Most disruptions don’t come out of nowhere. They whisper before they shout. In this episode of the Disruption Lab, Columbia Business School professor Rita McGrath, author of Seeing Around Corners and The End of Competitive Advantage, explains how to spot inflection points before they’re obvious to everyone else. She also shows how to turn those shifts into progress for yourself, your team, and your organization. We talk about why smart people explain away the early signals and what you can do about it. If you’ve ever felt blindsided by disruption at work or in life, this conversation will help you see the next one coming and use it.

Learn more about Rita

Website - https://www.ritamcgrath.com/

Learn more about Patrick

Website - https://patrickleddin.com

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

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

Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc

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Fear is the most expensive thing in business, and in life. It kills ideas before they’re spoken, stalls careers, and keeps entire companies playing it safe while competitors pass them by. Ryan Berman has made it his mission to disrupt it.

Ryan started out writing ad jingles in New York, co-founded a creative agency in San Diego, and then made the boldest move of his career: he fired himself. He spent three years interviewing astronauts, Navy SEALs, and CEOs to understand what makes people brave, and turned what he learned into the best-selling book Return on Courage. Today, as founder of Courageous, he helps organizations like Google, P&G, and Snap identify the fears holding them back and move past them.

In this conversation, Ryan breaks down his courage formula: knowledge, faith, and action. Miss any one and you end up paralyzed, reckless, or stuck in the status quo. We talk about why smart people get trapped overthinking, how companies confuse bold talk with bold moves, and why courage matters more than ever as AI reshapes how we work. Most importantly, Ryan shows that courage isn’t a trait you’re born with. It’s a skill you can build, starting today.

Learn more about Ryan

Website - ryanberman.com

Podcast - The Courageous Podcast

Instagram - @couragebrands

LinkedIn

Learn more about Patrick

Website - https://patrickleddin.com

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

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

Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc

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For over a century, business has been built around the hero at the top. Bruce Poon Tip is tearing that model down.

At 22, Bruce maxed out two credit cards to launch G Adventures after no bank would back him. He went on to grow it 40% a year for two decades, turned down a $100 million offer, and pioneered community tourism worldwide. Then, in 2020, revenue dropped to zero and operations shut down in more than 100 countries. Today, G Adventures is approaching a billion dollars in annual sales. Bruce says the reason it survived is a philosophy he calls communityship.

In this episode, we explore why founder-led companies collapse without their founder, what happens when you replace hero leadership with shared accountability, how to rebuild culture after a crisis, and why the businesses that last are the ones that measure success beyond profit. Bruce also shares how anyone, from solopreneurs to executives, can build communities where people feel like owners, not employees.

Learn more about Bruce

Website - gadventures.com | planeterra.org

Learn more about Patrick

Website - https://patrickleddin.com

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

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

Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc

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We're drowning in noise: headlines, hot takes, endless feeds. But buried in every purchase, review, and complaint is a signal, and Tsvetta Kaleynska has built a career cutting through the chaos to hear it.

Disruption isn't new to Tsvetta. She grew up in post-communist Bulgaria as an entire economy was being torn down and rebuilt, taught herself English, and earned a scholarship to college in Brooklyn. Today she's challenging the old way companies understand their customers. As founder of RILA Global Consulting, she analyzes millions of online conversations to show major brands what surveys and focus groups miss. She also founded GLORION MEDIA and co-hosts The Money Signal: From Main Street to Wall Street with Peter Tuchman, one of the most recognizable traders on the New York Stock Exchange floor.

In this episode, we explore how everyday behavior is rewriting the rules of the market, why people now care more about a company's values than its discounts, whether online sentiment can really predict what happens next, and how AI is upending the way we listen. Most importantly, Tsvetta shows you how to tune out the noise and tune in to the signals around you, so you can spot disruption coming in your career, your money, and your life before everyone else does.

Learn more about Tsvetta

Website - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tsvetta/

Podcast - https://www.youtube.com/@tsvetta

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tsvetta/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/tsvetta/

TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@tsvetta_kaleynska?_r=1&_t=ZN-99o0fuiFN0V

Learn more about Patrick

Website - https://patrickleddin.com

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

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

Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc

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Most people who write about high-performing teams have studied them. Jennifer Colosimo ran them, with a number attached.

As Enterprise President at FranklinCovey she owned strategy, consulting and coaching services, and the commercial organization across the US, six international direct offices, and 60 global licensees. Before that she led global operations, learning and development, change management, and multiple sales teams at Accenture and DaVita. She has served as a chief operating officer, a chief learning officer, and a vice president of wisdom. She now advises FranklinCovey on AI, content development, and leadership.

In this conversation Jennifer talks about leading global teams when the time zones, the cultures, and the incentives all pull in different directions. She makes the case for staying human as technology takes over the agenda in nearly every boardroom. She is also candid about what great leadership actually feels like from the chair, which is rarely how it gets described from a stage.

We dig into our new book, Expect a Lot, Care a Lot, and the argument at the center of it, that expecting a lot and caring a lot were never a trade-off.

Learn more about Jen

Website - https://www.franklincovey.com/speakers-bureau/jennifer-colosimo/

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

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!

Almost nobody has a shortage of ambition. Walk into any organization and you'll find big dreams, real desire, people who genuinely want to do something that matters.

So why does so little of it get done?

Because desire isn't the constraint. Discipline is. Definition is. Process is. Most goals never move because they were never defined sharply enough to act on, and there was never a process to carry them through a week where everything else is on fire.

This week I'm joined by Scott Thele, National Practice Leader for FranklinCovey's Business Outcomes Practice and a co-author of The 4 Disciplines of Execution — the book and methodology now used by teams in organizations around the world. I've known Scott for 25 years. He hired me once, which should tell you something about his judgment. We've crossed paths on client work now and again over the years, but mostly I've had a front-row seat — watching what he's building and admiring the work. He has one of the sharpest minds I know on the hardest problem in business: goals that require human beings to change their behavior.

In this conversation, we get into:

• Why wanting it badly enough has never been the differentiator

• How to define a goal so precisely that a team knows what "done" looks like

• What to do when everything on the list is a priority (hint: that's the problem)

• How to measure the behaviors that drive the result, instead of staring at the result

• What Scott has seen work across industries, countries, and cultures — and what fails everywhere

If you've got the dream but not the traction, this one is about closing that distance.

Learn more about Scott

Website - linkedin.com/in/ScottThele

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!

Most of us learned to lead in one place. One organization, one country, one set of unwritten rules about how people are supposed to talk to each other, disagree, and get things done. Then somebody puts us in a different room — and half of what we knew stops working.

Victoria Roos Olsson has spent her entire career in those rooms.

In this episode, Patrick sits down with Victoria, his coauthor on the new book Expect a Lot, Care a Lot: How Six Critical Practices Create High-Performing Teams. Born and raised in Sweden, educated in the Netherlands, she ran learning and development for Hilton and for Jumeirah across Europe and the Middle East before landing in Atlanta. Today she coaches executives around the world as a Senior Consultant at FranklinCovey.

Victoria shares what more than twenty years of building leaders across cultures has taught her: what actually travels, what turns out to be nothing more than local custom, and why the leaders who adapt fastest aren't the ones who abandon their principles. She also shares the origin story of the six critical practices, which she helped introduce as a coauthor of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Everyone Deserves a Great Manager.

And she and Patrick get into the heart of the new book — why so many leaders treat high expectations and genuine care as a trade-off, and what changes when you stop choosing between them.

This episode is the second in our series of conversations with the coauthors of Expect a Lot, Care a Lot — each one bringing a different vantage point to the same six practices.

Learn more about Victoria

Website - https://www.franklincovey.com/consulting/victoria-roos-olsson/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoria-roos-olsson-2497612/

Latest book - https://www.amazon.com/Expect-Lot-Care-Practices-High-Performing/dp/1668264064/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0

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!

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!