Breakfast Leadership Show

Episode OverviewMichael Levitt sits down with Ilene Fischer, a former chemical engineer turned organizational change consultant who spent ten years working alongside Peter Senge at Innovation Associates and eight years with Tom Peters. Ilene's new book, Innovation Ecosystems: A Dynamic Blueprint for Organizational Success and Engagement, publishes October 22nd through Hachette, with a foreword written by Peter Senge himself.The conversation covers why systems thinking has gone from a nice to have to a have to have, why most AI deployments fail because they get layered onto broken processes instead of fixing them, and why the single highest leverage move in any organizational change effort is making people feel heard. Ilene and Michael both draw on real client cases, including a private equity roll up of eight home health and hospice companies and a healthcare insurance client that grew operating margin from 15 million dollars to 52 million dollars in a single year using her WOW Teams methodology.Key TakeawaysSystems thinking is no longer optional. Every decision made in isolation now ripples across an interconnected organization, which is why solving problems linearly creates more problems than it fixes.AI projects fail when they get bolted onto broken systems. Gartner projects that at least 40 percent of AI initiatives will be canceled next year, largely because organizations deployed AI without first fixing the underlying ecosystem.Culture determines whether any initiative, AI or otherwise, can actually take hold. A fear driven, top down culture will reject good ideas even when experimentation proves they work.Being heard, not incentives or new tools, is the top driver of successful change. Roughly 70 percent of failed change initiatives trace back to people not feeling heard.Multidisciplinary talent, not more specialists, is the real talent gap. Organizations need people who can work across domains, such as AI and healthcare together, not deeper expertise in a single lane.Deep listening without an agenda is the starting point for any change effort. Ilene's team interviewed 107 people before facilitating an eight company merger for a private equity client.Engagement and retention follow naturally once people feel heard and see their talent used. One healthcare insurance client moved from a 50 to a 70 Great Place to Work score and became the fifth best place to work in its state within three years.About Ilene FischerIlene Fischer began her career as a chemical engineer and the first woman engineer at Raytheon in Andover, before moving into quality management and eventually organizational change consulting. She spent a decade working directly with Peter Senge at Innovation Associates and eight years with Tom Peters, and she developed the WOW Teams methodology used to align strategic goals with frontline execution.Her book, Innovation Ecosystems: A Dynamic Blueprint for Organizational Success and Engagement, is available for pre-order on Amazon now and releases October 22nd. Peter Senge wrote the foreword. Ilene is hosting a launch event on October 22nd featuring Peter Senge as a speaker.Connect with Ilene:Website: https://sophianetwork.netEmail: [email protected] bring this same systems thinking to your own organization, visit https://www.breakfastleadership.com/leadershipos to schedule your Leadership Operating System diagnostic. Note: The Breakfast Leadership Show includes occasional paid partner episodes, in which the guest has paid to appear. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

SummaryMike Sullivan is co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at OneDigital, an insurance and financial services organization with roughly 6,000 people across the United States and Canada. He is also co-author of the bestselling book Workforce Intelligence. He came on to talk about what three years of deploying AI inside his own company actually taught him, and the answer is not what most executives are being sold.The turning point was a single sentence. When OneDigital stopped thinking about AI as technology and started thinking about it as talent, and began hiring it, everything changed. Their people mentor the AI, teach it the job, and then hand it the work it genuinely does better. Each AI coworker has a name and a personality, and it becomes the repository of institutional knowledge that used to walk out the door when a 35-year employee retired.Mike is direct about the condition that makes any of this work, which is trust. You cannot lay off ten thousand people in the name of AI and then tell the survivors you are all in on them. He also names the question almost nobody has answered yet: when a growing share of your workforce is AI talent, who manages it, and how do you measure a blended workforce? Michael and Mike also get into the disappearing bottom rungs of the corporate ladder, why Gartner expects a wave of companies to table AI projects over missing ROI, and why Mike now jokes that his father, a union ironworker from Buffalo, would finally call him pro-labor.What you will learnThe reframe that changed everything at a 6,000-person company: stop treating AI as technology and start hiring it like talentWhat a capacity dividend is, and the question to ask once AI hands your team their time backHow to build AI coworkers that capture institutional knowledge before your longest-serving people retireWhy trust is the precondition for AI adoption, and how layoff headlines destroy itThe management gap nobody has solved: who owns AI talent when your org chart only knows human capitalWhy the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder are disappearing, and what that does to early-career hiringWhy AI projects stall on ROI when leaders expect an immediate return from something that needs cultivatingAbout Mike SullivanMike Sullivan is co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at OneDigital, an insurance and financial services organization operating across the United States and Canada with roughly 6,000 employees. He is co-author, with Vinay Gidwani, of the bestselling book Workforce Intelligence, written deliberately for non-technical leaders who are trying to run companies through AI adoption without losing the trust of their people.ConnectOneDigital: https://www.onedigital.comWorkforce Intelligence by Mike Sullivan and Vinay GidwaniBreakfast Leadership Network: https://www.breakfastleadership.com   Note: The Breakfast Leadership Show includes occasional paid partner episodes, in which the guest has paid to appear. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

GUEST BIO Stephanie Houser is a former Fortune 500 executive turned consultant, entrepreneur, and speaker. After 12 years in corporate leadership, she now runs a consulting practice focused on process, risk, product, and technology development for growing businesses. She also operates a self-publishing company that helps writers publish their books, and she is building an asynchronous ed tech tutoring platform. Stephanie speaks and serves on boards, bringing a cross-industry, problem-solving lens shaped by careers in writing, education, corporate leadership, and entrepreneurship. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN Why fear rooted in layoffs is now the biggest barrier keeping people and businesses from moving forward. Why unrealistic timelines, fueled by social media highlight reels, cause people to quit before real traction happens. The difference between chasing virality and building lasting visibility. Why shiny object syndrome derails long-term strategy, using a cruise liner turn as a metaphor for staying the course. Why attention spans have dropped from just over two minutes in 2004 to roughly 47 seconds today, and what that means for leaders. Why personal development starts with empathy, admitting mistakes, and spotlighting others rather than seeking credit. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS Stephanie Houser joins Michael to discuss what separates leaders who build lasting organizations from those who stall out. She describes herself first as a problem solver, a thread running through her varied career across writing, education, corporate leadership, and entrepreneurship. That range gives her more lenses for seeing and solving problems, a point Michael echoes from his own background in healthcare and consulting. Drawing on her work across an ed tech startup, a self-publishing company, and a consulting practice, Stephanie names three forces holding people and organizations back right now. The first is fear, intensified by waves of layoffs that have eroded job security. The second is a timeline problem: social media rewards overnight success, so people quit when real progress, which usually takes years, does not happen in months. She draws a clear line between virality, a temporary surge, and visibility, a durable state built through consistent, trusted engagement. The third force is a lack of personal development, which she ties to empathy and staying connected to the people doing the work. She shares an example of a CEO who assumed her team did not need more support, only to learn the team had been asking for it directly. Leaders who disconnect from front-line reality create openings that get exploited or ignored. Stephanie and Michael return repeatedly to staying the course. She uses the image of turning a cruise liner, which takes three nautical miles of advance planning, to describe how leaders must commit to a long-term direction and resist shiny object syndrome, the short-term distractions that feel exciting but pull an organization off its planned path. Michael shares a cautionary example of a well-funded organization that lost its way chasing shiny opportunities instead of holding to its plan. They also discuss shrinking attention spans. Stephanie notes that undivided attention today lasts about 47 seconds, down from just over two minutes in 2004, so a message needs to be repeated rather than delivered once. She points to the marketing rule of seven as a reminder that repetition, not length, makes information land. The episode closes on personal development as an ongoing discipline. Stephanie encourages leaders to listen more than they speak, admit when they are wrong, spotlight the people doing good work, and learn to say no with confidence, backed by reasoning rather than a title. GUEST CONTACT INFO Stephanie Houser, corporate speaking and board inquiries: https://stephaniehouser.com Stephanie Houser, individual and creative fractional work: https://AboutStephanie.com LEADERSHIP OS CTA Ready to bring more clarity and long-term focus to your leadership? Visit https://www.breakfastleadership.com/leadershipos to schedule your Leadership Operating System diagnostic for your company. Note: The Breakfast Leadership Show includes occasional paid partner episodes, in which the guest has paid to appear. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dr. Santarvis Brown, educator, pastor, author, and Chief Education Officer at ProQ, joins Michael D. Levitt on the Breakfast Leadership Show for a powerful conversation about leading with purpose. With over 20 years in education and 15 years in pastoral ministry, Dr. Brown brings academic rigor, spiritual grounding, and practical business insight to every leadership conversation.The Leader You Have to Lead First: YourselfIn his book "Leading While Limping," Dr. Brown challenges leaders to confront their own "bang-ups and hang-ups" without filters or masks. When you avoid that internal reckoning, you risk inflicting your unresolved issues onto the people you lead. Authentic leadership begins with radical self-honesty. As Michael puts it, you will spend more time with yourself than with any other person on earth. Working through whatever you find within is not optional for any leader who wants to create lasting impact.Impact Over TitleDuring his tenure as the top education official for the Seminole Tribe of Florida's Department of Education, a young student wandered to the executive floor looking for homework help. Dr. Brown pulled up a chair and helped him with his reading. When the boy's mother arrived, the student looked at her and said simply, "He's a teacher." That moment crystallized the principle Dr. Brown carries everywhere: your title comes and goes, but your impact remains.The Story That Became a ChapterDr. Brown shares a defining story from "Leading While Limping." A university student he mentored went silent one evening, breaking from his usual enthusiastic greeting. Dr. Brown turned around in the parking lot, took the student to a nearby Denny's, and had a conversation about everything and nothing. At 1:30 a.m., the student sent an email with the subject line: "You saved my life." He had been on the verge of ending it rather than returning home without finishing his degree. Dr. Brown was on campus at 5:00 a.m. the next morning, and together they secured the funding needed to get him to graduation. Nearly 20 years later, that student still introduces Dr. Brown to everyone with the same words. The lesson: sometimes you are the aspirin to someone else's headache while carrying a migraine of your own.Human Connection Is Not OptionalLeaders who isolate themselves behind titles miss the very thing that makes people want to follow them. Genuine presence, curiosity, and interest in another person are not soft skills. They are the foundation of any leadership worth building.Growth as a Problem: The Chaos TaxProQ, founded on the book "Don't Walk Off a Cliff in Business" by Thomas McDonald, operates on a simple principle: predictable, scalable, reliable progress. Dr. Brown explains that not all growth is good growth. When growth outpaces process, businesses pay a chaos tax in inefficiency, burnout, and lost leadership bandwidth. ProQ helps organizations grow incrementally and intentionally so that progress becomes sustainable. As Dr. Brown puts it, businesses fail today not because they lack opportunity or know-how, but because they lack process.Connect with Dr. Santarvis BrownLearn more about ProQ at ProQSystems.com https://www.proqsystems.comConnect directly with Dr. Brown at [email protected] and subscribe to his YouTube channel, The Leadership Doctor SB (https://www.youtube.com/@TheLeadershipDoctorSB), where he diagnoses leadership challenges every week.Schedule Your Leadership DiagnosticVisit https://www.breakfastleadership.com/leadershipos to schedule a leadership diagnostic for your company today. Note: The Breakfast Leadership Show includes occasional paid partner episodes, in which the guest has paid to appear. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Most books about life after a career transition are written after the author has figured it all out. Geoff Curtis wrote his while still inside the uncertainty. That intentional choice is at the heart of "Embracing Your Own Purgatory," and it is what makes his perspective so rare and so honest.After 30 years in biotech and pharmaceutical communications, Geoff exited his company and found himself in the disorienting in-between that so many high-achievers are completely unprepared for. He had the freedom. He had the resources. What he did not have was a roadmap for who he was without the title, the team, and the daily structure that had defined him for three decades.In this episode, Geoff and Michael explore why leaders who spend their careers focused outward on results, teams, and growth are often the least equipped for the inward work that a major transition demands. Geoff makes the case that rushing to the next thing, whether a board seat, a consulting engagement, or a new venture, is often a way of avoiding the more important question of who you actually are beneath the role you played.The conversation covers the uncomfortable reality that early career success can become a liability later in life, why men in particular are reaching out to Geoff after reading his book to share stories they have never told anyone, and how getting comfortable with uncertainty is not a sign of weakness but a prerequisite for genuine self-discovery.Geoff also discusses what he learned from observing young physicians who took time away from their careers to travel and returned as better clinicians, and why he believes the leaders who do this kind of reflective work in their 40s and 50s are better positioned for whatever comes next than those who never slow down long enough to look inward.If you have recently exited a company, are approaching a major career transition, or simply feel like your identity has become too entangled with your professional title, this episode will give you permission to sit with that discomfort a little longer and do the work that actually matters.Book:  "Embracing Your Own Purgatory"Topics covered: Career transitions, business exits, identity after leadership, retirement planning, self-reflection, biotech and pharma industry, vulnerability in leadership, personal growth, purpose after work, life after business ownership Note: The Breakfast Leadership Show includes occasional paid partner episodes, in which the guest has paid to appear. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.