Disruption Lab

Patrick Leddin PhD
  • 5.0 (15)
  • Society & Culture

Disruption isn’t coming—it’s already here. Whether you’re leading a team, raising a family, or chasing a dream, curveballs are part of life. Disruption Lab helps you turn them into breakthroughs. Hosted by Patrick Leddin and inspired by his book Disrupt Everything and Win (with James Patterson), each episode brings bold ideas and real stories to help you thrive in a fast-changing world. Disruption is powerful—but so are you.

  1. 3d ago

    Disrupt at the Speed of Business with Executive Leader Jennifer Colosimo

    Most people who write about high-performing teams have studied them. Jennifer Colosimo ran them, with a number attached. As Enterprise President at FranklinCovey she owned strategy, consulting and coaching services, and the commercial organization across the US, six international direct offices, and 60 global licensees. Before that she led global operations, learning and development, change management, and multiple sales teams at Accenture and DaVita. She has served as a chief operating officer, a chief learning officer, and a vice president of wisdom. She now advises FranklinCovey on AI, content development, and leadership. In this conversation Jennifer talks about leading global teams when the time zones, the cultures, and the incentives all pull in different directions. She makes the case for staying human as technology takes over the agenda in nearly every boardroom. She is also candid about what great leadership actually feels like from the chair, which is rarely how it gets described from a stage. We dig into our new book, Expect a Lot, Care a Lot, and the argument at the center of it, that expecting a lot and caring a lot were never a trade-off. Learn more about Jen Website - https://www.franklincovey.com/speakers-bureau/jennifer-colosimo/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifercolosimo/  Latest book - https://www.franklincovey.com/books/expect-a-lot-care-a-lot/ Learn more about Patrick Website - https://patrickleddin.com Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/ Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc If you liked this week's episode, consider leaving us a 5-star review below!

    Disrupt at the Speed of Business with Executive Leader Jennifer Colosimo

  2. Sep 22

    Disrupting How You Actually Get Things Done, with author Scott Thele

    Almost nobody has a shortage of ambition. Walk into any organization and you'll find big dreams, real desire, people who genuinely want to do something that matters. So why does so little of it get done? Because desire isn't the constraint. Discipline is. Definition is. Process is. Most goals never move because they were never defined sharply enough to act on, and there was never a process to carry them through a week where everything else is on fire. This week I'm joined by Scott Thele, National Practice Leader for FranklinCovey's Business Outcomes Practice and a co-author of The 4 Disciplines of Execution — the book and methodology now used by teams in organizations around the world. I've known Scott for 25 years. He hired me once, which should tell you something about his judgment. We've crossed paths on client work now and again over the years, but mostly I've had a front-row seat — watching what he's building and admiring the work. He has one of the sharpest minds I know on the hardest problem in business: goals that require human beings to change their behavior. In this conversation, we get into:     •    Why wanting it badly enough has never been the differentiator     •    How to define a goal so precisely that a team knows what "done" looks like     •    What to do when everything on the list is a priority (hint: that's the problem)     •    How to measure the behaviors that drive the result, instead of staring at the result     •    What Scott has seen work across industries, countries, and cultures — and what fails everywhere If you've got the dream but not the traction, this one is about closing that distance. Learn more about Scott Website - linkedin.com/in/ScottThele Learn more about Patrick Website - https://patrickleddin.com Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/ Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc If you liked this week's episode, consider leaving us a 5-star review below!

    Disrupting How You Actually Get Things Done, with author Scott Thele

  3. Sep 15

    Disrupting Leadership Across Cultures with Victoria Roos Olsson

    Most of us learned to lead in one place. One organization, one country, one set of unwritten rules about how people are supposed to talk to each other, disagree, and get things done. Then somebody puts us in a different room — and half of what we knew stops working. Victoria Roos Olsson has spent her entire career in those rooms. In this episode, Patrick sits down with Victoria, his coauthor on the new book Expect a Lot, Care a Lot: How Six Critical Practices Create High-Performing Teams. Born and raised in Sweden, educated in the Netherlands, she ran learning and development for Hilton and for Jumeirah across Europe and the Middle East before landing in Atlanta. Today she coaches executives around the world as a Senior Consultant at FranklinCovey. Victoria shares what more than twenty years of building leaders across cultures has taught her: what actually travels, what turns out to be nothing more than local custom, and why the leaders who adapt fastest aren't the ones who abandon their principles. She also shares the origin story of the six critical practices, which she helped introduce as a coauthor of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Everyone Deserves a Great Manager. And she and Patrick get into the heart of the new book — why so many leaders treat high expectations and genuine care as a trade-off, and what changes when you stop choosing between them. This episode is the second in our series of conversations with the coauthors of Expect a Lot, Care a Lot — each one bringing a different vantage point to the same six practices. Learn more about Victoria Website - https://www.franklincovey.com/consulting/victoria-roos-olsson/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoria-roos-olsson-2497612/ Latest book - https://www.amazon.com/Expect-Lot-Care-Practices-High-Performing/dp/1668264064/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0 Learn more about Patrick Website - https://patrickleddin.com Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/ Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc If you liked this week's episode, consider leaving us a 5-star review below!

    Disrupting Leadership Across Cultures with Victoria Roos Olsson

  4. Sep 8

    Disrupt the Playbook with CEO Ron Johnson

    Ron Johnson has lived on both sides of the scoreboard. At Apple, he was the Senior Vice President of Retail Operations who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Steve Jobs to build the Apple Store from a blank sheet of paper — inventing the Genius Bar along the way and creating what became the most profitable retail square footage on earth. Before that, he was the merchandising leader at Target who brought Michael Graves to the masses. After Apple, he took the top job at J.C. Penney and things became real tough, real quick, becoming one of the most scrutinized CEO exits in modern retail. In this conversation, Ron is remarkably candid about all of it. We talk about what success actually teaches you (less than you'd think), what failure teaches you (more than you want it to), and how to tell the difference between a bad idea and a good idea people weren't ready for. He shares what it was really like to earn Steve Jobs' trust, why he still believes the vision at Penney was right, and what he'd tell a leader standing at the edge of a big, risky bet right now. Ron's new book, Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius (Harper Business, September 22, 2026), co-written with Zander Nethercutt, goes deeper — and he says it's less a retail book than a guide for anyone leading through technological change, and a reminder of what it means to be human in the age of AI. If you're building something, scaling something, or rebuilding after something didn't work — this one's for you. Listen or watch now. Learn more about Ron LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shopdifferent Latest book - https://www.harpercollins.com/products/shop-different-ron-johnsonzander-nethercutt?variant=44771032498210 Learn more about Patrick Website - https://patrickleddin.com Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/ Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc If you liked this week's episode, consider leaving us a 5-star review below!

    Disrupt the Playbook with CEO Ron Johnson

  5. Sep 1

    Disrupting the False Tradeoff with Author and Former CEO Doug Faber

    Doug Faber started his career on a loading dock at eighteen. He finished it in the CEO's office. In this episode, Patrick sits down with Doug — his friend, colleague, and coauthor — to walk that climb, and to unpack what those years in operations taught him about leading real people under real pressure. Doug shares what changed in him between the dock and the corner office, what he got wrong along the way, and what he learned over twenty years at FranklinCovey working alongside executive teams at some of the world's best-known organizations. Patrick and Doug get into what actually separates high-performing teams from average ones, why so many leaders treat high expectations and genuine care as a trade-off, and what happens when you stop choosing between them. This episode is one of three with the coauthors of Expect a Lot, Care a Lot: How Six Critical Practices Create High-Performing Teams — each one bringing a different vantage point to the same six practices. Learn more about Doug Website - https://www.franklincovey.com/consulting/doug-faber/ Latest book - https://www.franklincovey.com/books/expect-a-lot-care-a-lot/ Learn more about Patrick Website - https://patrickleddin.com Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/ Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc If you liked this week's episode, consider leaving us a 5-star review below!

    Disrupting the False Tradeoff with Author and Former CEO Doug Faber

  6. Aug 25

    Disrupting a Nearly 60-Year-Old Company with Ragan CEO Diane Schwartz

    Consider the position: you run the company that teaches everyone else how to communicate, and then the ground shifts so fast that nobody knows what to say anymore. Not your customers. Not the executives paying your customers to find the words. Not you. That's roughly the seat Diane Schwartz took in 2019 as the new leader of Ragan Communications. What followed was a pandemic, an industry rewrite, an AI wave still cresting, and seven straight years of growth anyway. But this episode of The Disruption Lab isn't really about communications. It's about what you do when you inherit something that already works. Every new leader faces the same fork: break the wrong thing and you destroy the reason people showed up; protect the wrong thing and you end up curating a museum. Diane had to decide, fast, and she'll tell you what she chose to blow up and what she refused to touch. We get into the launch that scared her most, why she calls AI "a career accelerant for communicators, but only if the right levers are pulled," and where she watches teams freeze instead of pull them. We also get into the part nobody puts in the press release: what seven years of continuous change costs the people living through it, and how a leader knows when they've pushed too far. Whether you run a company, a function, or a team of three, there's something here for you. And she started as a journalist, which means she answers questions the way she used to ask them. When I asked what belief about leadership she's had to throw out, she didn't reach for something flattering. See if you'd have the nerve to give her an answer about your own career. You'll leave knowing what to protect, what to break, and one move to make this week if disruption feels like it's happening to you instead of for you. The mic is on. ____________________________________________ Learn more about Diane at Website - www.ragan.com Socials - Diane Schwartz | LinkedIn Patrick Leddin PhD Website - https://patrickleddin.com Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/ Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc If you liked this week's episode, consider leaving us a 5-star review!

    Disrupting a Nearly 60-Year-Old Company with Ragan CEO Diane Schwartz

  7. Aug 18

    Disrupting Scarcity with Chris Whitney of One Generation Away

    Chris Whitney doesn’t believe America has a food shortage. As he puts it, it’s a logistics problem, not a supply problem — and he’s spent the last decade proving it. In this episode of Disruption Lab, Patrick Leddin sits down with Chris Whitney, founder and CEO of One Generation Away. After spending six months in a food line himself, Chris started rescuing surplus food from grocers, farms, and restaurants and moving it onto tables across Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida. It began in the back of an SUV. Today it’s a $33 million operation, with semi-trucks unloading 20,000+ pounds of food into parking lots on Saturday mornings — no paperwork, no questions asked. Chris’s story is one of the real-life accounts featured in Disrupt Everything—and Win, the New York Times bestseller by James Patterson and Patrick Leddin. You’ll come away with a sharper eye for the difference between a scarcity problem and a distribution problem, a sense of why designing for dignity changes who actually shows up, and a real look at what it costs to scale 30x — and go all-in — without losing the thing that made you work in the first place. Learn more about Chris Website - OneGenAway.com Facebook - Onegenawayofficial Instagram - @onegenaway LinkedIn - @onegenerationaway Learn more about Patrick Website - https://patrickleddin.com Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/ Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc If you liked this week's episode, consider leaving us a 5-star review!

    Disrupting Scarcity with Chris Whitney of One Generation Away

  8. Aug 11

    Disrupting Your Comeback with Celina Sattelkau, Professional Golfer, Ladies European Tour

    We all have setbacks. Times when we fall short, lose our footing, or watch the plan we built come apart. Those moments are inevitable. What you do next isn't. This week on the Disruption Lab, Patrick is joined by professional golfer Celina Sattelkau, a former Vanderbilt All-American who went from being unable to hold a golf club to winning two professional tournaments in ten days. Celina grew up in Hambach, Germany, picked up the game at seven, and became one of Europe's most decorated young amateurs before arriving at Vanderbilt in 2019. Then COVID brought neuropathy in her hands and feet, serious mental-health challenges, and the loss of the one thing that had defined her. Her way back required patience, a renewed love for the game, and something harder than either: asking for help. In this conversation, Celina shares what carried her through, and what you can use the next time your own plan gets disrupted:     •    How to take the lesson from a setback without carrying the disappointment into the next moment     •    Why asking for help felt impossible, and what changed the moment she did     •    The fundamentals that hold up under pressure, whether you're on live television or facing a hard week at work     •    What she would tell the version of herself who couldn't grip a club and didn't know what came next Whether or not you've ever swung a club, this episode is about the thing golf teaches better than almost anything else: you don't control every bounce, but you always control your next shot. Disruption may change the conditions. You still get to choose your next move. Learn more about Celina Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/celinasattelkau/?hl=en   Patrick Leddin PhD Website - https://patrickleddin.com Speaking - https://patrickleddin.com/speaking/ Newsletter - https://patrickleddin.kit.com/disrupt Socials: https://linktr.ee/disruptiveinsightsllc If you liked this week's episode, consider leaving us a 5-star review below!

    Disrupting Your Comeback with Celina Sattelkau, Professional Golfer, Ladies European Tour
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About

Disruption isn’t coming—it’s already here. Whether you’re leading a team, raising a family, or chasing a dream, curveballs are part of life. Disruption Lab helps you turn them into breakthroughs. Hosted by Patrick Leddin and inspired by his book Disrupt Everything and Win (with James Patterson), each episode brings bold ideas and real stories to help you thrive in a fast-changing world. Disruption is powerful—but so are you.

Information

  • Creator
    Patrick Leddin PhD
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    43
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Patrick Leddin PhD
  • Show Website
    Disruption Lab