Angie 00:09 Good Monday morning, everybody, and welcome to No More Mondays — the podcast built on three simple beliefs: humans still matter, mediocrity is expensive, and ownership changes everything. Every single one of the conversations we have here is designed to help you do just that and live and lead with more intention. As always, I am your host, Angie Callen, and today’s conversation is brought to you by my book, Scary Good: Discovering Life Beyond the Sunday Scaries — it is really about rethinking how you live and work. So if you’re ready to do that, head on over to scarygoodread.com and grab a coffee and a copy. Let’s get into today’s show. I am excited to introduce all of you to Stephen Shapiro. He is an innovation expert, a keynote speaker, and author of a plethora of books on creativity and problem solving, all with very fun, intriguing titles, including his latest — You’re Not Playing with a Full Deck — fresh off the presses and available on Amazon now. Stephen has spent a lot of time helping organizations rethink how to approach innovation and leadership, working with Nike, NASA, Microsoft, Marriott, 3M, and more. What caught my attention about Stephen is not just his approach to innovation itself, but the idea that in this unpredictable world, old playbooks don’t work anymore. Leaders who are thriving aren’t those doing things perfectly according to standards — they’re the ones willing to think differently, ask better questions, approach humans in a new way, and move forward even when things aren’t super clear. So today we’re going to talk about how to innovate amongst the uncertainty, and how leaders can navigate complexity without falling back on outdated approaches. Stephen, welcome to No More Mondays.

Stephen 02:23 It’s great to be here, and I’m glad I’m not the only one who gets the title of my own books wrong. I’ve done that in the past. Very refreshing.

Angie 02:30 You’d think after saying it 9,000 times it would just roll off the tongue. One of the things that struck me as I was digging into your work is something you say in the leadership and innovation world — that best practices are stupid. Please tell me more about that.

Stephen 02:56 That’s the title of one of my books. The general idea is that if we’re trying to just copy what other people are doing — replication — that’s not innovation. It might be useful in some situations, but you’re always playing a game of catch-up. More than that, it’s basically a recipe for mediocrity. Instead of doing what others are doing, we should be digging deep to figure out what makes us special, what differentiates us as an organization, as an individual, as a team, and how we double down on that to get the greatest impact.

Angie 03:52 I think what you just said is more important now than ever, because we’re not just trying to differentiate ourselves from competition — we’re also trying to differentiate ourselves from algorithms and automations. I’m curious why people cling to proven models so much even when everything else is changing.

Stephen 04:19 Part of it is safety. If you do what someone else did, you can justify it — hey, it worked for them. But being safe is actually the least safe thing you could possibly do. In an age of AI, I truly believe the only differentiator organizations are going to have are their people. Studies show that large language models are getting better and better, but they’re also giving the same exact answers. So if you as an organization rely heavily on AI, even if you’re great at it, it’s going to sound the same as everyone else. There’s no differentiation there.

Angie 05:12 The risk of relying too heavily on best practices, AI, or “this is how it should be done” thinking is that you fall into a sea of sameness — and it’s way more obvious now. You can literally see it in written content and output. That’s one of the reasons leaders and business owners need to think seriously about what differentiates them. You could not have given me a better answer than “people are the differentiator” — humans still matter is the hill I’m going to die on. I’d love to hear more about how we lean into that even when tech and automation seem so central.

Stephen 06:04 Tech and automation are great. When I look at organizations, I look at everything they do in three categories: support, core, and differentiating. Support things support the business but don’t create customer value. Core is the table stakes — what everybody’s doing. And the differentiator is what you do that no one else does, that the world needs and craves. That’s your special sauce. A differentiator can’t be a technology someone else can replicate. The only things inside organizations that will stand the test of time are human capabilities. When we get clear on what we do better than anyone else, that the world craves and no one else can do, and we focus our energies there — that’s how we create something that lasts.

Angie 07:02 Remember — AI is here to augment and enable, not replace. When you lean into the humans who are the differentiators, who have the creative intelligence to think about things that don’t exist yet — because AI can’t do that — and then augment them with AI, you’ve got a powerful combination. You can’t trade one for the other or you’ll just fall into that sea of sameness. Now I want to talk about your new book. What does You’re Not Playing with a Full Deck mean?

Stephen 07:41 I had a lot of arguments with people over this title. They said I was insulting people. But I’ve said controversial things before — Best Practices Are Stupid, Goal Free Living. I don’t step away from controversy. And the reality is, none of us are playing with a full deck.

Angie 08:03 Controversial — and also true.

Stephen 08:10 Exactly. If we think about a deck of cards as the abilities, knowledge, personalities, and wisdom we have, none of us have everything. We all have our differentiator as an individual, and other people bring their superpowers. The people who are different from us tend to drive us crazy — but one of the things I say is the person you like the least is the person you need the most. That person is probably the least like you, but they complete you. I’m a very scattered person. In Personality Poker — it’s a card game I developed — I keep the “disorganized” card nearby to remind myself. I’m creative but not organized, not structured, not methodical. Those people typically drive me crazy. But I’ve learned I need them if I’m going to get anything done.

Angie 09:50 They balance things out — I hate the word balance but in this context it works. This is essentially the Callen household. I’m married to disorganization. Jim has more hobbies and can spend a day doing nothing that makes a dime and be completely happy. I’m wired to work 90 hours a week — systems thinker, organized. But what’s funny is one bounces out the other. He makes sure I go have fun and have some spontaneity in what would otherwise be an overly structured life, and I make sure there’s some vocation to support the hobbies on his end. So how does this dynamic — finding the person who drives you nuts and letting them complement you — help innovation and navigating uncertainty on a team?

Stephen 10:57 That’s really the beauty of human beings — that complement of different styles is so important. But here’s something critical: if you take two people, a scattered person like me and an organized structured person like you, and just put them together, you could clash. It’s actually been proven to be counterproductive unless there’s a deep appreciation for what each person brings to the table. You need to do the work upfront — understand how you’ll drive each other crazy, what value you each bring, how to give each other what you need. Then you can create something beautiful. I’ve seen this over and over in my work.

Angie 11:59 From a practical perspective, what tools can leaders use to build that platform of common understanding and respect?

Stephen 12:17 The first thing is to make sure each person is playing to their strong suit — doing what they’re designed to do. Then you need to play with a full deck: look at your team and ask, do I have people who are great at data? Great at creativity? Great at planning and executing? Great at making human connections? Then make sure everybody knows how to work together to deal out the work so people do what they do best. And even though Personality Poker sounds like it’s about individual personalities, it’s actually about the personality of the team and the organization. Teams have personalities. Meetings have personalities. Organizations have personalities. When you look at it through that lens, you get power you wouldn’t have if you only look at a series of individuals.

Angie 13:30 I’ll go a step further — a lot of cultures are accidental and not intentional. If you don’t take the steps to create that environment of mutual understanding, you’ll end up with a culture one way or another. It’s whether you’ve dictated it that determines whether you get an ace of spades or a joker.

Stephen 13:59 Exactly — a lot of jokers. There’s a chapter in the book called “Culture Starts with Cult.” Most organizations embrace a cult mentality — everybody thinks the same way, acts the same way, uses the same three-letter acronyms. It works from an efficiency perspective, and it’s worked in the past. But in an environment where change matters and diverse points of view matter, it doesn’t work. When I look at the personality of an organization, it’s based on what gets recognized, rewarded, and valued. Most organizations recognize and reward one thing more than others, and that helps them — until it hurts them. The question isn’t to get rid of your culture, it’s to broaden it and have a deeper appreciation for all the different facets and how different styles contribute.

Angie 15:05 I want to use the word diversity here — but experience diversity, not the classic response to it. From a hiring perspective, people gravitate toward what they know, which is usually what’s similar, and that often isn’t what’s going to bring a new perspective or drive innovation. That’s falling into standard practice. Right butt, right seat — which is what you described with playing to people’s strengths — is going to be more important than ever in this ecosystem where technology is essentially a co-worker. I’d love to talk about how this team makeup supports our ability to navigate unpredictability with an adaptive mindset.

Stephen 16:31 It comes down to different points of view combining in powerful ways. We’ve heard that opposites attract — but there’s irrefutable scientific evidence that opposites actually repel. We want to be with people similar to us. So if we surround ourselves with similar people in the workplace, we hire people who fit the mold. And I always joke that if you only hire people who fit the mold, eventually the organization is going to grow mold — you’ll get moldy, stale ideas. We need to hire people who don’t fit the mold, put them in the right role, and embrace creative tension. Recognize that tension is a good thing, not a bad thing — if the tension and conflict is about ideas, not people. Breakthroughs always come from diverse points of view coming together in unique ways. It’s not about an expert solving a problem alone. It’s multiple perspectives blending together to see something new.

Angie 17:44 I love that — especially within an environment where that’s not just allowed but encouraged. I want to talk to individual leaders for a moment. Leadership today has way more facets than ever before — how do I hire more diversity, broaden the skill set, make my team more human, where do I bring in AI? That makes a lot of leaders feel like they have to have all the answers all the time. How do we lead confidently in a world where there’s no way we’re going to have all the answers?

Stephen 18:28 I love that you said that, because anybody who thinks they have to have the answers is going to be wildly disappointed. The role of a leader is not to have the answers. The role of a leader is to ask questions of others that get others to ask better questions. The biggest issue inside organizations is that we spend way too much time solving the wrong problems. We get distracted by bright shiny objects. If leaders become better question askers, their organizations become better question askers. And the biggest challenge with AI isn’t what AI does — it’s that if I ask AI the wrong question, it’ll give me 1,000 irrelevant answers. So how do we make sure every person in our organization understands what matters most, how we differentiate, where we should be focusing? When we change the questions, we change the solutions that become visible.

Angie 19:43 The AI situation is a great visual anecdote to a bigger picture — what you get out of AI is only as good as what the driver puts in. And that’s the same idea: your solutions as a team are only going to be as innovative as the problem statement you set ahead of them. How do we get more creative and thoughtful and curious around how we frame challenges?

Stephen 20:25 The first thing is just to acknowledge that as human beings, we’re not wired to do that. The brain is wired for survival, not innovation. Whatever we did before didn’t kill us, so the brain says it’s safe — let’s do it again. That’s why it’s so difficult to get people to innovate. Now, there are tools. I have a book specifically about reframing — it helps companies not solve problems, but reframe them. Here’s a story I love: an airport was getting complaints that baggage claim took too long. They researched it, found bags took 15–20 minutes to get from the plane to the carousel. So they spent a ton of money on faster conveyor belts and newer technology, got it down to 8–10 minutes. Then they asked passengers again — still complaining about baggage claim. They couldn’t get bags there any faster. Then they had an epiphany: it only took passengers 1–3 minutes to get from the plane to the carousel. So instead of speeding up the bags, they slowed down the passengers — they moved baggage claim further away so people had to walk. Bags were there when passengers arrived, and people were happy. Busy walking time doesn’t feel the same as boring wait time. Just changing the question fundamentally shifted the solution.

Angie 23:01 A former engineer who loves people over here, so I want to riff on this case study for hours. What’s so funny is they tried to re-engineer a process, when really the solution was to address it from the human side. That’s a great metaphor for so many things we try to systematically over-engineer, when the solution ends up being a human one. A big part of that is perspective. The whole point is looking at your problems as potentially symptoms instead of causes. We jump to conclusions quickly — in business and in dealing with human challenges — and take a problem at face value instead of lingering long enough to ask: are we actually solving the right problem? That’s the crux of the whole story.

Stephen 24:19 Absolutely. We make assumptions and jump to conclusions. And people, when they hear innovation, think it’s the same as creativity — but they’re actually very different. Creativity tends to be more artistic. Innovation is more analytical. The innovation process does not start with an opinion, suggestion, idea, or solution. It starts with a well-framed, important problem or opportunity. We jump to solution-finding way too early, and we find solutions that are impractical, or that don’t solve the real problem, or that we’ll never be able to implement. If we step back and be thoughtful about the problem we’re solving, we can fundamentally shift things. And I think the reason people are so busy sometimes is because they’re doing the wrong work. This is not about doing more with less. The key is to do less and get more. If you figure out what matters most and hyperfocus on the things that will move the needle the fastest, you will always get better results than trying to do a lot of things faster.

Angie 25:48 I feel like I’ve met my match in the catchphrases department — I want to have a phrase-off, but we’ll save that for another day. All of these phrases are memorable because they’re true. Efficiency for efficiency’s sake isn’t actually efficient. It’s like in the software world — engineers love to make products for products’ sake without checking for market fit first. Let’s go find a problem our solution solves, versus what problem do we actually need to solve? That’s where innovation begins. I want you to revisit something you said — the relationship between creativity and innovation. Let’s go back to that.

Stephen 26:47 When people hear creativity, they imagine someone laying on the ground, looking at the clouds, coming up with cool wacky ideas. And as George Carlin said, I’ve got a lot of ideas — the problem is most of them suck. That’s the problem with creativity. We come up with a lot of really bad ideas that don’t solve problems and have no value. Innovation asks: who cares, what pain are we solving, what problem do we need to address? That requires data. It’s not staring at clouds — it’s talking to customers, understanding what keeps them up at night, finding the pain points. If we understand those, we have greater leverage and greater focus.

Angie 27:43 Every coach friend I have who’s ever had me help build their business — Stephen just validated my entire existence, because I talk so much about problems and solutions. In the coaching world we’re real good at just wanting to coach people, right? Versus: what’s the purpose? You can have an idea and start there — but it doesn’t become innovation and doesn’t become sticky until you think about how it’s a solution to a problem that actually exists. Whether you’re serving an individual client in a coaching business or you’re a Fortune 500 leader, buying is still driven by that emotional “what problem does it solve” question. In summary, Stephen — tell me if I’m on track: embrace creative tension, ask better questions, allow diverse discussions on your team, be curious, and challenge yourself — are you being creative, or are you actually being innovative? Because none of us is playing with a full deck, and we need to remember that in both life and leadership. Now, how do people find you and get the new book?

Stephen 29:37 You can find me at theinnovationspeaker.com, or if you want to dive right into the book, go to fulldeckbook.com. I designed the book to be read in 90 minutes — my shortest book by far, super easy to read but incredibly action-oriented.

Angie 30:11 Speaking of knowing your audience and solving the right problems — people don’t read long, long, long stuff anymore. Well done. And suddenly I feel the need to host a game show, but I can’t call it Catchphrase — isn’t that a board game?

Stephen 30:29 It is — and I always wanted to be a game show host growing up, so this is perfect.

Angie 30:36 Drew Carey, watch out. All right, as we wrap this up — we’re in this ever-changing, unpredictable market that’s going to keep changing. What does the future of work look like, and more importantly, how do we humans stay human while navigating it?

Stephen 31:21 The first thing is to recognize that the world will always change — it always has. If we can understand what lights us up as human beings, what we’re great at, what the world needs and craves, what we do that no one else can do, and we really double down on those things — and encourage everyone around us to do the same — and we each appreciate what each person brings to the table, that keeps us sane. And collectively, together, we’re going to create some beautiful things that might not have been created otherwise.

Angie 32:02 In two sentences you just covered impact, empathy, and ikigai. How’s that for a conversation about what it really means to live and work with intention? Stephen Shapiro, everybody — thank you so much for being here, sharing your wisdom, your catchphrases, and telling us about your new book. I’ve loved it.

Stephen 32:30 It was a blast. I’d love to do a catchphrase showdown as our next episode. I’m mostly serious.

Angie 32:37 I’m mostly serious too. I’ve had an inkling of wanting to host a game show, and you may have just pushed me over the edge. Stay tuned — you never know what’s coming. If this conversation resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it, leave us a five-star rating, and if you haven’t checked out Scary Good: Discovering Life Beyond the Sunday Scaries — head over to scarygoodread.com and grab your copy. Until next time, remember: humans still matter, mediocrity is expensive, and ownership changes everything. Here’s to fewer Sunday scaries and more No More Mondays.