EP 235: The Legacy Thinking Trap for CEOs

Most leaders try to fix slow execution by improving what's already there. Claus Jensen says that's the trap. Small tweaks to an old system just make you a little better at being slow.

Claus Jensen is Chief Information Officer at The University of Texas at Austin's Dell Medical School, where he leads technology and innovation strategy across a large, multi-site academic health system. On this episode, he breaks down "future backwards" thinking: starting from a clear picture of the outcome you actually want, then working back to remove the constraints in your way, instead of asking how to slightly improve what you're already doing.

This is for you if you're still optimizing systems built for a smaller version of your company, if every location seems to move at its own speed, or if you sense your team is solving the wrong problems well.

You'll learn:

- Why "how do I improve current state" locks you into incremental, not real, change

- How to identify which of your operating assumptions are outdated across locations

- A framework for planning backwards from your future state instead of forward from today

- How to combine human judgment with technology without losing the human component

- Why speed of thought, not speed of action, is often the real bottleneck

Listen now, and take the free Scorecard Diagnostic to find your specific leadership bottleneck: https://gpsleadership.org/scorecard/

If this hit home, share it with another who's still fixing yesterday's system.