Ron Johnson has lived on both sides of the scoreboard.

At Apple, he was the Senior Vice President of Retail Operations who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Steve Jobs to build the Apple Store from a blank sheet of paper — inventing the Genius Bar along the way and creating what became the most profitable retail square footage on earth. Before that, he was the merchandising leader at Target who brought Michael Graves to the masses. After Apple, he took the top job at J.C. Penney and things became real tough, real quick, becoming one of the most scrutinized CEO exits in modern retail.

In this conversation, Ron is remarkably candid about all of it. We talk about what success actually teaches you (less than you'd think), what failure teaches you (more than you want it to), and how to tell the difference between a bad idea and a good idea people weren't ready for. He shares what it was really like to earn Steve Jobs' trust, why he still believes the vision at Penney was right, and what he'd tell a leader standing at the edge of a big, risky bet right now.

Ron's new book, Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius (Harper Business, September 22, 2026), co-written with Zander Nethercutt, goes deeper — and he says it's less a retail book than a guide for anyone leading through technological change, and a reminder of what it means to be human in the age of AI.

If you're building something, scaling something, or rebuilding after something didn't work — this one's for you. Listen or watch now.

Learn more about Ron

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shopdifferent

Latest book - https://www.harpercollins.com/products/shop-different-ron-johnsonzander-nethercutt?variant=44771032498210

Learn more about Patrick

Website - https://patrickleddin.com

Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/

Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt

Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc

If you liked this week's episode, consider leaving us a 5-star review below!

Doug Faber started his career on a loading dock at eighteen. He finished it in the CEO's office.

In this episode, Patrick sits down with Doug — his friend, colleague, and coauthor — to walk that climb, and to unpack what those years in operations taught him about leading real people under real pressure. Doug shares what changed in him between the dock and the corner office, what he got wrong along the way, and what he learned over twenty years at FranklinCovey working alongside executive teams at some of the world's best-known organizations.

Patrick and Doug get into what actually separates high-performing teams from average ones, why so many leaders treat high expectations and genuine care as a trade-off, and what happens when you stop choosing between them.

This episode is one of three with the coauthors of Expect a Lot, Care a Lot: How Six Critical Practices Create High-Performing Teams — each one bringing a different vantage point to the same six practices.

Learn more about Doug

Website - https://www.franklincovey.com/consulting/doug-faber/

Latest book - https://www.franklincovey.com/books/expect-a-lot-care-a-lot/

Learn more about Patrick

Website - https://patrickleddin.com

Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/

Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt

Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc

If you liked this week's episode, consider leaving us a 5-star review below!

Consider the position: you run the company that teaches everyone else how to communicate, and then the ground shifts so fast that nobody knows what to say anymore. Not your customers. Not the executives paying your customers to find the words. Not you.

That's roughly the seat Diane Schwartz took in 2019 as the new leader of Ragan Communications. What followed was a pandemic, an industry rewrite, an AI wave still cresting, and seven straight years of growth anyway.

But this episode of The Disruption Lab isn't really about communications. It's about what you do when you inherit something that already works. Every new leader faces the same fork: break the wrong thing and you destroy the reason people showed up; protect the wrong thing and you end up curating a museum. Diane had to decide, fast, and she'll tell you what she chose to blow up and what she refused to touch.

We get into the launch that scared her most, why she calls AI "a career accelerant for communicators, but only if the right levers are pulled," and where she watches teams freeze instead of pull them. We also get into the part nobody puts in the press release: what seven years of continuous change costs the people living through it, and how a leader knows when they've pushed too far. Whether you run a company, a function, or a team of three, there's something here for you.

And she started as a journalist, which means she answers questions the way she used to ask them. When I asked what belief about leadership she's had to throw out, she didn't reach for something flattering. See if you'd have the nerve to give her an answer about your own career.

You'll leave knowing what to protect, what to break, and one move to make this week if disruption feels like it's happening to you instead of for you. The mic is on.

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Learn more about Diane at

Website - www.ragan.com

Socials - Diane Schwartz | LinkedIn

Patrick Leddin PhD

Website - https://patrickleddin.com

Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/

Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt

Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc

If you liked this week's episode, consider leaving us a 5-star review!