Cultivating energy for systems change (interview with Chris Block)

Listen to the interview on the In Too Deep podcast

It’s not resources per se that allow us to do real important system change, it’s energy. It’s the energy and the urgency that we bring to it that ultimately [create change]. The solutions are all there, the resources are all there. The knowledge of what we need to do, it’s all there, so why isn’t it happening? That’s because there’s not enough energy to bring all those things together in a way that will actually create the change we want.

Jeff (00:48)
Welcome to In Too Deep, the place for meaningful conversations about tackling tough problems. This week we’re joined by Chris Block, who is currently the Chronic Homelessness Initiative Director at Tipping Point Foundation. Previously, he was the CEO of American Leadership Forum (ALF) Silicon Valley, as well as a number of other roles, all really in the thick of it, as a systems leader working on systems change. I think you’ll find he has a fascinating background, with lots of insights to share, so let’s dive in.

Jeff (01:19)
So I think, for me, one of the places I’d love to start is knowing your background. I think one of the really interesting things about you is the journey you’ve been on, and the number of different leadership roles you’ve taken on. Which, to me, you really feel like they’re always embedded in a network lens, a relationship lens, a systems change lens, even before people were popularizing and using that term. Before we get to that. I think where you and I first got connected is in your American Leadership Forum days, but I would love it if you can step back and think of, whether it’s how you were raised or some of the early formative experiences, what comes to mind for you that shaped both the path you ended up taking, and who you are as a leader today.

Chris (02:08)
Yes. Well, interestingly enough, I didn’t start out as a systems thinker. My father was a printer when I grew up. We had a small printshop in a small town, but my degree is actually in social work. When I decided I wanted to do this work, I think it had to do with a printshop being very wonderfully mechanistic. People come in, they need something, you give them what they need, they pick it up and they pay you. It’s a very linear process, it’s very clear, and it’s very one-on-one.

So it made sense that when deciding what I wanted to do, I decided I wanted to be a social worker. I wanted to be a social worker because, quite frankly, I thought I could save the world one person at a time. I did that for a while, and then I realized that there’s just too many people, and I will never get to them all.

Chris (03:18)
So I thought that housing was a way to help many more people. So I got into housing, as a housing developer. Then, I had the same level of dissatisfaction. “Wow, there’s just too many people who need housing. I’ll never build enough.” So, I got into policy and finance, and started to do much more large-scale programmatic and financing development and policy, hoping that I could help to create a large enough context for formal housing so that we could house everyone that needed it. I had the same experience as I had previously, where there’s just too many people who need housing, and then came the increasing awareness of the problems around it, that they run deep.

Chris (04:11)
And so then the realization was, this isn’t about finding ways to build more units, although that’s an important part of the process. But what’s this larger structure that we’re working in, that doesn’t seem to adequately address what people really need? That’s when you (Jeff) and I met, at the American Leadership Forum. To see if there is a way to bring people together that can create the kind of substantive or transformative change that is needed.

Chris (04:44)
As a result of my experience at the American Leadership Forum, I then came back to housing. I think that’s what I took away from that. I think what’s necessary is to be able to work in highly-leveraged contexts, where there’s an opportunity, and where you’re actually embedded or working within a particular system. So, for instance, general leadership programs like the American Leadership Forum are important, but they are particularly important as they teach people who are embedded in particular systems to be more effective in those systems. And so I did that experience, and now I’m back, as you know, in San Francisco, deeply in the middle of the system that has been tasked to deal with homelessness.

Jeff (05:44)
Wonderful. It’s super helpful. So I wonder, before we hop forward beyond the American Leadership Forum experience. I love the frame of this idea of creating network servant leaders, and was wondering if you can say a little bit more about servant leadership in general. What aspects of that continue to feel most important to you, with this broader frame of how those types of leaders can be most effective within those embedded contexts?

Chris (06:15)
Yeah. So the notion of servant leaderships at its core was developed by somebody named Robert Greely, who wrote an essay called Servant Leadership. That was in many ways the foundation of servant leadership work. What he said, and what I think has been borne out, is that the leadership paradigm, at least in the United States, or the dominant leadership paradigm in the United States was that: people who looked like each other and shared a common set of values, or at least could pretend they shared a common set of values because they looked like each other, and were often the same gender, would get into a room and make decisions for everybody else.

Chris (07:05)
What Robert Greeley said was that that leadership paradigm… (And remember, he was writing this stuff just at the time when there was a civil rights movement coming, and environmental movement, it was on the heels of the end of colonialism.) He foretold a time when people would no longer put up with a very specific group of largely men who looked like one another making decisions for everyone else. And he ended up obviously being right. We still struggle with that dominant leadership paradigm, but everywhere you look it’s breaking down.

Chris (07:44)
I think the positive unintended consequence of that is that at the same time where that old leadership paradigm is breaking down, it is being replaced by servant leadership. A leadership which necessarily involves large groups of people engaging in this collective work together. People who often don’t look like one another, and who often don’t share a common life experience. That’s coming just at the same time as where, you could argue, the leadership challenge of the 21st century is how we deal with complexity. How do you deal with solving problems on a large scale, where there’s lots of moving parts?

Chris (08:26)
I would contend that are much more diverse “servant leadership collective destiny paradigm” is ideally suited to making significant change around complexity. Because, if we’re going to solve complexity, then differing perspectives based on different life experiences and different values, particularly with people that are actually most impacted by whatever system we’re trying to change, gives us a much greater chance of actually changing and transforming that system. I like to talk about diversity wrapping its arms around complexity, and that’s what servant leadership allows for. Does that make sense?

Jeff (09:17)
It does. It’s a wonderful visual as well for how that could end up. A lot can change. As you describe your background, and as you’ve been starting with social work, and moving into the housing side and the finance and policy side, I wonder: before this interview I was reading and looking up different articles, and I know there’s work that you have written with Heather McLeod Grant, and also Lance Fors, around the “I, We, It”. Could you draw any parallels there, and also share a little bit more about how you’ve used that or continue to use that frame as helpful for people. Or to continue your thinking about how to be effective in solving complex problems.

Chris (10:00)
Yes. Well you know, if we’re taking a systems or a field view of this, then, at least human systems, are really constructed of individuals acting in smaller groups to impact a much larger system, or a field. That’s the way it stacks up. I think oftentimes our leadership, certainly our leadership training and development, has either been focused on the individual, either the individual’s development and the individual’s interior condition, or a heroic leadership model where the individual is in charge. Or it focused on collaboration and consensus and teamwork. Or it focused on larger systemic outcomes and systemic awareness.

Chris (10:58)
I think to make real change that’s sustainable over time, it takes individuals with good interior condition, operating in effective teams within the context of a much larger system. We call that, in the article as a reference, the “I, We, It” of leadership. That, because of the complexity that we’re dealing with in the current century, we can no longer separate out what kind of a leadership, or which leadership domain we want to work in or play in.

Jeff (11:42)
That’s super helpful. In a ways it’s interesting, because some of the following questions I had for you nest nicely in with each of those categories. One of them we’d love for you to talk a little bit about, is the I, the interior condition work. I know you’re a long-term practitioner of Zen Buddhism, so I’m wondering how that’s informed you, or how you’ve seen it be really powerful for others in the “I”. And then I wonder if we can do the “We” and the “It” more around ‘Smallifying’ some of the systems practice work following that.

Chris (12:16)
Yep. And let me just zoom a little bit here. Because I think that, as individuals working on a larger system, if we’re really going to do some significant transformative work in the larger system, then we have to break down the barriers that we as individuals face. [The barriers] we create between ourselves as individuals and whatever system we’re trying to transform. My Zen practice, of course, gives me a much greater appreciation for that lack of separation. Or at least it gives me much more awareness. And then it comes up in my work, and I’m able to make sense out of it.

Chris (13:03)
The example I often give is that I spent a lot of time walking in San Francisco, and I spent a lot of time walking in San Francisco and talking to homeless folks. Because if I have created this constant barrier, or this ongoing barrier between me and homeless folks, then I don’t have a chance to be a real agent of change in a larger system. I’m on the eight floor of the building in San Francisco, because I work for the Tipping Point Foundation.

Chris (13:32)
Currently we’re doing great work, it’s important work. But the locus of that work can’t be on the eighth floor of an office building in the financial district in San Francisco. There’s a lot of reasons why we’re here now, and that’s fine. But I also need to spend a lot of time in direct relationship [with the homeless population]. And I think often times, Jeff, we say we need to do that so that we know about the situation of homelessness, and we’re aware of the solutions. I don’t actually think that. That’s very secondary.

Chris (14:06)
Quite frankly on that stuff, I think I could Google it. A couple of YouTube videos and I’d be there. The reason it’s important, I think, particularly is because there’s a sense of energy and urgency that I get. It helps the larger system to understand, when I’m in direct relationship with someone who is un-housed. Yeah, there’s a different energy to my work because I spend so much time with people that are directly impacted by this thing that I’m trying to change.

Chris (14:39)
And that, I’ll come back to that a lot I’m sure. Because it’s not knowledge, it’s not strategic thinking, it’s not resources per se that allow us to do real important systems change. It’s energy. It’s the energy and the urgency that we bring to it that ultimately [creates change]. The solutions are all there, the resources are all there. The knowledge of what we need to do, it’s all there, so why isn’t it happening? That’s because there’s not enough energy to bring all those things together in a way that will actually create the change we want.

Chris (15:19)
I don’t know any problem that we have right now on the social side where we can’t fix it because we don’t know what works. In the bay area, in the United States, I don’t know any problem that we have that we can’t fix because we don’t have the necessary resources. Or even: people talk about apathy, and caring, or they say not enough people care about something. Most issues that I think are real important have a big constituency actually, and a pretty well informed constituency.

Chris (15:49)
So then the question is: if we’ve got the knowledge, and we’ve got the resources, and we have the people, or there’s enough caring about it, why don’t we see some more significant progress in those things that matter most to us? I think that’s because we lack the energy. Whatever you want to call it, the energy to connect those dots, the faith that it can happen. The willingness to get out of our own way, to make sure that we’re doing things, that we’re connecting those resources and knowledge and people differently.

Chris (16:23)
I think there’s a whole lots of explanations, but the bottom line for me is that if we create enough energy in the system, to bring those things together in a new way, it happens. And the way that that happens, for me at least, is by spending a fair amount of time with people who are actually on the streets.

Jeff (16:44)
I’d love for you to spend a bit of time just explaining what Smallify is, as well as the work that you’ve been involved in around ‘early childhood work’, and actually getting to that point where you create something out of that energy and urgency. Where you encourage people to actually get to smaller concrete steps and actions that people can take. Could you connect those dots, and explain a little bit more about what Smallify is, and what you’ve learned going through, and being involved in that work?

Chris (17:18)
Sure, absolutely. It’s actually the perfect connection. I worked with a guy, Dave Viotti. We were at this company, Smallify, a certain number of years ago. It was really, in a very particular way was based on this idea that, Dave talks a lot about challenging people to take action. Even to the point of saying, “Define the problem so that the action you take is small enough so you can’t not not take it.” The idea of taking action. Making a difference in whatever way you can as quickly as you can.

Chris (18:03)
Because that’s actually what generates energy. Thinking about something which is necessary, writing about something which is important, creating a plan, finding resources is essential. But what really creates the energy for positive transformative movement is taking action. And so, I think that the effectiveness of Smallify lies in this notion that, what a system needs is energy to create change, and we create that energy by taking action.

Chris (18:43)
And so what happens, for instance, with the ‘early childhood work’, the effectiveness of children having lots of verbal interaction, before birth, at birth, in infancy and beyond, and the effect it has on predictors of success in education. That started out with a small group of people in a design lab, with Smallify. I think the first thing we decided to do was, I think they decided to work with 20 families through an existing program, and use one of these word counters so that parents could gauge their effectiveness.

Chris (19:30)
Kind of the Fitbit notion, that if you give people a rationale for doing something, and then allow them to measure it, they’ll do more of it. Which was certainly successful with parents, and now I think it’s scaled to near 1000, and there’s actually school districts talking about wanting to implement the programs.

Chris (19:53)
Yeah, I’ll say where we do Smallify work, we actually implement “I, We, It” when we’re doing the Smallify work. So, for instance, we spent some time doing some mindfulness work, and we also spend some time with people who are individually determining what’s important to them and why. We also spend a lot of time setting up the days so people can work effectively in groups. Small groups, three to five usually. We also spend a significant amount of time making sure that people are aware of where they are in the system, and how they want the system to move as a result of their work.

Jeff (20:33)
Say a little bit about some of the ongoing challenges you still run into in terms of Smallify, or what’s some of the preconditions work that you need to get to, before something like that can really be transformative for some of the types of projects that people listening would be hoping to tackle?

Chris (20:54)
I think we run into the same kind of… I don’t know if it’s a challenge, or it’s a problem, or… I think normally when I see people who are working in the Smallify labs, I think by and large people make a positive difference in whatever realm they’re working in. So, we were working with some folks from social services in Hawaii. They wanted a much more transparent information sharing system in their work, because that could make for much more effective work with kids.

Chris (21:34)
But initially they were able to get a system where, I’m not going to get this exactly right, but where one group was able to share birth certificate identification with another workgroup, and it ended up with significantly more kids getting on Medicare, I believe, or whatever the companion program is in Hawaii. So, it had a direct impact on lots of kids getting better healthcare. And I think there’s lots of examples of, most people who come into a lab have that kind of success. We’ve identified a problem, and we’re able to solve it.

Chris (22:12)
The bigger challenge is whether that is leveraged to create larger systemic change. So I think you’re seeing with the early childhood work that that small group prototyping with 20 families is going to lead to some, it’s already leading, and has the potential to change in a significant way how early childhood interaction happens in Hawaii. So that’s the kind of leveraged activity that makes some significant change.

Chris (22:48)
But in order to do so… Making big change always requires, at some point, the external environment to cooperate. So, we can have the resources, we can have the idea, we can have the right people in place, but part of that is the external environment, at some point, has to cooperate or has to want to partner. Part of the challenge, I think, for people in the Smallify labs is to make sure that they have a sustainable working model that allows them, when it makes sense, to continue working on these. Making small bets, and then the small bets get larger, and they keep making those bets, until the larger environment cooperates, and we can see some large-scale change.

Chris (23:39)
So, for instance, there’s a group doing green fee work, and it’s developing a fee for conservation in Hawaii. They’ve got a great concept, and they have a lot of support. Then at some point, if they’re going to actually be able to create a fee which generates significant revenue to make a difference in conservation in Hawaii, the external environment will have to cooperate in a significant way to create that funding stream.

Jeff (24:08)
I know you’ve been exposed a bit to systems, I’d say specifically the systems mapping practice, of the TOG systems practice, and I think you had done some of that at ALF before as well.

Chris (24:20)
Yep.

Jeff (24:21)
Could you just say a little bit more about what you’ve seen as being effective there? Also, what are some of the challenges, and just what your hopes are for how that continues to evolve and support people who are trying to make progress in these complex challenges?

Chris (24:36)
I think the first thing, importantly, there’s no doubt in my mind that greater systems awareness, and greater field awareness is necessary if we’re going to make significant progress on complex problems. Because I just think we have too many examples where we’ve taken simple solutions to complex problems, and either have created more problems, or not made nearly as significant progress over time that we want to. The good news is, we don’t really have a choice. Then the question becomes, what’s the most effective way to exercise that choice?

Chris (25:14)
And I think there’s a continuum, right? In our systems, there’s a continuum from, we bring people together, then we have them all stand up in a room, and we give them some systems awareness exercise, right? We say, “Okay, now as a result of this 90 minute exercise, you know that when you’re doing your work you should have a greater appreciation for the players in the system, and how the system operates at some macro level.

Chris (25:45)
Then there’s the other side of that continuum, which is, we take a long time, we talk to a lot of people, and we draw very complicated maps with lots of causal loops, which show us the system in its most comprehensive and purest form. We’ve talked about this before, I think what we’re all struggling with is to try to find the middle ground in our systems work. So how can we create larger systems awareness, based on the real systems that people are working in, without creating so much complexity in our systems mapping itself that we actually don’t create any greater awareness to the participants or the practitioners in the system.

Chris (26:38)
I think that’s the place where Kumu plays most effectively. How do you create real systems awareness based on real systems that people are actually working in, without creating either a process or an outcome that’s so complicated you actually add to the complexity? I think that’s where I am with it. I do think we can be… Well, overly complex, I think we have that down when it comes to systems mapping. We know how to do very extensive, very complicated maps that are really hard to figure out. I mean, my sense is we do less and less of those actually [at Smallify].

Chris (27:16)
We run the risk, though, of oversimplifying it, and I think certainly I run the risk of that. Systems are complicated, and in order to understand them it takes some intense focused effort. I think that’s where Kumu plays in. I think Kumu has done a pretty good job walking that middle path. “We’re not going to let you off the hook with our systems thinking, and we’re not going to completely overwhelm you either.”

Jeff (27:51)
One last topic I wanted to spend some time on is, I know for you it’s a transition into your role at Tipping Point Foundation. I think it’s the first time if not one of the first times of you being in the role of funder. So, both would love just to hear any additional background that seems relevant to share about Tipping Point Foundation, and just some of what you’ve learned also in that role, that has shifted or changed your thinking about, again, how to be effective, knowing we have so many different types of stakeholders who are involved, trying to work on any one of these challenges?

Chris (28:24)
Yep. Bear with me, I think I want to tell just a couple examples or stories that might be kind of illustrative about how it’s working for me. Maybe the first is, I want to just talk a little bit about how, I retired for three years, and spent a lot of time just walking around San Francisco with my dog, talking to homeless folks and drinking coffee. Then last year I went to a place, a nonprofit locally, called Episcopal Community Services.

Chris (28:55)
We were responsible for the start up of adult coordinated entry, which is a major systems change effort in San Francisco, to assess homeless people, and then prioritize homeless people for housing based on their level of acuity or vulnerability. It has a chance to have real, from a few standpoints, have real significant benefit to the system. First of all, it will maximize the effectiveness of the system, because the most vulnerable people will be getting the most extensive services. But then, even more importantly from a systems change standpoint, it creates transparency in not only who we’re housing, but who we’re not housing, and have no plans to house. So I think that’s the context I was working in last year.

Chris (29:42)
I’ll just tell a little story about how I think systems change happens at the ground level, if you’re aware of the larger system. A primary part of our work with getting people what we call housing-ready: which means that they have all the documents they need, and there is an available unit, we move people into that available unit. I was talking to a housing stabilizer, and he was saying that we were having trouble getting someone out of a shelter because they needed a certain kind of identification, and that identification was going to cost $36. It was hard for the staff at that institution to get that $36.

Chris (30:30)
So I handed the guy 40 bucks, just out of my wallet, and I said, “Go get that guy’s ID, and get him out of the shelter and into housing.” So then when that happened… That happened. He took the 40 bucks, he did it. Well then a couple days later he came to me and said, “You know, that 40 bucks was helpful, but actually, if I look at my caseload, there’s six people who are in the same situation, and I talked to the other social workers and there’s 36 people that could benefit from another $40.”

Chris (31:05)
So we created a line item in our budget to pay for that kind of ID procurement. Then we went to the city and explained the situation, and we had gotten some money from the city that we were able to reposition in order to do that. Now the larger discussion that they’re having at the city level is, why does the city, why do developers of housing for homeless people require these relatively small fees, which then make it difficult for homeless people to move in as quickly as possible? And is it possible to actually create a fund so that whatever risk is being mitigated by these small fees could actually be covered by a larger systems wide fund that would actually make the system more effective and address the risk concerning the developers?

Chris (32:08)
That’s the kind of “I, We, It” work that I think is necessary to change systems. And we had the same experience last week. We were pushing for a new method of housing homeless folks. We had brought in a provider a year ago as a funder. This is where I think, more specifically to your question, as a funder we should be doing some high risk leveraged investments in the system, that at least gives the system potential to do work significantly different and more effectively.

Chris (32:50)
We had a particular idea about the way that we can subsidize housing in the private markets, in order to house more homeless people faster. So the first thing we did was create a prototype, using the Smallify approach: “Let’s just do it, and see if we can help some people.” We did it with the [inaudible 00:33:15] approach, we did it with a particular provider.

Chris (33:21)
And we said to the provider, “We’d like to significantly scale this effort up. What kind of infrastructure would you need to scale this up?” We actually provided funding for them to create that infrastructure before we had the necessary agreements with the city to scale up this effort. But just last week, because the city was challenged in a particular way to do housing the way that they had traditionally done it, we had a pretty significant systems breakthrough, in that the city has provided a significant amount of funding for us to be able to do this new model. And we’re able to exercise that opportunity quickly through the infrastructure that we’d previously created.

Chris (34:06)
So what we’re trying to do at Tipping Point, is to find out where they’re trying to leverage points in the system, and make some risky investments in those areas, hoping that then we can get the larger system to respond to those investments.

Jeff (34:22)
Great example too, of some of the smaller changes, but made within a systems awareness actually leading to some of these larger ripple effects. Where you could imagine people thinking like, “Hey, okay, well changing that one fee isn’t going to end up having these ripple effects,” but done in the right way and with the right relationships ends up creating this really powerful change.

Chris (34:47)
I think part of that is just, what I was referring to before, whatever I can do to create more energy in the system and then to try to build on that energy, I’ll do. So that’s the example of the 40 bucks. There was something very powerful about just being able to hand that person two 20s. It’s the kind of thing that June Holly talks about all the time, doing these kind of short, very small investments. I don’t know if she’s talking $40, but how you do small investments that move people in a certain way that then can help to energize a part of the system and lead to us being much more aware of what needs to change in that system.

Jeff (35:31)
I wonder if we could return to some of the stuff that actually came up when I was doing a little bit more research around ALF. One of the quotes or comments that had come up was the frame of, ‘an opportunity for established leaders to form deep relationships across sectors being essential to community change’. I just wonder whether that focus, and specifically that idea of really deep relationships but cross-sector in nature, how much of that continues to come up? How much of that is coming up in the Tipping Point work, and how much that’s a focus of some of just the ongoing frame you have for how to be effective in this context?

Chris (36:09)
It can really complicate this work that we’re doing. I mean, a system isn’t anything but an interlocking set of relationships. And so to the degree that we are in right relationship, we have an effective system. And to the degree that our relationships are distorted or unhealthy, then we have a system that’s not optimizing its potential to create the kind of outcomes we want.

Chris (36:36)
And so I think I spend, in my own work, even in the systems change work last week, it would be easy to confuse the idea that we had a good idea on how to house people, we had money in order to actually implement that model, and we’ve created an infrastructure with a partner, so that they could actually implement the model. So if you’re just outside looking in you might say, “Okay, it was the money, and it was the infrastructure, and it was the idea that created the opportunity for change last week.”

Chris (37:12)
Those at some level, some very real level would be true, but really the most important thing was that there are two or three people in that room who have significant relationships with one another, so we could trust each other enough to try this new thing, even though it carries some risk. And I think to our work, we spend a lot of time, definitely.

Chris (37:38)
And what I mean by relationship is that you know somebody’s name, and you have some appreciation for how many kids they have, and what they like to do on the weekends, and where they went to school. It’s that kind of relationship building that I think is necessary to create big change in very risky endeavors. Because what normally happens is we get people in a room, and we develop this very significant plan, but we don’t spend any time putting people in right relationship with each other.

Chris (38:17)
So then we develop these very high risk plans, and at some point in this really significant transformative work that we’re doing, it’s like we stand at the edge of the precipice. We’re altogether standing at the edge of the precipice, and we have to decide whether to jump off or not. And the only way we’re all going to jump off is we lock arms and lock hands, and then make the jump. But then what happens is, because we’re not in a good relationship with each other, often times what happens is we take two steps back and say, “If only we had enough money to implement the plan,” and then we go off and do the same work we’ve been doing in the same way for a long time.

Chris (38:54)
And yet when you see significant efforts that have made a real difference in the world over time, it’s because people have a very much different relationship. And so when they have to jump off together, they’re able to actually do that.

Jeff (39:14)
I love that. Such a great picture. So, Chris, super appreciate all the time. I think I just have one more question for you before we hop off, which is just thinking of the notion of the importance and power of having great questions to help us pause and think about things. What’s one of your favorite questions, if people are working and doing this type of work that we’ve talked about, what would you want people to be thinking about or wrestling with as one of the takeaways from this call?

Chris (39:44)
Oh, wonderful. This is good, because I’ve been actually coming up with… I believe in this so much. I’ve been here a couple months at Tipping Point, and I’ve been struggling with, what is the question I want to answer when I’m at Tipping Point? So, your request is timely. We’re involved with transforming the homelessness response system so that it is effective at addressing the problem of homelessness in San Francisco. The question I keep asking myself is: “do we have a solution space that’s as large as the problem we’re trying to solve?”

Jeff (40:26)
That’s great. Thank you, Chris. Any other last words before we hop off?

Chris (40:30)
No, that’s it. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Jeff (40:34)
Appreciate it too. Thank you so much for taking the time, Chris.