The primary focus of this discussion centers around the transformative concept of the Living Organization, as articulated by our esteemed guest, Norman Wolf. As the founder and CEO of Quantum Leaders, Norman elucidates a revolutionary perspective on leadership and organizational dynamics, positing that organizations should be viewed not as mechanistic entities, but as living systems that necessitate nurturing and development. Drawing upon over three decades of experience in advising executive teams, he emphasizes the imperative for leaders to adopt a more human-centric approach that integrates business outcomes with human development, fostering sustainable and soulful growth. Throughout our conversation, we explore the philosophical underpinnings of this framework and its practical implications for rethinking the foundational DNA of organizations. Norman's insights yield a compelling narrative that challenges conventional paradigms, urging leaders to cultivate environments where both individuals and organizations can thrive in tandem.

Engaging in a profound exploration of leadership and organizational dynamics, this episode features Norman Wolf, an esteemed figure in the realm of business consultancy and the founder of Quantum Leaders. Norman introduces his groundbreaking concept of the Living Organization, which advocates for a paradigm shift in how leaders perceive and interact with their organizations. Rather than viewing organizations as mechanical constructs driven solely by efficiency metrics, he argues for recognizing them as living systems that thrive on human development and emotional engagement. This perspective is particularly crucial in a world where traditional approaches to leadership have often led to disillusionment and disengagement among employees.

The dialogue reveals a startling statistic: approximately 70% of organizations struggle to effectively implement their strategies. Norman attributes this widespread failure not to a lack of competence among leaders but to a pervasive mindset that treats organizations merely as machines. He emphasizes the need for leaders to rethink their approaches, proposing that the key to unlocking success lies in nurturing the human aspects of their teams. This involves fostering a culture of trust, collaboration, and shared purpose, which in turn can lead to sustainable growth and extraordinary results.

As the conversation deepens, Norman shares insights on how leaders can cultivate an environment conducive to human flourishing within their organizations. He discusses the importance of creating opportunities for employees to contribute meaningfully to their work and the organization’s mission. By reframing the relationship between results and personal development, leaders can not only achieve their strategic objectives but also enhance the emotional and relational health of their teams. This episode serves as a vital resource for any leader or organizational stakeholder seeking to navigate the complexities of modern business by embracing a living organization mindset that honors both the human spirit and the pursuit of excellence.

Takeaways:

• The conversation emphasizes the importance of viewing organizations as living systems rather than mechanical structures, which fundamentally alters leadership strategies.
• Norman Wolfe articulates the transformative concept of the Living Organization, integrating business outcomes with human development for sustainable growth.
• The podcast discusses the paradigm trap that leaders often face, which limits their ability to execute strategies effectively and develop their organizations.
• Leaders must recognize that fostering human development is essential for achieving organizational growth and that people are not merely resources but vital contributors to success.
• The discussion highlights that a shift in mindset is necessary for leaders to engage their teams meaningfully and foster ownership rather than mere buy-in.
• Norman Wolfe's insights suggest that the future of leadership requires a focus on relationship-building and emotional intelligence to enhance organizational maturity.

Links referenced in this episode:

• quantumleaders.com
• thelivingorganization.com

The space where we explore big ideas, bold innovation, and the stories that help create deeper understanding in a rapidly changing world.

I am your host, Keith Haney.

Today's guest is someone whose work fundamentally changes how we view leadership strategy and the very nature of organizations.

Norman Wolf is a founder and CEO of Quantum Leaders and the creator of the Living Organization, a framework that integrates business outcomes with human development to create sustainable soul centered growth.

With over 35 years of advising CEOs and executive teams, Norman is a master of helping leaders see organizations not as machines to be engineered, but as living systems to be nurtured.

His insights come from decades of leadership experience, including his time at Huey Packard where he led major turnarounds and drove transformational change.

He's also served on several boards, including National Technical Systems.

He is the author of a game changing book, the Living Organization Transforming Business to Create an Extraordinary Result.

And today he's going to share his wisdom behind his model, the philosophy that drives it, and how leaders can rethink their very DNA of their organizations.

Norman, welcome to the podcast.

Keith, thank you for having me.

It's been, it's a real pleasure to be here.

And thank you for that lovely introduction.

Well, yeah, no, I'm very impressed and you're right up my alley.

I just did a dissertation on organizational change, so I'm looking forward to this conversation.

So you can.

I could have used you in my dissertation chair.

So, Norman, I'm going to ask you my favorite question.

What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Wow, This might sound trite, but it has a lot of depth to me.

Follow your heart.

Okay.

The.

Over the course of my life, both from a personal as well as a very professional business point of view, there is great wisdom to what I call the heart center or heart centered wisdom.

And it brings, it puts the very active, challenging mind into perspective.

It allows us to use the mind for what it's intended for, which is to help manifest what the heart wants.

And so yeah, I find following the heart is probably the best wisdom I've ever followed.

I love that.

That is great.

Thank you.

So I'm going to ask you because I really want to get into what your work is because it's so interesting to me.

You've spent decades working with world leaders.

Strategy, transformation.

What's first sparked the idea that organizations aren't machines but living systems?

Well, I was unconscious about it for a long time in terms of, you know, that's always the way I felt about, about organizations.

Why do you always hire me as a client?

And he said, because you helped me execute faster.

So, yeah, that made sense to me.

That's what I was always interested in, whether when I was a leader at HP or in other positions afterwards, or helping leaders.

Leaders have a responsibility to ensure the organizations perform in a way that produces the results necessary for sustainable growth.

That's the fundamental role of a leader.

And, and so helping leaders fulfill that responsibility was always what was important to me, which is a fancy way of saying we have to execute on our strategy.

We have to create what we say we want to create.

As I began to focus my consulting, really now it's more explicitly on strategy execution, I began to discover that there have been a number of studies done over the years that indicate only 30% of companies actually succeed at executing strategy.

In other words, 70% fail.

I was at a conference and somebody asked me, what do I do?

And I told them.

And she asked me, why do you.

What makes you different than any other consultant?

And I said, I think it's because I look at organizations differently.

I see them as living entities.

They have a soul, they have a purpose, they have a reason for existing.

They're just like people.

And making that statement obviously became the catalyst.

What those two things brought to my mind was if 70% of executions fail, in the context of all the wisdom we have in terms of, I mean, you wrote your doctoral thesis on organizational effectiveness and leadership, and there's no end of wisdom on what we need to do.

And leaders aren't dumb.

They're very smart, they're very committed, they're very caring.

So why aren't we moving the needle?

Why has it been 70% for over three, four decades now?

And that's when I concluded that the problem is we're stuck in the paradigm trap.

We have a way of thinking of an organization, and that way is thinking of it as a machine that needs to be optimized, made efficient in the process of converting inputs to outputs.

And with that way of looking at the challenges, it leads me to make decisions a certain way, which is actually undermining our ability.

So I shifted.

I started to think about, okay, if an organization is a person, if it operates like an individual, then the question really, is it not how do I optimize the machine, but how do I help this living person get more effective at creating the outputs or the results they want?

That changes that.

That changes everything.

Now, that's great.

I mean, it Just changes the way we frame the challenges.

What my role as leader is, how I go about achieving those results.

And I'm sure we'll get into more of the details, but that was the catalyst, that disconnect between what we know to do and the reason we're not doing it.

And the realization that we're stuck in the paradigm trap, we're stuck in a belief system that's undermining us.

What's funny about as I hear you talking about, that I'm thinking about, because my dissertation was really about how you do that in a church setting.

And what was interesting is it just hit me as you said that Jesus gave us a perfect illustration to talk about the church as a body of Christ.

He talked about it as a living organization.

And we all can't be eyes, we all can't be ears.

And you just also kind of described that business have to think that same way too.

These are all parts of a body, parts of a living, growing organization.

That's exactly right.

So as you think about that, I want to get into this idea that so many times we think about business, we think of it as a thing, not a person.

And how is it, how is growth really kind of impossible without understanding the need to do human development in the organization?

Well, yeah, that's a really good point because what we have again in, in the machine paradigm.

So this I'll keep referring to the machine paradigm as just the way we think about how we proceed to achieve our goals, right?

And in that paradigm, in that way of thinking, we have separated, we have bifurcated the role and responsibility, the focus, the challenges around how do we create results versus how do we develop our people.

You see, you got business consultants and you got organization development consultants, right?

You've got, you've got process, RE, engineering, strategy development, KPIs, goal setting, dashboards over here in the business side of houzz.

And you've got the soft side, culture and leadership.

And you know, and literally we break it up that way.

In fact, the responsibility for results is the role of leader, responsibility for people.

Well, HR will take care of that, right?

I mean, you can see it how we think.

And as you were alluding to, that's really ridiculous.

At the end of the day, the only way things get done is by people doing them.

And people are not just simply component parts of a machine.

They're living, breathing, emotional, relational, creative beings.

That's the essence of people.

And the other principle, the.

One of the key principles that I discovered is the interesting notion that When a group of people come together for a common purpose, they literally create a collective Persona.

They collect a, they create a se, an identity.

My sales team has a different set of identity than my finance team or my engineering team.

And the people within become identified with, and therefore part of a living entity called the sales team or the finance team.

The company itself collectively has its own personality.

IBM is very different than Microsoft.

Coke is very different than Amazon.

And it's not just what they do.

Their whole personality, their Persona is very different.

And how people within those organizations were very different.

My life at Pratt and Whitney Aircraft, a very aerospace oriented, structural engineering minded organization, very different than hp.

Also engineering minded, but very different culture, you might say more like different Personas.

And my behaviors changed the minute I went from one organization to the other.

I started to unconsciously adapt the behaviors of the collective I was in.

That's part of what we do.

So the notion that an organization is a person starts to rethink about how do, how does a person create outcomes?

And with people, we do stuff to get things done.

Obviously our activity is important, but people are, relationships are very important to us as people.

And so the quality and nature of my relationships will impact my activity.

Simply put, I get up in the morning, I'm feeling good, something happens, I get into conflict with my wife, oh, it's really a bad fight, and I go to work.

That energy of that conflict in my relationship at home is carrying forward into my life.

I remember early in my career some, one of my supervisors said, norman, when you come to work, you live your personal life at the door.

I was like, huh?

How do I do that?

How do I leave my.

What part of me do I leave to?

Where I take off is my right arm.

I mean, it's silly, right?

Right.

But if I'm a component, that makes sense, if I'm a person, it doesn't.

So activity and relationships, not only outside relationships, but obviously relationships within my team, relationships with my team, with other teams, very important to have how I will produce, how I will do my activity.

The third element that is very unique to humans, even different than other living systems in nature, is we are story making entities.

We create meaning in life by the stories we tell.

I just read the passage in the New Testament I think came from Mark.

There was a parable in Jesus's comment was something around that same notion.

It's the stories we tell that create our sense of reality.

And so activity, relationship and context are three elements of leading a person to create better results.

Where activity is the Only thing I care about in the machine makes sense.

That's the framework of the living organization framework.

Or that's the foundational piece of the living organization framework.

So for the leader hearing our discussion, I'm curious, who's now adopted the living organizational mindset?

What does it look like, their decision making?

How does that change different from the person who sees the IT as a organization, mechanical organization, that's non living compared to the one who sees as a living.

Tell me some decision making changes in the mindset.

Going back to one thing you implied earlier.

The way I like to say it is in the machine paradigm.

I look at my people as a resource to get results.

But when I think of it from a living organization perspective, I know that if I can develop the capability and maturity of the people, maturity becomes a key element.

Obviously when you're dealing with humans, I can develop the capability and maturity of the people.

I increase the capacity of the organization to perform more.

Makes sense.

So instead of using people to get results, why don't we use the results as the catalyst?

The challenge of getting the results as the catalyst for developing the people.

So I changed my orientation.

It's not like my job is to set the goal, set the strategy, establish the KPIs and say, here's what you have to do and I'm going to evaluate you on it.

It's like, here's our strategy, here's what we have to do.

How can I help you be more successful at doing that?

Not a lot of difference in the doing, but a very different in the framing.

A different energy about it, a different relationship about it.

So that's just one aspect.

Another aspect is we begin to think of the organization not as thousands of people, but as specific living entities.

Like I have my salesperson.

By salesperson I mean the whole collective of the sales team.

And I can ask the question, what is, what is their collective all about?

How are they being as a collective and how do I have to align that collective with our strategy?

It takes the pressure off of me of having to think about how do I align a hundred people to our strategy.

I just have to deal with one person, that collective called the salesperson or the engineering department.

So it changes the way I think about how I align and get the organization committed and taking ownership for our strategy.

Another element is in the traditional way, as I said, the leadership team will develop the strategy, figure out what the goals are, what the metrics are, and then pass them on down to the organization.

And they look for buy in.

Right?

They look to get alignment and buy in.

In our model, I don't want just buy in.

I want ownership.

I want people committed.

I want them engaged.

Well, if I want them engaged, I've got to be able to allow them to choose.

If they don't choose, they're really being nothing more than a.

A victim, if you will, or a recipient of somebody else's ideas.

And they're never going to own that.

If I came to you and I said, keith, you know, here's what you're going to do for a living, and I'm going to evaluate how good you are, that's a whole different conversation than if I said, keith, here's what we need to accomplish together.

How can you contribute?

What would you like to contribute?

Of course, there are boundaries.

You can't say, well, you know, gee, I'd like to.

I'd like to learn to fly helicopters, but we're not in the helicopter business, so, you know, probably that's not one of the options.

But I can help you find a new company if that's really what you want to do.

The conversation changes, and now, so we call it contribution agreements.

I want you to tell me how you want, want to and feel engaged and what's going to empower you to contribute to your fullest, and then how can I help you develop so that you can, you can do that.

It's very different conversations we're having now as leaders.

So those are just a few examples of what changes when you adapt this living organization framework mindset.

You've been doing this work for decades.

What trends are you seeing today that make this model even more relevant and for the future of the work that you're doing?

Well, you're right.

I've been doing this for decades.

I've been working with clients for well over 35 years.

So a couple of things I see.

One is, as a friend of mine said Norman, the world's finally catching up to you.

So that's the good news.

Being a pioneer, you wonder whether the Reagan trade's ever going to follow you along.

But it's catching up.

And I do see that.

I see there's a stronger interest in recognizing that the old patterns are not working.

We don't need more tools.

We don't need more new creative repackaging of everything we've already done.

We need a whole new mindset, and more and more people are seeing that.

So that's the good news.

The other thing is, I think the environment we're in has been for a while, but is increasingly more complex and more chaotic.

And, and that's putting greater demands on leaders to address a world that is uncertain, chaotic.

You know, most of my clients for the last year have been, especially the last year, have been dealing with so much uncertainty.

They don't know what the tariffs are going to impact.

Are they going to be tariffs?

What's the marketplace going to do?

How are the customers going to respond?

Are they economically good?

I mean, there's just so much uncertainty out there.

They can't use the old models for planning and establishing plans.

They need an organization that's much more resilient, much more fluid, much more responsive to changing demands of an organization.

And that requires an organization that's much more mature.

Maturity.

With maturity, we learn the art and skill of dealing with life.

However it shows up without getting thrown off.

That's one of the benefits of maturity.

Having been around a while, I can tell you that's one of the benefits.

But that's what we need from our organization.

So I see the world, the changing world is actually going to force leaders to rethink what they've been trained over the years to do.

And it's not that it's wrong, it's just not sufficient for today's world.

Well, that's good.

In your work, you challenge leaders to see people, to redefine how they see people.

And I know for those who are trying to wrap their minds around this shift of a living organization, what change would you say leaders need to make today?

To embrace, to really get this mindset?

I would say that probably the biggest thing is actually I was talking to a client yesterday about this very thing.

They have to see people as inherently good and wanting to make a contribution.

I think they also have to recognize that while that is true, employees overall, people in general have been trained to be highly dependent on leaders to make decisions for them.

Society overall, I mean, our education system, even universities.

I remember earlier, early in my career, universities were about creating critical thinking skills in people.

And over the decades I've watched them evolve to creating technicians, people who can have certain skills that are marketable.

Right.

That's not what universities used to be about.

So we've trained people over the years to really be dependent on leaders to make decisions for them.

And so I think one of the skills leaders really need to focus on is how can I as a leader take a group of people that aren't geared towards, have been conditioned, if you will, to be followers and have them be co creators together as A single unit like starlings, who move in lockstep with each other intuitively and with passion to achieve the goals of the organization.

I think it's a major retraining and a lot of it is maturing.

It goes back to that notion of we have to recognize as leaders, we have to add the element of maturity to capabilities to really be successful.

So in my study, I studied different types of leadership and figured out if one leadership style was more conducive or successful at changing others.

I'm curious, with all your 35 years plus of working with leaders, is there a leadership style that you've discovered struggles with this more than others?

Yes, leadership styles that are very, what you might call the heroic leadership.

The person who feels compelled to be the guiding leader, the guiding light, will struggle with this a lot.

Leaders like Hugo Choli, who was the former CEO of Best Buy and was responsible for Best Buy's turnaround.

He wrote a book called the Heart of the Company.

I think that's it.

Something along those lines.

And he speaks about leadership as being a, in my language, a heart centered journey.

You've got to be able to connect authentically with the people.

If you're going to challenge them to, to become more mature, they have to feel a sense of caring, compassion, even love for them as a human, not for them as a comp owner.

And that's going to challenge a lot of leaders to step into that.

I will tell you that those leaders I've worked with and I've trained how to go into the heart center and how to communicate from the heart center, how to relate to people from this place of love and caring and compassion and empathy find their lives actually so much easier because the people are joining them in their journey to create the results they need.

They've taken away the burden of having to be the all knowing, all powerful, heroic leader that so many leaders think they have to be.

I'm glad you mentioned it because I was going to ask you this question.

You kind of led right into it beautifully.

So many leaders are exhausted and overwhelmed.

How can your motto help them lead with more clarity, purpose and resilience?

I think I just answered that in so many ways.

Yeah, the ability to reframe your role as a leader and then learn the skills.

I mean, there are some skills you do have to learn to be able to move into this new role of leadership, but it, it takes all the tension and pressure off of you of having to be the one with all the answers all the time to situations that are unpredictable, uncertain, Constantly changing.

It's.

It's.

You know, I. I actually read a study recently.

The first study that I've ever read where they measured the.

The way leaders are feeling in the summary of the study was leaders are increasingly emotionally exhausted at the end of the day and feeling extremely frustrated.

And it's only getting worse.

And it's because of what we ask of them.

It's just inhuman.

Leaders should be.

And so the term that we've often heard, servant leadership, which is a very, you know, Jesus Christ like, orientation to what leadership is all about, is really the role we have to move into.

But to be.

I mean, I think even Christ said it, to be a servant to others is a great sacrifice.

And basically what you're doing is sacrificing your ego to something greater than yourself.

And that's very difficult for a lot of people.

It is.

So I'm going to ask you my favorite question, Norman, and that is, what do you want your legacy to be?

Wow.

That.

I set the world on a path to transforming the paradigm of business.

I love it.

If we don't do that, we continually have environments where people are contained into less mature positions, an environment where they're constantly dependent on others for the sense of self and identity and sense of contribution.

And I see our paradigm as the living organization, as an opportunity to not only help organizations become more effective at creating the results they want, but in doing so, the byproduct of that is we develop the maturity of our society, which will only benefit everybody.

That's good.

So on this season, we have a new thing now, a surprise question.

Pick a number between 1 and 10 for your surprise question.

7th.

All right, here we go.

Would you rather have unlimited sushi for life or unlimited tacos for life?

Wow, that's tough.

Two of my favorite dishes, my intuition tells me sushi.

I'm not sure why.

If you're going to ask me why did I pick that over tacos, I have absolutely no idea.

But there's something about sushi, maybe the way it's done, with a certain sense of sacredness that comes to mind.

I mean, a lot of the way Japanese prepare their food is ritualistic.

There's a sacredness to the food that is.

So maybe that's why I relate to sushi.

So, yes, sushi sacredness.

There you go.

I like that.

So, Norman, where can people find you, connect with you, and buy your book?

The book is on Amazon.

So living organization, transforming business to create Extraordinary Results is on Amazon.

So you can just look it up.

You can find me on my website, quantumleaders.com you can reach me at N W O L F E at Quantum, excuse me, @quantumleaders.com and I'm on LinkedIn.

Norman Wolf on LinkedIn so those are probably the best places, probably the best places via email if they want to reach me personally.

And N W O L f e@quantumleaders.com I also like to take this opportunity to say that the second book of the Living Organization trilogy is at the printers and will be out sometime May June time frame and it's called Leading the Living Organization.

So it's all about the leadership skills that leaders will need to do this.

I'm very excited about that.

And actually if people want a free copy of the first book, they can go to thelivingorganization.com bookworth well Norman, thanks

so much for sharing your wisdom and for inviting us to see organizations and leadership in a completely new way.

The Living Organizational offers a transformative blueprint for anyone who wants to build companies that grow sustainability, honor the human spirit, and unlock extraordinary results.

To my listeners, if you're a leader, an entrepreneur, or simply someone who knows there must be a better way to build and to lead, you need to read this book.

Check out the show notes for Norm's links, Quantum Leaders and resources to dive deeper into Living Organizational net framework.

If today's conversation sparked a new thought or challenged your assumptions, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who's ready to rethink what leadership can be.

Until next time, keep building bridges.

Keep becoming the version of yourself that God created you to be.

And Norm, thanks so much for providing such amazing content to my audience.

Keith, it's really been a pleasure.

Your questions were fascinating and I'm glad I had an opportunity to reach out to your audience.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Norm.