Culture for Modern Hyper Growth Businesses - Jack Jackson

Outline Summary: Reaction to Action — Key Ideas from the Interview with Jack Jackson

Intro This transcript features a detailed conversation with Jack Jackson, a veteran executive and author of Reaction to Inaction. The discussion centers on practical leadership in the face of speed, disruption, and a culture of performative productivity. The host, Anthony, draws out Jack’s experiences, the book’s action framework, and broader implications for American business, culture, and future leadership.

Center

• Who is Jack Jackson?

  • A seasoned strategist and operator across startups, GTM leadership, and Fortune 500 roles.

  • Recognized as an influential tech leader; author of a book critiquing hustle culture and proposing a constructive antidote.

  • Passionate about empowering employees at all levels to thrive amid rapid change.

• Origins of the book

  • Rooted in a personal story: an early-career colleague’s talent and dedication were undermined by bureaucratic delays, contributing to lost client value and talent attrition.

  • The phrase “reaction to inaction” crystallized after witnessing stagnation when timely decisions were blocked.

  • Twenty-plus journals document years of meetings, notes, and lessons that fed the book’s practical guidance.

• The problem space

  • Performative productivity and hustle culture cause real harm: wasted talent, disengaged employees, and measurable business losses.

  • COVID-19 amplified these dynamics, with meetings expanding in frequency while meaning and impact diminished.

  • Across sectors—from government to private enterprises—there is a urgent need for a blueprint that translates theory into actionable change.

• The book’s proposition

  • A framework offering practical, scalable solutions for transforming culture and performance from the “janitor to the CEO.”

  • Emphasizes a repeatable blueprint and concrete tools rather than abstract theory.

  • Includes case studies, research, and real-world examples aimed at delivering tangible outcomes.

• The “spheres of influence” and the Action Framework

  • Introduces the concept of fences or safe boundaries enabling autonomy and experimentation at all levels.

  • Everybody has a role, from CEO to frontline contributor, within a defined sphere to push ideas, fail fast, and innovate.

  • Focus on what really moves the needle: customer impact, streamlined processes, faster decision cycles.

• Culture as a flywheel

  • Culture is reinforced by what leaders reward and celebrate. Outcomes-based recognition drives engagement and innovation.

  • A practical example: rethinking internal metrics away from hours logged toward value created and customer impact.

  • The “grandma rule” (do what’s right for customers) translates into everyday decisions and discretionary authority.

• Americana and leadership in context

  • The closing chapters connect organizational practice to national leadership: America’s hero DNA should re-emerge as a force for constructive problem-solving.

  • Practical steps for rekindling American ingenuity include empowering everyday workers, expanding autonomy, and aligning purpose with action.

• Practical takeaways for listeners

  • Adopt the action framework across all levels of an organization.

  • Replace “presence” metrics with value-driven indicators.

  • Champion customer-focused problem solving, fast feedback loops, and concrete improvements.

  • Use AI and technology to augment human creativity, not replace it, while restoring confidence in decision-making.

Outro

• The interview ends with a strong endorsement of the book’s impact on Lean Scale and beyond.

• Jack’s message: strategic empowerment, purposeful culture, and a resilient, innovation-driven leadership model can restore America’s competitive edge.

• The host commends the work as essential reading for contemporary leaders and anticipates further developments from Jack’s ongoing influence in business and policy.

Full Transcript

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, an 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 and so many others. Jack is also the author of Reaction to Inaction, 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 podcast. Happy to be with you. Uh huge fan. So, thank you so much uh for having me. Really really appreciate it and for the the kind uh introduction. Um this is 18 years in the making. This is 18 years of of making mistakes, getting some L's uh you know and getting some dubs too. Uh this is a uh a lifelong project. I mean I I literally would sit in meetings uh and have one notebook uh for the meeting notes of what people are talking about whether it be the board the seuite uh 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 is a really personal story and uh I'm still friends with the person who uh inspired this story but very very early in my career um I was working 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 uh just loved the company, passionate for the company, worked the long hours, did everything he could uh to make the company great in the technical side of the business. And uh and I just saw him fighting and fighting over and over again these battles of just trying to get things done. And finally, uh, one day the company's biggest customer, uh, came to us and said, "Hey, I need a couple fixes on something you're doing." And I watched him for about a week and a half, meeting after meeting, filling out forms, and he needed to get approvals and all this stuff. And I just saw him getting frustrated. I could just tell he was at wit's end. And I thought this employee was just incredible. Uh, he was a counterpart of mine. I thought he was amazing. Uh, and uh, and I watched me get more and more frustrated. And finally, we lost that that big customer. Um the business never really realized its true potential. It stayed stagnant for years. Uh went through seuite after seuite for years, never grew. Uh and he left the business and went on and had this amazing stellar career. And he is now an executive uh at a very very big publicly traded company um in the Fortune 500. And uh he really inspired the book. And that day I named the book you know 18 19 years ago I I named the book. I said, "God, that's the reaction to an action. Nobody could make a decision." And I named the book that day. And that day, I began carrying two notepads. And uh 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 and I'm excited to share some of those personal experiences as well. Um, and and I really do think that's the 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 was 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, you know, fluffy idea from an ivory tower. These are real tangible results impacts if you don't get a handle on this. Yeah. You know, um, you know, we were talking earlier and, you know, I I've put in about, you know, I thousands of hours in research and reading. I mean, I've interviewed, uh, professors, leadership, sea suite, you know, Fortune50 CEOs, um, you know, uh, top of their game uh, psychologists. Uh, 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. Uh, there's a lot of uh quote unquote theoretical playbooks. Um, but nobody really has a blueprint. Nobody says here's a framework from the janitor to the CEO uh to build a company to make it a high performance innovative you know company that will will will dominate over the next hundred years and and my book you know uh you know my book does that it offers a solution for companies who go how do I really change the culture across the board right and I think that that's a really powerful thing that the the the world in every way shape and form whether it government, you know, floodfed enterprise, private, public, they need that. You're seeing it suffering across the board, whether it be Doge, uh, doing cuts in the federal government to, you know, uh, companies laying off tens of thousands of people trying to figure out the bottom line. Um, this book can help solve those kind of problems. I absolutely believe in that and even um, company like Lean Scale and pulling so many things from it. And I think one thing you did really really well um at the front end of the book, you set the table of how we got here. So before you even start giving advice of where we need to go and and how to get there, I 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. Um, if you could, I 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 helps set the stage of what we do next. Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, you know, in the book I talk about this and if you look at the history of of America, uh, you know, America is not just a country, it's an idea and the birth of American business and the the birth of innovation through the 20th century, you know, whether it be Ford, whether it be assembly line, whether it be all these kind of into uh the technology boom, America, the idea of America has been prosperity, innovation, um, you know, pushing the envelopes of of technology, health, science, medicine, everything you can think of. And 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, whether it be, you know, you you know uh uh how we do business, right? Uh the world looks to America. And I think, you know, when you look at the tech boom, you know, fast forward to the tech boom, the 80s and 90s and 2000, there was I always joke about it, it was Rome, right? It was Rome. You know, uh the 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 spend absorbent amounts of money, big expense reports. uh we would whine and dine ourselves and our customers and 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 and I think it kind of almost went stifled I think a lot of American ingenuity. You could do Pets.com and they could be you know 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 no new ideas we just we track everything to to the data point right the ones and zeros tell us our story and they tell our customer our story they they tell our board our stakeholders our investors our story and I think that really stifled America innovation I think it really stifled the idea and the spirit of what America innovation is And 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 America 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 and I think it's a it's a major lesson uh for American business, American business to look at it and say it's time for us to change the playbook. It's time for us to stop doing these things. And so, um, 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, and I think that's important to remind ourselves as a country, as an idea, as the beacon, you know, 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 it's a reminder of 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 uh in the book. Yeah. And it's a big responsibility we have and and it's something that we shouldn't take lightly. And over time, the way you laid it out, I I thought something that was really interesting is how everything got data driven, especially during uh the industrial revolution, all of the like 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 knowledgebased 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 that emerge that I have absolutely seen I've worked in startup world. I've also worked for some Fortune 500 and I I see it in both areas in unique ways, 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 eaked 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. Uh absolutely true. And and you know, there's there's a few points uh on that and and we'll get to COVID and how that exacerbated uh the problem, but you're absolutely right. I I I think um and I'm guilty of that, right? We're all guilty of going, "Hey, I'm going to send an email at at 10 p.m. 11:00 p.m. and hey, I'm working, right? I'm working." And then you look back on that email and you go, "Uh, there is no value that that there is no value in that email except for tr, you know, signaling that I'm a hard worker." Uh, but you know, I'll tell you right now, the the the best performers, the highest, you know, performing executive leaders, professionals, CEOs, to janitors, uh, they don't do that. they they're not the guy that's working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They understand that there's high value decisions uh in certain hours of the day. Uh there's, you know, there there's a few decisions that are made in the afternoon that are important, that are impactful, that are valuable. Uh 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, you know, there's probably a good hour or two hours where I can make these great decisions. have perfect clarity, perfect focus, and then maybe it's after lunch, I'm more creative. Or maybe it's at 5:00 a.m. when I'm at the gym, uh, working out or I'm on the jiu-jitsu mat, uh, you know, I'm I'm more creative. I'm coming up with better ideas. And so to understand how to harness those things and being within a framework at a company culture where you're allowed and you're rewarded uh, for for bringing those to the table and having a positive impact on your business is way more valuable. It's way research after research after research shows that it's way more valuable to to a company, to its employees, to the health of the business, uh to the health of the customers, how you show up every day, uh 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 out the next morning. Um, I'm been overly uh conscious of the optics 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. Um, and I think what what what happened over history is this hamster wheel kept speeding up and and I was right in the middle of the quite a tech boom, tech rise between 2010 and 20, I don't know where you want to clock it, 21 or 22. Um, 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. is let's figure out profitability and revenue later. 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 co 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 know, you're absolutely right. Uh you know, postcoid was this like obsessive uh you know, obsessive uh funding and gosh, I remember just we raising our 20 million, raising our 50 million, raise 100 million. I'm like, man, we haven't even sold anything yet. We have like a prototype, right? and and everybody was sending you money and you're you're flying around the world and you you know and you're just like wow you know I'm I'm meeting customers go we're going to have this thing well you know it's going to do stuff and uh and I and then you you know co hits and you go from this like story of like all the data is telling us that this is a good idea to wow we're all distributed we're all home we're all and then you know you go from being this kind of innovative pushing the envelope uh you know being able to sit in a room with your with your fellow uh workers and come up with great ideas and sit around and lunchtime and water cooler and and have your ear kind of to the to the ground and understand what what what the culture is like and what's happening to everybody being distributed and everybody being a little scared everybody a little paranoid about you know am I doing the right thing am I presenting myself well am I am I on enough Zoom calls am I and just busy work I mean you know during co I remember I was running a global organization uh with with hundreds and hundreds of employees and 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 uh temperature check like hey kind of almost like hey how am I doing you know how am I doing Jack how do you see me my performance and I remember I think after the third call uh I I just started saying hey look you're doing fine uh don't put calendar invites you know on meetings just to do it you know the value comes with creativity innovation customer uh support customer experience I'm obsessed with the customer experience always have been. Um, how you look and feel to the to the customer is really what you should be obsessed about. So, instead of putting on a 30 uh minute calendar call for you and I to talk about, you know, kind of how you're you're on an island and you're feeling a little 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 an envelope, come up with a great idea, innovative idea, uh, you know, deliver some, you know, a great experience to our to our customers, our partners, our co-workers, add value, and everything else speaks for itself. Absolutely. Absolutely. I I think the number of meetings like 10xed 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. Um, yeah. Well, knowing where a lot of companies are right now, knowing that that zeitgeist of hustle culture, 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? Now that you know the problem, what's what's the solution? Yeah, you know, when you look at um there's a great uh I always quote this, there's a great analogy. Um I spoke uh with with a wonderful human being. Um she's the CEO of Gold Star Gamers and and we'll definitely shout her out. Um she's doing some incredible work for for children who have lost um you know uh their parents in in war, right? Um their parents are veterans and uh and she's doing some amazing stuff. It's called Gold Star Gamers. And uh I shared with her the book and and what I'm doing. And she said, you know, uh Jack, this reminded me of some research. Uh and some of the research she cited was, you know, if you put children um in a schoolhouse with no fence, they they all stay very close uh to the schoolhouse. They don't 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 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 we're the land of opportunity, innovation, creativity, business, technology, science, medicine. Let's let's expand those fences. 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 sosis 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 you know down to the to the to the you know you know individual contributor in an organization but everybody understands uh 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 to serving the customers better. So, there's no longer this I'm going to, you know, be scared, terrified. I'm having these fluffy one-on-one meetings. You I talked about offline, right? You know, get on the one-on-one. It's like, how was your week? What did you do? You know, what can I help you with? It's not that. It's 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 that internal stakeholder? What did you do to to cut a process down or to make it more efficient or to make it more intelligent? You know, how did you do that? Right? And so your your 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, you know, everybody is almost like I'm just trying to keep my job, right? And instead of going the opposite direction of is I'm going to go all the way to the end of that fence. I'm going to ask some tough questions. I'm going to ask some great questions. I'm going to make some changes. And my in my one-on- ones with my organization, and we'll talk about that a little bit later. Uh, you know, 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 uh, 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 to today. Yeah. And I think that sphere of influence, expanding what people have autonomy to do, I think it's so empowering and and I know it's a big part of your mission and and a lot of the work you focus on when you're leading teams. 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 a check-in. I could just say, "No problem. Do you want me to make you a new one? Do 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 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? And you wouldn't worry about asking permission. You just do it because you know it's the right thing for the customer. You know it's the right thing for the company. It's going to make the customer happy. And how can you find opportunities of implementing that in your organization? I think it something small like that makes a huge impact. Anthony, I'd like to take you back to that moment, that feeling right for for a second being that server. God, you go man, I'm proud to be part of this company. I'm I'm proud that they've given me this small responsibility to do that, right? Well, well, well, I'll share with you the, you know, the flip side to that coin a little bit. Fast forward till today, there's CRO that are running, you know, billion-dollar companies that can't do that, right? That that still have to go to the CFO, that still have to go to general counsel to change a, you know, a concession and something. And I mean it's it's scary, you know, um you know, and a big part of this book and and and I say this, you know, in in part just and in part reality, you know, we've wasted so much money on on these coaches and professional development uh in in in our world, right? I've seen this across major companies in every industry. I have personally sat uh in retreats that were six figure retreats for a week in this posh, you know, uh posh snow town lounge or lodge and uh and sit there and these guys come in for for eight hours and we give them, you know, 75 grand to talk to you about how to communicate with your team and and how to how to show some leadership and what's define the problem. I I once sat in in a professional development day with a seauite you're not going to believe this with a sea 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 that was it. That was what we and I remember looking at these executives and you could 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? And so those are the moments that that really uh you know inspire you to say hey I think it's time we could be better. We can do better a as a as a country as a business leaders as as as organizations. We can do better and we we owe it to to our employees. We owe to our customers and we owe to the rest of the world to be honest with you to do better to set a better example of how how we innovate, how we become creative, how we treat people, right? How do we empower uh people and this framework allows for all of those things, right? It allows for all of those things um to happen. So, I love your analogy. I I love your analogy. Um man, that hits home, you know, that that feels real. Yeah. And I still remember today when I'm thinking about our team and uh what do we empower them to be able to do and and just trust them. You're you're hiring adults. You're hiring smart people who are very capable. You know, they trusted 16-year-old me to make uh decisions like that at a table. So, I think a lot of the professionals we have like we we need to really empower them. And another thing that you you talk 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. And it was making me think as I was reading your book, I was reflecting on something that we do. I'm going to share this. This is a lean scale thing we do and it's something we're going to 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. Um 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 uh medal ceremony. we put their faces on top 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 um 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 upsell something outcomes based and just reading that tidbit from your book immediately made me think I need to change this because I know it's having cultural ripple effects and I need to change it right now. Yeah. Anthony and and you know we talked offline you're you're a customerfocused consultant. You you know people say that right? People say hey we want to do right by our our customers and things like that but you you conveyed to me like it's what's critical to our customers. We care you're obsessed. You're obsessed with your customers. You're obsessed with giving them the best value. You you're you want to come in there and have this positive amazing uh impact. And you you could tell the passion comes through in our offline conversation. I I could tell. And uh 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, "Hey, you know, can I use some of this framework? Can I steal some of this stuff?" Uh, and for somebody with 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 it's always what do we walk away? What's our legacy uh with that? And by the way, you guys have a great reputation and is stellar. You're, 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 E goes to another company, you know, what are they going to remember, right? What are they what are they going to say? Right. Right. And it and it really is true. We have um you 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 c 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 um there's a few stories about me uh about how do we do better? And I probably asked that question a thousand times uh in in my career. And I'd walk around uh you know in organizations I probably had no business in in being a part of. And I'd walk into like the the customer service team and I'd hear somebody on a call and they'd hang up and you kind of see this frustration. So I'd walk up with my my my uh you know four shot espresso cup of uh Starbucks and 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 have we should do this or we should respond that way or or here's a better way to communicate whatever that improvement is. And I go do it. Well, Jack, you you know, you're you're running this team, this organization over there. I I 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 half of them didn't listen to me, but those some did and they'd send me a quick note and say, hey, you know, I I did what you said. Uh, it made a huge difference. And then, unfortunately for them, I would say, you know, write it up and uh and send it uh to your boss and copy me on it and uh you know, and they would write up what happened and what they did and then all of a sudden, you know, 3 months later that idea is implemented. And and I always come back to if it's the Anthony thing and then if that if that person was Anthony, 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 um 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. Uh but it comes back down to that, right? Um 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? With the with the the steam train that is AI. And gosh, man, I I've obsessed with it. I've I've spent months and months doing deep research all the way down to the code to the feedback loops to to the you know the the the the language models to just I mean and then all the research of what's to come. Um you need that more today than ever. You need that American creativity, American ingenuity. You need that human uh empowerment. And gosh, man, we could uh 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. Uh, and because I know you talked a lot about how there's mass disengagement going on and all the everything from the great resignation to people quiet quitting um 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. Yeah. How how do companies do that? And it's part of the action framework, but h 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, but what's a framework for doing that? Well, yeah, you know, in the book, I kind of lay out, you know, a lot of that part of that framework, right? Right. I mean, I kind of give uh and again, you know, it's interesting as CEOs come to me and go, "Hey, Jack, I'm going to read I I'm going to buy your book and uh I'm going to talk to the seauite or I'm going to implement this with the seauite or the board." And I go, "No, no, don't waste your time." You know, everybody gets the book. Everybody should get the book, right? If you're going to read it, then you should read it with the intention of everybody understanding and reading the book. Uh 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 is 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. You know, um there's a story of somebody who was in janitorial services and there was this big meeting happening um the next day and um 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 um I remember having coffee with with this person's boss's boss's boss in the break room and they said, "Hey man, um this guy just he just upsets me." And I was like, "Why?" And it's in my notes and and I was like reading this and he and I was like, "Why is he upset?" He's like, "Well, you know, 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 and he cleans up and he does all this what made the office, you know, great, but he didn't follow the process and procedure and now he's asking us to reimburse him. And I remember like thinking to myself like, okay, uh, you know, 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 and you can 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 procedures, you reward it. You go, here's that and then some. Let me buy you 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. 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's that that that big wave of, you know, people getting like 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 going to innovate? Why are they going to be creative? Why are they going to 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? 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 going to be able to learn how to communicate to 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? Uh that's what this book is about. And um you know, the feedback from executives from some of the biggest companies we all know and love was like, "Wow, I want to implement this. This is different. I need to really soak this in." Uh once said to me, "This is a piece of academic work. It it's just the research, you guys, it it just doesn't lie. It's there. It it tells you the research is there, the history is there, the academic research is there. Um, from psychologists to professors to MBAs to CEOs to individual contributors, everybody I've interviewed and talked to, um, 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, you're part of the culture. And the culture is an innovative, high performance business, we all act accordingly. Um, 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, um the history and just of course your own personal practical wisdom layered in throughout um 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. And um I'm just so excited uh 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 and you put it as the 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. Um is using these concepts to help put America back in lead in terms of business. And I I'm just 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, um thank you. I I I think of of all the the parts of the book. Uh business leaders love the framework. Um but but everybody else loves that that portion of the book and and I've got a lot of questions uh around that. You know, America, their culture is built on being the hero. We are a hero culture. We have saved, you know, hundreds of millions of lives around the world, right? from from World War I to World War II to the the industrial revolution to all these amazing things that makes America America, the idea of America. We've led the way in medicine, technology, um human rights. I mean, we've done so many amazing things as a country, um as an idea of what America is. And you know, I think we have to get back to that. We got to get back to our DNA as heroes. Our DNA as as businesses that solve problems that affect realw world issues, people that are affected around the world uh with real problems, real 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 to make it a better place. And I think it's our responsibility um to do that. And the way we do that um as a country, as an idea, as a concept is by empowering, by innovating, by solving these complex problems. It's not going to come from technology. It's not going to come from AI. AI is not coming to save you. It's not coming from uh you know, some genius billionaire. It's not. It's coming from everyday Americans, you know, coming in, punching into work with great ideas, wanting to be a part of something, uh, you know, wanting to feel valued, wanting to feel empowered, wanting fences around them where they feel safe. Uh, and and every one of them has a little bit of that hero DNA 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 what is America? What is the American worker? That steel worker, that plumber, that coder, that programmer, that CEO, that janitor who discovered, you know, or 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 that you added that um in into the book because I think you know America recently sentiment there's a lot of criticism what did what did we not do well 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 going to be perfect. Uh just like no person's going to be perfect. Um but I think as long as we continue to strive to be better every day, which also I think is built in that DNA. Um I think we can accomplish really amazing things and and it's a very special place to start a business, cultivate a business. Um we have so much in our country's culture that helps make it conducive to take calculated risks and make something special. Um, and I appreciate you putting this in the book so we can make sure we don't lose that. Let's keep let's keep amplifying that. Let's not let's not walk away from it, but let's celebrate it and harness it for more progress. Yeah. You know, Anthony, and and and I'll leave you I'll leave you with this, you know, um that illustrates that point. Um, I'm under contract with a company called Shelter Zoom and um, it's an amazing amazing culture company and and they use the action framework. The founder is this brilliant Chinese al Chinese heritage Australianborn American. Uh the other co-founder is Persian and their whole life is obsessed 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? is let's go back to that. Let's go back and revisit how do we dominate this 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? And I and I really hope uh that this framework will provide that kind of blueprint uh for everybody. Amazing. And I think anyone who reads that um part I hope walks away really inspired uh to do better better work um and you know make 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. Um, this is absolutely a must readad. 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. 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 Leanscale based on what I've learned from the book. So, Jack, I just want to 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. You I'm honored, humbled. Keep doing what you're doing, Lean Scale. Uh so proud to be on the podcast. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you.