---
title: "The Hidden Cost of Hustle Culture"
episode: 54
podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast"
publisher: "LeanScale"
guest: "Jack Jackson"
guest_title: "Executive Strategist, Startup Advisor & Author of 'The Reaction to Inaction'"
date_published: 2025-10-29
date_modified: 2026-07-22
duration: 00:44:01
word_count: 7792
topics: ["sales-leadership", "gtm-strategy", "ai-in-gtm"]
canonical_url: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/jack-jackson-hidden-cost-hustle-culture/
source: "LeanScale Podcast Knowledge Hub — https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app"
license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast."
---

# The Hidden Cost of Hustle Culture — Full Transcript

> Episode 54 of The LeanScale Podcast, with Jack Jackson.
> Published October 29, 2025 · 00:44:01 · 7,792 words.
> Machine-transcribed and **not diarized** — speaker attribution is inferred, so verify
> attribution against the audio before quoting a specific person.
> Structured breakdown: https://leanscale-knowledge-hub.netlify.app/podcast/jack-jackson-hidden-cost-hustle-culture/

## 00:00 — Meet Jack Jackson: 18 years in the making

**[0:00]** (logo whooshing) Today we have Jack Jackson. I am so pumped up for this interview. Jack, thank you so much for being here. Jack is a seasoned executive, strategist, and absolute powerhouse in the tech and startup ecosystem. He's led go-to-market and scaled multiple startups from inception to exit. He's also been on the other side as an executive leadership role in Fortune 500 companies. And along the way, he has found a passion in empowering people at every level of an organization, aiming to equip employees with the ability to thrive in an era of speed and disruption. It's no secret why he won the most influential leader in tech award by TechNet

**[0:43]** and so many others. Jack is also the author of "Reaction to an Action," a powerful reflection on the organizational cancer of performative productivity, hustle culture, talent waste, and a practical antidote built on his incredible experience. Jack, thank you for being here. I absolutely love the book. You did an incredible job with this and would love to start off with what inspired you to put all of your thoughts and experience into this incredible book here. - Well, Anthony, first off, thank you. Completely humbled. I am so happy to be on Lean Scale Podcasts. Happy to be with you, a huge fan. So thank you so much for having me.

**[1:30]** Really, really appreciate it and for the kind introduction. This is 18 years in the making. This is 18 years of making mistakes, getting some Ls, you know, and getting some dubs too. This is a lifelong project. I mean, I literally would sit in meetings and have one notebook for the meeting notes of what people are talking about, whether it be the board, the C-suite, you know, just regular, you know, frontline manager meetings and employee meetings. And I have my notebook on the other side writing down stuff for my book, right? And what really inspired it is a really personal story. And I'm still friends with a person who inspired the story,

## 02:10 — The colleague who inspired the book

**[2:10]** but very, very early in my career, I was working at a very small company and a tech company, and they had every ability to be one of the biggest companies in the world. Their technology, their marketing, everything was incredible. And I just remember watching an employee that had been there for years, just loved the company, passionate for the company, worked the long hours, did everything he could to make the company great in the technical side of the business. And I just saw him fighting and fighting over and over again these battles of just trying to get things done. And finally, one day the company's biggest customer

**[2:47]** came to us and said, "Hey, I need a couple of fixes on something you're doing." And I watched him for about a week and a half, meeting after meeting, filling out forms and needing to get approvals and all this stuff. And I just saw him getting frustrated and I could just tell he was at his wit's end. And I thought this employee was just incredible. He was a counterpart of mine. I thought he was amazing. And I watched him get more and more frustrated. And finally, we lost that big customer. The business never really realized its true potential. It stayed stagnant for years. Went through C-suite after C-suite for years, never grew.

**[3:24]** And he left the business and went on and had this amazing stellar career. And he is now an executive at a very, very big publicly traded company in the Fortune 500. And he really inspired the book. And that day I named the book, 18, 19 years ago, I named the book. I said, "God, that's the reaction to an action. Nobody can make a decision." And I named the book that day. And that day I began carrying two notepads. And I've got 23, 25 thick journals later, full of notes from every meeting over the last 18 years. - Well, all the experience shows up so well in the book. I pulled so many things that I can implement tomorrow at Lean Scale.

**[4:06]** And I'm excited to share some of those personal experiences as well. And I really do think that's a root cause. That company lost incredible talent with, I'm sure, a wealth of knowledge about how the organization works, a book of relationships. I'm sure some talent left with that person as well. They lost the client, which I'm sure is sizable revenue. And it's really, really tough to come back from that. And there are real effects of what you're talking about. This isn't some fluffy idea from an ivory tower. These are real tangible results impacts if you don't get a handle on this. - Yeah, we were talking earlier, and I've put in about thousands of hours

## 04:47 — 100+ leadership books, no real blueprint

**[4:47]** in research and reading. I mean, I've interviewed professors, leadership, C-suite, Fortune 50 CEOs, top of their game, psychologists. I've read over, well over a hundred leadership books. And I realized there's a common theme that nobody has a practical, tangible, actionable solution. There's a lot of theory. There's a lot of quote unquote theoretical playbooks, but nobody really has a blueprint. Nobody says, here's a framework from the janitor to the CEO to build a company to make it a high performance, innovative company that will dominate over the next 100 years. And my book, my book does that. It offers a solution for companies who go,

**[5:38]** how do I really change a culture across the board? And I think that that's a really powerful thing that the world in every way, shape and form, whether it be government, flood fed, enterprise, private, public, they need that. You're seen as suffering across the board, whether it be Doge doing cuts in the federal government to companies laying off tens of thousands of people trying to figure out the bottom line. This book can help solve those kinds of problems. - I absolutely believe in that. And even a company like Lean Scale, I'm pulling so many things from it. And I think one thing you did really, really well at the front end of the book,

**[6:18]** you set the table of how we got here. So before you even start giving advice of where we need to go and how to get there, I think you did a great job at giving the quick history lesson. And then also it gave me a lot of realizations that I think I have a lot of biases towards what I value as a professional, what I value as a business leader. If you could, I think giving that story arc of how we got to where we are today and how some of those systemic problems have compounded over time, I think really helped set the stage of what we do next. - Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, in the book I talk about this and if you look at the history of America,

## 07:03 — America as an idea: where innovation came from

**[7:03]** America is not just a country, it's an idea. And the birth of American business and the birth of innovation through the 20th century, whether it be Ford, whether it be assembly line, whether it be all these kind of into the technology boom. America, the idea of America has been prosperity, innovation, pushing the envelopes of technology, health, science, medicine, everything you can think of. And I think it starts there. I think the idea and the story of America starts there. The rest of the world for so many decades have looked to America to say, how do we create something new? Whether it be social media, whether it be AI, whether it be a new vaccine,

## 07:42 — The 'Rome' era and the data-driven pendulum

**[7:42]** whether it be how we do business, right? The world looks to America. And I think when you look at the tech boom, fast forward to the tech boom, the 80s and 90s and 2000, I always joke about it, it was Rome, right? It was Rome, the joke amongst executives that we would laugh about was like, give me two lobster tails, throw one in the garbage. It just didn't matter, right? We just spent absorbent amounts of money, big expense reports. We would wine and dine ourselves and our customers. And it was just this kind of crazy time, but nobody was really pushing the envelopes. VCs were cutting money if you had an idea from a napkin.

**[8:21]** And I think it kind of almost went stifled, I think a lot of American ingenuity. You could do pets.com and it could be pets.com too. And then everybody throws money at you. And then you see this big kind of dip, right? Everything crashes and everybody kind of reborns the innovation of America. And I think from that point, everybody kind of the pendulum swung the other way. And they went to this other place where they said, well, now everything's data driven, right? There is no innovation. There is no new ideas. We just, we track everything to the data point, right? The ones and zeros tell us our story and they tell our customer story.

**[8:56]** They tell our board, our stakeholders, our investors, our story. And I think that really stifled American innovation. I think it really stifled the idea and the spirit of what American innovation is. And I think today you look at it and you say to yourself as a history lesson, you go, well, this is the first time ever that American is being beat by a Chinese car manufacturer around the world. Why is that, right? Why is that? And this is happening in industry after industry after industry. And I think it's a major lesson for American business, American business to look at it and say, it's time for us to change the playbook.

**[9:34]** It's time for us to stop doing these things. And so I try to set the tone in the book to really share that part. Like this is who we are. It's in our DNA. And I think that's important to remind ourselves as a country, as an idea, as the beacon, the light of the world that people look to for help, support, guidance, and a role model to look at us and say, what are we doing today? It's a reminder of what we owe ourselves, our citizens, our business owners, and the rest of the world of who we are. And I wanted to start there in the book. - Yeah, and it's a big responsibility we have. And it's something that we shouldn't take lightly.

## 10:12 — Performative productivity and hustle culture

**[10:12]** And over time, the way you laid it out, I thought something that was really interesting is how everything got data driven, especially during the Industrial Revolution, all of the focus on inputs, focus on activity, and then how do we fine tune that and just get the most output out of a person possible? Then we start to shift into this knowledge-based economy where we still have the measuring sticks of maybe Industrial Revolution, but we have different problems that we're solving. And the two things that emerged that I have absolutely seen. I've worked in Startup World. I've also worked for some Fortune 500. And I see it in both areas in unique ways,

**[10:55]** but performative productivity, I think is just an absolute killer of real productivity. And then the hustle culture where people are simply just burning themselves out. And then maybe you eked out another couple hours of emails and spreadsheets, but you didn't have a well-rested mind or well-rounded life where you could bring in creative ideas and then come up with new concepts that move the needle forward. - Yeah, absolutely true. And there's a few points on that and we'll get to COVID and how that exacerbated the problem, but you're absolutely right. I think, and I'm guilty of that, right? We're all guilty of going,

## 11:39 — The 11 p.m. email that signals nothing

**[11:39]** hey, I'm gonna send an email at 10 p.m., 11 p.m. and hey, I'm working, right? I'm working. And then you look back on that email and you go, there is no value to that. There is no value in sending an email except for, signaling that I'm a hard worker. But I'll tell you right now, the best performers, the highest performing executive leaders, professionals, CEOs, degenerators, they don't do that. They're not the guy that's working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They understand that there's high value decisions in certain hours of the day.

**[12:15]** There's a few decisions that are made in the afternoon that are important, that are impactful, that are valuable. And then everything else should run itself. And that goes back to the book, right? The Action Framework is all about that. I think you could probably look back on your day and go, there's probably a good hour or two hours where I can make these great decisions, have perfect clarity, purpose, focus. And then maybe it's after lunch, I'm more creative. Or maybe it's at 5 a.m. when I'm at the gym working out or I'm on the jiu-jitsu mat, I'm more creative. I'm coming up with better ideas. And so to understand how to harness those things

**[12:47]** and being within a framework at a company culture where you're allowed and you're rewarded for bringing those at the table and having a positive impact on your business is way more valuable. It's way more research after research after research shows that it's way more valuable to a company, to its employees, to the health of the business, to the health of the customers, how you show up every day, than just sending a thousand emails a day. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I'm guilty of it too. I've definitely done send the email at 11. I could have scheduled that the next morning. I've been overly conscious of the optics

**[13:26]** of how leadership may be perceiving me or even in a leadership role, how my team is perceiving me and setting a tone, setting a standard, which I think we'll talk about a better way to do that. And I think what happened over history is this hamster wheel kept speeding up. And I was right in the middle of it, quite a tech boom, tech rise between 2010 and 20. I don't know where you wanna clock it, 21 or 22. And I think not only at an individual level, but at a company level, companies were very much so rewarded for optics, fake it till you make it, go raise a boatload of money, go get eyeballs, go get users, let's figure out profitability and revenue later.

**[14:09]** And I think that whole environment incentivized companies to make decisions in a really interesting way that cascaded down to how their teams are run. And you mentioned it earlier, on this already hot rise of performity, then you just have an absolute ignition with jet fuel on this after COVID and then the introduction of AI. So I'm curious your take on where things were and then how the problem got even bigger during that time. - Yeah, you're absolutely right. Post COVID was this obsessive funding.

## 14:49 — COVID: obsessive funding and meeting fluff

**[14:49]** And gosh, I remember just, I had to be raising our 20 million, raising our 50 million, raising our 100 million. I'm like, man, we haven't sold anything yet. We have like a prototype, right? And everybody was sending you money and you're flying around the world and you're just like, wow, I'm meeting customers and go, we're gonna have this thing, it's gonna do stuff. And then COVID hits. And you go from this story of all the data is telling us that this is a good idea to, wow, we're all distributed, we're all home. And then you go from being this kind of innovated, pushing the envelope, being able to sit in a room with your fellow workers

**[15:30]** and come up with great ideas and sit around at lunchtime and water cooler and have your ear kind of to the ground and understand what the culture is like and what's happening to everybody being distributed and everybody being a little scared, everybody being a little paranoid about, am I doing the right thing? Am I presenting myself well? Am I on enough Zoom calls? Am I in just busy work? I mean, during COVID, I remember I was running a global organization with hundreds and hundreds of employees and I would get these just invite for 30 minutes and I would jump on them in the beginning and it was just fluff. It was just kind of almost like an emotional

**[16:05]** temperature check like, hey, kind of almost like, hey, how am I doing? How am I doing, Jack? How do you see me, my performance? And I remember I think after the third call, I just started saying, hey, look, you're doing fine. Don't put calendar invites on meetings just to do it. The value comes with creativity, innovation, customer support, customer experience. I'm obsessed with the customer experience. I always have been how you look and feel to the customer is really what you should be obsessed about. So instead of putting on a 30 minute calendar call for you and I to talk about kind of how you're on an island

**[16:44]** and your funnel is disconnected, the best way to feel better about that is just go talk to a customer. Just go talk to somebody, get some feedback, push the envelope, come up with a great idea, innovative idea, deliver some, a great experience to our customers, our partners, our coworkers, add value and everything else speaks for itself. - Absolutely, absolutely. I think the number of meetings like 10 X during COVID and meetings used to be an hour. They all got to 30 minutes and then now you have 20, 30 minute meetings throughout the day. - Yeah. - Well, knowing where a lot of companies are right now, knowing that that zeitgeist of hustle culture,

## 17:24 — The Action Framework: from problem to solution

**[17:24]** performative productivity is still systemic across a lot of companies. Talk to the audience a little bit about the action framework. What can you do? Now that you know the problem, what's the solution? - Yeah, when you look at, there's a great, I always quote this, there's a great analogy. I spoke with a wonderful human being. She's the CEO of Gold Star Gamers and we'll definitely shout her out. She's doing some incredible work for children who have lost their parents in war, right? Their parents are veterans and she's doing some amazing stuff. It's called Gold Star Gamers. And I shared with her the book and what I'm doing

## 18:10 — The fence: spheres of influence

**[18:10]** and she said, "Jack, this reminds me of some research." And some of the research she cited was, if you put children in a schoolhouse with no fence, they all stay very close to the schoolhouse. They don't venture very far. But if you put a fence 200 yards out, they will go all the way to that fence. They will push, they will go all the way to that fence because they have a sense of safety. They have a sense of security with that fence. That's what this book is about. This book is about saying, hey, we're America. We're the land of opportunity, innovation, creativity, business, technology, science, medicine. Let's expand those fences.

**[18:55]** Let's put some fences around. I don't need a 30 minute meeting to know how you're doing because the fence is wide, the fence is great. I call them SOIs, spheres of influence. So whether you're the CEO or you're the janitor, I built this action framework for spheres of influences. So obviously CEO has the biggest one and then it goes down to the individual contributor in an organization. But everybody understands where their fence is and how they can play inside that fence. They can innovate, they can be creative, they can fail, they can make the wrong decisions, they can make the right decisions, all in the idea of making the company better,

**[19:35]** to serving the customers better. So there's no longer this, I'm going to be scared, terrified. I'm having these fluffy one-on-one meetings I talked about offline, right? Get on the one-on-one, it's like, how was your week? What did you do? What can I help you with? It's not that, it's like, let's talk about how we made this company better. Let's talk about how we pushed that fence, those spheres of influence. How did you go all the way to the edge when you spoke to that customer or when you spoke to the internal stakeholder? What did you do to cut a process down or to make it more efficient or to make it more intelligent? How did you do that, right?

**[20:15]** And so you're one-on-ones all the way up to how you go to market, how you plan your strategy, how do you innovate product, how you deliver that product to the marketplace. All of those things are touched within the book, within the framework, right? And I give case study after case study about how these companies just stop doing that. They stopped going like, everybody's almost like, I'm just trying to keep my job, right? And instead of going the opposite direction of, I'm gonna go all the way to the end of that fence, I'm gonna ask some tough questions, I'm gonna ask some great questions, I'm gonna make some changes. In my one-on-ones with my organization,

**[20:50]** and we'll talk about that a little bit later, it's like, what did you do this week to really fail or to really win? What did you really screw up? What did you really push? What did you really innovate? What did you really do that is exciting that you can tell that we can talk to with the customers? And those are the things that I think the book really solves, and I think it's at the heart of how America does business today. - Yeah, and I think that's fear of influence, expanding what people have autonomy to do. I think it's so empowering, and I know it's a big part of your mission, and a lot of the work you focus on when you're leading teams.

## 21:26 — The grandma rule: empowering the frontline

**[21:26]** And I can remember, this is an example from a job I had in high school, I spent a lot of time in restaurants, and I remember as a server, I didn't have to ask a manager to comp a meal if somebody said it was made wrong. I never had to check in. I could just say, no problem. You want me to make you a new one? You want me to fix this one? I can take care of it right here right now. And I can't tell you how empowering being able to make that call in the field was, and you call out to it in the book, that also is what gives, I love how you phrase it in the book. It's the grandma rule. What would you do for your grandma?

**[22:05]** And you wouldn't worry about asking permission. You just do it 'cause you know it's the right thing for the customer. You know it's the right thing for the company. It's just gonna make the customer happy. And how can you find opportunities of implementing that in your organization? I think something small like that makes a huge impact. Anthony, I'd like to take you back to that moment, that feeling right for a second being that server. God, you go, I'm proud to be part of this company. I'm proud that they've given me this small responsibility to do that, right? Well, I'll share with you the flip side to that coin a little bit. Fast forward till today,

## 22:43 — Six-figure retreats and 'we sell software'

**[22:43]** there's CROs that are running billion dollar companies that can't do that, right? That still have to go to the CFO, that still have to go to general counsel to change a concession and something. And I mean, it's scary. In a big part of this book, and I say this in part just and in part reality, we've wasted so much money on these coaches and professional development in our world, right? I've seen this across major companies in every industry. I have personally sat in retreats that were six figure retreats for a week in this posh, you know, posh snow town lounge or lodge and sit there and these guys come in for eight hours

**[23:30]** and we give them, you know, 75 grand to talk to you about how to communicate with your team and how to show some leadership and define the problem. I once sat in a professional development day with a C-suite. And you're not gonna believe this with a C-suite of brilliant MBAs and executives with a professional development coach, we spent four and a half hours coming up with one sentence of what we do. And the end of the day was we sell software. That was it, that was what we, and I remember looking at these executives and you can imagine notes I was taking that day and they're going looking at me going like, are we really doing this? Are we really doing this?

**[24:13]** And so those are the moments that really, you know, inspire you to say, hey, I think it's time, we could be better. We can do better as a country, as the business leaders, as organizations, we can do better. And we owe it to our employees, we owe it to our customers, and we owe it to the rest of the world, to be honest with you, to do better, to set a better example of how we innovate, how we become creative, how we treat people, right? How do we empower people? And this framework allows for all of those things, right? It allows for all of those things to happen. So I love your analogy, I love your analogy. Man, that hits home, you know, that feels real.

**[24:55]** - Yeah, and I still remember today when I'm thinking about our team and what do we empower them to be able to do, and just trust them. You're hiring adults, you're hiring smart people who are very capable. You know, they trusted a 16-year-old me to make decisions like that at a table. So I think a lot of the professionals we have, like we need to really empower them. And another thing that you talked about in the book that I really, really love, and some people have a tough time wrapping their arms around this concept of culture, but how you can turn your culture into this flywheel of action, and a lot of it coming from what you reward formally or informally.

## 25:37 — Culture as a flywheel: what you reward

**[25:37]** And it was making me think, as I was reading your book, I was reflecting on something that we do, I'm gonna share this. This is a lean scale thing we do, and it's something we're gonna change after reading this book. We're a consulting company. A lot of what we do is around billable hours. So every month we have a company meeting, we go through results, performance. You know, a lot of it's around being a pep rally too, a lot of Kool-Aid at that meeting. And one of the slides we have, we put the top five people who worked the most billable hours, literally on pedestals. It looks like an Olympic medal ceremony. We put their faces on top.

**[26:12]** And the number one person is the person who's worked the most billable hours. And as, you know, we thought it was a good thing to do, but reflecting on it with the book, what it's really promoting is, hey, who's working the most hours, who's clocking the most time, rather than maybe who completed the most projects this month, or who made the biggest impact for a customer or pushed the biggest up, something outcomes based. And just reading that tidbit from your book immediately made me think I need to change this 'cause I know it's having cultural ripple effects and I need to change it right now. - Yeah, Anthony, and you know, we talked offline,

**[26:54]** you're a customer focused consultant. You know, people say that, right? People say, hey, we want to do right by our customers and things like that. But you know, you convey to me like, it's what's critical to our customers. We care where you're obsessed. You're obsessed with your customers. You're obsessed with giving them the best of value. You want to come in there and have this positive, amazing impact. And you could tell the passion comes through in our offline conversation, I could tell. And that's amazing. And I'll tell you, I work with a lot of consultants, right? You can imagine, especially now with the book, everybody's calling me up and going,

**[27:29]** hey, you know, can I use some of this framework and I steal some of this stuff. And for somebody with your company culture who really wants to have an impact, who really wants to make a difference, it's the outcome. It's the outcome. It's always, what do we walk away? What's our legacy with that? And by the way, you guys have a great reputation and it's stellar, you know, great brand. But, you know, it's one of those things you walk away and go, what's my legacy? What's that person, when that's the egoist in their company, you know, what are they going to remember, right? What are they going to say? - Right, and it really is true.

## 28:04 — 'Do work our customers can be proud of'

**[28:04]** We talk about flywheels in the book. We have our own flywheel. The first one, the part that we focus on the most, the way we phrase it is, do work our customers can be proud of. Not just do great work, not do a good job, not meet the status quo. Do work where the customer walks away proud of what you built and wants to share it with their friends or family or leaders or whoever. Because when you do that, that's what gets people evangelizing on your behalf and keeping that flywheel going. - Yeah, you're absolutely right. You know, there's a few stories about me, about how do we do better? And I probably asked that question a thousand times

**[28:42]** in my career and I'd walk around, you know, in organizations I probably had no business in being a part of. And I'd walk into like the customer service team and I'd hear somebody on a call and they'd hang up. But you can kind of see this frustration. So I'd walk up with my four shot espresso cup of Starbucks and walk up and say, hey, tell me what happened. And then they would tell me this story. And I would say, how do we do better? And you know what's crazy is they would have answers. They'd have solutions. Hey, you know, Jack, we should do this or we should respond that way or here's a better way to communicate whatever that improvement is. And I go do it.

## 29:20 — 'How do we do better?' and the Anthony rule

**[29:20]** Well, Jack, you know, you're running this team, this organization over there. I have to fill out a form. I have to escalate to an escalation team. Escalation team's got to go, just go do it. Go do it. You know, they're just like, well, you know, it is funny, but, you know, half smart, smart, you know, they have them didn't listen to me, but those, some did. And they'd send me a quick note and say, hey, you know, I did what you said. It made a huge difference. And then unfortunately for them, I would say, you know, write it up and send it to your boss and copy me on it. And, you know, and they would write up what happened and what they did.

**[29:53]** And then all of a sudden, you know, three months later, that idea is implemented. And I always come back to, if it's the Anthony thing, and then if that person was Anthony, and then it was the Anthony rule, do the Anthony rule. You know, just do it. How do we do better? How do we do better? And that's, I get teased about it. I've been given cakes at office parties with that. How do we do better on it? Joking and messing with me. But it comes back down to that, right? And this action framework is all kind of built on that. How do we do better? And how do we allow our employees to do better? How do we allow? And with the invention of AI, right?

**[30:25]** With the steam train that is AI, and gosh, man, I've obsessed with it. I've spent months and months doing deep research all the way down to the code, to the feedback loops, to the language models, and then all the research of what's to come. You need that more today than ever. You need that American creativity, American ingenuity. You need that human empowerment. And gosh, man, we can make some beautiful changes to the world. - I think so. I think so. And a lot of that comes back to having a culture where you have a purpose. And 'cause I know you talked a lot about how there's mass disengagement going on and everything from the great resignation

**[31:17]** to people quiet quitting, everything that you mentioned in the book, there's some serious disengagement going on with organizations. And I think when you're saying, hey, there's some beautiful things we can accomplish, a lot of it has to do with your company has to have a purpose of doing something and tying those people in your organization to that purpose. How do companies do that? And it's part of the action framework, but how do some companies just seem to do an amazing job of integrating that greater purpose into all the way down to the individual contributor? Well, what's a framework for doing that well? - Yeah, in the book, I kind of lay out

**[31:58]** a lot of that part of that framework. I mean, I kind of give... And again, it's interesting as CEOs come to me and go, hey, Jack, I'm gonna read, I'm gonna buy your book and I'm gonna talk to the C-suiter. I'm gonna implement this with the C-suiter, the board. And I go, no, no, no, don't waste your time. Everybody gets the book. Everybody should get the book. If you're gonna read it, then you should read it with the intention of everybody understanding and reading the book, because I think it's really, really important to understand that. And I think how you weave that kind of innovation, that kind of empowerment, that creativity

## 32:29 — The janitor, the funding meeting, and no credit

**[32:29]** is the whole framework, right? You allow people to go to the edge of that fence. You allow people to fail. You allow people to feel like they're part of something. There's a story of somebody who was in janitorial services and there was this big meeting happening the next day. And he needed some supplies to make sure that it was presentable. It was a big funding arm that was coming in that could really change the whole trajectory of the business. And I remember having coffee with this person's boss, his boss's boss in the break room. And they said, hey man, this guy just upsets me. And I was like, why? And it's in my notes.

**[33:06]** And I was reading this and I was like, why is he upset? He's like, well, the big wigs are coming in and this guy just goes out to Home Depot, throws a bunch of stuff on his card and buys all this stuff and he cleans up. He does all his work, made the office great, but he didn't follow the process and procedure. And now he's asked us to reimburse him. And I remember like thinking to myself, like, okay,

**[33:31]** what is their response? And like, how does that guy feel like he's part of something? How does that person feel like the initiative and the thing he did is actually part of the big mission, right, of the business? And you go to the middle management, you go to individual contributors, you go all the way to the CEO. How you implement that is some situation, just so small, so minute of a $100 bill or $150 expense that didn't follow process and procedures, you're rewarded. You go, here's that and then some. Let me buy you a lunch. You took some initiative, you took some action and you did something amazing. And by the way, they got the funding. It was wonderful.

**[34:08]** Everybody celebrated. Guess who didn't get credit? That guy. And so I think that's that quiet resignation. That's a quiet quitting. That big wave of people starting their own businesses, doing anything they can because they don't feel like they're really part of something. And if they are part of something, what they're doing doesn't have meaning or value. And if they don't have meaning and value, then why are they gonna innovate? Why are they gonna be creative? Why are they gonna push the envelope? How do you build high performance teams is by making people feel like they're part of a team. How do you make people feel like they're part of a team

**[34:39]** is everything they say and do is part of the company culture. How do you build that company culture? You create fences and allow them to do that, right? So that's what this book is about. It's a blueprint. It's a framework. It's not a coaching gig. It's not a self-help book for leaders. It's not a book where it says, hey, read this and you're gonna be able to learn how to communicate to your org. It's like, let's change how you manage your business on the day-to-day. Let's change how your business does the business of doing business, right? That's what this book is about. And the feedback from executives from some of the biggest companies we all know and love

**[35:17]** was like, wow, I wanna implement this. This is different. I needed to really soak this in. One said to me, this is a piece of academic work. It's just the research you guys, it just doesn't lie. It's there. It tells you. The research is there. The history is there. The academic research is there. From psychologists to professors to MBAs to CEOs to individual contributors. Everybody I've interviewed and talked to, all the data says the same thing. If you feel like you're part of something, if you feel like the culture is part of the culture and the culture is an innovative, high-performance business, we all act accordingly.

**[35:56]** And if you look at the biggest companies in the world today, you look at Amazon, Jeff Bezos, he believes in the exact same thing. His leadership style is the exact same way. Empowering people. I really haven't read something as impactful as this since Good to Great. And I do think the amount of research you put into it, the amount of case studies that are layered in, the history, and just, of course, your own personal practical wisdom layered in throughout has just made this an absolute complete piece of work. And I'm already taking notes, making changes at lean scale based on what you put in the book. Thank you.

**[36:38]** And I'm just so excited to get it out into more people and excited to get my company reading it as well. And I know something that you've been alluding to throughout the conversation, and you put it as the last chapter in the book, which I think is really, really powerful, and I shouldn't have to say this, but I also think it's really courageous to put it in your book, is using these concepts to help put America back in lead

## 37:05 — Putting America back in the lead

**[37:05]** in terms of business. And I would love to hear you talk more about that, and practically and tactically as a country, how we can kind of stop this business leadership decline that we're experiencing, and then reinvigorate the growth that we've seen for the last couple centuries. - Yeah, well, thank you. I think of all the parts of the book, business leaders love the framework, but everybody else loves that portion of the book, and I've got a lot of questions around that. America, their culture is built on being the hero. We are a hero culture. We have saved hundreds of millions of lives around the world, right? From World War I to World War II,

**[37:55]** to the Industrial Revolution, to all these amazing things that makes America America, the idea of America. We've led the way in medicine, technology, human rights. I mean, we've done so many amazing things as a country, as an idea of what America is. And I think we have to get back to that. We gotta get back to our DNA as heroes, our DNA as businesses that solve problems that affect real world issues. People that are affected around the world with the real problems, real challenges, and how we solve those problems, and how do we make life better for everybody. And I think the world looks to us for that. I think the world truly looks for us

**[38:43]** to make it a better place. And I think it's our responsibility to do that. And the way we do that as a country, as an idea, as a concept, is by empowering, by innovating, by solving these complex problems. It's not gonna come from technology. It's not gonna come from AI. AI is not coming to save you. It's not coming from some genius billionaire. It's not. It's coming from everyday Americans, coming in, punching into work with great ideas, wanting to be a part of something, wanting to feel valued, wanting to feel empowered, wanting fences around them where they feel safe. And every one of them has a little bit of that hero DNA

**[39:30]** inside of them that makes them Americans. And so the book really comes back down to, how do we bring that back? How do we empower the DNA of what is America? What is the American worker? That steel worker, that plumber, that coder, that programmer, that CEO? That janitor who discovered, who created spicy hot Cheetos, right? How do we empower all of them? You know, it's not a political thing. It's a human thing. And that's what I talk about in the book. And that's why it's so important. - Well, I'm really, really happy that you added that into the book because I think, you know, America recently sentiment, there's a lot of criticism. What did we not do well?

**[40:17]** Or where have we fallen short? And of course, yeah, there's areas we could have done better. But if you look at the total body of work, of what we've done as a nation, compared to any other nation in the history of the world, we have done so much more good. And of course, no country is gonna be perfect, just like no person's gonna be perfect. But I think as long as we continue to strive to be better every day, which also I think is built in that DNA, I think we can accomplish really amazing things. And it's a very special place to start a business, cultivate a business. We have so much in our country's culture

## 40:57 — ShelterZoom and a closing challenge

**[40:57]** that helps make it conducive to take calculated risks and make something special. And I appreciate you putting this in the book so we can make sure we don't lose that. Let's keep amplifying that. Let's not walk away from it, but let's celebrate it and harness it for more progress. - Yeah, you know, Anthony, and I'll leave you with this, you know, that illustrates that point. I'm under contract with a company called ShelterZoom, and it's an amazing, amazing culture company, and they use the Action Framework. The founder is this brilliant Chinese, Chinese heritage, Australian-born American. The other co-founder is Persian, and their whole life is obsessed

**[41:49]** with making the world a safer, better place. They think about it every day. How do we create products? How do we serve our customers and make it a better place every single day? If there's a great idea, then it's a great idea. Let's look at it and let's go down the rabbit hole. And I think that goes back to what is the idea of America? What is that final chapter about? It's let's go back to that. Let's go back and revisit. How do we dominate this business world as American companies? How do we take that American ingenuity like we always have done and make it have a huge positive impact for the world? And how do we do that again?

**[42:27]** And I really hope that this framework will provide that kind of blueprint for everybody. - Amazing, and I think anyone who reads that part, I hope walks away really inspired to do better work and make America a place where, like we were talking about, you can take calculated risks. You can celebrate the progress and really, really just build some beautiful, special things that make the lives of others so much better. Jack, this has been awesome. For our audience, this is absolutely a must read. I'll say it again. This is the best book I've read on business since Good to Great. And I think you have done an incredible job.

**[43:17]** It's packed full of resources, frameworks, history, case studies, data, you name it, it's in here. And I've already made a few major changes internally here at Lean Scale based on what I've learned from the book. So Jack, I just wanna say thank you so much for being here today, for sharing your story, for sharing your knowledge and wisdom. And I hope this makes the impact I know it can. And I also can't wait to see what you do next. Jack, thank you so much. - Thank you, Anthony. I'm honored. I'm bold to keep doing what you do on Lean Scale. So proud to be on the podcast. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. - Thank you.