Deb Dendy: Episode 83, fostering a
people centric culture with Luigi Resta, welcome to the story in your head. I'm Deb Dendy. And today, Ron, myself and guest Luigi
Resta discuss how to foster a people centric work culture, the challenges
infusing family into the business culture and finding the balance between. Ron Macklin: Welcome to the
story in your head podcast. Today, our guest is Luigi Resta. Could you give us a, like a short elevator
speech introduction on who you are? Luigi Resta: Yeah, thank you, Ron. It's good to be here today. My name is Luigi Resta and I am the CEO
of R plus energies, a utility scale, renewable energy development company. I wouldn't say that
that totally defines me. I'm also a father of
three grandfather of two. And grew up kind of in an academic,
hippie world in Northern California. So, so I have a very background
and a very personality. Ron Macklin: So then I got a question
to the academic hippie background. I've been anytime put
those together in my life. Never before, but can you expound
just a little bit on that background? Luigi Resta: Yeah. So my father and my mother met in
the early 60s on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence and my dad was Italian. My mother was American. Again. He was a beatnik artist, and they migrated
west to New York and then from New York to Northern California, Marin County,
where they ended up getting separated, but I grew up with my mother in this
little bohemian town called Bolinas, which is on the coast in California. Marin County, Northern California. And in the sixties, it was where all the
hippies, academic hippies were growing up. And as a result, I grew up off
the grid on the first sort of certified organic farm in California. We worked on stopping clear cut logging
when the oil spill happened underneath the golden gate bridge in 1971. It was my parents and those
people that got together. So they were really intellectual thinkers. Peter Warshall, Bill Nyman, who started. Nyman Beef, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, the writers. Those were kind of my parents peers
that I grew up in, academic hippies. Ron Macklin: Got it. And currently you're residing in Salt
Lake City or in the Salt Lake area? Luigi Resta: Yeah, I moved to Salt
Lake City about five years ago when I started R Plus Energies. Ron Macklin: Great. Thank you for the brief introduction. Deb, any questions there? Yeah. Deb Dendy: Thank you, Luigi. You know, it's interesting. So I was looking into your background. Of course I would look on LinkedIn
and something really stuck out to me. So your chief of staff, Teresa Foxley,
she said, couldn't be more proud to work with a leader that has created a culture
best summed up as execution oriented, people centric and community minded. Thank you, Luigi Resta
for blazing this trail. And because we like to talk about
culture and company culture on this podcast, I am so curious, like what does
a people centric culture mean to you? Luigi Resta: Well, I, that probably
goes to my background and what we just discussed about growing up in Bolinas
and this kind of academic community, academic hippie community is that what we
do matters and everything we do matters. And people matter. And so, I, what I would say is that
our first, culturally, our, my first position in leading by example is
that a handshake makes a difference. When you say you're going to do
something, you commit to doing it. That people are first priority,
the community is second priority, or, you know, on level. And the project is a byproduct of all the
work and commitment to make it successful. So we're execution oriented because
we want to move things forward, but not at the sake of the betterment
of the community and the people. Ah, great. I guess so. That's kind of the way
I would describe that. And Deb Dendy: how many, how
many employees do you have? How many people do you
usually have working these Luigi Resta: projects? Currently R Plus has about 50
employees direct and some kind of full time consultants indirect. That's direct employees of, of my company
and then building actual projects or doing environmental consulting and engineering. At any given time lately, we're probably
between 500 and 2000 people that are touching the work that we're doing. Ron Macklin: You just started R Plus. When, when, how long ago
did you start R Plus? Luigi Resta: We, I started our
plus five years ago, but it was really, and I was able to get
kind of a, a fast start because I wasn't starting from the beginning. I have 20 years of experience in renewable
energy development and our plus is the new culmination of my current investor, the
Gardner company, which is a family office. Fantastic. They're based here in Salt Lake City. Which is the reason why I moved out here. They understand the importance
of renewable energy and a diverse energy grid. And so they've been investing in, and
I really brought, once I started R plus energies, I was able to bring people that
I've worked with in the past 15, you know, prior 15 years to the table and to our
plus like Teresa Foxley, as an example. And, and I've really been able
to accelerate and we're, we've built, you know, and completed
construction on some solar projects. We're under construction on other ones. We have solar battery wind and are really
the premier developer of pump storage hydro currently in the United States. Ron Macklin: Well,
that's, uh, that's great. Now, starting out from zero, like you
were the first hire, I'm guessing. Right. And then you had like three or four, when
I first met you, you had three or four people in that, in that business as well. How important is it for culture when
you only have three to four people? And then how does it change when
you move to 50 people or 1500 Luigi Resta: people? That's, that's a great question. Well, the three or four people I did start
out with some interns that were trying to clear their college credential and. And those interns are still
with me five years later. So that should give you a good indication. They've moved up through the ranks and
they have good titles and good salaries. But I would say at the very beginning,
I was more focused on execution and projects than I was specifically
the people and the culture. And I did have one of my early hires say. Luigi, you're too much of
a project company and not enough of a people company. And I clicked and it
was like, you're right. I'm focusing on the wrong thing. So that was like six months into the,
the new company generation and, and I changed and from that moment forward,
it's been people first, project second. And it's remained that way every time. This was one Deb Dendy: of your interns that,
that, that brought this forth Luigi Resta: for you. It was no, it was an actual
employee, but it was one of your Deb Dendy: employees. So the, how can you comment then
on the openness that you've created for your culture, for people to be
able to bring, bring things to you? Luigi Resta: Yeah, well, we have
a weekly all hands call on Friday at 11 o'clock mountain time. And again, we span kind of
the whole us from time zone. So we, we do this open house Fridays
where it's everybody comes together. We talk about successes, challenges. It is new babies being born or vacations. It's kind of an opportunity for people
to talk about anything they want. And it also is a time where we do
Evaluate, you know, company evaluations and what are we doing really good
and where can we improve and so it's very much an open forum and with
execution, getting extra applause because we clap a lot and we started
this at the from the very beginning. So from the first week I started the
company, it was doing these weekly calls. And I end them always by, you know,
it's Friday morning or midday, and I end by saying thank you to everybody
for all the work and effort and, you know, commitment and what they do both
professionally and, and personally, because I feel like we have an intrinsic
requirement to be good citizens. And so I'm trying to breed that
culture that it's not just professional culture, it's personal culture as well. But I end the meetings with make
sure to get out and do something healthy and happy, you know,
over the weekend, every day. So that's like a mantra that we have. Oh, that's awesome. Ron Macklin: That's really great. How important or like, is
there anything you would share? Like when you go to hire people from
new people, like interviewing can be so misleading on what somebody's culture is. How do you go about finding
people to join your company? I'm guessing renewable resources, people,
right, pretty much in demand right now. Yeah. How do you go about that? Luigi Resta: It, that's, it's difficult. Cause if you have renewable energy in your
LinkedIn profile, you're a target for, you know, for recruiters to try and grab you. We have taken a slightly
different approach. My, you know, my background
is as a developer. And so I've really, View development
that has to be from the very beginning to the very end of construction meeting
with the landowners meeting with the county commissioners Going through the
engineering going through finance going through the utility Not a lot of people
have that complete skill set and and I think it's important that you can
meet a farmer Right or a rancher and shake their hand regardless of what
the situation So we've actually hired a lot of younger people that are in
their twenty five to thirty five range. They have some engineering or some kind of
experience and then training them through the process of how do we do development. So we're building an organization
with really qualified people that the goal is that when they leave our
plus to go to work somewhere else. The people can be like,
Oh, you worked at our plus. We definitely want to give you a job
to answer your interview question. I think we, we did start off with
using the a method of hiring. It's a very constrictive, you know, multi
step interview process that has defined questions, soliciting certain answers. We've kind of boiled that
down to asking questions. Are the people self thinkers? Are they creative thinkers? And will they take the
challenge on and execute? And like, if you ask questions around
those based around those concepts, those are the kinds of people we want to hire. Ron Macklin: So self thinker, if
I heard that correctly, right. I'm curious, like, how does
that show up a self thinker? Like what, what is your description of it? And then also like, how does it show up? Luigi Resta: Well, oftentimes it's,
it's asking a question like what was really challenging that you had
to do in your professional career. And they'd say, well, You know, I was,
I was told to do this, okay, they didn't think or I, I figured out that we could
solve the problem by bringing this person in from somewhere else and this,
you know, commodity or whatever it is. And as a result, I was able to
solve that concern and issue, right? They solved a problem by
themselves without having to. Kind of ask somebody else to take
their order from them and the Ron Macklin: other one was creative
How do you notice people that are Luigi Resta: creative? I again, I I would say it kind of goes
to that approach to How do they approach? situations, is it prescriptive and and
mechanical or are they thinking slightly outside of the box and If you ask, you
know, somebody to go in a straight line, are they going to go in a straight line
or are they going to look to the right to the left to see what other options so it's
just kind of reading the, the in between the lines of their answers, I guess. Yeah, I'm Deb Dendy: curious, like,
why does that matter? Why does that matter to you
that that your employees would be able to be creative and self Luigi Resta: thinkers? While our industry, which is a blossoming
industry in renewable, I mean, we're really, as an industry, it's taking off. There's 250, 000 or so
employees in the United States. By the, by 2030, we could
have a million people. What we do is we develop new projects. In rural areas that are not always
supportive and accustomed to what we're trying to do and we need to
have people that feel empowered and capable to take on those challenges
and ultimately what we do is overcome challenges like our whole business. Is to take a step, which then we get run
into a challenge, figure out how to solve the challenge, take another step, run into
a challenge, figure out how to solve it. And then in the end, we end up
building beautiful, great projects that last for generations. Yeah. Thank you. Have you hired Ron Macklin: somebody
that you had to let go? It didn't fit into the culture. Luigi Resta: Yeah, that happens. You can't not do that. I wish that there was a way
to do that, but it happens. What is Ron Macklin: your stand? How do you take care of that? Luigi Resta: Well, it's difficult. It depends on what you hired them for and
the reason that you have to let them go. Ideally, we always try to
work with an individual On a professional development plan. You know, if you notice that they're
not doing what they need to be doing for their job, you work to try and create
a professional development environment where they can improve and understand
where they're missing the mark. So always we try to improve. It's not a de facto. You're not doing your job. We're going to let you go. It's a professional
development environment. First, we get, we have discussions,
then we go through a professional, a PIP, a professional improvement plan. And then ultimately, if they're not
making the changes to be successful in their job, we just have to let them go. And if that's the case, it's very simple. We've gone through this process. You're aware of it. We're aware of it. You're not fulfilling the need. You're not happy. We're not happy. We're going to let you go. Today's your last day. Pull the bandaid off. Ron Macklin: I think that's
a, that's the plan I use. I think that's a very sound plan. Are you looking to strengthen your
relationships, whether personally or professionally, you want to learn how to
build authentic connections faster, or perhaps you're looking to beat employee
burnout, the power of connection. My name is Ron Macklin,
founder of Macklin Connection. And in our workshops, we teach
you the fundamentals of how to do exactly that and more. If you learn more of the
power of your relationships, visit us at MacklinConnection. com. One of the things that we hold as
a group is that every person has all these stories in their head. That's why we call the podcast,
The Story in Your Head. We have all these stories in your
head, and that's really kind of our philosophy, like what is real,
what works, what doesn't work, how we choose to live our life. Then every time we come together as a
group, we bring all those philosophies and they start bumping into each other. Mm-Hmm. , because I've got one, Deb's
got one, Luigi's got one. And all those interactions turn into
what your culture is in that space. So as we look at like developing
those stories, like what does your guys stand for? Developing, not tactical, like,
like how to develop a field or the electronics or the, the, the inverters
or all the technical stuff like that. Right. Or how to Right. But all those other skills that
people need to have, like, what is your stand and how do you go about
keeping people fresh in their training Luigi Resta: and knowledge? Well, I mean, I'll approach this slightly
from a spiritual perspective, I guess, because you say those, you know, the ideas
in your head, the thoughts in your head. One is that when we talk about
those Friday meetings and we have quarterly all hands meetings where
everybody comes together, I talk about the importance of breath. Right? To breathe is to, to live. Without breath, you don't have spirit. Without spirit, you can't
really achieve anything. And so we start off with the fundamental,
like we have to be conscious of what we do and it starts with our breath. And so we, that's part
of our culture here. And then with that, you can start to
improve and develop and learn because you can start to say, well, this
is an area where I want to do more. I want to breathe deeper, right? And so we do spend a lot of time on
professional development within the organization, and we've actually created
something called the R plus University, which is why we have this podcast room
where we have subject matter experts talk about specific items of our business. In like 10 to 15 minute bites and
people, and then they get assigned to our employees so that they can learn more. Hopefully I answered that question. No, it was great. Ron Macklin: Thanks. How is like, how's it working? Like what's your participation rate? How many people are
engaging with the thing? What comes out? Luigi Resta: Well, it's, it was an older
idea that we've just started implementing and I think we have about 75 lesson
plans so far or podcasts that we've done with our subject matter experts. Thanks. It is being adopted as
we and it's developing. So it's a little bit of a
building the plane while flying. Our goal is to get to several
hundred and different levels. And ultimately, what we want to
create is a mastery, a mastery of all the disciplines within
our renewable energy sector. So whether it's land or interconnection,
Or, or PPA or finance that there's these different lesson plans that
you can, you know, create a mastery as you go through them and learn. And so somebody that works in land
might want to learn about finance. They start taking those classes
to get to a point where you could have a mastery of that finance. And then we make all of
ourselves available to everybody. Ron Macklin: So, so it's like I can have
a, sorry, this may not be the right term. I can have a Luigi in my pocket
because I have a cell phone. That has the recordings that
you and other people have made that represent the culture. So you can carry it around
and watch it anywhere. That's exactly Luigi Resta: right. Yep. That's really cool. Wow. And we've, we've had, we've had some
of the, the employees, you know, that have watched the Different courses
say they've watched it two or three times because some of the content
is really deep and complicated. And so the first draft you've, you
know, you hear half of the words and then second time you hear a few more. So it is proving to be a useful tool. That's a Ron Macklin: power of video. Right. Is that, and one of the people
we work with is Cindy and she has a saying, you kind of want
to get it all over you, right? Like, so you want to read something, learn
it, watch it, try it on, watch it again. And it kind of gives it all over you so
that it becomes a part of who you are. Absolutely. That's really, that's really powerful. Thank you. Deb Dendy: Yeah. Luigi, I've been thinking about not
only about your own culture, but the culture of the people that you work
with, the land owners and others that you're in government officials And how
different is that culture from what you're building within your culture? And, and how do, how do I say this? How does it help you to have the
culture you have when you're working with people that have very, maybe
disparate ideas about things? Luigi Resta: Yeah, that, that,
that is the basis for our business. It's really bridging that complexity
because I told you about my background, you know, grew up as an academic hippie. And I find that most of the work that we
do is in rural USA, which is extremely conservative Republican coal communities. And you know, how do you bridge
that difference is a beginning and I try to find common ground. And if you go to rural USA,
what are they concerned about? They're concerned about multi
generational issues like everybody else. They're concerned about sustainability
in the sense that they want their kids to be able to sustain their life in their
community, not necessarily green energy and carbon reduction and environmental. It's about the, you know,
being good stewards to their community for their purposes. And I think what we try to do
with our culture is to understand that we're trying to be good
stewards to provide opportunities. To continue sustaining the goals
and lifestyles that you've had. And that's where we have been
successful as a company because. Everybody here, if they go
out and meet with a farmer, rancher, landowner, legislator,
politician, it's the same thing. It's not totally about the environment. It's about opportunity to have a
sustainable, diverse economy that every stakeholder has a A say in a part in Deb Dendy: and are they usually
receptive to that approach? Luigi Resta: Sometimes it
takes longer than others, but yeah, generally after a while Ron Macklin: they do. That was a nice way of
saying no, not always. Luigi Resta: Sometimes it
takes longer than others. Yeah. I mean, we, we developed one project in
Eastern Utah, uh, Carbon County, Utah. 147 years they've been mining coal
out of the ground, and I started developing this solar project back
in 2016, and they saw solar as a direct assault to their way of life. Understandably, you know, solar is
taking some of the coal jobs or coal, the benefits of coal generation. Fast forward. I just stayed in the community. Fast forward to 2020. We started construction of that
project, and we employed 300 people. 250, 000 of new tax base, you know,
to the community and 2020 was the first year that that community
extracted zero coal out of the ground. So they had no other economic
diversity and it wasn't because of solar that they weren't pulling coal
out is because it got too expensive. And so now the community is
like, Can we have another one? We want you to come back. We understand we, we see the benefit. So it just takes time. Hmm. Yeah, that's great. Thanks. Ron Macklin: So Luigi, what do you
see as the challenges for keeping your culture or growing your
culture in the next five years? Luigi Resta: Time, probably time is
my challenge that the more the bigger you get, the larger you get, and the
more we are pushing to help, you know, we're trying to help the national
energy system transition from coal and natural gas to renewable energy
and dispatchable renewable that is firm, that is reliable and resilient. And we don't have and, you know, There's
a big need today for that and we don't necessarily have the people to help
execute that and you hear about it in The power supply, you know, whatever market
you are and as we hire more people within the organization, I think it's going to
be how much time can we allow and a lot to the culture to keep it and how much
can I a lot, you know, to the people in the culture to make sure that we are still
doing that while executing on the plan. I think that's the probably
the biggest challenge. Deb Dendy: Yeah, so I heard time, but
also numbers, like as you bring in more, more and more people who have their
philosophies, as Ron pointed out, those philosophies could create a challenge. Luigi Resta: Well, and that's why
I think it's really important as a foundation, since we started R Plus five
years ago, we've grown to 50 people. Culture is really embedded in the
current employees and as we hire more people, that culture will rub off. So let's say I have, you know,
somebody hires project manager, hires two more people below them. They have a culture and then that they
kind of rub off on the new employees downstream and they effectively force
that we're going to be good people. And in the bottom line, our culture is
to be good people and do good things. And if you have a problem with
that, you're not a good fit. Yeah, Ron Macklin: got it. That's great. Luigi, this is a chance for you
to ask any questions for us. This is what we do for a living, right? And we help people build
cultures and we do that. What questions do you have for Luigi Resta: us? Well, do you see any areas of
improvement that we, that I can adopt? Wow. I, Deb Dendy: like, I, I have to, I have
to admit, I was so triggered to see. Someone mentioned that you
were project focused or action oriented and people centric. I think in some ways, those two,
someone can create a story that those two are mutually exclusive. And I'm actually impressed about the way
you've been able to maintain that so far. How about you, Ron? What do you see? Yeah, Ron Macklin: well, I don't
see anything Luigi right now. The things that I would be curious
about is how bold do the people feel that they can, they are like, can
they really put their ideas out there? The part of our, as, as a human, right? We have this story about what's
right, what's good, what's real. Well, we also have this story of fear. It's, it's in every human. It's, it's in that space. We're not good enough. We're insufficient, not fast
enough, not strong enough, not smart enough, whatever that story is. And sometimes we have many of them. When you really have the space where
the people around you, you feel like you're believed in, that you're
trusted, you're part of the team, then they can be really creative. I mean, really put themselves out there
and do things that, well, at the moment it may seem like it's like it doesn't
work and then somebody builds on it. And then somebody else builds on it and
then all of a sudden you have a whole new space that you didn't have before. And so the question I have
for you is like, how bold do you see your folks being? Luigi Resta: Yeah, that's,
that's a good question. And it came up recently because we have
different committees that focus on, you know, how can we improve and, you
know, as the leader CEO that ultimately the buck stops here, if something goes
wrong, I take responsibility for it. Everybody knows that I will be the
one, if somebody makes a mistake to take responsibility, but also I
fully empower everybody that intern that first started with making
decisions and being responsible for the result of those decisions. At every level so, you know, they might
not be making a 10 million dollar decision Maybe it's a 200 decision or maybe it's a
time decision But we, we really focus on empowering all of the employees to take
responsibly fit execution at whatever level and then, and then applauding them. And, and if they, if it works
great, they get extra applause. If it was something that they ran
into trouble with, we say, well, where can we have fixed this? And that allows people to have that
individual voice with both their superiors and all the way up to me. Ron Macklin: Thank you. That's, uh, I want to. Anyway, second, that space, what people
really want, what I want is I want to make a difference when I show up to work. I want to have somebody respect me
for who I am and what my ideas are and I get to contribute and that's
more important than the money and to who I hang out with in that space. So I acknowledge you for that. Thank you. Deb, anything else? Deb Dendy: Yeah, I was thinking also about
blame, like blame and responsibility. Because in a closed, in a closed
culture where people might not be so open to ideas, failure
can be seen as something bad. Right. And I got to find someone to
blame because this isn't, this isn't good that I did this. And so that also that open kind of culture
where you can make mistakes and it's okay because you learn from them really
allows people to take responsibility for things as well instead of trying to
pass that buck or blame someone else. Luigi Resta: So that's great. I would add something that's thinking
about this too, is that my brother works for, is a consultant and works for, he's
worked for all the big consulting firms. And their information is power. And as a result, nobody
shares their information. And here we are exactly the opposite where
transparency is power and full, you know, disclosure is, and openness is power. Like, We are sharing so the
collective can be successful, not any specific individual. And I think that's really that goes to
the culture thing that we talked about. But it's something that I mean, we,
we, from myself to my CEO to, to our CFO to Teresa are fully transparent,
open with all the employees about everything that's happening, both good
and bad, because it's important for them to understand what's happening. Deb Dendy: Yeah, that
appears to me as uncommon. Thank you. Ron Macklin: Thanks. Thanks, Luigi. Luigi, any last comments
before we close her down? Luigi Resta: No, this has been great. I've really enjoyed speaking
with both of you guys. Thank you. Thank Ron Macklin: you. You're very welcome. And thank you. Thank you for being on the podcast
and thank you very much, Luigi. Deb Dendy: Thanks for
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