You’re Solving the Wrong Problem: Scaling Genius with Jason Wild

That's the music for your ears. Videos are also released on Windows with Shopify, which can be used to a real help. Let's start with the latest episode of Shopify. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another exciting episode of Mick Gomplode and today, I am joined by an absolute titan in the world of innovation and leadership.

He is a visionary who is shaped strategy for global giants, from Microsoft, Salesforce, advising CEOs across six continents, and whose new book, Jesus scale, is going to revolutionize how we think about great through IDN. Please join me in welcoming the transformative pioneering the unstoppable Mr. Jason Wilde. You're listening to Mick Unplugd, hosted by the one and only Mick Hunt.

This is where purpose meets power and story-spark transformation. Mick takes you beyond the motivation and intermeaning, helping you discover your because and becoming unstoppable. I'm Rudy Rush, and trust me, you're in the right place. Let's get unplugged. Jason, how are you doing today, brother?

During great, thank you so much, Mick. I hope I can live up to those expectations. You have already done that, and that's why I'm honored to have you won. You know, Jason, obviously, I want to get into the book, but before I do that, I love asking my guests and my audience loves hearing about what I have called your be cause. That thing that's deeper than your why, right? Like Simon Seneca,

great guy, told us to start with why.

“But I think our be cause goes a little bit deeper, right?”

It's your true purpose, and it changes from time to time. So if I were to say Jason, wow, it's 2026. What is your be cause today? What's your purpose today?

Yeah, well, Mick, I think my mind and heart immediately goes to where I started kind of my first career,

which was when I was still kid. I was a child actor. And it was not my idea to get into acting, had the classic stage model. And so from a very, really age, I was rejected a lot, which I guess you know, it's good. It helps develop a thick skin more importantly. And the getting to your question was, I saw the power of storytelling,

whether a play or a movie, right?

“You're part of something that just emotionally connects with people, right?”

And we'll cause people's hair on the back of their neck to stand up. So as I grew up and became an adult, I became fascinated with just the power of storytelling.

And as I entered business, it really was no more powerful than I wanted to help people shape stories.

And do things that hopefully in 510, 20 years in the future people look back and say, I was a turning point. I made a difference and I was a part of that. So creating stories that hopefully go right valuable for the good reasons, for the best reasons. There you go. And you do an amazing job at that. So how did the child acting like, what are some things that you learned on the stage?

And in that sense that, you know, lead to what you're doing now? Yeah, many things. I think, but like I said, you know, I have kids and that's where I would put my own kids through this, but being rejected hundreds of times by the time you're 15 years old.

“Does something, right? We talk about resilience and embrace resilience, but like how do you actually practice it?”

So, you know, I think that enabled me to have a point of view of, yeah, other people's opinions matter, but being able to bounce back fast, not worrying about, you know, making everybody happy. And I think, you know, being in Hollywood, which, you know, arguably is kind of the land of fakeness, not everybody is fake. I really saw the importance of authenticity and just being myself and embracing my own own identities.

So, believe it or not, I could start in movies with Mr. T, King Fonda, Chris Kristofferson, so dating myself with some of the A-list in the 70s and 80s and the, like, Mr. T.

I mean, he was amazing. He would show up on set on the studio every day,

every morning, you know, fully in persona with, you know, the B-A baroccus with convertible red rolls, Royce, and, you know, the big sunglasses, and was really intimidating. And once I get to a point where I like have good enough relationship with them,

with these, like, really chewed up old boots that had duct tape wrapped all around him and all around him.

I was finally said, "I'm Mr. T." You know, it's up at the boots. And he said, "You know, when he was growing up,

you'd get in half much, this father would be 16 years old, gave him a pair of work boots. He was the only gift he ever got from his dad. And he said, "He wears him every day to remember where he came from."

“So, I think just that one moment taught me so much about really getting to know people”

as much success as you have, you know, who's important to perspective and remembering where you came from and empathizing with the many others who have not been as privileged. Man, that was like a surreal moment, you know, because I've seen the old Johnny Carson segment where Mr. T is telling that exact same story about the boots and to hear you say it from a personal experience. Man, like that's, that's very real. I didn't even know he did that on the tonight show,

but yeah, so I told my brother and he was like, "Yeah, you're making that up." So, that's good. I'll have to follow up on trying to YouTube videos so that my brother could see the real sources. There you go. There you go. Somebody believes Jason, and it's me. I believe when you brother, if nobody else does. And I think, you know, the other thing is, like, I guess touch got a little bit is, you know, you hear in life and business world, the power of storytelling.

And it is, I think it is very, very true. And whether you've been in a conference and you see somebody about stage and they're talking about something and I literally almost put you to sleep. And the next person is up there talking about the same thing, and it is moving you to want to do something and be a part of that movement. And the content is the same. It's just how that story is told. And there's a reason why

great stories have gone viral for thousands and thousands of years. So, I think it's an underappreciated art in the world of business, especially in your

“ship. And yeah, it can be too cheesy or over the top. You have to pick the right moments.”

Yeah, the story telling is something that's just very innate to us two beats. I completely agree, man, completely agree. And you know, Jason, you've had an illustrious career

incredible, you know, leading innovative, innovative teams at Salesforce, Microsoft IBM, working with

NATO, Disney, like you name it. I think, you know, it used to be like three degrees of separation of them Kevin Bacon. I think now it's like one degree from Jason Wilde with all the connections that you have. Is there a pivotal moment or a key experience early in your career that united that passion for innovation? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, actually what I was going to college was working at a law firm in Chicago to, you know, hit my way through college and

you know, making copies, finding documents, you know, pre-internet stuff. And I guess maybe law firms still do something with that. They probably do.

“And I just came to this realization of, I was more passionate about ideas,”

then debating and litigating interpretations of, you know, the past or occurred states. So, it kind of led me to business, even though I had really, very limited business experience. So, I got my MBA, graduated with an MBA, but with, like, had, like, no business experience. So, luckily at that time it was like the beginning of the build out of the internet and it was just a tremendous amount of growth. So, I was really, really lucky because

they were hiring people that didn't have the experience because they just, they needed, they needed bodies, they needed people to, you know, do that stuff. So, I did it for the while, started family, you know, go to the financial crisis and, and as I started to really develop kind of my dream job, but that moment it was going to work for IBM. Why? Because IBM is international business machines.

And I had been bitten by the travel bug and, you know, when I thought of business,

and the gold standard it was IBM. And so, I've eventually made it their first week,

you know, it was a big turning point because I was really fortunate it was the end of the tenure of CEO, Luke Gersner, an IBM, you know, famous famous CEO. It was kind of controversial when he started an IBM because he was an outsider to the local tech. He came from American Express. So, you know, there are a lot of people who doubted whether he would be successful.

And so, in the employee onboarding in my first week, believe it or not, we're at headquarters and the CEO stops a bite by to give a chat for 10 minutes. And I've been really fortunate to hear so many people through my life and literally been surrounded by geniuses, but, you know,

and the person is like speaking to your soul. And the story was really about, hey, he takes over IBM because it leads

“with Wall Street, Wall Street says breakup IBM, right?”

The portfolio fund days are over, who says interesting thanks for the input, but then goes and meets with a bunch of customers. The customers told him time after time don't break up at IBM, just find a way to get it to bring together the best of IBM and harness it into this relationship.

But for a young person in my 20s to hear, because I thought Wall Street and the stock market, like nobody challenges them, right? And to hear a CEO who is successful, basically talking about customer centricity and one of the first things that I really learned.

And I think it was that moment, so I became really passionate about customers and I realized that for different reasons,

it wasn't always natural to people think of customers first.

Right? And you think of any company, 100 years old, one week old Mac, the pretty much of the same origin story, right?

“Some entrepreneur came up with an idea of a solution to solve some problem in the world.”

You find a customer, right? And it's kind of like you're right like this at the beginning of that relationship. But as you grow over time, you get lawyers and operations, supply chain, right? The decision maker gets farther and farther away from customers. So as crazy as it was when the first projects I worked on was with a regulated utility,

it was still like year 2000, 2001. We're talking about a customer's strategy. And the client's is like time out. We don't have any customers here, we have rate payments. And it was just shocking to me.

And so the innovation bug bit me early because I saw that I had thought that innovation was really just disruptive innovation. Right? These things that, you know, visionary geniuses come up with and they change the world. But I very, really hadn't brought in my definition of innovation.

And innovation is that, but it's also can be little things. And anything that's new and useful. And that sometimes the best innovation was not something that was new to the world was something that was new to an industry or new to a context that you were applying it.

You know, we're going to weigh it and make sense to whatever the problem we were trying to solve. And that as I was really surrounded by many of these geniuses, you know, I started to see that just felt like they were approaching things the wrong way. Even though they thought that they were doing it the right way. And what I mean by that is falling in love with their own ideas, celebrating pilots,

rewarding ideas.

But to me, I've never climbed a mountain.

I'm looking up to my 3000 foot one. And innovation kind of is like climbing a mountain. Yeah. And which is people think the goal is getting to the top. But it's not just like the goal of innovation is not just to generate the ideas.

You may not know this, but there are more fatalities in mountain climbing going down a mountain. Then going up. Which is counterintuitive to you think, right, your adrenaline goes down. You think the job is done, relax, and bad things happen. So I saw millions of dollars.

And like the brightest minds focused at the beginning around ideation. But very few ideas actually getting far enough to change something. And being meaningful enough to change a system. So it stuck with me. It was a question as a practitioner doing the work.

Around why is that? When the conditions seem generally the same, but then the output can be very, very different. So I became a lifelong student to try to understand why that is. And one of the key things was, these people we fall in love with the water bit of action.

“There's something I think human nature about.”

Right, being able to sleep at night and feeling like we can understand it by making it tangible and putting it in a little box and convincing ourselves that, you know, we understand it. But the most innovative companies don't focus on the what the focus on how. And the focus on creating a community where organically innovation happens. And their best ideas thrive and their shared intention.

Not where it's the person with the biggest title or the loudest voice. Pound in the table, pushing the ideas forward. So we can passion about it as an art and realize that there are others who also. And it's how it's how they co-authors. You know, to begin the book presses.

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There's no risk with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description box. Go check out nordvpn.com/micumplug. Yeah. And we're going to get to the book now because being a huge fan of yours for as long as I have,

we share very similar philosophies. You know, a lot of companies hire me to help them go from point A to point B from a scaling perspective. And a lot of times I start with culture because to me. As a leader, you don't really run your business. You run the culture and the cultures where it runs your business, right? And I tell, I tell CEOs and sea sweet folks all the time.

The reason that you find scaling hard is usually one of three things in a lot of times this all three. One scale is just a word and you really don't want to, right?

“But it's a word that you know you need to talk about.”

Two, you try to solve problems before they truly exist. Meaning, yeah, you know when you double your business, there's going to be things you need to do differently or things you need to add. Problems that you're going to have, but don't try to solve them before you get there. And you spend so many moments trying to solve problems that haven't happened yet that now you can't scale.

And then three, sometimes you're key people need to change because they're satisfied. Meaning, you know, they've been with the company for X. They've achieved the goal that you set for them. And now just like you talked about going down the mountain, right? They're at that part of going down the mountain because they feel like they've already climbed it.

And you need more people that are ready to climb the mountain alongside. So now I want to segue to genius at scale because you hit on something that I think is also really important there. And that's just the framework to scale, right? Like sometimes you just need the framework, the path to actually do those things. So I'd love for you to talk about the book a little bit.

I'm excited about the book. So the floor is yours, genius at scale, let's go. Well, thanks so much for that and I'd love your points. So believe it or not, it's almost been 10 years. So when my co-author Dr. Linda Hill invited me to write the book. She's the chair of the leadership initiative at Harvard Business School.

She and I had collaborated a bit when I was leading, you know, some innovation projects IBM.

“Honestly, my, you know, in my mind, my first reaction was like, is this can of camera, this is a good joke. And, you know, like, why me.”

And, you know, in Linda's words part of it was I've been doing the work. I've been a practitioner like leading teams on the ground leading projects, you know, in 40 countries. And so, you know, if we're going to talk about these concepts of creative abrasion, like intentionally, you know, tapping into diverse environments, where there's psychological safety to challenge the status quo. We better practice that ourselves, right? And not just right and talk about it.

And the other reaction I had was like, not to date myself again, but like a Gilligan's Island moment. Oh, yeah, it's going to be a two year tour, right? And well, have a nice book and everything will be great. And the ten years later, thousands of hours, and it's been worth every single, every single minute.

And I want to go through each of your points. Because I really like those. I mean, your first one you really said, right, I need to be.

I think this is one of the reasons why we wrote the book. You know, I didn't want to write a book, just to write a book. But again, you know, lots of people that are collaborated with that I've tried to help smarter than me, incredibly talented. Just seeing them approach it the wrong way. And we'll get into that a little bit. And part of it is, and you mentioned this kind of traditional leadership,

is been, you know, what you could call path finding. We're here at A. We need to get to B. The role of leadership is to remove the barriers and inhibitors, minimize the turbulence and get to B. It's quickly and efficiently as possible. And sometimes the debate is how much transparency should we give, you know, to everyone else, etc.

And that's great when you have the luxury of time.

And it's not just AI. Quantum is coming, blockchain.

So these are, like, game changing disruptive technologies, feeding off of each other. I think creating even more uncertainty. So what we write about instead of path finding, which is more about leading change. Right, knowing what the destination is, having some conviction and saying, "Okay, let's figure out the most efficient path to get there as an organization."

“It's hard to do that when, who knows what the world is going to be like in the nuts of distant future, right?”

People in Silicon Valley, and I think it's a little bizarre, but it shows you their perspective. Some people are saying the five-year plan is dead, because who can even think five years ahead? So when you're leading and fog, you know, the traditional path finding leadership approach just doesn't work. So our book is really a love letter to way finding. And it's naturally a comfortable for a lot of leaders, especially the Fortune 500 ones we have to be on earnings calls.

Stick out their chest and be decisive and show confidence when the reality is way finding is about figuring out the destination while you're on the way there.

And I think so that's number one, and it sounds very risky, but it's clearly risky to do nothing and keep going the path that you're on and trying to renovate your current business. By pouring new technology on old thinking, then it is to, you know, embrace this kind of, you know, way finding approach. So I think that's, you know, if you were to say what the book is really about, it's about that. And then how do you make that practical? Where do you start depending on, you know, if you're start up or see your master card?

So each chapter is about, you know, different leader leaders. And my co-authors and anthropologists, where maybe other people write a book after the interview and see you for 40 minutes and that's cool.

“Right. We've literally like studied these people in different contexts for years and years and years. So then the other points I think, you know, that really important is, you know, I've been in tech for 25 years.”

You mentioned Microsoft Salesforce IBM. So listen to me when I say this, it's more about people than it is about technology.

And Linda and I were fortunate to be featured a few days ago in a Fortune article where basically we were called leadership experts, which was very generous.

And it was really about kind of, but our take on the AI doomsdayers. And, you know, on the impact to, you know, jobs in the future work and now don't give me wrong. You know, this may sound strange, but as much hype as there is around AI. I think in Mayways map it's being under height. Literally it's going to change how we work and live in many, many, many ways. But you know, I think the main point becomes, you know, how do you create environments where it's less about measuring KPIs and outputs a thousand different ways.

And instead measuring two or three things and focusing on learning and learning fast. How do you get you to understand that innovation is really a social process. You can't mandate it. You can't dictate it nor can you delegate it. So finding this like delicate balance between creating the environment where people are willing and able to want to innovate and bring their personal passions. But it's connected to a bigger platform that represents whatever the organization, you know, our business is trying to achieve.

So it's interesting to see how people are reacting to this very different way. And I kids, so I don't think people should be necessarily worried about the conversation of AI taking your job.

“Right, but I think you should be more worried about some leader who is clueless thinking that AI can do your job.”

Right, right, I totally agree with you. So in the book, right, what was interesting is like co-author teaches classes of Harvard Business School, different levels including high potential. Their first chapter is about Mastercard and the CEO and when he joined Mastercard and their valuations of a 1314 billion and about 10 years later when he left their valuation market cap was north of 335 billion. So a 25x increase and after he left the Mastercard was appointed by the White House to be the president of the World Bank.

So take that transformation cultural innovation playbook that you implemented a Mastercard and now take it to a level where you're trying to solve hunger and poverty at a planetary level.

It's a huge success story. The CEO not only did his job, but in a way got promoted to be the president of the World Bank, but when we asked people, would you take this job of being the chief innovation officer working for the CEO. One of the classrooms only three people raised their hand out of 85 people, even though they knew that it was wildly successful. So there's something, and I remember early in my career, someone telling me, oh yeah, innovation programs, that's where careers go off the diet.

Now, whatever you want to call up Mac, with your arrival of AI, the advice that I give people is get graded problem solving. We may not know what the problems are, one 510 years from now, but the world has always been a target rich environment for problems. And things like design thinking, which is featured a lot in our book, especially in one of the roles of the Bridger, which really works across boundaries and kind of chills out of where innovation usually dies.

Because people have their agenda, and nobody's focused on driving this change across silos, the Bridger is a really the unsung heroes of innovation, and their master's at creative problem solving.

“I think a little bit of design thinking got lost in the jargon, and you know, wearing black turbanacks and Steve jobs and all of that, but if you swim away all of that, and it's core, it's getting world class of creative problem solving.”

I think that's what the world needs right now is for people to embrace, you know, AI is an enabler, not as a tool, as an enabler of being creative problem solving. So to your point, one of the things that I discovered is human beings, we're pretty good at solving problems, but we're terrible at picking them.

Next time, new this a lot of time ago, this frames quote, like if I had an hour to sell the super complex problem, the 55 minutes on the problem with five minutes on the solution.

There's this great story around the world of the story, hotel opening up and Manhattan, and I'll end on this, because I have a little poster here at my home office, it's a reminder that every few decades, the psychotic hotel park avenue goes through massive renovations.

“And of course, they're very desentric, so when they open up again, they pay very, very close attention to customer feedback, right?”

They open up immediately, there's a huge spike in complaints, so they call them emergency meeting, what's the complaint? The elevators are too slow, so let's get all of our brightest minds, million dollars to change the algorithm, multi million dollars to convert a couple of, you know, worker, elevator shafts to add to passive. There's an intern sitting in the room, who's there supposed to take notes, listening to all of this, she raises her hand and says, can I have a few thousand dollars or a couple of experiments?

Yeah, yeah, whatever, yeah, sure, she doesn't box, whatever, and they're meeting right, few days later, the track and results, complaints completely disappeared.

“It's like, what? We haven't even got the RFP response in the algorithm yet, what happened?”

Well, the intern solved it, what did the intern do? The intern put mirrors inside of the elevator and around, you know, the elevator areas, because the problem was not that the elevator was too slow, the problem was the weight was too boring. So I think great leaders are great about creating those environments where people or anybody can come up with a good idea and there's an open mindedness to what is the real problem that we're really trying to solve, and it almost becomes a working hypothesis.

Jason, I'm borrowing that story, brother. That story is, and I'm going to give you all the credit, that's an amazing story and amazing parallel, like, that was perfect, man.

I'm using that story. Probably tomorrow, I'm using that story. Well, that's good. Well, you know, I think we see and work in life. There's lots of opportunities. So getting the right mindset and you surround yourself with the right people, they're willing and able to invade and seemingly impossible is not. Totally on the same page, man. And again, I'm excited about the book, what I want to do, and my listeners know this books that I love and that I wave about, I like to to purchase copies. So I want to get 20 copies.

The word genius, you're going to get a copy of the books. I'm buying 40 copies, Jason, but I think the book is paramount. I don't think a book like this exist.

“And I think it's so timely with, you know, you talked about AI and businesses are trying to figure out growth and innovation, but they're missing the frameworks.”

And you can't do anything without the frameworks, right? I don't care how good you may be if you don't have a framework, you're never going to be the version you're supposed to be. Your business is never going to be what it was supposed to, if you don't have the frameworks. And I believe in the book that much, Jason, that it is the framework for scale.

It's the framework for innovation. So 40 copies, LinkedIn, Instagram, the first 20 people you're getting a copy of Jason Walsham.

Love it. Thank you so much. You got it. Where do you want people? If you're if your person number 41, where do you want them to buy the book, Jason? Because I'm I'm 40 but 41, you're on your own. Yes, absolutely. So make sure you get genius in there quickly. And if you're 41 and beyond, and it's interesting 41 is one of my lucky numbers. We do have a great book website called [email protected] for you multi-lingual people out there. It's an English Spanish Portuguese.

“And we're really trying to ignite a movement and not just write a book. So would love to hear your feedback. What do we get wrong? What would you like to hear us think about the study next?”

And I think we'd all agree that it's a great moment to think about different leadership styles in the world. There we go. Jason, huge fan of you. I'm going to have everything in the description and show notes as well.

I'm going to have links to go follow Jason and interact with Jason. He's a great human being. He's an amazing.

I hate the word thought leader. So I'm going to come up with something different. He's an amazing genius leader. But he truly is someone that not only gives you insights, but gives you the action that follows. And those that know me, I'm all about the action. You can give me insights. But when you give me action, you become my best friend. And Jason, you'll become that brother. I appreciate you. I love that. It's very kind. And we can be friends for life. Here is the book.

And yeah, we talked about being thought doors.

“I see the point that we do need to think and continue to be creative, especially in this time of AI. But it's nothing without an action by us. There you go. Ladies and gentlemen, that is Jason Wilde. And remember, your because is your superpower.”

Go and wish it.

That's another powerful conversation on Mick Unplug. If this episode moved you and I'm sure it did, follow the show wherever you listen.

Share it with someone who needs that spark and leave a review. So more people can find there because I'm really rush. And until next time, stay driven, stay focused and stay unplugged.