Host Justin McMenamy and guest Jim Weber discuss techniques by which innovative teams can survive inside large bureaucracies.  They discuss the need for the innovative leader to set a different “cultural thermostat,” from the broader organization; allowing for some of the organization to be in a flexible gaseous state while the rest of the company remains a solid structure focused on optimizing the present.  

McMenamy credits the book Loonshots by Safi Bahcall and Kelly Johnson’s Skunk Works rules of management, emphasizing the need for executive protection, boundary-layer leaders who can translate between rigid and creative worlds, and small policy differences in HR, IT, legal, and compensation required to enable a phase shift.  

Weber describes “talent tapping” by finding underused internal talent and relying on a protective boss who deflected steering committees, while both note the “career poker” strategy of staying at the table versus climbing.  

They also cover empathy, leaders acting as organizational psychiatrists, and when it can be compassionate to help misfit employees transition out, including the one positive lesson McMenamy cites from Jack Welch: people want to be good at their jobs.

Host Justin McMenamy interviews Steve “Roach” Roehrich, a veteran naval aviator, former Fortune 50 Chief Business Improvement Officer, and aerospace manufacturing CEO, about leadership lessons acquired and deployed in military and corporate theatres.  

Across the wide-ranging conversation, Roehrich recounts growing up poor in rural Minnesota, joining the Navy as an aviator, traveling the world, studying finance, and navigating the corporate world.  

Roehrich argues that the military is a leadership crucible and defines key attributes of leadership: integrity/authenticity, vision, resilience and adaptability, emotional intelligence, decisiveness, humility, and continuous learning.

He describes the tools by which one can lead organizational changes as influence, trust-building, and giving teams agency rather than using authoritarian control, he then attributes similar principles as keys to his 48-year marriage to Susan.

Host Justin McMenamy welcomes Leo Salotti, co-founder of Terranova, to discuss leadership lessons learned from cross-cultural management and career transitions.   

Across the episode, Leo describes lessons learned after being promoted to leading a team which spanned Argentina and Brazil, including choosing humility by delivering a full leadership presentation in Portuguese and tailoring solutions to Brazilian conditions rather than copying Argentina’s model. They explore moving from engineering to people leadership, emphasizing trust, avoiding micromanagement, and “test-driving” leadership through cross-functional projects.  

Leo recounts starting his career at a large multi-national equipment manufacturer as a formative “school,” then leaving the structure for Precision Planting, driven by a desire for external customer exposure and avoiding the feelings of being “another brick in the wall.”

They discuss balancing structure vs creativity, decentralized vs centralized decision-making, meeting avoidance, financial realities, and how to discern when it’s time to move on using reflection, a “seven hats” framework, and signals like bitterness or health impacts.  

Leo closes with a “La Petit Hotel” story involving storms, a stranded truck, and late night dismantling a gas boiler.

Host Justin McMenamy and Jim Weber continue their conversation on fostering a culture of innovation including methods of preventing it from being killed by pessimism and process.  

This episode covers innovation’s overlap with creativity and art, and how nearly every company markets themselves as innovative, sometimes despite objective evidence to the contrary.  

Justin introduces the “Trellis and Vine” analogy: provide enough structure to support creativity without choking it; warning that well intended leaders can smother innovation through noble pursuits of synergy, globalization, metrics culture, governance, and project rationalization.  

They emphasize a willingness to self-disruption, R&D to customer proximity, market competitors managed as “worthy rivals”, project pipeline prioritization, and competitive prototyping as key ingredients to a company hoping to curate a culture of innovation.

Host Justin McMenamy interviews entrepreneur and marketer Danny Kirk.  The conversation spans topics like defining failure and success, the place for pessimism in business, and leadership lessons drawn from the great philosopher Shaquille O’Neal.  

Kirk shares his unconventional background, raised by academics and musicians, a high-achieving classical trumpet player who dropped out of high school, and his entry into entrepreneurship through a scholarship and a startup weekend that led to his first company.  

Over the last 15 years, Danny has started 5 revenue-generating businesses, pursues 100–200 ideas annually quickly invalidating most of them, and discusses his latest business in GEO (generative engine optimization) for AI.    

Kirk recounts being forced out of a gym business, selling a SaaS venture for scraps due to technical debt and infighting, discusses quit-vs-grit, and the needed priority which should be placed on unit economics within any startup. He explains his marketing approach for small businesses, focus where the “tribe” is, avoid vanity metrics, prioritize revenue, and build trust by disqualifying prospects.  

The conversation also covers Kirk’s recent battle with anxiety following a login prompt attack on his business along with the need for routine to keep him grounded.  Justin reflects on experiences navigating stressful times of life, redefining security and success, and protecting health and relationships as life complexity grows.

Host Justin McMenamy interviews Andy Pearson, creative director at Liquid Death.  

Through the conversation, Pearson recounts stories, from early in his career, of buying taxidermy squirrels and navigating eBay’s ban on selling human body parts.  

Andy then contrasts the philosophies of various ad agencies and stresses the importance of a shared creative vision and engaged leadership, ideally with “a bone to pick.”  

Pearson describes Liquid Death’s ethos as making entertainment not marketing, critiquing ads as unwanted interruptions, and questioning industry assumptions both in product and marketing. He then describes Liquid Death as a high ownership, iterative, fast-paced culture that starts with the question “what is the dumbest thing we could do?”.   

Finally, Andy shares how his passion for ultra running began amid grueling agency hours and tells of a Strava user who challenged him to a “race to the Death”.

Host Justin McMenamy and guest Jim Weber continue their multi-episode discussion around the many ingredients which comprise a successful culture of innovation.   

On the topic of brainstorming both Justin and Jim agree that scheduled brainstorming sessions with idea voting and ranking are mostly unproductive. Jim argues effective brainstorming consists of informal, rapid idea vetting with colleagues who try to break ideas and improve them over time.  He then emphasizes the need to ask everyone, from executives to technicians, “what would you do?” to learn technical and organizational constraints, even at the risk of embarrassment.  

Justin highlights the need to reduce hierarchy, otherwise creativity is often outsourced to an “innovation manager,” as well as the need to separate idea collection events from idea selection so contributors stay encouraged while a smaller group prioritizes. They discuss creativity as an underused organizational asset, and debate when simulation-first approaches are essential versus an “Edisonian” fast iteration methodology enabled by low-cost prototyping.

Host Justin McMenamy welcomes Kristen Patty to discuss leadership and HR lessons from their time at Precision Planting during a decade of growth from under 100 employees to over 500, including global expansion across more than 15 countries and the acquisition by AGCO.

Kristen shares why she left a large multinational retailer early in her career for a startup, emphasizing self-discovery, taking the next right step, and seeking actionable feedback. They cover her transition from Sales Operations to head of HR and her focus on mission-driven recruiting. They discuss balancing HR process with situational care, how policy application affects company-wide trust, and practical ways to protect culture while scaling.   

The episode ends with Kristen’s advice for leaders entering new roles, stressing humility, clarity of expectations, honesty about gaps, and building relationships through one-on-one conversations.

In this episode host Justin McMenamy welcomes fellow leadership podcaster Erin Thorpe. 

Across the conversation each discusses formative early-career experiences and how they shaped their mid-career focus on leadership. Both reflect on how not fitting within organizational norms can bleed into lowered self-worth, and they discuss a framework of being “refined” versus “consumed” by adversity, emphasizing that not every bad day warrants resignation and that staying in discomfort can build tenacity.  

They explore differences between technical and people skills, contrasting engineering’s black-and-white mindset versus the negotiated nature of relationships.  

Erin describes her path into podcasting: authoring a book in 2016 and later starting the “Tactical Empathy" podcast. Erin explains tactical empathy as a practical leadership tool that balances understanding self and others while maintaining high standards and execution, countering the idea that empathy is a mask for weakness or lowered expectations.  

She offers ways to build empathy as a muscle: frequent self-check-ins, acknowledging feelings, validating others without necessarily agreeing, and resisting the urge to immediately fix problems.

In the first episode of the mini-series entitled “Innovation: Is It More Than a Feeling?” host Justin McMenamy and Jim Weber explore the concept of innovation. The episode delves into defining the necessary components of innovation, contrasting it with being merely clever or even foolish.  Jim shares his career experiences as an innovator within a Dow 30 organization and discusses his personal take on innovation, including the idea that there are various levels of innovation. The discussion also touches on the reality that innovation can be seen beyond technology and product development.  Justin provides examples from the tech industry, and offers insights from his experience at Precision Planting, particularly on the company's innovative distribution model. The conversation concludes with reflections on how innovation is perceived and executed in different contexts, including manufacturing, marketing, and sales.