Breakthrough Innovation

Most organizations don't have an innovation problem — they have a permission problem. You can run every sprint in the book and still watch good ideas die between the third approval and the fourth steering committee. So how do you build innovation capability that actually sticks?

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Matthias Orgler, a leadership development specialist and SAFe Practice Consultant who has spent two decades helping large organizations close the gap between agile theater and real transformation. We cover why SAFe's big picture gets the ratio backwards, how immersive "work shock" workshops rewire leadership habits in days, and where to spend (and refuse to spend) a 90-day innovation budget.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

0:21 Most organizations have a permission problem, not an innovation problem

1:15 Is SAFe really agile? When the trade-off is worth making

4:42 The 90/10 problem: why SAFe's big picture inverts what actually matters

7:08 How to close the gap between what executives promote and what they believe

9:17 Reframing change: "The context changed, not your competence"

11:16 What leadership development actually looks like — work shocks and habit change

13:21 Why celebrating failure is a leadership discipline, not a slogan

16:16 The 90-day innovation budget: where to spend and what to refuse

18:41 Bridging the workshop back to Monday morning

20:14 Setting people free: untapped potential trapped by assumed rules

21:14 The square root principle — how many change agents you actually need

22:24 Building momentum that can't be stopped

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ SAFe can be a useful entry point for waterfall organizations, but 90% of its "big picture" is process and roles — while 90% of what makes agility work is the mindset and culture underneath

✅ The fastest path to lasting change is immersive leadership workshops that shift habits and emotions, not slide decks that get forgotten by Monday

✅ Don't spend your innovation budget embedding coaches who run retrospectives — invest in leadership transformation and identifying internal change agents

✅ You don't need to convert everyone. Setting free roughly the square root of your headcount as empowered change agents can create self-sustaining momentum

✅ The most innovative people in your organization are often already there — trapped by misaligned incentives and unwritten cultural rules

🎁 FREE RESOURCE

Download our Design Sprint Starter Guide → https://centered.work/design-sprint-starter-guide-signup

🔔 SUBSCRIBE for weekly innovation strategy → https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/breakthrough-innovation-7249796048536133632/

👥 CONNECT

Centered.work: https://centered.work

JL Heather: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlheather/

Preston Chandler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonchandler/

Matthias Orgler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orgler/

📕 Get the book Breakthrough Innovation → https://centered.work/books

#innovation #designsprint #leadership #breakthroughlab #agile #SAFe #agiletransformation

Every executive says AI is moving too fast to plan around. Daniel Burrus has spent 40 years proving that the biggest shifts in technology aren't surprises — they're future facts you can see coming, if you know how to look.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Daniel Burrus — futurist, New York Times bestselling author, creator of the Anticipatory Organization model, and AI Expert in Residence at High Point University. We cover how to separate hard trends from soft trends to innovate with certainty, why chasing AI tools without the right mindset guarantees failure, and how "problem skipping" unlocks answers you've been missing.

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ All trends are either hard (future facts that will happen) or soft (assumptions that may or may not happen) — separating them is the foundation of innovating with confidence

✅ A trend is academic until you attach an opportunity to it — that's when it becomes actionable

✅ Keeping up with AI is a fool's game — jump ahead by asking where it's going, not where it is

✅ AI requires a mindset shift first, a skillset second, and only then the tools — most leaders have the sequence backward

✅ Whatever problem you're stuck on, that's not the real problem — skip it, ask why, and find the one underneath

🎁 FREE RESOURCE

Download our Design Sprint Starter Guide → https://centered.work/design-sprint-starter-guide-signup

🔔 SUBSCRIBE for weekly innovation strategy → https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/breakthrough-innovation-7249796048536133632/

👥 CONNECT

Centered.work: https://centered.work

JL Heather: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlheather/

Preston Chandler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonchandler/

Daniel Burrus: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielburrus/

Daniel Burrus website: https://www.burrus.com

AI Strategy Report: https://www.aistrategyreport.com

📕 Get the book Breakthrough Innovation → https://centered.work/books

#innovation #designsprint #leadership #breakthroughlab #anticipatoryorganization #danielburrus #AI

Most organizations are pouring resources into making individuals faster — but that's not what drives breakthrough innovation. The real structural shift is building smarter teams that can make better decisions, iterate faster, and operationalize learning before the competition.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler wrap up their three-part series on the intersection of culture and structure by going deep on the structural half — why cross-functional teams outperform departments, how a product mindset replaces the project trap, and what happens to middle management when you push decision-making to the people with the most context.

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ Organizations should shift from making faster individuals to building smarter, cross-functional teams that share accountability and decision-making.

✅ A product/outcome mindset — not a project mindset — is essential for innovation, because no single project will get it right the first time.

✅ Middle management layers are shrinking as empowered teams take on more ownership — and that's both uncomfortable and necessary.

✅ Training alone doesn't drive change. Training plus embedded coaching plus leaders modeling the right behaviors is what makes transformation stick.

✅ The ultimate competitive advantage isn't just learning faster — it's building the structure and culture to operationalize that learning.

🎁 FREE RESOURCE

Download our Design Sprint Starter Guide → https://centered.work/design-sprint-starter-guide-signup

🔔 SUBSCRIBE for weekly innovation strategy → https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/breakthrough-innovation-7249796048536133632/

👥 CONNECT

Centered.work: https://centered.work

JL Heather: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlheather/

Preston Chandler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonchandler/

📕 Get the book Breakthrough Innovation → https://centered.work/books

#innovation #designsprint #leadership #breakthroughlab #organizationalstructure #agileteams

Breakthrough innovation isn't about catching lightning in a bottle — it's about building the cultural and structural conditions where breakthroughs happen again and again. In this episode, JL Heather and Preston Chandler go deep on the culture side of that equation.

This is Part 2 of a three-part series on the intersection of culture and structure in innovation. Part 1 laid out the overarching framework — why culture and structure are codependent and how they work together. In this episode, JL and Preston focus on the cultural conditions that make breakthrough innovation repeatable: psychological safety, trust and accountability, the language of learning vs. failure, and why value obsession beats process obsession every time. Part 3 will shift to the structural side — the tangible systems and changes that bring it all together.

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ Culture and structure are codependent — changing one without the other creates drag that pulls you back

✅ Psychological safety isn't just a nice-to-have — it's the precondition for repeatable innovation

✅ Organizations should talk about "learning" instead of "failure" to remove the stigma that shuts down experimentation

✅ When teams understand the why, they become value obsessed instead of process obsessed — and they stop counting steps and start measuring distance

✅ One of the most underrated leadership skills is the ability to unlearn what made you successful

🎁 FREE RESOURCE

Download our Design Sprint Starter Guide → https://centered.work/design-sprint-starter-guide-signup

🔔 SUBSCRIBE for weekly innovation strategy → https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/breakthrough-innovation-7249796048536133632/

👥 CONNECT

Centered.work: https://centered.work

JL Heather: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlheather/

Preston Chandler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonchandler/

📕 Get the book Breakthrough Innovation → https://centered.work/books

#innovation #designsprint #leadership #breakthroughinnovation #culture #psychologicalsafety #organizationalchange

3. LINKEDIN EPISODE ANNOUNCEMENT POST

Your organization has 87 approval steps and still has quality issues.

That's not a process problem. That's a trust problem.

In the latest Breakthrough Innovation episode, Preston and I dig into why most companies keep reaching for structural fixes — more reviews, more gates, more rules — when the real issue is cultural.

Here's the thing: culture and structure aren't sequential. They're codependent. Pull one without moving the other, and the system snaps right back.

We unpack what actually makes breakthrough innovation repeatable:

→ Psychological safety that goes beyond lip service — and what Pixar's Brain Trust got right

→ Why "celebrate failure" is the wrong message — and what to say instead

→ The difference between value obsession and process obsession (and how one question reveals which one your team has)

→ Why the most underrated leadership skill right now is the ability to unlearn

This is Part 2 of our three-part series on building the conditions where breakthrough becomes a habit — not a happy accident.

#BreakthroughInnovation #Leadership #Innovation #Culture #OrganizationalChange

Companies are investing more in innovation than ever, AI on top of that, and the results have not moved. The problem was never a shortage of ideas — it is that most organizations are wired to squash the ones they already have.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler go back to the foundation the whole show rests on: culture and structure are two halves of one coin, and almost every stalled innovation effort is a company that fixed one and left the other alone. We cover why organizations built for predictability end up structured against their own ambitions, what Netflix's no-vacation-policy really taught them about making a behavior permissible before it can become acceptable, why routing and approval chains read to a team as "we don't trust you", and what changes when a leader delegates authority instead of tasks.

This is part one of three. Part two goes deep on the culture half, part three on the structure half.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

0:21 More investment in innovation, no more results

1:16 Structured for predictability, which is the antithesis of innovation

1:49 It was never a shortage of ideas

3:15 Every leader leans culture or structure, and the pendulum swings back

5:06 Netflix, the vacation policy, and the rule nobody used

7:19 Values are words on a wall until someone feels safe enough to challenge them

8:04 Why good work backslides the moment a crisis hits

10:09 Cargo cults: copying the structure, missing the culture

12:19 The A3 that was only ever a size of paper

14:16 The culture industry has the same blind spot in reverse

15:22 "We are one team", with independent P&Ls

19:27 Why the marketing industry is stuck 30 years back

22:23 AI slapped on top of a process nobody fixed

23:01 Stop treating AI as a tool. Treat it as a participant

25:10 Routing, approvals, and what they say about trust

27:52 Delegate authority, not tasks

29:30 The two-day vacation test for leaders

32:35 "Own it": what happened when someone was handed AI adoption

34:49 People rise to the expectations you set

37:48 Ownership at home: the lawn, and Extreme Ownership

40:38 Wrapping up, and what is coming next

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ Culture and structure are not two projects, they are two halves of one. Fix either on its own and the pendulum swings back — the leader who diagnoses the culture problem correctly and leaves the approval chains, the separate P&Ls and the incentives untouched gets short-term movement and a long-term relapse

✅ Copying a visible practice without the invisible conditions underneath it is a cargo cult. Google's 20% time was worth nothing in companies where a single no could kill an idea that needed twenty yeses, and the A3 crossed the Pacific as a problem-solving methodology when it was only ever the size of a piece of paper

✅ Delegating a task keeps the leader as the answer; delegating authority makes the team the answer. Give someone a space to own rather than a list to complete and the work comes back bigger than the brief — the person handed AI adoption returned with a governance process for agents that nobody had asked for

🎁 FREE RESOURCE

Download our Design Sprint Starter Guide → https://centered.work/design-sprint-starter-guide-signup

🔔 SUBSCRIBE for weekly innovation strategy → https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/breakthrough-innovation-7249796048536133632/

👥 CONNECT

Centered.work: https://centered.work

JL Heather: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlheather/

Preston Chandler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonchandler/

📕 Get the book Breakthrough Innovation → https://centered.work/books

#innovation #organizationalculture #leadership #aiadoption #breakthroughinnovation

Are you actually growing, or just functioning well? Most senior leaders don't realize they've crossed that line until burnout forces the question.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather sits down with Adrienne Benton, Navy chaplain-turned-leadership coach and founder of Mobilizing With Impact. We cover why fear of failure is rarely about the failure itself, how purpose and alignment (not just activity) create sustainable momentum, and the MOVE framework leaders can use to break out of mediocrity in the next 30 days.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

1:27 What's really underneath fear of failure

3:25 The one decision you've been avoiding

5:19 From "we can't" to "what would it take"

6:44 Where leaders lose their teams: purpose over capability

8:54 Moving from waiting to deciding

11:01 The hidden cost of focusing only on tactics

12:47 Confusing motion with progress

14:11 Learning to thrive, not just survive

15:26 Leading somewhere you never intended to be

17:14 The MOVE framework for the next 30 days

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ Fear of failure is rarely about the failure — it's usually about identity, worthiness, or competence underneath it

✅ Purpose tells you why you're moving, innovation shows you what needs to change, and momentum determines whether it happens

✅ Momentum doesn't require giant leaps — it requires faithful, consistent steps (Make a decision, Own your growth, Value consistency, Execute with courage)

🎁 FREE RESOURCE

Download our Design Sprint Starter Guide → https://centered.work/design-sprint-starter-guide-signup

🔔 SUBSCRIBE for weekly innovation strategy → https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/breakthrough-innovation-7249796048536133632/

👥 CONNECT

Centered.work: https://centered.work

JL Heather: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlheather/

Preston Chandler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonchandler/

Adrienne Benton: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriennebenton/

📕 Get the book Breakthrough Innovation → https://centered.work/books

#innovation #designsprint #leadership #breakthroughlab #mobilizingwithimpact

Most leaders say they're committed to developing their best people — but the systems they've built tell a different story. When visibility, access, and opportunity are determined by unexamined structure rather than actual talent, organizations quietly lose their most valuable thinkers.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Dr. Lola Adeyemo, CEO of EQI Mindset and founder of Immigrants in Corporate Inc. We cover why "talent gap" is a misdiagnosis, how to design structures that unlock the talent you already have, and why ERGs are a business tool — not just a culture program.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

1:22 Why "We Have a Talent Problem" Is the Wrong Diagnosis

2:57 The Danger of Talent-to-Task Thinking

4:24 The Difference Between Culture and Structure — and Why Both Matter

6:33 The MAP Framework: Mirror, Ally, Power as a Leadership Competency

10:38 How ERGs Can (and Should) Be Used as a Talent Strategy

13:59 Rebuilding Trust and Psychological Safety When It's Been Eroded

16:25 AI's Double-Edged Sword: Data vs. Human-to-Human Listening

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ "Talent gap" is a symptom, not a diagnosis — leaders need to identify whether the problem is attraction, access, development, or retention before reaching for solutions.

✅ The people you already have are your most powerful asset. The real question is: what structures are you building to see, hear, and activate them?

✅ ERGs and community spaces are not culture theater — when designed intentionally, they are the architecture for belonging, innovation, and retention.

🎁 FREE RESOURCE

Download our Design Sprint Starter Guide → https://centered.work/design-sprint-starter-guide-signup

🔔 SUBSCRIBE for weekly innovation strategy → https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/breakthrough-innovation-7249796048536133632/

👥 CONNECT

Centered.work: https://centered.work

JL Heather: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlheather/

Preston Chandler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonchandler/

Guest: Dr. Lola Adeyemo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drlolaadeyemo/

📕 Get the book Breakthrough Innovation → https://centered.work/books

#innovation #leadership #talentdevelopment #belonging #EQIMindset

Most organizations are still asking the wrong question about AI. The question isn't how to get people to use a new tool — it's how to prepare them for a world where AI is a participant, a partner, and eventually something far more capable than any tool in your stack.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Robert Feeney, founder of Ringarang, a pocket coaching platform built to move human beings from one mindset to another through proactive, drip-based engagement. We cover why the $400 billion corporate training industry is fundamentally broken, what it means to treat AI as a participant rather than a tool, and how Ringarang 4.0 is using fully AI-led coaching to create real behavior change at scale.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

1:24 Why the corporate training industry is "thoroughly disingenuous" — and getting worse

3:30 The giant mind screw: asking employees to train the AI that may replace them

6:00 Tool vs. participant: the reframe that changes how leaders deploy and develop AI

9:15 What humans get to do when AI handles the routine — and why WALL-E might not be the worst outcome

11:00 Historical context: Henry Ford, the 40-hour week, and what capitalism actually tells us about AI

14:20 Chargers vs. blockers: why every organization needs both — and what AI makes possible for each

18:30 Ringarang 4.0 — what a 100% AI-led coaching platform actually looks like

21:30 How to connect with Robert and Ringarang

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ Leaders who reframe AI as a participant — not a tool — ask fundamentally different questions, delegate different work, and build a more consistent practice around it. That shift is strategic, not semantic.

✅ The same drip-based engagement model that makes advertising so effective at changing behavior is exactly what corporate L&D has failed to replicate — and what Ringarang is built to deliver.

✅ We are asking employees to help train the systems that may replace them. There's no way to make that feel good — but organizations that acknowledge that tension honestly are far better positioned to navigate it.

🎁 FREE RESOURCE

Download our Design Sprint Starter Guide → https://centered.work/design-sprint-starter-guide-signup

🔔 SUBSCRIBE for weekly innovation strategy → https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/breakthrough-innovation-7249796048536133632/

👥 CONNECT

Centered.work: https://centered.work

JL Heather: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlheather/

Preston Chandler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonchandler/

Robert Feeney: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rofeeney/ | [email protected]

📕 Get the book Breakthrough Innovation → https://centered.work/books

#innovation #artificialintelligence #leadership #breakthroughlab #ringarang

Most transformation strategies don't fail because the plan was wrong — they fail because the organization quietly rewrites the plan while everyone's still calling it a success. Understanding why well-funded, well-led transformation initiatives still stall is one of the most critical challenges facing senior leaders today.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Charlotte Allen, CEO of Rebel Success for Leaders and former 16-year Kraft Foods veteran. We cover the Quiet Override — the invisible organizational immune response that dilutes bold initiatives from the inside — why there's a 32-point gap between leaders who say employees are involved and employees who actually feel included, and why tracking behavior change (not just KPIs and deadlines) is the missing discipline in transformation leadership.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

1:17 Why the strongest strategies produce the weakest outcomes

3:05 Why executives already know it's not working

3:57 What the Quiet Override actually looks like inside an organization

6:47 Organizational coping mechanisms and early warning signs

8:14 What happens when someone calls it out

10:27 What separates organizations that can change from those that can't

11:08 The 32-point perception gap between leaders and employees

13:14 How to bring skeptics and vocal objectors on board

14:42 Why converts become your strongest champions

15:30 The absence of change leadership capability

17:17 The behavior change question no one is asking

18:26 How a new CIO should detect the Quiet Override early

19:22 First signals: when everything looks too rosy

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ The Quiet Override is the unspoken recalibration that happens when an organization's immune system begins to respond to change — and it starts before any leader can see it

✅ There's a 32-point gap between leaders who say employees are involved in change (74%) and employees who feel truly included (42%)

✅ Organizations that succeed at transformation track behavior change, not just process metrics, deadlines, and budgets

✅ If everything on the dashboard looks green and no one is bringing you bad news, the Quiet Override is likely already underway

✅ Designated champions — especially respected vocal objectors who buy in — are the most powerful accelerants for real transformation

🎁 FREE RESOURCE

Download our Design Sprint Starter Guide → https://centered.work/design-sprint-starter-guide-signup

🔔 SUBSCRIBE for weekly innovation strategy → https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/breakthrough-innovation-7249796048536133632/

👥 CONNECT

Centered.work: https://centered.work

JL Heather: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlheather/

Preston Chandler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonchandler/

Charlotte Allen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotteallenfoodinnovator/

📕 Get the book Breakthrough Innovation → https://centered.work/books

#innovation #designsprint #leadership #breakthroughlab #rebelsuccessforleaders #changemanagement #transformation

Most organizations don't have an innovation problem. They have a prioritization problem. The pipeline is full — and that's exactly what's breaking it.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Noel Sobelman, 25-year innovation portfolio management expert and author of Innovation Portfolio Management: Linking Strategy to Execution, whose client work spans Medtronic, Honeywell, and Siemens. We cover why the most common failure mode in large-company innovation is saying yes too often, how metered funding and evidence strength replace hockey-stick spreadsheets as the real currency of innovation governance, and what a Chief Innovation Officer should actually do in their first 90 days.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

1:27 Where innovation breaks down in large organizations — the real diagnostics

3:14 The two ends of the spectrum: everything gets killed vs. everything is underfunded

4:04 Why the companies that get it right say no more often

6:08 The stage gate question: what organizations consistently get wrong

9:36 Core vs. breakthrough innovation: why different uncertainty levels need different governance

11:08 Evidence strength: how to quantify uncertainty and compare projects with limited resources

13:18 Long-cycle industries (pharma, auto): how to de-risk before the execution engine turns on

16:56 Leadership behaviors that stall pipelines — and how to change them

18:52 Zombie projects, capacity buffers, and how to clean out a clogged pipeline

19:59 What to do first if you're a Chief Innovation Officer with 90 days to show results

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ The most common failure in large-company innovation isn't a shortage of ideas — it's loading teams past capacity with underfunded projects. Throughput, not volume of yeses, is the right metric for a healthy pipeline

✅ Evidence strength is the operating currency of breakthrough innovation governance. The question isn't "what does the spreadsheet say?" — it's "what have customers actually shown us?" Metered funding tied to validated learning replaces ROI guesswork

✅ Core and breakthrough innovation need different governance models. Stage gates work for predictable extensions; high-uncertainty bets require an agile, learning-metric-driven approach with shorter cycles and a bias toward de-risking early

🎁 FREE RESOURCE

Download our Design Sprint Starter Guide → https://centered.work/design-sprint-starter-guide-signup

🔔 SUBSCRIBE for weekly innovation strategy → https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/breakthrough-innovation-7249796048536133632/

👥 CONNECT

Centered.work: https://centered.work

JL Heather: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlheather/

Preston Chandler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonchandler/

Noel Sobelman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noelsobelman/

📕 Get the book Breakthrough Innovation → https://centered.work/books#innovation #portfoliomanagement #leadership #productdevelopment #breakthroughinnovation