Must-Have Certification for Transitioning Military Leaders (Scrum) with Navy Veteran Tim Dickey

KP: 0:00

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Tim Dickey: 0:16

Yeah, once you figure out where your space is, you use a different tool. So, project management is the right tool in the complicated space. You know, Scrum is the right tool in the complex space where you've got to do some experimentation and inspection and adaptation, you know, so so, you know, it just depends on what you're interested.

KP: 0:39

Warriors fall in, it's time for formation. Today, we're joined with a 24 year Navy combat veteran who worked his military career in various positions, and was deployed to Afghanistan as a military intelligence analyst. Now, as a civilian, our guest today has worked for a number of highly successful businesses, such as Carnival Cruise Line, Verizon, and IBM Cloud. We're joined today with Tim Dickey, who's going to talk to us about Scrum, which is a framework for Agile software development. Now, some of you listening or watching might have seen this term used for different training and certifications out there. Well, today's today, Tim is going to help us better understand what it is. And just let everyone know that term scrum comes from the formation of players in rugby that emphasize teamwork. The term itself is quite interesting. So what's even more fascinating is what it means, what it stands for, and how it could positively affect your own career. So Tim, thank you for joining us on the morning formation, sir.

Tim Dickey: 1:40

Hey, my pleasure. KPM. Glad that I get to talk scrub, which is one of my passions.

KP: 1:46

Yeah, well, I could definitely tell, you've pretty much achieved the highest standard out there being a scrum master. You know, what in the heck is Scrum? And how can we simplify the definition so that folks who are hearing this term for the first time truly understand what it is?

Tim Dickey: 2:02

Well, you, you hit the nail on the head with a lead off, it's a framework, and it's extended beyond software development. So now it's it's actually considered progress into product development, as well as service development. So it's, it's a, it's gone mainstream, if you will. So it started in the software community. And now people talk Scrum, and they they talk the broader umbrella term agile, and use specific to the framework. Scrum itself is really for solving complex problems is when teams don't know what the solution is, let alone what the problem is. And, you know, to contrast that with traditional project management a little bit, you know, traditional project management, and I think we'll get into this a little bit deeper, is a little bit better geared toward the complicated domain. The problem is known, but the solutions are kind of in question. Yeah, so Scrum is really very experimental. And as a framework, it's very open as well. So it gives you the lowest amount of overhead you can possibly get with three accountabilities, which is a team, a product owner, and a scrum master, along with five separate events and events or meetings, you know, within this big scrum container, which is, number one, you've got a daily meeting, which is your planning session, you've also got a sprint planning meeting, which is, the duration of time that you're working in, it can be as short as one week to upwards of four weeks, they want to keep the cycle very tight. And then you've got a sprint review, where you actually demonstrate the work that you've done over the course of your sprint. And that's the developers as well as stakeholders and customers coming together. And, and talking through the work and, you know, showing, showing it, you know, something as simple as a design to as complex as actual functionality or an actual mock up with the product. And then you've got a sprint review, which is really the team assessing its own performance, and figuring out what worked, what didn't work, and what can be improved. And then you've got three artifacts coming out of Scrum. And in the really simple, which is a backlog, which is a huge, consolidated list of all the things that you want to build, along with a sprint backlog, which is a shorter list of the things that you're going to focus on and everything is about value. So, you know, the product owner and the team negotiate and they go, okay, these are the things we want to work on, because these are the highest value pieces of work. And at the end of it, you get an increment and an increment is really something useful. It could be like I said, It could be could be actual functionality within software, it could be a great design, it could be a model, if you're using Scrum to develop a car. And actually, that has as happened. So, you know, again, it's this 353. And so you can tell I just rattle this off for a memory. So whatever goes on beyond that is really, about team practices, and about team adaptation, you can plug just about anything you want into it. There's nothing prescriptive about how you work as a team. And that's kind of the joy of it. So you really get to experiment and adapt. And, and again, this is complex work. It's just figuring out what's gonna work what, what doesn't, if it does work, keep doing it. If it fails, at some point in the future, go back and start to do. So does that answer your question?

KP: 5:58

Yeah, it does. It sounds just as fascinating as project management. And I actually have my MBA and project management. And I didn't quite realize the value of those types of certifications when it comes to the overall efficiency and effectiveness because many folks don't realize, I can tell you that from the project management side of things that many of us do projects, and we do project management. So imagine with Scrum, there's a lot of things that we do. And we just don't realize that the tactics that we're using our scrum related, but it really helps formulate and understand what we're doing to a science. And that, you know, when I did my research before our interview here, that's kind of what I gathered, as far as what Scrum is. And I just want to ask, Tim is scrum training and certification, something that is new? Or has it been around for some time,

Tim Dickey: 6:53

it's, it's been around for some time. In fact, the the organization that I'm certified through, they were established in 2009. And it was as a result of one of the CO creators of the scrum guide, kind of looking at and saying, you know, we really need to have a rigorous and even standard by which to judge professional scrum practitioners. And so there's, there's there's actually three different certifying organizations out there scrum Alliance being one, the the core curriculum and content is actually developed by the trainer him or herself. So there's not a whole lot of standardization. You can go to one of those courses and be competent in the knowledge of Scrum. You can do what I did going through scrum.org. And a little bit rigorous standards testing, large question thick and rigorously vetted in there's a community of professional scrum trainers who are actually curating content, and they're improving it. I you know, literally every single year. And so, that's, that's the route I chose. And I'll tell you a little bit more about how I got there. And then there's also scrum MC. And so the gentleman who founded scrum.org is Ken Schwaber. Scrum Inc, was founded by his co author, Jeff Sutherland, and scrumming. Same, same basic foundation along with Scrum alliance is all based on the scrum Guide, which was previewed at a software development conference in 1995. here in Austin, Texas, and I live in Dallas. So you know, it's all relative and close by for me. So, you know, that, that goal, that desire to make scrum into your professional set of, you know, accountabilities and in practices, you know, it began in earnest, because, because there was that recognition that, you know, nice, this needed to be you a little bit more rigorous, a little bit more well formed a little bit better organized. And it's, I think it's really taken off from there. And the community continues to grow. In fact, I know scrum.org has, has a bunch of metrics for the number of people who are certified through the different levels of certification, and I happen to be in that midway point, the next step is become a becoming a proficient professional scrum master level three, which is a written exam. And trust me, I'm having to pay a lot of time and focus. Getting to that that point where I can do my written exam because it's two hours, 10 questions, and it's a lot of actual practical experience and applying the scrum values as well as you know, the basic mechanics of how you coach and assist your team to be successful in getting something useful out the door.

KP: 9:59

Yeah, I definitely think it's a great way to gauge your overall effectiveness when it comes to teamwork and project. Project building project completion. And it's kind of funny to him because Scrum is something that I've seen a lot of buzz about Scrum certification, Scrum training. And I just didn't know what it was. And I kind of felt dumb. Like, maybe I should know what this is. And I don't know what it is I kind of was getting an idea to seeing some of the posts out there. So there was a lot of buzz. And that kind of talks to the idea of what you just said, about the growth of getting scrum certified. Just want to ask you, is there different levels to scrum certifications? And what are they?

Tim Dickey: 10:42

Yeah, so within scrum.org, you've got three tiers of certification, specifically in the Scrum Masters accountability, you've got the same thing in the product owners accountability. And in the developers countability I want to say there's only one, but developers are such smart people, it's like, they they come in with mad skills, and you know, all kinds of, you know, certifications from Microsoft and from, from Amazon. And, you know, you name it, they walk in, they're like fully loaded guys like me, like you, me being a recovering program slash project manager, you know, giving it it's like, yeah, I needed to bring some credibility. And in addition, there's there's a number of ancillary and complementary certifications, like professional scrum with Kanban, single certification, professional scrum with user experience, another single certification, and the list goes on. And, and if you're really interested in it, and you want to geek out, go to scrum.org. Online, and they've got a beautiful web page that explains all of it.

KP: 11:53

Yeah, you actually gave me a few of those, those links, as well. And I'll make sure that I post those down in the show notes as well. So anyone out there listening can further do research on that. And Tim, with you being a military veteran yourself, who would you say Scrum is for? Well, it's

Tim Dickey: 12:12

for anybody in everybody, it doesn't really matter what your background is. And I think the veterans community in particular is really well suited. Because, you know, we've, we, we improvise overcoming adapt. I mean, that's what we're trained to do. And exactly what scrum enables teams to do is to look at an obstacle and say, Hey, we got to figure out a way around this. Let's put our heads together. And let's get thinking.

KP: 12:40

Yeah, I definitely, I definitely can can tell you that from even a I keep telling my project manager because that's my background experience. But even from a project management background, I can I can attest to the idea that once you truly understand what you're doing, in terms of tactics and effect and efficiency and effectiveness, it really ups your game as far as getting the proper project done in the right amount of time to meet your schedule and overall purpose. So and with that being said, you know, we spoken on this podcast about project management. And I hate to say that word over gaming, we're talking about Scrum. But on previous episodes, we have talked about that. So how does scrum compare to project management? Or is that even a proper comparison?

Tim Dickey: 13:29

I think that there's, you know, there's there's two schools of thought and it really goes back to understanding what space you're operating in. Complexity over here, complicated over here. There's a there's a great thing I use to help orient people called the Canarian framework, and big shout out to Dave Snowden for this. And once you figure out where your space is, you use a different tool. So project management is the right tool in the complicated space. You know, Scrum is the right tool in the complex space where you've got to do some experimentation and inspection and adaptation, you know, so so, you know, it just depends on where your interest is, if you're if you're one of these really well organized and very thorough, and you think through everything, and you just love the planning cadence. You know, nothing wrong with going into project management. If that, I would not want to try and build a bridge using Scrum, there's no need 000 100% I never do it. However, if I'm going to say, build a Tesla, for the first time, I would rather use Scrum, I'd rather use this iterative process and do a series of smaller experiments that build on one another. And that's where Scrum, really, and by the way, I can't tell you whether whether, you know, Ilan used scrum as a as a way of developing, you know, his automobiles. But it makes sense, given that he great helped co create PayPal, PayPal, which is a web based software system, he may have encouraged his teams to use Scrum as as their basis until they got to that stage where they could could move to, you know, the Toyota Toyota Production System way of working, you know, I don't know. But you know, it's, it's this is this stuff, where it's like, man, we don't really even understand the problem. And we really don't understand the solution. But we know how to experiment except a good method. And let's see what we get from there. And then more important, let's get it. Let's get it in front of our customers in front of our stakeholders quickly, so that we can get their feedback and see if we're all we're close. If we're completely on base, or if we're like, you know, really skewed off to the left or the right.

KP: 16:37

Now, I think your example makes a lot of sense, building a bridge versus building an electric vehicle for the first time. It definitely underlines the idea that Scrum is something that you might want to use when you're venturing into an unknown frontier. And you have to do various experiments, versus a definite because we all know, engineering throughout the years, we know how to build bridges. But when, especially in today's world, with with what's coming out with the internet, and green energy and things like that there's so, so many frontiers in industries that we're getting into, we just don't know, until we get there. And we experiment, we try it out. And scrum sounds like it would be an elephant and a definite certificate that you would get to elevate your career. How do you think our veteran community can benefit from getting certified to become a scrum master, or to get certified even at the at the basic level of Scrum, or just scrum training in general? Tim,

Tim Dickey: 17:39

I think that it's it's a worthwhile pursuit. And I think it's complimentary. I think that, you know, any veteran should consider both, you know, consider project management and understand the lens that that project management looks through. And then you know, get the get the scrum certifications and understand the lens that Scrum is looking in, I daresay, you know, there's, there's, there's a point where, you know, and I, and I haven't seen it yet seamlessly happen, but but it does happen where where you you get good overlap, where, you know, I would say in the hardware space, like, you know, building out cloud, we used a lot of the things that that I knew I adapted from scrum in order to build out cloud, especially in going into the pandemic, we were, we were finishing a build cycle at IBM of four cloud site expansions. And we had to pivot, we really had to figure out how we could how we could at least try and maintain our schedule, with the understanding that we were going to have to do a lot of different logistical moves that we had not planned for, because stuff was on backorder, and stuff got stranded, and you name it. But the team came together, we thought through some of the challenges, very iteratively. We put our strategy on paper, and then we adjusted as we went along. You know, and and we were always using the word forecast forecast for forecasts because there wasn't that high degree of uncertainty. We knew what the desired outcome was, but we really didn't know how we were going to achieve it. And that's the brilliance of Scrum is, you know, nobody tells the team how to do the work. They determine that on their own because they're closest to it.

KP: 19:30

That makes a lot of sense. Because I can tell you as a leader, that's the kind of leader that I am. I would rather prefer to get the the insight, insight and innovativeness coming from the team versus me telling them exactly how to do things. And that scrum sounds absolutely fascinating to me. Then, Tim at this point, I want to pivot the conversation and give you an opportunity to talk about your own military career transition out of the Navy, because I understand that you spend some time in the reserves and on combat deployments as well. So would you mind talking to our listeners a little bit about some of your experiences.

Tim Dickey: 20:04

Yeah, sure. I started in the submarine community on active duty and riding around on nuclear powered SEER tubes, or, I'm sorry, nuclear power boats was was a wonderful and and certainly eye opening experience actually was part of the commissioning crew of the USS Wyoming SSBN 742. So the ship celebrated its 25th anniversary here, I think it was last summer. And, you know, I went, you know, maybe this is not really where I want to make a career of it. And I determined that, you know, after six years and doing cool things there, and in even more so being introduced to the Special Operations community on my first submarine, that was like, I had a good lifetime of active duty, you know, and left active duty took advantage of, of the Navy college fund, which was a thing back when, when I, when I left, and I've got a little bit of gray in my beard, and yo stayed in the reserve. And so I did the dual career route, graduated from college, got hired on as a systems manager for Carnival Cruise Lines working on the cruise ships, and made some really good career moves, that that complimented both what I was doing in the private sector in it, and what the needs of the, the, at that point, the Coast Guard Reserve, and then subsequently the Navy Reserve wanted from me. And so, I went on on a set of extended orders that Special Operations Command south because that was the command I was supporting, I was knowledge management, doing SharePoint configuration. And, you know, it, it was it was great, because I had pulled my private sector experience, into into the military, there was a definite need there was having to be on staff. And, you know, RAM that through to becoming a DOD contractor for a period of time. And I answered the call, you know, as, as an enlisted leader, I felt kind of convicted asking my sailors to, to go to Holy, I wasn't doing it myself. And so I did two rotations in Afghanistan, and you know, boots on the ground doing my job. First time was helping declassified detaining files. And then the second time around was supporting a special operations Joint Task Force, you know, the super cool guys. And you know, you know, honing, honing my skills in my my trade in the military, you know, so I was, I was leveraging my civilian experience in all that it stuff and making great stuff happen systems wise, wow, doing all the Intel Analytics as well. So I got I got the benefit of both worlds and, you know, solve that solved a number of problems and even put together a process that outlived me in that second deployment where one of the guys in my unit came back, and he said, Chief, I can't believe it. You made my my 16 hour job into an eight hour job, and I was bored the rest of the day, I was like, Well, sir, between you and me, I'm just glad that the process outlive me, you know, that if the data mining and everything else worked at it, and it works so well, that you know, three to three years later, people are talking about it so and, you know, I got that got an opportunity after my I came back from that last deployment, got hired on with Verizon, that the great part about that is a guy by the name of Tommy Jones, if Tommy's listening to this, love you, brother, he and I were sitting on a flight going from Washington, DC to Fayetteville, and he handed me his business card after we chatted, and he opened the door so that I could get interviewed at Verizon, which really demonstrates the power of the network. You know, never underestimate where your contacts lie, whether they be on LinkedIn, whether they be your neighbor, your friend, you know, guy, men and women that you served with in the past who who've already transitioned out. And so moved from Miami to Dallas, big changes there and loved my time with Verizon, and then subsequently ended up changing over to IBM Cloud, which was really a phenomenal thing. I mean, it's IBM, you know, what can I say? And, and now I am, I'm doing the consulting thing with a great local outfit called improving enterprises. And I'm, I'm a consultant who also serves as a scrum master for for an energy sector client, headquartered in Canada and so I get to work remotely from home coaching teams and helping them improve their processes and hopefully getting the outcomes that that they desire as far as you know, the build out of some, some complex systems to to make, make, you know, their work more efficient, you know, And then thoroughly love it. And, you know, having having this dual career was really, you know, I think it was the best unplanned career I could have ever hoped for.

KP: 25:12

Yeah, it's funny because I was talking to someone this week about the military reserves, specifically the Army Reserves, and the benefits of going into the National Guard reserves versus going active duty, and how you can have that dual career taking off almost at the same time. But your story is exactly what I love to hear. And that's exactly what I'm talking about. With true leadership, you know, making sure that you utilize your military career to help elevate your, your personal career or your civilian career, and fully taking advantage of that, Tim, and that's why you're on the morning formation podcast, because we like to hear those types of stories. And you mentioned networking, and that's such a very important part when it comes to the overall career advancement, and, and linking up with folks that can really help you elevate. And that's been something that I've emphasized to our community as well, would you mind going a tear or two deeper into the importance of networking based off your own experiences, like you just mentioned?

Tim Dickey: 26:16

Sure, sure. Um, you know, I think the best example I've got is how I ended up where I am today at improving. You know, one of one of the big things that I realized when, when I moved up here was, as a data center manager, and I was really responsible for data center operations throughout the state of Texas, so multi site, I threw myself into the work, and I really didn't spend enough time developing local context in the community, you know, and being very focused on that, and knowing that, hey, you know, it's Verizon, and, you know, it's, it's a great company. And, you know, I saw some career longevity. What I didn't see, though, was that they were pivoting their business. And so, after, the thing was three, almost four years, Verizon sold its commercial data center operation. And so it split, that the physical sites that went to a smaller outfit, and then the managed services that ultimately ended up at IBM. And so, you know, had I been thinking forward and been, you know, working on building those, those external connections to work, I probably would have been better positioned, because when I, when I moved to that smaller outfit, I was a senior manager, and I was one of three. And, you know, my dad who worked for at&t For four years, you know, he had seen so many mergers and acquisitions in his time, he said, Son, you're on a clock, what can I tell you? And he was right, you know, and so I be I became, became gainfully underemployed. And I tried my hand at, you know, kind of kind of my own thing. You didn't didn't work out nearly as successfully as I'd wanted it to. But because I had gotten involved in the in the, the, the, the scrum community through a veteran service organization, allies and service, I was introduced to Agile for Patriots. And I began developing my my network in earnest while I was getting my scrum training, and going to meetups, and connecting with all these these, they call them user groups, where you've got people who do specific programming languages like Java, or Visual Basic or C++ or, you know, all this stuff that I have no interest in, because I like hardware, you know, but, you know, building these relationships and and demonstrating that, hey, you know, what, I, I'm, I'm here I'm interested, I'm, I want to learn and grow. And so out of that, I started a conversation with improving and it was funny because at the time that I got the job offer at IBM, I was actually declining a job offer from improving, and I went, Okay, this is going to, I'm going to continue to have this conversation with my with my contacts at improving and as as I continue to talk and show up at their offices for these the user group meetings pre COVID You know, I built these great relationships, I got to see the company from the inside out the quality of people that were there. And after this, this geo expansion at IBM I determined you know, I need to go back and I need to upskill because I in the hardware side of the for for quite a long time I needed to get back to software. And so you'll always have this ongoing conversation with with the people who are now my colleagues after two years and the the right client opened up, you know, the timing was right, I was finishing what I did at IBM. And I was like, You know what power of the network had I not done the right thing the second time around, cultivated those contacts, cultivated those relationships, you know, kept talking about something that ever in these communities, this is what the interest is, you know, there's there's no reason any one of us coming out of uniform, it shouldn't join a meetup, we should join these communities, if we've got an interest, you know, in data science, co join a data science community, if you've got an interest in, in impure it, there's there's pure IT community software development. I mean, there are so many different groups that now that most of our law align, you can literally just go jump in a couple of times, because they usually meet once a month, see what the crowds like, ask a few questions. More than likely, they'll they'll have kind of an open connection, period, a little bit of socialization, either before or after the formal meeting, learn some cool stuff in the professional area that you want to go into, and connect with folks on LinkedIn and start those types of conversations. I mean, I'm even right now, part of the industrial and organizational psychology group, that's veterans focused teams, need to understand teams need to understand the organization, what the challenges are with change management, I'm still reaching out to new groups of people where I think that I can, I can ask some intelligent questions and really gain some some deep learning about things that can inform me as a professional, and only make me better. Because outside of uniform, you know, we don't we there is nothing to guide us in our career path, there's nothing that's going to say, in the next three to nine months, if you do this, you'll be eligible for promotion, a lot of it is he'll kind of figure it out as you go, some companies are better at career path. Other companies are not, I know, Verizon was really good. I know that IBM was very good as well. You know, so smaller outfits, not so much, you know, if at the improving, has now got an improving path that wasn't there two years ago. So I know exactly what my path is, to the Vice President and Director, you know, but, you know, everything about going into the private sector doesn't have to be scary, it doesn't have to be hidden, missed, as long as you lean on people that that you can develop a relationship with, and in and get a whole bunch of different angles on where you want to go that diversity of opinion, because you need to know what the pros and the cons of a given profession are, from the people who are doing the work, you know, because assuming, you know, there's, there's a lot of gray area in there. And until you've you've talked to people, you know, you're you're not going to know if it's a good fit or feel for you.

KP: 33:05

That's actually really great advice, Tim, you know, I got out of the army myself in 2007. And in 2007, there was no LinkedIn, there wasn't a whole lot going on online, it was very difficult to connect with folks. And I think the advice that you just gave to actually go to the meetups, you know, you can inadvertently better understand the culture of a company, by speaking to the folks who are part of that company, and then in turn, they can see what you're about and see if you fit that culture. And I think that was one of the things that I struggled with, with my first job after leaving the military was, there were no more cards on the table, there was only one offer. And it was either I take it, or I go unemployed. And you know, that's, that's why I'm here today. I don't want folks to make that same mistake. And it's, I really want to reach back and have our military community, start doing the legwork, start preparing for that career transition. So that is some awesome advice that you talked about. And then also, you mentioned to your resiliency, that you had tried different things and some things didn't work, but then you kept going. And you know, a lot of folks in the military don't realize it. But that's that's what we're taught to do. Like we're taught to be resilient. We're taught to, you know, drive on, right. And yes, for some reason, when we get out into the civilian world, we just kind of lose that and but that's really truly who we are, you know, as as military service members. And you know, you brought some really great things today, Tim, but for anyone out there who's listening to this podcast, and they want to follow up with you on anything that you mentioned today, how can they connect with you or follow up with you with anything that you might have talked about here on the show?

Tim Dickey: 34:44

Hey, connect with me on LinkedIn, you know, Tim Dickey, all one, I don't have any special characters or crazy numbers after after me. Look for the bald guy with the glasses and the beard. And you'll know who I am you And also I've got my own personal blog, Tim Dicky calm. And so if you want to read more about what I'm doing and what I'm experiencing in that space of Scrum and Agile, as far as product and service development, come take a read, I try to cross post on LinkedIn every weekend. So the post actually drops on Saturday morning on my blog. And then I usually report posted a little bit later on Saturday, or first thing Sunday morning. And I am always always, always happy to have conversations with with veterans, you know, and military spouses as well. Because, you know, that, you know, male spouses are also a big part of the community, we, we can't do it without them. You know, and I'll tell you, my wife married into this thing. And, you know, I look at it, and I clearly married up because she handled the house in, in a fantastic fashion when our daughters were small, and I've just had, this was great. Thank you, God. So, you know, I like what you said, KP, which is, you know, we're out here, we're doing this, to help other people in their path be a little bit smoother than our own. And it really is about giving. And I think that, you know, that that is the core of what we do, why we wear the uniform, you know, and, and I love the fact that, you know, we can talk about it, and you and I admit, mistakes were made, we learned. And now we're sharing it so that somebody else can do better.

KP: 36:35

Yeah, that's the one thing is, you know, we, so many people are hard on hard on themselves when they make mistakes. And I've always told soldiers in times past, whenever I was in leadership was, you know, this, this particular mistake that you made, or this event doesn't define you as a person. And what's going to define you is where you end up in the very end. So you got to keep going, you got to keep trudging on and, and elevating yourself and being the person that you want to be, and that you believe yourself to be as well. And some of the things that you mentioned today, man really resonate with me when it comes to just overall, the technical side of Scrum, to your own military career as well. And I really appreciate you being on the show today. And before we final things out, Tim, is there anything that you'd like to summarize or provide additional advice to our listeners?

Tim Dickey: 37:29

Sure, I, I would think that, you know, reflecting back on my career, if somebody had been able to give me some, some wise counsel in advance of, you know, winding things down, I would say, you know, it's okay not to know what you want to be when you grow up, you know, it's okay to experience different things professionally. Don't doubt your ability to adapt. And from the standpoint of pivoting, always pivot to something that you're interested in, don't just take a job for the sake of taking job, you know, you may have to, I mean, and I'm not, not discounting that, I mean, there's, there's certain times where you're just gonna have to do it. But, you know, there are so many different ways to acquire skills and knowledge and experience. There's, you know, the, the horizon is very wide open, you know, we as service members have been taught to be mentally tough, like you said, we are resilient, we walk in with a really great toolbox. The challenge is adapting those stories and those tools in that toolbox to fit a different context, a different type of work. And so, you know, talking with with folks, you know, within within the military community, as well as people who have deep private sector experience, and are out there helping and supporting the veterans community, man, yo, if you don't tap into it, you're you're kind of passing up and one of the best resources you'll ever have. There's plenty of VSOs out there, veterans service or organizations is just a question of reaching out. And to your point, you know, tap today is very different than tap, you know, 1015 years ago, even five years ago, and I know that a lot of time, energy and effort has been put into making transition better for veterans. And, you know, it's just simply reaching out to somebody and start starting to ask those questions, you know, and ask the questions of yourself too. You know, there's there's no wrong answer. For the transition. There's no wrong answer for figuring out what the next step is in either starting a new career or transitioning into a complementary career. It is just simply a matter of being humble enough to say, I don't know. But I know how to find out. And I'm going to start asking some folks.

KP: 40:09

Very, very wise advice. And I think to summarize that invest in yourself, make sure that you keep moving forward. And when I say invest in yourself, that means while you're in service, make sure you go to the Education Center, make sure you start figuring out like what is available to me for me to do on those Fridays and Saturday nights when, you know, there's nothing better to do in the barracks. And while there is but at the end of day, probably not very good things that would just waste your time. I mean, at the end of your four years, or whatever your commitment is, whatever you decide to do, you definitely want to look back and say, You know what, I accomplished this. And, Tim, I really appreciate you being on the show today, I will make sure that I put all the links that you sent me as far as things dealing with Scrum as well as your your website down in the show notes. So if you're listening to this, and you want to follow up with Tim, to include his LinkedIn, all that will be down in the show notes, make sure you connect with him, add him to your network. He is a very open individual when it comes to, you know, dialogue and asking questions, and he's one of the many great people in our military community reaching back and looking to help help our community help our community level up overall, because we know how it was getting out. And we've seen other people getting out of the military making that transition and it's quite a it's quite a climb sometimes. So we're still here just because you're not wearing uniform anymore, doesn't mean that you still don't coach and mentor and help out each other. So, Sam, thank you for joining us on the morning formation. I appreciate it.

Tim Dickey: 41:40

Hey, pleasures, all mine. KP take care.

KP: 41:43

And for everyone else out there listening I want you to stay tuned, stay focused, and stay motivated. Warriors Fallout