Charlie Reith:

[00:00:00] And we're not gonna lay anybody off. Everybody has a job in the new organization. You may not like your new job. If you don't like it, that's fine. You know, you, you don't have to stay. You know, we, we had to rip the bandaid off you. You can't do a, you know, half a transformation. If you're gonna do a transformation, you've gotta just do it. Because change is really stressful for people. If you aspire to, to be in management or, or leadership, you know, you, you've got to take on challenges. You've gotta be willing to stretch yourself. And, uh, you know, I think that's part of learning, right? Is um, you know, stretching yourself in, in different directions. Mission control, we have the.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:00:43] Most leaders talk transformation. Charlie R ei th has lived it, turning Solomon from the gold standard of benchmarking into a consulting partner. Clients couldn't ignore. He fought entrenched silos based down skeptics and rebranded a 30-year-old company by burning the boats and betting on culture today, he reveals what it takes to lead through denial, win executive trust, and keep pushing forward when revenue tanks and fierce that sin. Buckle up. This one's about guts, guardrails, and grit.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:01:14] Today we have Charlie Reith, the CEO of HSB, Solomon Associates, and he's gonna tell you a little bit about what Solomon does. But to give you a background, he has a degree in civil engineering, worked for engineering companies, did some consulting, and then in 2004, went to Solomon and had a number of positions, including one particularly interesting one in running the Middle East, living in Bahrain, traveling to Saudi. All the time. And he came back and then was promoted to president, ultimately to CEO. He has some really interesting stories about his challenges of transformation. So Charlie, welcome to Rethink Change and I'm looking forward to this conversation.

Charlie Reith:

[00:01:58] So am I W ard, thank you. Look forward to it.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:02:00] So Charlie, you, you came into the position of CEO around 2016, 2017. What was the biggest, oh my god, I didn't know this. Was going on or this was so dire that you faced?

Charlie Reith:

[00:02:11] Let me see. I can count more than one. We were al I was always struggling for resources and um, we were so kind of siloed in the different business units and people were not sharing, you know, across the aisle basically. And, but I didn't realize how entrenched. Some of the business unit leaders really were. So that was, uh, a bit surprising to me and, and very, very disappointing, frankly. Uh, 'cause there was, the closed mindedness was, uh, deeply ingrained. And this is after whatever, what 12, 13 years of being with the company trying to really get the consulting part of the business off, you know, off the ground, right from virtually nothing. You know, our core business is benchmarking the performance of energy, you know, companies energy assets. Even 12, 13 years after we've been talking about doing consulting and doing consulting for, for, for a decade or more. There were still so many people who just didn't believe that we should be doing it. We could do it, that we should do it, and, you know, we're gonna kill the, the goose that lays the golden egg, meaning the, the benchmarking business.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:03:15] Why do you think they were so resistant to change?

Charlie Reith:

[00:03:18] Because the predominance of these folks were, were, you know, chained to these different benchmarking studies, and that's all they did. That's all they did. That's what they did at Solomon. Uh, they, when they came to Solomon, that, that's how they knew the company and that's what they wanted to do, was really work within those, you know, those benchmarking studies and, and actually see for the first time, gee, how, how competitive were they really? Versus all these other companies. 'cause then, you know, we had this database and, and they were able to really look and see, gee, how, how good is this company or that company that were their competitors for many years? And they just loved that part of the business and didn't wanna do anything else. That's all they, they they wanted to do. And frankly, that's l argely how we recruited people back then. You, you get what you, you get what you aim for.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:04:04] Right?

Charlie Reith:

[00:04:05] And, and we got it. W e got it.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:04:07] One of the interesting things is you had a commanding market share of the benchmarking studies. You had something like 80 or 85%. So there's not a lot of upside. So you were saying this, I assume as look if we're gonna grow. We gotta do something besides, we can't do it just getting more benchmarking studies 'cause they're just not clients for us.

Charlie Reith:

[00:04:28] Well, I mean, there's room for growth in everything, honestly. E even even that side of the business, which the 80% you're referring to is, is um, with, with regards to the refining sector, you know, in 2013 we had bought, uh, acquired Z Energy, which is an upstream benchmarking company and they had a single digit percentage of the market. So quite frankly today, that is the biggest growth opportunity we have is in the upstream business. Growing the benchmarking and, and everything else that goes with it. The 80%, yeah. There's nominal opportunity to, to grow that. And you could certainly grow it to 90 or 95, but you're never gonna get to a hundred. It just doesn't happen. But so many of the other studies, and we had 20 or 24 studies. Active studies, they didn't, they didn't have that same, that same market share. So there were growth opportunities there, but uh, you know, the bigger growth opportunities really were in the consulting side. You know, our benchmarking studies led to a cottage industry where, you know, these consultants. All the big names that you could think of, you know, the Big four. And, and then a lot of technical consultants, they knew the Solomon Cadence. They knew when, when the studies were done, they knew when the results were published, and those results led to, to them. You know, getting consulting projects to help companies improve their profitability. And, and that's the very type of consulting that, that I came there to, you know, to grow for Solomon. But you talk about the brand and, and the Solomon brand is synonymous with benchmarking and, and it, and it still is today and it is just a very, very strong brand. Um, it's not synonymous with consulting . McKinsey has a, has a brand that's synonymous with consulting and B, CG, and, and, you know, those big names, but Solomon, even in our, you know, our core clientele, right? Our key accounts, and we, we still struggle with, uh, explaining to them that, you know, we, we do consulting. So that's, you know, that's just an ongoing struggle and. It, it is what it is. But we have grown the consulting business and we, we hit a milestone of revenue, or we will hit a, another milestone actually this year in, in terms of revenue growth and, and it's, uh, about 40% of that is consulting. Wow. So we've, we've, we've accomplished a, a lot. There's a whole lot more market share that we could capture.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:06:39] So you came in, you knew that you had to grow the consulting arm of the business and not necessarily every, everyone was on board. You've got a leadership team that's in place and a lot of them are stuck in this mindset of we're a benchmarking company and consulting is not really what we do. What was your leadership style? More? This is the type of company we're gonna be get on board or get out, or was it, let me help you understand. The value of this so that they could get on board.

Charlie Reith:

[00:07:05] I tried, the ladder didn't work very well, so that's when we, I decided we're gonna transform this place and that's when we went out and, and hired you guys. Uh, we, we needed a, a soup to nuts. Top to bottom, end to end. I, I was, I was ready to let people go. If, if this, if this wasn't for them, that was fine.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:07:25] Can you talk a little bit about the process itself of getting everybody in their room, getting everybody on the same page, and really kind of seeing who's on board and who's not.

Charlie Reith:

[00:07:34] I don't know that anybody's ever been on the same page.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:07:36] Yeah, a hundred percent.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:07:37] But one of the things that helped, well, we, but I at least got him in the room. One of the things that helped is we had done the voice of customer research around the world.

Charlie Reith:

[00:07:45] Oh my gosh. And it was startling for most of the people in the room, the responses. It was complete denial by half the room. I would have to say I remember that distinctly. Oh, you didn't? It is just like our clients, when they see the Solomon results and they said, oh my gosh, we, we can't be that bad. You know, we've been doing this. We've had all these initiatives. We've saved all this money. It's like, well, so they're in denial. We were, we were in denial. There's, there's half the people in the room were in denial. It's like board. You didn't go out and talk to the right companies or Right clients, you didn't talk to enough of them. The cross section is wrong. It's very narrow. It's like. Come on guys. It's just like we tell our clients, let's learn from this. Let's learn from this and move forward, not sit here and deny the, the accuracy. Okay. But it was

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:08:37] a challenge. So specifically, what do you recall the results of the research to be?

Charlie Reith:

[00:08:44] Well, you, you, I mean, you did talk cross section. I did. Of our clients all over the world. All over the world. So, you know, there's a geographic representation. There was a market segment representation. I mean, one thing I distinctly remember is we didn't even have accurate, [00:09:00] um, I think we had accurate names, but we didn't have accurate email addresses and phone numbers. For half of the clients that we gave war to, to interview and Okay, well there's a finding right there.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:09:13] Uh, that's lack of customer intimacy.

Charlie Reith:

[00:09:15] A little bit. A little bit,

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:09:16] Y eah. But what I remember most is the clients would sit there and say, Solomon is the gold standard of benchmarking. And you come and give us these results that say you should do better here and you should do better here. And there's a lot of money, a lot of money to be made here. Their response was, tell me what to do. And Solomon would just walk out and say, good luck. Mm-hmm. And they would then have to call McKinsey or whatever. Who would, they would spend a hundred times more than they'd spent on the benchmarking study.

Charlie Reith:

[00:09:45] Oh, so you're leaving all this money on the table? Oh, that's why I thought it was a slam dunk when I interviewed. It was just, it was just shocking to me, to be honest with you. How rigid, I guess. Uh. My team was half, half the team anyway, uh, with, with regards to, to changing. We Solomon over the years had, uh, because of what word just described, we would tell a client how, how bad they were, but we wouldn't tell 'em how to get better. We ended up with this name. Many clients referred to us as the Seagull Company. So we would fly in every two years, we would poop on, on their business, and we would fly away, you know, leave them with a, with a pile, right. To deal with. And, uh, I just thought that was, that was a horrible nickname for, for a very reputable company that I had, you know, grown very fond of, and, uh, wanted, you know, wanted to see us do more.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:10:43] So we went through this whole transformation of redefining what the company was going to be. And uh, I remember when we did the presentation to the leadership and to the employees, you got calls after I'd spoken about, not, you're not just a benchmarking company, you're a consulting company. And you would get calls saying, who's this guy, pan maker, telling us this?

Charlie Reith:

[00:11:06] But that's what we had decided.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:11:08] Yeah.

Charlie Reith:

[00:11:08] Remember? Yeah. Um, we decided we were gonna burn the boats. We were going in that direction. We were gonna be a full service company, including consulting, help our clients, give them more insights, you know, not just flying every two years and then fly away. They were all in the same room. It's just shocking to me how human nature is. They hear what they wanna hear. They just close their ears to what they don't. But I had thought we had, you know, we had really gotten a lot further with, uh, with the team than we did. You know, some of those people really are, are no longer with us, even though they, you know, they nodded their head. They said, yep, you know, we're on board. They, they really weren't in their heart of hearts, and that was okay with me. So

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:11:50] when you, when you announced that we're burning the boats and heading this direction, that's when your work really started. How did you handle that and what were the steps that you took to accomplish that?

Charlie Reith:

[00:12:01] Well, this, I mean, this was a complete transformation culture, organizational structure, mindset, behaviors. I said it was, you know, soup to nuts. It didn't end with that presentation. That was just the beginning and we formed a, a small transformation team. Uh, remember, we were very careful how we selected those people.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:12:22] Mm-hmm.

Charlie Reith:

[00:12:22] Right? We wanted more open-minded, youthful people, you know, who had a longer runway with the company. So they would, you know, they would basically be, you know, making the blueprint, uh, for the future. They could see that, you know, where they could go right in, in their careers. So we have, what, seven or eight, I think seven or eight people, you know, with at least 15, 20 years of runway left. You know, we handpicked them, we, we handpicked them. Well, one of them is now the CEO. So we, we picked him from different parts of the company, you know, with, uh, you know, with that, uh, that set of criteria. I remember sitting in the, in the sandbox. Talking about those candidates. Right. So that was a small transformation team and Ward facilitated that. ' C ause I didn't wanna be in the room. I, I didn't want to be in the room. This was, I wanted to hear from them, their ideas about, you know, what we needed to do. And they did a phenomenal. Job, they were all looking at the market, you know, really, you know, doing a very thorough analysis from the very beginning. You know, what, what is, what is our, you know, the market potential here that we could capture? And my gosh, it was shocking how, how little of the market that we, that we really did have. That group concluded their work o over a period of what, three, four months? I guess. It, it was very good work. And, and, and what it led to was that, that, um, I brought somebody in to do a, a complete organizational design so that we, we went from this business unit oriented structure to a, a, a matrix. Wow. It paid, it paid off that. That was fun. Yeah, that was fun. Um, people had to, had to actually communicate across business lines and they had to share information and they had to share people. Um, all of that, all the things we said weren't happening. Um, this structure was forcing, forcing it to happen. You know, real, real, deep thinking. Lots of, uh, fur flying in the con in, in, in these, you know, team meetings. Because by design, again, we, we kind of handpick the people. Um, we handpick the contrarians and, and, and those that would really be more the leaders and that, that worked very well. And, um, and then COVID hit, we finished that design, um, in September of 2019 and rolled it out in October of 2019 and three months later, we were all sitting at home. So, but, uh, I'm glad we stuck with it because we could have easily just at that point said, oh, wait a minute, we've gotta, you know, our business is, is going to, you know, we, we, we've got some struggles ahead, you know, because of COVID and in particularly in, in, in refining when people aren't going to work, they're not driving cars, you know, gasoline, demand, diesel, all the demand for fuels products, you know, went. Down to almost nothing

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:15:07] N egative.

Charlie Reith:

[00:15:09] Exactly. And, and, and our clients were hurting. Right. So that translated into some real financial struggles for us. But, um, you know, I'm, I'm glad that we, we stayed the course because we could have easily thrown in a towel.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:15:21] Yeah,

Charlie Reith:

[00:15:22] easily. Yeah. And, and I think a lot of companies did. Um, but um, I said, you know, we're not gonna do that and we're not gonna lay anybody off. Everybody has a new, everybody has a job in the new organization. You may not like it, you may not like your new job. If you don't like it, that's fine, you know? You don't have to stay, but if you want to stay and you want to be in this, you know, new po, not everybody had a new position, but a lot of people did because it was a complete, complete redesign. You know, with the foundation of, you know, what we started with, uh, with guardrails,

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:15:51] one of the things that was, I remember that was uncovered, you know, when we, we talked about the lack of customer intimacy, that you didn't have the names and numbers of some of your best clients. One of the other things that came out is that you had. Your relationships with the leadership of the companies at the top C-suite was missing. They, not the

Charlie Reith:

[00:16:11] N on-existent,

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:16:12] Y ou were working with the plants, but not the C-suite. So how did you address that?

Charlie Reith:

[00:16:15] We, we were always working from, from the bottom up or trying to, we, well, I, again, we were, I think we were in the, the sandbox. Remember when we were talking about this, you know, our, our benchmarking cycle. Which, you know, every two years and, you know, nominally we're, we're getting the most sensitive data from, from really the world's largest oil and gas companies, all the big names. And it does, I mean, I can say those names, ExxonMobil and Shell, and Chevron and bp, uh, marathon, um, Valera, all of them, all of them gave us all their most sensitive information. And I remember. Telling our team in the sandbox, like we have three months, four months of complete unfettered access to these companies, and that's the time that we should be going to talk to the executives. But what do they want to see out of this study? What are they doing? What are they, what are they struggling with right now? That, that we could, you know, we could add more relevance to the, the study results presentation and the, uh, the readout if, if we can connect it to current events that are, that are ongoing within their company. And that, that spawned our, our whole executive engagement initiative. And, um, that's been, I think, phenomenally successful. We need more of our executives to get engaged with client executives. But, um, that's been a, a huge part of my, my role for the last couple of years.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:17:44] You've talked a lot about timeit in the sandbox, which is where we facilitate the guardrails to really come up with these transformative decisions on how to move forward with the, with the organization. How would you describe guardrails? To somebody who has no idea what it is.

Charlie Reith:

[00:17:59] I guess I go back to why, why did we hire Pennebaker in the first place? We were interviewing three different companies. Uh, one was. They were so out on left field, they didn't wanna show up for the interview, they just wanted to do it, uh, via, you know, video call. 'cause they were, they were too far away in New York City. So it was really just, just two firms. But the first thing is that you explain the guardrails process to us, and you had that diagram right with the target. Target with the, the cross hairs, but you explain very clearly to us what that process was, all the elements of it. And you, you've gotta understand, you, you, you were talking to a room full of black and white anal retentive engineers, and so we naturally gravitate to, to structure, uh, and or, and something organized, right? As opposed to, you know, something a little more esoteric. So that, that absolutely resonated, you know, with us. I guess the way I would describe it is a very structured process, very thorough. I knew in my heart and in my mind that that's what Solomon needed. We needed to, to, to really just dig into every aspect of, and we did. I remember distinctly we talked about core values. And, um, for a company Solomon, that, that was then probably 30 years old, I, I called Solomon a, a 30-year-old startup because they, they had no core values. There was no core values that were ever committed to writing. There was never really a discussion around, well, fundamental behaviors. When you come to work, because behaviors define the culture. And, and the only culture we had was we're gonna do these benchmarking studies. We, we went into that, we talked about fundamental behaviors and remember, I had, I already done some research on, on fundamental behaviors and, and, um, so that was, that was. Integrated into, into the whole conversation. We talked about the brand, we talked, and that led to rebranding, right? We talked about how we deliver the results of these, these studies, and again, told companies, you know, where they had all of the, that left all this money on the table, but we didn't tell 'em what to do about it. So we didn't give them any insights. So what's our tagline? Action from insights.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:20:13] If you're at a cocktail party, how would you know in your mind this company or this person who, who runs this company, they need to go through something like guardrails.

Charlie Reith:

[00:20:22] Depends how they talk about their company. I mean, I was just talking with, with, um, a, a former client of ours who's now retired, CEO, one of the largest chemical companies in Houston about transformation over at lunch yesterday. And he was talking about how he led his company that, you know, our client through it, through a transformation process. And I asked him about that. I said, so how did you do that? He goes. We, we had to rip the bandaid off and, um, he said, you, you, you can't, you can't do a, you know, half the transformation start this year and then, and then do something, you know, add something the next year and add something, the following, add something because change is hard. And, and I said, I, I, I completely agree with you. Um, because, you know, I, I knew that we needed a full, a complete transformation. So I think in the course of conversation I would ask a few questions about culture. I, I would ask about how do people feel about the company, right? Are they feel like you're going in the right direction? Things like that. But, you know, he and I both agreed that if you're gonna do a transformation, you've gotta just do it. Change is really stressful for people.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:21:33] You gotta have an appetite for disruption.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:21:36] It, it really is. And I'm glad you said rip the bandaid off. You know, we, we've done a lot of these and a, a quote or an analogy that stuck with me from another ex executive who we interviewed. He said, don't let the concrete set. If you're gonna do it, you gotta do it right away. That, that stuck with me.

Charlie Reith:

[00:21:53] Yeah, because change, I mean, change is hard. It, it's very, very, very hard for people. I mean, people get worried about their job, right? They get worried about the future of the company. They get worried about, it's like it's, they're more worried about themselves, of course, than the company. So, I mean, that's human nature. I mean, people have mouse families and, and you know, they need their job. So, I mean, that's, that's the first thing that you have to put people's minds at ease about. And that's why I said, no one's gonna get laid off even during COVID when everybody was laying off people.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:22:23] Yeah.

Charlie Reith:

[00:22:23] And it was hard, hard not to, because, you know, our revenue just dropped dramatically, but our expenses didn't. Of course.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:22:30] Uh,

Charlie Reith:

[00:22:31] so we, we had some rough years, but change is hard for people, even when they know there's a better way. If they've been doing something a certain way for so long in, in Solomon, I mean, we're still struggling with technology implementation of, you know, adoption of new technology because we, we still use Excel to a huge extent and degree in SQL databases. We have so many tools that have been built around these, you know, these applications, and we, we don't wanna have to almost have to shut our doors for a year or to completely change technology and then, and then reopen. We can't do that, you know, so people get very comfortable, uh, you know, doing things a certain way and, and you really have to prove to them that there's a better way and what it means for them. For the company.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:23:19] If you were to go back to the moment you started the transformation, and if there was anything you could do differently, what would you do differently?

Charlie Reith:

[00:23:28] I would've done it sooner. I mean, I, this was two or three years into, right?

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:23:33] Mm-hmm.

Charlie Reith:

[00:23:34] Maybe two years, I guess, into, I thought I could fix things on my own, you know? I, I realized that, look. That's, that's not gonna happen. I tried, I mean, I certainly tried, had a lot of hard conversations with people. It wasn't gonna happen quick enough. Okay. Maybe it would've happened, but it wouldn't, it wouldn't have been as, as comprehensive, as thoughtful, and, uh, as I think it, as well done. Yeah. It took a couple, I wish I, we had started it right away.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:23:59] Yeah. I think it was January, February, 2019. I, I remember pretty specifically.

Charlie Reith:

[00:24:03] So, so that would've been two years into my. When I took over.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:24:08] Right? Mm-hmm. What was the outcome of it? So you've tried to push this transformation yourself for a couple years. It wasn't really catching as much as you'd like, so that's when, when you hired us to come in. Um, what would you describe as the outcome of going through this?

Charlie Reith:

[00:24:23] We're, we're a completely different company. I would say now. I mean, we still do what we do. I mean the benchmark, how we do the benchmarking, all that's, you know, very, very similar. The one thing that we have added to the, to the, um, benchmarking is a lot more insights. A lot more insights. And, um, we've also integrated, you know, having conversations with executives. To understand, you know, what is top of mind for them? What do they want out of these studies this time? And we're connecting the dots much better. But we are a completely different company. Our culture's changed. And some of that is because I think when, um, we were in a town hall, my last town hall, Eric was putting some statistics up there about what, what had been done under my Charlie's uh, leadership and. It, apparently I've hired 75% of the current staff, so sometimes it takes a little bit of a turnover in people, right? So they, they actually came into a company that was different than the old Solomon, and, and I think that that was certainly a good thing. And, and that's obviously, you know, leads to, you know, a lot more comradery and, and, uh, collaboration and so forth because they. It just came into a different company with a different culture, but I, I'm most proud of the, the fact that the culture has changed. We're much more connected to our clients than we ever have been. I mean, literally, I, I spent half my time and now I'm just gonna spend almost all my time, you know, connecting and reconnecting with CEOs, COOs, client executives around the world. It is, it has really led to, you know, growing the Solomon brand in a different way. Um, we're still thought of as a benchmarking company, but um, we're more of a solution provider now than just a benchmarking company. We have attracted some incredible talent and we've set our side as, sorry. It's much, much higher in terms of talent, talent acquisition. And, um, people really want to come to Solomon. If, if that's the mindset people come in the door with.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:26:23] You're halfway there, it's

Charlie Reith:

[00:26:23] kind of half the battle, right? Yeah. Our revenues, it's grown tremendously. Our ebit, our, you know, our margins, our parent company is much, much happier. So our financials are, are much better than ever.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:26:36] Were the ancillary benefits of, of going through something like this. You talked about burning the ships, you know, this is who we are and this is where we're going. Did everybody, at least on the leadership team, say even if they weren't necessarily aligned with the direction of the company, was it just a realization that this is. This isn't just something we're gonna talk about. This is real and this is, this is what we're doing.

Charlie Reith:

[00:26:59] Absolutely. And that's why some, a couple of them left. They were in the room. They, they had to accept, you know, really, it was not a democracy per se, but y you, you know, if, if you got three cores of leadership, you know, committed to it, you, you know, they have to go along with it, but, uh, they didn't like it and they ended up leaving and that's fine. You don't wanna be undermined, right. They say one thing in public and then they, they talk to their, you know, their teams differently. When they're in private, uh, you can't have that, that, that just undermines everything you're trying to accomplish. Uh, and you, you can't let that go on.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:27:30] You were CEO during this incredibly disruptive period of COVID that nobody saw coming. And now you're kind of shifting into this chairman role during, I would say, also an incredibly disruptive period with ai. What are your thoughts on that?

Charlie Reith:

[00:27:45] Yeah, we, we talk about that a lot actually. Um, I mean, everybody's talking about it, of course, but, uh, you know, at Solomon we deal with a lot of proprietary data, you know, so data security is. I mean, it's supremely important because if we, if we have data, data leaks, and I, I swear I was talking to again this, uh, this former CEO yesterday at lunch about AI and about data leaks and so forth. I, it seems like I get a letter from, from some company. Personally, you know, once a month that there's been a data leak and more often than not it's, it's some healthcare provider or some third party that, that has my health, our data, who I've never heard of, but they had a data leak. If Solomon has a data leak and you know, and that's becomes widely known, we have to report it. You know, that undermines our business. So we are very, very careful. I mean, part of, part of our heritage is the data security, the, you know, intellectual property protection, uh, confidentiality philosophies that, that we have. I mean, ExxonMobil and Shell and, and all of these big companies aren't gonna give us their most sensitive data unless they know it's going to be secure. So using AI is something we're exploring. I don't know. We've got about 20 different use cases I think right now that we're in know that we're testing out. But these are all internal, within our own firewall, using our own AI application. But it is probably the, one of the top three questions I get when I talk to an executive, a client executive is, what are you guys doing, you know, with ai, how are you guys using it? What are you thinking about that? That's our answer is we're not gonna, you know, we're not gonna just blindly apply it because of our, the nature of our business. In turn, I asked Don, you know, what is your company doing? And there is, you know, there is. Concerned about, you know, their data security, of course, about hacking, right, about hackers. They're not using chat GBT, you know, they're not putting sensitive information in chat GBT. So they're using within their firewalls the same way we are. And they may have more use cases because they simply have more resources to, to do these things. But, um, I think thankfully the, the, um, you know, energy companies, oil companies are generally not, you know, they're, they're not even fast followers. There's, they're slow adapters of technology and, and partly because they're such large companies and they have such a huge investment in, in IT and technology systems, it, it's very, very expensive time consuming to, to change those things and

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:30:11] disruptive, incredibly

Charlie Reith:

[00:30:13] disruptive. Incredibly, and, and, you know, it took a long time to, for companies to adopt automated systems. In general, going from analog to, you know, digital and, uh, you know, just to start applying ai, you know, carelessly, I would say it, it's just not gonna happen.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:30:32] The concept of move quickly and break things doesn't,

Charlie Reith:

[00:30:35] yeah,

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:30:36] no.

Charlie Reith:

[00:30:37] Not at all. Not at all. It's, it is just too dangerous. It's too dangerous.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:30:41] So for the people who are listening who are kind of where you were, which is, I know we have to change, but golly, how do you do it? And boy do I have the stomach for it. What would you tell 'em?

Charlie Reith:

[00:30:51] Don't wait. You have to be courageous and, and do these things. They're hard. I mean, it was the hardest thing that I've ever done professionally in 40 years. Was take a company, take a group of people through this. But I'll tell you, it's the most rewarding thing that I think I've ever done. You can look at individual projects, but I mean, this was much, much, much bigger. I mean, if you wanna leave a legacy as a leader, don't be shy about it. It sounds cliche, but you have to be bold. It's a risk. It's hard work. You've gotta stick with it there. There's no silver bullet here. I'm sorry. You're talking about human beings, you're talking about change. And human beings don't like change if, if you don't have the stomach for it, you're probably not in the right position, frankly.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:31:34] So you've been an incredibly successful CEO now, chairman, moving into chairman, what advice would you give to somebody who's an emerging leader, not necessarily at the C-Suite, but you know, obviously high potential. What advice would you give to them?

Charlie Reith:

[00:31:49] I mean, there's a number of things, but, um, I mean, I'm a lifelong learner and, um, I, I think that's really important. I, I don't care what business you're in today, the world changes at a very rapid pace. And it's not just technology, you know, if it isn't technology, it's climate change, it's

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:32:08] generationally shifts.

Charlie Reith:

[00:32:10] Yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, now, now, you know, we're in a, I mean, everybody who went through COVID that was in the, in the workforce, you know, expects to have flexibility, at least in the United States to work from home, um, you know, to work under a hybrid situation. Yeah. I think being a lifelong learner is, is important. You know, I'm, I'm a big reader. Now there's, there's still a lot of good classic business books out there. Good to great speed of trust, you know, those types of things, you know, and be, and be courageous, you know, if you aspire to, to be in management or, or leadership, you know, you, you've got to take on challenges. You've gotta be willing to stretch yourself. And, you know, I think that's part of learning, right? Is um, you know, stretching yourself in, in different directions. And, uh, I've never been shy about, you know, tackling something in, in my career. So I, I guess that's what I would say too. To aspiring leaders,

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:33:05] how, how do you think Solomon will be different five years from now?

Charlie Reith:

[00:33:09] Well, I hope they will be. Um, I mean, we still have room to, to improve. Um, there's still market share that, that we need to capture. Eric, our new CEO and, and the, and the, the new leadership team is, is gonna do phenomenal things. We, we've got, you know, this whole executive engagement initiative that started a few years ago because I knew, I knew executives weren't traveling. I said, well, we, we were actually, the genesis of that was we were gonna go to Sierra week for the very first time ever, and I had lined up all of these meetings with client executives, CEOs, and so forth, and then, then Sarah got canceled. No one was going anywhere. I was like, wow, what are we gonna do? We had all these great meetings and, and I said, well, I don't think anybody's gonna be traveling. So we'll known virtually. And that's what we did. And, and that, that's, that started our, our, our executive engagement program that, that program is, is really taking off, I would hope in five years we're not. Exclusively synonymous with benchmarking that, you know, we're, we're looked at as more of a, you know, a full service company. We're gonna be growing in, in other sectors of, uh, of the business like, um, power generation. Because I mean, the world simply needs more energy and, um, but, um, I think, I think Eric wants to stay close to our roots, you know, the energy industry. You know, we're not gonna start. Going out. So there's so much room to grow our business. Uh, just, you know, in the energy industry and there's so many different, as, you know, sectors of that industry, gosh. And companies that, that aren't our clients. That are not our clients, but I'm sure you know, Solomon's technology adoption will be light years different than, than it is today. I'm very excited to see, you know, the young leaders that we had in a room, um, what's five years ago, six years ago, uh, who's gonna be running the company? Eric's one of 'em. He's, he's just one. But you know, some of the others, I mean, they're all, most of them have been now promoted to, uh, at least to a management position.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:35:11] They're sharp. They were really sharp people.

Charlie Reith:

[00:35:13] Very sharp people. So it, it, I'm just gonna sit back and watch and help where I can. But, um, I'm, I'm excited for Solomon's future. I, I, I really am.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:35:22] But apparently this has been a fantastic conversation.

Charlie Reith:

[00:35:26] Is there anything that we should have asked you that you thought we had asked that we didn't? Well, we didn't talk about the rebranding. That was a whole, I, I guess that could be a whole nother podcast that, that's a whole nother discussion because I, I learned so much and I have so much respect for, for what you guys do, because, I mean, re rebranding is more than, uh, you know, tweaking your logo and, and, and using a different set of colors. It, it was an incredibly thoughtful process. That was a challenging process too, to get people aligned with, because everybody has their own ideas about taglines, about colors, about, well, I don't know even what this logo means. I like this one better. Um, I mean, we had all of those conversations. I, I was fascinated by the whole thing. Very proud of where we ended up actually.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:36:15] And part of the, the. Driver for the rebrand was if you wanted to be perceived differently, you need to look differently and talk differently and seem different.

Charlie Reith:

[00:36:26] Yes. Action from Insight. Yeah.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:36:29] Great tagline

Charlie Reith:

[00:36:30] is, that is a good tagline. I'm, I'm very satisfied with that tagline. Um, and we're doing, we're actually living that, you know, more than, more than ever. And so I'm proud of that. So it's not, it's not just a tagline that that, uh, doesn't reflect, you know, where we've come, where we've gotten to. So one of

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:36:48] the other things that I thought from that process that was really, really good was your strategic competitive advantage. You use that in your communications.

Charlie Reith:

[00:36:57] Oh my gosh. The, the Venn diagram. People are so tired of me talking about the Venn diagram. They think it's corny and too simplistic. It's like, well. It, it is what it needs to be and it the simpler, the better, quite frankly. Right? Isn't that Einstein?

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:37:11] Yeah.

Charlie Reith:

[00:37:11] You wanna make something as simple as possible, but no simpler. And that Venn diagram. I don't need to show people the diagram. I can, I people know what a Venn diagram is. So I, I can describe, I talk about those three circles all the time, and I'm gonna talk about 'em at lunch today with, uh, the, one of the executives at Chevron.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:37:29] And for context, it's what are the three things that make you different that nobody else can say they do. Some competitors can do one, maybe a couple can do two, but nobody can do all three.

Charlie Reith:

[00:37:38] That's right. Yep. One is data, two is the subject matter experts, and you put those together and you get the insights that only solo can deliver. 1, 2, 3. And, um, that's, that's how we deliver value. Easy, easy enough. Best piece of cake, right?

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:37:55] Well, this has been great fun. It's, it's great to, to see you again, Charlie, and talk to you. I feel like it's been several years since, since we last spoke.

Charlie Reith:

[00:38:03] It's been a while. Yeah. Well, thank you. I mean, this has, this has been fun for me. Take care.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:38:07] You too. Thanks. Thanks for listening to Rethink Change. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it and be sure to follow the show so you don't miss a single episode. If you're a disruptor looking to challenge the status quo and don't know where to start or what to do next, Pennebaker can help find out more a t Penn e baker.com.