Bred To Lead | With Dr. Jake Tayler Jacobs
Ep.034 From Conformity to Innovation: Rebuild Leadership and Systems
09 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Bridge Builders, welcome back to bread to lead the pie class that's built to create phenomenal. Leaders. Last week, we talked about scaling, surviving mode within organizational structure and how to know where you are today. We're talking about what you do when you get to certain levels of leadership, because here's the deal.
What I've discovered over the last decade and turnaround is that the biggest threat to innovation isn't incompetence. It's actually tradition. The phrase we've always done it this way has destroyed more organizations than any competitor ever could or would. And the industries that pride themselves on tradition, they're the ones that start deteriorating at the fastest rate known to man because.
Tradition without evolution is just slow death with better branding. And today we're talking about leading with gumption, having the courage to be different, daring to challenge what everyone else accepts, not for the sake of being disruptive, but for the sake of building something that actually works, something that doesn't just survive, but thrives.
Because as we know, leadership is the software, systems are the hardware, And innovation is what happens when you refuse to let tradition write your future.
Let's go, Bridge Builders.
think is very important as we begin to digest the information that we're going to talk about this episode and moving forward in the season. I just have a couple of things I'm just excited about. Our operational system is officially going to be in five facilities starting the quarter. There's a lot of legacy technologies and systems that are slowly beginning to start moving out of
the space because innovation is needed. And in this space and time, we're dealing with this split leadership, the pool of leaders or leadership. Let's call it the leadership hustle, for lack of better words, where you have leaders who want to drive innovation, but they don't have signability.
You have certain leaders that do have signing ability and they're just trying to keep it as smooth and easy to get to retirement.
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Chapter 2: How does tradition impact innovation in organizations?
So you have like this thing and then there's a bunch of people in between. And one of the biggest concepts that we're bringing to light this year is operational blindness, because I You know, after talking with so many leaders, being in hospitals, talking with executives, I'm beginning to realize that everybody kind of understands the metrics or the reasons why they're underperforming.
They just don't have the full solution. And then the second thing is when it comes to leadership and really pushing something through, a lot of leaders lack the ability of follow through, meaning I start this initiative to create change and I drive that change regardless of what happens. And so we're dealing with this space. And honestly,
I just believe that we actually don't lack quality leaders. We don't lack quality clinicians. What we're struggling is actually putting ourselves in the best position possible to win just because of these old traditional isms that don't mean anything. You know, we have these silos of like clicks within the organizational structure of health care.
And some of you may see it in your own businesses in different industries. But in my business, my my industry currently health care, there's a lot of silos of departments that kind of work against each other, but not because they want to. But because the systems are so disenfranchised, it causes like this chasm of confusion while everybody's, you know, feel like they're doing the right thing.
It's kind of like your own world and you do your part and everybody else has to do theirs or else. And it doesn't really work as we're talking about moving forward with innovation in this space. We're dealing with, you know, a huge shortage when it comes to staffing all across the board in health care. So our organizations have to get stronger, smarter, faster.
And I'm excited to announce that our system is going into facilities. We've released the operational system in a couple of hospitals last year, and our technology is now following those facilities. And I'm excited to say, you know, we have hospital departments operating with less FTE. Actually, they cut down even more, and they're operating in so much better workflow with a lot more facilities.
Optimize efficiency modeling and the goal and the thing that we found out with this concept that we that we termed operational blindness that we'll be bringing. And you actually can go to our site, SipsHealthcare.com, click blogs and you can see our white paper there. I believe I put it on my LinkedIn too. But yes, operational blindness, our newest book, Operational Blindness Online.
is coming out to, that's bringing to terms why organizations are inefficient. And a lot of reasons these leaders are put in these positions to have full responsibility for departments that they don't truly have full control over because there's so many, many mechanisms that are kind of in the way of them running their business. And then two, we're operating in a new world running on old systems.
And we have to start to mature those systems so we give our leaders an opportunity to succeed. And last week we were talking about these scales of change. And the truth is, it's hard to actually get to the scale of change if we're still operating with blindness more than ever before. Leaders have access to more data more than ever.
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Chapter 3: What is operational blindness and how does it affect leadership?
So tradition protects it. Innovation questions it. And finally, that industry, that subset, that company, that business becomes irrelevant, not because they didn't work hard, but because they worked hard at preserving what should have evolved. And tradition isn't inherently bad, of course. Tradition that refuses to evolve is what's fatal.
Tradition is okay, but tradition that doesn't evolve is fatal. Perfect example for those that like sports. If a team won championships in football, running the football without wide receivers, back in the day, they would have won a bunch of championships. But today, you have to be able to throw the ball as well as run it.
Back in the day, if you had a 6'11", 7' center or power forward, you just throw it to them and they can square at any time. Today in the NBA, point guards are 6'10 and 6'11. So that approach doesn't work anymore. The tradition of... Working as a team, making taking the easy shot can stay the same.
But the way in which we operate the game, the game plan, the program has to change as the market or the industry is changing. That's what we're talking about when tradition isn't inherently bad.
Tradition, showing up on time, having a chipper attitude, loving what you do, being joyful at that tradition, having a progression program where people that come in entry levels can progress through your organization.
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Chapter 4: What are the five principles of innovation-driven leadership?
That's a great tradition to have. A tradition that refuses to evolve that becomes fatal is when we've been doing something one way and you're seeing it start to slow down in that way. We have to change. For an example, if you got the majority of your intern staff from high schools and junior colleges for 40, 50 years. And over the last 10 years, it's not the same anymore.
Chapter 5: How can leaders prioritize impact over optics?
You can't stay with that tradition because that's not where your market is anymore. You have to find out where they are so that you can start attracting them to you. But then if I don't look at my tradition, how are we recruiting them? How are we showing them the future? How are we getting the best and brightest minds in health care? What are we doing to be able to retain them?
Chapter 6: What strategies can be used to build a coalition for change?
If that doesn't change, we're going to continue to deal with the erosion of talent in our industry. And it goes back to the organizations that are still clinging to this is the way we've always done it. They're not stable. They're stagnant. Instability and stagnation look the same, but they're actually different. Stagnation says, hey, let's not change anything. Let's not breathe.
Let's just kind of keep things afloat. You know, we'll make it work with what we do. Let's not do more. Let's not do less. Let's just do enough.
Chapter 7: How do organizations make failure safe for innovation?
Let's do enough to pass our CMS regulatory tours. Let's let's do our best to make sure that we're doing the best job we can. Staying in the gray areas of following our regulatory standards. Let's do the best job we can at patient care. That is stagnation. Stable is we're growing, developing, and progressing at a pace we can afford to go at. That's what stable looks like versus stagnant.
Because stagnant things rot. Naturally, stagnant things rot. So we have to make sure that we're being stable in the way that we make decisions, but not stagnant and never making one that helps the organization. And I think that's very important right now. We're going to do a little bit of a commercial break for those organizations that are knowing, you know, that you have. good leadership.
You know that you have people that work hard, but something just seems to not work right. This is why you have to reach out to SipsHealthcare.com.
Let us hear what you're going through and how our operating systems, Thoroughby Design, can not only help you run your department, but also monitor it with our preventative maintenance and our preventative care technology that allows for the supervisor to know that there's a technology that prohibits and mitigate some mistakes before they happen.
One of the biggest things that we have to understand is that human behavior is almost measurable. You can pretty much count With a clock, how many times somebody is going to make the same mistakes? And it looks the same. You know these things.
So our technology understands human behavior and we prohibit a lot of mistakes that happen that typically causes most of the effects within an organization. So look into that. If you haven't got any of our books, Bread to Lead, Built to Bleed, or now our new book that's coming out, Operational Blindness, please be on the lookout for that link coming out soon.
But go to Amazon and go and pick out a book. and purchase a book. And for you and your team, Bred to Lead helps you with foundational leadership. Bred to Lead exposes SPD managers to the operational business side of SPD and operational blindness, talks to the executive about what to do to keep these mistakes from continuously happening and having the hospital lose money.
Okay, commercials are over. Let's get back to the pod class. Segment two, we're gonna be talking about the cost of conformity. And I wanna share with you a story. About five years ago, I walked into an organization that had been operating the same for about 30 years. Same processes, same hierarchy, same assumptions about what worked because it worked in the past. And on paper, it looked fine.
They were profitable, they had loyal clients, they had longevity, but underneath they were dying. And their turnover was accelerating. Their margins were shrinking. Their reputation was shifting from established to outdated. And when I suggested changes, workflow designs, technology upgrades, cultural shifts, I got the same response for leadership. That's not how we do things here.
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Chapter 8: What practical steps can leaders take to challenge tradition?
And conformity at even the cost of the hospital, the organization, or the business. And conformity of just staying stagnant, let's just keep what we have here. You never can keep it. You either grow it or it kills off. And that conformity, there's a cost in it. It's called the cost of innovation. That conformity, there's a cost in it. It's called the cost of growth.
That conformity, there's a cost in it. It's called the cost of relevance. And eventually, the cost will eventually be survival, where every decision that is made could keep the doors to the business open or closing. And here's what most leaders don't understand. Conformity feels safe, but it's the most dangerous position that you can take. Because while you're conforming, the world is changing.
And when you finally decide to adapt, you're so far behind that you can't catch up. That's why scripture says to be in the world, but not of it. Yes, I'm here operating, but I'm not so indoctrinated in the culture of conformity that I can't see that we need change.
I'm in the world like I understand the language, the lingo, those things, but I'm not so conformed in it where I can't see that things are getting out of hand. And the organizations that thrive aren't the ones that conform. They're the ones that dare to be different, not recklessly, but intentionally.
So let's really diagnose this tradition trap, like where the real hardware software tech is, like organizationally. And here's where the tradition trap happens. It's where you have organizational structures that were designed decades ago that don't reflect how work actually happens today. Hardware problems.
The traditional chap comes from processes that were built from a different era that never updated. The tradition trap comes from systems that prioritize control over agility. The tradition trap comes from infrastructure that makes change, change harder than staying the same. That's when you know that you're stuck in a tradition.
And those softer software problems, the leadership problems, is when leaders who built their career on the tradition and see innovation as a threat. The leader that's grown and matriculated and promoted in the industry or methodology of tradition that has been proven not to be the most efficient or a proper way to run the organization in today's time.
When innovation for transparency and openness and growth is present, those are the leaders who decline innovation. Because now, if we have technology that can really read behaviors, and truly show work throughput, you no longer can hide around the manual scribbled in numbers that you write or being able to blame something for not working.
Now you have to actually add value to the organization that you're in. That's a threat to them. The tradition trap when it comes to the software side of it, the leader side, the cultural side, is culture punishes failure. So nobody risks trying anything new.
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