The Next Mission: Retired Major General Matt Smith

Welcome back to Lit Happens with Cyd. So as many of you know, we are doing something a little different this week when it comes to not just books, but we're... Shining light on veterans and those who have sacrificed so much when it comes to serving our country and putting their lives on the line. And so now we're going to talk about leadership and how some of those veterans kind of transition from time in the service and then into civilian life and how they are helping other veterans as well. And now I am joined by retired Major General Matt Smith. Matt, how are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me on. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come in and chat. And also thank you for, you know, your sacrifice when it comes to serving in the military. And so before we kind of take a deep dive into, you know, what you're doing at Emory University, tell us a little bit about who you are in your time serving. Yeah. So thanks for the question. It's somewhat unique. Uh, so it's, uh, hopefully you find the answer interesting. So I went to college through an army ROTC scholarship. Like that's how I was going to go to school. The only way I was going to school and, um, serve for a number of years, got out, uh, went into the national guard here in Georgia. And then, uh, I euphemistically say I got a real job. And that was in the late 90s. And then at some point, I went and got a business degree here in the building that I'm standing in. And then graduated from that, started working for a small technology company called IBM on September 4th, 2001. And everybody. remembers what happened a week later. And I was serving one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer in the National Guard. And about 15 months later, my unit got mobilized for what became the invasion of Iraq. And I just stayed after I went back on active duty and retired just under two Two years ago, after a... Relatively unplanned but voluntary 25-year detour back into service and then landed here back at my alma mater where I have the privilege of continuing to work with and for veterans. And so you are the executive director of Veterans Initiatives at Emory. Now, how has serving time, you know, being a ranger, ranking to, you know, major general, how has that high intensity military leadership helped you transition into higher education initiatives? So I will say that the battlefields we have fought on overseas for the last couple of years are very complex. And, um, and ambiguous, and those are great adjectives to use for making a transition into higher ed. So working at a university is obviously very different, uh, than working in one of the uniformed services. Um, but where it is similar, is in the, you know, the size of things is big. It's a lot of human beings. It's a lot of different colleges at a university like Emory. And contrary to public perception, sometimes, like veterans aren't just like automaton robots that just do what they're told. They're human beings who have, you know, kind of stake in the decisions that are being made. And what I experienced during the latter part of my career as a more senior officer was the necessity of building teams and consensus to accomplish any given task or mission. And that is very analogous to working at a university. So what would you say, what core principle or lesson from your time in the uniform do you find yourself relying on most when advising veterans transitioning into the civilian lifestyle? Yeah. So let's see, if I had to pick one, I would say comfort with, just to repeat myself a little bit, but kind of deliberately, comfort with ambiguity. Right. So veterans, especially the current generation that are kind of our target audience are like 20 year plus folks. So those that have served for since 9-11 is that are very comfortable working in ambiguity and they're very comfortable with the phrase, you know, make air quotes, just figure it out. Back to the confusing environments that we've worked in overseas. So the idea of ambiguity, confusion, volatility, uncertainty, whatever adjectives you want to use, that applies to the global business environment today. So this idea that we have this pool of people who have decades of leadership experience and management experience, which is obviously two different things. And they're really comfortable in ambiguity and just figuring it out, whatever it is. So I talk about that a lot with veterans considering transition into business. And we basically help them. We retrain them, right? We kind of retrain them on how to articulate, Their experiences and how those experiences have value in a in a civilian world context. Now, for any veteran who might be hesitant about entering a higher education or business school after military service, how does your program kind of help navigate and close that gap? Yeah, so we we often refer to our program as like Making people aware of what's in the realm of possible. Yeah. You know, because if you think of somebody like your typical primarily active duty veteran who may have joined when they were 18 or 22 years old, and then they've lived on camp bases or stations around the world and in the United States, they just don't know what's out there. Back to my previous point, they don't fully understand the value that their experience has in the civilian world, in the commercial world, or in academia, as in my case and many others. Thank So it's kind of fun to be part of helping people realize just how much They bring to the proverbial table because they're so well-versed in dealing with human beings because of all those years of leadership experience. you. Now, what advice do you typically give transitioning service members who are trying really to find their next mission, you know, kind of after they leave the service and take off the uniform? Yeah, that's a great phrase to use. Sid, it's, we, so. Just by way of answering the question, our program begins, it's an annual one-year May to May, and literally the first thing we do is a values determination exercise. We spend eight hours the whole first day. Mm-hmm. Having the students identify, hey, these are my core values. And then the key takeaway from that is like, don't pursue something that's not aligned with your core values because you just spent like 20 whatever years focused on serving in a way that obviously resonated with your core values. Now is not the time to like do a hard left and go in another direction, you know? And I think... I'm an example of this. Many veterans, when they get out, don't necessarily take the time to make that determination about what they're about as a person after they take off the uniform. And we have found over several years that kind of aligning those two things, hey, this is what I'm like as a person, and this is what this particular career field is like, and they're... align, that is hugely valuable in a pretty significant transition process. And Matt, before I let you go, is there anything else that you would like to say to our viewers or veterans? Because me personally, I'm a military brat and I feel like Veterans Day should be 365. It shouldn't just be down to one day. It shouldn't just be down to a week. I feel like it needs to be something that's celebrated and recognized year round. Yeah. So I certainly second the motion. And thanks for your mom or dad's service and you putting up with that, not like you had a choice. So I'll share this thought as a closing thought. I was talking, this is years ago, to a major metropolitan city's chamber of commerce right around Veterans Day. And, uh... I was like, hey, I assume all your businesses and corporations pay taxes. And then I like to say, if you don't, don't say anything. But most of us pay taxes. And a lot of those tax money, a lot of those dollars go to the Department of the Army, the Department of the Air Force, Department of the Navy, et cetera. So the American business community has already paid for the experience all these veterans bring. They might as well get a return on that investment. And like I said, you just can't compare the amount of human interaction that these potential employees can bring to an organization because we're just given so much responsibility at such a young age when we put on the uniform. Um, it just has tremendous applicability in the, in the business world or in any other large endeavor, you know, be it nonprofit or to your earlier point in academia. So it's, uh, these, these men and women are a resource and shame on us, all of us, if we don't take advantage of them in a good way. Exactly. Well, Matt, thank you, you know, like I said, for your service, for your sacrifice and for what you're doing now, you know, helping them transition, you know, from the time of being in the uniform and out of it and showing them that, you know, it's so much more to life and that their experience can really help everybody. And thank you for taking the time to come and chat with me and viewers out there. I greatly appreciate it. Well, thank you for the opportunity. Hopefully you can tell I'm passionate about talking about them and it's great to be with you today, sir.