Unlocking Innovation with "A Better Way" Framework, with Leslie Holman

In this podcast episode, Dr. Jonathan H. Westover talks with Leslie Holman about unlocking innovation in your organization. Leslie Holman believes there is a better way to live, lead, and work—and she’s spent the last 13 years proving it. As the Owner & CEO of Pinnacle Performance Group, she leads a boutique consulting firm that helps organizations turn bold plans into recognized value. Prior to Pinnacle, Leslie spent many years watching companies who had strategies, but no way to execute on them. Enter Pinnacle, where her team partners with executives to ensure strategy becomes tangible, measurable outcomes across the business. Leslie’s deeper purpose took shape when she purchased Pinnacle with a vision to transform it into a living experiment in a more human, sustainable way of working. After years in corporate and consulting environments where excellence often demanded personal sacrifice, she set out to design a model where people could do meaningful, high-impact work without breaking themselves in the process. Today, Pinnacle operates as a whole-person, future-of-work laboratory—demonstrating that exceptional results come from honoring the full humanity of the people doing the work.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to the HCI family of podcasts, where your source for personal, professional, and organizational growth and development. We share our own original research, explore industry trends, and interview executives and thought leaders from across the globe. Join us for practitioner-oriented content around all things leadership, HR, talent management, organizational development, and change management. Maximize your personal and organizational potential with the HCI family of podcasts.

• 0:36Speaker 00

  Leslie Holman, welcome to the conversation today.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Hi, John. It's so great to be with you today. Hope you're having a great morning.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  It is wonderful to be with you. I am having a great morning. It's a great start to the week. And today, you know, it's a beautiful day. I'm excited to talk with you about innovation and unlocking innovation with a better way framework, touching on the work that you're doing with your organization. You're joining us from the Midwest. I'm in the Intermountain West. And, and yeah, today, we're going to be talking about unlocking innovation with a better way. As we get started, I wanted to share your bio with everybody. Leslie Holman believes there is a better way to live, lead, and work. And she spent the last 13 years proving it. As the owner and CEO of Pinnacle Performance Group, she leads a boutique

• 1:26Speaker 00

  consulting firm that helps organizations turn bold plans into recognized value. Prior to Pinnacle, Leslie spent many years watching companies who had strategies but no way to execute them. Enter Pinnacle, where her team partners with executives to ensure strategies become tangible, measurable outcomes across the business. Leslie's deeper purpose took shape when she purchased Pinnacle with a vision to transform it into living experiment in a more humane and human, sustainable way of working. After years in a corporate and consulting environment, where excellence often demanded personal sacrifice, she set out to design a model where people could do meaningful, high-impact work without breaking themselves

• 2:09Speaker 00

  in the process. Today, Pinnacle operates as a whole person, future-of-work laboratory, demonstrating the exceptional results that can come from honoring the full humanity of people doing the work. I can say that I love everything about that. I love the humanity element. And as someone who's been in the consulting world myself, I can attest to, you know, how it can all really break people and how much more humanity we need. So, kudos to you about the innovation laboratory and making it a more humane space. Leslie, as we dive on in, is there anything else you would like to highlight about your own background,

• 2:52Speaker 00

  personal context? And then we'll start with the conversation.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  I have learned the term jungle gym. So I have a fairly jungle gym background. And just bring a lot of different experiences that have helped shape my perspective. I started out as an engineer, went to grad school, as I said, then corporate and big consulting, private equity, before coming to a small organization. And I think all of those perspectives have really touched me and my point of view. But probably the deepest was the time I spent when I started as an automotive engineer, working in plants, and really getting to see and focus on the frontline employee. And just the richness of knowledge there that I saw was later lacking sometimes, as you went into the bigger and bigger rooms

• 3:40Speaker 01

  in the organization. So, excited for today's conversation, really passionate about talking all things work, humanity, work-life balance, and really, continuous learning. I just think, you know, we get locked into frameworks and so quickly. And we, as a society, don't always give ourselves in the working environment, the true opportunity to test and learn.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love the testing, learning, innovating, experimenting framework. I love all that. The jungle gym kind of idea that you were sharing, I love that. I mean, so many of us have, you know, nonlinear paths in our career. That is for sure. I've never really heard people talk about it as a jungle gym. So I love that kind of visual in my mind now. I think I'm going to steal that from you. And that's awesome. And yeah, what a fascinating background that you have that, you know, I think lends itself so well to kind of the work that you do and the framing of how you go about that

• 4:48Speaker 00

  work today. Well, let's dive on in. And maybe you can start by sharing with us a little bit about a better way and what that framework is. And then we can, you know, talk about how that helps organizations unlock innovation.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, a better way is actually the approach that we've been using internal to our own organization. And, you know, I think as I come, I'm really passionate, like I said, about testing and learning. So, 14 years ago, when I bought Pinnacle, I, you know, wasn't an experienced business owner, but I knew what I disliked. I had had experiences in consulting firms, and there were pieces that were great, and there were pieces that were not great. And I set forth to design a firm, which is where I wanted to work. And I think, you know, it has been a journey. We're almost 14 years on that journey. And I think the thing that I have learned so often is you have to believe there's a better

• 5:47Speaker 01

  way. You have to be willing to question the why and put your, break the barriers, break all, you know, break the rules that have been maybe placed in front of you, to really figure out a different way of doing things. And so, at this point in time in my career, I find it very interesting that my journeys are intersecting. I've had this career as a business owner for the past 14 years of helping shape a consulting firm and figuring out, how do I find a way to have workers that are working 20 hours or less a week, taking really highly talented people and finding a way to let them deploy the capacity

• 6:30Speaker 01

  and the talent they have into the marketplace, while at the same time doing that for clients that are Fortune 500, high-pressure, high-intensity situations. And in the process, have kind of taken those two components to prove that there can be a different and better way to go about work. And really trying to start to take the learnings we've learned within our organization and take those broader.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, let's unpack that a little bit. That's fascinating. And so, 20 hours or less a week. So you have people on your team who, you know, have a variety of different backgrounds, life situations, they want to work part-time for a variety of reasons, yet you're doing corporate work. And these clients are demanding, right? They have a lot of expectations that don't always, or perhaps even seldom neatly align with the desire to work 20 hours or less a week, right? So like, how do you go about designing, you know, your consulting firm in such a way to accommodate that? Because, you know, as

• 7:35Speaker 00

  you know very well, like, really, the model so often is, client is always right, client always wins, you know, we're going to deliver for them. And so, you know, it doesn't matter if we're staying super late into the night, if we're working weekends, we're almost always on call, you know, do whatever the client needs, right? When the client needs it. Yeah. So like, what has been your approach?

• 8:00Speaker 01

  So it's been super interesting, and it's obviously been evolving. But I think at the basis of it is aligning objectives. So aligning shared objectives. If I think about our clients, their objective is really to get the highest ROI. They want the highest impact work. And I say ROI, because that cost piece of it matters, that investment piece. So they want high impact. They're also understand that there's two parts to the ROI scale, the impact and the cost, and the investment they're making. But ultimately, they want the impact. And I think if you decouple impact from approach, that's a starting point. So a lot of times, people have a preconceived notion, as a consultant, you

• 8:45Speaker 01

  need to, you know, be full-time, hard at it, go a million miles an hour, versus, hey, what is the outcome we need to get to? And then we may have a different model to get there. One of the key differences of our model is everyone who works for us has 20-plus years' experience. They're proven business leaders in their own right. They've been through the trenches. In partnership with that, we have a really strong belief that two brains is always better than one. So we always do things with at least two people or a small team, because we believe that back and forth always makes a work product differently. So those two parameters, if we say, hey, we've got super experienced people who know have to get after it, they're tag teaming back and forth, and they have a clear

• 9:29Speaker 01

  impact or outcome that they have to go after, you give them the freedom to figure out how they do that. And in fact, when you allow people their own boundaries, actually, if you encourage and almost put boundaries on them to say, hey, our rule is take care of yourself, take care of your family, do good work. If you do those first two things openly and well, the do-good work goes off the scale. If employees feel they are grounded, if they feel that everything on the home front, whatever that means for them, is under control, when they show up, they are at it, and their productivity is so high. And so we've been able to take that factor to build into fractional work.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  So, hey, when you have the capacity to work, you're going to work awesome. And we just know that that you can't work at your highest level of quality forty, fifty, sixty hours a week. That's just a fact. I would, I would go to the mat with anyone on that one. You know, those hours at eleven and twelve are not the best times to be working. Um, and then how do you fit that into, uh, focused on an outcome versus an approach? And so, um, from that, we've really been able to, to put together a, a way of working that can drive impact, um, with very different inputs.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I love that. So you have the expertise, the experience, their tag teaming. And, and you make it all about outcomes and impact. Uh, that all sounds so obvious.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  It does. None of this is rocket science.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, not rocket science. It sounds obvious. And, uh, I, I was just talking to an executive the other day at a big, um, insurance company, like one of the major, uh, insurance companies in the country. And they were talking about one of the big, major, uh, everyone would know, like the big, major consulting firm. And they were talking about a big, uh, you know, change management, merger, acquisition kind of issue that was happening. And, and they were talking about the billables and the, the cost of working with this big consulting firm. And the millions of dollars that were going towards it, right?

• 11:35Speaker 00

  And now, uh, you know, take everything with a grain of salt and this, this person, you know, in the middle of this big change initiative and all the, you know, challenges associated with it, obviously. Um, yeah, it's, it's hard and, and obviously you take it with a grain of salt. But, but the reality was, you know, that a, a lot of the, a lot of the, uh, folks that are working on this are very junior, um, uh, consultants working with this, this agency, uh, with this firm. Um, and the billables are incredibly high. Um, is it always very productive work? Uh, is it accomplishing very much?

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Um, no, it's not. Um, and, and, you know, at least from this executive's perspective, uh, he, he did not see the value. He did not see how it was worth it. Um, and I have to admit, as someone who's also been in the consulting world and has seen these types of big, large scale initiatives, I also have to question it. Like I, I often, I see that and I'm like, okay, like I get it. I understand why big, huge organizations go with the big firms. I understand why they're willing to pay the millions of dollars. I understand how the, all of it works. I get it. But I also understand why, if you take a step back and you're actually willing to actually look at like the actual impact of it,

• 12:59Speaker 00

  like who fricking cares about like the hours? You know, if you, if you really want to make it make sense, it's, it's all about what hap, what gets done and the impact and like what you accomplish with it, right? That should be what it's, should all about. Um, because when, when that's not what it's all about, then you get to that statistic that everyone always quotes about eighty percent of all change initiatives fail and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, and, and all the ripple effects of all the negative things that can happen with all the, the bad consulting things, all, all the bad consulting engagements that occur, you know? And so, yeah, you want good, experienced people that know what they're doing, who are driven by results and impact.

• 13:43Speaker 00

  Uh, and, and then who cares? Like if they're working ten, twenty hours, if they get the results that you want, that's what you want.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I think that is a mindset shift that we've really seen change over the last decade. Uh, we've been working in this model since I bought the company and it was interesting, pre-COVID, we sort of hit it. You know, just, you know, don't say it out loud to the clients. They all think we're here all the time and, um, and I think COVID was really an eye-opening time for people to reckon, humanity had to come to the workplace.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Um, we used to all walk into the door and we would, you know, put on our game face and pretend like everything is together. It's all good. Here I am. And when we all got sent home for COVID, suddenly your kid is running into the meeting and the dog is barking and this, that and the other thing. And we all became human again. Um, and I think it allowed us to open up the conversation in a different way. And it's interesting watching it play out right now in sort of a wave of return to work of, um, what, what is work? What is the outcome that we're really driving for? How much control over to that approach do we really need? Um, and I think it gets really hard when you talk about large, large organizations.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Um, there is something about scale that makes it much more diff, difficult to pursue sort of the organic trust-based model that we, uh, use. But there is something there about empowerment and trust at the foundational core. If you, if you believe in your team, if you've hired the right people and you believe truly unquestionably in their ability to get the right thing done. If you're aligned on what impact truly is, and if you allow them to pursue that with a set of really aligned values, it's just astonishing the results that can be, can happen. So, you know, we're not, we're in a place where there is a time and a place for the giant consulting firms, the, the scope and scale you sometimes need.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  But I think what we're trying to maybe challenge is there are also some smaller places where it's worth taking a pause and thinking about, is the playbook machinery really the play, going to get me to where I need to go? Um, or is it wisdom? And that's also a super interesting question as we move into the world of AI. Um, you know, AI can start to replicate those playbooks for us. But when your problem isn't in a playbook or isn't in a data model, wisdom is what's going to bring it forward.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  One hundred percent. And that wisdom, you know, you can have a junior consultant who can produce a lot of cool stuff, cool looking stuff, you know, using AI models. Um, they can produce a lot of AI slop. Uh, the, the, you know, the problem is, does it have the judgment, the wisdom? Uh, do they have the judgment to actually review what's produced and, and know that it's good or not? Um, and the senior consultants have that, right? They know, uh, if things are problematic. They know if things need to be revised. Um, yeah, one hundred percent. Absolutely. Um, well, very good. I, I think, uh, as you work with other organizations, then how, how do you start to apply this kind of an approach?

• 17:01Speaker 00

  So obviously in consulting, you know, making it more humane, um, learning how to use this kind of a mindset shift and a framework, uh, to, to innovate more and to experiment in this way has really been effective for, for your firm. Uh, how do you work with other organizations to kind of help them go about this shift as well?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Well, and super interesting question because I think that's where the, the parallel is starting to, to get exciting. Um, if you hang around a pinnacle team long enough, you're going to hear the phrase, um, what must be true. Um, and I think, um, particularly as we think about, we're talking to a lot of people about innovation lately, um, and their desire, uh, to try to think differently and think outside the box. And I think that question, what must be true is so foundational and often overlooked. And let me explain that. Um, so as I went on my journey and understanding like, hey, here's what people, here's what the rules were supposed to be. And I'm going to break them and think differently, um, and find a better way. And we've been able to do that within our firm.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  But the key thing there was the conscious acknowledgement that, that we were going to break the rules. The rules existed and we were going to break them, do things differently. That's translating really strongly right now to what we're seeing in the marketplace and how we're working with clients. Is oftentimes clients are looking to innovate and even faster timeframes with more pressure now. I mean, the cycle of business has just, it increased exponentially. Um, but they're going back to their teams with the same question. Give me new ideas. I need you to think outside the box. And the, the pause that's missing is you're asking people who have been successful because they followed the rules

• 18:48Speaker 01

  to break the rules without giving them any guidance or permission or a way to think about what rules are they going to break. And so really starting to open up the question of not just what is a new idea? What is breakthrough? What is innovation? But what must be true to get there? Is a language we're seeing that allows people to think differently and invites them to break the rules. Um, because redefining the parameters in which you're solutioning is actually a really critical piece of innovation. And I think that's one of the things we've learned over our, our course as a small business and innovating within our operation is you have to identify the

• 19:29Speaker 01

  rules that have kind of defined your way of working and be really, um, conscious about challenging them and breaking them. Um, so it's, it's a really interesting time right now. We're seeing that play out a lot in our large clients as they, you know, there's just a lot of, um, instability and unknowns in the marketplace right now. People are trying to figure out new ways to win. And that is one of the biggest things that we're working with clients on right now is what has to be true to get to that new idea?

• 20:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. What? So challenging assumptions, what has to be true versus what have we always just assumed to be true? Right? Um, that's one of my biggest like pet peeves when I'm in meetings or when I, we're talking through challenging things because so often we just assume, you know, that things have always worked this way and they have to continue to work this way. And almost never do they have to continue to work this way.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 20:27Speaker 00

  Like they've just, at some point, for some reason, given context, a long, long time ago, people made a decision to do something a particular way and it's just carried forward. And it may have been a good decision and a good reason at that point in time, but that context is not the same and it's shifted dramatically since then. And so there's no particular reason to carry it forward. Um, and yeah, so it's like policy pruning, um, and, and like just, yeah, just going through that process is, is, is fun. Like I, I think it's, it's really, um, invigorating and freeing for people to feel like they have permission to, to really go through that process of, of what is true and like what is necessary?

• 21:12Speaker 00

  And, and what can we actually, um, push back on and what can we actually achieve? You know, once we, um, remove some of the unne- unneeded barriers, uh, to things, um, beca- because then yeah, so much is, is possible and, and innovation can flourish. Once you take away the unnecessary barriers. Now, obviously there are times where you need certain constraints and you need certain guardrails and whatever, like obviously, but yeah, if, if we're talking about unnecessary constraints that are just there artificially, um, for no particularly good reason, other than someone put them there 20 years ago, then yeah, let's look

• 21:51Speaker 00

  for ways to, to remove them or to, to create policy exceptions that are suitable or, or whatever. Right?

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And what we're seeing is kind of that really two parts. One is asking what must be true invites, um, staff and employees and teams that maybe don't have the control over the, the rules and, um, policies to be curious and challenge and lay out options. Um, so it gives, it gives them power and, um, agency to think differently. I think on the flip side too, having leadership teams really thoughtfully go through an exercise of where are you willing to bend and explore? And what are the absolute hard stops, things that you can't move on? Um, is on a challenging leadership exercise that if done correctly,

• 22:40Speaker 01

  can also build a lot of trust and, um, accelerate any sort of innovation journey for the, the team that sits beneath those leaders. Cause they understand, wow, our leaders have done some hard work and are inviting us to think in a different way. Um, and so it really takes both sides of the coin to do it, um, exceptionally. Um, but either side can challenge. I think we see a lot of teams that maybe they don't necessarily have the leadership buy-in, but if they frame things as what must be true, um, that can open them up and even, you know, doing it multiple layers. Sometimes like people do five whys of, you know, go through a couple of rounds of what must be true. And then what must be true, uh, starts to

• 23:22Speaker 01

  get you to some real insights and clarity and an organization of how do you maybe need to go look at your rules and figure out a better way?

• 23:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. 100%. Very good. Leslie, this has just been a fascinating conversation. And I know we've only scratched the surface here, uh, so much more to dig into, but I also know at the time I need to let you go and get on with your busy day. Before we wrap things up for today, I just wanted to give you a chance to share with the audience how they can connect with you, find out more about your work, your team, and then give us the final word for today.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I would welcome, uh, anyone to follow me on LinkedIn, um, Leslie Holman. And then my organization is, uh, found at pinnacleconnection.com. And as you are going through your day, I think the thing I would challenge you to figure out what rules are you going to break today to find a better way?

• 24:07Speaker 00

  Love it. Leslie, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. I encourage the audience to reach out, get connected, find out more about what Leslie can do for you. And as always, I hope everyone can stay healthy and safe. That you can find meaning and purpose at work each and every day. And I hope you all have a great week.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  Thanks for joining us for this episode of the podcast. We hope you stay healthy and safe and please join us again soon.