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Leadership Levers
This podcast spotlights leaders' actions so they may enhance their organization’s performance and culture.
We feature CEOs and industry-recognized Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who share their experiences and insights on three key challenges: people, performance, and profit.
If you are a leader who wants to learn from your peers about improving performance and financial returns, please join us.
Leadership Levers
The Business Artist - Sparking Innovation, Improvisation & Aligning Culture with Adam Boggs
Can being a 'business artist' spark improvisation and creativity to ignite innovation and transform how you lead and cultivate culture?
In this episode of the Leadership Levers, we are joined by Adam Boggs, CEO of Mayahana.io and author of The Business Artist, to discuss the intersection of culture, creativity, and organizational growth.
Adam shares insights from his extensive experience consulting for major corporations like SAP, Google, and Salesforce - highlighting that people-related issues often account for 90% of organizational friction.
He emphasizes that misalignments in values, communication breakdowns, and lack of trust can derail even the most well-conceived strategies.
Transitioning to his role as a startup CEO, Adam discusses the necessity of redefining decision-making processes and workflows to foster agility and innovation - moving away from traditional corporate methodologies.
Adam emphasizes that culture exists in every organization - whether intentional or not - and underscores the importance of inclusivity, shared values and resilience in building healthy workplaces.
Reflecting on his book - The Business Artist - he advocates for embracing one's unique style and creativity in the business realm. He critiques the tendency to create "avatars of human beings and human performance," urging leaders to allow individual expression rather than enforcing rigid corporate scripts.
He advocates for leaders to foster a balance between structure and improvisation, likening culture to jazz - dynamic, collaborative, and constantly evolving. He challenges leaders to focus on cultivating environments where creativity thrives, encouraging employees to adapt and contribute authentically.
Adam closes by reminding leaders that culture is not static, but ever-changing, shaped by the people and ideas within an organization.
By nurturing a culture of trust, adaptability and shared purpose - leaders can create workplaces that drive performance and innovation while celebrating the unique contributions of every team member.
This episode explores how intentional culture-building, creative leadership, innovation, and dynamic collaboration can drive performance, align teams, and empower organizations to thrive when addressing rapid change.
Connect with Adam on LI
Get Adam's Book - The Business Artist: A Human Approach to Sales, Storytelling, and Creativity in a Data-Driven World
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Welcome to the Leadership Levers Podcast. I'm your host, Will Gladhart, CMO at the Culture Think Tank. At the Culture Think Tank, we empower leaders with metrics that strengthen culture, drive performance and return. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address organizational change. Today, our guest is Adam Boggs, CEO of the author of a recent book release titled The Business Artist - A Human Approach to Sales, Storytelling, and Creativity in a Data-Driven World. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.
William Gladhart:Sure Happy to be here.
William Gladhart:Excellent. Let's begin by having you share with our audience a little bit about yourself, your background and your organization.
Adam Boggs:Cool. Well, I'm originally from the Midwest, from Indiana, so not too far from you there Will - spent half my life, I'd say, in California and before becoming the CEO of a company called Mayahana, which is a visual collaboration for decision-making right where participants' input really matters, I spent most of my professional career as a consultant helping large sales organizations like SAP, Google and Salesforce transform kind of either what or how they were selling, and naturally I've been around a lot of different cultures as a result of that, some different from others drastically, some not so much, some healthy, some not as much, and so I've certainly seen the good, bad and ugly.
William Gladhart:Yeah, I love that you've got that wide array of background. It definitely gives you some different perspectives. So we'll be discussing three questions today as a warm-up to our conversation. Would you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?
Adam Boggs:Sure, I think first of all we have to define culture as similar. I think it's sort of a shared belief, values, behaviors, the way we make decisions. I think every organization has a culture - whether it's intentional or not. Not all cultures are healthy, though, as you're describing there for healthy. For me, well, I think that kind of says you know, there's vitality, there's resilience. We're human beings, so there's maybe some balance in there as well. But a healthy culture to me is also inclusive. It's built on growth, collaboration and a little bit of adaptability or jazz as we say in the music world.
William Gladhart:Yes, well, bringing in some of those music context as well, which I really love. It's been our experience that leaders tend to struggle in three key areas people, process or profits. In your role as CEO or also as a consultant previously, would you identify which one of these areas presented a cultural challenge with you, your organization or with clients' organizations?
Adam Boggs:Yeah, in my previous life I guess I would say people People was generally 90% of the friction points. Oftentimes, when a strategy doesn't work out, it's not because it was the wrong idea, it's because people have to get it done and they have to have alignment, they have to be bought into, whatever that might be. And so the people culture challenges were where there was a misalignment on values or there was communication or lack of trust, etc. I would say in my startup life as a CEO, we have a pretty experienced founder team and some of that is a struggle right, because we haven't necessarily landed on when we start this company. What's the decision-making process that we're going to take here? What's the workflows? How do we experiment and kind of find ways to work together? So that was a little bit of a challenge for us coming out of the gate, having all worked at big companies, we kind of brought in how it was done in the past and then a startup decision process happens differently.
William Gladhart:It's hugely differently, much more agile, much faster, and I love that you alluded to at the beginning of our conversation that you have a culture, whether you intended to have one or not, and some of those best practices from the corporate world, but also wrapping them into the entrepreneurial process, because you and I both know from multiple companies that that entrepreneurial process can sometimes go a little off the rails or you know you just just because there's so many pieces going on that it can be a struggle to really make that alignment and culture a core part of your company.
William Gladhart:But many CEOs like yourself that we've heard of from these smaller organizations that when that alignment started to happen whether that be sales, whether that be funding, whether that be growing the company that it really started to impact that cultural strength, the performance elements really started to impact. You know that cultural strength, the performance elements, really started to impact the bottom line. So I really appreciate that you addressed that, as we're talking about some of those challenges around the people. What was the detriment or how did it negatively impact prior organizations?
Adam Boggs:You know. Generally in a decision-making meeting or in a collaborative workshop I would run. You would either get the loudest voice in the room who's generally got the senior title or you'd have the silent distractors or detractors right that are. You don't know who they are and so you would make decisions that kind of didn't necessarily have real alignment. You thought that they did. You didn't necessarily have good technology to hear from all the diverse inputs that were there.
Adam Boggs:We started to actually in our own company to use our own tool to help make decisions. It's just four of us on a founder team, but it found it super, super powerful to just get every voice out there and kind of hear it all. And then when you start to make decisions, even if you don't agree with the decision, you trusted the process that it took to get there. And it doesn't mean Will's idea is not important. It just might mean it's not as important right now from a speed and prioritization perspective. And so having that background on the people side of consulting and seeing some of the downside of that has helped influence the way we do our processes here.
William Gladhart:Yeah, so what is the one thing that you've identified, possibly specifically in your own company, that has impacted your culture, but also your next steps and growth positively?
Adam Boggs:You know it's interesting because we're you constantly have to evaluate what is our sort of stated, our stated values versus our lived values, and being able to constantly stop and assess are we doing the things that we want to on a regular basis? Are we hearing from everybody? Because having some empathy for I've got some folks that are coming in this from a different perspective, different financial arrangements, different family situations so culture takes a lot of cultivation and I think those words are connected, right, they probably have the same Latin root to sort of nurture and to care for, and so we've learned that we have to constantly pause and reflect on how far we come and remind ourselves to celebrate some of the wins, because it can get pretty challenging, right, when you're, when you're making mistakes together and you're not moving on as fast as you'd like.
William Gladhart:Absolutely so. Before we wrap up with our final question and also some advice back to leaders, opportunity for a shameless plug about your book, because I loved it. It was a fantastic read. As a fellow musician you know there were. It hit a lot of the points and highlights, so would you just share a little bit. What was the inspiration and the cause of you writing it? And then, just in a quick nugget, what's the core of the book about?
Adam Boggs:The write was actually kind of I felt like it was part of a problem in consulting. In people consulting, you've got a hundred people that you need to make better at their job and you would define great. You take the two people that are doing it well, whether they did it well from a lucky revenue perspective or their behaviors were repeatable or not and you make everybody else do that. So it's kind of creating avatars of human beings and human performance. I feel like there's an inner artist in all of us who wants to come out and find their own kind of in this style. So that's the first part is giving people permission to adapt and flex their own style, versus feel like they have to be forced to use the corporate deck, this discovery script, this elevator pitch, et cetera. There's only one, Dave Chappelle right, he's really good at being a comedian in his style. There's Christopher Nolan, Wes Anderson, Steven Spielberg - they're all great movie directors, but they all create movies totally different and that's awesome. We should appreciate that.
Adam Boggs:The second part just to carry that thought forward is I feel like there's two types of people in the world. There's the creators and then there's the consumers. And that's to say, if you're not creating stuff, you're consuming other people's creativity. And what I find to be true not just of musicians, of artists in general or people who approach the world from an artistic lens they tend to critique other creative things, saying, well, I like this, here's why. Or I don't like this and here's why. If you only consume and you don't approach the world through that lens, then you judge stuff Right and you say this sucks, this is wrong and the world doesn't need more consumer mindsets. In that world. It's a much more enjoyable world when we say I want to give you some advice or my perspective, even if you don't agree with it from an artistic viewpoint. So that's kind of the genesis behind the book.
William Gladhart:Yeah, no, I love that and there were a few elements that struck me in. There is because, having played in professional orchestras, et cetera, as a violinist, that you know the leader has the opportunity to be the conductor of all the different pieces that are happening within the organization. But, like if you can't hear them or you don't understand what's going on or you don't have some context around, who's there makes it very difficult to make all those pieces happen and move. So, as we wrap up today, is there anything you'd like to share with fellow leaders?
Adam Boggs:Going back to culture and maybe this conversation. I use this metaphor in the book, but I think cultures is like jazz, it's dynamic, it's improvisational, it's unpredictable, but there is a structure, there's a theme, there's some constraints right, you're playing a similar genre, but you have to trust the team. There's sort of a shared rhythm and some adaptability to make it really grow. And cultures aren't fixed. They're constantly evolving and adapting. And just know that the longer you're in a company, the harder that is to maintain, and that's OK. It might be that it's evolving for a good reason because of younger people with bright, new, innovative ideas.
William Gladhart:Yeah, that's fantastic. So, Adam, I've enjoyed having you on our Leadership Levers Podcast today. Thank you again for your insights.
William Gladhart:Sure, thanks Will. Thank you again for your insights.
William Gladhart:Thank you for joining us on the Leadership Levers Podcast. Find all our Leadership Levers episodes on the Culture Think Tank website at www. theculturethinktank. com, or listen on your favorite streaming platform. We'd love to hear from you about the challenges you have faced as a leader. Tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experiences in strengthening culture and performance, one action at a time.
