Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: General Gus Perna

I recently interviewed General Gus Perna on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is a retired four-star general who spent more than 40 years in the Army. As the CEO of Operation Warp Speed, General Gus Perna oversaw the logistics of the government's effort to help develop, manufacture, and distribute COVID vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. General Perna was previously the commanding general of the United States Army Materiel Command. General Perna, thank you for joining us.

General Perna: Well, it's a great pleasure to be here and I look forward to the conversation.

Adam: Pleasure is mine. You grew up in New Jersey, you're a big Yankee fan. And you went to Valley Forge Military Academy in college, you spent more than four decades in the army thereafter. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What experiences and lessons most meaningfully shaped your worldview? And what compelled you to pursue a career in the military?

General Perna: I came from a family that served. My grandfather was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and rose to the rank of three-star Admiral, my father and uncles served in World War Two and one in Korea. And so the conversations at the dinner table were always about service, but yet in a tone of nothing grand. As a matter of fact, it was never the first part of the conversation, it was always the latter part of the conversation that you had to sit around and pay attention to because it was about selfless service. It was really quite frankly, what I took away from those conversations, it was something that they felt important to do. And they did, clearly. My grandfather did it for a career. My father and uncles did it for a term of service during each war. But yet, it's a sacrifice for both them and their families. So that's the background I came from. So I went to Valley Forge for two years and graduated with honors and graduated as a distinguished military graduate, which afforded me the opportunity to go on active duty. And to your question, the greatest influence on my career was the people who took the time to coach, teach, and mentor me to be the right example, over the years. And that first assignment, I had two great company commanders, one of them who I still talk to, to this day, and two battalion commanders, one of who I still talk to this day, who spent a lot of time shaping me into the battalion commander. One said, “Hey, you really liked this army stuff? Why don't you just give this logistics thing and try and see how you like it? Instead of just saying no”. And so based on his recommendation, I did and went to the next assignment. Just multiply that by 10 different times, and four years later, here I am. So the biggest reason I stayed is the people that influenced me and the idea of serving something bigger than myself.

Adam: The power of mentorship, the power of people, the power of mission. Can you dive a little bit deeper into how you are able to rise within your career? And how can anyone listening to this conversation rise within their career?

General Perna: There are different levels, right? 40 years spans a lot of time, maturity levels change over the years, and your personal goals, and your perception change. So there's a kaleidoscope of things that are involved in success over that span. So I don't want to oversimplify it. I am so grateful for all my opportunities and the men and women I served with, and lucky enough to have some great leaders that I was able to learn a lot from, and then be put in places where the experiences I got exponentially increased my ability to do things inside the army. So in simple terms, I believed in the purpose of the Army, we need to be ready and when called upon, we had to go fight and win our wars. Now what was that all about that was raising my right hand is swearing an oath to the Constitution of the United States to support the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, I believe I’d done that with all my heart. So that drove me internally as a person. The background I talked about in the beginning basically became the fabric of my DNA. But I personally believed in that oath that I swore to. And so to that end, I worked every single day as hard as I could be the best at whatever I was doing. And I reflect back to a football coach, we're in a high school scrimmage. I was young, like a sophomore or something. And something happened. I didn't get into the game. So I went up and saw him afterward, I said, “Hey, I didn't get into the game. How are you going to tell me what I can do? I'm working my ass off”. And he says, “Hey, I called for, like, 20 times. I call for replacements of all these positions”. I said, “Yeah, but you didn't call my position”. He goes, “Who cares? I call for 20 positions, you should have jumped in the game and just moved out”. I never forgot that. Look how long it's been since 1978. I graduated high school. I never forgot that piece. So I worked hard. And when there was an opportunity, I took the hardest job possible. Hey, we need somebody deployed, okay? Hey, we need you to take command and this command is not that command. Okay. I took whatever they gave me. And I did it to the best of my ability. And I worked hard at it. I was not probably the brightest. But I worked hard. I learned my lessons. I didn't make the same mistake twice. I was loyal to my organization. I was loyal to the people that work for me. And I just believed in what I was doing. So it helped me progress through the gates. Now, I will tell you, there were times when one time I thought I was going to resign. There was another time I went to Somalia, I was disenchanted with the leadership that I was involved with. And when I came back, once again, I had met my obligation. And so I was going to resign my commission and go do other things. And luckily, another mentor who I still talk to today, he pulled me into his office and said, “Okay, I hear nothing but great things about you. What are you doing?”. And so I told him what happened in Somalia. He says, “Okay, what if I give you this job, and you start on Monday morning, what do you say?”. And I said, “Well, sir, you can't give me that job. I know there's an order meritless” and blah, blah, blah. And he says, “Don't tell me what I can't do. I'm asking you. If I do this, what will you do?”. I said, “Okay, I'll stay”. And so Monday morning, I reported to that new job. And I started a job that was way above my weight class. And I worked hard and things happen to allow me to just keep going. I remember talking to my dad, who was just really a remarkable person. I have great parents, both my father and mother. And he never would tell me what to do. But he'd always asked me the next question. And so I was on the phone, and I guess I was bitching and moaning about some leadership, actions, and decisions and blah, blah, blah, as everybody does, I think, at one time or another in their careers. And he finally said, it was the only time he actually said something to me about doing something. He said, “Hey, if you want to influence the future, you want to be a part of doing what you think is right, then you better do really well what you're doing, and you better keep getting promoted. Because the more times you get promoted, the bigger your responsibility, the more people you'll influence, and the more things that you can bring to light and get done the right way”. And I'll never forget that for the rest of my life.

Adam: A lot of great wisdom there. You don't have to be the smartest person or the most talented person to make it to the top. You have to work hard. You have to be proactive, you shared. So many great anecdotes about volunteering, putting yourself forward, and not being afraid to take chances. Loyalty, not making the same mistake twice. Having a deep sense of purpose. Going back to the power of mentorship, leaning on those around you when you're in a position where you don't feel like things are necessarily going your way, opening up talking to others and leaning on those who can tell you what to do. And you share that great story about your conversation with your dad, who told you, you know what, at the end of the day, focus on what you can control. Focus on your performance. Focus on being your best off, and the rest will take care of itself. Yep. How did you develop a passion for and expertise in logistics and operations? And what are your most important tips for all leaders on the topics of logistics and operations?

General Perna: It was just fortuitous. I thought I wanted to be an infantry officer, John Wayne is what I grew up watching, I loved being an infantry officer. I enjoyed it when I got that letter saying thanks, but this is what you got to do. I really did not understand the impact that was gonna have on my life, I was an average infantry officer. I was average. In retrospect, I just had a natural instinct for logistics and sustainment. It's very technical. And you have to take the time to learn it, the systems, the processes, the enablers, the capabilities that help us do our jobs. And you have to learn that and we have to work hard at it. I was just blessed with the ability to be able to apply the right leadership and have the right understanding of what needed to be done before it needed to happen. Now, trust me, I learned a lot of things as we went along. You always remember the best things when you're looking back, I made some mistakes, convoys went to the wrong place. Food didn't show up at the right time, I made the wrong calculation on amo, trust me when I tell you I made mistakes. Luckily, the army trains a lot. So you make your mistakes when you're training, not on the battlefield, what I always coach so when it comes to logistics and sustainment, you want to create a flow. It's about leadership involvement and decision-making. That mean to that end, the supply chain, in my mind, is about making sure that you can do your mission, whether it's selling a product, or enabling an army force, number one. Number two is you better always be better than your competition, so that you have the advantage. And three, so that you have insight and create something innovative, that goes beyond just evolutionary, but takes you to revolutionary, on how to do things. And if you're not thinking that way, then you really have no business being responsible for a supply chain, you got to be proactive, you got to visualize what you're trying to do, you got to see yourself see the MACD environment, and be willing to change. And you got to create standards and discipline processes that people understand. So that you can be agile and adaptive from there. I love sports, love football, and baseball, as we talked about, I see too many coaches trying to be agile and adaptive. But yet they don't have the foundation in place. If the team doesn't have a good offensive line and a good defensive line, and they don't understand the scheme of what's happening, then who cares how talented the quarterback is with a wide receiver, because they're gonna get crushed. So you got to have a good foundation in place. Everybody needs to know it, everybody has to work hard. And then you have to pay attention to what's happening, then you can be agile and adaptive and exploit situations for success.

Adam: When you use sports analogies, it certainly makes it a lot easier for me to understand. And when you and I were chatting off the air, about our shared love of baseball, talking to a ton about sports. And one of the things we were talking about was a conversation I had with a previous guest on this podcast, Joe Maddon, one of the great leaders in baseball, you were one of the great leaders in the U.S. Army. What do you believe are the key characteristics of a great leader and what can anyone do to become a better leader?

Gus: One, you have to be good at what you do. My observation of what's happening with Russia is that those leaders are not professional. They're political appointees. There are historic times in our great history where political appointees went into positions of leadership and they were unqualified, if not incompetent. So you have to be qualified and competent in your profession. I think that's an industry in the military, wherever, politically, I would argue the same. Second, you and I talked about this, there is nothing, nothing unless you're Superman, and I think that's a fictional character that you're going to do by yourself. Everything requires people and so you better just understand what that means about being in the people business. And that's about treating people right, holding them accountable. As I mentioned, I don't believe in like-ship, I believe in leadership, but that's about knowing people, understanding why they're doing what they're doing, what their family situations are, and how you make their lives better. But it also means having high standards and holding them accountable. We're famous for giving out medals for all the right reasons. But sometimes you can't give a medal to somebody who hasn't earned it. Because the people who are busting their ass are saying, why am I busting my ass? I don't necessarily need a medal. But I want to be recognized for busting my ass. But if you're gonna give me a metal, and then you're gonna give the person who's not doing their job of metal, then why am I busting my ass? And I'm oversimplifying it. The bottom line is we're in the people business. And if you want to be a good leader, you better be competent. And then you better understand how to treat people and treat them right. I always worked hard to treat people like I wanted to be treated. That's simple. I've been yelled at by the best. The one general, I told you about who I still talk to, I admire. I have made a mistake. He never raised his voice and worked hard to emulate that never raised his voice. He whispered in my ear, and he says, “Hey, I'm, I'm really disappointed, not at you”. He says, “I'm really disappointed today”. I get chills just thinking about it. Because I can hear the words in my ear. And what that did to me, he didn't have to yell and scream and use profanity. Look what he did. I'm still talking about it. 30 years later, and this thought process, especially the best leaders, I mentioned already, loyalty goes up and down. It's not just about what are you doing for me or my organization. It's about what can I do for you so that your way of life is better. It's really easy to say it takes a lot of work. Have you ever heard the story, of John F. Kennedy visiting NASA, after he declared we're gonna go to the moon? And there were a bunch of generals and admirals, and scientists surrounding him. And they were all briefing him. And he got distracted in the conversation. And he just abruptly left and he walked over. And he started talking to the janitor, he asked the janitor, what do you do? And the janitor responded back with, well, I do this. But the reason I do this is so that we can put a man on the moon, I empty trash cans and clean the latrines so that the scientists and the generals can think about putting people on the moon, that guy understood his purpose. But what I took away from that is how the President of the United States walked away from I'm sure very competent briefing, to go talk to somebody else in the organization. And I would argue that every CEO ought to know the names of the janitors in their buildings. And if you don't, shame on you. If you don't have enough time to say hello to them, if you're not interested in what gets them excited, then I gotta tell you if you're not leading your organization, because it's the whole team, that's going to really get things accomplished. I have this thing my father had in his office his whole life. And when he passed away, 25 years ago, I took it and it's hung in my office, it's Chinese writing, but underneath it, it translates and paraphrases it again, saying a group of people can get a lot of things accomplished if nobody worries about who gets the credit. That's the same until you enact it in real life. It's how you live it until you believe it until you care about everybody as a part of the team to what you're trying to achieve. As soon as you become the most important person in the room. Soon as you think you don't have time to talk to anybody. Soon as you are overwhelmed with your own schedule, I could probably point out the companies that are going to fail. And when executives talk to me about leadership, I spent much more time talking about this because I believe it with all my heart.

Adam: General, I literally agree with every word you said. It fundamentally comes down to the fact that leaders need to have a love of people. If you don't love people, you're not going to be an effective leader. You could be an effective soldier. You could be an effective accountant. You could be effective at many things in life, but you're not going to be an effective leader. Great leaders love people. It's a people business. You shared a few nuggets in there, which brought back interviews that I've done over the years. I did an interview with another general friend of mine, General Tom Trask, one of the early guests on Thirty Minute Mentors.

General Perna: I know, great guy. Yep.

Adam: One of the things that General Trask shared is over the course of his entire military career he can't think of a single time that he ever raised his voice. I did an interview with an admiral who told me that over the course of his career, he could count on one hand, the number of times that anyone told him this is an order. When we think about military leadership, and I use the word we, we being those of us who haven't served in the military, oftentimes we think of leaders who yell and scream and say, do this because you have to do it. This is an order. This is a command. But to your point, to General Trask’s point, as leaders of this podcast know, having heard from so many great military leaders, that isn't how it works. You need to lead the way that JFK led by compelling people to want to do their work. You need to have purpose in what you do, you need to have meaning and what you do. That story about Jeff Kane, the janitor, I really love that. CEOs need to know the names of their janitors, that is a great nugget, that is a great piece of advice. And it really comes down to humility, essential to effective leadership, exactly.

General Perna: I know Tom Trask and that guy is a remarkable leader, airman. Human-being. I believe it when he says he never raised his voice based on his DNA. When you're on the battlefield. And we grew up there was something about the generation when I was growing up that yelled and screaming, it was like you almost wonder in reflection, it was that taught yelling and screaming and profanity. I just did not like it. I was not going to be that type of leader. I worked on it because I wanted to treat others like I wanted to be treated. But in combat, unfortunately, a lot of us have spent a lot of time either in Iraq or Afghanistan and is kind of the last two decades. Yelling and screaming is not an effective tool. When all hell's breaking loose. What you already have to have is a foundation that they trust you, that's when they need you to be the calmest, and give the best orders. Let everybody know that you got this, that no matter how bad it gets, you're gonna be able to give orders and take care of them and blah, blah, blah, that that doesn't happen. You're one of these yellers and screamers and doing all that stuff. And quite frankly, self-serving. That's what those types of leaders are. And so I watched, and I learned and I was lucky enough to touch the best leaders who just did that all the time. I tell people all the time, do you really think they were trying to make a mistake? Do you really think about everything we were responsible for? They were trying to dork that up. It's a wicked hard problem. I give them credit for swinging. Again, I believe in leadership, not chips. So I don't want to come off as okay, I just sat there and everything was unicorns and rainbows and cotton candy and ice cream sundaes. There'll be times when people in the room knew I was pissed. But you don't have to degrade people. You don't have to embarrass them. You don't have to prove you're the smartest person in the room to be effective. There is a way to lead the team to success. However, you figure it out through phrases that you use, getting up and taking the time out, dismissing everybody for now, but bringing them back in to rethink everything. Humility. A lot of this was my fault. I did not understand the problem the right way. I gave bad guidance. You know, many times I've said that. Most times, it wasn't my fault. I didn't give bad guidance. But it's okay. Because it clearly wasn't understood. They weren't doing what I needed to get done. So communications go higher and lower in the army world. So if somebody's not doing what you want, then you failed to communicate properly. You didn't define the problem. You didn't give them the resources. You didn't check up on it, whatever it is, it was always my fault to that end. And so one of the things I used to say all the time, I say okay, everybody, let's stay calm. We're going to lead our way through this. It's okay. And then with the people that work for me, what they used to love to hear from me as I have just stopped the briefing and say press, I didn't need to hear a whole two-hour briefing to know if it was going to work. I could tell almost immediately if I was going to say go and I would just stop briefing and say press which meant, hey, I trust you, I know you're prepared. You've proven yourself, you've demonstrated to be great, right? You know what that does to a group of people that works for you. 

Adam: I love it. Perhaps your most successful mission, certainly your highest profile mission was your last one, your time leading Operation Warp Speed. What are the best lessons you learn from your time leading Operation Warp Speed?

General Perna: There was no organization, there was no organizational structure. There was no funding, there were no policies, there was no regulation, and there was none of those things that most people will think are normal. When I got the phone call in May, that says, hey, we need you to be a co-leader for this organization. And we just really need you to figure out the distribution, we're going to bring in a scientist that's going to work the vaccine development, but there was like a bunch of steps in the middle, right, that had to be done. This had never been done before. And so first and foremost, the leadership that I had, gave me priorities and resources, and support to that end. Number two, we had a great team that brought the best people to come work. Now we did a lot of work to try not to disrupt families because people were dying. And it's one thing to get a call and go to war and you're at risk. It's another thing to get up and leave your house and your family is still at risk. And we really didn't understand how all that was working. So I spent a lot of time trying to figure out to get the right people not only for their talent but also for their personal situation. And we were able to do that with no issues. So I had great leaders and I had a great team. And I co-led with a great individual Dr. Moncef Slough who was selfless This is the world leader in vaccine development, 14 vaccines she's been responsible for developing. So we had those two things. The next things though, we had to work on now. Why do I think we were successful? We had a defined purpose, safe and effective vaccines, and therapeutics, we had priority and resources from both administrations. And third, we have a unity of effort. And inside that unity of effort, it was the Department of Defense, it was Health and Human Services with their magnificent scientists. I don't care what people's perceptions are about individuals, because they saw them on TV or the news. We have the best in the world. And these people are remarkable, and I was proud to serve with them. And then our industry leaders, these guys have the best of the best. They know how to do things and get things done. Now, truth and lending, the purpose is about making money. Okay? Get over it. They're still the freakin’ best in the world. These entrepreneurs, these people that know how to get things done. And so it was the combination of these three organizations that came together to solve this problem. I do take a lot of pride in the team that the Department of Defense put together, it was roughly 100 people, and I was charged with them. But I started figuring this stuff out. It was okay, we have the best person in the world doing manufacturing, Carlos I'm going to get his name wrong. And I apologize to you, Carlos, whoever happened to be listening. But he was a genius in manufacturing. But we had to figure out how to enable the plans and the execution, we had to build facilities, we had to open up more lines, we had to get more equipment, we had to change power grids, we had to control supply chains through the fast production act, we had to do it offensively and defensively, we had to do it to make sure we had everything we needed. Because it came from other places outside the country. For a lot of it, we had to get control of it. But we also couldn't let anybody be a bully of it. We couldn't let anybody take control. One company could take control of it because we're building six vaccines, just so in case one failed, the other one would still be successful. So we had to manage it that way. We also had to do no harm. We didn't want to hurt heart medicine or cancer medicine or the flu vaccine or whatever it is. And I don't want to over or under-exaggerate that. But we worked hard not to do any harm. So we had to manage the supply chain to that end, right? We started producing vaccines, you know, just all of a sudden turn on this big giant vat and produce the vaccine. It is the most regulated, inspected process in the world. Nobody does it better than us. I don't care who you are. I know. I went and checked, looked, I saw, and I held myself accountable to it. We have the greatest scientists and people involved in that. And it's a huge process. Start small and you just keep escalating it after every time you get 100% perfection to get to the number you want. That's why we started making vaccines in July. That's why we knew If it got approved, come December, it made the trials, we executed the trials and it got approved, we'd start distributing it. Come on, it takes somewhere between five and 10 years to put a vaccine on the street. Look what we did. Now, that's because of the great work of the scientist who had done the research on mRNA vaccines and others because of industry working on this, they just didn't wake up one day and start working on it. They thought that this might be successful, and they'd done some work. It was a Department of Defense operationalizing things to effects not just admiring the situation, but challenging the status quo. It took trials, trials are normally some single digit 1000 we upped it to 30,000 45,000. In one case, that meant we had to expand facilities, we had to do more funding, and we didn't have enough syringes in this country. Because remember, do no harm, didn't have enough syringes. If we had the vaccine that day to administer the vaccine. We bought a billion syringes and needles in July so that we'd have them in December and January, February, and March, we bought them and brought them in from all over the world to do this. We put the kits together so that when people had the vaccine if it only had 11 doses in a vial, the kit was designed to pull 11 doses out. But the other company had a vial that was 21 doses. The kit was designed for that. Now, why did we do that? Because we wanted to ease administration. We didn't want wastage. But all that took planning and preparation. And this team did all that work, then we had to figure out distribution. There were a lot of people advocating for mass vaccination sites, there were a lot of people advocating for certain populations. And that's overwhelming. And there were policy decisions that had to be made. I just had to execute it. My vision was that everybody in this country, whether it was the Pacific Islands, territories, Alaska, Maine, Puerto Rico, and every single state, or major city department would get fair access to all the vaccines. That was my pledge, I said it out loud on TV, and I was gonna make that happen. And so there was gonna be haves and have-nots, there was going to be equal, fair, equitable distribution. So in other words, if we had a million doses, I think we had 5 million doses the first time they were available. I just applied a math formula based on the Census report for 18-year-olds and above population that became a percentage of how many vaccines they got. That vaccine rolled off and it was approved 24 hours later, it was in those locations because we wanted it administered as quickly as possible. So we had to simplify the process. We wanted people to be comfortable when we had small numbers, 5 million divided by all that stuff is not a lot. So we put it in hospitals and doctors' offices, but then we expand rapidly to CVS and Walgreens and Walmart so that people could walk in and just get shots. And I'm oversimplifying a very difficult process, I will tell you that our partners, Walgreens or Walmart, CVS, FedEx, and UPS, all these organizations were magnificent. Figuring out solutions, the beauty of what we were doing, and then the administration, we needed people to get shots, we needed to monitor them, we needed to make sure we weren't wasting vaccine, we needed to make sure we resupplying the places that need to have it, we wanted a flow of vaccine not stop, start stop start. But we had to manage two doses, which we didn't know is going to be two doses until later on. But I couldn't just send out one dose and then hope the people that got one dose will get the second dose, we had to figure out how to manage that supply chain. And the CDC did great work and distribution. People did great work and these partners that we had work, it was a collaborative team. We ran rehearsals every week, moving the vaccine from supply chain to manufacturing to distribution down to the final administration to the waste, and to the flow of it. We brought the states to the CDC and created a 50 question pamphlet where the states answered it and then we assessed it. We said okay, based on this, we think you got to do this and we think you got to do that. We ran them through rehearsals. I talked to more governors personally, and I could recognize your voice in the dark. Some were pissed at me, some were happy with me, and some just would talk to tell me their plan, but they had great control of it. Some didn't. But we need to interact. And so all that had to come together. Every person, every organization, and every office has a purpose. And if you really want to be successful in this world, you better have a good understanding of not what they say their purpose is, but what their purpose is. Because once you define the purpose, then you can start having real conversations and get people and organizations to do what you need to do. The last one I will tell you is you can't put your foot on the clutch if you're in charge. If you're doing something, you're never going to have perfection, assess the information you have, figure out what the risk is figure out how to mitigate it, and then go make a decision. Because for God's sake, trust me when I tell you, not everybody's going to be happy with what you're doing. Whatever the reasons are, somebody's going to have a criticism of what you're doing. There is no perfection and things, I can't think of a more important thing that we were trying to do. That's never been done before, and nobody had any policy regulations. And he experienced in doing it, pockets of it. But not holistically. But yet the criticism was pretty profound. So my point all that, get over it, be in charge, make a decision, learn from your mistakes, and adjust as required. But don't worry about what the cheap seats are sending.

Adam: So much great advice there. And this was as high profile as high stakes and effort. As one could imagine, a bigger crisis than we've experienced period. What are the best lessons you have for anyone listening on how to lead in times of crisis?

General Perna: Two points. One, you got to have a sense of the organization for when the problems, they're trying to solve at the lower level, but it stagnated. And you're not going to get that in the briefing, you got to have an understanding of how your organization is working the pulse of it so that you can go help move it or give them better guidance, or whatever it is. The second point is, and we talked about it earlier, leaders with tough problems, gotta stay calm, got to give a vision, what is the end state, they got to give resources and priority. And then they have to give guidance to what they think is most important, and the timeline for execution. And dang it, they gotta be calm and selfless in your execution. Because I'm going to tell you, no matter how perfect, you think the thing is, if you're the right leader, someone's going to come in and give you some bad news. And that can be disruptive to everything. If you don't understand how to take that news. Yelling and screaming and firing people is not helpful when you have problems.

Adam: What can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?

General Perna: Work hard, do people right, and be confident in yourself. And you'll do well. I think everybody says, oh my god, the youth of the nation were in so much trouble. I don't think that is much crap. I think they're just as smart. If not smarter than we were. It could probably go all the way back to whatever days and somebody could have said that. I think we have a bright future. I think our youth are awesome. I think they can solve big problems. And they will. I'm just an advocate of, hey, look, you just can't walk in and take command of a 990,000-person organization, you might have the intellect. But you don't have the experience. You don't have the leadership attributes. You don't have whatever to that end. So somebody's gonna write yourself as general. He doesn't know he's a dinosaur. Sometimes you got to pay your dues. You got to build the foundation, you got to build the experiences, you got to fail. You got to be successful. You got to say every once in a while I thought that up. You got to get back up. Right? What is courage? You've heard this, courage is getting knocked down and getting back up and getting back after it. That's courage. But you don't have that if everything's been perfect. If you're answering the leadership questions in a lab, or if you think just because you went to X college, you got a grade point average. Nobody's going to confuse me with Albert Einstein. With that said, I accomplished a lot in my life. And I'm pretty proud of that. So dissect that. How did I get there? Hard work, a good support system, confidence in myself, and dedication to something bigger than me, the Constitution, and our nation. So it's a lot of mom, pop, apple pie, but that's what I would say if somebody was me.

Adam: Surround yourself with the right people. Give it your best. do things the right way. Build your personal foundation, get real experience, and get back up.

General Perna: One of my favorite quotes is by Dr. Livingstone, who was a famous explorer of the African continent. After being lost as a group, for some time, his staff for lack of a better term came to him after the morning coffee, they were in an update. And they said, hey, Dr. Linda Sim, we got a plan. What we're going to do is we're going to go backward, we're going to retrace our steps for the last six months, we're going to regroup, we're going to get new supplies, we're going to refresh ourselves, take showers, have a little r&r, and we're going to start over. And I'm over-exaggerating the conversation, but pretty much how it went. And Dr. Limits didn't pause, and said, hey, staff, thanks for taking the time to do that. I really appreciate it. Here's my guidance. I'm willing to go in any direction. As long as it's forward. I think it's so profound. That's a true quote. I'm willing to go in any direction as long as it's forward. If you ask me to tell one piece of advice to anybody, that would be the piece of advice. I would tell somebody who's new young, who's taken on a big project, who's unsure of themselves, who doesn't have everything that they need a go in any direction, as long as it's forward, and you'll be successful.

Adam: General Perna, thank you for all the great advice, and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors. 

General Perna: Well, I really appreciate the invitation. I talked way too much, but as I hope was received, passionate about it, not perfect, just passionate. And I do like talking about it. Because I think the more people that learn from our experiences, the better off we're going to be collectively. So thank you.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally-recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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