As a leading keynote speaker, author, and advisor on innovation, Stephen Shapiro has developed a proven approach for increasing speed, reducing risk, and improving innovation Return On Investment tenfold. For the past 20 years, Stephen has been helping organizations accelerate the way they innovate by helping them create a culture of innovation at 24/7 Innovation. In 2020, Stephen founded the Invisible Solutions Institute, which provides powerful tools, processes, and frameworks for creating a culture of innovation and instilling a systematic approach to problem-solving.

Shapiro turns heads, opens minds, and captivates audiences with his provocative results-focused content. He has shared his message in over 50 countries, and his work has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and many more top-rated news outlets. For any organization that requires rapid and predictable change – from developing new products/services to creating new business models – Stephen’s challenge-centered philosophy promises to accelerate innovation.

In this episode, Stephen and Bryan discuss:

  • Defining your company’s value
  • Training a few employees so they can train others
  • Why expertise is the enemy of innovation

The show is shared on the following platforms: 

Transcript:

Bryan Wish:

Stephen, welcome to the One Away Show.

Stephen Shapiro:

Hey, Bryan, fantastic to be here.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah. It’s a pleasure to have you here. I’ve enjoyed our initial conversations and your spirit and your purple that I see every time. So, Stephen, what is the one away moment that you want to share with us today?

Stephen Shapiro:

Yeah. As you can imagine everybody has a lot of different moments, but there’s one that’s definitely probably most meaningful for me. And it was sitting in a hotel room in Upstate New York, after a long day working with a client. And as background, I was at Accenture, and one of the things that I was doing in the early 1990s was I was one of the co-leads for what was called our business process re-engineering practice. And basically what this meant was we’d go to companies and we would re-engineer their processes, we’d make their processes more efficient. Basically what we did was we made a company need less resources because when you made a company more efficient, well, you could downsize the workforce. And I knew a lot of people were losing their jobs as a result of this efficiency work that we were doing, but it didn’t hit home.

Stephen Shapiro:

It was literally tens if not hundreds of thousands of people lost jobs. In fact, this one project I was working on the CEO before we got started on this project said, “10,000 people are going to lose their job as a result of the work that you’re leading.” And again, it was just such a big number that it didn’t really mean a lot to me until I went back to the hotel. After working at this project, turned on the TV and there was a story about three high level executives at this company who lost their jobs a year earlier. And what had transpired, one person was sort of upbeat and happyish living off of inheritance, still didn’t have a job, but at least was in good shape financially. Second person cried the entire interview because he couldn’t feed his family, couldn’t get a job so he had a mow lawns just to put food on the table, and the third person committed suicide.

Stephen Shapiro:

And so I went back into the office the next day and asked if this really happened and I was told, “Yeah, that was an accurate reporting.” And I literally walked off the project that day, never returned to the project, quit the company. It ended up being more of a leave of absence. They didn’t process my resignation, but it was a six month leave of absence. And I thought to myself, “I like what I’m doing, but I don’t like the negative impact on companies.” And so I decided I wanted to focus on innovation, on growth and helping companies hire more people rather than making efficient, which means they’re going to have less people. And that to me was a pivotal moment in everything I’ve done in the 25 years since then as a result of that TV show in that hotel room.

Bryan Wish:

Wow. Wow. Holy moly. Well, thank you for sharing. I would love to ask a couple questions around that. When you turned on the TV, you saw the impact of your work clearly was devastating to a couple, took a life. How did you feel inside? What was going through your emotional space at that time?

Stephen Shapiro:

Yeah. It’s one of those existential moments where you ask yourself, “Is this really what all my hard work is about? It’s nice to get a paycheck and do work that companies and shareholders appreciate, but can I do more?” And I know now that’s really become a big part of people’s motivations for working, is not just to get a paycheck, but to make a positive difference in the world. 25 years ago for most people, I think it was really more about the paycheck, but I just had this existential crisis where I thought, “This does not feel right. Something needs to change.” But I didn’t know what it was, that’s why I took the leave of absence for six months and I literally would go to the beach and I would just think. I would read books. I took workshops. I just needed to figure out where am I going? And fortunately I figured out where I wanted to go. And fortunately, I found enough supporters inside the company to help me make that a reality.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah. Wow. Must have been a lot to process, take on, but thank God you did, right? Just for context, how old were you in your career when this happened?

Stephen Shapiro:

It’s a good question. Must have been late 20s I think, just around 30 years old, somewhere around there. If it’s 25 years ago, yeah, that’s about right it was probably about 30. It was early enough in my career, if you catch something early you can make a big change in trajectory. And so pretty much everything I’ve been doing since then has been focused on growth and innovation. And what was really cool is I didn’t think that so many people would buy into my vision, but eventually I found some people who said, “This is really cool. We want to do this.” And we grew it to 20,000 people inside the company. We had 20,000 people who were interested in learning about this. They learned it.

Stephen Shapiro:

We trained 20,000 people. We wrote books on it for these 20,000 people and their clients. I know what we created on the back of that was spectacular and impactful to this day. I’ve given speeches where somebody was in the audience who was at Accenture at the time when we rolled out this program on innovation and process and growth. And people remembered everything about the program from 15, 20 years previously, which always just blows me away that people loved the material that much. And it’s become the basis of everything I’ve done since, which is again going out and really hopefully making work a better place for people so we can create jobs, and that will stimulate the economy. That’s really my purpose.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah. It’s great that you were able to find that, and also take that period to dig in and go through, sounds like personal transformation in your own way. You went from a place of operating mindset of maybe reduction to maybe innovation and growth. Imagine there’s a tunnel and at the beginning of the tunnel is reduction, at the end of the tunnel is growth and you had to go through this messy middle to maybe see the light and then enter into this next phase of your work and all the things you’ve been able to do. What happened between your life altering moment to realizing, “Hey, I can step into my life’s work.” What were some of the things that I’ll listen to, maybe reading, conversations you were having, things where you maybe woke up and said, “I think it’s this growth and innovation thing that is much more exciting, brings my full skills to life.”

Stephen Shapiro:

I can’t remember exactly what I was reading and what classes I was taking, but I will say that the core was just recognizing that… There was a quote once that I heard from Jack Welch, I saw a video of him speaking, and he said, “For the past handful of years we’ve been squeezing lemons. We can’t squeeze anymore lemons, it’s time to grow lemons.” And that just always stuck in my head. And so I realized, “Okay, well, I’ve been squeezing lemons for a long time. How do we grow lemons?” Innovation back in 1995 was not a word that was really widely used. It was basically limited to product development departments. It just wasn’t a popular topic the way it is right now where everybody talks about it, nobody does it right. And so what got me from that moment in the hotel to making it happen was first of all getting that clarity that I wanted to grow lemons and then getting support for it.

Stephen Shapiro:

So I remember the first few people I talked to inside the company while I was on the leave of absence, I said, “Hey, I’ve got this great idea. We need to create a practice around growth and making companies bigger and more revenues and things of that nature.” And I remember a couple people looked at me and said, “Well, if that’s what you want to do, you’re in the wrong company.” And so I got that message from several people, but fortunately there were a couple people who were mentors and people in positions of power that eventually conversations with them when I started to share my vision they’re like, “Yeah, why not? This is something we should be doing. Why not?”

Stephen Shapiro:

And so one partner that I worked with, he said, “We’re doing this new practice right now. We’re reorganizing the company. And I think what you’re talking about would fit nicely over here.” So he introduced me to someone else. That person who was basically in charge of this group said, “I love this. Let’s make it happen.” And we just created this incredible experience that is carried on to this day for many people.

Stephen Shapiro:

Had I not found those few people who really supported it, I don’t know what would’ve happened. So it’s always like the movie Sliding Doors, which is a fantastic movie if you haven’t seen. It could be just a very small moment that has a total change in trajectory. If I had not met the person who really was supportive of it, I don’t know. Certainly wouldn’t have gone anywhere inside the company, but I don’t even know where I would’ve gone. Maybe I would’ve done something completely different. Maybe I would’ve left the company. Maybe I would’ve been dejected and gone back to what I was doing before. I have no idea.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah, totally. Well, I love that you kept beating down the doors or to find the right people to help you accelerate a vision and not take no for an answer and not get dejected after the first couple, “Hey, this isn’t going to fit here.” What I love too is you’re able to leverage a brand and maybe corporate resources to build a vision, to get the training wheels off, they understand what you were working with. So a more detailed question that I have or something I’d be super curious about is, okay, so you had this vision you wanted to help companies grow, expand, do all these things, where did you start? How did you think about implementing this and building and organizing, and then also making it worthwhile for Accenture and then the people you worked with from there? It must have been complex and really exciting and all the things. I’m curious what you did.

Stephen Shapiro:

So I think that the key thing was, instead of trying to create something that’s totally new and separate from the business, I try to find something that would be connected to something the business was already interested in investing in making that happen. So the first thing we did wasn’t the most successful piece of work, but the company was redoing all of its methodology. So basically, at least back then every person in the company went through training programs in the methodology so that when you got onto a project, if you were working with somebody from a different state, different country, different experience, at least we all had the same language. And so the first thing I was able to do was to find the people working on the methodology and said, “Hey, let’s build what we’re working on into the methodology so that it now becomes part of the language and understanding for everyone.”

Stephen Shapiro:

And that was good, but it wasn’t the most powerful thing. What really became most powerful was when this new organization, the process competency is what it was called, and I said, “Well, maybe we can’t sell innovation, but people want process. What if we talk to the process people, what if we use process as the Trojan Horse for innovation. How do we get our foot in the door? It’s not with innovation, but it’s with process.” But if you looked at the materials, everything was around innovation. The cornerstone of all of our process work that we were giving to people was, how do you think differently? How do you identify value? Well, value is all around innovation. How do your customers define value? How do you then develop new solutions? All that work really came from linking what we were trying to achieve to something the organization already had at least some level of interest and investment in, as opposed to saying, “Hey, let’s create a totally new group around innovation,” that probably would’ve failed miserably.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah. Wow. I think it’s so interesting what you said though about innovation, right? That a lot of the focus was there, but what you found was within the process, if you got that right it could create the right innovation. I just want to clarify that’s what you said, right?

Stephen Shapiro:

Yeah. A lot of our work at that time was installing ERP systems like SAP or Oracle. And so there’s a lot of work that was technology, still is a technology company, but back then it was a lot of software implementations. What we really try to get people to do is we’re not trying to get them to be anything other than they are, if you’re an expert in software, that’s fantastic. But instead of just putting in software, just installing software, step back for a moment and ask, “What can we do to create the greatest value leveraging this software? What are the problems and the opportunities that our clients have that the software can be an enabler towards?” And just some of those simple mindset shifts with people who are doing the same work they were always doing, but we would have them just pause for a moment, step back and make sure they really understand how do we define value? What are the biggest opportunities? And how do we build solutions around that rather than just going with the solution hoping it creates value?

Bryan Wish:

Yeah, no, it sounds like you really layered in some of the fundamentals in the way to make sure the thinking or the road that you went down wasn’t just, “Let’s pick solution and run, but let’s thoughtfully think it through with a more careful lens.”

Stephen Shapiro:

Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Bryan Wish:

Cool. What I understand is you were in front of designing this, in rolling it out to the company, correct?

Stephen Shapiro:

Yes.

Bryan Wish:

Wow. When you look back to that period, I know you talked about some of the results, but when you look up back on the impact of that work and people are still, seems like being impacted to this day from that work and that blueprint that you laid, how do you think it shaped you the most? How do you think you changed the most from that work? And maybe how was your feeling inside previously a place to despair, now at a place of… Yeah. I’m just curious what this moment taught you about yourself.

Stephen Shapiro:

Well, I think there were a few things, and I look back on my career and that’s probably one of my fondest memories of my entire career. And it’s not just because of the impact. Yeah. When you can create something that 20,000 people are touching and appreciating and valuing, and then those 20,000 people bring it to their clients. So you’re talking about hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people potentially being impacted by the work that was very meaningful, but it was also the team which I loved working with. So I had this team of people and they were just spectacular. We all saw the world a little differently, which was great. And we brought our own unique strengths to the table to create a one day training program. And that one day training program, we took everything we could possibly think that would be of value, stripped anything out that wouldn’t be of value and created this incredible one day experience.

Stephen Shapiro:

And then what we did was we identified inside the organization, I think it was 200 or 300 people who were already experts in this general area, our more senior experts in this area. And we put them through a three day train the trainer. So we didn’t just have the one day class. We had a three day train the trainer where I went to England and I went to Asia and I went to multiple places in the United States where I would personally train hundreds of people. And then those hundreds of people were actually the ones who delivered the training to the 20,000.

Stephen Shapiro:

And it was that model where in nine months we went from, “Hey, we’ve got this idea to create this program to wow 20,000 people have gone through the program.” Actually 40,000 people received copies of the book that we wrote to support it. We had other materials that went along with it. And that to me was it was also just fantastic from a process perspective, getting it done as quickly, learning the power of leverage, understanding that if this small team had to get it to 20,000 people, we wouldn’t get there, but by creating those advocates of 200 to 300 people, well, boom, all of a sudden everything became really powerful. And from there we created other structures to just make sure we kept on reinforcing it and reinforcing it. And it was just a really incredible experience.

Bryan Wish:

That’s great. Yeah. It seems like you saw the power of just momentum, build with right strategy process, plan, and then obviously going back tens of thousands of people all at once. For you, that’s super cool and neat that you had the reins to do it. I’m sure you were very diplomatic and very thoughtful in your approach, but very, very cool. Tell me if I’m off piers, you had one experience of this early part of your career that was completely something, a road that you knew right then and there, “I do not want to go down.” You went through six months of navigation and you found growth in expansion and helping companies think it with an innovative lens or even right at Accenture at your home base. So you had two very important experiences and they both taught you. How did you start thinking about what was ahead for yourself? Once you had this under your belt and you built this out, where did you go next and why?

Stephen Shapiro:

So one of the people that we partnered with in the development of this program, unfortunately he passed away, but he’s Dr. Michael Hammer. So anybody who’s been around in business for a while might know the name. Dr. Hammer was really the creator of business process reengineering, but he was also just the most brilliant speaker that I’d ever seen. The guy was just amazing. His book Reengineering the Corporation was the second bestselling book of all time or second bestselling business book of all time back in the ’90s. In 1996, Time magazine selected him as one of the 25 most influential people in the world, not just the business world, but the world. And so I got to know him and work with him and see what he was doing.

Stephen Shapiro:

And I remember in 1996, it was November of 1996. So we were working with him on some re-engineering work and then as we were doing this innovation work, we also were continuing to work with him in… I remember writing in a journal that I wanted to be the Michael Hammer of the next wave. And what that meant to me was writing books, giving speeches and traveling the world. And I said I want to do this within five years. So that was November 1st, 1996. Totally forgot about the notebook. Didn’t really think about where I’m going.

Stephen Shapiro:

November 1st, 2001, literally five years to the day, left Accenture, my first book was published and I started my career as a speaker. I always Marvel at this intention that I put out there basically was created without me doing anything explicitly to make it happen. And so to me, that was that next big shift is for the past 20 years, I’ve had my own business now for 20 years, but that all came on the back of being influenced and inspired by someone else setting that intention and then somehow everything just coming to fruition the way it has. That’s what I try to do with most of my business.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah. I mean, when you set that internal compass, it’s funny how the right things just start showing up at the right times and you don’t really have to work. They read a book it’s called Power versus Force and it’s like, “Yeah, you need to be so forceful with it.” You said it, the intention and the thing showed up and you went after what felt right and you made it happen. But also the fact you found someone to emulate and learn from and say, this is someone I want to model in my own life. It sounds like someone very prominent. I’ve not heard of Michael myself, but so neat you had that kind of someone take you under their wing.

Stephen Shapiro:

It definitely helps to be inspired by someone to know what the future could look like. And so for me that was certainly… Because I just watched him and I was always mesmerized by how well he spoke and the quality of his stories and the work he was doing and the impact that he was making. And that’s really where I wanted to go with my business. I’ve not reached the same level of prominence that Dr. Hammer did during his time yet. Yeah, exactly. We still got a lot of time here, but for me in the space of innovation, that’s really what I’ve been trying to do for the past 25 years, is just get the word out, help companies do it, help individuals do it.

Stephen Shapiro:

And one of the things which I’m really starting to see about myself is even though I’ve been in the speaking industry for 20 years giving a lot of speeches, I’m at the point where for the past few years I’ve been shifting my business a lot because I want to really see deep impact. And speeches are great and I can influence hundreds or thousands of people at a time, but you can’t gain any level of mastery with an hour. And so I’ve just had this shift rate lately where I’ve said, “You know what? I just want to feel like I’m making a deeper difference, a bigger difference.” And that’s as you and I have talked, I’ve been shifting my business more and more towards fewer speeches and more deeper mastery building results focused work for my clients.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah. Well, you seem to follow your intuitive calling and then things that you should be doing quite well, as obviously the pandemic created that opportunity I think for a lot of people to rethink and rejig what they’d been doing for so long. I know that you just went away for a week or so in a cave in Florida at some hotel to begin that retooling process for yourself. The big question I had for you is you said, “I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t get to the level of mastery or impact that I wanted.” Let’s say five years from now, you’ve created a product line to go deep and you have created that level of mastery with clients that you’re working with, what does that look like? If you have a paint brush, paint your vision for me of what that looks like in a fulfilling and meaningful way.

Stephen Shapiro:

For me, a lot of it comes down to making sure that I’m working with people at a level where they’re not just able to understand concepts, but they’re able to think the way I think, they’re able to do what I do, and they’re able to apply it to their businesses. And so I have this mastery program that I’ve been doing with a number of companies, and it’s just absolutely amazing to see the results, not just because people are leaving learning something new, but as they apply it, they’re generating real value, but they’re also having personal insights. And then what gets exciting about that is once they have that level of mastery, they want to share that level of mastery with others. And that becomes sort of this scaling within the organization. And so what we’re doing is we’re going into these companies and we start with a small, small group of people and just give them everything they could possibly need and work them hard till they are brilliant at this process.

Stephen Shapiro:

They then work with others and then it cascades to the point where you get some scale inside the organization. So ultimately I would love, and it’s not about having thousands of companies, but to me, it’s really having dozens of companies that have started with this small group of masters that have then scaled it to the point where now they have this big network of people inside the organization who are all using the same thought process. They’re all generating the same level of value, and it just is helping to accelerate the way organizations innovate in the way they do business. That’s ultimately what I want, because if I can help more companies grow at a greater level that creates more opportunities for employees, it creates a better workplace for people. All those things feed on each other.

Bryan Wish:

Absolutely. And that cascading, I love what you said, that cascading effect, how the work with one can multiply to thousands. Similar to what you did with Accenture, one by one by one to tens of thousands, right? And taking that similar approach, doing it obviously your own way and obviously what you know how to do best, but now rejigging it in a way that makes sense to you and now organizations. So must feel really good directionally to have a sense of where you’re going.

Stephen Shapiro:

It’s just nice to have clarity. I didn’t think of it till really right now, but that existential meltdown that I had in 1995 sitting in the hotel room, realizing that my life’s work was not having a positive impact on the world. I think that’s what’s happened to me over the past few years, is it’s not that my work hasn’t had a positive impact, it certainly has, but it hasn’t had the depth of impact that I’ve wanted. And that’s really been I think the big shift for me, is okay, it’s not about quantity of people and quantity of events and quantity of companies, I can do that, but I really want to focus on the quality of the relationships, deep, deep relationships with companies that are truly committed to making the workplace better and growing their businesses. Having that clarity helps a lot because as you know, you can’t do everything, you got to figure out where you’re going to focus your energies. I’m very clear now what I’m focusing my energies on.

Bryan Wish:

Well, so I have a question, but just want to share that. I think you and I are value aligned on similar level that the work we want to do is deepened by nature. We want to feel that connection, we want to see the transformation happen, right? So someone, on my end can live out their dream in their most authentic path and we build it, for you, helping a company do that in their own right and grow and expand. And so my question for you is rooted from insights from my own journey is how do you get deep with a company? What’s the discovery process? What kind of questions are you asking to uncover the ideas that you’re working to implement? How does it work for you to build such a meaningful relationship with the business to then go have that cascading impact?

Stephen Shapiro:

But I think the key thing is to recognize I’m not coming in as a consultant. A consultant’s role in many cases is to go in, do an assessment, figure things out, make recommendations, and then leave and then it’s left to the company to either implement it or if it’s getting implemented by the consultant, next time you have a problem, you have to bring the consultant back. So I’m really trying to create self sustaining organizations. And so I don’t need to be an expert in the industry. I don’t need to be an expert in the company. I know my process. I have a fast innovation model. It’s a four step process. And that model I know works because I’ve seen it work over and over and over again. And so what I do is I have a way of getting people to understand every facet of that model.

Stephen Shapiro:

So for example, if I’m working with these masters and one version of my program it’s a year long program. The first six months, I take two people every week, one on one we meet, but before we meet, they get content around a particular topic and they have to digest that content, think about that content, apply that content, talk about it with their team, and then come to me. And we do this over and over and over for 26 weeks to the point where by the time we get to the 26 weeks, they’ve not just learned it, they’ve not just taught it, but they’ve applied it and generated the value. And it’s a very systematic approach I use to get people to that level of mastery, but then it’s the second six months where we now start to get to the scaling.

Stephen Shapiro:

We bring on a group of a couple dozen people. And the people that I went through this intense process with, they now start working with this other group with my support so that over the course of the next six months we’ve gone from a couple people to a couple dozen people. And from there we cascaded even further to hundreds and thousands of people, depending on what the client wants to do, but it’s a very systematic process that just works because it works.

Stephen Shapiro:

And the reason why it works also is that I’m not trying to be the expert in the company, I’m working with the people who are the experts in the company to help them be able to solve problems, identify opportunities, prioritize investments, and implement new innovation. But they’re the ones who make it happen and they can do it over and over and over again, rather than relying on me. My goal is to be irrelevant or somebody who a company, once they go through this program, a company can say, we never, ever, ever need to hire you again because we have everything we need to sustain ourselves. That’s my ultimate goal.

Bryan Wish:

Super cool. I’m a process driven thinker and so I can appreciate your style because I think good process creates good repeatability and good repeatability creates long term results and impact. So I just would love the way you’re thinking in this next chapter. The question that I had for you is, on the business side what types of companies are you working with? Who’s your entry point into those companies? I have to imagine maybe the CEO or the leadership team. How are you making this or how do you envision or foresee this coming to life as you get going?

Stephen Shapiro:

It’s typically four different categories, maybe five. Certainly anybody who is the chief innovation officer or the VP of innovation or has an innovation leadership title, that’s an obvious logical place where people become interested. Sometimes it’s for learning and development. It might not be the same level of intensity that I just described, but I have different ways of delivering it. And so I’m working with learning development organizations for the high potential employees. And then sometimes it might be for a C level executive like you were saying. If it’s a smaller organization, most of my clients are bigger organizations, so it tends to be a level or two down.

Stephen Shapiro:

And then the last category related to innovation but it’s more people in the product development side of things, people who really are developing something new all the time. Those are the four main categories that I tend to work with, but it’s really for any company that wants to be able to grow the business. I mean, it could be sales people, marketing people. The methodology I use works with every single person in an organization.

Bryan Wish:

Nice. I got it. Wow. And I can imagine from what you’re saying is, okay, so you break through work with an organization, tell me about the ripple effects that you see. So you’re going to go in and implement this process, create the cascading effects. If I’m an employee at company, let’s say we’re on product development @ancestry.com and you come in and you do an engagement, how do you want it to change through your process my thinking to go and do my job better to help the company grow? What does that look like?

Stephen Shapiro:

A lot of it has to do with the way we see the world. Most of us look at the world through our past experiences. And unfortunately in many situations, expertise is the enemy of innovation, because what happens is our past experiences influence almost all of our decisions. And we assume that what we know is relevant in the future, but when the pace of change outside the organizations, as fast as it is, what we knew doesn’t mean it’s what we should know, we need to relearn and unlearn and focus differently. And so to me that’s the key tools that I give people is, being able to see the world differently, being able to almost put aside their past experiences to be able to identify what assumptions do they make and really start developing solutions that meet the needs of the market today and tomorrow.

Stephen Shapiro:

We want things that are going to be durable and are going to stand the test of time. And we also want things that are going to be disruption proof, that aren’t going to be something which a new technology’s going to come in and make you irrelevant, or a new competitor’s going to come in and make you irrelevant, or even more challenging for some companies is societal changes making you irrelevant, because if you’re in the tobacco industry, you were doing well a number of years ago, but struggling more now. Sugary drinks, same thing. So all these shifts. And I give people the tools and the mindset to be able to always look at the world with a fresh set of eyes to be able to identify what’s the most valuable opportunity to go after, and the tools to be able to solve those problems and opportunities to bring them to fruition to create the greatest value as quickly as possible.

Bryan Wish:

Totally. We get so stuck in these routines or this monotony of it’s how we do our job. It’s how we show up. But really instilling that creative forward thinking mentality of we can script the rules of how we’ve gotten here to break some things down and do things differently. It’s an interesting way to work with a company. Now, my question to you would be, let’s say what’s a company that you don’t admire for innovation? Then I’m going to have a follow up question. When you look at companies out there that you’re like, I would love to help because they struggle with innovation, who you define.

Stephen Shapiro:

Right. I’m not going to mention specific companies. But I will say that there are, I think it’s companies that have been happy being a commodity for a long period of time, that commodity’s no longer valued the same way that it was. Companies that believe that they have all the answers, because to me, once you think you have all the answers, you’re in trouble, it’s really about figuring out what are the right questions to ask. And so when I look at my clients, if you think about a bell curve of sorts, my clients aren’t the ones who already think of themselves as highly innovative because they probably have the resources to do it, at least their way might be different than the way I would do it, but they’re not my primary target. Especially since I only want to work with a handful of clients a year.

Stephen Shapiro:

It’s also not the companies that are happy where they are, and aren’t willing to change, it’s the ones who say, I’m not satisfied with the trajectory that our organization is going. If we go down the path we’ve always gone or we are going right now, we’re going to be out of business. Those are the ones, because when I look at innovation, I use the words growth and some people might say creativity or novelty or ideas, but the reality is I look at innovation through the lens of relevance. How do we create an organization that is relevant? And what I mean by relevant is it’s like we offer something that the market desperately wants and needs that no one else has been able to offer, and be able to do that on a sustainable regular basis. That to me is the game. Those are the people who I like to work with that do that, not the people who are just happy with what has worked in the past.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah. Completely, completely. And I think you’re right, right? You got to find the tribe of people who want to make change. So more acutely, let’s just say you found that tribe, the company you’re working with, you found the tribe, maybe at the product level or different positions, they realize, “Hey, this is work. We need to do, the head of innovation.” And again, if I’m speaking out of my pay grade here, you can tell me, but sometimes the CEO or that core members of that leadership team they’re setting a culture from the top down, maybe that company has gotten there because people who run culture, who create those effects downward haven’t prioritized innovation in the way that is necessary even though there might be a head of innovation, how do you combat challenges when you’re trying to create shifts, maybe at a high level within the business, but you’re maybe competing with the downward force that it’s not always aligned to the work you’re trying to do?

Stephen Shapiro:

I think part of it is everything I do has to be aligned with the direction of the organization. I mean, trying to row the boat against the currents makes no sense. So it’s why even though I work with a handful of people and we scale that over time, it really starts with just making sure what we are talking about is aligned with where the CEO wants to go and where the executive team wants to be and where the shareholders want to go. So we can’t create something that’s going to go against the tide and have much level of success.

Bryan Wish:

Got it.

Stephen Shapiro:

To me, that’s the entry point into an organization. And what’s really cool is when you do this work, even if it’s several levels down from the CEO, what’s been really cool is the word gets up and they’re like, “This is interesting.” And so I’ve worked with CEOs of companies that are tens and tens of billions of dollars who all of a sudden, “Whoa, what’s going on here? This is very interesting.” And companies have changed the way they make strategic and financial decisions based on this. We can still influence the direction, but if it’s antithetical, if it’s the opposite of what the leadership wants, we’d have to really take a long hard look as to whether or not it’s going to make sense.

Stephen Shapiro:

The first thing I would do in those situations is not my mastery program, but it would really be more of an influencer program where I work with the leadership team to better understand and drive the direction for the leadership team so that we can make sure that what we are about to embark on makes sense. And that’s very powerful. So my work around differentiation, for example, if a company doesn’t understand how they differentiate and isn’t clear in what they need to do to differentiate, then the rest of my work doesn’t really matter that much, because if they’re really just going after something that’s a commodity, they’re always going to be a commodity. And so sometimes I will always start with the top leadership to make sure we have that alignment there before we get into the actual mechanics of the program.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah. Makes total of sense. I love that you have a way that if you need to work with a leadership team, you can do that because you can get aligned, make sure you’re aligned there so when you go and then work with other parts, you can see transformation or innovation changes from top down, bottoms up, all areas. So it seems like you’re thinking and will be executing right, in a very holistic sense in a way that can drive massive change down in the organization. Very exciting.

Stephen Shapiro:

Yeah. Yeah. I find at the end of the day I like to work with the people who are doing the work. Some of the smartest leaders recognize that the CEO, the C-suite can’t have a complete perspective on what’s needed. It’s the people who are talking to the customers with people who are in the trenches doing the work, they’re the ones who are going to always identify the opportunities when given the tools. And that to me is what I love doing, is helping the people, middle management. People give middle management a bad name. It’s like, “Hey, they’re the ones who block innovation.” But no, they don’t have to be. You give them the tools, they’re going to be the best advocates for it because they’ve got the voice of people above them and they’ve got the respect of the people below them. That to me is actually a really great place to start, is middle management, because they have the greatest potential influence in the organization.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah, absolutely love it. And I’m really excited for your journey ahead. While we’re here in the closing minutes, Stephen, I’d love for you to tell us a little bit about Invisible Solutions, the book behind your decked out purple light, purple book, purple shirt, all the things well branded. So what would love to know about the book and where to find you.

Stephen Shapiro:

Sure. So the book Invisible Solutions came out basically at the very, very start of the pandemic, March 3rd, 2020. Did not plan that when I wrote the book, but there you go. And the general premise of the book is that everybody’s looking for solutions, but the best way to find solutions is to not look for solutions, but rather to solve the right problem, are we reframing the problem? So Invisible Solutions is based on work that I’ve done for over a decade around lenses. I have these 25… Actually I have a whole catalog more, but the book is 25 lenses that allow you to reframe any problem, multiple ways so that you can ultimately find a solution that you probably wouldn’t have seen.

Stephen Shapiro:

So the whole point of Invisible Solutions is to find solutions that are right in front of your nose, but you can’t see them. So like when you go to the optometrist and they got those giant things that they put in front of your face and you look at the wall trying to read the letters and you can’t see them till they put the right lens. Well, the lenses I’ve created help you see something that’s there, but it’s been invisible to you. It’s a really practical and powerful book and I’m super proud of it.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah, I bet. It sounds like a ton of thought went into it and what works, what doesn’t and what you’ve learned, and I’m sure a lot of research to help drive good decisions, amongst many other things. Stephen, where can people find you get in touch with you, hire you for all the great things that you’re up to?

Stephen Shapiro:

The easiest place just to go to the website, SteveShapiro.com, that will take you to the website. And then from there, if you want to learn about Invisible Solutions, you can certainly do that. If you want to learn more about the book, because the book is based on lenses, go to getthelenses.com and then you can download the 25 lenses for free and get some videos and other materials. So that’s sometimes a great place to start is just getthelenses.com and it’ll redirect you to the page where you can get all those goodies for nothing.

Bryan Wish:

Awesome. Well, this was a blast. I so appreciate your time, your energy, spirit, effort, all the things, Stephen. Been really fun getting to know you and can’t wait to put this out to the world.

Stephen Shapiro:

Yeah. I really enjoyed the provocative questions and as I’m here trying to answer, you’re really getting me to think. So I just appreciate someone who does a really great job at interviews.

Bryan Wish:

I wasn’t going to come on and just give you the normal. Come on, you should know me by now.

Stephen Shapiro:

Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Bryan Wish:

All right. Well, see you soon.

Stephen Shapiro:

All right. Take care.