PODCAST | Leadership Lessons in Uncertain Environments

What separates great leaders from average ones isn’t intelligence, credentials, or experience. It’s the standard they set and the culture they build around it.

I sat down recently with Dr. John Holmes, COO of STAX Engineering and a retired U.S. Coast Guard Captain with over 40 years of maritime leadership experience. The conversation pushed on a few things I needed to look at in my own practice.

Who Is Dr. John Holmes?

John isn’t a typical COO. Before leading operations at STAX — a company whose mobile technology captures and controls ship emissions without modifying the vessel — he spent decades commanding U.S. Coast Guard units in demanding operational environments.

Now he applies those same principles to a fast-scaling company that’s an approved provider of on-call emissions control services for vessels at the Port of Los Angeles.

Active barges, volatile port schedules, regulatory complexity, a young and diverse workforce — STAX is a real-time leadership laboratory. Sitting across from John, you can feel the experience behind every answer.

The “Good Enough” Trap

One of the moments that stuck with me was John talking about his own early years. He coasted through high school and the first half of college on “good enough” effort, then finished his last two years with a 4.0 once he understood what full commitment actually meant.

I want to be careful with this one, because it’s not about perfectionism or never feeling like you’re enough. There’s a difference between beating yourself up and showing up with your full capacity, whatever that looks like on a given day.

What John is pointing at is intentionality. When leaders and teams settle for 70%, they don’t just underperform — they erode the culture around them without realizing it.

A simple question for any leader: are your standards explicit? Do your people actually know what “great” looks like on your team?

Alignment Over Agreement

The most useful insight from John’s career, for me, was this: in the military, once you walk out of the room, everyone pulls in the same direction — whether they agreed inside it or not.

In the civilian world, he found the opposite. Decisions get relitigated. People lobby for do-overs. Energy bleeds out through the hallways.

That landed for me. The breakdown is rarely the strategy. It’s the lack of unified commitment to executing it.

I see this constantly. Leaders spend enormous energy crafting the right plan, then watch it fail — not because the plan was wrong, but because two or three people half-delivered their piece.

What John and I landed on is straightforward: debate hard before the decision, commit fully after, evaluate at a defined checkpoint, then adjust. Agility and alignment work in sequence, not opposition.

Servant Leadership in Practice

John is direct about the philosophy underneath his leadership: servant leadership. Not the version on office walls — the actual practice of having your people’s backs, taking the hit when something goes wrong, and building people up so they can carry more.

He said something worth repeating: people don’t care what you know until they know that you care. At STAX, that shows up in real ways — flexibility when life demands it, ownership in the mission, and expectations that communicate belief instead of pressure.

This is the difference between team development and team building. Topgolf every quarter is fine. But it doesn’t build the trust and shared accountability that hold a team together when something hard happens.

What You Can Use

Here’s what I’d take from the conversation:

• Audit your decision culture. Honest debate before the decision. Full commitment after. A defined review window so people trust that committed doesn’t mean permanent.
• Hire for fit, not just credentials. Look for people who’ll work with the company, not just for it.
• Set high expectations as an act of belief. Excellence communicates trust when it’s paired with support.
• Give people equity in the outcome. Literal or cultural — people perform differently when they have ownership.
• Know the difference between team building and team development. Social connection builds rapport. Intentional growth builds performance.
• Model “I was wrong.” Leaders who own mistakes create teams willing to take risks, tell the truth, and learn fast.

The Bottom Line

Conversations like this are why I do this work. The principles forged in some of the most demanding leadership environments — the open ocean, search and rescue, national security — translate directly to a boardroom, a startup, a scaling company.

The thread running through everything John shared is the same thread we work with at Move Mountains. Set the standard. Align the team. Serve the people in front of you. Refuse to settle for good enough.

That’s how leaders move people forward.