Unleash Genius or Get Left Behind: The Brutal Truth About Business in the Transformation Age

Right now, your business is either a genius factory—or a talent graveyard. 

Which is it?

Most employees aren’t disengaged because they’re lazy. They’re stuck—waiting for leadership that unlocks their potential. 

Inside this episode:

1. The Hidden Talent Trap – Why 70% of employees are disengaged and how to flip the switch
2. The Power of Strength-Based Leadership – How to align people with their natural genius using Kolbe A™
3. From Stagnation to Innovation – How to create a workplace where talent thrives, not withers

🎧 Listen now and learn how to unlock the full potential of your team before someone else does.

Unlock Your Business's Full Potential: Enroll Now in Dr. Dave's free Flow-Driven Business Blueprint Course!

Transcript

In 1975 Palo Alto, the room smells like burnt coffee, melted solder and sweat. Chuck Thacker hunches over a beige box, wires spilling out like guts. His glasses are fogged. His hands shaking, not from the cold, but from something else. He flips a switch. The screen flickers. He nudges this little contraption, three buttons, a rolling ball underneath the cursor moves, click, windows, open, icons, blink. It's not just a machine, it's the future glowing there right in front of him. Adele Goldberg leans in, smirks that mouse better work this time. Chuck shrugs. It moves the arrow behind them. Bob Metcalf wrestles cables, muttering something about the Ethernet, tying computers together like a digital nervous system. These people, they don't sleep and they don't slow down. They're building something that could change everything. Then the phone rings the suits in New York. It's Xerox corporate Thacker. Update us. Chuck swallows. He tries this screen. It's they cut him off copiers. Chuck, we sell copiers. Click. Adele throws down her notepad. They don't get it. She knows exactly what's happening. The suits are about to smother something revolutionary. They always do. Chuck clenches his fists. His jaw tightens. He grabs the alto, this thing He's poured his soul into, and he shakes it like he's trying to wake it up, like he's shaking the stupidity out of Xerox. His knuckles go white, his teeth grind. Then he lets go, lets it drop, stares at it. They'll never see it. He mutters, never and they don't. The suits shove the project aside. Too weird, too risky. Dalto gets buried by bureaucracy, committees, memos, years of more review. The spark dims Adele fights. She pushes for the Alto to breathe, but she's outnumbered. Xerox doesn't want the future. They want ink on paper so it dies. Then Xerox makes an even bigger mistake. They don't get personal computers, but they do know Apple's onto something, so they cut a deal. Apple gets to tour their Palo Alto Research Center in exchange for some stock. Adele warns them, if you show this to jobs, he'll take it again. She's overruled. Steve Jobs walks in black turtleneck, eyes sharp. Chuck boots up another alto, click, drag, glow. The future is right there, but not in Chuck's hands anymore. Jobs doesn't blink. He just nods and walks out. Two years later, the Macintosh launches, and Xerox, they're back to selling copiers. The question is, why? Why did Chuck Thacker genius die in a storage closet while Steve Jobs vision changed the world? And more importantly, are you chuck right now? Are you Adele fighting against the tide, or are you jobs taking what others waste. Today, we're talking about how to unleash genius before it's too late, and why. As an entrepreneur, your ability to communicate and defend that genius determines whether you build a legacy or get left behind. Let's get started. Well, hello there. Welcome to flow driven the podcast that transforms ambitious entrepreneurs into flow driven CEOs with high performance workplaces. I'm your host and coach, Dr Dave Maloley, and I believe that entrepreneurs are athletes and their business is the field of play every single day is a game, and the outcome of that game really depends on whether you're prepared to win or you're not. Here's what I dream of a world where businesses routinely adopt flow as one of their core values. Imagine workplaces where leaders and teams perform in harmony, where challenges are met with collaboration and where potential is unlocked, not wasted. Flow driven is where high performance and high profit intersect, and that idea is supported by four pillars. First, we have mental optimization, sharpening your mindset so that you can. Operate at your very best as the leader. Then we have flow orchestration, structuring your business for seamless execution. Third, there's courageous communication that's all about building trust and alignment through open, candid dialog. And finally, we have team transformation, that's where we create a culture that amplifies collective genius and drives exceptional profitability. Today we're going to be focusing on that third pillar, courageous communication. So on some of the past episodes, I've talked about moving from industrial age to information age to transformation age, let's revisit that the Industrial Age was all about control. Bosses barked orders. Workers fell in line. No questions were asked. Success met efficiency and predictability. They told you to stay small, just obey. And then came the Information Age. This is where data started taking over. Systems locked it down. The game shifted from muscle to metrics. Track every move, optimize every corner. They wanted the employees to think, I am my output. So the limit was really the dashboard and the strength of these employees were buried under busy work. But now we're in the transformation age. AI is rewriting all the rules, automating knowledge work, flipping industries upside down, exposing cracks at a brutal pace. Let's look back at Xerox. They had the Palo Alto Research Center. These were the sharpest minds of their era, the first graphical interface, the first modern mouse, the future was right there, but the leadership never said, your job is to see past your limits and unleash your genius. There was no rallying cry. There was really no vision, just memos and stick to the cop. Years. They had it in their hands, but they let it slip away jobs. Then walked in and saw all those strengths. He saw Chuck Spark, he saw Adele's fire, and he felt it, and he grabbed it. He told his team, your job isn't to play small. Is to break ceilings, is to play to what you're great at. He lit a fire under that generation and built an empire. Today, too many teams are drifting. Gallup says that 70% of employees are disengaged, not lazy. They're just trapped. Their brains are wired for learning, problem solving, creating something outrageous, but they're stuck in meetings that don't matter, boxed in by old stories, like I'm just the fill in the blank with your job title, waiting for a signal to ignite. They've got the juice. They're just waiting for someone to flip the switch, and in the transformation age, you're going to have to adapt or die, because AI is moving from low level tasks to strategy to creativity to decision making. It's important that you help your team members see past their perceived limits, because the status quo is a death sentence. So make it loud every huddle, every review, every chance you get tell them you're not here to drift, you're not here to shrink back. I see what you're made of. I want you to play to your strengths, because Industrial Age rewarded obedience, information. Age rewarded optimization and the transformation. Age rewards audacity, those who tell their team, unleash your genius. And I mean that because if you're not leading that charge in your business, you're going to get left behind. So now that you understand that if you play small, you're going to lose big, I think it's important that we understand that this isn't necessarily a talent gap. It's more of a leadership gap, because teams drift when they lack clarity and expectations. And your job isn't to be the cheerleader. It's to build systems that make progress inevitable, the kind that keeps employees engaged, customers hooked, and profits growing quarter after quarter. Xerox ignored this, but jobs didn't. So now let's talk about four steps to drive growth and momentum with this idea of unleashing genius. It's not about pushing people harder. It's about building a culture where growth is normal, risk is rewarded, and people step up without asking for permission. Here's how step one set the standard growth is the default culture isn't going to be some poster on the wall. It's what you reinforce daily. If you want people to think bigger, push forward and. Grow. They need to hear it. They need to see it. They need to feel it every single day. So in your morning huddles, ask, Where are we playing small? What's one thing that we can try today? In your reviews, ask what challenge did you take on, what clicked for you in one on one coaching sessions, ask them, What strength do you want to double down on? Now, again, people check out because they don't see a reason to lean in to push their comfort zone. But when growth becomes a part of the daily rhythm, they will step up. Your customers will notice, and the results of your business will follow now. Number two, you really have to hire for growth. Look for three traits. Your team moves as fast as its slowest. Decision makers hire people that are wired for growth. Screen for three things. One, curiosity, you might ask, what's the last thing you learned that changed how you work. Two, coachability. Tell me about a time where you got tough feedback, and how did you apply it. Three, initiative, what's a problem you solve before anyone asked? So don't just ask about their past job descriptions. Ask about their growth, and then once they're on the payroll, make sure that they're learning, that they're pushing, that they're adapting, and they know that if they don't continue to grow, they don't have a seat in your organization, because AI isn't slowing down, and your competitive edge isn't just talent, it's adaptability. When your team is full of learners, problem solvers and action takers, customers are going to trust you. More results are going to compound, and momentum keeps building. Let's move on to number three, catch drift. My definition of drift would be when somebody plays it too safe for too long, and it's your job to spot it early if you see hesitation, ask, What's stopping you from making that move when you sense someone's coasting, ask, this team grows. Where can you push forward today in a huddle? Remind them that if things are going off track, we can call it out and fix it. That's how we stay ahead. Adam Grant says great leaders develop people not just results. So your people don't need motivation speeches. They need clear expectations and quick resets that make growth part of their job. Finally, align strengths. Kolbe  A makes it all click. Steve Jobs understood this. People perform best when they work the way they're wired. That's where Kolbe comes in. If you're not familiar with Kolbe, it's spelled K, o, l, B, E. It was created by a absolute legend of leadership, Kathy Kolbe, and she says success is the freedom to be yourself. And the assessment that I'm recommending is called the Colby a it's not a personality test. It doesn't measure your intelligence or your work ethic. It measures how people instinctively take action, so you really need one for you and everyone that reports to you. Once you get your report back, you're going to see four color bars, one for Fact Finder, one for follow through, one for Quick Start and one for implementer. Fact finders, they thrive on deep research and analysis follow throughs thrive on structure, organization and consistency. Quick Starts, they thrive on new ideas and fast execution. And implementers thrive on hands on problem solving. And you and your team member are going to have a unique hybrid of those four fundamentals. So this is how you use a Kolbe A in your business. Have every member take the Kolbe A to understand their natural strengths, then you assign work based on their instinctive abilities, not just job titles, and then reinforce it, because that's where their genius lies. AI can process data, but it can't replace that human instinct. When people work in their zone of genius, they perform at their very best and they feel energized. And if that's happening with your employees, your customers are going to feel it, and when your customers feel it, they don't leave, they buy more and they refer so here's my challenge for you, let's start small. Over the next week, have one simple but powerful conversation with your team and ask them these three questions, what's one thing you see in this business that could be much better? Two, if you had full ownership to fix it, you. What would you do? And three, what's stopping you from making that happen? Because most people don't even realize how much potential they have, because no one's ever asked them to tap into it. They've been trained to follow, not create. But if you want a business where genius thrives, your people need to know their ideas, creativity and problem solving matter, so start planting that seed, ask the questions. Give them permission to think bigger, and when they step up with a brilliant idea, celebrate it. Act on it. Make it clear that in your culture, potential isn't wasted, it's unleashed. Thank you for joining me today. If you found this episode valuable, I'm gonna ask you to take a moment right now and pay a small fee share this episode with a fellow entrepreneur that would benefit from it and leave a five star review so that we can continue our rapid growth here at flow driven until next week. This is Dr Dave, reminding you to stay focused and flow driven.