Today’s guest is Keith Lucas—startup advisor, former CPO/CTO at Roblox and COO at Instrumental, and author of “Impact: How to Inspire, Align, and Amplify Innovative Teams” He builds engines of innovation inside entrepreneurial teams by aligning mission, values, and execution. Expect a principled, no‑BS playbook for hiring and developing “mission athletes,” creating aligned autonomy (not micromanagement), and turning taste and judgment into repeatable team performance. * Why he’s here: He’s scaled product and engineering orgs, then distilled those lessons into a clear operating system leaders can actually use. * What you’ll learn: The five non‑negotiables for hiring and promotion; how to design success criteria people can live by; the single interview question that reveals intrinsic motivation. * How to apply: Tighten your alignment stack (vision → mission → values → strategy → goals), run explicit feedback loops, and coach decisively when performance falters. Links Host Links * LinkedIn: Linkedin.com ↗ * Personal website: www.cadendamiano.com ↗ Show Links * Apple Podcasts↗ * Spotify↗ * www.wayofproduct.com ↗ Guest Links * Get the book: Impact: How to Inspire, Align, and Amplify Innovative Teams ↗ * Keith Lucas — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvlucas ↗ * Keith Lucas — Website: https://keithvlucas.com ↗ Timestamps: 01:17 Keith’s Career Journey at Robolox and what he is doing now01:51 The Concept of Influence02:09 Purpose and Its Importance03:29 Building a Team with Shared Beliefs07:57 The Role of Values in Team Success11:17 Realized Culture vs. Codified Culture15:57 Hiring for Innovation and Alignment22:27 Navigating Career Development40:58 Final Thoughts and Advice42:12 Conclusion and Sign Off Innovative teams do not stumble into great products They intentionally build engines of innovation in how they hire, promote, and operate day to day. Keith Lucas has seen both well run and badly run startups, and the pattern he cares about is deceptively simple: Purpose-driven companies that adopt a long-term, institution-building mindset have a structural edge over those optimized for short-term financial wins. When Keith thinks about building entrepreneurial teams, he looks for five “non-negotiables”: * Can this person elevate the team’s ability to create, innovate, or solve problems? * Do they align with the values? Do they want the same long term outcomes? * Do they believe in the mission? * Can they live with the team’s non-negotiable principles? * Do they meet the minimum standards of mastery and autonomy? Teams that take those standards seriously quickly surface who needs too much handholding or who does not care enough about quality, because the realized culture will not support them. Here’s a practical nugget you can take from this episode today (though I recommend you listen to the whole thing, it’s one of the best episodes on leadership) His favorite hiring and team staffing question for sussing out these non-negotiables is something I am going to steal: When you have a free moment at work, where does your mind go? The answer exposes intrinsic motivation, and great leaders use that signal to dial in roles so that enthusiasm, skill, and impact line up instead of grinding against each other. Underneath all of this is a simple thesis: if you want an engine of innovation, you need people who behave like mission athletes—mission driven, performance oriented, continuously growing, and elevating their peers—and you need to give them aligned autonomy instead of micromanaged checklists. This episode is for builders who care about creating something enduring rather than chasing short-term wins, and who are willing to design their hiring, culture, and leadership practices to match that ambition. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wayofproduct.com
