Why CEOs Spiral: The Hidden Patterns That Predict Breakthroughs (and Breakdowns)

Summary‍

00:02:40 — The Fashion-Industry Collapse That Changed Everything

A silent street and a leadership awakening

Natasha shares how the sudden impact of NAFTA wiped out the Montreal fashion corridor she depended on — and how the shock sparked her lifelong mission: helping leaders adapt before they’re blindsided. This moment becomes the foundation for her work teaching CEOs how to interpret early signals of change.

00:06:32 — Why Smart CEOs Still Miss Critical Patterns

Seeing patterns isn’t the same as seeing the right patterns

Natasha explains that leaders naturally track the patterns they’re trained to see — but often ignore those outside their domain. Kodak, Blockbuster, and other “too big to fail” examples illustrate what happens when internal certainty outweighs external reality. The lesson: CEOs must broaden pattern recognition beyond their comfort zone.

00:12:30 — Cognitive Biases and the Confidence Trap

“Confidence is not competence”

Jeff and Natasha discuss CEOs’ tendency to choose confident team members over those who deliver inconvenient truths. She shares an IPO-stage story where this bias triggered missed deadlines, internal turnover, and a near-failed launch. It’s a warning to scaling CEOs: reward truth-telling, not certainty theater.

00:19:02 — Data-Driven Leadership: Using the Right Data (Not Just More Data)

If the data is inconvenient and you ignore it — it isn’t data, it’s décor

Natasha recounts a Siemens executive team that had a beautiful change plan… until the data revealed their people weren’t aligned with it. To their credit, they paused and redesigned — saving a change initiative that statistically had a 70% chance of failure. Leaders must ask: Do we have the right data for this problem?

00:22:19 — The Congruence Framework: Who Is Leading Whom?

Culture chooses its leader

Natasha breaks down the core principle of Spiral Dynamics: leaders can only lead those with whom they have psychosocial congruence. Strategy must match the reality of the culture — not the idealized version discussed in boardrooms. This section offers tactical guidance for CEOs moving fast and building complex teams.

00:31:04 — Unity, Down Spirals, and Protecting High-Performing Teams

How one “bad apple behavior” can break your best team

High-performing teams are rare — maybe 10–15% of all teams — and fragile. Natasha explains how even one incongruent behavior can down-spiral performance and morale. CEOs must protect team unity with vigilance and intentional culture design.

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‍Full Transcript

Jeff Holman (00:01.006)
Hello again, friends. I'm Jeff Holman. I'm the host of this awesome podcast called the Breakout CEO Podcast. And it's so good to be back with you. We've had a lot of stories over the last few weeks about breakout CEOs and their, you know, momentum, the stories they've been through. It's been fun hearing those stories. We're here again today with Natasha Todorovic, who's on the show to help share some stuff that I, we were just talking, Natasha, about.

some of the things you've done, the book you've written, and this concept of spiraling that a lot of CEOs go through even if they don't publicize it. So I'm super excited to talk about the things that you've done with CEOs and to get into some of that today. So welcome to the show, Natasha.

Natasha Todorovic (00:48.209)
super excited to be here with you, Jeff. And I think I mentioned we have something in common, which is when our clients come to us. And usually as service providers, because we work with super smart clients who are super competent with great teams, they usually come to us a little late because they are so smart, they figured they could do it themselves.

Jeff Holman (00:57.582)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (01:11.022)
That is so true. Early stage companies in my case especially, they're like, hey, I don't have the money. don't have the time. Maybe this will go away. And usually there's some amount of cleanup, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot once they bring our team in on the legal side, as I'm sure you've seen on your end too.

Natasha Todorovic (01:33.993)
Well, I love your fractional legal. mean, that is so smart and that is so adaptive to what that client niche needs. So kudos to you for that.

Jeff Holman (01:47.3)
thank you. Thank you. Yeah, just for the audience, I don't share it a whole lot, but the Fractional Legal Team is really a thank you for kind of introing that. The Fractional Legal Team is really about bringing a fully staffed legal team to startups and scaling businesses because you've got all the same problems as everybody else does. Maybe not all at once, maybe not as many problems, but you have them. So we just staff a team that has the expertise to address those as they come up. So that, you know what, that was...

If I were to do a full podcast on my breakout moment, I think it's a story in progress and that's definitely part of it because I think you're right. The response from the market has been, hey, why don't more people do this? This seems like the right way to do it. And I agree and I think more people should. But that's enough about me. Let's get into some of your background. What brought you to where you are today to talk on this show?

Natasha Todorovic (02:40.273)
so many twists and turns. You you're talking so many spirals, so many spirals. You know, the thing that got me into change, I was in the world of fashion. I was running a division and this thing called NAFTA happened.

Jeff Holman (02:45.546)
Any spirals in there too?

Jeff Holman (03:02.819)
Mmm.

Natasha Todorovic (03:03.429)
And I was in Canada, I in Montreal. There's a street where I always would go to source my fabrics and stuff that I needed. And it was like double, triple parked and people were running in and out. And it was like the marvelous Mrs. Maisel when she went to see her father-in-law, right? It was just honking and people yelling and it was just so much fun. And in about a two week period,

the factors which were financing most of these deals, there were I think four or five of them, they all closed. It was shocking. And I think I was, I drove to my street and it was in the middle of the day, I think it was a Wednesday, it was maybe lunchtime and there were no cars parked, nobody was going in and out, it was a ghost town.

Jeff Holman (03:39.192)
Really?

Jeff Holman (03:58.165)
silent

Natasha Todorovic (03:59.354)
And my job was to predict what people were going to want 18 months in advance and have those fashions and garments and fabrics in front of them. And I sat there looking at the street and I mean, I was in tears and said, how did I not predict this? And I never wanted to be flat-footed when it came to change again.

Jeff Holman (04:06.135)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (04:22.669)
Hmm.

Natasha Todorovic (04:29.425)
Now, in that delusional self of Natasha way back then, I had a belief that if I could just look at the crystal ball, I'd never be caught unawares again. And you and I both know that that's not how the world works.

Jeff Holman (04:47.117)
No, it's not. The political scene here in the US might tell you that. Same thing today, right? It's not NAFTA today. Well, maybe revisiting some of NAFTA perhaps, but all sorts of stuff going on.

Natasha Todorovic (04:53.833)
It's it.

Natasha Todorovic (04:59.143)
It's a crazy scene and I think the takeaway really is after having been doing this and I I've flown nearly two million miles, I've delivered certifications in over 15 different countries, I've worked with leaders from over 50. The takeaway is it's not that you're ever going to be able to predict everything. It is what do you do when the surprise

The happen and the unexpected happens. How do you, in yourself and with your team, be agile, be resilient, be adaptive, see around corners, understand what's happening, because those who understand it first and those who react quickly are those who end up surviving.

Jeff Holman (05:37.815)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (05:49.847)
I want to hear more about that, but first I'm kind of of the mindset and we had a guest on earlier a few episodes back, John Richards. talked about seeing patterns and things. You know, I know we're surprised by these. What's that?

Natasha Todorovic (06:00.849)
I loved that episode. I loved that episode. He was brilliant.

Jeff Holman (06:06.822)
yes, he shared some wonderful tidbits for us. He talked about patterns a little bit. Do you see that a lot of CEOs truly are surprised when things change? Or do they have either some conscious or some subconscious pattern recognition going on leading up to this? Because I have to think there's maybe a mix out there.

Natasha Todorovic (06:32.553)
love that question and I think if you ask most people, they would say that their skill is in seeing these patterns. But what patterns are you seeing? Because in the world of fashion way back then, I could see the patterns of clothing, but I could not see that out west, the lumberjacks were saying, oh, this is gonna be terrible. Well, if you're in the world of fashion, nobody listens to lumberjacks.

Jeff Holman (06:44.705)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (07:01.24)
Fair enough.

Natasha Todorovic (07:01.801)
Right, but they saw what was coming, right? So we each track for different patterns. We're skilled in that way. You track for legal vulnerabilities. And I track for these patterns in human nature.

Jeff Holman (07:08.695)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (07:19.392)
Okay. Interesting. And every CEO has their own skillset and some are better at probably seeing the different layers versus maybe hyper-focusing on the one layer that they're involved in. So I'm sure it varies. is this, is this, I don't want to jump ahead, but is this a little bit where spirals might come into play?

Natasha Todorovic (07:40.766)
This is where we're spiraling and we're dynamic-ing, Jeff. So, yeah, no, absolutely. My brand, Spiral Dynamics, refers to two things. The spiral is human nature. How do we grow, how do we develop, how do we lead, how do we form culture organizationally? For most people, it's totally unconscious and unintentional. It works because...

Jeff Holman (07:44.59)
You

Natasha Todorovic (08:08.391)
they did a few things and they think they made it work. But they don't know quite exactly what they did. And for others, it's like all hell's breaking loose and they don't know what happened or how to fix it. So that's the human nature piece. And then the dynamics piece is how do we evolve and change? And this work actually goes back to the 1950s. My late husband's mentor,

was researching the nature of human nature. So over 30 years, he took the research and realized that it pointed to, mean, everything that's human, almost everything that's human related, how we think, how we organize, how we cohere, how we conflict is related to development. And so that's the spiral and the dynamics, the changing nature of human nature.

Jeff Holman (09:05.528)
That's interesting. And the dynamics of the spiraling of course can be probably directional upward, downward, maybe sideways. I don't know. But we're always kind of in motion. was funny. It reminds me of something that may be off topic, but I had an MBA professor one time and I think for seven or eight years, he had been teaching this lesson about Star Wars, you know, and at one point...

I think it was Yoda said something like, the future is always, is always emotion. And when he said that, I'm like, I perked up and the journalist in our class, he actually perked up and spoke up. And he said, I think it's not emotion, it's in motion. It's the future is always in motion. Like emotion, would be a good lesson. It's just not what Yoda said. So.

But that's, I think that's what you're getting at is, is this is, we're just in a, you know, our history, you know, does what it does, but looking forward, we're, we're looking at motion, the dynamics, the spirals, the, like, we have to, we have to be able to take that and we know it's going to keep moving. Like we talked a little bit before about some companies, you know, large scale companies that everybody knows about who maybe didn't really, uh, think that they had to move as, as everything else was in motion.

maybe share a few of those with us.

Natasha Todorovic (10:30.129)
Yeah, I think we're talking about Kodak, right? And yeah.

Jeff Holman (10:33.036)
Yes, Kodak. Yes. I also was thinking of Netflix and the Blockbuster and stuff like that.

Natasha Todorovic (10:38.217)
So all of them, yes. And that's what creates us as humans, that we have these pressures in the world, and then we have a way internally of thinking and processing, and then the world changes. And some humans adapt with that world as it changes, and some don't. So the CEO of Kodak had come from, I think it was HP, and they were bought into, believed with all of their heart, mind, and soul,

Jeff Holman (10:43.608)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (10:52.344)
Yes.

Natasha Todorovic (11:07.857)
that the next generation of Kodak people were going to go to the mall and they were going to want to print their memories, right? And this is happening in a world where everyone was taking pictures and storing them on Facebook and sharing them and they missed that. And it was early, it wasn't part of their experience. They didn't believe what they were seeing. They had digital cameras, but they completely missed the signals in the environment.

and they down spiraled when in the world that was up spiraling in complexity, they just separated and missed the world.

Jeff Holman (11:49.389)
Yeah, I think we've heard a lot of stories about those CEOs. Is that a lack of ability to see what's going on or is it just not appreciating the scale of what's happening? Like why would a CEO, whether it's a Kodak CEO or a CEO of a small company out there building a niche product for a very targeted market, like why do these people miss these?

It's not because they're bad CEOs, right? They're very talented people. But what kind of comes together that results in a smart CEO otherwise missing some of these signals?

Natasha Todorovic (12:29.705)
So you're asking me to get into some more research. So one of the things, we miss what I call life conditions, right? We kind of, we're like fish, we float in our water, and we think the water is the water is the water. And then there are these little symptoms, these very quiet little signals that happen. And some people pick up on them and they build huge

Jeff Holman (12:33.614)
No.

Jeff Holman (12:40.974)
Okay.

Natasha Todorovic (12:59.603)
companies around them and others miss them and you know, that's that combination between our cognitive biases, you know our blind spots and our belief in what we are seeing and if we totally believe it's not something that counts and keep going as if something else does and focus on different signals and maybe ignore the team or maybe ignore

Jeff Holman (13:01.165)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (13:11.288)
Yeah.

Natasha Todorovic (13:27.145)
opposition or we ignore different people telling us things because a lot of successful CEOs got there because they were smart and because they're smart, they're confident in their smarts and they've made a lot of good moves. And I remember one who was, he was taking his company public and they were having some challenges up ahead of the IPO.

And one of the engineers said, don't worry boss, I've got it handled. If we do this, it'll all work fine. And that certainty really gave him comfort. And then there was another engineer who would have led the team who said, hey boss, it isn't that easy. It's not that comfortable. It's going to be a lot harder than you guys think, but I think we could do it. We just need to extend things a little bit.

So which one do you think he chose to lead the initiative?

Jeff Holman (14:29.87)
Well, if he's like most CEOs, wants the confident person to do it. He's got deadlines to meet. He's got investors to satisfy, maybe quarterly, maybe not quarterly, but internal, you know, regular reporting to try to hit his goals, get his bonus. I mean, I think most people would say, this guy seemed really confident. Let's go there.

Natasha Todorovic (14:53.969)
eggs and that's what he did. And what do you think happened after that?

Jeff Holman (14:59.19)
Well, probably the reason it's a story is because it didn't end the same way that it started. Tell us the ending.

Natasha Todorovic (15:06.217)
Well, so what happened was not only did they miss their deadlines, the IPO struggled through with a few hiccups, but they lost an engineering team of about, I think it was 12 or 18 programmers.

Jeff Holman (15:15.938)
Mm.

Jeff Holman (15:25.459)
really? Just lost confidence in the CEO or why is that?

Natasha Todorovic (15:30.441)
Because they were treated very badly, the whole thing was roughshod over the engineers and they didn't want to be part of shortcuts and bad decisions.

Jeff Holman (15:44.866)
They didn't want to release the product that wasn't ready to be released yet.

Natasha Todorovic (15:50.844)
And they had better offers available to them at Microsoft and Google and other companies. it was a choice to be somewhere where they weren't respected and weren't trusted or getting better positions somewhere where they were.

Jeff Holman (16:10.082)
Well, would, so did this, did this CEO in this scenario, did he have, or she have, you know, peer, a right-hand person to help, help guide this or, you know, what, what should this person have done or what could they have done in this situation? Cause you're really taking your team at face value, right? This team member says one thing, this team member says another thing. What, what were, what were other alternatives that they might have explored?

Natasha Todorovic (16:37.513)
Yeah, I think in the run up to an IPO, you've got a lot of pressures and you want to make the right choices, you want to move fast, you want to make decisions to get faster to the bigger decisions. And this is one of those moments where you need to sit back and go, am I saying yes to something because I want the security?

Jeff Holman (16:44.396)
yeah.

Natasha Todorovic (17:06.205)
Or am I saying yes because this is actually going to happen? And one of the things I always caution my clients in being wary of is that confidence is not competence. And just because somebody sells you something that you want to hear doesn't mean you're making the right moves. So we have to

sometimes take all that confidence and all that certainty, step back and go, what if this is wrong? What if there's a better way? What are we missing? What if those other voices that said something different actually have a bigger part of this picture? So it's taking a pause when we least want to pause.

Jeff Holman (18:03.406)
Well, I think a lot of people at that stage too, the phrase that you hear a lot of, or at least I hear pretty frequently now is, you know, what does the data say? And so there's this aspect of confidence and assumed competence perhaps, but really what does the data say? And I've seen some pretty large businesses that seem to operate without a lot of data. And I don't know if it's always, but a lot of times these types of vision run companies that

lack data to back up the vision. They seem to get themselves into financial trouble. They seem to end up in lawsuits. They seem to try to stretch the truth to cover a gap that, you know, maybe the data would have said something. So I think at least from what I've seen, data is sometimes where people would turn and say, well, we like what you're saying. We like what you're saying, but let's like, we need some data behind this. Is that one of the solutions here or?

Natasha Todorovic (19:02.809)
What is the right data for the right problem? Because very often what organizations do is they take data and then they apply that data to somewhere where it doesn't belong. And I've been presenting human nature data and change data and teaching people how to use that for a long time.

Jeff Holman (19:29.282)
Mm-hmm.

Natasha Todorovic (19:29.501)
And what's remarkable is how often when people don't like the data, they'll ignore it or they'll rationalize it to mean something else. So it's not only taking the right data, measuring the right things, but being informed by it even when it's inconvenient and undesirable. And I'll give you an example of that. One of my clients.

Jeff Holman (19:39.971)
Yeah.

Natasha Todorovic (19:57.204)
was working with a senior exec team of Siemens and they had their entire change strategy mapped out. They were excited, they were having fun. They thought it was going to be the coolest thing since sliced bread. And he calls me, it was like 10 o'clock at night and he's like, Natasha, I think we have a problem. I'm like, what's up? He says, would you just look at this data for me? And I'm like, okay. So we had the exec team data.

Jeff Holman (20:02.083)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (20:22.222)
Okay.

Natasha Todorovic (20:27.177)
And then we had the team that needed to implement the change in their change data. And I was like, ah, I see. And it was different. They preferred change to be different. They had different challenges. And he said, what do I do? So we went through how he might present it and the different things that he could do. And kudos to him. He was up.

till whatever it was, four in the morning, he got up at whatever, six, and then he went into his day with the exec team. And he presented it in a way where they looked at it, they looked at themselves, they took a pause, and understanding that in roughly 70 % of change initiatives and cases, that they fail. So understanding that they saw their data,

They saw their team's data and they were like, wow, this is never going to work. And he was like, right. He said, then they said, well, we need to go back to the drawing board. And he said, you're right.

Jeff Holman (21:34.287)
Is that because the team was able to see the risks involved? You know what saying? I'm always kind of fascinated between the concept of people driving towards success versus people driving away from risks. I'm not sure those are always the same thing. And it sounds like what you're saying is this person, I think, and I'm maybe filling in some blanks here, I think they looked at the data and they said, hey, we got a big risk here because this data doesn't match this data.

we need an outside perspective. Call Natasha, you agreed with them. And so it seems like they were identifying problems, not necessarily knowing the solution yet, but wanting to avoid the consequences that might come from the problem. Is that a fair way to say it?

Natasha Todorovic (22:20.977)
One of my big soapbox items is congruence. We as leaders, leaders can lead those with whom they have psychosocial congruence. People choose their leaders. And when we design change, when we design a new strategy or a new pathway or a new playbook, we need to design it

with the reality of our culture and our people in mind. And sometimes what happens in the boardroom or in an executive retreat is it all sounded wonderful. We design it using our mirrors. And then we try to deploy it onto a culture that is not motivated that way. So when we, you know, without divulging the data, let me do it this way.

Jeff Holman (23:11.948)
Yeah.

Natasha Todorovic (23:19.561)
If you can have the perfect strategy, if it's not adapted for where your people are, let's say there were 20 different changes and everybody's change fatigued, you're not gonna be able to pile on one more thing. It'll just fall flat and people will be like, I can't do this, I'm done, I'm burned out. So you've gotta hear the rhythm in the music.

Jeff Holman (23:33.646)
Mm-hmm.

Natasha Todorovic (23:49.116)
and play to where they are. And then you can pick it up so that they go along with it as long as you're attuned to where your people are. So it's this dance between the vision of the future that the CEO has and the leadership and executive team have, what they are motivated by, and the teams that need to make that happen and then keep it going once it happens.

And if you've got congruence across those different groups of people, it'll work. But most organizations go, have this idea, we're tell people what to do, we're going to ignore the people who are resisting because it's just resistance and they'll get with the program and you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet and all the stuff you've heard. And then it doesn't happen and then they go, we'll call it a success.

Jeff Holman (24:35.918)
Right, Yes.

Jeff Holman (24:43.927)
Hahaha.

Natasha Todorovic (24:44.765)
And then they go into the next one and the next one and then what they're doing is they're teaching their teams how to respond to those initiatives.

Jeff Holman (24:55.374)
So how does a company, cause again, I think a lot of our audience is they're fast paced, very smart people building things quickly. They're kind of the build fast, break things type of audience. And some of them might just say, well, listen, we are gonna break some eggs. We don't know if this is right model. But it seems to me like if they could take away some...

steps or some type of, I don't know, a framework or something that they could say, well, okay, yes, I'm gonna move fast, something's gonna break, but we don't need to break things that we don't need to break. Like, how would one of these scaling CEOs in a fast moving company, like what are the things they should stop and say, okay, before we do this, how do I assess my congruence with my team? How do I, like what are the...

two or three things like, do I have congruence and should I move forward with this? Or do I need to get congruence first? It reminds me of times when, early in my career when I was invited into board meetings, I'm working with the executive team very closely. I see the board members less often and there were a couple of moments where it hit me very, very hard. Sometimes me more directly and sometimes seeing other people who had gone into these meetings without.

making sure there was congruence across the parties that really mattered in the meeting they were in. And so what would a fast moving CEO of whether it was a 10 person team or a 100 person team, how do they maybe ensure a little bit more that they've got congruence even though they're moving fast?

Natasha Todorovic (26:45.257)
So we have a playbook. But one of the things we've already talked about is what is happening in the world in which you're playing? Are there changes in the world that you're tracking or are you missing those changes? What's happening with competitors and are you following, are you missing changes? And really paying attention to that environment in which your organization must thrive.

Jeff Holman (26:47.565)
Good good

Jeff Holman (26:55.341)
Mm-hmm.

Natasha Todorovic (27:14.535)
because if your organization is not built for that environment, your organization will not thrive. Then the next piece is asking who is leading whom? And we've got a process and we've got data and we've got diagnostics and psychometrics that measure this, but we look at is there congruence between the leaders and their teams? And if there is, we let them know, and if there isn't, we let them know. But in the people who should lead whom,

Jeff Holman (27:14.701)
Okay.

Jeff Holman (27:35.894)
Okay.

Natasha Todorovic (27:44.158)
The whom is the culture. The whom are the people who are choosing to follow that leader. The whom are the people who are making all the different pieces come together every day and how they work together and what they create as a kind of living organism. And then there's the why that drives all of this, know, the vision, the mission, the

Jeff Holman (28:04.439)
Yeah.

Natasha Todorovic (28:11.817)
purpose, the reason for this organization. And we answer all those questions before we ever look at the how question.

Jeff Holman (28:22.379)
Hmm. So putting that fetish in place. Yeah.

Natasha Todorovic (28:23.881)
So the how question is last. How do we do this? We don't know how we do it until we know our market, we know how we fit in the market, until we know who we are, until we know our vision, and a few other pieces, until we know our timing for it. And then we figure out the congruent how. Does that help?

Jeff Holman (28:40.781)
So it's.

Jeff Holman (28:45.005)
Yeah, no, that helps a lot. think, because I'm reframing in my mind as you speak, I think a lot of people say, well, this is what I want. Now I got to get the team on board. And what you're saying is, wait a second, let's not try to force the team into the how, let's get the congruence and then figure out if this how or another how is the right how. Am I getting that?

Natasha Todorovic (29:05.565)
The team, yeah, the team may already be super stoked and excited about moving fast and breaking a bunch of things, right? You got the green light, just go, right? But then how do you pick them up when things haven't worked? How do you deal with the deflated down spiraling with failure after failure? How do you take those lessons? How do you take people who are super smart because you hired talented people

Jeff Holman (29:16.322)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (29:28.066)
Yeah.

Natasha Todorovic (29:35.758)
and lead them through those dark night of the soul moments when they failed. And that creates either that down spiral where they kind of pull back and they don't want to play the game anymore, they're tired, and it creates more of an up spiral, well, we're going to try the next thing until it works or when it works.

Jeff Holman (30:00.974)
Yeah, that I like that. I also like how before you said that the, the, whom is the culture. I think I said that right. The whom is the culture. It reminds me of the, you know, the, the first follower concept. And, you know, if you don't have a follower, you don't have, but you're, you're not doing much leading if you're not followed by anyone. And so making sure you get that follower there and that, cause that follower draws it.

Natasha Todorovic (30:21.417)
The followers choose their leaders. You might be signing checks and people might be nodding and saying yes, but positional power is not inspirational power and it's certainly not psychosocial congruence of you being the leader that your people have chosen. So, go ahead.

Jeff Holman (30:25.729)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (30:44.427)
Yeah, would it be too simple to say we're really talking about some version of unity? You need unity in your team. And if you have a team that's not united behind the vision, behind the purpose, doesn't gel well together, mesh well together, you're just gonna continually struggle.

Natasha Todorovic (31:06.153)
As long as your team isn't working on all cylinders, you're going to struggle. You can have, here's a tip, and I think this is really, really important. You can have a high performing team, and there are only probably 10, 15 % of teams that are high performing, and it ebbs and flows, right? You can bring them back, or can bring them back to high performance, but you've got to watch those ebbs and flows.

Jeff Holman (31:22.573)
Mm-hmm.

Natasha Todorovic (31:35.457)
And if you inject these bad apple behaviors, you can take a super high performing team and kill it.

And that's just one person doing things in these sorts of bad apple ways. I'm not saying the person is a bad apple, that they are behaving in these ways that just suck the life out of the team. And you've got to be attentive to that so that your high performing team stays high performing.

Jeff Holman (32:06.805)
Yeah, it's just that incongruence. It's not a character flaw necessarily, but if they manifest those incongruences with the team, that can throw the team out of its high performing mode.

Natasha Todorovic (32:18.313)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We had an organization we worked with and they, economy dipped. They had about 350 people. It was the hardest, most painful decision that they'd ever made in their history. And that was to fire, you know, 90 people. It was 86 people. And I write that in my book. And what they did that was

Jeff Holman (32:20.375)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (32:37.773)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (32:41.751)
Yeah.

Natasha Todorovic (32:47.005)
really different was they invited people to volunteer for firing and What they promised them because they prided themselves on being a network organization being very well connected and relationally astute they promised that everyone would find a new home and That worked for I think

Jeff Holman (32:53.986)
Mm-hmm.

Natasha Todorovic (33:14.981)
everyone minus three or four people. And what that did, in their heart and soul, they belong to this organization. And they were consulting firm, they did kind of the fractional project manager thing for their clients often. And they were so

Jeff Holman (33:18.144)
Okay.

Natasha Todorovic (33:44.761)
They were so tight as an organization that even when people had gone, they hadn't gone. They were still pulled into projects. probably, I think it was maybe three, four years later, for a few years in a row, they won, I think it was best place to work, it was European. So best place to work, they were top three, three years in a row.

Jeff Holman (34:05.684)
wow.

Jeff Holman (34:10.209)
because they really had that nailed down for their culture, how they treated their people, staying united despite struggles like that.

Natasha Todorovic (34:17.447)
Yeah, their CEO was their chief emotional officer. Right, this is very tuned in,

Jeff Holman (34:21.479)
very, very tuned in.

that's very cool. Well, this has been fantastic. There's so much here that I think CEOs can take away. If they were to focus on one aspect of what you've said today, where should they start? Because I do think a lot of CEOs in these scaling businesses, they're under a lot of pressure. They're moving fast. They've got nine things to do and time for two today. And the other seven might never get done.

What's that starting point that you would suggest to them?

Natasha Todorovic (34:59.153)
You're through line is your people. And I'll always remember this example. So Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn, he had entire sections of his calendar blanked out. And when he was asked, you know, what, you have nothing to do, right? Of course he has things to do. He said, look, I need to think deeply about my key people. need to think about how they're developing.

Jeff Holman (35:18.891)
Right.

Natasha Todorovic (35:28.125)
where they're going and how I support them. So if you want your organization to move forward, it runs through your people. You have to know them deeply because they're the ones who are going to either, they're gonna win the dream or you're going to limp over the finish line, hopefully.

Jeff Holman (35:54.592)
Yeah, yeah, if at all. That reminds me in a previous episode with Earl, Earl Foote, who runs an MSP. He just put so much emphasis out. You two would be great friends because he might, he didn't call himself the chief emotional officer, but he's the CEO that has such a passion. Like it's clear that he's put time and attention and effort and money into doing, I think what you've said, he didn't call it congruency, but I think he's...

Natasha Todorovic (35:57.682)
If at all.

Jeff Holman (36:23.841)
You know, the focus is on the culture and the team and building that congruency, even if you call it something else. So that's, that's a very, I think, I think I'm seeing this trend, even though I'm, I'm so few episodes into this already.

Natasha Todorovic (36:36.864)
I'll leave you with this. One of the pieces of research that we've done around the world, big organizations, small organizations in Latin America, North America, in Europe, in South Africa, in Australia, around the world, is what we have found is 35, for most,

teams and most organizations, individuals are contributing 35 to 40 % of their potential. Not because that's what they want, but because that's all the organization is willing to accept. And no one goes to work and no one goes to an organization saying, aha, I'm just giving you this 35 % and I'm saving the best stuff for last.

Jeff Holman (37:27.392)
Certainly not a good employee, huh?

Natasha Todorovic (37:29.193)
No, they don't, they truly don't. And they're going in because not only do they want to contribute all of who they are, they want to grow as a human being, they want to leave value, they want to give positive impact. And if you look at your organization, and you're looking at every single human being and realizing that they're giving you 35 to 40 % because that's all you're asking,

and that's all your environment is prompting them to give. Think how much faster and how much more and how much more creative things could be if you could tap into that and grow it.

Jeff Holman (38:13.931)
Yeah, no, that's a lofty, maybe achievable, but lofty goal for a lot of us. Well, it's been wonderful having you on here, Natasha. I'm sure companies would like to know a little bit more about how to contact you, how to get in touch with you, maybe hire you, maybe buy your book. Give us a little bit of rundown on where they can connect with you in those ways.

Natasha Todorovic (38:35.399)
I'm happy to connect on LinkedIn. You can find me at Natasha Tadorva Callen, maybe in the show notes. And if you don't mind, I'd love to send you the link to my book and they can find it in the show notes. Yeah, it's called Making Change Work. And it's got some stories, it's got some case studies, it's got some tools and templates, and it's got a few really interesting cases. So thank you for asking, Jeff.

Jeff Holman (38:46.067)
for sure. Yeah, we'll include any of those links in there. So please.

Jeff Holman (39:02.541)
Yeah, yeah, I know, and a lot of stuff I'm sure today would carry over from the book into your businesses. This has been an amazing episode. Really, you've brought some, I can't say that I haven't had any guests yet that haven't kind of enlarged my own thinking, just thinking about my own small business, the clients that I work with. I'm always amazed at how much there is to do.

and how many areas there are for improvement and for real opportunity in business. So thank you for, like many guests, expanding my own perspective in these ways.

Natasha Todorovic (39:39.547)
Every business is a people business.

Jeff Holman (39:41.913)
I love it. Well, thank you to you and also to our audience for the Breakout CEO Podcast. It's another week and we've had a great time listening to Natasha. We'll put those show notes into the, into the, those links into the show notes. We'll get this posted soon and look forward to having you on our next episode, having more guests like you on our, on our episodes to come. Thanks so much.

Natasha Todorovic (40:05.201)
It has truly been an honor and a privilege and a pleasure. Thank you so much, Jeff.

Jeff Holman (40:10.327)
Thank you, Natasha.

Jeff Holman (40:15.598)
I'm gonna stop this.

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