Lorraine H. Marchand | The Five C’s to Drive Corporate Innovation (Culture, Customer First, Collaboration, Change & Chance) + Insights from 120+ World-Class CEOs + Five Principles for Sustaining Growth Through Innovation

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Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi -million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use? Because they believe in you, and they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s The Thrive Time Show, starring the former U .

S.

Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zillner. Two men, eight kids, co -created by two different women, 13 multimillion dollar businesses.

We started from the bottom and now we’re at the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Colton Dixon’s on the hoops. I break down the proceeds, bringing some wisdom and the hoops. As the father of the squad, I’m a leader, so if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s the CNC up on your radio, and now free.

Veteran IBM Watson Health, Bristol Myers Squibb.

LabCorp.

LabCorp. For three decades, this incredible guest has spent her time, her energy, helping companies build the courage and culture for making massive, innovative changes. In her new book, she wrote this new book here, it’s called No Fear, No Failure, Five Principles for Sustaining Growth Through Innovation. Ladies and gentlemen, without any further ado, please join me from home in putting your hands together for Lorraine Marchand. Welcome on to the Thrived Time Show.

How are you?

Hi, I’m doing great and wonderful to be with you. So for people out there that have no idea who you are, because maybe I’m a poor marketer, if people want to look you up, I guess, where should they start? Can you kind of walk us through your career?

Where did your career start or how did you get from where you started to here maybe? Oh, well, that’s a wonderful question. And Clay, I really believe that one’s career arc ought to start with a big, messy problem that you set out to solve. And so that was exactly what I did early in my career. And so the unifying theme has been that I’ve been dedicated to bringing new therapeutic advances to patients in need. So that’s what I’ve done professionally.

I’ve done it in the auspices of large corporations. You named a few. I had an opportunity to be an entrepreneur. I learned at the seat with my dad when I was about 12 years old, brought my first product to market. And I’ve also had an opportunity to be the founder of startups. And so I made every mistake in the book and so decided to write the proverbial book so that I could help accelerate other individuals’ paths to successful entrepreneurship and innovation.

and that’s what I sought to do in my first book, led to my second book, the teaching that I do, the consulting that I do. Now, obviously you just turned 25, but if you go back five years ago when you were in your 20s and you were starting in your career, do you remember your first job? Like, what was your first job?

I know now you’re known as this expert and guru all around the world, but what was your first job? Yeah, my first job was actually at a medical school and I was the medical writer. I also, so I did the magazine, the newspaper, radio shows, you name it. I had the great pleasure of interviewing fantastic scientists, clinical scientists and physicians and learning about health and medicine through their eyes and the research that they were doing. And for somebody who’s very curious, it was just fantastic.

I was just like at the font of knowledge and and it was a it was a fabulous experience.

Where was the first job or what was the first moment where you thought wow I’m gaining some traction because you have a lot of young people listen to this show that maybe they’re in the labyrinth of corporate America saying you know am I getting anywhere what was the first job or the first role where you thought wow I’m really gaining some traction here? Well, it’s a great question. And early in my career, as I said, I was really interested in therapeutic advances. And I saw a lot of issues around infrastructure and why certain types of technology and manufacturing wasn’t going to scale. And I wanted to solve those kinds of problems. And I think I had a colleague who said to me very early in my career, Lorraine, will you Please stop trying to solve everybody’s problems and doing so much because you’re making the rest of us look bad.

And sometimes, Clay, it’s something negative that makes you stop in your tracks. And so that comment caused me to reflect. And I thought, what environment do I need to be in to succeed? Because I’m not going home. I’m not going away. I’m not going to stop.

And asking questions. I’m not going to stop solving problems. This is who I am. And I realized that I needed to be in a culture and an environment that absolutely experimentation, play, trying things. without any fear of failure.

And it made me much more deliberate about my career choices going forward because I really thought about culture. And if I can tie it back to your question, the one thing that I tell students as well as adults, the best question that you can ask in any job interview when you’re done with the technical questions and they say, oh, is there anything that you want to ask me? Ask them, what happened to the last person who failed here? What is it like to fail here? What kind of a culture do you have when it comes to experimentation? Because that’s going to tell you a lot about the environment that you’re stepping into.

They will not expect the question because it’s not the softball question. Oh, tell me about the culture. And they get to give you a lot of platitudes. Trust me, if you ask somebody, what happened to the last person who failed here? You’re going to cause them really to think and you’re going to get an authentic answer.

And then you make the decision, is this the place that I want to work? Now, again, for somebody out there watching this show, they’re noticing, wow, you’ve had massive success. And I’m assuming someone’s watching the show because they want to thrive. And they might say, man, I wonder what mentorship advice Lorraine would give me. Before we get into your new book, if you’re sitting down with somebody and you’re having coffee with him or her, and they’re going, Lorraine, how do I get ahead? in corporate America.

I’m an entrepreneur. I’m not an entrepreneur. I work within an organization. I’m an entrepreneur just like you, or I want to be just like you. And I’m just kind of banging my head against the wall.

What advice would you give for somebody out there that feels stuck in corporate America? Well, they’re going to feel stuck because 95 % of CEOs say that innovation is the most important thing on their agenda. And the same 95 % say they do a terrible job at it. And it becomes very apparent to those sitting in the middle that they’re not in an organization that really focuses on people thriving and on advancing new products and services into the market. So then you say, well, what do I do kind of stuck in the middle? What can I do to do my part?

The best thing that you can do is make sure that you understand the company’s goals and objectives, that you’re very clued in to who their customers are and what their customers want and what it’s going to take to move the needle. And when you come forward with your big idea, it shouldn’t be something that’s off in left field. It needs to be something that’s aligned with the company’s goals and objectives and come straight from the mouth of pain points that customers are experiencing.

experience has been that if you stay close to what the customer needs and it aligns with the company’s goals and objectives, you’re going to have a far better chance of getting that innovation to have the attention of senior management and actually being able to push it through. Now, final question I have before we get into the new book is, how do you organize your day? Or how did you organize your day as you were climbing up the ladder? I mean, do you have like a routine, a way in which you organize your day? Because so many people I’ve interviewed on the show, Wolfgang Puck, John Maxwell, the founder of Square, top gurus, top leaders at Adobe, and they all have a routine.

What advice would you have for somebody out there when it comes to organizing their day? I think the most important part of your day is the morning as soon as you get up. And mine includes the duality of meditation and exercise. And I have to have meditation and exercise to get myself grounded physically as well as mentally and emotionally for everything that I’m tackling that day. After I’ve done that, to take care

care of me, the me part, then I’m able to think proactively about my day, my priorities, how I want to expend my energy, where I need the best energy and making sure that what I’m doing through the day matches with my energy flows and that I’m very deliberate and conscious of bringing my best self forward. Now, you could have spent your time, now that you’ve had success, you could have said, you know what? I am going to go to a beach and think about how much work I don’t have to do today. You could have gone to self -enrichment things. You could have gone to a beautiful beach. You could have gone on vacations.

You could have done whatever. But instead, you said, hey, I’m going to sit down. I’m going to sacrifice the time and energy to write this new book. No fear. Five principles for sustaining growth through innovation. No fear.

So I have to ask you, because it’s a big labor of love. love, in my opinion, to put together a book.

Why did you decide to write this new book, or what motivated you to write this new book, No Fear, No Failure? Yeah, well, thank you, Clay. First of all, you have to have passion and know what you love. And so for me, my work is what I love. I’ve got balance and boundaries, but I love what I do. And I’m really, really fortunate that I love what I do.

And I want everybody to love what they do, which is why I have written two books. The first one, The Innovation Mindset, focuses on how, as an individual, if you have a new idea, you want to try something new, you can work through eight steps in order to get it to market. And as I was doing workshops and keynotes and talking with individuals about this area, I had so many company CEOs come up to me and say, you know, we have really creative people in our company, or I’m a really creative, innovative person. The challenge that we have, Lorraine, is this big, behemoth, bureaucratic organization. We’re over -regulated.

We have more attorneys than drug developers. And there’s so much going against us in terms of trying to bring new ideas forward because of this large organization. Can you help us? And I thought, you know what? That is a great challenge. It is coming straight from the mouths of my customers or clients.

I decided that it was an interesting question, given the statistic that 95 % of CEOs believe innovation is important, but they’re all doing a terrible job. Why? Who’s doing a good job? Why are we doing such a bad job? So I decided to interview 120. I thought that would be statistically a good number.

Develop an innovation index and see what I could find out about this problem. And so that really led me to a framework of what I call five principles for how you can drive sustained growth in your organization through innovation.

So that came straight from my background and experience and the experience of the 120 people that I’ve interviewed. So let’s talk about these five C’s. And I’m taking notes, by the way.

So C number one, what is C number one? Scene number one, it has to start with culture, Clay. And I like to share the quote of Dave Evans. He’s the CEO of Fictive. It is a growing digital supply chain company. They just merged with the Japanese company.

And Dave said it best. He said, my job as CEO is not to set budgets. It’s not to hire. It’s not to raise money. It’s not to design the product roadmap. My job as CEO is to drive culture.

culture. That is all I do. But even Dave knows he can’t do that alone. So he’s identified what he calls river guides. And those river guides are the individuals in the organization who, by the way, they do their work every day, show, live, breathe the culture.

So that’s what it means to drive culture and that culture has to be one that abolishes the F word. In the business world, the F word is fail and replaces it with continuous learning, replaces it with growth. I like to say the culture should be one that advocates try, fail, learn. And a number of well -known CEOs agree. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella says that we need to reframe failure as continuous learning. Even Jeff Bezos wrote in a 2019 letter to shareholders, if we’re not failing at a size that is meaningful, we’re not going to be inventing at a size that’s actually going to move the needle.

So there are some successful CEOs that agree with that. Did you say you interviewed 128 CEOs?

Is that the number you said?

120, yes. 120.

Can you maybe just share some of the names of the companies that the CEOs are ahead of? Oh, well, yes, sure. Fictive is one of them. Veolia is another. Our Systems.

Ernst & Young, so that names a few.

Wild. So again, 120, I’m taking notes here, folks. So you’ve interviewed 120 leaders, CEOs that went into the research for this book.

So scene number two, what’s scene number two? Scene number two is customer first. And so right after the culture in most organizations, we have to be singularly focused on our customer. And again, what I found in my research and my own personal experience, you mentioned IBM, is that far too often in large organizations, we think we’re putting the customer first because we’ve got marketing and user experience panels and all of these tools that we lay out there. But the mindset is inside out.

And we continue to solve problems and look at our products and services through an inside -out perspective as opposed to outside -in, which means that we’re really looking at our company from the customer’s perspective. And so in the book, I lay out voice of the customer questions and ways that you can make sure that you are fully aligned with that customer in order to bring that outside -in perspective.

And some of the testimonials and examples in the book get into how CEO’s and heads of marketing are doing just that. So you got culture, we have culture, then we have customer first.

What’s the third C? Well, let’s go to collaboration. And I like to say that In the old days, when collaboration was a behavior that companies wanted to incentivize, it was thought about as who gets along with whom. It’s not that anymore. It is a strategic business imperative. And the data has shown that when different functions, when service groups, when product, all come together around the company’s goals and objectives, around a shared vision of the customer and the experience that they want to provide to that customer, revenue revenues grow exponentially.

Why? Because we figure out new ways to bring services and products and ways of serving that customer that end up bringing new ideas to the fore and new ways of growing revenue, yes, but also new ways of really satisfying that customer. So the collaboration is a way of serving the needs of the customer, and it’s a way of having a very positive experimental type of culture.

So they all intertwine together nicely. Now, someone says, I’m taking notes about the C’s, but why do I have to do this?

If someone doesn’t do, doesn’t implement these five C’s based upon the research that you’ve done with 120 top leaders, what’s going to happen by default? Well, one thing I’d like to add is that I’ve also created these organizational archetypes. And in the organizational archetypes, I evaluate them around the five Cs and their innovation muscle, if you will. And so in a diagnostic, you could actually look at your company against the five Cs, and you might say, you know what? We’re doing really well on culture. We’re doing really well on collaboration.

But this customer first C, or this change C, or this chance C, that’s one that we need to really double down on. So you can definitely look across the landscape and identify where as an organization you feel that you have the greatest gaps. But the short answer is, if you’re not attentive to these five C’s, then you’re not going to be innovating at the kind of scale that will really move the needle. And there’s just work to be done in order to improve the environment that people are in, your ability to satisfy customers, and your ability to innovate and to grow.

And most companies in this day and age feel tremendous pressure to grow. Now, again, let’s recap these C’s here. There’s five C’s. Can you recap these C’s?

I know somebody out there is taking notes. Oh, well, we said the culture, so we have to start with the culture. Try, fail, learn. We have to put the customer first and practice outside -in thinking. to serve the customer’s needs. We have to be collaborating, which means bringing products and services and different functions together around the customer so we’re serving their needs, but also so that we’re growing revenues, figuring out new products and services to bring to market.

The fourth C is chance. Now, you might view chance as taking a chance. I view it in a financial sense. And you may be aware of Sergey Brin’s famous golden ratio which is 70 -2010. And at Google, he proved that the 10 % that they were investing in innovation and blue sky and new things led to 70 % of the company’s growth five years later. Companies that have adopted this golden ratio have had a lot of success in terms of making innovation part of the DNA, investing in it and having it produce positive results.

for their company. So there’s definitely a financial aspect. of chance, the flip side of chance, or the corollary to it, I should say, is also investing in your people. So I like to say you need to bring the right team together, invest in them, empower them to do their jobs, and then get out of their way. And most of the CEOs that I’ve spoken with, we can talk about Carbon Clean, Scopio Labs, say exactly the same thing. You bring together the right talent, you empower them, and then get out of their way.

But you got to give the people the resources that they need.

So that’s the fourth C, is chance.

Now, what is the fifth C? Well, the fifth C brings it all together, Clay, because we’ve got to be able to navigate change. If we use a little bit of a sailing metaphor, we know there’s going to be weather out there, we’re going to have to tack, or in the parlance of that, we’re going to have to pivot. And we have to know when to pivot. So a pivot is not sacrificing your vision or your strategy.

It means that you’ve got to stay fluid in terms of the roadmap. And if you have to take a turn, go in a different direction, then you need to be able to do that. And oftentimes, it means unlearning in order to relearn and go forward. And I like to use the metaphor here of a performing arts colleague who’s in the UK, a professor at Oxford actually, and he talked about how in his professional dancing career, at one point his coach told him that he had to learn how to breathe. At which point he said, thank you very much, I think I know how to breathe. But the point was he had to learn how to breathe differently.

And once he did for one full year, his performance went down. He lost competitions until he got the hang of it. And then he started making those quarterfinals. So sometimes it’s very difficult in business for us to accept the fact that we have to go off track in order to go on track.

But that’s exactly what the courage to change requires. Now, for somebody out there that says, look, I’m a busy business owner. I’m a small business owner. I’ve got 50 employees or less. How does this book apply to someone who’s a business owner with 50 employees or less?

And I want to know how this applies maybe to midsize companies. Well, you know, there are so many practical tips in the book. And I definitely kept that in mind because I mentioned I’ve been the founder of startups and have also worked in very small companies. So we have to be practical about it. And I think that you’re going to find really basic tips. For example, one of the things as a small business owner that you can do, we have great ideas.

We only have so few. much capacity. Before you put something new and exciting on someone’s plate, delete something first. Right? People need help prioritizing so that they can absorb and give time to the new shiny thing. Help them prioritize.

Another way to foster an environment of experimentation and making it safe to fail, something that I did in companies that I’ve worked with, I held fail -free Fridays where I would get my senior team together just for 30 minutes. Let’s talk about what’s not working. What’s going wrong? What are the obstacles? to figure those out together, not push them under the carpet, not pretend like they don’t exist, but have a forum where we celebrate them, discuss them, and do what we can to fix them.

So you’re going to find a lot of practical tips that you can implement day to day. Now, what if I’m a bigger company?

I know all these principles apply to both big and small companies, but if I have a larger size company, what kind of unique insights could business owners of maybe larger companies gain from your book? I think one of the things is this idea around hiring the right kind of talent and being the kind of CEO who hires the right people, trust them for what they know, the subject matter expertise, their technical expertise, and then your superpower is knowing the right kinds of questions to ask, right, in order to bring out the best in your people. So you don’t compete with them. You don’t try to know it better than they do. You don’t micromanage. You bring the best people together.

together, you get really good at asking the right kinds of questions, and you let people run with it and do their jobs. And oftentimes in large organizations, that’s one of the biggest drawbacks to being able to innovate is not really giving people the latitude, the resources, the free reign to go out there and innovate. And a corollary to that is don’t punish them for failure, right? Figure out how to incentivize experimentation. And some companies have figured out how to do this well by having different kinds of accelerators or hackathons or having town halls where they They acknowledge somebody who maybe solved a customer problem.

So it’s also about acknowledging people when they do small types of things that are good, small incremental innovation, as well as those big things that really move the needle. So giving people the latitude to create, to do their jobs, not punishing them for failure, and then making sure that along that continuum, you are acknowledging at a personal level from the smallest innovation all the way up to the big things that are moving the needle.

Those are just a few examples of things that larger companies can do. Now, you’ve been on some great interviews over the years. You’ve been on some big shows. And I’m sure you’ve gotten off a handful of shows where you thought to yourself, man, I wish they would have asked me this.

So is there something in your heart that you really want to communicate about your new book or anything that’s just a big message that you want to make sure you get out to our listeners that are eagerly taking notes? Well, I just, I know that we have a problem. in this country and other countries as well. I mean, the data shows us that 70 % levels of disengagement by people in their work, in their jobs. People are also thrown right now about how to deal with AI, either in their workplace, is it going to replace me? How do I use it as a tool?

So, you know, these things all mean, these two barometers to me, mean that people need to be in more innovative environments. They need to feel more empowered. And I think if you read this book the way I’ve I’ve written it is that you will get really practical tips for things that you can do as an individual, that you can do with your team, that you can do with your organization to start to make that kind of change where innovation is really gonna be fostered, where work can be exciting because you’re creating, you’re linking arms with people that you really enjoy working with, and you’re really making a difference. And I think that’s what we’re all looking for. Believe that people will find that in the pages of my book, in the stories of the companies, the case examples, the CEOs.

They’ll find so many rich stories that will resonate with them. Now again, folks, the title of the book, let me pull it up on the screen here, folks. The title of the book is No Fear, Five Principles for Sustaining Growth Through Innovation. No Failure. It’s No Fear, No Failure. The title, No Fear, No Failure, Five Principles for Sustaining Growth Through Innovation.

And again, folks, you can find it on Amazon or everywhere books are sold. I’ll put a link to it on the show notes. Lorraine, I’m going to give you the final 60 seconds. I really do appreciate you carving out time to be here with us today.

What do you want to share with everybody out there who’s looking for a final word of maybe encouragement? Well, I would say… I would like you to start to look for problems that you could solve because curiosity is at the heart of innovation. A lot of times people don’t know how to get started, and I would just like to encourage you to look at problems that you have on a day -to -day basis at your workplace, in your environment, at school, at home. Start to write these down, noodle them over, and that’s where you’ll start to find the innovation and the fodder from which you can start to make real change and bring new ideas forward.

So start today, write down those things that are bothering you and figure out ways that you can solve problems that you’re experiencing in your own life. Thank you so much, Lorraine. I really do appreciate your time. Thank you for writing this book and for gifting it to the world.

and hope you have a great rest of your day.

Thank you clay, it’s been a pleasure take care of my.

But like Clark man, he is one character.

It’s a good word for character, yeah, that is it. Driven smart and the guy was so hyper all the time is doing so much good and then his mother and she just says She just lets him be Clay Clark. I mean, so he’s endorsed by his mother and he’s doing magnificent work.

So it was a great meeting you out there and all the people that he surrounds himself with.

His Clay Clark starts his days at five o ‘clock in the morning. Oh, it’s incredible.

Yeah. He’s, he’s like, he’s, he’s a machine. He’s a machine, but his, you know, I could, I have problems with my company starting at nine o ‘clock. Yes.

Hundreds of people showing up at 5 .00 AM in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Man, he’s a leader of a leader. He’s a fantastic young man. No, he is. He is.

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