Unleashing Innovation at Scale: The ABCs of Leadership

0:02 What's working on purpose anyway? Each week, we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want, working on purpose. Now, here's your host, Dr. Elise Cortez. Welcome back to the Working on Purpose program, which has been brought to you with passion and pride since February of 2015 already. Thanks for tuning in this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, Dr. Elise Cortez. Most leaders are sitting on untapped human energy and capacity, and I help them unlock it. I'm an organizational psychologist, logotherapist, workforce advisor, and the founder of the Gusto Now movement.

0:54 But my favorite title is much simpler. I traffic in energy, not the surface level motivation or another engagement initiative, but the deeper force, what I call Gusto. the life force for performance that drives commitment, perseverance, and genuine ownership of a shared mission in the clients we serve. You can learn more about us and how we can work together at gusto-now.com, or my personal site is alicecortez.com. Getting into today's program, we have with us Jason Wild. He's a strategic advisor and growth executive. After building and scaling innovation teams and strategic revenue programs at Microsoft, Salesforce, and IBM that influenced six-plus billion dollars in enterprise deals, He founded Wild Innovation Strategy Excellence to help leaders of companies transform, innovate, and grow. He's the co-author of Genius at Scale, How Great Leaders Drive Innovation, which we'll be talking about today.

1:45 He joined today from the Connecticut area. Jason, welcome to Working on Purpose. Thank you, Elise. It's wonderful to be here with you. I'm so grateful to have you on. We met some time back, and as you know, I devoured this beautiful book that you brought forth into the world. It's gorgeous, and it's chock full of so many great examples of how organizations and leaders are doing this thing called innovation well, which we'll get to some of those examples later on. But before we do, let's hear a bit more, if we can. I just introduced a bit about your background, but if you would just share a bit about your background and how it is that you came together with your other two co-authors Linda and Emily to write this book. And that alone is already quite a triumph to do this with two other authors, by the way, Jason.

2:30 It is. It is. And we're still friends, which I think is the most important thing. Exactly. Exactly. Believe it or not, almost 10 years later. And so, yeah, when Linda invited me, Linda Hill, my co-author, who's the chair of the leadership program at Harvard Business School, and I've known Linda for many, many years, but when she invited me to co-author and write her next book, In the moment, I thought it was a candid camera moment of like, oh, that's a good one, Linda. Very funny. You got me on that. And obviously, I'm really honored and privileged that out of all the people she's gotten to know and collaborate with over the years that she picked me. And so I got to know Linda first and then her research assistant, Emily Tedderts, several years later. But I came across Linda when I had just left IBM. I kind of started my career at IBM, spent 13 lucky and wonderful years.

3:27 At IBM, kind of beginning my career. And I often tell. People that it was really career changing because on IBM's nickel, I worked on client innovation projects around the world on pretty much every continent. I think if there was work to be done in Antarctica and sell something there, they probably would have sent me there too. I had left IBM, joined Salesforce, and leaving a company that was on the verge of celebrating its 100th anniversary, IBM, and then joining Salesforce, which had recently at that time been a startup and maybe 12, 13 years old when I joined them in hyper growth mode. remit at Salesforce was to bring a lot of the consultative selling the client centricity of IBM into the world of Salesforce and to lead a global innovation team and so really really lucky to do that at a place like Salesforce and the first couple of years that's how I came across Linda and because I had many conversations with people in consulting and academia right and.

4:36 Work my own family and. But Linda just kind of saw the world differently, I think, first and foremost. Around innovation. Innovation is a very exciting, sexy, if you will, topic that approaches all sorts of opinions and sometimes wannabes. But it was really refreshing that Linda had a realistic view of kind of the messy, gritty side that often people see the outcome, the great idea that changes a system or something, But Linda really appreciated kind of the hard work and the grittiness that often was left on the editing floor.

5:16 So that was number one. I think number two was also her view on leadership. In the first conversation, I'll never forget that She just got me thinking about my own self-awareness as a leader, which to this day, at least when people ask me, I really think that self-awareness is probably the most underappreciated characteristic of any great leader. But she had written a book many years ago. Called Being the Boss, which focuses on managing yourself as a leader, managing your own team, and then managing your network. And it was the third part that was great. Really eye-opening for me. And I had multiple brain turns just in the first conversation with her. Because I had. Seen kind of managing the people who were outside of your own team as kind of politics.

6:01 So in my own head, it was like, oh, how do I minimize this? How do I avoid it? Almost like a Dilbert cartoon in a bad way. But Linda was the one who really got me to realize. That I frankly wasn't doing my job. And I needed to really focus on building these relationships where trust was maybe low or nonexistent because those dependencies were going to make or break whether my team was going to succeed or not. So the first conversation really hit it off, and we stayed in touch. And then several years later, she invited me to write the book. And I think as she describes it, it's because I'm a practitioner. I've been an operator.

6:43 I've led projects in 40 countries. And she really enjoys creating a multi-generation team. So I'm kind of in the middle, more leaning towards the 30-plus years of experience. And we thought it was important. We're going to write a book about collaborating to innovate and co-creation that... that we have to have to actually like live and breathe the work ourselves, uh, and be a team that embraces that collaboration and experimentation. And it wasn't always easy, right. Bringing kind of different perspectives and ideas. Um, and you know, the book almost took 10 years, but we're all convinced that we wouldn't have had the same output if we tried to do this individual.

7:26 Um, so yeah, it, uh, the the triad of uh of the authorship group. And and uh and her eye for detail and and beginner's mind and in many other. Aspects were just huge to the to the book and. When you write a book you've written a book at least you never know what the reaction is going to be from the marketplace which is part of the. Fun i understand yeah A beautiful way to introduce the book where it came from and also really start us into just I love how you talk about the grittiness of innovation. I think you're right. A lot of people don't recognize just what it takes to on the other side of that creativity. So let's situate here. I don't think we can go a day without hearing how important innovation is.

8:15 Right. But but let's hear more about why leaders need to really think about driving innovation organizations. What's at stake here? What's why is this so important? Yeah, well, I think with the technology that has arrived just in the last couple of years, I think it's fair to say that we're embarking on yet another industrial revolution. It's not me saying it or my co-authors. This is organizations like the World Economic Forum and the Drucker Institute and many others. These are sort of a big deal, as you know, Elise, because we may not see it now. But eventually it changes how we work and live. And I think what makes this industrial revolution different than the prior ones, where you had a singular technology, you know, changing systems, right, for steam and electricity, and then eventually computational power PCs and computers and the Internet. Here we, of course, have AI, but we also have other technologies like quantum and blockchains. and next generation telecommunications, which arguably each one of these individually could be the catalyst, you know, enough.

9:29 Of an industrial revolution. But we have them kind of arriving around the same time, feeding off of each other. So it makes, first, before we even get to innovation, it makes leadership tougher than. It's ever been. Yes, 100%. Right? And, you know, one of the things we talk about in the book is this notion of wayfinding. And you could say that kind of classic leadership, leadership over the last 90, 100 years, you know, around industry and business. Has been defined by kind of what we call pathfinding. And the role of leadership to discover. And articulate that vision, get the organization and ecosystem or value chain.

10:12 To hopefully follow. So you're building followership. as effectively, as efficiently as possible. And it's like, okay, let's get from A to B and manage that change as successfully as. We can and making some course corrections. And that's worked well for most organizations and most leaders, especially when you have the luxury of time. But in this world that's literally like changing. A couple of feet underneath our feet and the planet is shifting like every week and every month and we just. Don't have that luxury. So wayfinding is a word or term that's existed in the English language for some time, but it's really been more about like airports or, you know, hyper toxic kind of dangerous environments. And, you know, where do you go when you need to know without thinking.

11:03 About it, but wayfinding is new in terms of the notion of leadership. And, This is kind of the world that we live in right now, which is how do you lead when you're surrounded by fog? When leaders, whether you're a startup or a legacy company, leaders are used to being in town halls, being confident, having most of the answers or at least sounding confident when they're trying to tap dance around that. Set the vision. Take on the burden. Of direction and clarity. But that's just really, really difficult and almost impossible in this world that we live in right now. So wayfinding has really resonated with a lot of people, not just leaders, but the people who are part of these organizations.

11:46 And it really means, like, how do you make progress when you're trying to figure out the destination at the same time? And so that's leadership. And then innovation, we define innovation very, very broadly. Of course, we include disruptive innovation as a part of our definition of innovation, but we also. Include smaller incremental things. So our definition of innovation is anything that's new and useful. So most leaders hopefully have been doing some form of innovation over the years, or it's like, how do they exist? Or how have you even made it this far? Right. Kind of saying it flippantly.

12:27 But, you know, you could argue for the last 20 years after the Internet matured, most industries, innovation was kind of seen as optional or a nice to have. And I think, you know, beginning with COVID, I think it was a wake up call to a lot of organizations who had their business model challenged. You know, how well do they really understand their customers? or their customer's customer if they're in B2B, that not. All growth is good long-term. And I think COVID was a bit of a trigger, a catalyst, as you say in your book. It ignited, I think, a.

13:08 Lot of leaders to say, wow, didn't think we could do that, and we did, or we really don't know that space. Or that customer very, very well. And as we left COVID, right, we kind of skated right into the arrival of artificial intelligence. And I think, you know, that is compounding the fact that pretty much everyone we talk to these days is. Recognizing that innovation is no longer an option. And some organizations, you know, it's kind of crazy, at least, are saying things like, wow, giving. Our employees access to chat GPT, isn't that innovative? And, you know, what happens is, you know, when you go for some time, years, maybe decades, without innovating or outsourcing the ideation, let alone the execution.

13:56 You know, like going to the gym. If you don't go to the gym, those. Muscles don't get exercised over time. And you just can't flip a switch and say, hey, let's be innovative. It's Monday morning. We need to think and act differently because it's a reflection of culture. and many decisions and things that have happened over the years. So some organizations we're seeing are thriving in this moment, others are struggling. And obviously we wanted to write a book that was about hope. I think first and foremost that, yes, it can be difficult to transform. Yes, it can be very, very challenging to reinvent yourself and say, we're this today and we want to be something completely different today. That could feel like you're stranded on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean while this beautiful cruise ship passes you by.

14:45 It's like, how do we get there? So we know it's not easy, but it's not impossible either. So a big part of the reason we wrote the book is. It's a giant 300-page love letter to either established organizations or startup founders saying, To say, yeah, the world is getting a little crazy. It's changing really fast. But we've learned a lot by studying these leaders over years and years and years. Leaders who were not in the right place at the right time, but leaders who demonstrated in different contexts that they could lead. And the first thing that we learned was they didn't make it about themselves. They made it about.

15:26 The environment and a place where people were willing and able to want to innovate. And that innovation is a social process. So, yes, it's exciting times. And honestly, it's a bit terrifying as well. Extremely well said. Let's let our listeners and viewers chew on what you just said there as we go into our first break here. That gives them a lot of pause for their time. I'm your host, Dr. Elise Cortez. We're on the air with Jason Wild. He's a strategic advisor and growth executive at Wild Innovations and Strategy Excellence, where he helps leaders of companies transform, innovate, and grow. We've been talking about the importance of innovating today and starting to talk about what it takes for leaders to create that environment. After the break, we're going to introduce their ABCs of leadership that will help teach you how to lead innovation in organizations through the ABC model. We'll be right back.

16:28 Thank you. Dr. Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose, an inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose-inspired leadership and meaning-infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at EliseCortez.com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is Working on Purpose with Dr. Elise Cortez. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise, A-L-I-S-E, at EliseCortez.com. Now, back to Working on Purpose.

17:21 Thanks for staying with us and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I'm your host, Dr. Elise Cortez. as I too am dedicated to helping create a world where organizations thrive because our people thrive and they're led by inspirational leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness. And we find ways to do business that betters the world. I keep researching and writing my own books. So one of my latest came out. It's called The Great Revitalization, How Activating Meaning and Purpose Can Radically Enliven Your Business. And I wrote it to help leaders understand today's very discerning workforce. What do they want to need from you to give you their best and stick around? And then I give you 22 best practices to equip you to provide it through your leadership and your culture. You can find my books on Amazon or my personal site, EliseCortez.com.

18:05 If you are just now tuning in, my guest is Jason Wild. He's the co-author of Genius at Scale, How Great Leaders Drive Innovation. So I found your ABC model very, very helpful and easy to access. I love it when you create a model that we can get our arms around. So I would love for you to introduce the ABCs. And my running pal, Charles, knows I host the show. He's like, who's on the show tonight? I'm like, Jason Wilder, we're talking about the ABCs of innovation. He goes, okay, sounds good. I'll tune in. So what are the ABCs? Yeah, well, the ABCs kind of emerged, I'd say, about two-thirds of the way through writing the book. I mean, we were uncovering different insights through our research, right? A little bit of what I touched on before, that innovation is a voluntary act. You can't mandate it. Innovation is a social process. And really, these great leaders don't force innovation.

18:58 There's a bit of a paradox, which is part of the reason why we named the firm Paradox Strategies. But these leaders, they really create the conditions where people choose to innovate and want to really innovate. And it sounds very simple, but in the book we sort of realize that there is a science and you can go from art to science in creating the conditions. And many of these leaders, and this is. Not going to be comprehensive, but they're really good at creating psychological safety at different levels and not just what people say, but what people actually do. And one of the things that surprised me a bit, especially in larger companies, is that many leaders over the years have said, hey, don't bring me problems, bring me solutions. And I kind of would get that at the surface level because you know, they don't want to complain culture. But what you want are people who are bringing both opportunities, problems, right, and solutions in the right context with the right focus that's relevant.

20:03 And so psychological safety becomes really, really important. Rules of engagement matters. Um, every culture is different. And one of my favorite quotes about culture is culture is what happens when the leader leaves the room. Uh, right. And culture is what people feel like they can get away with when they think that no one is watching. And so every place has culture. Even if you think you don't have culture, you do. And actually, if you think you don't, it probably is, could be a toxic and negative culture. so great leaders really understand that culture is intangible and it's not built overnight but it becomes everything in terms of differentiation attracting talent and really creating the environment again.

20:48 Where people are willing and able to want. To co-create so we started seeing patterns that there were different leaders who were great depending on their context and leaders showing up in different ways depending on where we were in the process versus ideation versus execution versus the post-modern learning. And we kind of started with a blank sheet of paper. And across these patterns, we did see different roles start to emerge. And, you know, the one that most people are very familiar with is, you know, the architect role. And we touched on this a bit. It tends to be the CEO or a C-level executive or a president or a founder owner who feels the real responsibility of whatever it is that you're doing is a business. And they literally take it personally. The architects in our book, we found one of the things that they're really good at doing in building culture is recognizing what their own strengths are. and the limitations of their own superpowers. And Pixar is an organization that we've been privileged to study for many, many years. And Pixar has this great phrase, which is, everybody's got a slice of genius.

22:07 And so what the architects are really, really good at is understanding that everybody has a slice of genius and creating the environment, even if it's three or four levels down, where everybody people are able to activate that slice of genius and connect it into the bigger platform or purpose that the business or the ecosystem has. So sometimes architects are mislabeled because people think they're the smartest person or the most talented and decision maker. But really the greatest architects are really focused. On culture and recognize that the best culture is about leading from behind.

22:47 So that's the architect. The second thing, the second role that we discovered, and I think it's the role of the three that the world has really responded very positively to. In a way that just surprised us. And I'll get into why. And that's the bridger. The bridger is really about building partnerships. Bridgers are great at curating the right solutions, translating across different ways of talking and functions. And roles and right? You see classic kind of chasms across every organization internally, right? Sales versus marketing, business versus technology, the leaders versus the middle.

23:29 And so you have all of these different fiefdoms that start to emerge and the bridgers are really good at kind of spanning across those boundaries and those lines to ensure hopefully that there are no cracks that start to emerge. So the bridgers are great at kind of understanding the social intelligence of the organization. And they're kind of polygons. They're able to speak the language of sales when it's time to, you know, ensure that people understand that in other places. And when you look at it, some of the most important roles these days that have emerged, not just in the technology industry, but many industries, forward deployed engineer, chief of staff, revenue ops, these are all different bridger roles.

24:21 They're trying to bring different pieces of the business and deliver an important outcome at scale. Now, the interesting thing is, and I almost said funny, but it's not funny, but in my personal view, you could almost draw a line between those organizations that get it because they're investing. In this role of bridgers and the ones that. Don't get it and they're either doing resource actions and layoffs, and they're exiting a lot of these bridgers. And you'll never find a role or a job description that has bridger in the title. They show up in different ways. But basically, look at AI and AI adoption. Whether adoption is going to succeed or fail is largely going to rest on middle management.

25:10 And middle management right now is in the middle of its own evolution. And crisis? AI, right? Middle management before was all about orchestration of the execution and orchestration of doing. But with a lot of autonomous agents, right, you don't need as much, you know, middle management. So we see a shift and a pivot of middle management towards more and more decision-making. So that's the role of these bridgers, and the bridgers are about building partnerships and ensuring that the ecosystem overall is healthy and focused on the core problem and mission that we're trying to solve. So bridgers, I think, in many ways, are the unsung heroes of innovation.

25:54 And you could almost do an audit of many organizations, and the ones that don't have enough bridgers are going to struggle long term. And long-term now, we're measuring in like a couple of years, right? At least not like long-term of the 1980s of 10, 20 years from now. And the organizations who get it are going to be developing these bridgers and seeing them as really the next generation of leadership and really the headlights to the rest of the organization. And then the last C is the catalyst. I've helped many large organizations, but I've also helped startups. And one of the things that we realized is that And a lot of people wake up emboldened to want to change the world. But like catalyzing a movement is really an overwhelming thought. Like, how do you do that?

26:44 And where do I start? Not everybody is Steve Jobs. And the good news is, is that it's not easy, but it's not impossible either. So we have different chapters of the book of catalysts who are entrepreneurs inside very large organizations. And catalysts of startups. And probably my favorite chapter. In the book is the book about a spinoff from a Japanese airline, two individual contributors, literally. Nobodies, no team, no budget. And long story short, they ignited a global avatar movement inspired by one of their grandmothers who wanted to be more mobile, but would never leave her village in rural Japan ever again.

27:34 So it started with a question of how do you, why can't we teleport as humans? And they realized that the technology is 20 to 25 years away, but it became, what about transporting your five or six senses as a human? And they ignited a global movement that now they look back and say, wow, their story. So you can catalyze movements and change the world, but you have to start small with a very, a. Very clear focus. And ultimately you have to figure out how you leverage yourself. It's the antithesis of founders mode, which is trying to be everywhere and do everything and micromanagement on steroids, which is a path to burnout.

28:20 And it's sinister. Who wants to work in a place like that? So for us, It's the antithesis of true founder's mode, which is figuring out the right way to leverage yourself and really ignite a global movement. That gets other people excited to ride that wave with you. Okay, now that you've introduced the ABCs, the architects, the bridgers, and the catalysts, now if you could, Jason, situate in a concentric circle where each belongs. Yeah, if I had my whiteboard here, let me try to do it verbally. We'll imagine it. We're definitely interconnected. And I think, you know, in Linda's last book, you know, she started to uncover the importance of a lot of the architect role, but it was really focused on inside of the organization or the company.

29:06 And the realization was that's not enough, right? You also have to. Get your ecosystem, your key collaborators, your partners also on board, right? And if you're not completely aligned, you can't move at the same pace, right? right, an ambition you have. So that was a big part of learning around, you know, the architect. I think the other parts that we started to learn that were really interesting around Bridger and Catalyst is that, you know, Bridgers are constantly navigating in environments of low trust. And how do you build trust in these lower trust environments and so i think especially when you think of like regulated industries like health care or banking and compliance and so a lot of it becomes how do you build like the social kind of interactions and So if we were to whiteboard this a bit.

29:59 The architect is really the foundation. If people are not willing to enable, it's like don't even go past go. It's not even worth thinking about level two. That is the foundation. And having clear rules of engagement so that people, as I said... feel that there's psychological safety. Not any idea is a good idea, but we live in a world where 14 year olds are inventing billion dollar businesses. We don't know where the greatest ideas are going to come from. So that's the role of the architect. For the bridger, it would really be about these partnerships, right? If the architect is about creating the conditions where ideas can start to form, You and I both know, Elise, in the work that we've done over the years, that innovation is not an idea problem.

30:49 It's an execution problem. And it's an execution and implementation challenge across different levels. But the least important one is really technology. And this is coming from somebody who worked for 25 years at Microsoft, Salesforce, and IBM. If there's anything you take away from this conversation, it's not about technology. It's that Changing people's behaviors is arguably the greatest challenge we have on this planet. So the Bridgers really focus on the periphery of where the architect can always be and is constantly looking and trying.

31:31 To assess the health of all of these micro, small. Social relationships that And therefore, collectively, are we levering and leveraging those as well as we can based back on the mission. The purpose, and the platform that we're trying to create? And then you need catalysts who are out there who. Are trying to ignite new ideas way beyond the core of what you're trying to do and bring other people, non-traditional, not counterintuitive ideas, participants, collaborators, problem solvers in to do this.

32:11 And I think that's where the ABCs come together, and that's where it becomes something that. Endures over time. And it's important that the architect is continuously monitoring that environment to make sure that you're doing the right things, that people do have true psychological safety, that you're adapting the right rules of engagement, But it is an interconnected system. And I think the part that we realized is that you're not constantly catalyzing and you're not bridging around where those boundaries and those ideas can fall down because when people are under pressure, what do they do? They default to their basic training and what they know, right? And not the new thing. And even though there can be more risk.

32:59 In defaulting to what you know in the past. So a big part of it is creating the social intelligence and the contextual intelligence. But in a much more intentional way. And these three different roles show up in different ways so that the collective is about creating outcomes that matter. And focusing more on the how. And I think that's the big brain turn is too many people are Get drunk on innovation being the what. What's the next killer app? What's the big idea? What's the thing that's going to make me rich? And the reality is if you focus on the how, the what becomes the predictable outcome of that. And the ABCs in different roles show up in different ways individually and collectively to make that happen.

33:47 Powerful. Very powerful, Jason. This is just exactly the conversation I was hoping to have with you. Let's grab our next break here. I'm Dr. Elise Cortez. We're on the air with Jason Wild. He's a strategic advisor and growth executive at Wild Innovations and Strategy Excellence, where he helps leaders of companies transform, innovate, and grow. We've been talking now about the ABC model and how those different roles work together. After the break, we're going to treat you to getting to meet several of the leaders they showcase in the book and what they did in terms of their innovation efforts. We'll be right back. Thank you. Dr.

34:33 Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose, an inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose-inspired leadership and meaning-infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at EliseCortez.com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is Working on Purpose with Dr. Elise Cortez. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise, A-L-I-S-E, at EliseCortez.com. Now, back to Working on Purpose.

35:24 Thanks for staying with us and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I'm your host, Dr. Elise Cortez. If you are just now joining us, my guest is Jason Wild. He's co-author of Genius at Scale.com. How Great Leaders Drive Innovation. I absolutely jammed on all the great stories that you told in your book about these various leaders, what they were up against, what they were trying to achieve, and how they fell in their roles of whether an architect, a bridger, or a catalyst. So I want to get through as many of them as we can and want to make sure that we showcase each of those three roles, architect, bridger, and catalyst. So if we can first start with the MasterCard story, A.J. Banga. Can you share a bit about what he was up against, what he was trying to do, and his general approach, and which of those roles he really leaned on?

36:12 Yeah, for sure. So A.J. is just, he's so inspiring. And I think the thing that's amazing is when we first started studying him, he was obviously CEO of MasterCard at the time. I mean, like all of the stories in our book, multi-year longitudinal research. And you may not know this, but today, LJ is the president of the World Bank. So we felt after he left MasterCard, he was appointed by the White House. To take these mindsets and behaviors, this playbook, if you will, of how you create genius at scale, you know, our language, from the world of banking and the unbanked, which was what he was focused on in MasterCard, to now solving things like poverty and world hunger.

36:56 So I think we're all cheering him on. And obviously seeing that was an incredible vindication of what we were writing about in terms of the power of it. So. I would say, you know, what I would say is because there's so much to be said, there's actually two chapters of the book in the book on MasterCard. When he joined, you. Know, he had spent pretty much his entire career in banking in the in the industry. And one of the things that they did when he was a new CEO of MasterCard way back in 2011 was employee survey. Right. You know, ranking a bunch of things, questionnaire questions. Survey comes back and Ajay told us.

37:38 That he almost quit when he saw that innovation was ranked 26 of 27 attributes important to the future of MasterCard. I mean, that was shocking to him. It's like, how is that even possible? Now, as he pulled on that string and he understood more and more, I mean, it kind of started to make sense to him. And that was because MasterCard at that time was really focused on being a credit card services company. In my language, they were in a competitive back. Alley knife fight with known competitors, and it was hyper-competitive. So, you know, the perception of.

38:20 Employees in the workforce was innovation, it's not important. But Ajay had bigger ideas, and obviously he was hired to, you know, transform MasterCard and start with the culture. So long story short, when he left, The growth of MasterCard was incredible. They left their core competitors, American Express and Visa, in the dust. The valuation was more than 16x as the S & P 500 in the same amount of time. And hopefully people will read the book and I won't do justice to what he did. But as an architect, he basically got the entire organization.

39:01 To get excited about innovating, innovation and innovating again. And obviously it took several years to get there. And on the back of that culture change and the appreciation of innovation, right, are these great results. And one of the things that Ajay realized was as many ideas as he had, he knew that he couldn't do it alone. And that was the other reason that we wrote a second chapter. He brought in someone from the outside. an insider as well and the two of them were bridgers and that's why it was important for us to tell the story because very easily we could have told the story of Ajay Banga through a different lens almost seeming like he's Steven Spielberg and the one man genius and doing all these things and The man is a genius, but he's the first to realize that they wouldn't have accomplished anything without him realizing that he needed a team.

39:58 And this was collective genius, right? It worked. So Ajay did that, and he realized that innovation is not this aha moment, that it was about the genius of tapping into the entire organization, including the people who are very, very far from headquarters. So he did many, many things. But I think ultimately what I love about Ajay is he's great at reframing. And one of the things that I'll give as a gift. To your community and the people who are listening, architects are really good at challenging orthodoxies and giving the permission for people to feel empowered to challenge orthodoxies. And of course, we're not talking about religion. We're talking about norms and standards that at some point in the past, somebody made.

40:43 A decision And it's just the way it is, and no one has challenged it. So the question behind that is, what would you never say about blank? What would you say about MasterCard's products? What would you never say about how MasterCard collaborates? And behind those, you start to uncover kind of root causes. And like I said, decisions that somebody. Made some point in the past that maybe made sense then, and no. One has challenged that. So architects are really good at reframing the opportunity and empowering people to feel like they can challenge the status quo. And not just challenge it with ideas, but with actions as well.

41:26 So there's a lot around the story, and. Obviously it's really hard to give it justice in a couple of minutes. But there's a reason why we started with MasterCard as the first chapter of the. Book, because I think it really represents. true end-to-end transformation and becoming a culture of innovation, where innovation is not just some thing that pops up once in a while or the job of the research and development team or the really smart people, but it's a system. And MasterCard created a system. And that's you can buy talent, right? You can try to copy products and services, but it's. Impossible to try to poach and import a culture of innovation. Mm-hmm.

42:11 So inspiring, so elevating. So we don't have a whole lot of time left, so probably for one more share, one more showcase. And I don't know if you want to talk about Pfizer, if you want to talk about Procter & Gamble, who would you like to talk about to share? Yeah, why don't we talk about Bridger and Procter & Gamble. Okay. And, you know, the reason is because, you know, you. Look at Procter & Gamble, it's arguably the most successful consumer brand in history. and Kathy Fish, who is the protagonist in the chapter of the book, at the time was the chief. Innovation officer, R & D officer. And she and the leadership team of Procter & Gamble in. That moment realized that, in their words.

42:53 P & G needed to innovate in how they innovate. So, I mean, just let those words kind of sink in. Procter & Gamble. A talent destination is, attracting the best of the best, and has been for years, their own realization. Hey, we need to innovate in how we innovate. So Cathy introduced lean innovation into Procter & Gamble, not as a mandate, but as an experiment. The organization that invented StageGates came to the humble realization that maybe they needed to evolve and do it in a non-incremental way.

43:35 And that's what the story is about. Coming up with a common language. Language is very, very important. I think that's one of the things that I've realized as I've traveled the world. I speak my English, but sometimes I speak. Other people's English. Create a common language. It's very, very important. The second thing is if P & G can be humble, if P & G can look in the mirror and say it's not good enough, then I think it's okay for whatever organization you're leading as well to. Say, hey, maybe it was good enough at that point, but let's challenge ourselves because if it's not great, then. It probably sucks.

44:16 And I think the other thing that Procter & Gamble did really, really well was they would make decisions based on left-brained thinking, right? The legacy of Procter & Gamble. People make decisions based on. A better tide, a better downing, Right? No. They even realized that we as humans make decisions more on emotion than reason. So how do you actually instrument that in a decision-making process? Not easy, but they did it. So part of the reason why I love the P & G story, and it's also about bridging and becoming the best problem-solving organization. In the world.

44:56 And I think with the arrival of AI, who knows what problems we'll have. But we'll have lots of problems. So P & G is a great inspiration. Be a great problem solver. Well, you know, there's so much. Listeners and viewers, pick up the book. There are so many examples in here that are going to inspire you, that are going to make you see that there's so much more room for you to innovate in your own organization and within your own immediate team. So I really want you to just pick up the book. It's well worth it. I love that you called it a love letter, Jason. I think that's just spot on. I don't know if you know this, but this show is listened to by people around the globe. And they tend to tune in for several different reasons. They tune in because they want to become better leaders.

45:37 They tune in because they want to be able to create these better workplaces where we're out to create a destination workplace. They tune in because they want to understand the world of work better for themselves as well. What would you like to leave them with? Wow. Well, I've been blessed. I've led projects in 40 countries. The power of asking good questions. My favorite three questions. Who is the customer? What are you really selling? And how are they buying? Just pick on that second question. What are you really selling? Amazon.com. Yeah, they're selling millions of SKUs of products, but they're really selling this convenience. Yes. Automating warehouses and looking at robots.

46:20 It's not about cost. That's part of it. It's about fulfilling the promise of convenience. So ask yourself, what are you really degree do you fulfill that promise consistently every day. Hmm That is a powerful way to close this conversation, Jason. I really appreciated that I reached out to you on LinkedIn because you were a part, I think I told you that your book was selected for this book review that I tend to join sometimes. Here in Dallas. And I was like, I want that book. And I want to invite somebody from that book to come on the show. And that was you. So thank you for being recruitable and for making sure that we can make this date work. I really learned a ton from you and your co-authors. And it's incredibly inspiring and did a lot for what we're also working on here at Custom House.

47:03 Well, thank you, Elise. I enjoyed the conversation. And keep doing what you're doing. The world needs more of it. I 100% agree. Listeners and viewers, you are going to want to learn more about Jason Wild, his book, Genius at Scale, and the work that he does helping leaders of companies transform, innovate. And grow. You can visit a couple different websites to check in with him or to connect with him. One is the book's website, which is geniusatscale.com, the name of the book, geniusatscale.com. Another way to check into him is their other consulting website, which is ParadoxStrategies.com. ParadoxStrategies.com. Last week, if you missed the live show, you can always catch it via recorded podcast. We were on air with Tenille Miller, this time talking about her book, Flourishing From Within, reclaiming who you came to be in the life that's actually yours. Among many other things we talked about, she gave us the framing of three soul hungers, and they are becoming, belonging, and beyond.

48:00 So we dove into each of these three throughout the conversation. Where becoming is the hunger to feel alive in your own experience, express your authentic nature, and grow into your full potential. Belonging is the hunger to connect deeply, contribute meaningfully, and feel that you matter. And beyond is the hunger to touch something larger than yourself, to experience awe, transcendence, mystery, the sacred, the great belonging of life itself. And, of course, we talked about how leaders can create cultures that satisfy these hungers. It was a beautiful conversation. You've got to catch that one. Next week, we'll be on air with Carson Kelly. He's the founder of Compassion 2.0 and Flourishingly, talking about the neurobiology of human design and designing the conditions for human flourishing measured by the ROI of care.

48:45 See you then. Let's continue leaning into discovering how to elevate your operating system as a leader and create destination workplaces where legendary business takes place. Let's work on purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose, featuring your host, Dr. Elise Cortez, each week on W4CY. Together, we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously, leadership inspires in passion performance, and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there. Let's work on purpose.