A Great Idea Isn’t Enough—Build the Coalition to Make It Real: with Jason Wild & Linda Hill

Your best ideas won’t go anywhere if you don’t know how to build the influence to make them happen. In this episode of Big Swings Only, Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill and innovation leader Jason Wild, co-authors of Genius at Scale, reveal what it really takes to turn ambitious ideas into meaningful change. Their research shows that breakthrough innovation isn’t just about having the right idea—it’s about building the relationships, trust, and coalitions needed to carry that idea across the finish line. Linda and Jason break down how to lead and influence without formal authority, navigate organizational politics without simply “playing politics,” and recognize the sources of power you may already have. They explore why self-awareness is an underrated leadership skill, how to become a “bridger” who works effectively across boundaries, and why the strongest leaders know when to give away credit to build commitment and trust. You’ll also learn how great leaders build coalitions that transform individual efforts into movements—and how people with little authority, budget, or status can still create change at extraordinary scale. From navigating AI-driven uncertainty to leading former peers and having difficult conversations with transparency, this episode offers a practical look at the human side of leadership and innovation. If you have a big idea you want to bring to life, stop waiting for authority to make it happen. Build your influence, find your coalition, and take the swing. Connect with Linda Hill and Jason Wild Website: https://geniusatscale.com/ Book: Genius at Scale: How Great Leaders Drive Innovation (multiple languages) Consulting, Research & Speaking: https://paradoxstrategies.com/ LinkedIn: Linda Hill - https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda-hill-hbs/ Jason Wild - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonwild/ Contact ANI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Request A Customized Workshop For Your Company⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Kwame Christian on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠negotiateanything.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to buy your copy of Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life!

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What separates the winners from the losers at the highest level of industry comes down to one word, innovation. But how do you actually innovate? To find out, we brought on two experts who spent almost a decade researching exactly that. Lynda Hill and Jason Wilde, co-authors of the new book Genius at Scale. Lynda is a Harvard Business School professor and one of the world's leading scholars on leadership and innovation. Jason spent his career leading innovation at IBM, Microsoft, and Salesforce, working with organizations from NATO to Disney. Together, they studied the leaders behind some of the most successful innovations in the world. And what they found really moved the needle wasn't research and development, it was

• 0:43Speaker 00

  relationships and coalitions. The ability to build what it actually takes to get an idea across the finish line. In this episode, they break down the keys to innovation and what it takes to lead a big swing from inside any organization. This is the story of what it really takes to innovate. Welcome to Big Swings Only. Today's episode is brought to you by Shopify, Granola AI, Quince, and the Anxious Achiever Podcast. Stay present in your meetings. Get three months of Granola free at granola.ai/Quami. For your gift list, shopquince.com for free shipping and 365-day returns, and make sure to tell them that Quami with Big Swings Only sent you. Subscribe to the Anxious Achiever today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you

• 1:28Speaker 00

  listen to podcasts. Do you have an idea that you want live for the holidays? Launch before Black Friday at Shopify.com/Quami. Playing it safe is easy. Playing it safe is comfortable. But here's the problem. Playing it safe and playing by rules that were never meant for you will never take you to the next level. If you've got what it takes to hit the ball out of the park, the only thing holding you back is whether you're brave enough to take a big swing. I'm Quami Christian, and this is Big Swings Only. Every week, we're telling you the stories of people who fought their fear, chased the life they actually wanted, and became who they had to become to get it. This show is built for people who are meant for more, because if you really want to get

• 2:11Speaker 00

  to the next level, you've got to do something big. So the question isn't whether or not you've got what it takes. The question is whether or not you're going to swing. You were built for more, and this show was built for you. Subscribe now. I'm thinking about with leadership, we have leadership of others, but we also have to start internally with appropriate leadership of yourself. Because a lot of times, people, they have these dreams about being the boss, being on top and everything, and they don't think about what it takes to be there, or what is required as far as character to sustain it.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  I think for me, I think that there's a lot of opinions and misconceptions around leadership, including age and level of experience. I think part of the reason that I wanted to write the book as a father, as a husband, is to inspire many people that they can lead in many different ways, even if you're not a CEO. It's uncanny, Lynda actually wrote a book, literally titled Being the Boss. It hit me in a hard way as I read that book. It's really structured around three areas of management: managing myself, managing my team, and then managing my network.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  And until I read that book, for me, it was intuitive, time management, self-awareness, managing myself, et cetera, obviously managing my team and the people who directly report to me. But I'd always seen that third part as kind of playing politics and part of the BS game, if you will, early in my career. And thanks to Lynda and her writing, it really opened my eyes that, no, I wasn't doing my job. And it was important for me to go out there and be deliberate and thoughtful about building these relationships, because the work that Lynda's literally wrote a book about it and changed my perspective personally on leadership.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I thank you very much for that, Jason, I must say. And I was trying to think of a way to conceive of leadership that addressed two dilemmas. One is that often, people who have a tremendous amount of potential don't realize that potential. And that makes me very sad, because boy, do we need leadership. And one of the things I was sort of seeing in my research is that one of the reasons why, one of the key reasons why they weren't fulfilling their potential, is they didn't think about the network. Most people look down. If you ask someone to define leadership, they think about the people who report to them, and they think about their formal authority.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  We now have learned, thanks to all the work on emotional intelligence and all of that sort of stuff, that really leadership involves managing yourself as well. How do you use yourself as an instrument to get something done? But the third piece, as Jason says, and I actually, I met a CEO just last week who said to me, I read Being the Boss, and I think one of the reasons I am now a CEO is because I finally began to understand about that managing your network piece, that when you're managing the network, you're creating the conditions necessary for your team to be successful. So if you're not working with the parties above you, above you, your peers, and also people outside the organization, that you need for your team to have access to resources

• 5:34Speaker 02

  the team needs to do what it wants to get done, then you're not doing your job and your team's not going to be able to deliver. So the first reason why I found myself writing that book was because, again, people left out the network piece, and people still do a lot. And I often do receive calls or meet people who tell me, oh, you helped me understand about the network piece in a constructive way. The second reason I did it is because it turns out when you want to do breakthrough innovation, and not just come up with an innovative idea, take a big swing, but you want to make sure that that breakthrough innovation actually gets realized, it gets launched, or commercialized, or has the impact that you want to have, rarely is it enough for you to simply work with your own team, or even your own organization.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  You often have to build partnerships outside the organization to get access to what you need, or you might even have to figure out how to cultivate a whole new ecosystem to support the kind of breakthrough work you hope to do. So it turns out, that piece of the puzzle was showing up as being innovation, or those big swings, and it was showing up for why people derailed. And so hence, I didn't intend to write Being the Boss, but I ended up writing it because of these two problems, and they kind of were related to each other.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  Well, rumor has it, Lynda, that if you're going to write a book called Being the Boss, you have to be a boss. So that means that you have been officially validated, and you're inspiring people all over the world, including Jason here, to be better leaders, too.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Well, I wrote it with an executive, because I always try to write with an executive. Hence, Jason was kind enough to agree to be a co-author, a full partner in writing Genius at Scale, our latest book. And I always write with a young person. They start with me normally when they're early twenties, when they're in their early twenties, and then, depending on how long it takes us to write the book, they might have just turned 30 or whatever it might be. But I dare not write alone, because, again, you need to have other people who are as committed, and you can bounce ideas off of and learn from all along the way.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  Brilliant, brilliant. And I love how you are living your methodology as you teach the methodology. It shows, and it's really powerful. And let's talk about this, managing the network versus playing politics, because this is something that people struggle with a lot. Because you think about people saying, well, I mean, the work should speak from itself and things like that. If the project is good enough, it should just magically finalize itself, right? We recognize that the network is going to be either something that complements us, that helps us, or it could be a liability. And it sounds like it starts with the mindset around it. So I'd love to hear both of your perspectives on this, too.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  You know, the first thing that I thought of Quami is, as I've traveled the world and spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley, there's an extreme point of view around networking that I've heard. The first time I heard of it, I thought that people were joking, but they're very serious, and that is, hey, focus on something that's so impactful and important that the network will come to you. And you know, to me, maybe there's a small slice, less than 1% of new things, innovative solutions or new ideas that are launched, that that's the case. But it just seemed to me so misplaced and arrogant, I think representative of of just some of the mindsets that that exist. And luckily, there are other mindsets.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  And as I was, you know, sharing with you, I mean, it was, it was very personal because early in my career, I was leading innovation teams, extremely privileged to be working on like really complex, fun, you know, potentially life-changing projects for, you know, the clients and the people that we were serving and working with. And, and I kind of felt like I hit a plateau in my own career. Even though, like you said earlier, you know, the work was impactful, the work should speak for itself. And, and it was this realization that I wasn't really proactively managing my network. You know, as you call the show Big Swings Only, I love sports. I grew up playing, playing baseball.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  And, you know, one of the ways that I think about it is, you know, and I've realized every job, you could argue, has some form of a BS ratio, even the manager of the New York Yankees. And I'm a Cubs fan, right? As much as that might be a dream job to somebody, you still have to deal with the media, you got to deal with personalities. And so I kind of had this negative view of, I'm going to minimize it, I'm going to try to manage it. And it was just, it was, it was the wrong mindset. So, you know, being the boss, you know, engaging with Linda, you know, was part of this kind of awakening for me. And, but I think very quickly, I realized that, you know, it can become busy work.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  And without, like, having clarity of a mission or intentions, you could end up working really hard, long weeks, a lot of sweat equity, but not really building those relationships in those places that, you know, really, really mattered. And, and every project is, you know, unique in the context that you're coming from, you know, as a project team and the organization you're a part of, there are all really unique factors that make each situation kind of different and dynamic. But that consistent thread was thinking, you know, ahead of the partnerships that are going to be important. And if we want to be, whatever project it is, world-class in two or three things and execute flawlessly, who, who are those out there that we're going to need to be a part

• 11:18Speaker 01

  of this and the ideation and the execution and the scaling? And start to map that out ahead of time, so that we're not waiting until the last minute and scrambling, you know, reactively to try to build these relationships. And, and, you know, and usually those fail, right? Because, you know, the other side starts to realize that you're not being strategic, you know, maybe it's an emergency, you're trying to do some patchwork, whatever it is. So, the intentionality of it and thinking more of at a systems level and realizing that, yeah, some places that I invest my time, you know, it's not going to yield what I need. But the more that we're clear about the intentions and the success that we want to measure in

• 12:00Speaker 01

  the project, it'll be easier for us at the beginning to say, who are those partnerships and bridges that we have to build?

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Yep. So I think in related to that, you know, it's one of the, one of the things that I used to teach our power and influence course here at Harvard Business School. And there are two kinds of students that take that course, the ones who think they're powerful already and just want to hone their skills at becoming even more powerful and more influential, and the ones who have always felt pretty powerless. And one of the things that I say as a business professor to all of the MBAs and the executives I work with, I want you all to feel powerful, because powerlessness is corrupting. And if you want to be powerful, then you need to understand about how networks work, really. And the first part is to understand that there are three primary sources of political

• 12:51Speaker 02

  conflict in organizations. So be analytic about it. The three sources are first diversity, and there's all kinds of diversity, diversity. You very rarely get innovation without diversity of thought. So I'm not saying diversity is bad, you need diversity, but we have diverse priorities, different constraints, whatever they might be. And if you can't work with that diversity, there's going to be a problem. But organizations have become more diverse on any dimension you look at. So there's first, that is the primary source of political conflict in organizations. The second is interdependence. So if we're diverse, but we don't have to interact, we don't have to work together, then doesn't matter that we're diverse. So as you know, many organizations have been very siloed, so you don't actually have to interact so much with those other people.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  So you know, just let them be those other people. But a lot of what we need to do nowadays in organizations, we actually do need to interact, we are interdependent. If you want to build a common brand, then you got to be able to, everybody across the organization has to work a certain way so that your customers have a certain experience. If you want to really implement AI and you have these solutions, it's horizontal work. We need to rethink how our workflows, so we got to be able to work with these other parties. So we have more diversity in organizations and for a range of reasons, or even shared services, because we're either trying to cut costs or we want to work on a common platform. So there's a lot more interdependence in organizations. And then the third source of political conflict is competition for scarce resources. And guess what? We have a lot of competition for scarce resources.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  So those are the realities you need to work through as you're trying to build reasonable work relationships with other people. And if you can't work through those, you're not going to be aligned with what is most important to be working on, to deliver for, in this instance, maybe your customers. And the second thing is, again, you're not going to have the resources you need, because when you go to ask for X so that your team can do it, you don't have enough influence with the people who you got, who you have to impact to actually give you access to those resources. So a part of what I try to do is help people understand, yeah, of course, organizations are political because of those three factors. It's not interpersonal, it's really systemic. It can become interpersonal, particularly if you don't have the right mindset about

• 15:04Speaker 02

  it, and if you don't bother to build the right relationships. I want to just add to it, because we're talking about big swings and courage. You need, to take a big swing, you need to know you're a part of a group and you could influence those parties that will actually support you in taking the big swing. So I just had the absolute privilege of doing some research on Joe Missoula, the head coach of the Celtics. And one of the things that Joe did beautifully was he understood, I'm the head coach of a basketball team, but that team resides within a larger basketball organization, a larger business organization, a larger Boston community and media, you know, that we need to deal with.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  And he worked and spent time very deliberately thinking about the intersections and the dynamics from the media and the community down to the team. And so he understood that, you know, it's not enough for me to just coach the team, I need to make sure that there's alignment as much as possible across, you know, all of those circles of, that are really going to have an impact on how my team feels and how my team plays. So I think that what I see is, and as you know, maybe about Joe, Joe is seen as a very contrarian, innovative kind of basketball coach, and he really is. So I think that he, he got that immediately, that it wasn't just about those people on

• 16:26Speaker 02

  the, you know, the team playing with him, it was really the broader Celtics organization and then the Boston fans and the media.

• 16:34Speaker 00

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• 17:20Speaker 00

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• 18:04Speaker 00

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• 18:49Speaker 00

  And if you have a negative mindset about it, you'd think about it as politics. If you have a positive mindset, if you're being more constructive, it is network management. And I love how simple you've made this, especially with the, the parameters of the three sources of political conflict, diversity, interdependence, competition. Once you can see it so clearly, you've given us the, the layers so we can actually stratify this and see the, the distinctions here, we can understand and reverse engineer a strategy that helps us to get where it is that we want to go. Because the reality is that with any type of thing of value that you want to try to accomplish in this world, it's probably going to affect other human beings. Other humans are going to be part of it in some capacity.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  So whether you want to or not, play, understanding how to play this game positively is going to take what you want to the next level, because you can't succeed without it. And as we think through this, I, I want to, I want to have a more empowering vision of what power actually means, because Linda, you said something really interesting, because you said-

• 19:53Speaker 01

  With the people who take this class, power and influence, it's either they have it and they want to manage it better, or they feel like they don't and they probably want more of it. You said that the lack of power or powerlessness corrupts. And usually I hear the other side talked about more where power corrupts. That's the focus. Tell me about the latter side, because I think that's a very important thing to explore.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Well, one of the things and I that right now, right before I begin speaking with you, we are working on a new course called Grand Challenges.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  And trying to encourage the MBAs to take on moonshots, something they're passionate about. And a part of that is, well, I can't really do that, Professor Hill, because you know, I'm going to be so junior, I don't have enough money, all of these different reasons that you wish you could, but you don't think you can. And what I want them to understand is that they do have agency. You do have power. There is a way for you to influence those parties you need to influence to take on that moonshot. Or if you don't have it right now, you need to think right now, if this is what you really care about, how are you going to manage your career over time? So you'll be ready to take on that moonshot when you can. And by the moonshot, it may be within a company. It may be some sort of startup where it might be taking on some kind of social challenge that you want to do.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  So what we know and why powerlessness ends up being corrupting, it is the other side of power is corrupting. Because the only way you can fight powerful people for not, you know, from being corrupt is if you feel some sense of agency, I actually can make a difference. What you often hear when people say, I had no choice, is they didn't know how to exercise influence. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. They didn't know how to think about how do I gain power in a situation in which, you know, they don't have formal authority, maybe, or not as much as whoever it is that's, you know, making them, that's bullying them or doing whatever is not appropriate because they're behaving in corrupt ways. But once you begin to feel that you have no way of influencing, you have no power,

• 21:53Speaker 02

  that's when we we give up. We don't have the courage or we don't understand. There is a way to think our way through this situation. And then when you have large groups of people beginning to feel powerless or no agency, well, we know what can happen to our companies and our society. So I, that's what I mean by it. If you need to know, yeah, that's a really, really powerful person. Usually they have a lot of formal authority or they have control over some important resources. And they're powerful and you don't want to say, wait a minute, don't you remember David and Goliath? What did he, what resources do you have that will actually allow you to take on that powerful individual or that powerful group or whatever it might be? Can you build a coalition of people? Don't go alone.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  How can you build a coalition of people who can help you take that that individual on or that other coalition on? So I, that's what I mean by it is the other side. The powerful can't be corrupting unless we who are powerless allow it. And so I see myself as helping people figure out, how do you have agency when it looks like you have absolutely none? Right? You, what, and often it's because you do build coalitions, which again goes back to our discussion of networks. So one of the things that Jason and I have found in our research on innovation is that a role that is missing in many organizations, and the C suite tells us this, is they don't have enough bridgers. They don't actually have enough people who know how to work across difference,

• 23:20Speaker 02

  who know how to work, I'm going to go back to, forgive me, to AI, for instance, or these don't know how to work between tech and business. So if you don't, then you, if you only know the tech side, you don't really understand the business side and what the customers might want. And so you end up creating shiny objects. If you only know the business side, you, you know, you don't know the tech enough. You don't know what opportunities that new technology might offer or the real risks you have to manage. So again, we need more people who can work across boundaries. And working across boundaries, that's not just, you usually don't learn how to do that unless you actually have some opportunity or to experience working across difference.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  So don't just choose that career that, you know, more and more expertise in one area. Make sure you're also becoming broader. And that means maybe being a little bit more zigzag in your career. Because you're going to pick up something over here and work with some people over here that when you go to this other role, you know, you're going to need some of those kinds of people or have some contextual, have enough contextual intelligence about what they're like. So you can begin to, to use, use that knowledge to create a healthier relationship with them. I'm not trying to imply that all, you know, when you, there are political situations that we get into that we also know when to leave.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  And, and frankly, when you feel powerless, really, you should leave. People can take advantage of you in those circumstances. But I think that if you know you're in a situation that can be a television show, it's that politicized, all of us, no matter what, become very, you know, we, we, we become smaller, we go inside ourselves to protect ourselves. So once you begin to feel, and I, and when, you know, and former executives or that I've worked with, their students call me and they begin to tell me how powerless they're feeling, that is when they're also in danger of behaving unethically or in ways that they're not proud of because they can't figure out how to maneuver. And once you lose confidence in yourself, going back to courage, you're not taking any big swings.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  So I think sometimes we have the courage to walk away from those circumstances in which we actually can't figure out how to exercise any agency to have any influence.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Oh, so good. Yeah, building on what Linda said, you know, brings back so many memories of some of the personal experiences that I had. And, you know, looking back, I, I've worked at very large organizations, IBM, Microsoft, now Salesforce, although it was a startup in 1999. And in the role of helping other clients, you know, usually very large ones, everyone from NATO and Disney, you know, to, you know, many large organizations, legacy organizations. And, and I just saw that, you know, too many leaders just over rely on formal structure. And the worst one, worst ones create even more structure as a way to give themselves more power and authority, writing better contracts,

• 26:18Speaker 01

  appointing more project managers, right, more governance agreements. And as Linda was talking about in our research, and, and I lived this firsthand as well, beyond the research and doing the work, these bridgers and these more successful leaders do the important work of building trust and influence and commitment and, and ask themselves like important questions like, do we really know what our priorities, capabilities, constraints of our partners and collaborators? So for, for me, there, we talk about this in the book and one of our HBR stories, articles. There was a high potential leader whose team was prototyping something that, you know, checked out with everyone that they were talking to, including, you know,

• 27:01Speaker 01

  and customers about a new product and just tested really well. And they made the decision to proudly, but hand it off to their colleagues in IT marketing, you know, and elsewhere, and eventually it stalled, you know, for a variety of reasons. You know, the product was built on legacy tech and legacy systems. It was a new customer segment that the business wasn't really familiar with. So others thought it was too incremental. I mean, this happens in industries, small and large, all the time. And where innovation dies, not because the idea was bad, but because the partnership's meant to deliver, it just broke down. So whether I'm meeting with CEOs, we're meeting with CEOs

• 27:42Speaker 01

  or talking to my kids' local public school, one of the things that I really have strong conviction on is, especially in this world with the arrival of artificial intelligence, there are always going to be problems in the world. The world has always been a target rich environment. So get, get graded problem solving. We may not see or know with a lot of confidence what those problems are, three, five, especially 10 years from now, but there will be problems. So get graded problem solving. And that comes from everything from design thinking to Six Sigma and, and, and rapid prototyping and experimentation. But simply said, it's less talking and more doing and more learning.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  And, and I think history has shown that the problems change. And it's the people who are really good at adapting to solving those emergent problems are the ones that stay relevant. And I think that's becomes kind of the canvas of where those big swings also come from as well. I agree. And what's fascinating here is that we're recognizing that, again, just reiterating this, whatever your big swing is, this will have to be a part of it. When it comes to being that bridger who can bridge connections, who can handle these political dynamics exceptionally well, it's necessary. And so it's not, it's not a question of whether or not you want to play the game. You are playing the game. It's just a question of whether or not you're actually doing it well.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  And going back to the conversation about power, we, it reminds me of topics like the locus of control in psychology, self-efficacy, those type of terms, because it's not about whether or not you have the, the capacity or a capability, but if you don't believe you have the power, then it kind of feeds into learned helplessness. You're not going to take any swings of any sort. Right? And so we have to have that internal conversation to, to shift the way that we're thinking about this. And so what I'm thinking though, is that there are people listening to this podcast who are, are recognizing now that they had far more power than they realized. They were just looking at the wrong things.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  And so this is now, now we're going to move into like motivational guru up on stage. You, you have power. Okay. So.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you can be much more analytic about it than that.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  100%. So let's get specific. Where, where are the places where people have power that they often miss? Because I believe a big part of this, when it comes to reaching out and taking those shots and taking advantage of opportunities, is learning to look in the right places. Because we often look at places that confirm our belief that we're powerless instead of the alternative.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Well, it's, there's so many ways to answer this question. And I'm just going to go down one path and there's so many to be explored. But one is, you know, we do have imagination.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Human imagination is unbelievably powerful. You have, you know, you have ideas. You can think up what a different future might be. And you don't have to necessarily have the whole vision. In fact, most of us don't have the whole vision of what it's going to be. And if you say you do, given all that's going on in the world, how dynamic and complex it is, I doubt it. But I really do think being curious and using your imagination to think about possibilities, to address something that really matters to you. So one of the things that we wrote about in our, in the first book we wrote on innovation, was we wrote about what we learned at Pixar. And one of our business partners is a person who was sort of, I guess,

• 31:21Speaker 02

  sort of the equivalent of the chief technology officer of Pixar. And one of the things he said to me very early on is that everybody has a slice of genius. Everybody has talents, everybody has passions. So where does your power start? It starts with your talents and your passions. One of those talents that we have, particularly when we're children, if we haven't killed it out of you by, with school, is you have curiosity, you have your imagination to think through, to do that kind of problem solving. So look at your own talents, analyze them. What's, what, what is unique about what you know or what you can do? And all of us has something because we all have different backgrounds. Again, our passions are a source of power because with passion can come tenacity, courage.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  All of those things, those qualities that are more learned than we think, actually. It goes back to, as you said, you mentioned learned helplessness. I actually did my, you're making me feel, I don't know what you're making me feel, but I did one of my first experiments in college on learned helplessness, that people learn to be helpless. So I think though, that what you want to look at is your own slice of genius. And if you can't figure out what it is, talk to someone who loves you or knows you, and let them, and, and, and let them be, you know, your sparring partner to figure out what's, I guess what, what I hear young people these days say is, what is your superpower? Right? What is it? I mean, I want to, I must confess, when people ask me that, I find that word a little bit tricky for me. I don't know if it's my age or whatever.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  But this idea that we all have them, we all have slices of genius. Start there, understand what you have to work with. That doesn't mean that you don't want to also pay attention to what you don't have, which is what so many of us do. But look at what you do have. And these are the resources you have individually. And some of you may have, in fact, you're really good at relationship building. That is a strength. That is a superpower you can use to pull together who you need to try to get done, what you're gonna, what you're gonna want to get done. But I think we, and again, I worry sometimes about how we're educated, because we kind of help you as professors sometimes understand what you don't know. Right?

• 33:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  But when we're grading, as opposed to worshiping, and I'm using the word worship very seriously. What is so special about you? And I, I've met many, many individuals who are, have been viewed as high potential. Otherwise, they would not have ended up at Harvard Business School, who don't know what their slices of genius are. And so this grand challenges course, I was just talking to the strategy professor that I'm going to be doing this course with. And he was like, you know, we need to end with something that really helps the students understand what they have to offer to begin to tackle these kinds of dilemmas. Because they don't know, Linda. You know, and, and he, he's a strategy professor, he's an economist. But we both ended up in the same place is if we can help them be clearer about what their why is

• 34:07Speaker 02

  in their life by the time they leave. You can't get everything done, but some insight, more insight into that, as well as look at these special talents you have. And related to that, even within the kinds of relationships you have, can you use those in a constructive way, a reciprocal way? I want to be, I don't want to use use in the sense of manipulate, to get done something that you think is worth doing. Now, I can't do, one of the things I often tell, you know, the students or whoever I'm working with, the executives, I don't know what's in your heart. I never try to, you know, you may be trying to pursue something that would make me crazy if I knew I was being helpful to you, helping you get that done. But I'm going to assume, I have faith in human nature overall. And so you, again, that's where you start.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Your power starts with what do you have to offer? And if you're not self-aware enough to figure that out, then, and then get to it, that is work for you to learn. And then when you do figure out gaps, find out, can you get a partner who actually can be, who can complement you? Uh, or do you need to go on a, a development plan? That will allow you to, to take, you know, to kill, um, to close some of those gaps that are most, most, uh, critical to close. I mean, I was working with a man who is a top surgeon in the world. I mean, top, top surgeon. And he's a Rhodes Scholar. He's, he's absolutely brilliant. But given what he wanted to do, the moonshot, what he really deeply cared about,

• 35:32Speaker 02

  he needed a sparring partner, as he put it, who was very different from him, to work with him and help him get better at those things that are going to be required for him to get better at. If he was going to be able to lead in a way that would let him deliver what deeply, deeply matters to him.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  Every year, I swear that I'm going to get ahead of holiday shopping. This year, it started with a Quince cashmere sweater that I bought for myself. It was so soft, so well-made, and my first thought was, who else on my list needs one? Quince makes high-quality staples with 100% Mongolian cashmere and Italian leather. And their cashmere sweaters start at just $60. All of it is 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. As a negotiator, I know a great deal when I see one. This is luxury quality without the luxury price tag. I use Quince and you should too. Give the gift of quality this season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or just go to quince.com.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Kwame with Big Swings Only. That's the best way to support the show. If you were going to take a big swing this holiday season and start a business, what would you build? Maybe it's that one idea that you can't stop thinking about. I've built a business from the ground up and I can tell you that the hard part isn't the idea, it's getting it live. That's where Shopify comes in. You can sell everywhere people shop, online, in person, across social media, even in AI chats. And Shopify checkout with Shop Pay converts up to 36% higher than the competition.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  So more of the people who show up actually buy. Plus, Black Friday is when more people are already shopping and ready to buy. So the sooner you're live, the better. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/Kwame to start your free trial. That's Shopify.com/Kwame. Go to Shopify.com/Kwame to hear your first.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  And so I think, again, all of us need help. So one of the networks you really need to build is what is called your developmental network. Those people who actually can help you, you know, do those, have those experiences, learn from those experiences that will make you, your slice of genius kind of grow. All slices are not equal. Uh, and perhaps even more importantly, become aware of what they are. Because so many people are not aware of their passions or their talents. Literally aren't aware.

• 38:08Speaker 00

  Yes. And, and again, going to that concept of self-awareness. The thing is, we have to be accurate in our assessments. A lot of times, we can be almost self-deprecating to our own disadvantage, where we say, oh, I don't have very much to give. And no, we have to be very real about what our passions are and what our skillset actually is. And sometimes you need that friend to be that, that hype man or woman for you, to help you to recognize how good you can be or how good you are. But then you also have to be real about the gaps too. Because if you have, if you want to take these big swings, then you are going to have to recognize that there's probably a discrepancy between where you currently are and where you need to be in terms of skills and competencies. And now you can fill those gaps with precision and then make sure that you're making those moves.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Because one of the things that we have to recognize is along with the increased dynamism that is required in the workplace, with us having to deal with new changes more so than previous generations, everything's constantly in flux. So we have to be bridgers, we have to be, we have to be agile as well. Um, but then also, we have to recognize that the old command and control way of leadership is slowly, is, is dying in many ways. So in the many cases, we might want to take a big swing, do something impressive or create a project. But we ourselves don't have the capacity to, to get it across the finish line by ourselves. We don't have enough political capital. And so when it comes to influence without authority,

• 39:38Speaker 00

  where do people start when it comes to gathering up the political capital, capital you need within an organization especially, to actually get finished, projects, um, green, the green light, but then get it across the finish line as well?

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think influence without authority is arguably one of the most important things that I think that we uncovered in the almost 10 years of research of our book. And I think just building on what we were just talking about before, I'm convinced personally that self-awareness is the most underappreciated and undervalued skill for any leader. And I think for me, at the beginning of my own personal journey, I defined that a bit narrowly of almost how the external world perceives me. And that's part of it, but it was also my own heart and mind being aligned. And I think one of the things that this conversation reminded me of was probably the

• 40:34Speaker 01

  best career advice that I ever got, and it happened early in my career, from a guy by the name of Joel, who's now kind of a mentor, retired, but at the time, he was the managing partner of Aegon Zender, which is a Swiss-based executive search, CEO, board placement kind of firm, dealing with sensitive issues and CXO and above. And I think, I appreciate that Joel at the time saw something in me, and he had more confidence in me than I had in myself. And the homework he gave me over a summer as I was interning with him was, Jason, take out a blank sheet of paper, draw a vertical line down the middle. On the left-hand side, write down 10 things that you think that you love to do.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  On the right-hand side, write down 10 things that you think that you despise or hate doing. And he said, here's the key, is don't share it with anyone, including your better half, hide it away at some desk, go back to what you're doing, and in a month or two, go back to the list and edit it and go through at least two or three iterations before you finalize that. And that process, if I hadn't have done that, I would not have been here with all of you right now. I would not have written a book with Linda. Because what I realized was, as I grew up, teenager, went to college, I started to convince myself that these were the things that were important to me and I cared about, but it

• 42:02Speaker 01

  was really extrinsic, and it was coming from the outside world. And this exercise really helped me get back to the purity of, based on lived experience and what I'm doing day to day with my team and my work, what do I really, if I'm honest with myself, enjoy and not enjoy? And the list that I started with became an almost completely different list by the end of it. So I couldn't help but share that, because it was so transformational for me, that maybe it'll help many others out there. But when it comes to exercising influence without formal authority, especially in the

• 42:41Speaker 01

  world of innovation, and with so much change going on, innovation is going to become more and more important for every organization, no matter what you're involved with. It's no longer optional, and that's why we wanted to write this book. And I think there are kind of two answers, and Linda touched on part of this. One is emotional intelligence, and the other is contextual intelligence. And the leaders that we studied, not just the Bridgers that we talked about, but the other A and the C of the ABCs, the architects and catalysts, also exhibit this really, really well. And emotional intelligence is about managing that ambiguity without being in control,

• 43:22Speaker 01

  which can grate and create friction around sense of urgency, but they stay motivated, they take the long view, they're really good at giving credit generously and credit to everyone else, and they own their mistakes. Back to the importance of self-awareness and transparency. So one of the chapters in the book, and one of my favorite ones, because I travel so much, is Delta and Nicole Jones. And what she did to ensure that it was not just another innovation lab, that became an extension of the organization, but not really deeply integrated into co-creating that future. And obviously, we'd love for people to read the book and that chapter, but what she did

• 44:05Speaker 01

  was insisting her partners be the heroes. And the space that they created, that they called the hangar, and the team around that never took credit for the innovations that they incubated, it just didn't feel right. And it was just so key to the ongoing commitment. So they did lots of things to make sure that they celebrated teamwork and outcomes, that people who were maybe in the beginning skeptical about who would get the credit, they just put that to rest. And then contextual intelligence, and I think, again, with the arrival of artificial intelligence, understanding context is going to be important in work and in life. And so I think what these leaders do really well is, instead of making assumptions, because

• 44:50Speaker 01

  think about it, even like today, our beliefs and assumptions, how long do they last? The world is literally shifting underneath our feet, a yard or two every week. So they don't make these sorts of assumptions. Instead, they learn through question and inquiry and observation, and how the partner's context shapes their own mindset and behavior. So instead of imposing the Delta's way of working on these partners, they almost create kind of a shared way of working through rules of engagement together. And so, no project, especially if you're kind of pushing the edges and truly being innovative, is easy. There's lots of turbulence, right?

• 45:30Speaker 01

  So these teams recognize that in any relationship, you're going to have bumps in the road. And instead of hiding it and not being transparent, they're very transparent, say, hey, we own this problem, this was our issue, because they realize that the truth in any relationship is going to come out. So instead, focus on, hey, let's learn from this together and figure out what do we do now, and make sure this never happens again. And by doing it that way, what a surprise, it builds trust. So I think that there's a lot that can be learned around how do you put emotional intelligence and contextual intelligence in practice? And it's one of those things that everyone can learn by doing.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  So people often think that either you're born a leader or you're not. You either are a leader or you're not. You were born that way or not. The research is actually quite clear, that leadership is mostly learned. Now, I will say that that doesn't mean that all of us can lead in all circumstances, but there's a lot more leadership potential out there than we think. That's what the research tells us. Star leaders are more made than born. They really are. And the reason, I think, in part, we sometimes have this myth in our heads, that they're more born, is because when we think about leadership, we often think about that really big charismatic leader. And charisma is a source of power. Some people have a lot of it, and some people don't.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  And if you have it as a source of power, it can help you influence people for sure. It also has a downside to it. But really, I have one of my colleagues, Boris Groysberg, he began to study in-depth stars in a whole range of industries, not just leadership. He started with leadership and found that there's a lot more, there's more making of them than born. Now, I will never be going back to basketball. I'm never going to be, I'm not tall enough, I'm not the right gender even to do, well, I am the right gender if I want not to play for the Celtics. But I think that what I would say is that what we really often forget, how important experiences are. The other thing we've learned over time is that we used to think that all of the important developmental experiences were early in life.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Well, no, adults continue to develop. I even saw something the other day that talked about what it is about 80-year-olds that actually let them become 90-year-olds and not get Alzheimer's. And part of it is that they're really lifelong learners. They're curious, they're engaged, they're interacting. So I think that what we're really saying here is, you need to take charge of your own development, and think about, again, what matters to you. And I think, Jason, it's hard to figure out what matters to you. And people ask you, again, it's hard enough to try to figure out what your superpowers might be, but really, when you ask people, what's your why? What really matters to you? That is a search sometimes, and it will also change over time.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  That's the other thing we need to say. I mean, after you get to be, as you get older, you discover, oh, what really matters to me has shifted. But one of the things we saw in all of the leaders that we've studied, who were exceptional leaders of innovation, is that they actually all believed that values drive value. And so, again, clarity about what you value, and being able to share that clarity with others. What happens, as one of the leaders said to us, when people hear what you value, some people will move towards you because they share your values, others are going to move away from you. Okay, let them go, because you're looking for those people where you actually have some common ground.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  So don't be afraid to clarify. Related to that is one of the leaders I studied, who was actually a political leader. He was considered to be one of the most powerful sort of people in Washington in driving innovative solutions. And I was asked by a group of tech people, I mean, tech people who created things like the internet, literally, did the basic work for the cloud, they said, would you go study this person? Because this person really is what we think, one of the key catalysts for innovative movements in the United States. So I went to study him, and what I learned was, he was really, really good at coaching people in how to actually build coalitions.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  He spent a disproportionate amount of his time doing that. He coached them and taught them things like you just heard with, with, from Jason. Let, you know what? If you really want it done, then let the other person take credit. If you really want it done, make it easy for the other person. When you go into a room, too often we look around, particularly in Washington, and say, who's the most powerful person in this room? And how do I get closer to that powerful person? He's like, no, that's not the way to go. What you need to do is try to find out in the room, look around the room and find out who shares your interests. Who can you start to have common ground with? It might be at the level of values. It might be at the level of the problem or the opportunity.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  Once you find the people in the room with whom you share something to begin to build a relationship, that's how you get sort of those, that you start to seed the coalition you might need. And if that person also you're sharing and you have similar problems, eventually they're going to help you figure out how to meet the big boss. If they're, if their big boss is in that room. But he said, that's not what most people do. Most people move towards that person. They think, you know, this, that, that's the big cheese. Let me go there. Doesn't work because everybody's trying to get to that person. And why should that person pay a whole lot of attention to you? Particularly going back to if you don't have a lot of formal authority, or if you're more junior. But his group, and he had a hand, he was very careful at figuring out who could be

• 51:20Speaker 02

  open to working in this way. And it wasn't easy to share credit because these are top performers who are used to having a lot of credit. But he said, really think about, just do a tour of duty with government. Most of the people on his team are a large percentage, I shouldn't say most, they would never have thought they would be in government. They didn't want government, you know, they were very, they wanted to be in entrepreneurial ventures or whatever. But he said, just do a tour of duty here and figure out, if you can figure out how to scale that idea you have in this kind of context, you can affect millions of people, not, you know, if you will, hundreds of people, or maybe thousands of people. And I can't tell you how many, and we ended up interviewing people who'd been able to do their tour of duty in Washington with them, with, with him and his team.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  And they sort of described to me all that they learned from that. And also, and how frustrating the work was, just to be clear, but because there is a lot of bureaucracy, but how, on the other hand, what they got done there and they began to see the ripple effects that can happen when you're in a certain kind of context that creates those effects if you actually can move certain coalitions. So I think that, again, when people are thinking about, what do I, how do I want to make a difference? And we all, I want to really emphasize here that most of us need to make a living. And many of the people I deal with, you know, are, I was just, are first, the first

• 52:45Speaker 02

  person to graduate, for instance, from college, nonetheless, a graduate school, or even the executives. We had an executive here recently, and I want to be careful about this, because I don't want to, I can't identify him. But he described to the class why there was a certain kind of fruit that he couldn't bear to see or look at, because he came from a family that basically they were, they were migrant workers. And you, when you turned six, that's when you started working. So you were happy until you were six, because you just ran around while everybody else, you know, wasn't working and you enjoyed this fruit. But to imagine that there was someone in the class, and when he shared this story, who frankly grew up in tents, they were migrant workers.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  And he said, here I find myself at Harvard Business School, and I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to, he said, I, I would have never in a million years, or my family dreamed that I'd be here. And let me tell you what I'm trying to get done in my organization. So again, I think that what we need to understand is that, and when he described to people how he got where he was, did do it alone, had a lot of support from his family, his siblings who, you know, let, but he also was supporting his family. So he went, he, he was sending money home, if you will. So he had other obligations that, you know, a lot of them didn't have, but he still, and he still was very focused on, on making a difference to his organization.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  And that organization was one that some of us might say was in an industry that, you know, maybe isn't the best industry, if you're trying to, if you want to be, I don't know, not politically correct, but it was a complicated industry. But he had a way of thinking about why it's, it's an essential industry. And how was he going to get work done there differently? And for him, it actually did relate also to thinking about opportunities for the employees to have better work, work experiences. So again, you see how someone takes what his own experience has been and turns it into an incredible opportunity for himself, for his family, because he was making more money than they could have ever imagined to help support his family, although it was a pretty big family. And he was also, you know, trying to think about ways he could make this business, create

• 54:56Speaker 02

  a better work environment for the employees. At least in the part that he had some influence over.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  Yes. Oh, there, there is so much to explore in this. And Simone, let me give you a heads up. I'll bring you in on the next go around, because there, I want to go deeper on this one concept, because I've heard you both mention it in passing, and I want to dig deeper on it too. So the term is coalition building, especially when you think about gathering political capital. Coalition building is a method of building influence that people often overlook in a way that's surprising, because oftentimes they just don't have the word for what coalition building actually means. So let's give the audience something they can actually use tangibly when it comes to

• 55:44Speaker 00

  what it actually means to build a coalition and then how to do it well.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  So I think one thing, and I'm trying to think of a good example, we have a number of leaders who did a lot of coalition building. I think that one, one example I'll just give you right now, I'm trying to think if this is the best way to go at it. The reason why, so thinking about who has common interests. So it turns out, one of the leaders we studied in, in Didi, who's actually a businesswoman in, in agribusiness in Nigeria, she decided that what she needed to do was, you know, basically there was a lot of, a lot of food as being imported in Nigeria, that frankly, they should be able to not only have enough to feed themselves, but to export it to others.

• 56:31Speaker 02

  So she began to think about, we can only become better as an industry, an agribusiness industry, if we actually build some coalitions across particularly the SMEs in, in the agribusiness space. She was an SME, she's not a, she's not a farmer. She actually was doing some of the, the, you know, taking the raw goods and working on them to turning them into spices and distributing them, et cetera. So she said, you know, the way that, I guess, processing these foods. So she began to realize where, what's the lever? How can I help Nigeria? It ended up being Africa broadly conceived, but how can I help Nigeria be, really have

• 57:13Speaker 02

  the food we need and actually export the food that, as well? And so we can improve our livelihoods and our lives.

• 57:21Speaker 00

  If you were going to take a big swing this holiday season and start a business, what would you build? Maybe it's that one idea that you can't stop thinking about. I've built a business from the ground up, and I can tell you that the hard part isn't the idea, it's getting it live. That's where Shopify comes in. You can sell everywhere people shop, online, in person, across social media, even in AI chats. And Shopify checkout with Shop Pay converts up to 36% higher than the competition. So more of the people who show up actually buy. Plus, Black Friday is when more people are already shopping and ready to buy. So the sooner you're live, the better. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.com/Quami to start your free trial.

• 58:05Speaker 00

  That's Shopify.com/Quami. Go to Shopify.com/Quami to hear your first. Every year, I swear that I'm going to get ahead of holiday shopping. This year, it started with a Quince cashmere sweater that I bought for myself. It was so soft, so well-made, and my first thought was, who else on my list needs one? Quince makes high-quality staples with 100% Mongolian cashmere and Italian leather. And their cashmere sweaters start at just $60. All of it is 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. As a negotiator, I know a great deal when I see one. This is luxury quality without the luxury price tag. I use Quince, and you should too.

• 58:50Speaker 00

  Give the gift of quality this season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers, or just go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Quami with big swings only. That's the best way to support the show.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  So she realized that really the lever she had was to try to bring together some of the SMEs in agribusiness, small and medium-sized businesses, and help them become more efficient and effective in doing their own work, which would then trickle back to the farmers and also prepare them to, working with these, if they, if they develop coalitions to work with the government to develop, to develop better distribution channels and rules and subsidies, et cetera, to be able to export what they were doing. When she first tried to build this coalition of SMEs, and she was doing some of this actually virtually, because she was using digital tools, she discovered that the SMEs suffered from what she referred to as crab walk, a crab mentality.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  And what she meant by that is that resources were so scarce in Nigeria, that people didn't want to share resources. They didn't want other people to know what they had. They were hoarding. And so it took her a long time to convince them that actually, you know what? The pie can get bigger if we in fact work together, because together we have more strength than we do individually. So it took her a little while to get through this crab mentality, as she described it, and to show them that, no, let's try to combine what we know and do. Let's, together, we can get access to some digital tools, because the mobile phone was there, and they could do various things on the mobile phone that they couldn't do otherwise. And we'll help, together, we can afford to invest and develop some tools that will help us all get better.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  So that whole process has been, you know, took her years in some ways. She was quite committed to it. But she taught them that as a coalition, They could go get, they had more resources. This is shared resources. And they could also give voice to their common concerns when they were working even with foundations who were making, you know, grants to the area, et cetera. And that coalition building, so it wasn't they didn't know about coalitions or that they could come together. They were afraid to because they thought that we're each going to get a smaller piece of the pie. Instead of being competitive, we need to be able to collaborate. So that's an instance where they hadn't really thought of coming together and working that way. And she's now, this, this organization is incredible.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  Again, it's one of our chapters about African food changers and all the changes they've been able to make in, in food and across, not just in Nigeria, but it's now a global entity. And they are using digital tools to both keep the group working together as a coalition, because how do you keep everybody connected? As well as using those tools to make each of their businesses more powerful. Another one was, so I don't know if that's the kind of example you meant, or that's, that's an example that's a big swing because she is definitely a big swing. She was now the head of the, of Bono's Foundation. And as you know, Bono does a lot of work in Africa. So she's, she's now looking at, you need capital for all of these things, but this

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  network of, of SMEs across Africa in agribusiness, really very powerful in getting lots done that they couldn't have done individually. And they're learning together, they're figuring out what's tricky, how to share what they earn in ways to put it back into the pool so that they can continue to grow the pie. So that's an example of understanding if we can get these coalitions together, we can do things differently. A slightly different one, and I guess, I guess I would call it coalition building, is one of the executives we worked with was trying to change, and this is, he's a businessman who's helped build a very successful tech, uh, tech outsourcing company.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  He also has a foundation that does work in primary education. And what he began to understand is even though he personally and his foundation had wonderful relationships with government in India and had wonderful relationships with the teachers in these villages where they were working. The only way that this, these changes he was trying to make to primary education could actually be sustainable is if he improved and built a strong relationship between government officials and teachers. And not just local government, but also state government in particular. So it wasn't so much, I need, we need to get our relationship right with government. Government wants to work with us because guess what?

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  We're putting a hundred million dollars in to help in these different villages. Teachers want to work with us because we have established a way to help, to show them that we can help them be more effective in their jobs. But that's, that's not the key. The key here really is the coalition across state and local government with these local teachers. And if we can facilitate and make that into a coalition, they're, the parents included, then that is what will be sustainable. Because a hundred million dollars is a drop in the bucket to improve education of, of children, you know, in, in the early grades in India. So the coalition, he, he changed his thinking from, it's about me and my foundation working with these different parties, but rather I need to, I need to introduce these other

• 1:04:12Speaker 02

  parties who need to work together. And they need to be the coalition with the parents and whatever. And guess what? Then the parents are voting for the government officials, they're getting reelected. Uh, the teachers are getting access. And as a consequence of building this coalition for education, also the government decided to put electricity into some of these, these, these villages. Because electricity would give them access, again, all being done on the mobile phone, mostly. The mobile phone has changed the world in so many ways, in a positive way. They, he was able to deliver a lot of what he needed to deliver to both government and so, and the teachers. But again, it's the coalition that he built between the parents, the teachers and the government officials of two levels that actually have allowed that, that whole effort to be sustainable.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  Because the government then changed their metrics for how they measured the teachers. And the metrics were more in line with really educating the children, not just, you know, not counting beans, if you will, but really paying attention to educational outcomes that will make a difference to these children. So that, that is about thinking very constructively about what's the coalition that needs to be built to allow for this big swing, in this instance, improving primary education for children in India. And it's not just a one-on-one partnership, it's really getting those, those other parties to work, or just like with Inditi, getting the SMEs to work with each other differently, not just with me, right? That is what we refer to as catalyst leadership.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  When you think that way, about building those multi-party relationships. And we talked about the Bridgers, but this is the other piece, when you move to the coalition, that is what we refer to, which you're almost building a, what we would call almost a movement of, of people to solve a problem that is really critical to that society. Again, this is a business leader who was, was doing this work. He also, you know, he, he just felt it had to be done and he needed to think differently. So he, for us, would be a catalyst leader.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  Brilliant. Yeah, it's amazing, Linda, because that's exactly where it was going to go around the catalysts, right? We've talked about the ABCs of, of great leadership, architects, Bridgers, the C for catalysts. All, all of the ABCs are great at coalition building, but the catalysts, it's, it's, it's so important to their mission. And I think before I get into a little bit of catalysts and I share my personal favorite chapter, which Linda already knows, you know, when I've been involved in kind of coalition building, one of the tools that has been really effective is kind of tearing a page from a book of Economics 101, which is abundance versus scarcity, right? It's human nature that we value things that are scarce, sometimes rationally, sometimes

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  irrationally. Water, oil, the latest iPhone, people spending all night in a tent, right? To be the first one in line so they can do their unboxing video or for whatever the reason. And we, we value things that are scarce. It's human nature. But oil, water, those things tend to be kind of global or regional resources. But when you think about like coalition building, scarcity and abundance is relative. The data that, you know, on the back of trust with customers that I've earned the right over decades, that I may have as an organization, someone else doesn't have.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  But I may need something that would take me forever or a ridiculous amount of money to be able to acquire to get that. So I think that there's an interesting kind of frame that's been really helpful just in making innovation and change practical around just the lens of abundance and scarcity. And it's relative. Just think about who you partner with and you probably find things that are abundant in your own organization that others would value if they had access to it. And that could lead to an interesting conversation around exchanging value. So catalysts are really the world-class coalition builders that we studied in our book. And as Linda said, they, they're really about igniting movements, movements that hopefully

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  drive innovation much farther than their own team or their organizational boundaries. So, you know, they, they're really good at mapping ecosystems of stakeholders and seeding real tangible opportunities that can be inviting for multi-parties to want to be involved and co-create. And they don't stop there. They cultivate those seeds with, you know, the mindsets and relationships and tools that are important to sustain that movement. So probably personally, one of my favorite chapters in the book is the chapter about Avatar Inn, which is a spinoff of ANA Airlines, which is the largest airline in Japan. So the United Airlines, Delta Airlines of Japan.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  And the story is about two young engineers, two individual contributors, kind of nobodies, buried inside of the organization, Akira and Kevin. And they launched a global movement with, at the beginning, no budget, no authority around mobile robotics and avatar. And when they started the journey, you know, it started with a question around can humans teleport? And they were literally like laughed at and scoffed at. And they realized through the research that like the technology behind teleportation is several decades away. But it led them to can you transport human senses? And use cases from diffusing bombs to, you know, an immobile grandmother in rural Japan

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  who dreams of going to Machu Picchu, but will never go to an airport again. Patients who want to be involved in work, in society, but, you know, maybe have some physical limitations. So a whole range of use cases. And so these two junior engineers at a Japanese airline. Airlines are arguably the most risk averse industry in the world. No budget, no authority, building this global movement where they eventually got over a billion dollars of government investment, involve the equivalent of NASA in Japan, JAXA. And as I said, it's a spin out that's now independent. So if these two junior engineers inside of a highly risk averse airline can ignite a

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  global movement around robotics, and in my opinion, the most human-centered avatar movement in the world, anyone can. And we hear a lot like founders mode and how founders leverage themselves, especially at startups and tech startups. But for me, there's a negative connotation, which is management and trying to be everywhere and do everything. And I think this is a great example of a different sort of leveraging yourself in founders mode to co-create and scale something that eventually became bigger than them and their idea at the beginning.

• 1:11:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, and these avatar robots, I mean, I met these two, I met one of them, Akira first. We were on a panel together in Japan and he was describing teleportation. And I love Star Trek, Star Wars, I love aliens. So I'm thinking, I have to go talk to this person. I thought of him as a young man, I'm just gonna put it that way, honestly. And as soon as we get to the break, I gotta find out, I said teleportation? And it was teleportation without the mass. How can we send our five senses across, if you will, the internet? How can we send our consciousness? And they literally had these avatar robots. And this is the next big thing, technically, from what I understand. They were, this was probably eight years ago or so that I met them.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  They were already working on, you know, AI robotics. They now, of course, incorporated Agentic AI. But these robots, they have one up on the International Space Station, helping scientists do, do the science they wanna do. They have them in hospitals, they have them in stores, they have them at airports. And what you do is you're sitting, wherever you're sitting, and you're sending your senses. They're still working on the haptik hand. I thought, how do you send smell? Well, guess what? There's a lot of research on that. But just think about the coalitions they've had to build to create the platform and the capabilities to do this kind of work. And it's one of these times where they took advantage of something that was obviously horrible for all of us in many ways, COVID.

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  When they started, frankly, February of 2020, they thought they were dead. Quite the contrary, everybody wanted one of these avatar robots. People wanted them so they could say goodbye to their family member who was dying in the hospital. If the hospital had a robot, you could be in your home and send at least, it's much more than it's, I know it sounds like it, they did it very, it's very simplistic, but they, you can send, over time, they wanted, what if you could have touched, you couldn't yet, but they've been working on a haptik hand that I guess Jeff Bezos demonstrated. But though, how did they create these technologies? They worked with X Prize to find out who in the world, who's best in the world at sending, you know, touch across the internet?

• 1:13:16Speaker 02

  Who's best in the world at sending smell across? They found out by looking who, you know, who applied for X Prize. Then they would find and introduce these, they found out three groups of three different startups that were really good at the haptik hand. So you can touch from wherever you are. And then they introduced those three to each other. And then they got a little seed money from A&A to give it to those three and said, if you cooperate, because you're best at this, and you're best at that, and you're best, we'll get this hand done faster. So they created that coalition of competitors, if you will, who worked together and then were able to create that capability, another coalition. So these are people who are very creative of thinking about, how can we convince people to work together? Or working with JAXA. How did they get construction companies to agree to come together to work on that?

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  Because, well, now we have the space industry, right? So people are getting ready for building the satellites. But what they said, in Japan, we have all this radioactive, all these areas that are radioactive. You don't want, you can't send humans there to fix, clean this up, but we can send our avatar robots there. So the construction companies. So this is the imagination part of what I was saying, being curious, having imagination, having a problem you wanna solve that really speaks to you. And they're at it.

• 1:14:26Speaker 00

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• 1:16:21Speaker 02

  Yes. Amazing. This is great. Simone, I know you've been sitting here waiting patiently, my friend. I told you I'd get you in. What's on your mind?

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  I want to share with you an experience I had in Argentina, and I want to know your thoughts about that. Because when I was like 22 years old, I was working as a sales representative, and there was a guy that would come every once in a while, like once a month to do keynotes and train us in terms of how to sell, how to work as a team, and in some kind of politics. But then, after one year, I was promoted as a sales leader. And then I was the leader of my four friends. And then this guy came again, but not for a group training, and he just talked to me.

• 1:17:14Speaker 03

  He just, he went to my office and he said, do you remember what I told you when we were working as a team? Okay, forget everything, and I'll give you a new set of rules. So one of the things that, I was like shocked, but one of the things he said, for instance, as an example, he said transparency. So we were asking, we asked the group to be transparent, but now you're a leader. So you have to be transparent, but you have to be mindful about your transparency. So there are some things that you should not share with them, but you have to keep

• 1:17:56Speaker 03

  asking them to be transparent with you, because information is power. So you might need to know everything that's going on with them, but they don't need to know everything that is going on in the manager level. So he started to change the rules that I learned, but now there was like a different set of rules. Was it a good practice, or a bad habit? Or what happened there? Is that something that you usually see? Or I just had that experience?

• 1:18:29Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh. Well, I wrote a book called Becoming a Manager. And yes, and one of the, and you described two of the dilemmas, that, more than two, maybe, but at least two. One is, oh my goodness, I'm having to manage people that used to be my friends, and now they don't tell me stuff, and I don't get invited to go out for a drink or to have coffee, because I'm the boss now, right? And people can be very unsettled by that experience. So your communication and your relationship does have to change, because you can't play as if you don't have some extra influence over what might happen to them in their careers and lives. You might want to, but no. So people are often shocked when they realize that. And then particularly if you have to give negative feedback to one of those former friends,

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  what, you know, what a disaster. What I really wanna say to you first is, I know that Argentina's playing, because I have a woman who works with me from Argentina, and she's driving me off the deep end. I hope, you know, I'm not gonna say who I wanna win the World Cup, but Lord knows, you all better do well, or she's gonna be horrible to work with. But what I would say, in terms of relationship building, but what I would say is that really, the thing that you do, transparency is something that we, it helps build trust. And you need to be honest with people. I think if you're not honest with people, problem, right? You cannot share everything that you know, because there actually are laws. I don't know that I would say, it's almost because you can't share information about

• 1:19:58Speaker 02

  another person in your team with, because that's just not appropriate. So what you do need to sort of face up to is, there are rights and privileges I get as a leader, or as the manager, but there are also duties and obligations. And those duties and obligations, you're more aware, that you should be when you're an individual contributor, but when you're the manager, you represent the company. So you do need to understand, you know, I represent the company, and what are my obligations and duties to the company? And you're always trying to reconcile those with what really are my obligations to these individuals, not as my former friends, but just as people who have a right to know what's going on around them that might impact them. So that is one of, this dilemma of what information you can share or not, is something that new

• 1:20:42Speaker 02

  managers really, really struggle with. So he wasn't giving you bad advice, but except, I think he was giving you advice, I don't sort of like it from the point of view of power. That worries me. That information is your power, so don't share it with them. No, I wouldn't argue it that way. I would just argue that you need to think, you need to really have that bigger picture of the organization's point of view, or the enterprise perspective. And what does that say in terms of your duties and obligations that you can share and you can't share? But I wouldn't say it's because hoarding power, hoarding information, usually your workers are gonna do better work if they have more information, frankly. And you actually wanna share with them as much as you can about the big picture.

• 1:21:26Speaker 02

  So that they're gonna be moving in the right direction. When you empower them to do something, it's less risky, because they understand that big picture. So I don't like the advice from the point of view of, it's your power, so don't give it away. I think it's more about, what are your obligations? And you now have a set of stakeholders that are bigger, and that have conflicting priorities, the company, or your boss, and your, the people working for you. And you're the one who's caught in the middle, trying to reconcile those things.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree with Linda and also love Argentina. They've been there many times, Simone, and one of the best parts is that there's no jet lag when you fly north to south from New York, let alone the change of season. So the one part that I did like about what, you know, your former boss did was sensing ahead of time that it may just be a struggle and a challenge for you to maintain both the professional and personal relationships. I think whether that was something he observed or he related to himself, you know, I think it would have been more awkward if he discovered it later and, you know, based on some mistake or performance miss or whatever it is.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  So I think that part of it, you know, I think he was trying to get ahead of some of the interference and maybe seeing a younger version of himself when he was channeling some of that feedback. Listening to you, you know, it made me take a little bit of a trip down my own memory lane where, you know, as I went from IBM to Salesforce, leading innovation at IBM there to innovation at Salesforce, I'd brought some people with me, people that I considered both obviously incredible collaborators and innovators, but also friends. And, you know, to this day, I lost a couple of them as friends because I had some of my own moments of truth as a leader where, you know, I was being paid to prioritize professional

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  priorities over personal relationships and preferences. And I learned a lot from it. And if those people listen to this, there's always two sides to the story, but I've reflected on it a lot. And, you know, if I could go back in the time machine, I think, you know, the accountability I would have would have been being clearer with them about, look, we've been friends and we've broken bread and we've had fun at Yankee Stadium, but now I have a job and I have a family. And, you know, being transparent and I think part of it is struggling with the amount of transparency and like in COVID, right, you know, telling the team, we're in the middle

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  of a meteor field and we need to get to this planet and the ship could blow up at any moment. Some people appreciated that level of transparency, others it created so much anxiety that it became almost toxic because they were unproductive. So I don't know, and I think that there's an art to the amount of transparency and it goes back to what we were talking about before of contextual intelligence. And, and I've always felt that it's better to get it off your chest than talk about it nine times out of 10, right? You know, you can at least talk it through, but it's hard to be a mind reader and make assumptions about what people are thinking and feeling.

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  Thank you. Right now, it's a big one because of AI. People are, am I going to have a job?

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:52Speaker 02

  What are you hearing? You or even, you know, when there are layoffs, often you'll know before you're told and the employees haven't been told because you might be a part of the conversation to discuss if we're going to do layoffs, who should be laid off, when should they happen, et cetera. So I mean, these are horrible moments. Most people, if you have a little bit of a heart, even if they're not your friends, you, this is, being a manager is, there is a burden, there's an emotional burden that comes with leading other people. And, you know, you've got to live up to, you've actually got to be prepared to take that on. So the warnings are good and thinking through how am I going to solve this problem in the most humane way?

• 1:25:36Speaker 02

  And if you lie to people, they're never going to forget that, right? I think, you know, one of the leaders I know right now who has a very cohesive team, fairly certain a lot is going to be automated and people are going to lose their jobs. He just said to them, I have to be honest with you. I think some people will lose their jobs. I don't know who now, but if this works the way the company wants it to work, part of it is we're taking out, you know, we're cutting costs and we're automating things. And, you know, it's going to happen. I don't know. I will try, he didn't lie. I will try to warn you as soon as I'm allowed to warn you or I can warn you so that you can prepare. But part of the reason he actually talked about it explicitly in the town hall was

• 1:26:19Speaker 02

  because he knows it's on people's minds and he knows that he would probably know before they knew. And he acknowledged it in a way that they, you know, they thought, okay, he's trying to be as straight with us as he can be.

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, Simone, I mean, that pull, I mean, is you're in sales, right? You talked about being at SDR, becoming a sales manager. And, and so I think it takes the stakes to another level because culture shaping, culture building, it takes time. But, you know, in sales, the old adage is if we don't make our numbers this year, there is no next year. So let's focus on this year. So it's an inherent paradox, right? And, but yeah, always, I always feel it's always better to be more transparent as long as you're being sensible about it.

• 1:27:05Speaker 02

  Thank you so much.

• 1:27:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. Great question and great insights as always. I could speak to you both forever on this. I appreciate you coming in and sharing your wisdom. Before you go, I want to make sure that you have time to give a proper send off. Just let the folks know where the best place is to reach you and learn more about the work that you do.

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  We've really enjoyed the conversation and, and big swings only. We, we had to be a part of this dialogue. So, so many different ways to engage with us. We spent almost 10 years writing this book and hopefully that speaks for itself. But it's, it's a book that's meant to be a prompt. It's a book that's meant to be hope. It's not saying, hey, do what Mastercard did or do what this Japanese startup did. It's walk in their shoes, learn from what they went through and apply it to your own context. So of course we can be found on amazon.com. The book is called Genius at Scale, How Great Leaders Drive Innovation. We also have a website available in multiple languages, [email protected].

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  And we would love to hear from all of you. When we wrote the book, like other authors, we wanted to write a timeless book. Doing that in the middle of artificial intelligence is, is a bit of a challenge. But by not focusing on AI, we kind of focused on what it really means to be a human leader. And I think we'd all agree, we need more of that these days.

• 1:28:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we, and we both, we also have an organ, a company called paradoxstrategies.com. But any one of those are, you know, we have LinkedIn. So whatever would people want to be in touch with us, we'd love to hear from you and love to know both what your questions are and your challenges and opportunities you'd like to take advantage of because that'll help us figure out the next project. Jason and I are very driven about solving, doing research to solve real problems, real, take and figure out how to address real problems or real opportunities that people like yourselves care about. And I also want to say it was really fun to be with you all on your new program. Congratulations.

• 1:29:10Speaker 00

  Thank you. Likewise, this, this is perfect. You all would have been perfect for negotiate anything, but I'm glad that we were able to get this in for big swings only because this angle, it just, it resonates perfectly with, with the work that you both have been doing. So thank you for your contributions and thanks for your time today. Really appreciate it.

• 1:29:30Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:29:32Speaker 01

  Of course. Our pleasure.