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NBAT Podcast

@neverbeenaskedthat

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The questions leaders never get asked.
Long-form conversations. Real stories.
A podcast by @b_betold

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What if the story someone is born into isn't the one they're supposed to finish?

Today's guest is President Tim Downs, Ph.D., the 12th president of Minnesota State University Moorhead. Someone who has spent 40 years learning to read potential past what the record says, and building institutions willing to bet on that read.

From failing first grade to leading a regional university through its fastest enrollment growth in decades, his path has not been typical. He calls himself an accidental administrator. But 40 years of deliberate, principled work tells a different story.

A lot of this conversation comes back to what it actually means to bet on a person. Because without that, you are running a transaction. Not building anything that lasts.

Curious what you think we should have asked.

Full episode is out now, link in bio. by @neverbeenaskedthat

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21 minutes ago

Never stop refining your actions and behavior.

President Tim Downs explains what losing a race in middle school taught him about life. Look at your actions, assess the outcome, then determine how to improve next time. One relay is all it took him to remember never to stop to look at the competition or you’ll lose the race.

The review is not the punishment. The review is the point.

What is the version of "you looked" that you keep having to relearn?

Full episode out TOMORROW, link in bio. by @neverbeenaskedthat

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a day ago

He was 23 years old in his best JCPenney suit sitting in a corner office he had no idea what to do with. The first smart move he made was finding the person who actually knew how things worked and getting out of her way.

Full conversation out now. 🎙️ by @neverbeenaskedthat

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2 days ago

Excellence sounds like a compliance word. He found a better way to mean it.

Jon Riewer explains the reframe that changed how Eventide thinks about one of its core values: ICARE Integrity, Compassion, Accountability, Respect, and Excellence. Jon says the one that troubled him most was the E for Excellence. There is a lot of work in senior care, he says, that does not feel excellent some days. It is a people business, and it does not always go the way you want. The reframe: excellence is not a standard to hit. It is the courage to keep trying to do better.

The values that hold an organization together are the ones that get harder to live as you grow, not easier.

How do you define excellence?

Full episode out now, link in bio. by @neverbeenaskedthat

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4 days ago

“It’s a great day today. But I’m always in the back of my mind going, okay, what’s going to go wrong next?”

Jon Riewer explains what sustained crisis readiness actually feels like from the inside. He has led Eventide through the 2009 flood scare, a global pandemic, and more than two decades of growth. His framing has always been to channel the adrenaline into something forward. What he describes here is the other side of that: you do not get to turn the readiness off. It just becomes the background noise of every good day. After both crises, he says the organization came out the other side with bandwidth it did not know it had. It just hated having to find out that way.

There is a version of resilience that looks like strength from the outside and feels like constant vigilance from the inside.

What does it cost you to stay ready?

Full episode out now, link in bio. by @neverbeenaskedthat

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7 days ago

Dear Next Guest… Would you rather live close to mountains or oceans?

He picked the ocean, for the pull of it, the sense that something is on the other side. But he only goes about knee-deep and that is far enough.

What do you think - mountains or ocean? We want to know. by @neverbeenaskedthat

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8 days ago

He walked into his first management job ready to lead. Eileen, the veteran director of nursing, was not impressed.

Jon Riewer explains the lesson from his first management role that he has never been able to outgrow. He went in thinking he was there to take charge. What he discovered was that the people below him on the org chart were the ones who actually knew what was happening. He needed them far more than they needed him. Not as a philosophy he chose, but as a practical reality he had no choice but to accept.

"We still need all of them a lot more than they need me. And everybody knows it." Thirty years later, he says nothing about that has changed.

Who taught you the most important thing you know about working with people?

Full episode out now, link in bio. by @neverbeenaskedthat

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9 days ago

23 years into leading the same organization and he'll tell you straight: the longer he does it the more obvious it becomes how much he still doesn't know. That's not insecurity. That's the whole point.

Full conversation out now. 🎙️ by @neverbeenaskedthat

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11 days ago

He never filled out an application. He just kept showing up where the people were.

Today’s guest is Jon Riewer, President and CEO of Eventide Senior Living Communities. Someone who started mopping floors at sixteen in a small-town care center and never really left.

From growing up in Frazee down Highway 10, to leading an organization that serves 2,300 seniors daily across three states, his path did not follow a plan. He just kept going back to where the people were. He has held five or six different jobs inside one organization over twenty-four years, and he will tell you with a straight face that Eventide would probably never hire someone like him today.

A lot of this conversation comes back to what it actually means to stay, and what it does to a person who builds a life inside an institution rather than above it. Because without that, none of what he built would look the way it does.

Curious what you think we should have asked.

Full episode out now, link in bio. by @neverbeenaskedthat

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14 days ago

He didn’t plan this career. He gravitated to where he was included (and where the candy jars were.)

Jon Riewer explains how a care center hallway became the start of a twenty-four-year career. His mother was the Director of Nursing at the local care center in Frazee. After school, that was just where you went to wait. What he found there were residents who had time to listen, who genuinely cared about a kid wandering the halls. It became an extended family. He picked up a mop at sixteen, and he has been going back ever since. His best days, he says, are still the ones when he is back on campus with residents.

Sometimes the work that shapes you most is the work you stumbled into.

Was there a job or a place you fell into that ended up defining you?

Full episode out tomorrow, link in bio. by @neverbeenaskedthat

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15 days ago

Most people hear the word innovation and think technology or disruption or the next big thing. Joe Raso has a simpler definition.

And it changes the way you think about every problem in front of you.

Full conversation out now. 🎙️ by @neverbeenaskedthat

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16 days ago

n the 1980s, Austin, Texas was the same size as Kalamazoo, Michigan. One of the people who changed that had a simple answer for how.

For 40 years, Austin's secret sauce was saying yes. Not a silver bullet. A willingness to connect people and engage.
Joe sees the same DNA in Fargo: a market big enough to offer a lot, small enough that you can still get connected into it. The super connectors are the infrastructure.

Most of this stuff is simple. It's just not easy.

Is your community a yes community?

Full episode out now, link in bio. by @neverbeenaskedthat

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18 days ago