Deep leadership is a play on Jon’s history; he was serving officer aboard a nuclear submarine during the cold war. Our podcast is about the transition between services and civic street. But it is also about the application of a leadership style.

My guess on the show today is John Rennie; he runs a successful business manufacturing critical components for electrical utilities. He’s also a podcast host and the author of three books on leadership.Jon was born to a family in Manchester, New Hampshire, just north of Boston. It is a blue-collar town, and people do not leave. He was born to young parents with equally young grandparents. His Grandfathers had both served in WW2 and talked fondly of military service.

While John was born to a loving family, life was abundant, but funds were limited, and while he father extolled the virtue of getting to college. That opportunity would only be possible with a scholarship.He was fascinated by engineering and submarines and expressed the idea of becoming a serving officer.

Nobody wants to be an officer on a submarine.

The high school career person was surprised but did his research and found an opportunity. The Navy had a scholarship degree program which led to officer training. He got accepted, did his four years of college, achieved an engineering degree, and entered the Navy as a commissioned officer.

Our conversation is a fascinating insight into the life of a nuclear submarine, but it’s more than that. It’s what John learned from his experience in the military and how we took that out into the business world.

I often hear from people who have served that transitioning between service life and Civic Street is very difficult. Jon did struggle for seven years, but he applied his navy principles to his work, and the rest is history.He led eight manufacturing businesses for three global companies for 22 years until he started his own business manufacturing company producing critical components for electrical utilities. He has written three books on leadership and hosts the Deep Leadership podcast.