CHAPTER 6

Extreme Trust

Trust is like the air we breathe—when it’s present, nobody really notices. When it’s absent, everyone notices.

—Warren Buffett

I played college football at a small Division III school called Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. I was a fullback, a non-heroic position with few opportunities to run the ball and even fewer chances to catch a pass. I was primarily a blocking back. My main responsibility was to block the meanest players on defense—the linebackers.

One of my favorite plays was the 22 Trap. It was my rare shot at running the ball. The guard would pull to trap the defensive tackle, the quarterback handed me the ball, and I hit the hole for a couple of yards. Usually, the middle linebacker tackled me only a yard or two beyond the line of scrimmage. It was a short-yardage play to keep the defense honest, more than anything.

We played Pacific University in Oregon on a natural grass field during my senior year after a couple of weeks of heavy rain. At a small college in the wet and western parts of Oregon, keeping a natural grass field ready for play was impossible. At the start of the game, there was no grass in the middle of the field, and as the game progressed, the middle of the field went from dirt to sludge.

Near the end of the game, the quarterback called the 22 Trap and handed me the ball. Instead of being slammed by the middle linebacker just beyond the line of scrimmage, I saw daylight. My feet pedaled as fast as they could go toward the goal line. Maybe the word “pedaled” isn’t quite right. I’ve never sunk in actual quicksand, but I’ve watched enough old movies to understand the sensation. That is what running that day felt like. I was in the center of the field where there was no grass. I could hardly pick up my feet as I slipped and then sunk into the mud, lunging forward. The cornerback and safety were gaining on me from the edges of the field, where there was still grass.

I never made it to the goal line. I was tackled by the safety with two yards to go.

The goal was so close but so far away. I couldn’t get there fast enough, given the slog through the mire. Every time I felt the slogging that came from trying to push ahead with innovation at UPS, I recalled my one shot at goal-line glory as a fullback.

That so-close-but-so-far-away feeling would often rush back running the project approval gauntlet. It was not uncommon to hear something to the effect of, “Alan, your project was approved, but we don’t have enough billing resources to do it. So, we’re going to have to put it off.” The UPS safety tackled me again just short of the goal line.

I always protested, “Whatever your one billing resource is going to cost, I guarantee you it’s not as much money as what it cost for my entire team to spend months pulling all this together. Can’t we figure out a way to solve the billing problem?”

Nope. Too many budgets, all under different managers who had different metrics. When policy and bureaucracy get in the way of common sense, it stymies initiative and creates an environment of mistrust—in the system and each other.

This slogging, pushing hard to move incrementally forward simply slows innovation in a legacy company and ultimately drags down organizational velocity (OV). To switch metaphors, friction caused by a lack of trust throws sand into the velocity gears desperately needed by companies struggling to keep up with the startups of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Many organizations would say they have a culture of trust. But, it’s a rare executive who would admit, “We’re not good at trusting each other.” For most, it’s about chest-thumping and lip service. The executives all attend the same seminars and webinars, and read the same books on how trust creates culture; and yet, the Dilbert cartoonist has made a career satirizing trust in big corporations.

Processes that favor control over autonomy are one manifestation of mistrust, but examples come in many forms. For example, it shows up in how open and honest executives are in meetings, how much spending authority is granted, and how firms utilize consultants, to name a few. OV requires the practice of trust, not the statement or lip service of trust. You can’t have velocity without it.

In the old model, trust is (supposedly) earned and meted out slowly over time: “Be a loyal and obedient employee, and we will gradually grant you more authority and responsibility.” In the new model, trust is given. Access to data, spending authority, and other “control” elements are immediately handed to employees when they arrive to work the first day. Of course, this doesn’t mean the keys to the kingdom are given to a new hire on day one, but it does mean that the new relationship begins with trust, and the employee deepens your trust (or not) through actions over time.

While this caveat might sound like “earning your trust,” there is one key difference: by starting with trust as a rule, an organization takes its biases out of the equation and creates the opportunity for everyone to contribute at a faster pace. This enables OV.

I recently met with a former colleague now at Amazon, who recounted the first time she needed to access information at Amazon. She was able to access all the information she needed to complete her analysis, something she had never experienced in her past companies. In fact, she thought they had made a mistake and mistakenly given her too much access to data. “It blew my mind,” she said, “I kind of stuttered a little bit. I was like, so what you’re saying is anybody at Amazon can access that data? No wonder your [data project] would work; otherwise, we would all be standing in line like the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) to get information.” Trust is given at Amazon. They hire for it. It manifests itself in hundreds of invisible ways every day, including allowing a new employee to quickly gain the information she needs to observe, accept, and act with speed and agility.

I’ve argued throughout this book about the existential importance of learning quickly. A company’s survival depends on it. An organization can learn more rapidly than its competitors when its people trust one another wholly and implicitly. Trust is foundational to learning and is reflected in everything that an organization does. While there should be guidance with goals and parameters, employees cannot be bogged down by process (which reveals a fundamental lack of trust). Instead, they must be able to act, learn, and react to real-time information. Trust oils the joints of innovation in a company.

Invisible Asset

Trust, as everyone knows, is fundamental. Without trust, employees experience more stress, higher burnout, and less energy at work. A study in Harvard Business Review compared people at low-trust companies with people at high-trust companies. Not surprisingly, at high-trust companies there is 74 percent less stress, 106 percent more energy at work, 50 percent higher productivity, 13 percent fewer sick days, 76 percent more engagement, 29 percent more satisfaction with their lives, and 40 percent less burnout.¹

Trust is invisible; there is no line item for it on a balance sheet. But its presence, or absence, is felt. Trust is like the wind, casting invisible seeds into every field of an organization. How organizations observe, accept, and act on threats and opportunities (the very definition of OV) is essentially a function of trust, manifesting in both high- and low-profile situations.

Let’s take, for example, the situation of an executive who is in a staff meeting and faced with an operations issue that could be detrimental to the company. He or she thinks, I don’t want to raise a red flag. What will my boss and colleagues think of me? If I’m right, then I’m Gold, but if I’m not … This scenario plays out every day in corporate meetings across the world. The first idea is usually not the best one. A problem revealed invites solutions, and people are eager to come up with ideas to fix it. In addition, as ideas are surfaced, everyone present may gain a different perspective that enables a better outcome. But if there’s no trust among the team, the winnowed idea is never given a chance for a better result.

Let’s say the executive is in another team meeting. He has an idea for his division that is a bit off the grid. It’s based on current business trends and a view of the future that cannot be supported with facts (because it hasn’t happened yet, the supporting data doesn’t exist). Does the executive open his mouth and risk ridicule to put the idea on the table? He won’t if there’s no trust in the room. Ideas unexpressed become corporate cancer, eating away at the individual and depriving the firm of the very thing that can allow it to thrive in disruption.

It’s up to the CEO to set the tone for the transparent discussions that fuel an OV organization and lay the groundwork of trust that encourages transparency. These discussions can then lead to actions that cascade through the organization.

Here are two contrasting stories that exemplify the invisible power of trust. Before UPS went public, we had an old-school UPS operator who worked himself up to the CEO role. His name was Jim Kelly. When presenting to Jim and his staff, I was told to pause when someone asked a question and let the discussion unfold. It was always energizing. When I touched on a controversial point, invariably someone would raise their hand and the staff would actively debate back and forth. The CEO would listen. Sometimes he would jump in, make a statement, and I would move on. Other times he would just let the discussion play out. We were living our culture and hitting on all cylinders.

The last time I presented to the then-present CEO and his staff, the level of trust was night and day different. My marching orders for those meetings were, “Your only audience is the CEO. Don’t move to the next slide until he turns the page. If he turns the page while you’re still talking, move on.” This leader had a career of accomplishment at UPS, but he was not an OV leader. The stone silence of his executive team was proof positive of a lack of trust and openness. Yet, you could see the ideas churning in their heads through their smiles and grimaces. One of those ideas could have been a difference-maker, like money in the bank that will never be spent.

Ric Fulop is the founder and CEO of Desktop Metal, a cutting-edge designer, manufacturer, and marketer of AM systems. Ric told me that the key to his company’s OV success is its commitment to encouraging a free flow of ideas.

While trust is given, it is never taken for granted. Honesty, integrity, following through, being at your best when your best is needed; all these characteristics remain cornerstones of any organization. Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke calls it charging the trust battery. He uses the analogy of a cell phone battery. If your phone is 80 percent charged, you’re not thinking about your phone a lot. However, if you’re on low battery mode, that’s all you can think about.² Charging your trust battery through your everyday actions is critical to OV, allowing the autonomy to focus on what’s essential and not what should be table stakes. If anyone on your team runs their trust battery dry, fire them immediately, they’re cancer.

The Flow of Trust

As I mentioned previously, organizations are gummed up by control mechanisms; low spending and decision-making authority, tedious and multi-tiered access to information, and Groundhog Day approval committees taking months or more to reach a decision. All organizations need proper governance, but a high level of control within rigid hierarchies indicates a lack of trust. Ask yourself why the spending authority for similar levels of responsibility across similar organizations varies greatly. You’ll find that it’s primarily about the level of trust. Trust in the individual. Trust in the process. Trust in the organization, your partners, and your customers.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, some companies installed tracking software on employee computers with employees working from home. Had employees thought to check the updates to their corporate laptop, they would have discovered all sorts of monitoring software, including software that takes screenshots of an employee’s monitor at random intervals. Other software tracked keystrokes. It was the equivalent of an in-office desk check. Were these indicators of trust or suspicion between employee and employer? The answer depends on how much organizational trust the company has built up with its employees. Mac Quartarone, an organizational psychologist, said, “If you have a lot of trust, then you probably expect that the organization is just trying to do the right thing. If you don’t have a lot of trust, then you’re going to assume that they’re trying to fire you or trying to find people that they need to fire.”³

It is patently obvious, but if an organization wants to play in the green fields of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, then the practice of trust (not the statement of trust) is foundational. Employees looking over their shoulders are not looking ahead. Lack of trust creates inertia. It also gives rise to a bureaucratic tug-of-war that drains energy and squelches initiative. Employees are forced to endure loops of multiple approvals before they get an answer. Budgets are restricted without cause. And the company limits employee access to the data they need to make good decisions.

The tug-of-war is between control and autonomy. As companies get larger, executives install bureaucratic fences to control spending and limit access to data. These measures of control stem from a lack of trust. In a startup, the CEO, the two programmers, the half-time marketing person, and the one sales rep pretty much work in the same room with access to everyone else’s information. There’s little need for extensive controls. As an organization grows, so does the sheer amount of data, with departments instead of individuals utilizing various kinds of information. Trust can no longer be assumed. It needs to be managed.

I’m not criticizing financial and data controls—and all other organizational rules necessary for smooth functioning. These don’t necessarily indicate a lack of trust. That happens when the leader of an organization upholds the value of trust and then acts in ways that belie the trust he purports to cherish. This kind of behavior is more sand in the gears of OV. The leader loses credibility, and so does the company.

Walking the Talk

Many are the ways in which leaders talk one kind of trust game but play another. One of the most common is allowing executives to throw FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) in committee meetings, delaying or killing projects without providing alternatives that move the firm forward. Poking holes in projects to test for weaknesses is extremely valuable and expected at OV companies. But only when it’s done in the spirit of evolving the idea forward. At Amazon, they have a term for the FUD throwers, “blockers.” An Amazon executive told me in no uncertain terms, “You don’t want to be a blocker.”

Another demoralizing practice sends managers to a special team to access sensitive information they need to do their job. In an age in which data is the currency of work, this signals a fundamental lack of trust in the people who best understand the data. More examples are shown in Table 6.1.

Table 6.1 Thirteen ways leaders lie about trust

Thirteen ways leaders lie about trust
1	Allowing executives to throw FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) in committee meetings, delaying or killing projects without providing alternatives that move the firm forward.
2	Creating onerous processes for employees to access the critical information required to do their job.
3	Establishing low spending thresholds for management.
4	Doing “Desk checks”.
5	Tabling controversial topics at executive meetings to be discussed with a smaller audience “Behind closed doors.”
6	Allowing the “Water cooler talk” to become the primary source of company information.
7	Thwarting respectful disagreement and discussion in staff meetings.
8	Establishing austerity measures to get the company through a tough patch and then holding a meeting at some umbrella drink resort.
9	Delegating responsibility without providing commensurate authority.
10	Making decisions in a vacuum.
11	Playing the blame game.
12	Agreeing to a decision in a mesting and then actively undermining that decision, even with a casual comment.
13	Promises not kept.

OV binds organizations together. One of my colleagues at the University of Tennessee, Kate Vitasek, has championed a revolutionary method of developing and managing logistics contracts called vested outsourcing (VO). Contracts are typically drawn up to protect both parties. They keep the other guy honest. VO contracts are more like a binding covenan between the two parties. Each is vested in the success of the other, sharing both the upside and downside of the relationship. P&G, for example, created a facility management relationship with Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) that tied the service provider’s profitability to the latter’s ability to drive success against jointly defined business outcomes. The relationship led to a decade-long streak of JLL winning “supplier of the year” honors from P&G.⁴

The foundation of any VO agreement is trust. If there is not a sufficient level of trust between organizations, a vested relationship is not possible. Kate requires that both parties complete a Compatibility and Trust Assessment. If there are significant gaps in any of the trust elements, they must be addressed before she engages in the project. Kate knows that mutual relationships not built on a bedrock of trust cannot succeed.

Challenge Culture

One of the quickest ways a CEO can judge whether they are leading a culture of trust is to ask a series of basic questions that function as a trust barometer:

If the answers are mostly “No’s,” the CEO doesn’t turn around and implement trust initiatives. He or she looks inward. When the CEO acts in an OV way, exhibits humility, and asks questions, people will respond. They will want to talk and engage in spirited debate. Their leader has given them permission. In the Hollywood hero version of leadership, the CEO needs to know exactly what to do in every situation. They need to be infallible. They believe, “People will follow me if I exude the confidence that can only come from knowing everything.”

That’s narcissism, not leadership. Its motivation is power, a simplistic mindset that will only isolate the CEO and create silos in the company. It’s simply not effective in a complex, technological, and data-driven environment. The CEO must provide conviction around the “what” and the “why” but there must be vigorous debate around the “how.” And it starts with the CEO and how he or she interacts with the senior team.

The lieutenants learn how to act from watching the CEO, not reading the policy book. CEOs create a culture by what they do. They walk the talk. When their actions are congruent with their words, they will foster trust and build up the culture.

If a CEO wants to create an organization with speed and agility, the very first thing they must do is demonstrate trust.

The Virtuous Cycle of Trust

Corporate trust is two-way: employees trust the organization’s purpose and its leaders trust the people to pursue that purpose. Success happens when many people go above and beyond the call of duty to pursue a shared objective—not because they have to but because they want to. They’re motivated. They want to achieve the objective: for themselves, their colleagues, and for all the stakeholders whose lives will be improved if the particular goal is accomplished.

A virtuous circle is created as an organization is transparent in the what, why, and how of the company. Much has been written about the “why” with the rationale that people will commit to an organization when they understand its purpose. But it’s only when people internalize the purpose that they can move mountains. Knowing about the need to “take the hill” does not give soldiers the will to take the hill.

The “why” must be deeply internalized by everyone and communicated over and over through a clear and compelling narrative. Over time this “what” and “why” (narrative = mission, purpose, and values) become the culture of the organization.

Muscles provide strength, and trust is the tendon that attaches bone to muscle. You cannot have a strong organizational culture without trust. In a strong culture, employees have buy-in; they have faith that the leadership will act in a certain way. An employee in a strong culture thinks, “Who I am as a person is what the company wants. There is a match here.” That mindset governs an employee’s thoughts and actions.

Desktop Metal CEO Ric Fulop describes the difference between hiring “missionaries” and “mercenaries.” “You have two types of people: missionaries and mercenaries. You want to have missionaries working in a startup environment because you will go through ups and downs or difficult times. You want people who eat, breathe, sleep the type of business we’re in.”⁵ Legacy organizations who want to create OV need to generate a missionary mindset. The more workers believe and trust in the “why” of the organization, the more you can trust them with your organization’s work.

Culture, of course, is about the what and the why, but it is also about the how. The formula is this: (What + Why) × How = Culture. This chapter on trust sets up chapter 7, which is about the “how.” The “how” is constantly improved and adjusted based on the current business context and new information. Employees must be able to trust management’s intentions, that the senior team will act within the framework of the culture, even if the world falls apart. Trust is the glue of culture and it is quite easily weakened. Like with a spouse, switching metaphors, even a small behavior, can open a window in which trust is allowed to evaporate. If enough windows are opened, the relationship becomes at risk.

Trust is realized through shared experiences of executing the “how” to accomplish the “what” (or not). Note the word realized. As discussed earlier, trust is given and then reinforced through repeated experiences. When trust is high, autonomy is high, and control is low. When trust is low, then control goes up, and autonomy goes down. This trust is one source of the Founders Advantage, the secret sauce enabling rapid growth. Founders of startups are typically tight-knit groups that know and trust each other and are motivated by a joint mission. Startups nearly always move with speed and agility. As businesses become large and trust based on personal interaction becomes more difficult, control mechanisms are put in to “manage” the work. Incumbent organizations must fight this tendency by creating new structures such as small autonomous teams to recapture the Founders Advantage. Autonomy based on trust is what creates OV.

How Trust Is Enabled

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed an eternal truth about organizational change. When the stock market collapsed and the shelter in place orders came down, suddenly companies that had been glacially slow to join the digital revolution were using Zoom as if they were digital natives. Pain is often the only way to change. There was no choice but to change. Learn and adapt … or die. Companies didn’t waste untold hours concocting new ways to control their employees; they started to experiment with online communication. They started pushing decision making to the people closest to the customer. And while the digital tools and certainly the more agile philosophy had been available to them for years, they didn’t do it because they didn’t have to do it. It took a gun to their head.

Absent of an external draconian agent, organizations simply default to comfort. Unless, of course, their leader enables the change to happen. As I wrote previously, only the CEO can give permission to move with OV. And only the board of directors can provide that power to the CEO. Most likely, after the collateral damage of the pandemic starts to be repaired, a few companies will take a cue from what happened and continue to innovate. Many others will default to their old behaviors because this way of business is uncomfortable. It forces senior leaders to learn new skills. It changes the hierarchy, where the digital natives start to supervise the digital immigrants. The power structure will change.

For most of my career at UPS, I tried to put myself in uncomfortable positions; in doing so, I probably worked myself down the corporate ladder more than I needed to. I took lateral positions in new ventures instead of waiting for the promotion for a more direct move up. I was always tempted, however, to wait and see. To stay put and be comfortable. It’s almost impossible not to succumb to the comfort of what you know. We all want certainty. Taking risks can beat you down after a while. That’s why employees need constant reinforcement from the top level of the company: “What you’re doing is critically important. This is part of our mission. And the learning is in the failing.” All this is part of the corporate narrative, the story that shapes behavior, implicit and explicit.

In the 1930s, UPS issued stock to its employees. The founder said, essentially, “Everyone should have an ownership stake, and we’re going to be a company owned by managers and managed by owners.” Everyone called each other partners; there was an esprit de corps—all of the people policies revolved around supporting that egalitarian vision. A significant portion of the management team’s compensation was in bonus at the end of the year. The bonus calculation was straightforward. Fifteen percent of profits got distributed based on the individual’s management level. Everyone knew that if one department did exceptionally well and another didn’t, the bonus was the same. It was all about how UPS did as a whole.

That single principle created behaviors that eliminated friction. Instead of trying to optimize only what you controlled, your focus was bigger; what was best for the company. At times, managers would potentially inhibit the performance of their division to help out another division if asked. As a result, resources were not hoarded but flowed to the area of greatest need. It may seem counterintuitive that a business could achieve greater individual accountability through a group-based incentive. Wouldn’t “slackers” get away with not pulling their weight? While that happened occasionally, UPS’s promote-from-within policy developed managers with a strong work ethic. “Slackers” at UPS were rare as rocking horse manure which is why UPS was “the tightest ship in the shipping business” long before the incentive plan changed.

Unfortunately, this cohesive culture, founded on trust, began to unravel when UPS went public. Suddenly there was scrutiny from the shareholders: how could you pay this division their bonus when the team didn’t hit its goals? Bonuses became based on metrics that individuals may have very little influence over. Managers became focused on the parts at the expense of the whole. That is friction. I immediately felt the impact. When I moved from the core package delivery company to run global marketing for the Logistics & Distribution division, I tried leveraging some of my long-standing relationships only to hear, “I’m sorry. I would like to help, Alan. I just can’t.”

Over time, organizations accumulate friction. As they become larger, more controls are put in to manage risk. Decision-making authority is centralized; information becomes siloed. Managing for process becomes more valued than managing for outcomes. As investors clamor for financial returns, organizations establish short-term metrics, creating friction for longer-term “Forever Company” initiatives. Their past decisions, however, limit their future choices. For example, many commitments to sustainability get curtailed during economic downturns. Similarly, companies get addicted to dividends and stock buybacks to satisfy the quarterly needs of investors. The unwillingness to unwind past choices in the face of environmental change is a significant cause of friction in organizations. Of course, this is true for private as well as public companies.

The Hope of Trust

In the mid-90s I was part of a cross-functional, special-assignment team looking at how the Internet was going to impact commerce and UPS. We plugged along at a deliberate pace until an article came out in a trade magazine claiming that FedEx was now “The Airline of the Internet.”

This sat well with no one. No senior executive could countenance that FedEx had somehow outrun us. The executive over marketing and sales put his trust in our group and made changes that allowed OV to happen. He provided a healthy budget, pushed decision making to the edge, and created a direct line to him for the big decisions. He also provided “air cover” to prevent others from creating friction. We had unfettered access to the resources we needed and the permission to act. It was wonderful.

We developed an e-commerce strategy during a short period and created many of the core offerings that are still in place two decades later (albeit improved over time). Since then, of course, e-commerce has evolved from a fad to a global phenomenon, accounting for about 70 percent of UPS package volume in 2020.

Our progress, however, created jealousy and fear among some members of the IT group. In essence, we were given permission to go around IT. Working in e-commerce at the dawn of the Internet gave us a high profile within UPS with immediate financial impact and a fresh value for our customers. Quickly, however, there was a counter-movement within the company. The thinking was, “The e-commerce initiative must go through our strategic processes.” It was the old “We’re the government, and we’re here to help.” Not long after, spending on our initiative was curtailed, with new controls put in place. In essence, we reverted back to our Old Self: “I don’t trust that you are going to spend the money wisely. You’re not an IT person. I’m an IT person. I understand better. I should have the money, and then you can come to me with your project, and I will tell you the best way to do it because I understand IT.”

And that’s precisely how it went down. Our $8 million budget went to IT, and from that day forward, our e-commerce team lost control of our destiny. We had been corralled. The Wild West was over. Or, as Marine Colonel Howie Marotto put it, “Bureaucracy fights back.”⁶

While the story doesn’t end well, this was a short run of OV at UPS. And it was exhilarating—the feeling of trust that comes from a friction-free, sludge-free path. This kind of trust is within the grasp of every organization, no matter how old or staid. Trust, the fuel for OV, is available to every firm. Give trust and get results. And, as with most corporate progress, it starts at the top.

What? Trust is the foundation for OV.

So What? Absent trust, barriers are put in place that will bring OV to a crawl. Roadblocks that reduce autonomy and increase control to “manage” the productivity of the firm. While leaders may be able to control performance with better tools, they risk being lapped by more nimble competitors acting with a sense of urgency.

Now What? Start with trust. Don’t hire anyone you don’t trust implicitly from the start. Employees who break the trust bonds need to be dealt with professionally and swiftly; they are cancer to the organization. Read Table 6.1, “Thirteen Ways Leaders Lie about Trust.” Are you doing any of these things? Recognize the delicate balance between autonomy and control and strive to operate with more autonomy when and where you can.

 

¹  P.J. Zak. 2017. “The Neuroscience of Trust,” Harvard Business Review 95, no. 1.

²  T. Lutke. December 16, 2020. “The Observer Effect – Tobi Lütke,” Interview by Shane Parrish, The Knowledge Project. www.theobservereffect.org/tobi.html#trustbattery

³  S. Morrison. 2020. “Just Because You’re Working from Home Doesn’t Mean your Boss Isn’t Watching You,” Vox. www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/2/21195584/coronavirus-remote-work-from-home-employee-monitoring

⁴  K. Vitasek. June 13, 2016. “Procter & Gamble, TD Bank: Vested Outsourcing Success Stories,” Facilitiesnet. www.facilitiesnet.com/outsourcing/article/Procter-amp-Gamble-TD-Bank-Vested-Outsourcing-Success-Stories--16660

⁵  Fulop, Interview.

⁶  H. Marotto. October 28, 2018. “Colonel, Deputy Commander, 4th Marine Logistics Group.” Interview by Alan Amling