Ryan Leak

It's not a marketing campaign.

What it is, is it's paying attention to friction and eliminating it.

And most leaders, most people I would add, are wired to add.

Yeah, come up with more stuff, add more programming, more oversight, more initiatives, more structure.

But I believe growth is often less about addition and more about subtraction.

It's about asking a simple question.

What is the most annoying thing that our people deal with every day and how can we remove it?

And here's what you and I both know.

Every single organization has irritants.

The meeting that should have been an email,

The email that should have been a conversation.

The five layers of approval that make decision-making painfully slow.

The expense report that takes longer to file than the expense itself.

Outdated software that everyone complains about but nobody fixes.

And don't even get me started on the automated phone system that makes you press seven buttons before you ever even talk to a human.

Listen, the other day I had a Nike order that was messed up.

And so I called Nike's customer service line and I was expecting an automated system, which, you know, just drives me up the wall.

This isn't about my irritants, but I'm just giving you the story.

All right.

And when you call Nike, here's what happens.