The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving

Phil Gilbert led one of the most significant cultural transformations in corporate history, as IBM's General Manager of Design, he helped the 400,000-person company reinvent how it thinks, listens, and builds products.

In this in-depth interview, Phil shares the playbook behind "Irresistible Change", his approach to scaling design thinking, transforming culture, and helping teams adopt new ways of working that actually work.

If you've ever wondered how to lead large-scale transformation that doesn't collapse under politics or mandates, this conversation will show you the operating system behind lasting change.

About Phil Gilbert Phil is the author of Irresistible Change and is best known for leading IBM's twenty-first-century transformation as its General Manager of Design. His work has been profiled in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and numerous case studies on corporate reinvention.

Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, explains how he built a $3.6 billion company by placing human dignity at the center of leadership. He describes the moment he recognized that "our history does not give us the future that we deserve," and how this led to a disciplined focus on balance, diversifying customers, industries, and technologies to create a stable enterprise.

Bob recounts the insight that reshaped his philosophy: every team member is "somebody's precious child," and leadership is stewardship, not control. Caring, in his view, is an economic principle: "The greatest act of charity is how you treat the people you have the privilege of leading."

Key insights include:

• The role of business-model design in protecting people,
• Why pricing should reflect market value rather than internal cost,
• How trust and relationships outperform transactional approaches, and
• Why growth often emerges from navigating adversity

Chapman argues that today's crisis is not financial but a "poverty of dignity," and calls for leaders to build organizations where people know they matter.

Scott Levy spent two decades as an investment banker at firms like J.P. Morgan, advising corporate boards and senior executives on risk, growth, and capital decisions. Then he pivoted, serving on a public school board, teaching at Harvard, and writing Why School Boards Matter.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How Levy broke into investment banking and the lessons that carried him through twenty years on Wall Street

• What he learned about resilience, risk-taking, and long-term thinking at the highest levels of finance

• Why he left a successful career to focus on public education and democracy

• How business principles can, and cannot, be applied productively to education

• What executives misunderstand about AI, and the questions they should be asking

Lynn Smith, former national news anchor for NBC News, MSNBC, and CNN Headline New, and now executive communication coach, reframes public speaking as an internal leadership skill, not a performance. She identifies the recurring obstacle as the "brain bully", the inner critic that turns preparation into paralysis, and shows leaders how to retrain it so that clarity, calm, and connection become repeatable outcomes.

This episode translates decades of live television experience into actionable communication tools for high-stakes settings—from boardrooms to keynotes to broadcast media.

Key takeaways:

• Name and neutralize the "brain bully." "It's that inner saboteur saying, 'You're not good enough' or 'What if you say the wrong thing?'" Smith explains. She traces these patterns back to early experiences and teaches clients to "control–alt–delete our prehistoric code" so fear no longer drives performance.

• People don't want perfection, they want resiliency. Recalling a keynote where she froze on stage, Smith says, "I had to stop and tell the audience, 'I'm so sorry, I'm failing at this.'" That failure became the basis for her coaching framework. "People don't want perfection, they want resiliency. They want to see people overcome."

• Replace over-scripting with intentional structure. "Executives spend hours memorizing, but the result is robotic. The big revelation is… it has nothing to do with your prep; it has everything to do with your mental game." Instead, she recommends bullet-pointing key ideas for authenticity and flow.

• Drill down, don't dumb down. Smith's "Goldilocks effect" balances preparation, "not too much, not too little", so communication stays sharp and digestible: "If you communicate everything, you communicate nothing."

• Make voice and presence technical. Drawing from broadcast training, Smith advises projecting "from your diaphragm, not your chest," and using "the power of enunciation" and pauses to improve recall and connection.

• Manage energy deliberately. "Everything is energy," she notes. High-frequency energy, calm, clear, positive, creates magnetism. "When you're vibrating at the level you want others to meet you at, people lean in."

• Model resilience for the next generation. Her children's book Just Keep Going distills the same mindset for young readers: that fear and failure are not endpoints, but steps toward growth.

For executives preparing keynotes, investor meetings, or media appearances, this conversation provides a research-informed playbook to quiet the inner critic, align mindset and message, and lead with authentic, repeatable presence.

Is capitalism still working, or is it due for an upgrade?

In this must-watch episode, authors Seth Levine and Elizabeth McBride discuss insights from their book Capital Evolution, sharing what they learned from interviewing top CEOs, including Jamie Dimon, Dan Schulman (PayPal), Peter Stavros (KKR), and others who are helping to reshape the social contract of business.

They explore:

• Why Jamie Dimon led 200 top CEOs to declare that companies should serve more than just shareholders.

"If you ask Jamie Dimon, are you a capitalist? Because we asked him that, he said, I'm a rapacious capitalist." – Seth Levine

• Why the old model of shareholder primacy is failing

• How economic mobility has collapsed:

"50 years ago, if you were born in the bottom 25th percentile of wealth, you had about a 25% chance of dying in the top 25th... Today, it's about 5%."

• Why ownership, not just wages, is key to the next phase of capitalism:

"Ownership is a key to this new future that we see."

• How businesses, not just governments, must now lead on economic reform:

"We believe in this current environment that businesses have the largest power and some responsibility to reshape the norms."

🎙️ Featuring stories from PayPal, KKR, Apollo, and others, this conversation is packed with ideas for business leaders, investors, and citizens alike.