Building Better with Brandon Bartneck

In this solo episode, I explore a question that’s been on my mind for a long time: what actually separates an adequate leader from a good one, and a good one from a great one?I use football as an analogy, not to glorify sports leadership clichés, but to illustrate a distinction that shows up everywhere. In business. In manufacturing. In engineering. In organizations that win once, versus those that win consistently.An adequate leader operates at the tactical level. They make good decisions in the moment. They motivate. They call decent plays. They can win games with the right inputs.A good leader operates at the strategic level. They game plan. They understand matchups. They align tactics to strengths and weaknesses. They win more often.But the leaders who succeed year after year are doing something fundamentally different. They are designing systems.Using the Michigan Wolverines’ path to the 2023 national championship as a concrete example, I break down how Jim Harbaugh and his staff stopped optimizing plays and started optimizing the entire organization around a clear objective. Recruiting. Strength training. Scheme. Coaching roles. Player profiles. Even quarterback selection. Everything was designed to work together toward a specific outcome.This episode is about leadership as organizational design. About why “great people” alone are not enough. About why the right person in the wrong system still fails. And about the leader’s real job: creating a structure where people can exercise judgment, take ownership, and succeed without constant direction.This is a working hypothesis, not a manifesto. But it’s one I believe matters deeply for anyone responsible for building teams, systems, and results that last.Building Better with Brandon Bartneck explores what it means to build—better companies, better systems, and better lives. Through conversations and reflections, Brandon digs into the principles that drive growth, purpose, and meaningful work.Music credit: Slow Burn – Kevin MacLeod

In this solo episode, Brandon breaks down one of the most overlooked drivers of team performance: a leader’s ability to understand the true nature of the work their function is responsible for. Most leaders want high performance and a great environment, but few achieve it. Brandon argues that the root cause isn’t effort, tactics, or leadership style, it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the function, the type of thinking required for the work, and the capabilities of the people doing it.He unpacks why environments get overwhelmed and inconsistent, why the usual fixes don’t work, and why two failure modes (overwhelmed people in roles that are too big for them, and high-capability people stuck in roles that are too small) destroy momentum and culture.Brandon shares why leaders must define their function’s true responsibility, break down the real cognitive demands of the work, and understand their people at a deeper level. This is the foundation that makes every other leadership practice actually work.Topics Covered• Why overwhelm and inconsistency are symptoms, not causes• The real responsibility of a function inside a business• How leaders collapse different kinds of thinking into “tasks”• Why some people drown and others suffocate• How to define, scope, and assign work correctly• Why capability alignment is the foundation of great culture• What leaders must understand to develop people effectivelyConnect with BrandonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonbartneckMusic CreditIntro and outro music – Slow Burn – Kevin MacLeodSubscribe & FollowApple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

This solo episode is about a question that sits at the center of my work and my life. What is real impact. Not the buzzword. The kind that actually changes the direction of someone’s life.I break down impact from first principles. What it is. How you create it. Why it is more than reach or scale. Impact comes from the quality of what you are doing, the number of people you touch, the depth of the change, the duration of that change, and the way that change moves through other people over time.I also talk through the three ways impact shows up in practice. Direct service to real people. The formation and development of people around you. And building systems, structures, and institutions that keep working long after you stop touching them.From there, I get into how to choose a domain that actually moves the needle. You need to be working on something that touches human flourishing. You need leverage through people or systems. It has to fit your real comparative advantage. And it has to be neglected enough that your effort actually matters.That lens points somewhere most people overlook. The industrial base. Manufacturing. Real operations with real humans and real constraints. A place that shapes the daily lives of millions of people, that has been underserved for decades, and that is full of leverage for someone who can think abstractly and also build in the physical world.I share why I believe this is where my gifts can do the most good. Not as a rationalization, but as the conclusion of a first principles analysis of where impact actually comes from.If you are wrestling with meaning, purpose, or where to direct your best effort, this episode should give you something to think about.Building Better with Brandon Bartneck explores what it means to build better companies, better systems, and better lives. Through conversations and reflections, Brandon digs into the principles that drive growth, purpose, and meaningful work.Music credit: Slow Burn – Kevin MacLeod

Quincy Lee, founder and CEO of Electric Era, joined to talk about what it takes to build a durable business in an unforgiving industry.Electric Era is scaling in the EV space. But what stood out most is how Quincy thinks. His focus isn’t on growth at all costs, but on building a company that’s hard to kill. That phrase became a central thread of the conversation: how to anticipate failure modes before they appear, design systems that can withstand them, and create the cultural and technical resilience to adapt as conditions change.We also dug into hiring and storytelling, including why narrative matters more than most people think. Quincy and I talked about how truth and story interact, why narrative control shapes perception and value, and how founders and leaders can tell their story authentically without distortion.Quincy also highlighted two new products designed to improve reliability and the overall EV charging experience, RetailEdge and HaloAI. Two big takeaways:Building a resilient organization is about systematically reducing your exposure to failure—technically, financially, and culturally.The story you tell matters as much as the product you build. Narrative is how people make sense of what you’re doing.This isn’t just an EV conversation. It’s about how to build companies that last.Building Better with Brandon Bartneck explores what it means to build—better companies, better systems, and better lives. Through conversations and reflections, Brandon digs into the principles that drive growth, purpose, and meaningful work.Music credit: Slow Burn – Kevin MacLeod

Most conversations about work-life balance start with the wrong question.We assume the goal is to limit work, to keep it from taking too much of our lives. So we optimize for time, energy, and boundaries, all while treating work as something to manage or escape.In this solo episode, Brandon challenges that premise. He steps back to ask a more fundamental question:What is work actually for?Brandon explores how work can serve as both a platform for growth and a vehicle for contribution. It's one of the few arenas where we can test our capabilities, develop judgment, and apply our gifts in ways that genuinely help others.He shares why fulfillment doesn’t come from balance or hours worked, but from alignment — integrating work, family, and personal development into a single system aimed at growth, love, and service.This isn’t a prescription. It’s an exploration into what it means to live and work well.Why “work-life balance” starts from the wrong assumptionDefining the real problem: what role work plays in a life well livedHow work creates the feedback loops that drive capability and maturityThe connection between growth, love, and contributionHow alignment replaces balance as the goalWhy work is something to steward, not escape“Work isn’t something to balance against life. It’s one of the primary ways we learn how to live it.”If this episode sparks reflection — or disagreement — Brandon would love to hear from you.Reach out on LinkedIn or at buildingbetterpod.com.Building Better with Brandon Bartneck explores what it means to build. Better companies, better systems, and better lives. Through conversations and reflections, Brandon digs into the principles that drive growth, purpose, and meaningful work.Music credit: Slow Burn - Kevin MacLeod