Helping People Thrive in Your Organization

Summary

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Revenue Builders Podcast: Helping People Thrive in Your Organization

Hosts: John McMahon & John Kaplan
Guest: Lucia Annunzio, CEO of the Center for High Performance
Date: December 7, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the critical role of people in driving sustained, accelerated growth within organizations. Drawing on Lucia Annunzio's extensive global research, the conversation unpacks how treating people well—allowing them to truly use their intellect and judgment—is the core differentiator for long-lasting business success. The hosts and Lucia discuss actionable leadership strategies, the pitfalls of micromanagement, and the importance of fostering a genuine sense of value and autonomy among employees.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Fundamental Finding: People Drive Sustainable Growth

• Global Research Results
  Lucia shares her company's research: the first comprehensive quantitative global study into factors that underpin sustainable profitability.

  • "What we found is the biggest differentiator of how companies make money that actually lasts...is how people are treated." (01:00)
  • Companies can make money temporarily, but sustainable growth comes from respecting and engaging people.
  • Strategy is essential, but how people are treated is even more vital.

• Strategy Alone Isn’t Enough

  • "A great strategy without allowing people to use their brains will never maximize its potential." (01:21)
  • Organizations often miss the mark by failing to empower their people to think independently and creatively.

Return on Brain Power

• Concept Introduction
  Lucia introduces “Return on Brain Power,” positing it as more crucial than just ROI.

  • "Do we allow [employees] to use their brains really? Or do we micromanage, tell people what to do, how to do it, when to do it, why to do it, which basically says don’t use your brain.” (02:27)
  • Micromanagement stifles creativity and leaves "money on the table" by not tapping into employee ingenuity. (03:12)

• Challenging Assumptions and Fostering Innovation

  • Companies that enable employees to challenge assumptions and think differently are more adaptive and effective.
  • "The way you've always done it may work, but the world is changing. As the world changes, how are we going to change?" (03:12)

Leadership Style: From Transactional to Transformational

• Transactional Environments Are Limiting
  Host John Kaplan points out how too many organizations operate transactionally.

  • Employees do what they're told; leaders simply pay them and sometimes promote them (“if you’re lucky”).

• Transformational Leadership
  The true aim should be to coach and develop people so they eventually don’t need heavy supervision.

  • "You've done a great job with recruiting and developing people when they don't need you anymore." – John Kaplan (04:08)

The Research: Feeling Valued

• Quantitative Differentiator
  Lucia’s research found the #1 predictor for sustainable growth is whether people feel valued by a significant margin.
  • "The number one differentiator of sustainable growth around the world...was that people in the group felt valued." (04:19)
  • Employees most valued “My boss tells me what to do, not how to do it.” Treating smart people like they’re smart is key.

Commander's Intent & Fence Post Theory

• Commander's Intent (05:10)

  • Leaders provide clear “intent” and allow their people the autonomy to figure out the best approach.
  • “Once they get the intent, they go and build me a fence that is better than I had even thought that it was going to be.”
  • Some people, however, are conditioned to be overly prescriptive, checking in constantly for direction.

• Fence Post Theory

  • The analogy: Some employees independently build a better fence; others need explicit step-by-step instructions—often due to leadership style or reward structures.

Individual Differences: Inner vs. Outer Directed People

• Motivation Styles (07:27)
  Lucia distinguishes inner-directed (ask strategic questions, seek understanding) vs. outer-directed (seek to please, follow instructions closely) people.

  • "It's not good or bad or right or wrong. They're just different." (07:27)
  • Leaders can help outer-directed people learn to ask questions—by rewarding thoughtfulness and initiative.

• Creating Psychological Safety

  • People often refrain from thinking for themselves due to prior punishment or humiliation.
  • "If you're an outer-directed person and you've been punished...for making a mistake...or humiliated...you kind of learn to keep your mouth closed." (08:24)

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Notable Quotes

• On sustainable success:

  "The biggest differentiator of how companies make money that actually lasts...is how people are treated."
  — Lucia Annunzio (01:00)

• On unlocking employee potential:

  "Do we allow them to use their brains really? Or do we micromanage, tell people what to do, how to do it, when to do it, why to do it, which basically says don’t use your brain."
  — Lucia Annunzio (02:27)

• On measuring value:

  "The number one differentiator of sustainable growth around the world...was that people in the group felt valued...My boss tells me what to do, not how to do it. We dubbed that treating smart people like they're smart."
  — Lucia Annunzio (04:19)

• On leadership impact:

  "You've done a great job with recruiting and developing people when they don’t need you anymore."
  — John Kaplan (04:08)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:37 — Lucia Annunzio introduces the research and the main finding about people and performance.
• 01:21–02:27 — The limitation of strategy without empowerment; Return on Brain Power.
• 03:12 — Companies leave “money on the table” by not leveraging employee viewpoints.
• 04:19 — Research findings on the primary driver of sustainable growth.
• 05:10–06:57 — “Commander’s intent” and the “fence post theory”.
• 07:27–08:23 — Inner vs. outer-directed people and the importance of developing questioning skills.
• 08:24–08:54 — Effects of psychological safety and previous punishments in shaping employee mindset.

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Summary Takeaways

• Sustainable, high-profit growth is rooted in how organizations treat and empower their people, not just strategy.
• Leaders must move from micromanagement to fostering autonomy, valuing input, and enabling employees to use their full intellectual capacity.
• Creating an environment where employees feel genuinely valued and safe to question fosters innovation and high performance.
• Understanding and adapting to different motivation styles—inner vs. outer-directed—can help unlock everyone’s potential.
• True leadership success is when people, developed well, no longer need close supervision.

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Transcript

[Lucia Annunzio]

Foreign.

[John McMahon]

Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast with John McMahon and John Kaplan. This podcast is brought to you by the team of Force Management Today, a segment from our episode with Lucia Annunzio. She's an author and the CEO of the center for High Performance. Her work is based on her company's proprietary global research on the factors that accelerate or inhibit profitable growth. Her research shows that sustainable performance performance starts with people. And that's where she kicks off this segment.

[Lucia Annunzio]

Well, my company has done global research, actually the first global systematic quantitative study of what drives accelerated growth in the world. And basically what we found is the biggest differentiator of how companies make money that actually lasts is any company can make quarter to quarter, but how do you make money that lasts is how people are treated. How are human beings at your corporation treated? Yes, you've got to have a strategy. It has to be based on customer needs. You have to hold people to that.

Strategy with goals and accountability.

But a great strategy without allowing people to use their brains will never maximize its potential.

And I've intuitively believed that my whole life. But I got to a point in my life where the world seemed to be operating without doing that. So what was wrong with me was, was I just this do gooder who couldn't accept reality? And that's why we did the research and it was quite well funded and quite comprehension. And you know, the good news is my naive thoughts are now sustainable and quantifiable and hard quantifiable data and then treating people.

[John Kaplan]

Lucia, what goes into that is that developing people, training people, coaching people. What are some of the, of course things that leaders need to do to, you know, sustain that type of performance with people.

[Lucia Annunzio]

Great question, John Mack.

I believe that the secret to success is a little known concept which I call return on brain power. If you want return on investment, how do you get return on brain power? We spend a whole lot of time and a whole lot of effort recruiting, interviewing the best and brightest. We performance manage them, we pay them. But do we allow them to use their brains really? Or do we micromanage, tell people what to do, how to do it, when to do it, why to do it, which basically says don't use your brain. And believe it or not, the majority of people in companies today do not use their brains.

I like to use the expression companies leave money on the table. Why? Because you don't allow people to challenge assumptions, to think out of the box, to tell you that the way you've always done it may work, but the world is changing and as the world changes, how are we going to change?

[John Kaplan]

Right. Too many environments. Just listening to what you say. Too many environments are very transaction oriented.

[Lucia Annunzio]

Yes.

[John Kaplan]

You do this for me, I'm the boss and in exchange for that I pay you and I don't penalize you. Where exactly? When you're really trying to do a.

[Lucia Annunzio]

Job, one day maybe I'll even promote you.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah, if you're lucky.

[Lucia Annunzio]

But if you're lucky, what I say.

[John Kaplan]

Is transform people to your point. You want to coach them, develop them, get them to.

Basically not need you anymore.

[Lucia Annunzio]

Exactly.

[John Kaplan]

That's when they're at their best. You've done a great job with recruiting and developing people that they don't need you anymore. That's when you've done a great job. As far as a leader is. That's what I always think.

[Lucia Annunzio]

Exactly. The number one differentiator sustainable growth around the world by a margin of 2.0 on a 10 point scale for the quants out there, that's huge. Huge was that people in the group felt valued. We talked to 600 people by telephone and asked them what that meant. They said, my boss cares what I think, my boss wants my opinion. My boss tells me what to do, not how to do it. Number one answer was my boss tells me what to do, not how to do it. We dubbed that treating smart people like they're smart.

[Force Management Team Member]

You know, I, I, I love that concept. There's a couple things I want to talk about here. Deep dive on the part that you just said.

I've always called that. That's probably not the right language for this podcast, but I've always called it commander's intent. And it's not a, it's not a, I don't mean to use the, the pun of command, you know, but.

I found that in spending a lot of time with folks from the military, they explained to me this concept of commander's intent. And.

What it means to me today is that the most successful leaders and the most successful people working for those leaders is when they work in an environment where they can understand commander has to have true intent or leader has to have true intent. And then follower, if you will, or employee if you will, has the ability to interpret that intent, keep that intent at the forefront and be able to use their expertise, their intuition, their.

Knowledge and know how. And I always called that in force management, I call that the fence post theory. So some people I get and I say, hey, I want to build a, I want to build a fence. And the people that I get along best with are the ones that say, why do you want to build a fence? What do you want that fence to do? What's the purpose of that fence? How long is the fence going to be there? Once they get the intent, they go and build me a fence that is better than I had even thought that it was going to be. And then there are some people, and sometimes it's because of my leadership. There are some people that put the fence post in the ground and they. They surround it with concrete. Then they come back to me and ask what they want me to. What I think they should do next.

[Lucia Annunzio]

Right.

[Force Management Team Member]

And there's a common a. There's. There's two lenses there. Part of it's my leadership, I'm sure that has been, you know, too prescriptive. And part of it is people that aren't taking the initiative to allow themselves to use their brains. What advice do you have on kind of how to figure that out? I know it's always the leader's responsibility, but there's a lot of the reason why you have a platform is because people suck at it. Right.

[Lucia Annunzio]

People aren't all hardwired the same way. Yeah, some people are very inner directed. They don't choose to be inner directed. They are. Those are the people who will ask you all the questions. How big do you want the fence? Why are you using the fence? And then there are people who are outer directed. Their motivation is to do what you want and to do a good job and receive a pat on the back. And it's not good or bad or right or wrong. They're just different. And my experience is if you help someone to learn how to ask you questions, they can become the people who are hardwired. But they have to. They have to see that those people get rewarded. They have to understand that the best way to get that pat in the back is to show your thinking, not to ask the boss for their thinking.

[Force Management Team Member]

I like that.

[Lucia Annunzio]

But you know, people. People have been so conditioned not to think, have been so punished. If you're an outer directed person and you've been punished, punished for making a mistake or punished or demoted or humiliated. Worse, humiliate publicly in front of your teammates for asking what you thought was a reasonable question and your boss thought you were stupid, you kind of learned to keep your mouth closed.

[John McMahon]

Don't miss the whole episode with Lucia. It's linked in the show notes. Make it a great week.