Breakthrough Innovation

Most leaders are trying to innovate inside a governance structure that was never designed for it. Change the structure, and you change what's possible.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Brenna Davis, CEO of Organically Grown Company — a nine-figure national organic food distributor operating under a Perpetual Purpose Trust. We cover how governance structure determines strategic freedom, why embedding values at the ownership level unlocks long-horizon innovation, and the practical leadership philosophy that helped Brenna lead a national food supply chain through COVID and beyond.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

1:58 Brenna's origin story — from Pacific Northwest forests to CEO

4:03 What is a Perpetual Purpose Trust (PPT) and how does it work?

5:55 How PPT unlocks long-term innovation over quarterly pressure

8:45 Sustainable packaging innovation: plastic-free net bags and compostable materials

10:46 Small innovations that compound: trim tabs and invisible impact

12:40 Using Lean methodology to improve order accuracy and coworker culture

14:29 Final advice: embrace excellence, not perfection

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ Governance structure — not strategy, not talent — is often the hidden constraint on a company's ability to innovate. The Perpetual Purpose Trust model frees leaders from short-term financial pressure and enables long-horizon bets

✅ Sustainability and innovation aren't in tension — Organically Grown's plastic-free net bag became one of their most in-demand products, proving that purpose-driven decisions can generate competitive advantage

✅ Creating a culture of innovation requires rejecting the myth of perfection. When leaders treat mistakes as process failures rather than personal failures, psychological safety accelerates improvement

🎁 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/

Brenna Davis: [LinkedIn URL] | brennadavis.com | organicgrown.com

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

#innovation #leadership #purposedriven #sustainablebusiness #organicallygrown

Most companies aren't failing because of the wrong people — they're failing because they're running the wrong playbook. If your go-to-market engine was built for an enterprise you're not, you're not behind. You're just fighting the wrong battle.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Ben Morrison, founder of Made Simpler and a 20+ year revenue growth operator. We cover why mid-market teams keep copying enterprise playbooks that don't fit their stage, how Google's systematic changes have quietly erased traffic and revenue for thousands of small businesses, and what a lean, high-output go-to-market motion actually looks like in today's landscape.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

1:24 Why marketing isn't working — the real problem underneath

3:39 Cargo cults, guerrilla strategy, and fighting your own battle

6:41 The Google Shakedown — what changed and why it matters

9:47 Motion vs. progress: vanity metrics vs. actions that drive impact

12:52 Old-school strategies making a comeback (and why they work)

15:15 The 90-day high-leverage move for B2B mid-market teams

18:50 How to reach Ben and the free competitive analysis tool

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ Mid-market companies consistently fail by copying enterprise playbooks — the winning move is building a strategy designed for your actual position in the market

✅ Google has systematically reduced traffic for small businesses by 60–80%, and surviving means shifting attention to AI search engines, podcasts, community, and direct outreach

✅ For B2B teams, a personalized LinkedIn motion + email outreach + content engine is the highest-leverage trifecta to build in the next 90 days

🎁 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/

Learn more and get Ben's free Competitive Analysis tool at: competitiveanalysis.made-simpler.com

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

#innovation #goToMarket #revenueGrowth #leadership #madesimpler

Most organizations say they care about culture. But if your last three culture initiatives quietly died, the problem probably isn't your strategy — it's the gap between what leadership believes is happening and what's actually true on the ground.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with LaChandra Baker, workforce optimization strategist, three-time TEDx speaker, and author of Your Own Biggest Cheerleader, and founder of LBB Edutainment. We cover why culture transformations keep stalling, how belonging-centered leadership drives real business value, and what self-advocacy actually looks like for leaders who are used to advocating for everyone else.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

1:41 Meet LaChandra Baker

2:27 The gap between what leaders believe about culture and what's really happening

4:15 Why promoting top individual contributors into management sets them up to fail

6:33 The mindset-behavior-action framework: leading indicators over lagging ones

8:55 Giving teams ownership — the difference between order takers and innovation drivers

10:05 Belonging vs. fitting in: how to protect inclusive culture under pressure

13:07 What being your own biggest cheerleader really means for leaders

13:57 The first shift leaders need to make toward authentic self-advocacy

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ Culture is what you reward, what you discipline, and what you coach — not what's on your posters. If you're bonusing toxic behaviors to hit outcomes, you're undermining everything else.

✅ Belonging isn't a DEI initiative — it's a business strategy. When people belong, they bring their full talent, perspective, and potential. When they're just fitting in, you're leaving innovation on the table.

✅ Self-advocacy starts with self-knowledge. Before a leader can advocate for themselves authentically, they have to understand their triggers, their biases, and what they may need to unlearn.

🎁 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/

LaChandra Baker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lachandra-baker/ | lbbedutainment.com

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

#innovation #workplaceculture #leadership #belonging #breakthroughlab #lbbedutainment

🔗 Learn more about LaChandra's work at lbbedutainment.com

Thanks for tuning in to Breakthrough Innovation! Want to subscribe to the podcast? Have feedback to share? Connect with us on Spotify or iTunes and leave us a review—we’d love to hear from you!

Most leaders don't fail because they stop caring. They fail because they can't stop adding — more initiatives, more hours, more optimization — until the very effort that built their success quietly starts to undermine it.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather and Preston Chandler sit down with Nell Derick Debevoise Dewey, Harvard-trained leadership advisor, self-described subtraction activist, and founder of the Subtract to Succeed Substack community. We cover why subtraction is a strategy, not a retreat, how to shift from floodlight to laser as a leader, and a practical Stop, Drop, and Roll framework you can apply before your next meeting.

⏱ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro

1:37 Meet Nell Derick Debevoise Dewey (Nell3D)

2:04 Early warning signs you've crossed into diminishing returns

3:46 What physical symptoms are telling you about your leadership capacity

7:47 The infrastructure of "more" — why subtraction is an uphill battle

9:18 Floodlight vs. laser: the paradigm shift every leader needs

10:37 Delegation as a gift, not a burden

12:21 Stop, Drop, and Roll: the subtraction framework explained

13:34 What "Stop" really means (it's not a retreat — it's data collection)

14:36 How to run a subtraction experiment without blowing up your life

16:05 "Roll": using systems thinking to unlock win-win-wins

18:25 How to connect with Nell and access Subtract to Succeed

💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS

✅ Doing more doesn't produce more — it produces less clarity. When attention is scattered, work today demands 100% of your best mind, and splitting it 100 ways is a mathematical impossibility. Subtraction is how leaders get their capacity back.

✅ The Stop, Drop, and Roll framework is an in-seat, eyes-open practice — not a retreat. Stop means collecting real data (physical, relational, operational). Drop means running a small experiment in subtraction. Roll means using systems thinking to find the win-win-wins those changes unlock.

✅ Delegation done well is a gift — to your direct reports, to your future leaders, and to your own ability to operate as a laser instead of a floodlight. What you model is what the next generation of leaders will do and receive.

🎁 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/

🔗 Get Nell's free Stop–Drop–Roll one-pager: https://nell3d.kit.com/stopdroproll

🔗 90-day guest pass to Nell's Substack, Subtract to Succeed: https://nell3d.substack.com/guestpass

👥 CONNECT

Centered.work: https://centered.work

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

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

Nell Derick Debevoise Dewey: Subtract to Succeed on Substack

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

#innovation #leadership #subtraction #womeninleadership #breakthroughlab

Most executives say people are their greatest asset — and then fund their development last. That gap is costing organizations far more than they realize, not just in turnover, but in lost innovation, eroded customer loyalty, and strategic agility that never materializes.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, host JL Heather sits down with Sandra Coker, founder and CEO of Human Power Solutions and international bestselling author of *People Profit: How to Improve Your Bottom Line by Investing in Those Above It*. With over two decades of experience partnering with CEOs, COOs, and HR leaders inside mid-sized organizations, Sandra has built a reputation for diagnosing the real barriers to performance — and they're rarely what leadership expects.

Sandra breaks down why most employee development efforts fail, what her proprietary Level Five Learning model looks like in practice, and how broken internal systems — not underperforming employees — are usually the root cause of culture and engagement problems. She also shares her perspective on leading across five (soon six) generations in the workforce and why communication style, not policy, is the key to bridging the gap.

If you're a leader who suspects your people strategy isn't delivering the results it should, this conversation will give you a framework to take back to your team this week.

Thanks for tuning in to Breakthrough Innovation! Want to subscribe to the podcast? Have feedback to share? Connect with us on Spotify or iTunes and leave us a review—we’d love to hear from you!

Most executives believe they're strong communicators. Their teams often disagree. That gap — and what to do about it — is exactly where Dr. Danny Brassell lives.

Known as "Jim Carrey with a Ph.D.," Dr. Brassell has delivered over 3,500 keynotes worldwide and authored 21 books on leadership, communication, and business growth. As co-founder of WellCrafted Story™, he's helped entrepreneurs, executives, and organizations transform the way they communicate — turning speaking engagements into measurable business results.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, produced by Centered, host J.L. Heather sits down with Dr. Brassell to unpack why storytelling without intention falls flat — and what separates a good speaker from one who actually moves the needle.

You'll walk away with:

The Five C's framework for building a presentation that converts — not just engages

Why ending on your call to action may be costing you 50% of your audience

The counterintuitive reason leaders should share their failures, not their victories

A free Storytelling Blueprint at freestoryguide.com to start building your own Well-Crafted Story

If your ideas deserve a bigger audience — and a bigger return — this episode is your starting point.

Thanks for tuning in to Breakthrough Innovation! Want to subscribe to the podcast? Have feedback to share? Connect with us on Spotify or iTunes and leave us a review—we’d love to hear from you!

Most organizations don't fail at strategy. They fail at execution — and the gap between the two is where transformations go to die.

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, JL Heather sits down with Jeff Niebuhr, a seasoned technology and delivery executive who has spent his career leading large, complex organizations through modernization, restructuring, and high-stakes change. Jeff has led global teams of hundreds, delivered mission-critical platforms at companies like Verizon, and operated at the intersection where strategy either works in practice — or fails fast.

Jeff shares what he actually looks for when he steps into a broken organization, including the red flags most leaders overlook, why "can't" is almost always hiding a decision someone is afraid to make, and why knowledge trapped in one person's head is one of the biggest transformation risks in enterprise technology.

He also pulls back the curtain on a surprising side project: an AI-powered autonomous content and marketing system — with roughly 50 virtual employees — that recently won a Pinnacle Award for autonomous enterprise systems. The lessons he's drawn from building it part-time are reshaping how he thinks about AI as a force multiplier inside large organizations.

If you're a senior leader navigating transformation pressure, this one is worth your full attention.

Thanks for tuning in to Breakthrough Innovation! Want to subscribe to the podcast? Have feedback to share? Connect with us on Spotify or iTunes and leave us a review—we’d love to hear from you!

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, we talk with Coby Skonord, founder of IdeaWake, about why most corporate innovation programs fail — and how organizations can unlock massive value from the ideas already inside their workforce.

Coby shares lessons from building IdeaWake from scratch, raising venture funding, and helping companies like Kraft Heinz, SiriusXM, and U.S. Bank crowdsource employee ideas that drive measurable business impact.

💡 Why most innovation programs fail before they start

🚫 The “black hole” problem that kills employee participation

📉 Why companies expect breakthrough innovation but fund it like a side project

⚙️ How small operational improvements often outperform moonshots

📊 The simple framework companies can use to measure innovation ROI

If you're trying to build a culture of innovation, this episode shows why ideas aren’t the problem — systems are.

Thanks for tuning in to Breakthrough Innovation! Want to subscribe to the podcast? Have feedback to share? Connect with us on Spotify or iTunes and leave us a review—we’d love to hear from you!

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, we sit down with Paul Schmidt, VP of AI & Innovation at SmartBug Media, to break down why so many innovation efforts fail — even when the ideas are solid.

Paul brings an operator’s lens to innovation, services, and AI adoption, focusing not on hype, but on what actually sells, scales, and sticks.

💥 The #1 reason new services fail: no distribution, no buyers

🧩 Why innovation must include sales, marketing, service, and customers from day one

📉 How overly bespoke solutions quietly kill scalability

🎯 Why your biggest growth lever is probably existing customers, not new logos

🤖 How to adopt AI by solving small, painful problems instead of boiling the ocean

If you care about turning innovation into revenue — not theater — this episode delivers a clear, grounded playbook.

Thanks for tuning in to Breakthrough Innovation! Want to subscribe to the podcast? Have feedback to share? Connect with us on Spotify or iTunes and leave us a review—we’d love to hear from you!

In this episode of Breakthrough Innovation, we sit down with Kylee Ingram, co-founder and CEO of Wiser, to unpack why organizations with smart, experienced leaders still make costly decisions.

Kylee’s journey spans international television, award-winning interactive media, and now decision science — all driven by one core question: why do groups sometimes make brilliant decisions and other times fail spectacularly?

🧠 Why decision quality is not the same as decision outcomes

🚨 The three hidden biases sabotaging leadership teams

👥 Why “the loudest voice” often wins — and why that’s dangerous

📊 How cognitive diversity matters more than titles or hierarchy

⚙️ How better decision design can reduce errors and increase innovation

This episode is a wake-up call for executives who rely on instinct, experience, or consensus — and want a more reliable way to lead through complexity.

Thanks for tuning in to Breakthrough Innovation! Want to subscribe to the podcast? Have feedback to share? Connect with us on Spotify or iTunes and leave us a review—we’d love to hear from you!