not willing to compromise for anyone, no matter what? I think more and more leaders are trying to embrace that same perspective within their businesses. 

Natasha Nuytten: Plus one, how'd you come to that? Like we've been in this business environment for years and years where we have companies like Enron putting things on the wall, saying that they value them and then dumping oil, in the Gulf, like how did you personally come to that? Was it through business experience? Was it through particular leaders? Were there any moments that sort of shaped that for you? 

Dennis Ritcher: I'll tell you so much of what shaped me professionally is what I've experienced personally. And most of that has come through, I would say pain. When you think about the word pain, most people sum that up as something that hurts, and I've always thought about pain and the capacity of there's two types of pain. The pain that hurts, which is, I may fall and get a cut and that hurts, or I may do something and I'm embarrassed. So it hurts my ego. And then there's the pain that alters. You go through life events that others may not ever experience. You've had some pivotal moments that are shaped or redefined who you are. It's altered who you are. And I think I've had both of those and I've leaned into those moments significantly more than I have probably given an appreciation for when I was younger, but what's really helped me is what I've experienced personally. We're all, you think about, you mentioned people operations earlier. If you and I were walking down the street right now and we walked by 10 people and we try and engage in conversation with those 10 people, we would explain why we're trying to talk to them and get their perspective on good leadership. We're either going to be effective at influencing them to participate with us in that conversation, or we're not. They may say what company do you work for? And you say I work for Clara. Oh, Dennis, you work for Fullscript. We're either going to sell them on why these are great places they should be and why they should spend time with us, or they go, God, Dennis seems miserable. We're all in the people business, whether we're at work or in our personal lives. And I think I've just tried to use those personal moments to transcend into my professional journey. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, that, that makes sense. Is there anybody in your world who's been like the best example of that for you? 

Dennis Ritcher: That's a good question. I would say from a leadership perspective one of the commanders I had when I was at Penn Special Forces Group Lieutenant Colonel Eric Brown he believed in me to put me into a couple of positions that were, and in essence, be a couple levels above my current pay grade, and so he had to go vouch for me to his boss, his, our commander, and, I remember asking him at one point, what, why me? And he goes, look, there's always going to be people in life who may take ill-advised bets on others, but I don't think this is an ill-advised bet, and it really, it struck me that this person who I'd been around, for a few months, believed in me so much that ultimately the one thing I didn't want to do was disappoint him, right? Now I am the leader of my own team. I didn't want to let them down, but more importantly, I didn't want to let him down. So now I had extra motivating factors and he was so good about looking at people and not just their experience. He had a couple of years runway before he moved into this other leadership role, which I got to go work for him again, he'd been spending all this time looking at all of these different key leaders that were all in my peer group, but in very different job functions and picking all the right people, and as he built this, as we joked, our dream team that we got to spend a couple of years together with, we all walked away from that moment knowing, you know what, we're never going to relive this again and we're okay with that, but it was his innate ability to see people for significantly more than just what they've accomplished, their skills. It was so much more about each individual person, different voice, different perspective, different way of thinking, different way of problem solving and putting that all together. And that somebody for me, especially, younger in my military career, that really helped shape and affect that it's not just about the resume, there's so much more to the person than those couple of pages, those bullet points, those accomplishments. How do you find the time to learn all the things like you asked me in the beginning, were those two words, if you spend more time getting to know that person, that's the person who's going to be showing up to work with you. That's, who's going to be leading your teams. And so he was highly influential on me with that component of building teams through a slightly different lens. 

Natasha Nuytten: Oh, I'm so conflicted because I want it. Do I go left or do I go right here? So I'm going to stick with Eric. You said it was his name, right? I'm going to stick with Eric for just a moment. In that, and mostly because you just touched on like the thing that I get the most excited about, if what I dream about at night is blowing up the resume and creating a new way to, to look at teams. And I think one of the, one of the things that's going to happen, and this is actually a little reflective of the other direction that I was going to go is that when we have these things converging these influences happening, multiple inflection points make something possible. And we think about that career path and how you ended up with Eric, in this, having these opportunities was this inflection of this life thing that had happened. And how do I solve for and take care of my family and nine 11 happening. And that is a highly unique experience that is going to impact forever. What Dennis does thereafter. And so when I think about how he was leading in this environment, I'd love to get your take on this because I'm a firm believer that technology is changing jobs so quickly. And so much right now, there's this moment where we think we know how they're going to change. And the reality is six months from now, we're gonna be like, oh my God, it was so wrong. I had no idea. I even remember saying something to someone might even have been four months ago where I was like, eventually prompt engineering is going to go away. And I'm like, okay, you're such an idiot. You totally missed the mark. Maybe in 10 years, it's not yet. Anyway, point being it's like Swiss cheese, right? Like I think, and I'm, I'd love to get your take as we're building these dynamic teams, whatever organization we're in, whatever industry we're in. I'm hearing this may be reflected in how he was building that sort of dream team that you'd referred to is it doesn't necessarily matter the pedigree. But this person has these incredible things. How do we leverage the best of Dennis and the best of Natasha and the best of whomever and build a team, that then covers each other's gaps, enhances each other's strengths and puts together and puts out the best product. And I'm curious, you've been doing people ops now for a really long time, but you also have a product sort of technical background, I'll say, I'm curious if that resonates and what you think, how is that going to move forward in the future? Or you're like, no, it's not Swiss cheese. It's going to be this whole other kind of thing. 

Dennis Ritcher: Yeah, no. I would say, the dynamic that, I had walked you through with, observing how Eric had built the team is probably what changed my perspective of what I was looking for as I went into other jobs and other opportunities and other stages of my career, as I was always curious how, the person I'm talking to, the hiring manager, the CEO, or the board, how are they building this team? What is their ultimate outcome? And I think when I take where I'm currently at with Fullscript and leveraging what you were talking about with AI, our CEO, Kyle Bratz, fairly declarative, 10 months ago about Fullscript being an AI first company, but what he underpinned that comment with is, we're human first, we're people first and AI empowered. And I think that resonated so much with me, not just cause I'm in the people business, not just because it's what I love. It's a technology piece. You're a hundred percent right. There's going to be some people out there who think tomorrow's going to be the day that all these things change and that these jobs are going to start to go away. In reality, it's going to take quite some time for AI to truly start to overtake things. Even if you look at the news this morning, I was reading in the post about the FDA and how a bunch of their AI tools that they use were actually given false recommendations and leveraging reports that weren't necessarily real, almost that hallucination component of what comes with AI. It doesn't mean they should stop using it. It doesn't mean we should stop believing in things. We just have to be mindful of trust, but verify is going to be a very real component of our lives for, I would candidly, I'd say for me, for as long as I continue to work, because I'm always going to want to understand if I just blindly trust all of the technology around me that I'm actually doing a disservice to the people around me. I'm not creating intentional moments. And so even with all the technology in the world, would you and I be having this moment right now? Would technology have brought us together? Would a LinkedIn algorithm have brought you and I together today? Somebody could convince me yes, but others could easily convince me no. If I was put on the spot, I would say no, right? Not yet, at least. And so I think we need to always be mindful of what's on the horizon, whether it's technology, new systems and tools, but you also always have to remember, it's up to going back to the leadership piece. It's up to leaders to declare what are non-negotiables for us. And I've even shared that with my team at a recent leadership offsite. I was asked, Dennis, what components of your respective world or our company in general, do you think AI will never be able to replace? I was like never is a dangerous word to throw out there. I said, how about maybe in the next 15 to 25 years? And they go, okay, sure. And I explained my few answers to those moments here. AI is not going to replace you and I having this organic, real conversation that's not scripted. We're just having a good time getting to know each other and understand what you and I have been through in our lives and what's important for us to discuss. When I think about interviewing potential people to join a team, Kyle Bratz, and CEO of Fullscript had a very similar approach to Eric. When I first met him, he said, look, I want to know who you are. Where'd you grow up? Where are you from? What's important to you? We literally spent an hour and a half talking about everything, but professional journeys, right? That's not, AI is not going to replace that moment, that call to reach out to a candidate and hear that excitement. That inflection in their voice, right? Hey, I'm excited to be extending you an offer, Natasha, so you can come join the team. That's just not going to change. I would hope that the moments when an employee needs an HR business partner or a leader, most of they're not on an AI thing, going representative, representative, representative to try to be a real person, right? People need human connection. They need to feel supported. They need to be heard. They need to be validated. There's certain components. I just don't see technology taking over or companies are going to make a conscious decision to let that technology take over and then people have to make a decision if that's what they're okay with. Or maybe this isn't the place for me and I need to zig or zag to somewhere else where I'm getting what I need. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. Yeah. It's that choice. Like you use that word and that being important to your earlier choice. And I just had two days ago, I will not say the platform. I was doing something that is a complex business minute, technical business thing, and supposedly it was doable and, it was going through, we've all been there, right? Like you're going through all the prompts and you're looking up all the things and the technical docs and how do I do the thing, whatever. And I got to the point where we actually pay for the service to say, Hey, I need to talk to a support person. And even to get to the support person, I was put in this cycle of 20 minutes trying to get past the prompts to talk to somebody. By that point, I'd been doing this thing for three and a half hours. It was a massive waste of my time. There were so many other things I should be able to do. And I found myself swearing into the chat, just let me talk to a human being. And so I think your point is very valid even in those things where. There should be processes and flows that can be automated, right? That seems like such a simple thing. Just ask them what the last thing they did was, and we can give them the next step that we're still humans. And so there are still those moments where I have done everything. I don't know what I did wrong and no, I can't tell you all the steps I've been doing for three and a half hours. Help me out.

Dennis Ritcher: That's fine. And word choice matters, right? Cause you and I could be sitting there describing the same situation that we're experiencing to someone and use a very different approach, very different word choice, or I may interpret something a different way than you. And again, I understand, a lot of the technology out there is really smart, but there's still, I think, a long way to go to still provide that. Person to person experience. Even at Fullscript, we have a customer support team. We always talk about what's part of our secret sauce of what makes our business special for our 10 million plus customers and our 125,000 practitioners that use our platform. Part of it is our customer support team. Because when people do call, whether it's a customer or a doctor, they get someone immediately, but our team, our customer support team there, they're empowered and enabled to solve problems faster with AI, with the technology we're building in-house. It's still something that yes, companies can go out and you can outsource it. You can leverage AI to do all that. But what would we be risking? We'd be risking a personal experience for people who are calling. People don't just call customer support because they want to chat with someone. They're calling for a specific reason. You are having a specific issue. And this is where I get into, I'm, you were talking about swearing into the, I'm a four letter word user. I'm usually on my best behavior in these forums, but I'll tell you one of my other favorite four letter words is time. Whether you're a CEO or a customer support rep, that doesn't mean someone else's time is more important than yours, just because of their title, their position, you don't know what's going on in their life. You don't know how much of that time that they have, that bandwidth may be stretched. And that 20 minutes that you were hoping to talk to somebody could have been the only 20 minute window you had in your day to solve that problem. And so I think if companies and leaders are more mindful of time and what that really means to other people, I hope that's something they're factoring in when they're contemplating rolling out a new processor or new technology. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, 100%. We have taken, we don't even call, like we call customers and clients partners because we take them so seriously. Like we're here to help you be successful in doing what we're trying to help you do. So if it's beyond us, okay, let's help you find somebody else who can answer that question, but it is that relationship for sure. It's clearly something that you have a value around, right? Is that human experience and people? I'd be curious if, thinking about the experiences that you've had and, how you grew up and how you walked into the world, what are some of those sort of core values that have really influenced how you choose to lead? And, when you do come to those sort of forks in the road, when you get to decide if it's left or right, and it doesn't necessarily mean either decision is wrong, what are those things that drive you in making the decision about going left or going right? 

Dennis Ritcher: Yeah, I think it's, while I think I learned a long time ago, while I would like to think I'm in control, I'm only in control of a small facet of so many other things. And so I just need to stay focused on what I can control and not dwell on what I can't control. If right now all the electricity goes out in the hotel and that affects our experience, I can be upset about that, but I also don't know what caused that. I don't know what else is going on. And so I can't dwell on that right now. I could have had a plan in place and had something to do in case this happens, I could do this, but am I going to be able to be prepared for every scenario? Of course not. And I think that was something I had to embrace for me. It was that flexibility and that understanding that just because it's what I want, doesn't mean that's what's going to happen because I expect this as a result doesn't mean that's what's going to happen and not looking at failures as a failure, but as an opportunity to celebrate learning and experience. And there's still something I can take away from that. Move that forward to something else. I'd say another one, just in general I'm very big on, on respect. I think that there's a fine line that I learned young and my professional journey, especially there's a distinct difference between people wanting to be liked and being respected. And so I had to start to decide what matters most people may not like, but do they respect the decisions I'm making? Because I'm sharing the business case with them. I'm explaining the context and why we need to do this instead of just saying, this is what we're doing. I think there's respect, and I've always appreciated if people say, like Dennis, I don't necessarily make the decision, but I respect why you all are doing this. And I appreciate you sharing the insights behind it. So the respect piece I think is really important to me. And it's important for me to also understand why it matters to be respectful to others. You never know what people are going through. You never know how they're truly feeling. There's more, no more dynamic element creature on earth than human beings. And going back to why I love that person to person connection because of that dynamic element, being able to be there for people, it's truly important to me. So I think a respect piece is certainly important and say probably the last value that would be most important to me. And I'd say high level would be integrity first. You have to build a brand as a person. You have to build a brand as a leader. And if your brand is underpinned by being an integrity first person, then when you're out there talking to people, the last thing they're going to think is that you're being gaslit or misled, but it takes time to build that. People want to come in and say I was successful at X, Y, or Z companies. Congrats. You're not at X, Y, or Z company anymore. You're here, right? How does this affect me? What's in it for me? What's in it for us? And so it's always the one thing that I always enjoy most starting a new position in a new company is the discovery period. Because of why you're out in that discovery period, you're building your brand. I'm getting a chance to tell people, Hey, I'm going to follow up with you, Natasha. I appreciate you sharing that. I either do it or I don't. I'm starting to build my brand, that integrity component of things, underpinning what I do. So I'd say those would probably be some of my non-negotiables maybe. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, that makes sense. So for young people who are maybe leaders, maybe not yet leaders or unofficial leaders without titles how might they, you gave us a, if you're, if you don't have that brand yet, like how you start to build that, but what if somebody has started off on their own foot, created a mess they need to back out of because frankly, as leaders, no matter how thoughtful and intentional we are to use your word, right? Like we are going to have bad days. We're going to step in it and just really screw it up. That's how you do outside of the sort of generic, be vulnerable, and own it, like, how do you recommend people make that shift, make it right? 

Dennis Ritcher: Influencing without authority in general comes from, and taking a bit of that cliche of owning it though, but I'll say I'll take it. I'll double click on that for a second. There's so many people when you do step, we've all had a moment where we've just not done the right thing or affected somebody in a, in the way we didn't intend to, if you don't quickly take ownership of that and understand what you've created, what you naturally, you think you're doing is, okay, I'm buying myself some time to figure it out. The faster you own it, the quicker you control that narrative. And the quicker you can let people know, I'm not going to use any of you as a scapegoat, I'm not pointing fingers at any of you right here, number one, and here's what I'm going to do, or here's what I want to do for us in the go forward. And you've got to go out and execute against it. So I do firmly believe that ownership is huge because it actually is underpinned by humility. There's nothing worse as an employee, as a peer, as a friend, as anything, to watch somebody not have enough humility to admit they made that mistake, to admit they made that, that choice, and here's what I'm going to do about it. And so I think that is, is sometimes I'd say often overlooked and especially for newer people in the, in, in any industry or young in general and life influencing without authority, obviously, in, in today's society, being an influencer social media influence, or whatever, it's that topic, but that word influence is meaningful. You can influence without authority. You see it all the time, you and I could suddenly start doing some random product placement right now, trying to influence people to use something we're hawking, but I think at work and in a university setting, and you're trying to influence without authority, it's different if I tried to, influence my daughter to do something, cause I'm dad, she's like, all right, dad, of course you want me to do this, but at work being an individual contributor, it was probably some of the more pivotal moments and learning opportunities for me and my career journey. And actually I became very intentional going back to one of my words throughout my journey that as I progressed in the leadership levels, manager or senior manager or director, I also wanted to experience the individual contributor equivalent of that, especially at larger companies. I want to understand, did they have the same opportunities? What some of the myths I used to hear is that I don't have the same ability to get promoted or progress in my career unless I become a people manager. And so then you get people getting into the leading business for all the wrong reasons. And so for me, what better way to understand and experience it than to go out and do it. There's no greater sense of accomplishment than when people follow you and a plan that you've laid out and they have no reason to follow anything. You're not your, you're not the manager, but they will follow you because they believe in you. They believe in what you're, and what we are trying to accomplish. I've found more satisfaction out of some of those individual contributor moments that I have in formal leadership moments. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. They're also harder sometimes when you, because then as leaders see those, they will often say, Oh, Hey, that person has influence. That person is a leader. And they'll move you into a role without shoring you up.

Dennis Ritcher: And then you're like, Hey, you're even saying my favorite. Hey, Natasha, do you want to be a people manager? It's not. You crush that, that project, hey, effective tomorrow, I'm giving you this team. And you're like, wait, what? 

Natasha Nuytten: I, yeah. 

Dennis Ritcher: Do I want this, my feeling of setting up for success. And this is probably one of the biggest things that scare people going back to my comment about the pain piece that alters people because they thrust into a leadership position. They didn't want to, they didn't feel set up for success. It doesn't go well. They get a performance manager. They get fired. That alters them. Now they're like, you know what? I never want to be a people manager again. It's such an unfair position when leaders and businesses make those kinds of decisions without consulting the person and more importantly, setting them up for success. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. 

Dennis Ritcher: Even if I were to say, Natasha, I think you'd be a great manager and here's why you've done this. You've done this. You exhibited this. How are you feeling about it? And then you tell me, and then I'm like, okay, so you would say hypothetically, you said, honestly, Dennis, I'd only want to do this because recognition is important to me. Not for me personally, but I love recognizing people. Okay, great. So Natasha, how do you like to be recognized and why? So now I know maybe you don't like to be put on the spot in front of people. So now I know that too. So now again, I'm showing you that I care about you as a person. I'm trying to not affect you in any way negatively. I'm making you a part of the decision-making process. And then I get to ask, what can I do? Or is there anything I can do or we can do to set you up for success? If you were to take this on, you could say, honestly, I feel good about day to day. I feel comfortable with good one-on-one structures. I know how to do team planning and effective roadmapping. But I've never had to write downward performance reviews. I've only done peer feedback. I also don't know how to budget. And so I'm not sure, like, how do I manage salary increases and promotions, and I don't know. So now we're starting to narrow down the places that as a leader, I can help support you, or I can go pull in subject matter experts from the HR team or from other teams or appear to be that buddy to you to help be that sounding board. It doesn't take much to set people up for success. And for some reason, people always think they know best. Going back to my story with Eric, if I would have said to him, I just don't think I can do this and I don't want to do this, could he have still made me do it? Sure. That's military, just like any job, you're going to go do it. But if I would have said that and he would have still put me in a role maybe he'd have been held to a different standard had it not worked out. So you put this person in the role. They had, they told you multiple times, they did not want to do this and you still forced them in there. So there was no one else capable across the entire team to do this. So it would have completely altered that entire chapter. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. 

Dennis Ritcher: Instead I felt set up for success. He brought me into that. He explained to me why he wanted me to do it. He let me know he was going to be, there as a support mechanism. He let me know the key people I would need to be working with and what the expectations were. I felt energized. I was still nervous. There's still a little bit of anxiety. I'm not going to lie, but I felt more excited about that opportunity because of that support structure being there. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. There's a total argument and probably a two hour podcast around the notion that we go back to that, that Swiss cheese concept, right? Not everybody's intended to be a manager. That's right. How do we build organizations where an individual contributor can continue to grow, Excel, be recognized, get more money, get better benefits and recognition, like all the things that come with the title and still do it the way that they feel that they are best suited. That's right. 

Dennis Ritcher: Yeah. That's why we don't call them. We don't call them individual contributors. We call them builders. We're all part of the full script house. We're all building some component of this house while we live in it. Some people own a floor because they're a manager or an executive, but there's still several other builders out there who don't have to be leading people to help us continue to make our house the best house that everybody wants to be in. And so that's why we drifted more into that builder terminology. 

Natasha Nuytten: I love that. I love it. I still have, I think, 36 of the 47 questions coming out of your story, but we are out of time, so I'll have to save them. But before we do go, is there anything I should have asked you that I didn't or that you want to leave us with? 

Dennis Ritcher: Yeah, no, that's such a great, that is such a great question to end with. I would, the only thing I guess I'd want to say is to people in general, when I think about what motivates people, you don't have to do it the way everybody tells you have to do it and that it's okay for you to have confidence in yourself to be that change agent, to be that difference maker, to go out there and write your own story. And even if it doesn't turn out in that moment, the way you want, guess what? You close that chapter, but your story continues on and now you have something to look back on, to reflect on, to help shape and affect what you decide to do going forward. Even if that means you try something like that again, a few years later, and it still doesn't work. Several companies have tried to launch products over and over again. Some are more persistent than others, and some ultimately find success. And I wish people took a little bit more of that same approach to themselves on their own professional and personal journeys. It's okay to fail. It's okay to pick yourself back up. It's okay to keep going, but you have to write your story. You have to own your journey. 

Natasha Nuytten: I love it. It's a great place for us to end. 

Dennis Ritcher: Thank you for that. Yeah, I know. I appreciate it. 

Natasha Nuytten: All right. Is there anything that we can do to be helpful to you? How can people support what you're doing? Amplify your work, et cetera. 

Dennis Ritcher: No, I appreciate that. Yeah. Honestly, I just love to engage in good conversation. Again, I go back to this serendipitous moment of getting a reach out. You and I have this great conversation. These are the things that I love. These are the things I think we need to be doing more of in just society in general. We need to have more moments of connection. Not more moments of judgment, not more moments of, I'd say anonymous perspective. Get out there and own what you feel. Even if I disagree with what you're saying, does it mean I don't respect you? Just because I disagree with your stance on something doesn't mean you're wrong and I'm right. It just means that we don't see eye to eye and we can disagree and commit to still engage in good conversation. We can disagree and commit, continue to work together and check in with each other to see if maybe something has changed in three months or six months or nine months. I think having more moments like this are great. And so I would certainly welcome having conversations with people, but whatever is top of mind, I think it's the most important thing that we're not doing enough of right now. 

Natasha Nuytten: Awesome. With that, Dennis, thank you for making time and for sharing, it's been a delightful conversation. I will keep all those questions in my pocket for the next time our paths cross. 

Dennis Ritcher: Awesome. Thanks so much, Natasha. I really appreciate it. It was great chatting with you. 

Natasha Nuytten: Awesome. Thank you.