Breakthrough Innovation

Your customer journey map is wrong — and it was probably wrong before the workshop ended. In a world where AI agents are starting to traverse brand experiences with zero patience for friction, static journey maps aren't just outdated — they're dangerous.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Britt Fox, founder and CEO of Nevam, a platform that turns static journey maps into living, real-time digital twins of the customer experience. We cover why traditional CX mapping fails the moment the workshop is over, how Britt sold into a major enterprise from a prototype while on maternity leave, and why enterprises building AI internally may be underestimating the true cost of maintenance and tech debt.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS (approximate — adjust to final edit)

0:00 Intro

1:22 Why journey maps die the moment they're finished

2:01 The gap between CX strategy and marketing execution

4:29 How fast is customer experience actually changing?

5:30 AI agents traversing your experience — and they won't forgive

6:40 Building the MVP in 12 weeks and selling from a prototype

9:28 Hosting CMO breakfasts to validate the problem on maternity leave

11:17 Failure is just meaning you gave up

13:13 Kill criteria — knowing when to pivot vs. keep going

15:55 The moat: why building in-house costs more than you think

17:05 Graph technology, native integrations, and the business brain

18:16 Agencies as partners, not competitors

19:26 Where enterprise marketing focus won't survive AI

20:23 Meet Hazel — Nevam's AI that scrutinizes your CX before customers feel friction

23:36 How to connect with Britt and Nevam

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ Static journey maps become fiction the moment the workshop ends — enterprises need always-on, real-time visibility into how customers actually move through the experience

✅ AI agents are already traversing brand experiences, and unlike human customers, they won't come back after hitting friction — your CX has to be ready

✅ The build-vs-buy calculation for enterprise AI is misleading — internal builds may cut SaaS costs but shift the burden to operational costs, AI tokens, and tech debt

✅ Validating with paying customers before building is the fastest path to de-risking — Britt sold a prototype into a major enterprise before writing a line of production code

✅ The real moat isn't code — it's the thinking, the experience layer, and the contextual business brain that sits on top of 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/

Britt Fox: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanynfox/

Nevam: https://www.nevamcx.com/

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

#innovation #customerexperience #CX #digitaltwins #journeymapping #AI #martech #designsprint #leadership #nevam

Most leaders think they're engaging a community — but what they're really doing is speaking to an audience. That distinction is quietly killing trust, retention, and growth.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Bryan Woodyard, a C-suite strategist with 30 years of experience across nonprofits, healthcare technology, and global organizations. We cover why community engagement requires authenticity over performance, how transparency transformed nonprofit fundraising at Minnesota Public Radio, and what leaders can learn from the American Sign Language community about truly belonging.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

1:14 The recurring disconnect Bryan finds in every industry

2:49 Version control for understanding your market

3:47 The NPR fundraising story — aggregation and transparency

7:09 Avoiding big bang events — iterative community building

8:22 How community engagement shows up in healthcare software

9:33 What ASL teaches about meeting communities where they are

10:39 Feedback loops and the ouroboros of community value

12:43 Why CEOs speak to audiences instead of engaging communities

13:17 Getting started — authenticity and jumping in feet first

14:45 Preston's Ford executive story — learning by experiencing

15:55 Being a translator, not a tourist

17:09 Engaging communities where you won't be immediately accepted

18:40 The sign name — a belonging signal

19:24 Bryan's takeaway and how to connect

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ There's a critical difference between speaking to an audience and engaging with a community — most leaders default to broadcasting when they should be belonging.

✅ Transparency builds trust faster than polish — Bryan's NPR aggregation story cut a four-day fundraising cycle in half by simply showing donors the full picture.

✅ You can't manufacture community connection — authenticity means bringing yourself into a community without expectation, not extracting value from it.

✅ Meeting a community where they are (literally learning their language) creates feedback loops that drive sustained innovation.

✅ Your company's core values and founding story are your most authentic entry point into the communities you want to serve.

🎁 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/

Bryan Woodyard: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bmwprofile/

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

#innovation #designsprint #leadership #breakthroughlab #communityengagement #communitybuilding

Performance ratings are supposed to drive improvement — but the research says they're doing the opposite. What happens when the system designed to ensure quality is actually the thing preventing it?

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Craig Randall, creator of Trust-Based Observations and a leadership coach who has trained school leaders across six continents. We cover why evaluation-driven observation causes harm, how separating observation from evaluation unlocks genuine growth, and the brain science behind why trust — not ratings — is the real driver of performance.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

0:23 Why observation systems cause harm

1:17 What is evaluation-driven observation?

7:09 Parallels to the non-teaching world

8:04 Process over outcomes — the Mike McDonald example

10:05 Creating accountability without rating pedagogy

12:53 What to evaluate instead — professionalism, relationships, mindset

15:26 Software engineering parallel — what happens when core skills lag

16:47 The Brené Brown trust-vulnerability-risk connection

19:45 What leaders can change tomorrow — semantics and brain science

22:40 Why the details of language matter in leadership

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ Rating people on their core craft — whether teaching or any other skill — destroys the trust needed for genuine improvement

✅ Separating observation from evaluation creates the psychological safety people need to take risks and grow

✅ The brain checks for safety four to five times per second — if people don't feel safe, they literally cannot absorb feedback

✅ Accountability doesn't disappear without ratings — professionalism, collaboration, planning, and growth mindset still hold people to a standard

✅ Semantics matter immensely — one word like "necessarily" can undo the trust you've built

🎁 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/

Craig Randall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trustbasedcraig/

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

#innovation #designsprint #leadership #breakthroughlab #trustbasedobservations #trustbasedcraig

Remote leaders don't burn out from doing too much work — they burn out from being the bottleneck for every decision. If your team waits for you before they move, you've got a delegation problem hiding as an engagement problem.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Madi Waggoner, a remote work strategist who has spent 15 years building and scaling remote teams across 60+ organizations. We cover the three hidden defaults that silently erode remote team performance, how to use check-in checkpoints and the WAIT framework to delegate decisions (not just tasks), and how to create spaces of belonging that move teams from dependency to true empowerment.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

0:23 The "router" problem in remote leadership

1:32 The three defaults of remote work: invisible, friction, disorder

4:27 Remote leadership archetypes: Switchboard, Compass, and Fog Walker

6:06 Why delegating decisions matters more than delegating tasks

6:25 Check-in checkpoints: a staggered trust-building cycle

8:38 Learning to fail small instead of fail big

9:48 How leaders know when to let go

11:45 The WAIT framework for delegation (Why, Audience, Info, Time)

15:19 Creating "spaces" of belonging for remote teams

17:36 Moving teams from belonging to contributing and challenging

19:09 The Liberated Leader Assessment and next steps

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ 90% of remote team problems come down to three defaults: things are invisible, friction is everywhere, and everything moves from order to disorder

✅ Most leaders delegate tasks but hold onto decisions — check-in checkpoints let you hand off decisions gradually while building trust

✅ The WAIT framework (Why, Audience, Info, Time) forces intentional friction before firing off delegation messages

✅ Remote teams need dedicated "spaces" — channels where questions, wins, and help requests have a place of belonging

✅ Ask your team one specific question: "How am I a bottleneck?" — specific questions get specific answers

🎁 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/

Madi Waggoner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madiwaggoner/

Liberated Leader Assessment: liberated.buildingremote.co

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

#innovation #designsprint #leadership #remotework #remoteleadership #delegation #breakthroughlab #buildingremote

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