Doug Faber started his career on a loading dock at eighteen. He finished it in the CEO's office.

In this episode, Patrick sits down with Doug — his friend, colleague, and coauthor — to walk that climb, and to unpack what those years in operations taught him about leading real people under real pressure. Doug shares what changed in him between the dock and the corner office, what he got wrong along the way, and what he learned over twenty years at FranklinCovey working alongside executive teams at some of the world's best-known organizations.

Patrick and Doug get into what actually separates high-performing teams from average ones, why so many leaders treat high expectations and genuine care as a trade-off, and what happens when you stop choosing between them.

This episode is one of three with the coauthors of Expect a Lot, Care a Lot: How Six Critical Practices Create High-Performing Teams — each one bringing a different vantage point to the same six practices.

Learn more about Doug

Website - https://www.franklincovey.com/consulting/doug-faber/

Latest book - https://www.franklincovey.com/books/expect-a-lot-care-a-lot/

Learn more about Patrick

Website - https://patrickleddin.com

Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/

Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt

Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc

If you liked this week's episode, consider leaving us a 5-star review below!

Consider the position: you run the company that teaches everyone else how to communicate, and then the ground shifts so fast that nobody knows what to say anymore. Not your customers. Not the executives paying your customers to find the words. Not you.

That's roughly the seat Diane Schwartz took in 2019 as the new leader of Ragan Communications. What followed was a pandemic, an industry rewrite, an AI wave still cresting, and seven straight years of growth anyway.

But this episode of The Disruption Lab isn't really about communications. It's about what you do when you inherit something that already works. Every new leader faces the same fork: break the wrong thing and you destroy the reason people showed up; protect the wrong thing and you end up curating a museum. Diane had to decide, fast, and she'll tell you what she chose to blow up and what she refused to touch.

We get into the launch that scared her most, why she calls AI "a career accelerant for communicators, but only if the right levers are pulled," and where she watches teams freeze instead of pull them. We also get into the part nobody puts in the press release: what seven years of continuous change costs the people living through it, and how a leader knows when they've pushed too far. Whether you run a company, a function, or a team of three, there's something here for you.

And she started as a journalist, which means she answers questions the way she used to ask them. When I asked what belief about leadership she's had to throw out, she didn't reach for something flattering. See if you'd have the nerve to give her an answer about your own career.

You'll leave knowing what to protect, what to break, and one move to make this week if disruption feels like it's happening to you instead of for you. The mic is on.

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Learn more about Diane at

Website - www.ragan.com

Socials - Diane Schwartz | LinkedIn

Patrick Leddin PhD

Website - https://patrickleddin.com

Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/

Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt

Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc

If you liked this week's episode, consider leaving us a 5-star review!

Chris Whitney doesn’t believe America has a food shortage. As he puts it, it’s a logistics problem, not a supply problem — and he’s spent the last decade proving it.

In this episode of Disruption Lab, Patrick Leddin sits down with Chris Whitney, founder and CEO of One Generation Away. After spending six months in a food line himself, Chris started rescuing surplus food from grocers, farms, and restaurants and moving it onto tables across Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida. It began in the back of an SUV. Today it’s a $33 million operation, with semi-trucks unloading 20,000+ pounds of food into parking lots on Saturday mornings — no paperwork, no questions asked.

Chris’s story is one of the real-life accounts featured in Disrupt Everything—and Win, the New York Times bestseller by James Patterson and Patrick Leddin.

You’ll come away with a sharper eye for the difference between a scarcity problem and a distribution problem, a sense of why designing for dignity changes who actually shows up, and a real look at what it costs to scale 30x — and go all-in — without losing the thing that made you work in the first place.

Learn more about Chris

Website - OneGenAway.com

Facebook - Onegenawayofficial

Instagram - @onegenaway

LinkedIn - @onegenerationaway

Learn more about Patrick

Website - https://patrickleddin.com

Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/

Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt

Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc

If you liked this week's episode, consider leaving us a 5-star review!

We all have setbacks. Times when we fall short, lose our footing, or watch the plan we built come apart. Those moments are inevitable. What you do next isn't.

This week on the Disruption Lab, Patrick is joined by professional golfer Celina Sattelkau, a former Vanderbilt All-American who went from being unable to hold a golf club to winning two professional tournaments in ten days.

Celina grew up in Hambach, Germany, picked up the game at seven, and became one of Europe's most decorated young amateurs before arriving at Vanderbilt in 2019. Then COVID brought neuropathy in her hands and feet, serious mental-health challenges, and the loss of the one thing that had defined her. Her way back required patience, a renewed love for the game, and something harder than either: asking for help.

In this conversation, Celina shares what carried her through, and what you can use the next time your own plan gets disrupted:

    •    How to take the lesson from a setback without carrying the disappointment into the next moment

    •    Why asking for help felt impossible, and what changed the moment she did

    •    The fundamentals that hold up under pressure, whether you're on live television or facing a hard week at work

    •    What she would tell the version of herself who couldn't grip a club and didn't know what came next

Whether or not you've ever swung a club, this episode is about the thing golf teaches better than almost anything else: you don't control every bounce, but you always control your next shot.

Disruption may change the conditions. You still get to choose your next move.

Learn more about Celina

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/celinasattelkau/?hl=en

Patrick Leddin PhD

Website - https://patrickleddin.com

Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/

Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt

Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc

If you liked this week's episode, consider leaving us a 5-star review below!

Content Warning: Discussion of depression and suicide ideation

Owen Fitzpatrick has studied propaganda where it does its worst work. North Korea. Afghanistan. Rwanda. Iran. More than 100 countries in all. And after all of it, he landed on an uncomfortable conclusion: the most effective propagandist in your life isn't a government, a company, or an algorithm. It's the voice in your own head.

But this episode of The Disruption Lab isn't really about propaganda. It's about why intelligent people hold onto things that aren't true, and why handing someone better facts almost never changes their mind. If good information were enough, every strategy you've ever rolled out would have landed on the first try. So what actually moves a belief?

Owen, psychologist, speaker, and author of Inner Propaganda: Leading Hearts and Minds Through Turbulent Times, joins me to unpack the three forces that make a belief stick: Feels Right, Fits In, and Makes Sense. We get into belief leadership during disruption, what a leader does when people don't trust the strategy or the person delivering it, and the thin line between shaping beliefs and manipulating people. Whether you lead an organization, sit on a team, or you're simply tired of arguing with someone who won't budge, there's something here for you.

It also gets personal. Owen shares the story he was telling himself at fourteen and the single question that interrupted it. That moment reframes everything that follows.

You'll leave able to spot the narrative that's quietly keeping you stuck, and with one question worth asking the next time disruption knocks you sideways. The war is in your head. Go win it.

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Learn more about Owen at

Website - owenfitzpatrick.com 

Latest book - https://innerpropaganda.com/ 

Patrick Leddin PhD

Website - https://patrickleddin.com 

Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/ 

Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt 

Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc

In 1972, a company called Atari did something almost no one does: it created an industry from nothing. Pong, the 2600, the joystick in your hand — Atari didn't just join the video game business, it invented the culture around it. But this episode of The Disruption Lab isn't really about video games. It's about what happens after you win. How do you keep a legendary brand relevant across five decades of technology, rival empires, booms, busts, and a world that looks nothing like the one you were born into?

Ethan Zoubek, President of Atari, joins me to talk about leading one of the most recognizable names on the planet as it approaches 55 years in business — and quietly reinvents itself again. It's a conversation about legacy without nostalgia-worship, about the discipline of disrupting yourself before someone else does it for you, and about the difference between protecting a brand and trapping it. Whether you run a company, build a team, or just wonder how anything lasts this long, there's something here for you.

And yes, we have fun with it. I let slip my favorite game from when I was a kid — see if you can guess it before Ethan does. You'll leave a little nostalgic, a little smarter about reinvention, and probably wanting to dig your old console out of the closet.

You don't have to love video games to love this one. Press start.

Learn more about Atari at https://atari.com/

Learn more about Patrick Leddin PhD

https://patrickleddin.com

Bestsellers - https://patrickleddin.com/bestsellers/

Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/

Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickleddin

Thank you for your support! We will see you next month for season three of Disruption Lab.

Who decided the rules you live by are actually the rules?

Patrick sits down with Cate Hall, author of the forthcoming book You Can Just Do Things: How High-Agency People Get What They Want Out of Life, for a conversation about agency, reinvention, resilience, and challenging invisible limits.

Cate’s story is anything but conventional. She went from attorney to world-class poker player to battling addiction and rebuilding her life from the ground up. Along the way, she became a leader in the world of pandemic medicine and now serves as CEO of one of the world’s largest private foundations.

Together, they explore what separates people who wait from people who act, why so many limitations are self-imposed, and how individuals can reclaim ownership over their future in a rapidly changing world.

This episode is a powerful reminder that disruption often begins the moment you realize you are allowed to do things differently.

Take the quiz mentioned in today's episode at https://www.catehall.com/cringe-minefield-quiz

What if the life you want isn't built through hustle, but through intentional design?

In this episode of Disrupt Everything, Patrick sits down with entrepreneur, bestselling author, and performance coach Craig Ballantyne to explore why discipline isn't about restriction. It's about freedom. Known by many as "The World's Most Disciplined Man," Craig has helped hundreds of business leaders and entrepreneurs grow successful businesses while reclaiming their time, protecting their priorities, and building lives they actually want to live.

Together, they unpack the principles behind Craig's Perfect Day and Perfect Week frameworks, the surprising power of subtraction, and why so many high achievers become trapped by the very success they worked so hard to create.

If you've ever felt overwhelmed, overcommitted, or stuck reacting to everyone else's agenda, this conversation offers a different path forward. Because the goal isn't simply to be more productive. The goal is to build a life of meaning, impact, and freedom—on purpose.

It's time to disrupt the default and start living by design.

What would happen if you stopped waiting for permission and simply started tackling big problems?

Patrick talks with Tommy Pennington, a Vanderbilt graduate and rising innovator, about what it means to think boldly at any age. Tommy has explored everything from fusion-powered technology to traffic flow systems to helping nonprofits gain access to large-scale donated goods through his work at SIMPLI.

What makes Tommy stand out is not just the size of the problems he takes on. It’s his willingness to move toward complexity instead of away from it.

This conversation explores curiosity, initiative, innovation, and the mindset required to pursue ideas that most people would never even attempt.