Sherpa Leadership Podcast

Episode 10 - Reinventing Continuously Without Losing Your Team

• Sherpa Consulting Group

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Reinvention isn’t a vibe, it’s a discipline. We break down how to evolve your organization without burning out your team or chasing every shiny object. Starting with a clear line between mission and methods, we show why ditching the finish-line mentality reduces fatigue and creates space for smart change. When you accept the infinite game, you stop waiting for “there” and start building the engine that adapts.

From there, we get practical. Trust is the throttle: move at the speed of trust by piloting ideas, asking for real feedback, and making it safe to question assumptions. You’ll hear how “bullets before cannonballs” turns risk into learning and how early authorship turns resistance into momentum. We also expose four traps that derail leaders—whiplash decisions, ghost planning in isolation, copycat strategies, and the stuck founder mindset—and share the structures that keep you out of them: quarterly parking lots for new ideas, due diligence with pioneers, and cascading communication that makes rollouts feel obvious, not abrupt.

Leading across generations demands new methods without losing your core. We talk about updating tools, accountability, and language while staying anchored to values and vision. If you’ve ever felt torn between moving fast and keeping people with you, this conversation will give you a usable framework, reflection prompts, and permission to slow down so you can speed up with buy-in. Stick around for a teaser of our upcoming conversation with John Monroe on change at the speed of trust.

If this helped you lead with more clarity, subscribe, leave a quick review, and share it with a leader who’s ready to climb higher.

Welcome And iServe Recap

SPEAKER_01

In business, um, just kind of like in life, everything is constantly changing. And if that's a threat to you between your ears, you're going to struggle your entire leadership journey with fatigue because uh it's going to be it's gonna be just out of reach.

SPEAKER_02

Makes me think about this experience that a lot of us uh maybe have had as parents with young kids when we're on a trip in the car, right? Are we there yet? Are we there? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? And on the leadership journey, the answer is no. We're never there yet.

Why Reinvention Matters

SPEAKER_01

You're listening to the Sherpa Leadership Podcast, your guide to climbing higher in life and leadership. I'm Reed Moore, and alongside Chase Williams, we're here to help you break through obstacles, scale your potential, and lead with greater clarity and purpose. Welcome back everybody to the Sherpa Leadership Podcast. Chase Williams and myself, Read Moore here, and we are here to help you climb higher in life and leadership. And we are working through the iServe model, and today we're going to launch into one of the things that we need to be able to do as leaders, and that is to reinvent continuously. And maybe we want to say something like reinvent continuously without losing your team. Uh so we're gonna talk about how to do this effectively. And uh, Chase, good to see you again, my friend.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, great to be here. So, just as a short little recap, we're talking about how we view leadership through the iServe model and what we've talked about thus far. And if you haven't listened to these episodes, please go back and do so. Uh, but the first one that we covered was individual performance and results. This idea that uh to be a leader in part, you have to be initially committed to performance and results yourself, and then ultimately leveraging that into succeeding through others, right? And so we've unpacked that in a previous episode. And then we moved to see and shape the future, or what we might think of as vision and why that's so important to our ability to influence others and take a group of people somewhere, wherever that may be, whatever our vision is for, right? The mission of our team, organization, family, church, et cetera. And then we also talked about engaging and developing others, engaging and developing others, because true leadership is success through others and helping other people think and getting to a destination or a vision with a group of people, not alone. And that requires us to engage and develop others. And we've got some great guests for all three of those. And those are live, I think almost all of them. So you can go back and listen to them. And today we're gonna be unpacking this idea of reinventing continuously. So, Reed, give us a kind of an overview of why this is so important in leadership.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so the first thing that goes through my mind is there are some people that are watching right now and they're rolling up their sleeves and they're like, yes, right? Like, I love this. I knew somebody was gonna tell me this is a good thing. Yeah. Right? And there's probably a group of people that are listening to this, and as soon as we talk about reinventing continuously, there's just this element of fatigue. Yes. Right? Like, really, we're not there yet. Right? And so we're gonna dive into this uh depending on you know where you are on this. There, there's probably some blind spots, like kind of going back to the bonus episode of blind spots to breakthroughs that might show up. But we want to help leaders navigate what we think is really an important leadership quality, especially in 2025, which is reinventing continuously, uh, but doing that in a way that's going to be healthy and sustainable in your organization.

Mission Versus Methods

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I totally get that. And you're right, I think about both types of leaders, like the fatigue leader that's like, I really don't want to, I've worked so hard to get here. Yes. And the leader is like, yeah, let's change, let's reinvent, let's do something new. And we're gonna talk about kind of both of those ends of the spectrum. But why is reinvention important at all in let's say the business world is a starting point?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so one of the reasons I think reinvention is so important is that uh as leaders, especially early in our career, we're trying to solve problems, we're scratching and clawing just to be able to get to some level of accomplishment or success. And uh when we get there, there's this feeling of almost like finality that we're after or a finish line that we're after. And if we go back to some things like Simon Sinek's uh Infinite Game, there's just this false dichotomy in life and in business that there ever is a finish line this side of death. And I woke up years ago and I just had this, um, I just had this amazing kind of freeing experience. And that is I woke up one morning and I realized if I approach life, relationships, and business uh as if there is no finish line, I remove a lot of disillusionment from my life. Uh, I remove a lot of um striving from my life, and there's a lot of pressure that that goes on the shoulder of a leader when it comes to uh feeling like you have to get to a specific destination and then you will have rest or you will have to, you know, maybe not reinvent or something like that. But in business, um, just kind of like in life, everything is constantly changing. And if that's a threat to you uh between your ears, yeah, you're going to struggle your entire leadership journey with fatigue because uh it's going to be it's gonna be just out of reach.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you know, it makes me think about this experience that a lot of us uh maybe have had as parents with young kids when we're on a trip in the car, right? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Yes. Are we there yet? And on the leadership journey, the answer is no. We're never there yet, right? And so, like coming to peace with that is what I hear you saying, and the value that that brings us internally.

SPEAKER_03

Yes.

SPEAKER_02

There's also some reasons to be reinventing continuously external to us, right? So we can start internally, first creation, second creation out there. I think we would all agree that the the business world, the world in general, is rapidly changing all the time and maybe faster, whether that's technology or whatever else might be causing it to speed up. You know, there's this old saying, like the only thing that stays the same is nothing stays the same.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Right? Well, that's the world in which we operate for a number of different reasons that we can unpack. But the challenge of not reinventing or getting stuck in the old ways or stuck in old ruts is that the world itself, business, family, community, as it changes rapidly, will just pass us by. And it will limit our ability to influence others. It will limit our ability to engage those people in what we have as a shared mission or vision for what we want to accomplish. And so there are some benefits to not being overly influenced by the changes around us. Right. But there's also some benefits to paying attention to what's changing around us so that we can leverage that to the benefit of where we want to take people, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you know, and and uh maybe a disclaimer as we get going is this is not um this is not carte blanc to chase every shiny object. No, it's not. To be clear, uh reinventing continuously, if you think about the idea of invention, invention is not haphazard, it doesn't create whiplash, and that's really what we're talking about. So we're talking about doing this uh as a leadership discipline, as it turns out, all of the disciplines that we've talked about so far require discipline. Yep. This one uh is no different.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's right. So when we think through like a framework for if we acknowledge that reinvention, continuous reinvention as we would call it, done strategically, not haphazardly, is important, then what's some framework we can use for starting to think through this discipline or skill around reinvention?

Reinvent At The Speed Of Trust

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so so when we're talking about reinvention, um, fundamentally we're talking about the methodology of going about business. And I think that we get in a lot of trouble when reinvention is constantly reinventing the mission of the business or maybe even the direction of the business. Now, that can happen, right? In the um, you know, if you look at something like Twitter that started out as a very different product, uh, that can happen. But uh, over the course of time, for most people's businesses, what happens is we start creating a lot of problems when we start messing with the mission or the reason that the business exists and we start pivoting around that. The reality is that uh the mission is what we're married to, but not the methods. One of the things I experienced uh in my early 20s was uh I was I was involved in a church in Alaska doing youth and young adult ministry, and it was awesome, it was so great. And we had this extra space or this extra room in in the church that was kind of like the original uh auditorium and it became ours, like for for the youth ministry. It was growing, it was thriving, and it was uh you know, it was all of this just horribly ugly redwood, right? Just the it was it was really outdated. And so uh we decided that we were going to paint the entire space uh behind the stage black, which is a very neutral thing, you see it a lot now. And oh my gosh, uh we got absolutely just lamb-basted over this whole thing. And and I was I was really upset with how much negative emotion this whole thing created because we're like, don't you know that we're building people and we're investing in the next, you know, all this stuff. And and and I kind of did the the very first element that I think we have to do when it comes to reinventing continuously, and that is I reflected. Yeah, right. We have to stop and think, and and what I realized was something that has served me well over the years, and that is that when people don't clearly see the mission continuing to grow, they start to cling on to the methods that represented the mission back in the day. And what what I was fighting wasn't a black wall versus a uh a redwood wall. What I was really fighting was there was a group of people that sacrificed almost everything to be able to get the church where it was to that point. And uh I didn't honor that, which was my immaturity. They had attachment to the redwood, they had attachment, deep attachment to the redwood. Yeah, and and what they really were attached to was the mission, but they couldn't as clearly see the mission anymore, and so they tied themselves to the method. And I think that as leaders, when we start getting tied to the methodology, we do have to take a step back and say, okay, have I lost sight of the importance of the mission? Because the first part is uh upon reflection, you might find that the methods are overly valuable because the mission has uh faded away a little bit.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I love that. So when you think of this idea of making sure that we're married to the mission, right? But we're just dating the methods. Yes. And you gave a great story there, which is like reminding people when change is upon us or might be necessary that it's actually for the mission, the vision of the organization that they, you know, probably originally came to love. And maybe now they're starting to get attached to some of the methods. Some of the questions that you can ask, right, when you're in this reflection time is things like what's missing, what's no longer working, even if it used to, yeah, right? What might require, what might be required in order to take another step toward accomplishing the mission that we have? Those are some kind of examples of questions that you can use in reflecting. And the reason why I think those are important is something you shared earlier on. We want to be careful that we're not just being overly attracted to shiny objects. Yeah, there's a lot of them out there. There's a lot of good ideas, everyone's got 20 of them, and and and that's awesome. And yet it can uh they can entice us in a way that might draw us as leaders, even away from the mission. We get excited about something or we see this uh quote unquote shiny object that seems to be having success for one of our peers or in another industry, even. And those things in and of themselves are not bad or negative, but we just have to be careful that we're not constantly chasing down shiny objects that don't actually move us closer to accomplishing the mission, right?

Build Buy-In With Bullets Before Cannonballs

SPEAKER_01

Yes. Yeah, I think about one of these things that um if if we're gonna do this in maybe a mature way, is we need to understand that uh reinventing can only be done at the speed of trust. Because this leadership journey is not a solo journey, just the the concept of leadership in in general uh already tells you you're going with other people. And there's there's uh there's these mental pictures of leadership that give that we get, which is like you know, the person out in front with the sword and they're leading the way. That is a part of leadership. And maybe it would be uh worth saying that uh that is a great picture of leadership when it comes to danger and risk and you going first and and being the person who is willing to put themselves out there. I think that that's great leadership. But when it comes to maybe like a journey, it may be better to see a leader at the back, right? And that is my job almost like a shepherd. My job is to make sure everybody gets where we're going safely. That requires the discipline of slowing down, knowing that if you just run out ahead, you're gonna end up somewhere alone. That's gonna be totally ineffective.

SPEAKER_02

So we can only move at the speed of trust. Spoiler alert, we have a guest who's gonna be speaking on this topic around his leadership journey. Yeah. And he talks a lot about that. So make sure you catch this episode. This idea of gaining trust first, moving at the speed of trust. It truly is the foundation of moving people in general, but certainly reinventing and making change. Why? Because change is hard. Yes, and people naturally resist change to varying degrees, and so we have to have that trust. And without it, you can have the best strategy, you can have the best idea, but you can't move people in the way that you need without trust.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Right? So, what are some practical ways, Reed, that you think of when when you're when you're when you need to move or slow down even to gain trust? How do we do that? How do we gain trust with people when when change is necessary?

SPEAKER_01

Um, so so I think one of the practical ways is to build up a bank account or a reserve uh with with people that are in your life, right? So we think about this in marriage, right? Uh, we're either living in an abundance of love so that way when something happens and there's a debit against the love account, uh it doesn't bankrupt the account. Right. And and so when we're leading people, uh, are we leading from a deficit? And and maybe one of the ways that we can create a deficit as leaders is when we um when we are reinventing and we put all of our chips on the table. We're all in all the time on every idea, and every idea we take the entire attraction of the whole company and we refocus them on that, what might be a shiny object or at least not a vetted object. And so I think that we build trust by um, you know, like uh Jim Collins would say, shooting bullets before cannonballs. Yep. And we do that by these small incremental wins. And so when people are are nervous about just taking this step forward and in this reinvention, um, have they seen you fail in a measured way? And have they seen you make wise decisions because you're reflecting, because you're moving at a speed of trust, and because by the time that you decide that you are gonna go all in, you've worked with them and you've vetted the um the direction you're gonna go.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so that can look like inside of an organization, it can look like piloting a change, yeah, testing a change. You're talking about bullets before cannonballs, right? It's like, let's see how this works before we put all our powder behind all in. Yes. Right? And so that's practically what that can look like to gain trust and to also get feedback in the direction that we're heading so we can tweak and make changes according to what the people that we're leading are saying or what the end consumer is saying about this small change that we're starting to make, even if there's this idea that eventually this will be the thing that we will point all of our cannonballs toward. And I think the other thing you can do to help gain trust in that process is ask lots of questions. Create a safe place for people to give you feedback, especially those people you lead.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Right? Like when you're announcing uh a change or even an idea, make it okay for people to question it, for people to have concern around it. You have to have a leader that has low enough ego to be able to be able to hear those things from the people that you lead, not only because it will uh it will get give you more trust, more than likely. Yeah, but you'll also get some authorship from the people that are likely going to be executing the change. Yeah. They might have some good ideas that go along with this change. They might have some valid concerns that we haven't thought about yet.

SPEAKER_03

Yes.

SPEAKER_02

And heaven forbid we rush headlong into a great idea when five people at the table knew maybe it wasn't in these key ways, and we didn't create a safe place for them to let us know ahead of time, right?

Culture That Surfaces Sacred Cows

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah. If you're gonna reinvent continuously and you're gonna do it well, it's sort of it's gonna require vulnerability on your on your end. Yes. And what that means is inviting trusted people into your thought process early on, when it's probably dumb, it's not really well formed, um and and you don't have the confidence yet that it is the right direction. And if you do that really, really early on, maybe not in any formal way, but just like, hey, Chase, can I pick your brain? I s I think I'm seeing this thing and I want to do something about it. And here are my thoughts. What do you think? And this is maybe weeks or months, depending on the type of change, uh, maybe even years before this change actually happens. And if I start inviting people into that process, what's gonna happen is a couple of things. I'm going to engage their genius and their third and fourth party perspectives, which is gonna be way better for the idea, right? Um, and I'm going to, like you said, I'm going to start engendering authorship with them. And we, when it comes to actually reinvention, I'm going to have people in the organization that are going to uh be uh be champions for it. Not because they think I'm the smartest person ever, but because they had part of their genius in the mix. And that's gonna work, that's gonna help a lot when it comes to adoption.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, not only that, but if you're able to go first as a leader around this idea of uh reinventing, you can actually impact the culture in your organization or your family or your church or your community in regards to the value of reinventing so that some of these pieces can actually bubble up from the top, right? If we have people in our organization that see us constantly um thinking about what may not be working or what might need to change to accomplish the mission, then we make it a safe place for them to do the same, right? We we start to have people help us identify what we might call sacred cows inside of our organization, right? There's that old story, right? And and maybe some of you have heard this, where the granddaughter is making a ham for Easter or Thanksgiving or something of that nature, right? And so she likes she she cuts the end off of the ham to put it in the pot. And her mother's there and she asks, you know, hey, why do we cut the end off the ham to cook it? This is the way I've always seen you do it. And the mother says something like, Well, I don't know, that's the way grandma did it. Let's call her. They call grandma, hey, why do we cut the end off the ham before we cook it? I'm not sure. Let's call great grandmother. They call her, of course, and they ask her the same question, and she says, Because my pot was too small to fit the ham.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Right? And so that's a common story in business if you haven't heard that to identify the the challenge of sacred cows. Like, this is the way we do it because that's the way we've always done it. Yeah. Well, that can lead to kind of uh rigidity or getting stuck in an organization when the outside world is constantly changing. So imagine being able to create a culture where people are looking for better, better ways, right? Not change for change sake, but improvement's sake, more efficiency. Maybe you save some money, maybe it gets a better result. If if not only you, but your entire organization is looking for opportunities for these changes that improve the pursuit of the mission. Now what do we have?

Leading Across Generations

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was looking up here because I was thinking that some of this goes back to this idea of individual performance and results, right? And us modeling the way. One of the things I know is helpful is when the people that you're leading through change or reinvention look at you and look at your personal life and they watch you reinventing yourself, right? So you're you're not, you know, you're not staying the same leader that you used to be and then trying to enforce this thing. You're somebody who's reading books and you're listening to podcasts and you're going to conferences and you have a coach and you're you're working on your physical health and your spiritual life and all these things. What happens is over the course of time, they start to get inspired not by what you say, but what you do. So now when you start saying something, it has more gravity underneath it, right? It has more weight behind it, yeah. Uh, which I think is just a helpful, uh, authentic thing to do as a leader.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think another another thing that comes to mind, Reed, around this idea, is uh if you're gonna lead for any length of time, one of the things you're gonna run into is you're gonna you're gonna start leading people from a different generation.

SPEAKER_03

Yes. Right?

SPEAKER_02

And we're experiencing that now. Matter of fact, your your son Nathan works directly with us at Sherpa doing some of the stuff behind the scenes. And so you're gonna have to lead people that are from a totally different generation as you.

SPEAKER_03

Yes.

SPEAKER_02

Right? And likely you're leading some people that maybe are a generation ahead of you, et cetera. So so as a leader, over time you're gonna have some experience here. But the reality is, is the way we led boomers is not gonna be the same way we lead, you know, millennials or Gen Z or whatever the generations are. I'm not the expert, as you can tell. But my point is if we're reinventing ourselves continuously in the methods with which we lead, which doesn't change our vision for helping people become their best, right? We're married to that as a vision of leadership. But the way we speak to them, the technology we use to communicate with them, the way we hold them accountable, even there's gonna be some similarities and some foundational pieces. But if we're not reinventing that, we run the risk of becoming irrelevant leaders.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

All of a sudden, if we don't have the skill because we've not reinvented to lead the next generation, then we're just fading off in the sunset with the generation ahead of us. Yeah. And that's problematic for a family.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

For an organization, a church, a community. And I always say those things because we all know that leadership transcends all these different areas of our life. Yes. We talk about reinventing inside of an organization. It's no different than me having to reinvent my parenting methods for little kids to teenagers to launching them into the world. Yeah. Not not easy, but but I think we would all argue it's absolutely critical for the success you desire as a parent. Well, it's no different in these other areas of life, right?

Four Pitfalls Of Reinvention

SPEAKER_01

No, it's it's no different at all. And I and I think one of the things I always come back to is what's your guiding principle? Is it being is it being right or is it being effective? And for me, that has solved so many issues in between my ears and then coming out of my actions. So let's just say I have people who are two or three generations younger than than me. Um, my non-leader, like uh cranky old man voice. Get off my lawn. Get off my lawn, right? Like uh for the last you know, 1600 years, there's been writings of an older generation saying how weak and how ill-equipped and how just you know uh and and uh irresponsible. And and Volus goes on. That's what they said about us. That's what they said about us. Uh that's what my grandparents said about my parents, yeah, and the list just goes on and on. So we looked at it, we just say, okay, is this effective? Uh to look at my son and look at his generation and and list all of the things that they're bad at uh in broad, stereotypical um, you know, tone. Not effective. Not effective. If I'm reinventing continuously, I might find things in him, which I have, that I'm like, I have no idea how to do that. Uh I don't know how to start learning how to do that, but it looks like you have a specific gift here. What can I do to empower that, even though I don't understand the way that you're, you know, the way that you're showing up this way, right? It uh I'm looking to be effective.

The Whiplash Leader

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely. I had an opportunity not long ago to do a workshop for a group of folks that had a whole bunch of different generations, and they were experiencing some challenges around that, which is common, right? Not abnormal. But we got to work through like when you think of the different strengths that different generations bring to the table and the synergy that can provide for a group of people working towards the same goal, which they were, then you start to think about those differences in a way that's helpful rather than those differences that are hurtful or at least not effective. Absolutely. Like, hey kid, you're dumb and you should get off my lawn. Like, I don't see where that helps you as a leader, even if you feel that way. You're gonna have to learn to say, what are the the unique giftings that this generation or this person has that create exponential horsepower towards where we're headed? And how do I, as a leader, learn to lead that person to draw that out of them to make that not only okay, but welcomed? Yes. That's a that's a an example of reinventing myself as a leader to be able to do this. I'd love to sit here and say that I do that naturally, but I don't. No. My tendency is get off my lawn, kid, right? I don't know why. And so I have to work really hard to reinvent my thinking around that, my skill around that. I have to practice that. Yeah, right. And so none of that's easy, but it's absolutely paramount and worth it when you come out on the other side and you realize, holy smokes, yeah. There's great opportunity. If I are to, if I'm to reinvent here, what more can I get out of them? What more can they get out of themselves? What how much more influence can I develop towards whatever mission is we're on, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that motivates me sometimes with these leadership disciplines is just simply asking the question, what's the opposite? What's the opposite of me reinventing myself continuously? Um, I don't like the opposite. Yeah, I actually I probably despise the opposite more than I actually like the leadership discipline.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Uh, but that's something that that helps me move forward.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so my hallucination is maybe, just maybe, we've given a little uh context or or influence around why reinvention is important. Yes. So let's cover some of the common pitfalls of reinvention. I love these titles that we have here. We've got four of them that we're gonna share. And so you might find yourself falling into one of these, and this is something to look out for as you pursue reinvention. Again, I'm gonna assume that we're gonna commit to reinvention strategically. Yes. Right? Not ad hoc or in chaos, but then there's gonna be some pitfalls we want to watch out for. So what's the first one?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so okay, so the first uh the first way that we can engage with uh reinventing continuously is we can be the whiplash leader. Uh so the whiplash leader is changing directions every 90 days with no through line. Uh every 90 days is so generous. Yeah, totally. Every day. Every day, every week, between conferences, right? All of this. Uh the reality is that you will create a tremendous amount of whiplash in your business if uh there's no through line to the mission and you are changing things. Uh the dark side of this is that you don't ever allow anything to fully develop or even develop to where you you know if it has legs or not before you're off to the next thing. Yeah. Really frustrating. Behind your back, people are rolling their eyes because they will start to lose trust that you will stick to anything for any prolonged period of time, and they will pour their heart and soul into the last great initiative only to see all of their work show up as nothing because you've pivoted. Being the whiplash leader, not so good.

The Ghost Leader

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, this is um soul crushing for someone following a leader like that. Yeah, and I can say that with confidence because I worked with a leader like that. Now, this person's a dear friend of mine, and this is early on in our leadership journey, so this person will remain unnamed. But over time, we we have this inside joke, and this is with each other, not behind his back, but with him and me, right? Top priority tomorrow, new top priority, right? No matter what, it was like this new shiny idea that had no through line, and it was just this desire of like this, you know, probably ADD style, like new, new, new, new, new, new, new. But you're exactly right. Like you spend time thinking, strategizing, executing, putting your putting your heart and soul into the last top priority. Yeah. And then all of a sudden there's a new top priority, and that one's dead, and no one cares about that, including all the work that was done around it. And now it feels like you're starting back from scratch, and you wonder if you're just on this hamster wheel of new top priorities versus making progress toward the mission. Yeah. And it is soul crushing, it's really rough.

SPEAKER_01

I um I used to be a whiplash leader, and I still have these tendencies. I've had to put structure and discipline in place to open times for invention and then close them up for long enough to see that play out and get a commitment with our executive team. If not, uh I am all over the map all the time without core disciplines of uh you know quarterly business planning and making sure that we are intentional about the things that are top priority. And then when the when the next day I find a new shiny thing or I have a new idea, I just know it has to wait three months unless it's you know mission critical, there's an emergency.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I really want our listeners to hear that part because you have done a great job with structure around avoiding this whiplash. And that is sometimes there is actually a really great idea.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That doesn't mean that it gets top priority today. It means that it goes on the docket, our quarterly business planning. So, like, yeah, that's a good idea. We definitely should talk about that. If it's not mission critical today, but it's still important. Now we have a time and a place to unpack that. So you don't feel like as a leader that all your good ideas are just being thrown to the wayside. Right. They have a time and a place, and then those in the organization don't feel like they're getting whiplash from a what is probably a good idea most of the time. Every single day. Yeah. Right. And so there's an actual process that helps with that, even though it might not be natural. And that's what I want our listeners to hear. You can you can engineer the way that you operate to protect you against causing whiplash in the organization all the time.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And that's definitely something we've helped lots of other people with and teams and organizations. So we can help with that. You know, your best idea is funny because a couple things will happen. Number one, is it'll get shelved like a bottle of wine and it'll be better in three months. Or number two, you'll realize uh that top priority best idea. Well, it's not a good idea.

SPEAKER_02

That's exactly right. Okay, so the next thing that we want to consider, right, when we're thinking of reinventing is what we would call the ghost leader. Yes. Right. And the ghost leader is someone who is actually reinventing, but behind closed doors. Right. Without anyone else in the organization involved, right? Like almost isolated from everything that's happening. And then when they feel like it's fully baked, they're dropping it on the organization, you know, expecting that everyone's going to be just overjoyed with this massive change that they've been engineering and strategizing around for six months, and now boom, it's like we just dropped a bomb that we think everyone's going to feel as a gift. Yes. Right? So tell us about why that might be a problematic way of reinventing.

SPEAKER_01

Um, you might have built two or three or four months of context and thought around an idea, which means that all of that emotional excitement has grown. Uh, and and your emotional excitement and buy-in is coupled with their lack of context, right? And the lack of that thing being beat up by maybe better minds. So you come out of the hole and you have a lot of energy and you're like you're full-tilt and you're just expecting like, you know, the water to part and people to be like, oh my gosh, you're the smartest person ever. That may or may not be your you know your motive, but that's the experience you're wanting to have. Yep. Uh, you are not ever going to get that experience.

The Copycat Trap

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, this is a fascinating one. I experienced this once as a leader when I did this wrong. I was, we were kind of, I wasn't in isolation myself, but I was in isolation with one or two other leaders, kind of like behind the curtains, running the math, strategizing this new idea. And it was actually a big change to our economic model in a business that I was operating. And the plan was we were going to roll this out and actually charge the clients less than we were charging them for the same amount of value. And so here we are behind the curtain, running the math, doing the pro forma, beating this up with two of us or three of us, instead of involving the clients and the stakeholders and the right peers, et cetera. And we thought, right, naively so, that when we in we announced this change to our economic structure, which was gonna like like practically it was gonna charge everyone less for the same value. And there was resistance to it. And at first, like, I couldn't understand, like people are resisting paying us less for the same value. I just don't get it. Yeah. In part, it was because all of this thought process was happening in isolation behind closed doors, and it felt like a bomb, even if even if you could argue it was a good thing, it didn't come across as a good thing because we had all this emotional energy tied to this is the best decision ever, and everyone wins here, but no one had any context. Yeah. And so, like, they start to make up you know stories around what the actual motive is versus what we thought it was, and now you have people like resisting this idea of paying you less when you would have never expected it, or I certainly didn't. Yeah. And so it was like this this big aha moment of like, wow, well, could it be because I've been the ghost leader who's working on this without any input from the people that it's gonna actually impact, even if it is a positive impact, which doesn't necessarily mean it was or is, but that was my mindset, right? Yeah, and so this is a dangerous way to uh to get people to reinvent with you by just figuring it all out on your own in isolation.

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah. Reinvention has a second element to it that's as important, and that is adoption.

SPEAKER_02

Yep, that's right.

SPEAKER_01

And reinvention without adoption, yeah, it just creates lots of problems for you. And so the the ideal if you have a large thing that you are reinventing is for it to be a surprise to exactly nobody. Yes. Right? And so what that means is a lot of discipline and a lot of thought through this, and that is when I have the idea, who do I bring in in the early stages that that's trusted that can help shape this, and who's the next layer of people on through your organization, ultimately uh in the ideal, to the point that you let enough people in that everybody starts gossiping, which is what what uh Patrick Lincioni calls cascading messaging. Yep, but it really is fundamentally uh gossiping about the right things. Right. And by the time you make an announcement, it's no announcement at all. There's no announcement at all. Everybody's like, yeah, thanks for finally telling us we know we're we already knew that. Yeah, exactly right. Um that's that's the ideal, and it really starts with with this idea of be vulnerable and and and expose your idea to other people.

The Stuck Founder

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I want to touch on that before we go to the next one. I love that because what I learned in that experience was that part of why we were, you know, baking this thing behind the curtain was ego. It was like we are gonna come out with this great idea that everyone's gonna love and cheer for, and it's gonna be the saving grace of this challenging time we're going through in the organization. And although maybe I didn't realize it at the time, there's an element of ego that's like, I want to keep this so that when I announce it, it's genius. Yes. And and here's the here's the thing, it wasn't genius, it wasn't even my original idea, but there was some element of cloak and dagger that was actually attached to ego rather than vulnerability and rather than this cascading messaging to understand, like, if everyone knows about this before the announcement, yes, not only do we get good feedback, we can add additional context and have important conversations with, you know, both advocates and those that may have some resistance to this, so that when we're ready to go, we get adoption, right? There was this like, ooh, I'm gonna hold this until it's ready to go and then reveal it to the world, right? And so that was a hard lesson to learn. Yeah, that's a good one.

SPEAKER_03

Good one.

SPEAKER_02

So, what's the third, uh, their third style?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, the copycat. Sees a competitor. Uh, maybe a competitor, by the way. Sure. Sees a competitor doing something and mirrors it without understanding the why. Oh my gosh. Um, this one, this one is problematic for a lot of reasons. One is it's problematic just on an emotional level, is it's kind of rooted in comparison.

SPEAKER_02

Yes. Right.

SPEAKER_01

It can be. It can be. Um, and it and and the way that we get there sometimes is somebody sells us on their idea because they're genuinely excited about it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And it's unvetted, it's unproven, and they're going to jump off of a cliff, and you're just jealous that you're not jumping with them.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Um, the other thing is they might be playing baseball, and I'm so jealous of that. Uh, but I'm actually paying football. And if I start adopting their same workout regimen, I start adopting all of these things, I'm I'm fundamentally not playing my game at a high level.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And so when we just go full-till copycat, uh, we have some challenges that show up.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, we need to ask some better questions. Even if we're intrigued by something someone else is doing, it maybe appears on the surface to be working for them. We need to uh we need to ask some really good questions. We need to uncover whether just because it's right for them and it may very well be working great for them, doesn't mean it's right for us. Are we even playing the same game? Are we on the same mission? Do our values align and what however this idea might you know get executed, etc. And I see this happen often in new ideas that show early signs of validity, and then everyone kind of rushes into this new thing. You have like these early adopters, and they're getting some um some positive response from the marketplace early on. Yes. And all of a sudden, right, it's like, oh, cannonball, and then everyone else's cannonball falls behind because they don't want to miss out. Yes, right? Those people that are maybe not early adopters, and then pretty soon several more months go by and you get a little bit more breadth of feedback from the marketplace, and you realize, like, oh, when we got a little uh a little broader feedback, it we realized it actually wasn't that good of an idea.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Or we realized that the results are actually even worse than the way we were doing it, right? And so um, we got to make sure that we're asking those powerful questions, right? There's this saying that I've I've heard before that is instructive here, right? And that is pioneers get bloody and settlers get rich.

SPEAKER_03

Yes. Right.

SPEAKER_02

And and all it is is just a reminder to like, it's okay to be the tip of the spear.

SPEAKER_03

Yep.

SPEAKER_02

It is okay, and we need people that are willing to do that. But understand, like, if you're just copying someone's idea and they're at the tip of the spear of something new, it's not vetted. It's not yet a proven model over the course of time. And so just understand that there's a lot, there's a much higher risk there, and there's a there's an exponential risk if you're not asking the right questions and you're just copying somebody because of the success they may be having with it.

SPEAKER_01

I think one of the things that can help with this is to find out where your sweet spot is when it comes to maybe uh are you on the bleeding edge like a pioneer? Are you an early adopter? Are you an early majority? Are you uh a late majority or are you way, way back, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yep, a laggard.

Reflection, Next Steps, And Teaser

SPEAKER_01

A laggard. And so I think if if you are having challenges in your business because you're uh you're not reinventing fast enough, then maybe work on that as a discipline over time. But um we tend to operate as an early majority in our business. I would like to tell everybody that we're early adopters. Uh at times I have been an early adopter, and at times I've tried to force that and I've paid the penalty of an early adopter that I did not want to pay. Right. Right? And so for us, uh, if I'm constantly looking and paying attention to those things, uh, we have the ability to make really good decisions, but it's a couple layers back. Pioneers uh pay the price and they're willing to pay the price and they know the risks, and they do pretty well when they're operating in that space. Uh so if if you're not that pioneer and you start forcing that on your team, and it's contrary to all of your culture, all your systems and structures, you're gonna have an issue and it comes from this copycat element.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and my encouragement would be to pay attention to the pioneers in your industry. Yeah. Because you can learn a lot from them. Oh, yeah. And they do some incredible things, right? So if you want to be an early majority as an example, pay attention to the pioneers and do your due diligence. Yes. That's the asking good questions part. And I've heard you do this really well, Reed. So to compliment you, it's like, oh, hey, so and so and such and such, I see that they're doing this thing, they're having some good results. So let's jump on a call with them. Let's get a little bit more information about how they're doing it, why they're doing it, how much body of work do they have, and how much data, how much data or or information do they have in terms of feedback, or is it something you just started? And so again, there's there's structure and process you can put in place. Not because we want to ignore those things altogether, yeah, but we want to be strategic and discerning around our due diligence before we just copy.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. My experience has been too that I um we operate better uh in our organizations when we have other people. Uh so I pay attention to pioneers all the time, and I'm fascinated, I'm always excited about what they're doing. But then there's a vetting process, and then there's handing it to somebody who actually runs the company. And uh when she looks at these things, she looks at through the critical eye of what will this disrupt in the company in a negative way? What will this solve? Uh, what will the cost be and all these other things? And so there's just kind of a way of vetting this beyond my initial kind of whiplash, let's do this thing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And there's one more that we want to cover. This is uh a style, if you will, that you want to watch out for when it comes to reinvention, and that's what we call the stuck founder, right? And this person knows that they need to evolve, but they stay in the comfort zone too long. They might be a little rigid in their thinking or their action, or certainly to make any change in the organization or otherwise. Why is that so risky?

SPEAKER_01

Um, it's so risky because you've spent your whole life, maybe, or the better part of your years building something that your current actions could kill. Right? And it's it's a you know, it's the death of a thousand cuts. It's not an overnight thing. But the challenge is that as you as you get stuck in your ways and then things start to change around you, uh honestly a lot of bitterness can set in. Right? You can become a victim, you can start adopting victim language as to why everything's wrong and why everything's against you and why it should be a certain way, which is all ineffective and irrelevant, right? Right. If you find yourself in this place, uh there's maybe there's maybe two options. One is to to start this process of reinventing yourself and then reinventing your business. There's another option, and maybe people don't want to hear it. And that is you may not be willing to do the work that it's going to take at this point to do that. And it may be time to um be vulnerable and humble and start inviting other people who are uh already, willing, and able to start doing that and empowering them.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Right? Both hard options, very hard options.

SPEAKER_02

You're talking about something like succession in your own role or bringing people in that are willing to reinvent. Because here's, you know, there's there's this cliche that we we hear. And of course, a cliche is just something that's said over and over and over because it's true. Yes, right? So when you hear the word cliche, pay attention, don't actually throw it out. But there's this idea that, you know, nothing exists in nature, nothing exists in stasis. Like nothing stays the same. It's either growing or it's dying, right? Like a tree, for example, is growing its entire life until the day it stops, and the very next day it's starting to die.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

Closing And Calls To Action

SPEAKER_02

And and leadership's a little like that, right? Like I shared this in the bonus episode with uh blind spots to breakthroughs, but I guarantee you there is someone else burning the midnight oil to knock you off the mountain that you're on, or the the place of the mountain that you're on, even if you're not on the top. And so, like, just staying stuck is not an option. No. The two the two options that you gave both are hard, sure, but staying stuck is not an option. No. And that is that is uh potentially the the nail, the death nail in the coffin of your organization or your influence or your leadership, even if you don't recognize it immediately, when you've decided that you're gonna stay stuck, that's incredibly problematic.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and even on a personal level, uh it's probably the death of your joy in your business. If you're not enjoying what you do right now, it may be because you are, you know, building up barriers around your stuckness. And you were created to grow until the day that you die, to some level and at some pace. And the more that you fortify yourself against growth, the more consequences there's gonna be in your family and your community. Uh the list just goes on and on. So a life's full of hard choices. Now it may be time to make one.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and it's often time to make one, right? And I think just admitting that and recognizing it makes it just slightly more slightly easier, slightly. Yeah, it's still hard, right? But if you're unwilling to even acknowledge that that's how you're feeling or that's how you're behaving, or that you're stuck in some way, then you haven't even taken the first step to making a change, to reinventing continuously.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So I would just say that if somebody's listening to this and they are having a hard time either creating a whiplash in their organization, as in they're creating a lot of it, or they're stuck, uh, reach out to us. We're really good at helping navigate these two different uh elements of the iServe model when it comes to reinventing continuously.

SPEAKER_02

The reason that is in part is as Sherpas, right? It's like we might have a different view and we may be able to ask a different question that helps you see something through a different lens. That's the value of a coach and a consultant. Yeah. Is someone who has climbed the mountain and and is willing to be real with where they see you on the mountain in order to help you get unstuck. Yes. Right? In order to help you climb higher up the mountain of leadership, influence, etc. So, yeah, please do reach out to us. So what else, Reed? How do we land the plane here?

SPEAKER_01

Um, so I think we just zoom out and we just ask ourselves this question. Um, if you were to identify yourself as one of these leaders, right? You are identifying yourself as a whiplash leader, a ghost leader, a copycat, or a stuck founder. Which one of those is the thing that comes most to mind? What's the consequence of not growing in that area? And the next thing I think is most important, what are you going to do about it?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And you might ask an additional question might be what area of my leadership do I need to evolve in next? Yeah. Because I guarantee you there is one. Absolutely. Right? And so just that reflection piece, which is what we shared earlier around like step one, reflect on like what area of my leadership do I need to evolve in? And once you've identified one, maybe more than one, then engage someone in helping you move forward, figuring out what the next domino is and how to actually take action in that evolution that you've identified is important.

SPEAKER_01

Love it. And I'm really excited for John Monroe to take us even deeper on this topic.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. If you like spoiler alert, John Monroe's amazing and an incredible guy. And we had the chance to interview him around this particular topic, and those two episodes are going to be coming soon, so don't miss them. Thank you guys for watching and listening to this episode of the Sherpa Leadership Podcast. We hope it inspired you and it moved you. And if it did, please leave a review, like, subscribe, and send this episode to a leader that you love. You can always go to Sherpa Consultinggroup.com for lots of additional resources. And remember that leadership is a journey. Every step you take matters. So keep climbing, and we'll see you on the next one.