Innovators on Tap

On the first episode of this new season, we have an incredible guest. I sit down with John Coyle, an Olympic medalist, sought after speaker, design thinking expert, and a best-selling author.

But John’s success has been far from a liner path. After failing to qualify for the 1992 U.S. Olympic Speedskating Team, he decided to quit, abandon what was considered best practice at the time, and instead he trained by himself in a completely different way. Instead of working to better manage his weaknesses, he focused on maximizing his strengths. This approach led to John a Silver Medal in the 1994 Olympic Games, a U.S. record and an unofficial world record.

But that is only the beginning of John’s story as we talk about his later work with Lance Armstrong and former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling - and then we get into his unique ideas and insight around leadership and innovation - including the realization that I spent far too much time focusing on what team needed to do better, instead of putting them in positions to maximize their strengths.

Learn more about John here.

If you have an opinion on these topics, please feel free to email us through the contact page. The best ideas often stem from the intersection of different points of view.

You can follow the podcast and host Chuck Swoboda on Twitter for further exploration and discussion on innovation.

Gears. Bearings. Conveyors. Drainage systems. Plumbing fixtures. Not what you first think of when it comes to innovation - but areas that maybe even more affected by innovation that all those tech companies that we normally think about.

Why? Because while we often associate coming up with a new idea as the hard part of innovation, transforming existing industries can be even harder.

It’s the real world for most of us.

Today’s guest, Todd Adams, is the CEO of Rexnord, one of the real world companies driving innovation across several different industries. But like many successful leaders, he never imagined himself in that role. As he revealed during our conversation:

“I never aspired to be CEO. I wanted to contribute to the success of an organization and learn along the way”

Whether you want to be a CEO or not, Todd has some great advice about how you should go about any opportunity.

“Make sure you want to do things for the right reason. People sometimes aspire to roles because they want the title, the recognition, the money...but you actually have to love the job”

If you take away one piece of career advice from all the episodes we’ve done so far, that might just be the best.

You can follow the podcast and host Chuck Swoboda on Twitter for further exploration and discussion on innovation.

The episode is also available wherever else you listen to podcasts. Enjoy!!

When we talk about innovation, we often focus on disrupting certain industries, but innovation also requires you to embrace personal disruption: your beliefs will be challenged, your direction will be changed, and your responsibilities will be shifted.

Today’s guest, Abim Kolawole, has embraced personal disruption throughout his entire career. Starting out as a lawyer for the SEC, he pivoted into running the claims business at Northwestern Mutual, and then pivoted again to his current role as VP of Digital Innovation. When I asked him about the winding path he has taken, he said:

“Your career journey is about optionality. You have to keep your options open to maximize opportunity. ”

But this episode is not just about Abim’s story, but rather its about the classic Innovator’s Dilemma: why large, successful, well managed companies struggle to adopt new innovations and technologies even though they see them coming.

We also discuss how large companies can use a crisis to force themselves to innovate, how to build a team that can accomplish innovation and not just talk about it, and the necessity to be rapidly adaptable in today’s fast-paced society.

You can follow the podcast and host Chuck Swoboda on Twitter for further exploration and discussion on innovation.

The episode is also available wherever else you listen to podcasts. Enjoy!