Key insights from the conversation

The Future of Work

• Work as a force for good: Work is described as the most powerful force on the planet to lead positive impact at scale.

• Human-centric focus: As humanoids and AI enter the workforce to handle robotic tasks, humans must focus on cognitive skills, imagination, and work that truly matters.

• The urgency of now: We are in a critical moment for humanity where we must ensure every minute of human work has a genuine impact on consumers and society.

The "Secret" to Transformation

• Four key drivers: The "secret" to transformation is simple but requires execution: 1) Brutal focus, 2) A network of A-players, 3) An obsession with impact (not just doing), and 4) A leadership rhythm where ambition exceeds resources.

• Turning the key: Many know these principles, but few are willing to "turn the key" and execute them due to the discipline required.

Brutal Focus and "The Wall"

• Defining winning: Organizations must be clear about what winning means and, crucially, what they will not pursue.

• The Stop Wall: A transparent list of things the company is explicitly not doing right now to protect focus.

• The Wall (Source of Truth): A single, usually digital, source of truth where everyone sees priorities, owners, and real-time execution.

• Transparency over comfort: The goal is to see "red" (obstacles and problems) rather than a sea of "green" reports, so leaders can help unlock issues.

• No "PowerPoint Karaoke": Moving away from static, ambiguous slides toward live data that looks forward rather than reporting on the past.

Distributed Leadership and Talent

• One Mission, One Person: A strict rule where one person leads only one mission, ensuring total accountability and no place to hide.

• Uncovering hidden talent: By restricting how many missions one leader can hold, top management is forced to discover and trust talent deep within the organization.

• Silos vs. Flow: Departments (Finance, HR, etc.) exist to build functional strength, but talent must flow into cross-functional teams to serve specific missions.

• Leaders as Sherpas: Top management shifts from directing to serving; they become "Sherpa guides" who exist to support teams and remove obstacles.

The Leadership Drumbeat (Rhythm)

• Consistency creates safety: A stable, predictable leadership rhythm (drumbeat) makes people feel safe and allows them to focus on the customer rather than internal politics.

• Simultaneity kills politics: When everyone sees the same data at the same time, political narratives and "hiding" become impossible.

• Efficient meetings: Replacing long reporting meetings with short (5-10 minute) sessions focused solely on future execution and unlocking immediate obstacles.

• Anticipation: A strong rhythm allows leaders to stop reacting to emergencies and start anticipating future needs.

Performance and Care

• Complementary forces: High performance and caring for people are not opposites; they complement each other.

• Ending the 12-hour workday: By distributing leadership and focusing only on what matters, organizations can eliminate the need for heroic, unsustainable working hours.

Full transcript

Here is the full conversation transcript, edited for clarity and conciseness. Here’s also the link to the conversation on LinkedIn live.

Roberto: Hello. Jonathan.

Jonathan: Hey Roberto how are you

Roberto: I'm very excited to be here and, looking. forward to this conversation today with you. We are already live and I already see there are six person connected to the live stream in the first moment. So, hi everyone,

I'm not going to look into the chat, but if you want to send a message, say hi.

first of all, thank you, Jonathan, for this opportunity and for the inspiration to read the book because I enjoyed it very much. this is also why I'm looking forward to the conversation.

And I also want to thank the people who are connected here. And then I'm going to close this because we're investing one hour of our time, which is the only thing we have. It's never going to come back. So we have to make this investment of one hour worth of our time, of course, and of the time of the people, which I have no doubt. And we will be checking to the chat and, we will not be interacting live in the chat, but we will make some pauses during the conversation so we can see what question do you have. And I invite you to ask question to Jonathan. We both love the ask me anything. So we'll improvise. We'll see. We have a lot of ideas, a lot of things to share.

So this will be very fun. Before starting, I want to invite all the people who are connected to share in the chat. What comes to your mind when we talk about transformation in a business context, the first things that come to your mind, and then we will check the chat and see what's there. I know you since, 2022, I listened to a podcast with your discussing with Gianpaolo Santorsola on the transformation of the business of Adevinta, which was very inspiring. Then we got in touch in 2023 and finally with your book, we got back in touch and we had the idea of, giving more voice to these ideas that we care about .

I want to start with, a quote from the book, which is on the end, which I really like, which says, and I'm going to read it, "work is the most powerful force on the planet to lead positive impact at scale". And I know this is a very dear quote to you, which is connected to your story and also to the book.

So I would love to hear a little bit about this connection.

Jonathan: Wow. What a start. Thanks everyone thanks Roberto and everyone listening to this live and probably afterwards I guess this stays no somehow in linkedin Yeah. I do believe that work is the most powerful force in the planet now to lead a positive impact at scale.

I think we are now in a moment where work is gonna be transformed exponentially in the next years.

We are seeing how humanoids are going to enter the workforce in a way that we have never seen before

Roberto: Yeah.

Jonathan: I do believe that it's our moment as humans to become as humans as possible and to use our cognitive skills to use our imagination to use our skills that only humans have to create and make work matter and to make sure that humans work in those things that only humans can work and that every single minute that is, dedicated by a human is dedicated to things that really have an impact for the consumers they serve, for the users they serve for the society where we are and I think this is the most important thing we cannot continue spending time working on things that robots will be able to do in the future in the near future in the two three years not anymore

Roberto: That's beautiful because we want to do things that matter in which we put our best, not just our time.

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Roberto: And so this connects to why write the book and why now, which by the way, I think some hint you already gave why now, but why to bring this idea into a book.

Jonathan: I started to write the book 15 years ago. I had a role where i was traveling around the world and spent hours in planes. I started to build, my first notes and structure because of my corporate role and later when I founded ActioGlobal, I had to park this project until COVID; COVID was a perfect moment to recover it and bring this book back to life.

And why now? I answered because i think we are now in the most important moment of humanity we need to make sure that work matters and matters more than ever. I think work is at the center of any social integration that we might imagine in the future not only with robots also with us as humans moving across the world and work.

Working on things that matter, has to be at the center for many years I have been, experimenting. Shaping ways of working across the world in many organizations in many cultures in many contexts with many leaders with many situations with many fears. And I thought that it was, the right moment to democratize our knowledge and share it with others so that others could also experiment through this experimentation we could make the ways of working stronger organizations across the world that's why I decided to publish it now after so many years.

Roberto: Yeah. absolutely, you've led with Actio Global 320 business transformationsthat's quite a track record. And also there's one thing that, you write in the book, which is there is no secret, and this is the secret, and this is also why you write the book because it is all transparent and you want to share it.

Jonathan: I like the way Andreas Joehle, who was the CEO of Hartmann group by the time I was working there, and I was highly inspired by him when we were together. I like the way he describes no, this, he says it's the key, that many people know but dunno how to turn it, and other people know it but don't want to turn it in the end it's a simple key, brutal focus on what matters the most, building a network of A players that work on those things that matter the most, shaping a culture that is obsessed with impacting, not doing and last but not least, a leadership rhythm that makes sure that our ambition is always higher, greater than our resources that's the secret I explain in the book and it's been a pleasure to write and share it with so many people in the last weeks.

Roberto: And then I guess the key is the execution, as you said, you have, the key, in your hand, but you have to turn it. If you don't turn you don't want, or your can't or whatever, then that does not happen.

Absolutely. I'm curious now, what would be the first one of these four?

Jonathan: I have to say the four are interconnected and but yes, the first one is brutal focus. Always starts with brutal focus. It's to make sure that organizations are clear about what they want to pursue. What winning means for them where they want to play to win and what winning exactly means in terms of outcomes for each of these where to play choices right and this means also defining communicating very clear what are the things that we are not going to pursue, in the book I explained that in organizations we build something we call the wall. Clear priorities are displayed across the organization but we also create the stop wall which are the things we are not going to pursue are the things that we make clear for everyone, that this is not our priority right now. It doesn't mean it's, worse. A company has to define their winning choices this is not a winning choice for us we don't have the capability ambition skills or it's not the right thing to do exactly now which doesn't mean it's not something we will pursue in the future means making it clear in this cycle by cycle it might be the quarter the half year this is something we are not going to pursue.

Without brutal focus you can do nothing.

You cannot build any way of working and that's how the book starts with the first driver it's a very important one because you also have a lot of experience with this Roberto. And we had a lot of conversations about this and you know in your experience also how Important is to start with brutal focus and then to build the rest of the drivers on top of it.

Roberto: Yeah, absolutely. To me, it reminds me, one thing that is also a struggle for me and maybe for many people, which is the FOMO, because there are so many things so many opportunities, there are endless opportunity with AI, without AI, whatever, and to decide what not to do, what is not yet or not now, and stopping something that you love.

Some people talk about the grief and the opportunity. This is also something that you have to accept. I accept I don't want to do this, and then you have to accept that. Yeah. And I love the idea of the wall. And actually when I was reading the book, was curious then there is a, an illustration, but I would like you to say a little bit more because when you say the wall, the first thing that I thought with this, but what is the wall and how the wall works;

can you give us an example so that the people can have this into mind and then maybe bring it to their day to day?

Jonathan: It's a wall that unites, everyone in the organization and everyone looks at that wall and it's the single source of truth. I was highly inspired by what I saw, early in my career, in Toyota, operations right when I walk into their operations, you know there were walls where they displayed this connection this true north connecting the vision of the organization with the performance of a specific line of a specific car production whatever, and I was highly inspired by this at Procter and Gamble. I also saw a lot of good practices in this direction with clear PDCAs, cycles connected from the vision of the company to employee ownership, And Yeah i always talked about the wall, as those, as that thing also to eliminate the bad connotation that the wall might have the wall where everyone sits in front of it and looks at it and it's where the reality the truth is the wall, in an organization is, normally a digital. We we build also a digital platform ourselves at ActioGlobal because we foundno other technology or instrument that existed in the wall and we decided to build our platform and it's a platform is a wall where everyone can see the priorities of the organization what are the outcomes that each of these priorities is trying to achieve who is the leader of each of these priorities? So clear accountability is important without this clear ownership nothing happens.

That is working on this priority. This is very important and we probably talk later about distributed leadership but also clear talent allocation right to make sure that one person is not working six priorities, 10 priorities at the same time clear talent allocation The wall is live in the wall you see how execution happens week by week how the teams have iterative, evolving execution plans that are developed refined, as they move as they execute. Also the obstacles it's very important we like the walls to see the obstacles we don't like to go into the wall to see that everything is green we like to see red, we like to see a lot of obstacles a lot of problems and we work so that leaders the top management help the teams unlock these obstacles and that's the front of the wall at the back of the wall you have the stop wall you click you see the stop wall and everyone can see what are the things we don't want to pursue as an organization what is our commitment who is the person who is responsible to make sure that this is not going to take time off people and everyone can see with a lot of transparency the wall and the stop wall there is no ambiguity at all. The main characteristic of the wall it's a unique source of truth in an organization.

Roberto: Yeah. So what I hear is that it's a space, you create with your team. Everyone looks at the same thing, they're updated. We are not hiding, we are not, putting the half truth. We are just saying what it is. And this reminds me of one thing that you repeat over and over in the book, which are the PowerPoint karaokes.

So can you tell me how different is the PowerPoint karaoke from the wall and why this is so important?

Jonathan: Every time I hear PowerPoint.. We step into an organization they show us their powerpoint 20, 30, 30 pages. What happens with this powerpoint normally you have a lot of boxes diagrams a lot of a lot of duplication, a lot of gray areas, a lot of ambiguity.

You have the ambition but you don't have a clear definition of the what you want to achieve. you don't have a clear owner It's something that was created two months ago but it's not live. And especially it's always looking backwards right?

It's not looking forward for me the most important thing of the wall. We don't look at the wall to report we don't look at the wall to explain that everything is fine we look at the wall to look where the reds are, what the problems are where we all need to work together as an organization to increase our focus to increase our ambition to increase our like our execution the wall just has two levels the level of the leadership team where the leadership team has clearly defined what winning means for the organization and where to play to win. And then another second level which is where the teams define refine, improve and deliver their execution.

We like the simplicity right? Because I think without simplicity organizations get lost in a lot of methodologies and a lot of stuff that doesn't add value so we like the simplicity of the world with only two layers and a lot of clarity.

The clarity is what allows us to focus on the business focus on the customers, to focus on the society and to focus on working together toward common goals and avoiding political traps.

Roberto: Yes. And also one thing that comes through my mind when you say, this is very simple. The question that pops to me is okay? how do you go to the teams? We have one wall, and then can we have a wall for each group or for each team or each department or there is just one for the whole organization?

Jonathan: Go deep today, eh?

Roberto: Yeah.

Jonathan: You go deep today. We like to have one source of truth the wall for the company so all the silos work together to work common goals And by the way, when I mean silos I don't mean, by definition department. A department is not a silo by default, it's a silo when they start to work on their self-interest and not in the interest of the organization the consumers and the people work in the organization but yeah, one source of truth, the wall, the brutally important priorities for the organization then each team has a second layer which is where they have their execution plan one priority one team one execution plan. There are teams that need to self-organize specifically for their business as usual for the things that are beyond the brutally important the wall allows self-organization in your area of responsibility, always connected with the brutally important to make sure that this self-organization in the business as usual is not preventing people to focus on the brutal importance. So here there is a big interconnection in terms of talent right because in the end, priority is work of people and you need to connect both these both things.

Roberto: So what I hear is that the departments are like some pools where the people work, they have the talent, they do their job, they do the day-to-day because they're still there, but then they go through the priorities and then we say, okay, we have this mission, as you call them, this mission. I have one mission, one person, one timeline, and then the people goes there, and then we go to the next step.

Jonathan: Absolutely. I'm here now in Berlin.

A question I had this morning working with the board. So we will not need departments in the future? And, it's a question we get in every single company we work for. Our answer is very clear we need departments more than ever we need the strongest possible financial departments, the strongest possible HR departments the strongest possible marketing departments because we need that people grow in this department, their functional skills their functional capabilities, we need the best talent so they can flow to value to those teams that will be working in cross-functional teams across the organization in order to deliver on the important priorities for the consumers the users that the organization serve.

By the way we are always talking about companies seems that we are only talking about companies that serve consumers or users or customers but also can be to serve citizens right this is this, what we are describing here, works perfectly for organizations that serve citizens this is about having a positive impact and the positive impact is what is at the center of the ways of working to build across the world.

Roberto: Yeah, exactly. And also what I hear is that people will have ownership of the project 'cause you're not, in a big team you go to the project, then you are responsible for finance, marketing, whatever, for the project.

And then you own all your expertise and all the things in that project

Jonathan: Yeah. This is how it works there is one person that is a fan of you she's the director the global culture director at Danone she describes very well in the book this idea about ownership she has seen it firsthand.

And you know how the teams own their mission how they own their execution plan how they own the iterations that they have to do along the way because this execution plan is a an alive execution plan is something that changes every day as as they execute and put things in front of their customers they get reactions data iterate and evolve this ownership is beautiful to see, in reality because in the end you eliminate the silos it's, a team from different with different skills with different areas of expertise working together toward a common goal, bringing their best they behave like the CEOs of the company working together towards these common goal. So this is, it's beautiful to see reality and how people go farther right in, in. In what they used to work before.

Roberto: Yeah. And this connects to what you said in the beginning about work and giving the importance of work to the human people. So this looks like something exciting, something where you grow. It's not working more and being treated like a machine. All the opposite

Jonathan: All the opposite.

Roberto: Being very disciplined, but precisely that discipline give you the freedom to do whatever you want.

Let's say if you are going for that mission, within your, scope of responsibility, the second part, which is the, what you call distributed leadership, and what are the other part of this second idea of people being leaders and leading projects.

Jonathan: I think there are many areas in distributed leadership but first of all is, making sure that leaders create a clear direction so that leaders give the direction at the same time they become we call them sherpa guides we put top management at the service of the teams because the teams are serving their customers, the teams have obstacles to serve their customers and leaders are there to support people don't work for the leaders, people work for the customers and leaders are there to support the teams that work for the customers. This is a very important part of this digital leadership. the second is to uncover talent that might be hidden in every corner of the organization when we create these teams one mission one team one execution plan we don't value hierarchy, we have the best people in the organization to serve this mission maybe it's someone that is four levels below the management team but if this is the best person to work in this team to achieve the mission this is the right person to be and one of the things i think all the team of actually global is more proud is how many talent we make visible, talent that sometimes they are not the ones that are that they present the power points in the best way right but they are the ones that drive execution in the best way. They work together with the other team members in the best way, go to the front line understand consumer and user needs in the best way bring it back to the team and work together with the team we are very happy about this because we are multiplying leaders in the organizations and this is one of the things that our customers value more.

Many organizations where we started say, hey here, we know there are 30 people 20, 30 people know that that are super great leaders and can own business challenges but we cannot imagine no that more people, and we have multiplied per three per five even per nine and more the number of leaders in these organizations I remember for instance, another beautiful organization in Spain Eroski group it's a cooperative,the largest industrial cooperative in the world.

I remember when we started the CEO I count 30 people very well because it's my executive team but we will need many more now I cannot say how much time will it take us and today they are more than 550, probably around 600 people moving together every week in a synchronized way this is talent that was in the organization but was not enabled to work in this way and we are very happy about this we don't do this alone by the way, We do this thanks to the leaders that are brave that have the courage to put hierarchy at the service of the teams we just enable them and give them, our knowledge so that they can do their best

Roberto: Yeah. it is beautiful. And also reminds me of one comment, which a person who was probably here in the live Sally, she wanted to ask you what evidence can you share that having a coaching culture drives up performance and probably this, that you gave this example that you have only 30 leader, but then with this guidance, with this service from the top executive, you uncover the talent that were already there, but were underused because I can imagine if you are in an organization and you know that always three level up are going to present to top management, you say, okay.

You'll tell me how it goes. But then if I say, okay, Roberto, you are going to report to the CEO, you are going to have 20, 40 opportunities every year to be in front of the top management for 10 minutes and to present your obstacle, what you did,

what help do you want? I promise you that I would be excited and this is amazing.

Jonathan: No. We have back to this question. every time people ask us, what is the Financial performance you achieve and all this. We always ask them to contact our customers and to ask them about their P and Ls, right because we cannot disclose no information we have measured, what we achieve in terms of growth top line bottom line also in terms of speed to market and the results are incredible but we like the customers that they talk about what we achieve no and they explain it. But for me, by far the most important is the number of talent we uncover because these are the people that are going to lead the future of the organization and when you have 10 people and after one year you know that now you have. 25, 30 people imagine the traction the speed the impact that the organization can have.

this is for the future this is Forever. And this is the what we are more, prouder, and of course this delivers financial results at scale the talent we

uncover is the thing we feel more proud about.

Roberto: Yeah, because then I can hear that when you have 30 leaders, then you have 90, and remember at the beginning we said the ambition and the resources, you have more resources actually, so you can be more ambitious, and then you have more leaders and more ambition. this becomes very fun because you can do more and faster.

Jonathan: And a very important thing, Roberto now that we talk about work and performance and care are not things that are opposite, but things that complement each other. When you have more leaders when you have more people that drive things in the organization you don't have the typical 4, 5, 10 15 20 people that are working 12 hours per day because you can distribute work in a way that is even and fair. And for me, this is very important this is why I say performance and care complement each other and this is the only way you describe it, you described it just now, the flywheel of how performance and care complemented and very important because I, believe there is a lot of bullshit about this today you know how it works in organizations.

Roberto: I would like to name the bullshit because I 100% agree with you this bullshit is connected to all this PowerPoint painting, because this is waste. if you waste so much time doing this then of course you have to work more.

But if you do only the brutal important thing, you say no to what is not necessary, then you don't have to work 14 hours. If you had to do something, okay, but then you will go back to normal. You will have more resources in terms of talent and so on. I love what you said because this does not mean, and you mean about bullshit.

When we talk about this project, we think, okay, this means transformation. It means working 14 hours every day for one year. ' cause this is like a military no, not at all. You drive out the waste, you select what is critical, you go for that. And then when you build on these resources, you will have more resources and the people will enjoy it.

It's not treating people like machine is bringing out the best. And one more thing that I want you to talk about, which is very much connected to this is why is it so important that one person only leads one mission for you.

Jonathan: Because we want to put pressure on the top management to discover more leaders. This is the only reason we want them not to do the easy thing of assigning one person to lead three missions. We want them to discover new talent every time we get into an organization, they tell us here we are different. Here it will be impossible to achieve this and I know, I will, I had said the same so I will have said the same. To be honest, as a member of the management team but thanks to our work, to my team, they have a lot of resilience and clarity on what to achieve when we work, hand in hand with the top leaders, we achieve this and we have we have a strong compliant on this principle across the organizations in every single culture in every single organization we work for

Roberto: Yeah. And I would also, add one thing on this when you say, okay, you are somehow putting the management in an uncomfortable position to say, no, we don't have just 30 leader, you must uncover 50 more. Even if they make mistakes in the beginning, do it because this will be an investment.

And then for the employee side, if you have four projects, you can hide because you can say, no, this week I was delayed because of that. And then when someone makes a photo, you look the other way and you say, no, I was doing that and thatif you have only one, you have nowhere to hide

Only in one frame, and this is your playing ground. And then the beautiful side is that also, at least for me, my best experiences in my personal and professional career was when I had one project, one team, one deadline. And we were very focused in delivering week after week.

Because you see the result in very short time. And then you see the result, you get feedback, you get very excited about what works, what not. And this is what makes you more engaged, not being scattered over 10 projects one. And then we, go to the other one, but first this.

Jonathan: Absolutely Roberto and i have to say now that we are live, that we have a lot of common friends and a lot of friends that have worked with you. One person is Christine Doig the product director at Spotify, but before she was at Netflix and at Google so really seasoned, leader she worked with you and she said, well, with Roberto, we worked like this we worked very well. She has a very good opinion of you

we have

common friends and we didn't know see how small the world is

Roberto: Yeah, it's a small world. Thank you Jonathan. And hi, Christine. if you are listening now or in delay, and by the way, now that you mentioned, let's check if we have some question in the chat.

Jonathan: Let's go for them.

Roberto: Joaquin is talking about brutal focus. Such a powerful concepts is obvious, but not.

For many. Yeah. This is classical example. Easy, simple, not easy.

And Arantxa is talking about from FOMO to JOMO. Exactly. This is, you remove the waste to make space for what matters, and then you enjoy what you're doing and then you go to the next. Absolutely. Thank you.

There's a question from Stephanie. Hi Stephanie. How do you identify talent in a company you are working with for the first time?

Jonathan: Who Identify talent we at Actio Global, we don't identify talent we make leaders to identify talent so what we do is to, first of all through the principles we are describing so one person can only lead one mission first of all but also one person can only be in two teams right and when we put this principle when we start with this principle, this is a very difficult principle to follow no when we start. But, then after some weeks some quarters the leaders make courageous embrace decisions about putting no someone to lead. Maybe someone that is have not seen before someone that they have not experienced working with them but another leader below them has worked with him with her has a good experience say, hey let's trust this person they give the ownership to this person she or he starts to work. With strong guidance support when he or she so shows more confidence than the top leaders step back and coach more. This is how it happens and how leaders by themself discover new talent in the organization by also this collective intelligence saying that the leaders the top management doesn't assign the people they know but also talking to their leaders to the layer below and also asking hey, we need someone to lead this who do you believe who with whom you have work that has delivered with resource in this area. Could we put this person in charge of this well maybe yes, but she needs some support. Okay. Can we support her? Can we put someone to work with this person and grow and enable her growth. Yes, we can how we do it, and this is part of the conversation sometimes we put leaders that are more experienced with leaders that are less experienced. For those leaders that are less experienced, top management. has more proximity proximity depends on how much proximity the person is asking to lead that the person starts to get confidence and this is how we evolve this We like to talk about proximity. Always avoiding micromanagement, but not every single leader needs the same level of proximity also depends on is this a business challenge that is part of her daily work or his daily work yes no is this something completely new where the person doesn't have business acumen but has the technical skills we have a lot of conversations about talent half of our conversations are about business half of our conversations about talent and then leaders make these decisions we start first week second week more coaching less coaching this person needs someone else from another team to join and put specific capabilities and skills these are the kind of discussions we have we avoid to have political discussions discussions about what one, in the wrong direction we'll look forward to to deliver on the most important priorities. And at the same time to build, those people that want to grow in the organization.

Roberto: Yeah, That's beautiful. Thank you for that. this reminds me one thing which I want to take again from book, which is connected to the third part, which is the impact over activity. And there is this beautiful metaphor that you can see here about the pilot and not the recorders. Can you talk a little bit about this?

Jonathan: We want to make sure that everyone has clear expectations we don't expect anyone to report on what they did in the last week because we trust people what we want is to make sure that people is growing into this pilot mindset and what we do is to make sure that they have clear their confidence level to deliver on the mission every week that they know specifically where they are going to land at the end of the quarter at the end of the year at the end of the cycle of the mission they're leading what is their execution plan in the next weeks and most important what are the gremlins on the wings.

What are the gremlins on the wings. it's those things that are not always politically correct to surface, those things that might not be comfortable to surface. We empower teams and leaders to talk about these things openly tackle them and find a solution together this is why we say we don't want reporters we don't want people talking about what happened all those things you can read in a report or you can read in the emails that is clear for everyone, let's drive forward and this is why this is the way we build, leaders also, through this habit, coaching and trust this is a framework of trust that we built in the organizations.

Roberto: Thank you, Jonathan. This connect with the previous part, which is not about micromanaging, it's about giving support. Because what I hear is that in this session, which I, by the way, you said in a very quick session, it's 10 minutes. You have 10 minutes with our manager at most, you cannot talk about, okay, we did this, this, this.

What I hear is that you say, we are here, we are going to get there, we are going to do this, and we have this obstacle. Please help us. That's it. It's five minutes.

Jonathan: It's five minutes yeah in most of the cases In most of the it's five minutes five six minutes four minutes because in the end, this is created so that team self organizing in an efficient way in an effective way so in the end, it's the self-organization of the team if you have a team and Roberto, you have led a lot of teams, you want to make sure that the team shares our confidence level to deliver where we will land, what is our execution plan in the next weeks and what are the obstacles or the problems or the things that we want to talk about with the leadership team it's about self-organization and then you have the opportunity we create the opportunity so that leaders have their, the top management every week because if there is a problem we want the problems not to be alive in the organization for more than one week problems that are alive in the organization for more than one week are those problems between us, the customer, the users, the customer satisfaction we don't believe they can be alive for more than one week and we don't want people to start to prepare PowerPoints and narratives and long emails and long explanations about this problem no we want everyone to be there in the source of truth to talk about the problems.

It's beautiful to see and everyone tells us it's impossible here meetings take 60 90 minutes it's possible.

Roberto: Then, so you think about how much waste we have, if we can reduce to five minutes, what took 60? And one thing that when you said about leaders is how important it is that the top management beliefs in this and is doing what they are saying. If we have three hours of this, whatever, how long is this session from the top management?

How can it be one hour, two hours, three hours in five minutes slots?

Jonathan: No depending on the granularity on the organization right because we work for organizations that have a lot of categories, they are very granular in terms of category products regions and everything and we have organizations that are more focused, but with it in a way that also they are in parallel.

So it means it's not everyone in the same place depending on the structure of teams and the role of the management team in each team we might be synchronizing an organization 3000 million of dollars revenue per year in one hour and a half two hours per week no I remember the words of another leader. He was the general manager of Unilever Spain when we started,together with Elena Matabosch, who was also the CHRO. Later he went to Imperial Brands, and he brought also this practice to Imperial Brands and he always, he said, you know, by Monday midday I can go home because I know everything that is going on in my organization. I know how the teams feel. I know the confidence level i know the obstacles I have talked with the leadership team about how to solve these obstacles

he's joking because. he has a lot of other things to do but Monday, 12:00 AM he understands the strategic execution of his organization he understand how the teams feel. He understand where the obstacles are and he has agreed an action plan with the leadership team with the management team to unlock these obstacles this is the reality and this is what happens in these organizations

Roberto: This reminds me of one thing you talk about in the, this is the drum beat, what you call the drum beat. And there are two things that you say, which is the transparency that simultaneity one side and the politics and confusion on the other side.

Jonathan: Simultaneity and transparency kill politics when everyone sees the same reality the same source of truth at the same time. No one can hide no one can explain others no one can create their beautiful narratives in order to hide. We like to talk about radical transparency, radical transparent ways of workings, because we want everyone to see what is important for the organization to have the same principles to form their teams to present their execution plans at the same time in the same way to the whole audience we want everyone to have the opportunity to give feedback in the same conditions and we want that everyone that has something to say to add to build to improve to the execution of the teams have and stable point of contact to do it no politics no interpretations no ambiguity. We work together, towards our common goals and it's as simple as it sounds back to the words of Andreas, Johle it's the simple key that many people know that there are people that don't know how to turn it , but there are people that don't want to turn it because they don't like the transparency and the consistency and the clarity that there is behind that door. And that is not for everyone I mean, it's it's good huh? It's good there are people that build their careers based on politics and it is also, it's a way, not our way, but it's a way.

Roberto: Yeah. And what reminds me, which connects with the beginning, what you talk about, the wall, that when something is green, but when it's red, it's red because you don't let things linger and you don't hide then you have the meeting after the meeting to explain what happened in reality.

You do this theater in front of top management and they say, okay, the problem was A, B, C, but we couldn't say because we fear, if you don't fear, if you did your best because you showed it every single week and you have nothing to hide, there is something which is yellow or red or whatever.

You have nothing to worry about.

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Roberto: This is also why you say it's not for everyone because very transparent. You have to put your best to be able to be on this meeting with the, clean conscience, let's say, okay, I did my best and this is here.

Jonathan: So this is why we always say we celebrate threats because we want to understand the problems that exist in the organization. When we start the year no another thing we change in organization. So sometimes we go to organization and say, hey, when do we start to, when do you start to work when do you get your targets for the year from your boss? the first week of march the second week of March.

one of the things we like to do in organizations is that by January 1st, everyone starts to execute on the brutal important priorities for the year and by January 10th, by January 15th, we already want to know the obstacles the decisions that need to be made in one week in order to progress those typical problems that you know will face in february March in the organization we want to know them.

In the first or second week of January because those are the obstacles that separate us from the satisfaction, from the impact of the users the customers or those who we serve customers are bosses and they don't deserve to be not well served by us because we are not tackling the obstacles because of politics because of fears or because of neglect and the drumbeat with the timings, and and the drumbeat of the consumers because in the end, they are the ones that set the rhythm of the organization.

Roberto: Yeah. And you said drumbeat and rhythm, there are people also here in the audience who say, oh, the first time I hear the word rhythm with leadership. So what's your take on that and why So important this rhythm.

Jonathan: It's the basis. When the rhythm of leadership is stable, it's predictable, it's consistent, people are safe people know what to expect. When people know that the leaders are going to be clear about the important priorities for the next cycle for the next quarter might be year might be 10 years whatever no this is not about short term or long term. People know that this happens when people know that leaders will be there every week to unlock, that leaders will not miss their presence, because they care about the performance of their teams they care about unlocking the decisions that need to be made when this happens , magic happens in organizations. Leaders need to be predictable leaders need to be clear this is leadership rhythm. the drumbeat is the leadership rhythm where leaders make organizations focus on business focus on decision making and not be focused on when can we talk with. It's incredible when i get into organization and I see how much time they spend booking meetings to talk to their leaders and then the leaders change and then booking meetings and then they have the meeting and then they have to book another meeting to explain to another person what happened and then another meeting, and what should have happened in May 15th happens in June 6th Who is waiting? Consumers are waiting and the leadership rhythm is about preventing this from happening in organizations leadership rhythm needs to be stable clear so that we can be agile, dynamic flexible. So that we can react to what the customer asked us or we can anticipate. One of the things we like to talk about is anticipation you can only anticipate when you have your cognitive focus not on scheduling meetings and explaining others and all the time being reporting and reporting but when you have this cognitive focus on the future on what will come next on our execution plan on business and not in politics and not in not in protecting your career. This is the leadership rhythm.

Roberto: There is a quote from the book, which comes to mind, the short term discipline, we know where we're going to meet, who's going to be there, what we expect. All the structure is here like a scaffold,

you don't know what's going to be there, just the structure. You know you're going to talk with top management next week, so don't worry. You'll have your chance to work and don't think about this. And then this over time becomes an advantage because then you can really do what matters and not book meetings.

Jonathan: Absolutely Roberto. There is so much bullshit about this, people say this is short term. This has nothing to do with short term. Think about your heart it's stable predictable consistent and it's a lifetime heartbeat, there are things in business that have to be predictable the leadership rhythm the organizational rhythm, the drumbeat is stable then people can focus on the customers they serve, they are not focusing as I said, on reporting on preparing exactly the same information for different people in different layers in different to different stakeholders because this is waste back to the start of the session work is the most powerful force on the planet to lead the positive impact scale, work is this powerful force when you work on things that matter scheduling meetings is the work of robots.

And also reporting is the work of robots we see it now with AI, but it was like this, to be honest, 10 years or 15 years ago. So we need to step up our respect for our humanity.

Roberto: And this would be much more fun. Definitely.

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Roberto: Yeah. and I see now, time flies. It's already 6:00 PM here in, in Spain. Yeah. And we could go on for one other hour, but we just talk about quick meetings, we talk about. So we have to be,

Jonathan: This is not a meeting. This is fun.

Roberto: I, I, exactly. That's, this is a conversation. So, anyway, I think, I will check one last time in the chat to at least to say, hi to the people who are still, engaging.

We will answer later. Of course. Thank you, Marianne. Thank you Mi Gabriela, Stephanie. it was so interesting to have this conversation with you, Jonathan. Thank you so much. I hope the people, perhaps get the book and has inspired to know more about this and puts into practice specifically to turn the key, not just to have the key because this is the key, but then you have to do something.

And I have one last question for you, which is little bit connected with what you said in the beginning. In the end, what would you like to see more and less in the world?

Jonathan: There are so many things i would like to see

I would like to see more talent driving difficult challenges we have so many human challenges right now. We have a lot of technology I would like to see. people use work right and that people work to solve those challenges and give the opportunity to other people to work on those challenges, leaders that build more leaders to solve the toughest business, human challenges that we have today so I would like to see more of this I don't want to see heroes. I want to see people that take challenges and build leaders to take more challenges this is what I would like to see more of and what i would like to see is, war huh? Cruelty. This is the what I would like to see No, I dream with one day where there are no war in the world.

And where there is no cruelty because it's incredible that in today's world we have children being killed, in different regions different parts of the world and how we cannot use technology and our humanity to stop this this is my dream, that next time we talk the world is a better world.

Roberto: Thank you, Jonathan. I 100% subscribe to that. And again, this reminds me how lucky we are to have this conversation,

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Roberto: Beautiful people connected with us, share the insights. And perhaps we can also have more of this. And less of that. Of course. Thank you,

Jonathan: Absolutely. thank you Roberto and thank you for everyone that connected today thank you very much

Roberto: Bye everyone.

Jonathan: Take care

Where to find Jonathan and his work

• LinkedIn

• Jonathan’s website

• the book “Lead to Beat”