Why the Smartest Leader Usually Fails

0:00John Jantsch:So what if the reason your company hits a ceiling has nothing to do with strategy, funding, or market conditions, and everything to do with who you think the genius in the room is supposed to be?

0:21John Jantsch:Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantz, and my guest today is Jason Wild. He's an executive advisor and co-author of a book we're going to talk about today, Genius at Scale, How Great Leaders Drive Innovation. It was published by HBR Press. Jason spent more than 20 years in senior roles at Microsoft, IBM, and Salesforce and led projects in 40 countries and co-founded Wild Innovation Consulting. And this wasn't in your bio, I don't think, but I found you had some television credits, movie credits. So can we start there? We can start wherever you want, John.

1:01It's great to end your show, yes. My first career was Hollywood. My mom was the classic stage actor, a stage mom, trying to get me and my brother to be famous. So yes, believe it or not.

1:13John Jantsch:That's awesome. So you started with Mr. T in something? Is that one I found, maybe? It did. I did. It's yeah. Going back to the eighties, but at the peak of his, his fame in the A-team, did the co-star at a movie, was the CBS movie of the week called The Toughest Man in the World. You can find it on Amazon or even YouTube. I think actually a few years ago, I found a YouTube clip where whoever uploaded the clip said it was the worst fight scene in Hollywood history. And I agree. Well, I have that permanent record for you. All right. So let's dive into the book. The core idea is that the idea of the genius at the top, the boss, is really now out of date and what's needed now is genius at scale.

1:58John Jantsch:Can you make that concrete really for a business owner, say, running a team of 10, 20 people? Yeah, absolutely. And this is a book that when my co-author invited me to write the book almost 10 years ago, I kind of thought it would be the book writing version of the Gilligan's Island, right? Maybe a two, three, three-year tour. And here we are, believe it or not, almost 10 years later in thousands of hours and worth every minute. So basic premise was I was not interested. I'm a practitioner. I've been leading projects in teams, trying to do meaningful work around technology, digital transformation, cultures of innovation around the world with large companies as well as startups.

2:39And honestly, at this point in my career, John, I was not interested in just writing a book to write a book. But I was really lucky to start my career at IBM when Lou Gerstner was still CEO there and got to interact with Lou a little bit. And it was a really important moment, I think, for me at that part of my career because IBM was very client-focused, very customer-centric. And that was ingrained, you know, deeply in my brain. And I was surrounded literally by geniuses. I was there when IBM did Watson, you know, on Jeopardy. I got to know the guy who, you know, invented the relational database.

3:14eventually a small company called Oracle monetized and create a nice little business around. And, you know, as I was working on these projects and, you know, long story short, I was seeing these incredibly talented people literally pour their life, you know, into these projects or whatever it is they were working on, but accepting very low success rights, five, 10, 15%. And, you know, I bought into the same notion that innovation was all about coming up with the best idea, that it was about, you know, the lone genius, the person with the biggest title and the power. But over time, I became really curious about what really did set out in a small company or a big company.

3:56You know, why did some ideas, you know, go far enough along to actually change the way that we live or work, change a system and others didn't. And it kind of became a little bit of my career and life passion. And so many of these people that I really looked up to just approaching it kind of the wrong way, falling in love with the ideas, focusing on the world of innovation. And maybe they get lucky or there's some heroic results, but the real organizations or teams that were great at innovating time and time again were the ones that really focused more on the conditions and the environment around them.

4:33And so, you know, we started talking about Mr. T. It took me 40 years for my life to almost come full circle in a way. But, you know, Genius at scale in some ways is meant to kind of put down this notion of senior leaders stop looking to hire that A-team player and instead focus on building an A-team. And I think it sounds very small and subtle, but it's a big part of the difference. And then when I looked at it, there are lots of books on innovation, of course, and lots of books on leadership, but there are no books about how do you actually lead innovation, which to me was really fascinating because it's one of those words or topics that lots of people lean forward, they're interested, they're curious, but there was a lot more opinions and actual science around how do you actually create those conditions as a leader for people to be willing and able to want to innovate.

5:27John Jantsch:And my co-author's last book, it was published about 12 years ago, focused a lot on companies like Pixar and eBay, right? Super creative, you know, digital native companies where innovating is not easy, but it's certainly easier than being, you know, a mom and pop small company, right? Or a legacy company that, you know, was founded 80 years ago. So in Genius of Scale, the book that we wrote, we, you know, we focused on companies in regulated environments, healthcare, banking, as well as startups, startups in Africa and Japan to really shine a light on, you know, everyone's context is different, but really the role of leaders is to create the environment where innovation organically thrives as a result of the community versus constantly trying to chase the next shiny object.

6:17John Jantsch:So a lot of my listeners are small business owners, mid-sized business owners, founders. And I think that the very nature of that is like, I created this thing. I'm the genius. It starts there. And so then I'm going to build a team and everybody looks to me to continue to say what's next. And you really introduce the evolution, I guess, that leader needs to go through and even some roles that they need to take on. You know, ABC, you've got a good, like all consultants. So you have a good framework there for architect, bridger, and catalyst. Walk me through a little bit of what those roles are.

6:51John Jantsch:Maybe the challenges for a lot of business owners to step into those roles. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, you know, for small businesses, you know, even large businesses these days, you know, doing business in the past, I don't think it was ever easy. It was easier. And, you know, literally the world is shifting two or three feet underneath our feet, you know, every single week. So there's so much to keep up with. And, you know, so legacy leadership was, you know, some would call kind of pathfinding to your point, whether you're, you know, the owner of a small business or a Fortune 500 company.

7:27And that legacy kind of leadership is change management, setting the direction, articulating the vision, hopefully very clearly, and then convincing as many people as quickly as possible to get in the car and follow you to that destination. And maybe that was okay when you had the luxury of time. But the world is changing really quickly, and you could argue that it's never going to be as slow as it is right now. It's only going to accelerate. So part of what the book is about is this, what we're calling wayfinding. If classic leadership was pathfinding, right, setting that direction, right, and trying to remove those barriers, which, you know, is even more important to small business owner because your margin of error is even less, right, than a large company.

8:14It's very uncomfortable for many leaders, you know, regardless of kind of your pedigree and your background. But I do think that small business owners are going to be more ready and in a better position to be able to pursue this. And what we talk about is more wayfinding. And part of the uncomfort is, how do you lead when we're surrounded by fault? Because it's not just artificial intelligence that's changing the world. There's geopolitical aspects. There's supply chain. There's other technologies, quantum, 5G, blockchain. All of these things are like feeding off of each other that makes predicting the future even more difficult than it was before.

8:54So this notion of wayfinding is, you know, figuring out what the destination is while you're on the path. And to your point, we identified common patterns. I mean, three very distinct roles that leaders play in cultures that have proven that they can innovate routinely in time and gap. and not just get lucky once or in the right place at the right time. So the ABCs, which, yes, are convenient and memorable, but did kind of like surface naturally out of our research and work. So first and foremost, the foundation is the architect. And the architect's job is really about building community. And what I touched on a little bit earlier, it recognizes that innovation is a social process.

9:36And especially in small companies, you can't mandate innovation. You have to invite people to want to co-create the future with you. And we define innovation very broadly, not just disruptive innovation, but anything that's new and useful, which I think makes it even more applicable to the world of small business. So architects do a good job of creating environments where people are both willing and able to want to contribute. There's the psychological safety. They don't feel like there's going to be a negative reaction when you challenge or come up with a new idea. So that's why that's the foundation.

10:13John Jantsch:That sounds like culture to me. It's a lot about culture. It is totally about culture. And I think in a way where the culture is continuously learning and experimenting too. And I think especially for small business owners, right, your business is not too big or too small to at least have a couple of working hypotheses. And I think that's what great architects do is they have working hypotheses and they encourage and empower others to have working hypotheses of at least one or two big questions this calendar year that we want to get smarter about. And those questions will lead us to better questions.

10:50So architects is a foundation. And I think we realize that, you know, that's important, but it's not enough. And then the next one is the Bridger beat. Bridger is really about focusing on building partnerships. And Bridgers, you know, tend to be more junior people in the organization. And I really feel, having been a practitioner and out there doing the work, the Bridger is the unsung hero of innovation, where the architects maybe get the award and Steven Spielberg and the Oscar, and then we'll get to the catalyst, which is about igniting movements that literally change the world. The Bridgers are usually behind the scenes doing really tough work and recognizing that But most innovation stalls not at the ideation phase of coming up with the ideas, but the integration phase.

11:40Human integration, system integration with partners. So these bridges are, you know, focused on these boundaries or these seams where lots of good ideas go off to die. And one of my previous employers actually called this area Death Valley as if it was a place that was a badge of honor if you survived it. So great architects and bridgers kind of flip the lens and create environments where it's not about surviving Death Valley, but it's about creating.

12:08John Jantsch:What role then do outside consultants and third parties play in that too? Because when you talk about partnerships, you're kind of focusing on internally, but bringing in great talent from the outside is probably a part of that bridge, isn't it? Yeah, it is. It can be internal and external. It can be sales and marketing, business and tech, right? A lot of it is people who speak different languages, have different objectives, feel that they're part of a different community. And, but you got to get them to kind of work together. They may not want to like hang out together at the end of the day and be best friends.

12:45But, you know, the role of that leader and that bridger is getting the collective value out of them that individually never would have happened. So absolutely, there's a lot of focus on partnering externally. And I think what bridges are good at many things, but one of the things they're really good at, John, is building trust in low trust environments, being proactive and mapping the ecosystem and places where, hey, if this goes well or not well, we think we're going to need some solutions or partners here and not waiting until it's a five alarm fire. And they give credit to others and go out of their way to make others the hero and not about themselves.

13:24And then C is the catalyst. C is about really igniting the movements to become bigger than the individuals. And I think this is where it's not every day where people wake up and say, oh, hey, John, I want to ignite a global movement, right? Because it just seems so far away. And when you look, I mean, I worked at Salesforce for many years, which is one of the CRM platforms for small business. And, you know, what's interesting about a place like Salesforce is it's become kind of the de facto movement for CRM and cloud computing. So a lot of people associate the companies with those movements, but movements are really started by people and ideas.

14:06And so part of the reason of the book is to give hope to people that it may seem very difficult or impossible, but anybody can ignite a movement that changes how we work and live. with the right focus and other best practices. Obviously, we would love for you and people to read the book and learn about more.

14:25John Jantsch:Well, so the ABCs basically add up to what you're saying is we need to have collective genius in order to have innovation. So how do, I mean, do people resist or maybe misunderstand that idea? I think there's resistance everywhere. And one of the things that I think, in writing the book, we wanted to write a book that is educational and inspiring, but also a business book that doesn't put you to sleep and has an element of entertainment. Because we're so fortunate and privileged, John, to be able to have studied for years some of these leaders and be a fly on the wall. and one of them was the leader of clinical supply chain at Pfizer and who was a relatively new executive.

15:11I mean, it's the story behind, you know, what he and his team did to get the vaccine out there in 266 days and usually what would take eight to 10 years. And one of the things that they did was a real focus on language. And it's a reminder that, you know, every detail matters if you want it to matter. And Michael Hu, this Pfizer VP, he inherited the team that was skeptical of almost everything, just because of past failures and attempts and other leaders and the usual stuff inside of a big company. And one of the things that Michael decided in his first few months of joining Pfizer was he banned the word change.

15:56And it sounds very petty, but I think it represents a bit of the genius of him understanding the environment that he was parachuting into. And instead, he said, let's talk about evolve. Because when people would talk about change, immediately it would be a negative reaction. More change. We went through a change management program last year. I'm tired of change, but who doesn't want to evolve, right? Who doesn't want to keep up with the Joneses? And so there was something psychological there about, you know, everyone should want to get better, better, better at their craft. And if you don't, why are you here?

16:34And I think you, again, have less luxury in a small business. So language matters. And I think self-awareness is one of the most undervalued skills of leadership. How you make people feel when you give them feedback. And these soft skills, now with the arrival of AI, you hear lots of people saying, they're not soft skills anymore, right? Because getting the most out of people and tapping into, as Pixar would say, everyone has their slice of genius. It's not the responsibility of the individual worker. of the leader to activate that and figure out what it is individually.

17:14John Jantsch:I'm curious because you studied so many exceptional leaders, are there things that we typically celebrate that are wrong, you know, about leadership and leadership culture that your research found? Oh yeah. And lots of things. One of the things that the pet peeve of mine is celebrating like individual awards. Right. And I mean, even like Thomas Edison said, it's like nobody did anything at all. and you know and whether it's intentional or not just putting someone up on stage as an individual it sends their own signals of right be an individual hero and be like this person right and you'll get to lift the you know the trophy too right and instead recognize teams and that might mean that sometimes you're recognizing people who you know aren't pulling their own wait, but the real message you're trying to send to the organization is collaboration is not optional.

18:08And even better get great at collaboration because that's how like meaningful value

18:12John Jantsch:creation happens. I think the second thing is that back to stop trying to be the smartest person in the room and instead try to activate that collective intelligence of the entire team. And I think the third one, and I'm not as worried about this with small business, but I'll say it anyway, is what do you think is the most dangerous place to make a decision, John? In a meeting. Yeah, in the office, right? In the comfort of your office. So I'm a big believer in getting out there and walking a mile in the shoes of your customers. Do it sometimes with purpose. Do it sometimes with a blank sheet of paper.

18:54I worked at Salesforce. Mark Benioff, the founder, co-founder of Salesforce, is a billionaire. there. Famously ahead of a big meeting with one of the big American banks, he wanted to go to a local branch, wait in line to see the experience. And yeah, it helped him prepare for the meeting, but it was more about sending signals to the whole organization that if the billionaire founder can care about time to do it, then everyone else can practice and develop empathy. So those are a few

19:25John Jantsch:things off the top of my head. So this book in some ways was collective genius. Do you think that a collaboration itself made for a better book or at least a different experience than writing a solo book? I think so for sure. And we're still friends, thankfully. And so yeah, it's a multi-generational team. I'm in the middle, you know, two academics with me as a practitioner. And yeah, I think it was just a phenomenal experience that I think we all, you know, agree that there's no way we would end up ended up where we got to if we tried to do this about and and i think the most important thing is that you know you write a book but you never know how the world is going to respond and you know i think some of the things like wayfinding is in the epilogue uh and we wanted to write a book that was meant to be timeless because i have some friends writing books about ai you know one was a former chief ai officer at nasa and like tongue in cheek get telling them like good luck hopefully it's still relevant by the time it's published and so it's interesting that you know we didn't write a book about ai yeah but a lot of people serendipitously are saying that the abcs represent a really interesting operating system right because organizations you need some structure and predictability but you know again you need to adapt and flex and morph your value proposition, you know, like great startups do.

20:53And so I don't think we would have landed there without all two exceptional co-authors that I've had the privilege of working.

20:59John Jantsch:Well, and I think you also surfaced in this day and age, what are probably going to be the human skills that are going to remain the most valuable, I think, in the long run as well. Well, Jason, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is Is there any place you'd invite people to connect with you and certainly learn more about Genius at Scale? Yes, thanks for asking. And yeah, it was just published a couple of months ago. We've got a wonderful website in multiple languages, geniusatscale.com, geniusatscale, all one. Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

21:37Sounds great. Thank you so much, Sean.

21:44We'll see you next time.