Some organizations have no heart at all. The best have three!

That’s the thesis of the new book, The Octopus Organization: A Guide to Thriving in a World of Continuous Transformation, co-authored by our guests, Phil Le Brun and Jana Werner. Both work with leaders operating at global scale—Phil as an Executive in Residence at Amazon Web Services, and Jana as a Global Executive Advisor at AWS—helping organizations navigate complexity, change, and continuous transformation.

In their book, Phil and Jana introduce a clear contrast between what they call Tin Man organizations and Octopus organizations. Tin Man organizations are rigid, highly centralized, and overly dependent on a small group of decision-makers at the top. Like the character in The Wizard of Oz, they operate with structure but no heart. Decision-making slows, intelligence gets trapped in the hierarchy, and employees often wait for direction rather than contributing meaningfully.

Octopus organizations, by contrast, are alive with three hearts. They are intelligent, adaptive, and responsive. A strong central purpose keeps everyone aligned, but authority and decision-making are distributed to the people closest to the work. Teams are empowered to sense, decide, and act, allowing the organization to learn, adapt, and thrive in real time.

A central contribution of the book is the identification of what Phil and Jana call organizational “anti-patterns”—recurring leadership behaviors and systems that feel reasonable in the moment but consistently undermine clarity, trust, cohesion, and performance. These patterns exist even in organizations with talented people and strong intentions.

In this episode, we explore several anti-patterns in depth: the lack of clarity that leaves people guessing what truly matters; the overuse of corporate jargon that creates distance and mistrust; purpose statements that are words on a page rather than guides for behavior; and cultures that elevate individual stars at the expense of cohesive, high-performing teams. We also discuss why fast, open information flow is essential for adaptability and well-being.

Phil and Jana also reconfirm our own understanding that well-being cannot be created through perks or programs—it emerges from how people are treated, trusted, and empowered, and how work is designed and decisions flow. For leaders who care about performance, well-being, and building more humane organizations, this episode offers practical insight into creating workplaces that truly thrive.

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For decades, Wall Street has rewarded short-term thinking: layoffs, cost-cutting, and squeezing employees. Let’s be honest, investors have never been concerned about workers or their well-being.

But that era is ending.

David Van Adelsberg, CEO and co-founder of Irrational Capital (alongside renowned behavioral economist Dan Ariely), has helped produce some of the most rigorous research on the connection between employee well-being and long-term business performance. The work draws on data from thousands of publicly traded companies over more than a decade—and the results are hard to ignore.

Irrational Capital’s research shows that companies ranking in the top 20% for employee well-being significantly outperform those in the bottom 20%—by nearly six percentage points over 11 years. Even more striking, their study proves intrinsic factors like trust, clarity, innovation, and connection are consistently more important drivers of company performance than extrinsic rewards such as pay and benefits.

In other words, caring and supportive leaders matter more than what they pay.

For years, CEOs and boards have nodded toward employee well-being without taking decisive action. Now, with investors and market analysts clearly rewarding companies that get it right, ignoring how people feel at work is no longer optional.

In our conversation, David explains how his research was conducted, what surprised him most, and the practical implications for leadership teams still on the sidelines (not a bright future).

For leaders wanting proof that supporting the human needs in employees is worthwhile, we’ve never had greater information to share.

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Due to a technical problem with Apple Podcasts, we had to reissue this episode to ensure all subscribers received it. Sorry if it’s a duplicate for some.

For only the second time since launching the Lead From The Heart podcast eight years ago, Mark is opening a new season by speaking directly to you—without a guest.

In 2018, Mark used the very first episode to introduce himself and his mission for the show. As this new season begins, he felt it was important to pause again, reflect, and—once more—clearly frame the context for what lies ahead.

Over the past seven years, the podcast has featured 170 remarkable guests—CEOs, researchers, academics, and thinkers whose work helped shape and advance a leadership philosophy that was once considered unconventional. What began as a challenge to traditional management thinking has steadily become part of the mainstream conversation about leadership, performance, and culture. Today, many of Mark’s ideas that once provoked debate—or even ridicule—are no longer contested.

In this solo episode, Mark revisits why he created the podcast, what it set out to influence, and how the leadership landscape has changed since it began. As you’ll hear, Season 8 marks an important inflection point. Mark introduces a new dimension he’s adding to the show—one designed to keep the podcast vital and relevant while aligning it more closely with the moment leaders now find themselves in.

Just before the new year, Mark published an article in Fast Company outlining why he believes employee well-being is poised to become a true business priority. In this episode, he expands on that thinking and explains how the podcast will support leaders navigating what comes next.

The post Mark C. Crowley: The Next Era Of The Lead From The Heart Podcast! appeared first on Mark C. Crowley.