The crew keeps the lights on.
Who develops the crew?
Public power and electric co-ops train harder than almost any industry on earth — apprenticeships, safety, hot line school, certifications, hours of it every year. Nearly all of it is technical. A lineman can be ten years in, running a crew, and never once have been sent to anything about leading people.
These formats are free, they run inside a safety meeting or a shift change rather than requiring a class, and nobody needs to have read the book first, including whoever is running it.
Where this comes from. Chris Sund is a keynote speaker and the bestselling author of You Are Capable of More. He is based in Fremont, Nebraska, in public power country, and has spent fifteen years leading organizations built on crews and shift work — people who do the actual job and get measured on numbers decided somewhere else.
What this is
not.
Utilities get sold a lot of programs. Here is what this does not pretend to be.
It carries no credit, it replaces nothing on your compliance calendar, and it should never be run instead of a safety briefing. Different job entirely.
No resilience module aimed at people working storm restoration. The material is direct and it assumes a room of adults who would rather be told the truth.
Fifteen minutes at a morning tailboard, an hour at a monthly safety meeting, or a cohort over ten weeks. You do not need to pull a crew off the system for a day.
No budget request, no vendor, no board approval. Print it and run it. It is free and it stays free.
The concepts that land
with a crew.
There are ten in the book. These four are the ones that get a room of linemen and operators to stop looking at the clock.
Lead Before You Are Asked
This industry promotes its best hands. The apprentice who became a journeyman who became a foreman, chosen for being excellent on the pole, then handed a crew and a set of people problems nobody trained for. Meanwhile the strongest person on most crews is already leading it without the title.
The single best session for foremen, crew leaders, and anyone on a promotion track.
Read the concept →Own It. Every Day.
Weather, load, the age of the system, a rate case, a decision made at a board meeting nobody in the truck attended. Every one of those can be completely true, and none of them move.
This session separates the accurate explanation from the useful one, without ever asking a crew to pretend the constraints are not real.
Read the concept →Seek Truth. Not Praise.
Crews work together for decades and the culture rewards not making a fuss. That is exactly why a younger hand will watch something being done in a way they are not sure about and say nothing.
In an industry where the cost of an unspoken concern can be someone’s life, this is not a soft-skills session. Run it with a crew that likes each other and has stopped saying the awkward thing.
Read the concept →Leave People Better
Public power is generational work. People spend whole careers at one co-op, train the apprentices who replace them, and serve members they see at the grocery store.
Success is what you achieve. Significance is who is better because of you. A strong closing session for an annual meeting or a retirement-heavy crew passing the work on.
Read the concept →Five formats,
five calendars.
Same material at different depths. Start with whatever your people will realistically be in a room for.
The Lunch and Learn
All ten concepts at about five minutes each, with a full run of show and the exact question to ask for every one. Nothing to prepare beyond printing a page, and nobody needs to have read the book.
Works for: a monthly safety meeting slot, an all-hands, a district meeting, or a session at a statewide association conference.
Open the Guide →The Workshop
One concept worked properly instead of ten skimmed. A question on the board, silent reflection, small groups, and the crew deciding together what it will change. Sixty, seventy five or ninety minutes.
Works for: a foreman and crew leader session, an operations meeting, or the hour version run twice so both crews get it.
Open the Guide →The Book Club Guide
One session per concept, written so anyone in the group can run it rather than requiring a facilitator. Honest questions, one that asks more of the room, and a challenge to carry into the month.
Works for: a foreman group meeting monthly, an apprentice cohort, or a management team. Everyone needs a copy of the book.
Download the Guide →The Boot Camp
All ten condensed into a day. Each concept runs the same loop: short teach, silent reflection, table discussion, decision. The group leaves with a written plan rather than a handout.
Works for: a leadership retreat, a supervisor development day, a board and management planning session, or the day before an annual meeting.
Open the Guide →The 10-Week Program
The deep version. One concept a week with real life in between, so people try something and report back. This is the one for building the bench rather than running an event.
Works for: an emerging leader or foreman development track, an apprentice cohort, or a group pulled from several co-ops through your statewide association.
Open the Guide →Running it
on a crew.
Things Worth Knowing Before You Start
Attach it to a meeting that already exists. The monthly safety meeting is the single best slot in this industry. Everyone is already in the room, on the clock, expecting to sit through something. Take fifteen minutes of it rather than creating a new meeting nobody wants.
Do not run it during storm season. If crews are working restoration or the forecast is bad, this lands as the office not understanding the job. Wait for a normal week.
The foreman participates, not presents. Every guide is written so the person running it answers the questions too. On a crew that matters more than usual, because the room takes its cue entirely from whether the boss is being straight.
Expect it to be quiet at first. This is not a talkative industry in a meeting room. Ask the question, then let the silence sit far longer than feels comfortable. The answer that comes after the long pause is the one worth having.
Include everybody. Operators, dispatch, meter techs, the office staff, warehouse. The material is about how a person operates rather than about the trade, and the people who never get sent to anything tend to take it the most seriously.
Leadership starts long before anyone gives you the title.
Or bring Chris
to the room.
Statewide association conferences, annual meetings, safety days, foreman and supervisor conferences, and management retreats. Bulk copies can be paired with a keynote so people leave with the material rather than the memory of it.
Bring Chris In
The keynote for a statewide conference, an annual meeting, a safety day, or a supervisor conference.
Start a Conversation →Choose Your Sessions
Pick the concepts that fit your crews instead of taking all ten, and get a session order back.
Build It →Free Guides for Managers
Seventeen guides for foremen and supervisors: first 90 days, hard conversations, retention, recognition and accountability.
Browse Them →The Printables
Worksheets for all ten concepts, ready to print for every seat in the room.
Print Them →Seen On
Chris has taken this material onto morning television in seven markets, and writes for Forbes and Inc.
When I’ve got something worth sending.
Just a story or an idea I picked up that I think will help you.
Sometimes that’s twice in a month. Sometimes it’s not for a while.