A Discussion with Chris Moustakas, President & CEO of DevonWay

Pamela Rucker: Hi, I'm Pamela Rucker, an instructor for Harvard Professional Development. I focus on coaching executives in the areas of leadership, strategy and innovation.

Welcome to Leading With Passion, a series honoring innovative small business leaders using their unique capabilities to improve people's lives. Today, I'm joined by Chris Moustakas, president and CEO of DevonWay, an award-winning software company that delivers quality, safety, asset and work management solutions to large organizations in regulated high-risk industries worldwide. Chris is passionate about helping organizations become more agile and improving their operations by adopting DevonWay's platform approach to their digital needs. Chris, welcome to the program.

Chris Moustakas: Thank you for having me.

Pamela: I know from talking to you earlier that you have a background in astronomy. So, when did you first realize that you were interested in that? How'd that love come about?

Chris: Well, I always wanted to go into the sciences. Basically, astronomy is something that I was interested in, really, that came from my brother. When I got accepted to Caltech, I knew that I wanted to pursue, really, physics is what I got in to study. I found myself doing more and more electives within astronomy, that kind of led me towards that path. I really enjoy it as a science. It's pretty incredible.

Pamela: I heard that you're not the only astronomer in your family?

Chris: That's right. Both my brothers are astronomers. One is a professor at Siena College in New York, and the other one is a director down at JPL.

Pamela: What's the earliest memory you have of going out and looking at the stars?

Chris: That's a great question. I don't really have the earliest memory. We lived where I grew up in Greece. We were outside of the main town, so very little light pollution. Really, at night, it was just incredible. It was just a canopy of stars all the time. I can't really say that I have an earlier memory. It just was always a part of just our being there.

Pamela: How was it living in Greece? Do you remember?

Chris: I do remember. I was there until I was 10 years old. I still have a lot of family back there. We try to make it back every year. It's a very different culture than the United States. In a lot of ways, very open, very Mediterranean. If you've ever traveled in the Mediterranean, you'll know what I'm talking about. Very family-oriented.

Pamela: We were talking before, and you said your dad was mayor of a city there when something horrific happened. Can you talk about that?

Chris: Yeah. He was actually in the city council. My hometown in Greece is Megara. It's right between Athens and Corinth, halfway in between the two. He was city council. In 1981, there was a terrible earthquake that leveled a huge part of the city. The mayor at the time suffered some, if I remember the stories right, suffered some family deaths from the earthquake. My dad took over temporarily, basically. He was an elected mayor, but he took over while the city recovered and helped to rebuild it.

Pamela: What was it like to have your father be in charge of a city during such a horrific incident? I'm sure you probably have memories about that. It had to be a stressful time.

Chris: It wasn't stressful, but I was five or six at the time, and I was pretty well insulated from everything that was going on. I know my dad was often absent because he had to help the city basically rebuild. My family did a really nice job of insulating us as much as possible. It was around that time also that we moved outside of the city limit. I remember very, very long nights though that he would spend. We wouldn't see him for days at a time.

Pamela: It's interesting to me as I think about what you do, because I know what you do, that you have this love for deep, abstract, untouchable things and this background where you had to deal with this horrific event and this stress because they seem to come together in what you do in your company. In a lot of ways, I think digital transformation is almost like looking at the stars. We don't always know what we're looking at. We can't touch it. It's abstract, correct?

Chris: Yeah, definitely. That's actually a very interesting parallel that you're drawing there, because when you look at really digitally trying to transform a company, and especially large global organizations, they're incredibly complex. The only way to really do it is to figure out what the individual elements are that comprise that complexity and try to solve it just one thing at a time. I think a lot of that also came from my dad's background as a civil engineer, which is kind of teaching us early on that just to approach the world and big problems by tackling its component parts.

Pamela: That's the hard thing though, right? Because a lot of times when we look at digital transformation, it's almost like looking at the stars. I don't always know what I'm looking at. I don't always know what's important. I could be looking at something that's really important, part of a major constellation and not even know it.

Chris: You can literally miss the forest for the trees.

Pamela: Yeah, I can miss it. And so having someone who's aware of what those capabilities are, aware of how to draw the thread to connect the dots, so to speak, in a way that helps me see something or find new value is really important. Don't you think so?

Chris: Yeah, definitely. And really just providing the tools and the support for those that are sort of in the know that are living it to be able to make those parallels themselves. Most of the knowledge in these organizations is really borne by the people actually doing the work. So a lot of what we do is just playing that supporting role for those people.

Pamela: I know that a lot of people who are looking at this are looking for ways to get things done better, faster, quicker. And one of the stories you told about your past was that I went in for a physics degree, but I came out with an astronomy degree because I didn't particularly like labs, right? And so I have to imagine that this idea of figuring out how to put abstract things together and figuring out how to get to my goals quickly without having to make things more difficult has to lead into the way that you lead people and the way that you design your code.

Chris: Some people would call it laziness.

Pamela: I don't think so, right? Because I think the idea that I know that I have this goal and there's another way to get there without me having to go through all that difficulty is something that all of us could do different.

Chris: I mean, I knew that I wanted to graduate. I was proud of being at Caltech, which was very difficult to get into, and I knew that I wanted to come out of it without... There were a lot of people that did not go all the way through with it. So even though I knew that I wasn't going to go into academia, it was very important for me to be able to graduate and take the next step from there.

Pamela: Talk to me about these mission-critical applications that you manage in highly regulated industries. So can you tell our viewers exactly which industries they are and what types of applications you're talking about?

Chris: Yeah, definitely. So we do a lot of work. The company started really with a focus on nuclear power generation. The founder of the company, Bob Felton, had that's where a lot of his background was. He was in the nuclear navy, nuclear engineer by training. And what originally attracted me to the company, I started as a software engineer. I was employee number... I can't remember exactly, but less than 10. Very much at the beginning of the company. One of the things that really attracted me was that focus on nuclear power. There's an important customer base of ours.

And we believe, I mean, I don't think that our zero climate, our climate crisis is going to go away without nuclear power. It's an important part of the energy mix. So from there, we kind of expanded into more broadly Department of Energy. We do a lot of work with national labs with a lot of the engineering construction firms that serve them. I've expanded into life sciences and advanced manufacturing. So I have just kind of organically grown into these very highly regulated, asset intensive, really high risk industries where when stuff goes wrong, it can have really very bad detrimental effects. And, sorry, to answer your other question, the applications that we do are really for helping these organizations manage their environmental health and safety, their quality management, work management, asset management, all of these operational processes that really tie into the work that needs to be done by the people actually working out there in the field.

Pamela: So you have nuclear energy, life sciences, any others?

Chris: Yeah, advanced manufacturing, a lot of large, like I'm actually not, I'm trying to remember right now which customers I'm able to name and not. They're on our website. You can go check them. The ones that we're allowed to name are on our website, but there's a lot that we're not. A lot of defense contractors.

Pamela: The thing that comes to mind, Chris, is that this is a big part of the infrastructure of all of our lives, right? And so it's really easy for people to take that for granted. I was talking to a college student the other day, my niece who is so eager to move out and she was so excited about all of the things that she was going to do. And we had to have a conversation with her that said, look, you know, when you leave, you have to pay for this and take care of this and take care of so-and-so. Because she had no idea of the infrastructure that other people had provided for her lives. And it seems like these industries are like that too. We just expect them to run even though we are wholly dependent on them being there.

Chris: Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Pamela: How do you see that playing into some of the pressure people might have when they have to think about how they're going to digitally transform or work on their organization?

Chris: Well, change happens very slowly often because they do have to approach any kind of change in a very methodical way to make sure that they're not going to do something that has like an adverse effect basically. So a lot of, again, what we do is give them the capability to affect that change on a timescale that is really, you know, matches their specific needs and requirements. These are very high reliability industries that really can't afford the wrong thing too. So we have like gas pipeline operators, for example, are some of our customers and literally stuff will explode if they don't do the right thing. So it is very, very important.

Pamela: I want to tap into that a bit because your connection to this type of work is really interesting to me, especially given your background and the impact it has on society. I'm going to read a quote that you guys said. You said, if you work in an industry where making a mistake can be costly or even deadly, then reach out to us. And so I think that went right to the heart of your value, right? It is both functional and it is emotional. So why do you guys say it that way?

Chris: Because honestly, emotion is really a nice way of putting it. We want it. And what keeps us motivated to work at the company is why I've been there for like 17 years now, why a lot of our average tenure is actually for the management team, for example, is well over a decade. And a big reason why, yeah, which is very rare for a software company. And a big reason we all really like working with each other. I feel like the culture that we build at DevonWay is pretty phenomenal. But another thing that gets us up in the morning is just the fact that we're having a real impact to organizations that are helping build and engineer our world. And the fact that we get to play a supporting role in keeping the workers at those places safe, it's just hugely motivating. It really gets us up out of bed in the morning.

Pamela: Yeah, I heard you say in a previous conversation that you love the idea of building great culture, but you don't want people to say it's like a family, right?

Chris: Yeah, I always hated that. That always makes me cringe a little bit whenever I hear companies.

Pamela: Why?

Chris: Well, because families are like neighbors. It's awesome when it works out and it's terrible when it doesn't. You don't get to pick them. I love a CEO to go out and tell his employees we're just like a bunch of neighbors and it doesn't make any sense. But I think that you can be friends with the people that you work with. I mean, it's such a big part of our lives. There is no reason why you can't have, and a lot of us have work friends that are lifelong at this point. I met my wife through work. These are relationships that are really important. So why work at a place where you're not going to get that sort of positive emotional impact?

Pamela: Well, and you'd want to have a great working relationship with them too, because there's a lot of pressure associated with the work that you guys do, and not everybody can handle that type of pressure. How do you see that showing up in the way that you are able to interact with each other and solve problems?

Chris: We're all really aligned around the same goals, basically, is what it comes down to. And it's very hard to be aligned around the same goals when you don't have friendship, really, because when you don't have friendship, then you're never sure if somebody is out to get you, if there's something malicious going on. But when you're friends, when you have that trust, and it really does come down to trust, when you know that you can make a mistake, and it's okay because your buddy has your back, that's really the only way that we can do the kind of work that we do.

Pamela: Yeah, say more about this idea of, I don't really trust that you might be doing something for my benefit if you come to me. Where have you seen that cause problems?

Chris: We've all worked. Well, hopefully, we haven't all worked, but at least I've worked in toxic places in the past where there was that sort of mistrust. You never knew if somebody had an agenda, basically. And we just feel like the work that we do is already complicated enough as it is that if we add that extra complexity on top of it, and toxicity, it just makes our lives so much harder. And it causes stress. It causes burnout. And honestly, as an employer, I can't pay people enough to want to work at a place like that. So why create a culture like that? It just doesn't make sense.

Pamela: Yeah. I love that comment. As an employer, I cannot pay people enough money to want to work in a toxic environment. This has to be a reason for many of us to actually think about the cultures that we build so that people actually feel like they can bring the best part of themselves to work, which is the essence of collective genius, which Dr. Linda Hill talks about, the ability and the willingness to innovate, right? I need to have the culture and the shared purpose and the environment, but I also have the ability to have a voice. And sometimes we might not always agree. We might have a bit of a friction there, but we have a way to solve problems. We have a way to get that out and make decisions. And we don't linger on it until the point that someone feels like I have so much animosity, I feel like I want to leave. How have you guys kind of made that mix work where you're on the same page, you have this purpose, which seems to be keeping society running is a big one. But also when you have such a big purpose, there might be a lot of friction around the work that you do. How do you manage that when people don't actually stay on the same page?

Chris: Yeah, I mean, we definitely have disagreements. One thing that I consistently tell everybody is, would you rather work with somebody that disagrees with you or with somebody that's completely apathetic? I mean, we all want to, arguments are okay and we should, as long as they're based on data and their objective. And every once in a while, we need a tiebreaker. And sometimes it bubbles even all the way up to me and I have to be the one that levies a tiebreaker. But that's okay. Once we decide on a path forward, then we're all gonna be rowing in the same direction. So do we have disagreements all the time? Really all the time, like fundamental ones too, but they're healthy disagreements. Nobody feels like it's a personal attack if whatever their chosen path isn't the one that the company chooses.

Pamela: How easy is it for you guys to go where the data leads you? Because I've worked with a lot of companies where people follow their dream until it becomes a nightmare and they will not let it go, right? And trying to get them to look at the data to make decisions based on facts so that everyone can move ahead is difficult. How do you guys do that?

Chris: That's a really good question too, because it can be very hard to even figure out like where to get the data from. And sometimes you don't have enough data. I mean, if you have a couple of pieces, anybody can draw a line with two points, right? So you need enough pieces of data to be able to really get, to figure out what the pattern is. So when there's not enough and it comes down to a subjective decision, again, we try to do it with knowing that there's gonna be an element of risk if we go down a particular path. But if we need to adjust later, it's better to make a decision and adjust it later, in other words, than it is to get into this analysis paralysis where you never move forward. That's often a lot more damaging to a culture when you don't move forward at all.

Pamela: I like the thought that you have that it's better to make that decision and then adjust, right? If it's not the right decision, we'll adjust, we'll fix it. But it's better than us being paralyzed and you really can't afford to be paralyzed in the environment you're in. You know, I can't let you go though without saying anybody can put two points together and create a line, right? Have you seen people do that a lot where they're trying to justify their point of view by using data in a way that's not necessarily meaningful?

Chris: I've seen people draw a line with one point. Like, really, anybody can do that. Yeah, they have one piece of data and then their whole, you know, that informs whatever path they wanna go down. And sometimes you do have to take a step back and figure out exactly what puts you down on that path. If you can do it with data, that's fantastic. But sometimes it doesn't exist. So that's when you just have to have professional respectful conversations with the people that you disagree with. And if you can't come up with the right approach from that conversation, then you escalate it. And as an organization, we figure out what the right way is.

Pamela: Let me double click on that for a minute. So that's great for your team. What do you do when it's your client that might do that?

Chris: That's a really good question too, because our clients often have ideas that are not the right thing. But they also know their organization inside and out. We're not gonna go in and tell them how to do their business. We do try to advise them based on operational experience that we've gathered from similar projects for similar clients. And that's a lot of what they pay us for. They pay us because they see that we have kind of a unique perspective, having helped a lot of different industries and clients within the same industry. So we do offer an important perspective, but at the end of the day, it is really their processes and it's their risk analysis, basically. They need to be able to know how the software is gonna affect their organization.

Pamela: Yeah. And that's part of the benefit of the platform that you say you've built, right? That you go in with these workflows that are already established by the industry that you are working in, but the client also has the ability to sort of work outside of the box as well. Is that correct?

Chris: Yeah.

Pamela: And I imagine that helps them find data that might be more useful for them to be able to get an insight that's gonna help them solve problems, right? And we know insight happens when you take two or more pieces of information and put them together to create new value.

Chris: Yeah, and that's a lot of what the platform does. So we have the way the applications work. It's all based on top of a no-code platform. And then you start with specific templates that really are sort of the base templates, the best practice template for a particular operational workflow. And then we help them customize that so they can modify the workflow, even the data that that workflow collects to make it specific to how they do business. But the power is exactly what you just said. The more data you can collect and the more you can start connecting it to other workflows, you end up getting something where the whole really is much bigger than the sum of the parts.

Pamela: I heard you say no-code platform. So how does that work?

Chris: So it's a collection of engines that all of our applications run on top of. So that lets us continually improve the underlying platform. And like we're rolling out a new user interface right now, for example. So that's all part of the underlying platform. So everybody that's running their applications on top of the platform is going to benefit from the release of those new features. So that way we can upgrade the underlying platform every couple of weeks is what we do for our hosted SaaS environments. While still on top of it, all of our clients can have all of their individual workflows.

Pamela: So now I'm a former developer. So I know that the easier you make something look or the more accessible that it is, the more intricate it's going to be working in the background.

Chris: There’s a lot of moving parts.

Pamela: The more people that are highly intelligent you need to have worked on this to make it all cohesive. How do you find the talent that has both the attitude and willingness to listen, to have creative debate, but not dissent into animosity, but also want to help society? Do you find that it's easier for you to do that? Especially now as we see people coming out of college saying, I want to do things with companies that have meaning. Or do you find that it's difficult to find that unique mix that you're looking for?

Chris: No, I don't think it's hard at all. I mean, you kind of have to know where to look, but there's a lot of people out there like that, that are smart, that are motivated by wanting to make a difference or not motivated just by the payday. There's a lot of places you can go work where if you really want to maximize how much you're bringing in in terms of dollars, you can go do that. We pay competitively. I'm not going to say that we're trying to take advantage of anyone, but it really is that extra meaning that you get from doing work that is important. That is a huge motivating factor. I feel that people really respond to it. You mentioned younger generations. We have a lot of, I want to say kids. There are kids to me now, but there are adults that are pretty much just out of school, and I've been extraordinarily impressed with their intelligence, their willingness to learn, how flexible they are. So you do have to know where to look, but it's really not hard finding some incredible talent.

Pamela: And that's important too, because as a leader, you have to create the environment where everyone feels like they can speak. So sometimes if you're older, you've been there a longer time, you might have more power and newer people coming in might not necessarily feel like they have a voice. So you have to create the space for them to feel like it's okay for them to speak. I like to say you need to enable everyone's voice, right? And so even if they aren't talking, you need to ask them, what do you think about that?

Chris: Yeah, and you're absolutely right. It has to be done frequently too. It's not something, it's not a sign post that you're going to put on your company homepage and assume that everybody's going to follow it. It's something that really has to permeate every meeting, every conversation that you have. And if somebody starts talking over somebody else, you have to take a step back. And if you have a leadership position in that meeting, you have to say, hold on a second, that person was talking. And again, it doesn't have to be malicious. Sometimes people are just excited about what they want to share. And especially in a world of Zoom meetings, it's very easy to not be able to read that body language and to start talking over somebody. So you just have to constantly be conscious of what's going on, what the dynamics are, and make sure that everybody has that platform.

Pamela: I love the way you said that too, because sometimes if you're talking over people, you can assume it's because they don't value what you have to say. And what you're doing is you're assuming positive intent. Maybe I'm so excited about the thing I'm talking about. I'm so passionate about it. I just didn't think to include you. I just didn't think to bring you into the conversation. So someone has to be sitting there, not necessarily as a referee, as a coach, but as the person that's trying to actually architect the conversation so that everyone has a piece in the thing that we deliver.

Chris: Yeah, my observation in general, I tend to have a pretty optimistic view of human nature. So I rarely think that there is malicious intent behind what people do sometimes. It might come out as being disrespectful, but if we take a minute to figure out like what people's intentions are, they're usually positive.

Pamela: You know, I have to ask you, what is that positive idea about what people are and what their intentions are? Where does that come from?

Chris: That's a good question. I mean, it's just kind of always been ingrained in us growing up. We have a pretty tight family. Like you mentioned, Greek culture in general. But even on the American side of the family, good humor, very positive, you know, helpful relationships really. It's just kind of how I grew up.

Pamela: Yeah, I think this outlook that you bring to it is probably part of what makes you lead the way you do. I'm going to read you another quote. You said that one of the things that makes applications hard to build has nothing to do with the businesses that they're supporting at all. Can you explain why you said that? So what is it that makes them hard to build? And how does the way that you think about this inform that?

Chris: Well, I mean, especially in this day and age where we have stuff like, you know, multi-tenancy and SaaS, and you have to worry about cybersecurity, which there's a lot of, you know, very fundamental stuff that goes into a software stack that really doesn't have anything to do with the business logic that ultimately that software stack supports. So if you can take all of that out and abstract it like we've done, and that way we can think about the software piece and somebody else who really knows the ins and outs of an organization can think about the business rules. We really have good separation of labor then. We do what we do really well and enable people to do what they do very well.

Pamela: That's a good point. I mean, and I think a lot of people might struggle with things without knowing that there's someone else that can do it a little better than they do, and it's better to sort of hand that off to someone else so that they can do what they do really well. You talked about something else that was really important to me, this idea of safety and also ESG. Can you talk a little bit about your position on that, what you guys are doing around that?

Chris: Yeah, definitely. ESG and sustainability is obviously a huge topic, and it should be. It's a natural extension of the environment and health and safety software that we already have, and it really gets down to creating a methodical way for people to identify what really the lowest hanging fruit is. What are their goals as an organization? There might be regulations coming out. I know in the EU there's regulations coming out. There might be some coming out in the United States too, but even if there's not regulations that come out, it's just sort of the right thing to do. There's no way that we're gonna hit our climate goals if we don't work together down to every individual organization. So our software just lets organizations identify what it is that they wanna do, put in place the process improvements to affect that change, and then just as importantly, loop back later to figure out if what they did actually had the desired effect, because often we do random stuff that we think is a good idea, but unless you have that closed loop where you can go back and check on it and adjust if you need to adjust, then you might as well just be driving blind.

Pamela: You said that it's not just about the software itself, but it's just the right thing to do. I think safety is like that too, right? A lot of organizations have requirements that they have to meet certain safety protocols and certain safety numbers, but it's just the right thing to do to take care of people.

Chris: Yeah, and we don't do well with customers that wanna put in place software like us just to check off a box. Like if it's not part of the culture to keep your workers safe, that's honestly, we have enough business coming down our way, like we would rather work with organizations where that's part of the culture, where they really want to affect an environment that keeps their community safe too, not just their employees, but their surrounding communities. That's really where we feel extra motivated when we're working with a culture that is that aligned with ours.

Pamela: Yeah, when they wanna be good community partners. Yeah, it's not just they wanna make money.

Chris: Right, exactly.

Pamela: That sort of ties in with the psychological safety you've been talking about with your team too. It's not just about what you do for your customers, but it's also the culture you build as an organization as you do this so that you can deliver on the promise, right? There has to be safety full circle for everything.

Chris: Exactly, yeah.

Pamela: Help me pull the thread. So if I think about insurance, banking, healthcare, utilities, nuclear power, all of those types of things, those types of organizations need to be able to create workflows and solutions really quickly in order to be successful. How do you see this helping the organization as well as helping society? How do you see that kind of working all the way through?

Chris: Well, I mean, if we all focus on what it is that we can actually change within our control, then society at large is gonna end up benefiting. So we focus on the organizations that are our customers by giving them the ability to really adjust and to tailor the solutions to what they need. And change over time too. Everything really boils down to the fact we know that it's a very shifting landscape out there. Regulations are gonna change. The competitive landscape is gonna change. So if we give them the tools to be able to change along with the shifting landscape, then we've done our job and then they can go on and do their job.

Pamela: When you do this and work with these organizations, whether it's internally or externally, clearly this is gonna require you to take a lot of risk. Sometimes you might fail. And I have found that a lot of organizations say that they're okay with people failing, but they really are not. What's your take on that?

Chris: You have to fail in the right way and you have to fail falling down on a mattress. You can't fall down. And you have to, the organization has to put in place enough of a safety net to where you can fail, but you're not gonna bring down the whole house when you do fail. So it's about creating those safe spaces, creating the environments where if we do something wrong, it's not gonna have a bad effect on either our customers or the rest, your co-workers or what have you. So it's about, there's no one size fits all answer for sure. And part of it does come down to having sort of a risk-based view of it too. Like what are the bad effects that can happen if we do this wrong? And then know that you're gonna have to adjust as you move forward. I mean, if we all had a crystal ball, then they certainly wouldn't need us.

Pamela: I always think it's great to do something that I read in Harvard Business Review some years ago about creating a failure resume, right? We all like to create a resume about all the great things we've done.

Chris: Oh, that’s interesting.

Pamela: But if we create a failure resume, we'll talk about what we were trying to do, but we were never successful at it. And I found that if we talk to people that way, you can say, you were trying to do what? You were going after what? So if I put that to you, right? If what are some of the biggest things that you feel like, wait, I didn't succeed at that, but I really felt like it may be better at something else. Can you think of anything?

Chris: Oh, I've made a hundred different mistakes in the past. I mean, but luckily I've had my coworkers, family supporting me and helping me change. Can probably think of some specific examples, a lot on the technical side, some on the personnel side, hiring wrong people that might bring sort of a toxic element that I kind of ignored, even though there were some warning signs there. But like you said, I mean, it's just a matter of recognizing it and adjusting it. And you can change the past. All you can do is affect again, what you have control over, which is what you're gonna do today and tomorrow.

Pamela: Yeah, and I think a lot of companies might be faced with that one in particular, that the work is so busy, the environment is so high stakes and so high pressure. Do you feel the pressure to go and get someone quickly? And you might not always pay attention to whether or not you're the best fit. And I think that's obviously when we've all failed at, right? How did you get yourself to break out of that cycle though, to actually step back and say that I wanna ensure that I get the right person in with the team?

Chris: You know, you have to, 'cause you do have high pressure situations sometimes where you know that you have to fill a seat. So you're going to go and fill it with the first person that you find. It really does take a very conscious effort to realize that ultimately, that's gonna be a lot more costly. And I know that Caltech had, they always had this sort of mantra that they would let a professorship go vacant for as long as it took till they found the right person to fill that. So they would only, which is what makes it such a special place to go to school. They would only fill it with the right person, not only top in their field, obviously, but also fit within the broader culture and what they were trying to do with the students, both undergraduate and graduate. So just having that philosophy of, I'd rather not grow in a direction that's potentially detrimental to us in the long term. I'd rather stay smaller now if it means having to wait longer to hire the right person.

Pamela: Such a great point, right? I'd rather not grow in the wrong direction. I'd rather wait.

Chris: Yeah, what's the point then? I mean, and again, if you're taking kind of the short-term view of it, if your whole goal is to maybe work at a company for a couple of years and then like flip it and go on to the next payday, then you're gonna, whatever your metrics are, you're probably gonna do that. But if you're taking a longer term view of it, where you really wanna build something special, which takes a long time, then you have to make those sort of longer term decisions.

Pamela: Yeah, such a great advice. Last question for you.

Chris: All right.

Pamela: So you have this huge team, you're super busy, you're managing these environments and industries that we all depend on. Do you ever have time to go out and see the stars?

Chris: Well, certainly not in San Francisco, certainly not in the last couple of weeks where it's been completely overcast. Not as often as I would like, but we do try to make it back to Greece every summer and then for sure.

Pamela: Thank you for joining us. The work you're doing is important, it's amazing, and I appreciate you sharing some time.

Chris: Well, thank you for giving us the opportunity.

Pamela: You’re welcome.