Lead In 30 Podcast

Stop Surrendering to Obstacles, How to Keep Your Team Moving!

• Russ Hill

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The moment a boulder lands on your path is the moment your leadership shows. Do you freeze and wait for clarity, or move and create it? We dig into the simple but potent idea that action produces information and explore how the best teams keep delivering even when the trail turns steep and the hail starts to fall.

We start by reframing accountability as power. Instead of punishing misses, we coach people to get curious about obstacles: What exactly is in our way, how big is it, and where’s the gap we can exploit in the next 48 hours? That curiosity fuels a tight loop—discover, decide, do—that turns uncertainty into insight. Along the way, we talk about why complexity doesn’t scale, how stories spread faster than slide decks, and what it takes to keep your org’s “foggy middle” aligned on a small set of clear outcomes. Expect practical examples, from piloting small bets to resetting team language so direction and ownership are unmistakable.

We also get candid about human nature. It’s normal to shrink for a moment when the market shifts, budgets tighten, or competitors pounce. The difference-makers don’t stay there. They take the smallest reversible action to learn something real, share that learning so it scales, and repeat the cycle until a path around, over, or through the obstacle appears. If you’re leading a team through change, this conversation gives you language to rally your people, questions to unlock accountability, and steps to make progress without perfect information.

If this resonates, share the episode with your team, subscribe for more practical leadership tools, and leave a quick review with your biggest takeaway—what boulder are you moving today?

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About the podcast:
The Lead In 30 Podcast with Russ Hill is for leaders of teams who want to grow and accelerate their results. In each episode, Russ Hill shares what he's learned consulting executives. Subscribe to get two new episodes every week. To connect with Russ message him on LinkedIn!



SPEAKER_00:

So I've got a question for you and your team. When you're on that path, let's say you're like hiking down the path towards the destination. It's said differently, you're on the journey to achieve the results that you're trying to deliver. And all of a sudden, you run into this boulder, like this massive obstacle. What do you do? What does your team do in that moment? I'm going to talk to you in this episode about what human nature is and then what separates you and other people and your team from other teams that are successful. What do you do when you run into the obstacle in this episode?

SPEAKER_02:

This is the Lead in 30 podcast with Russell. You cannot be serious. Strengthen your ability to lead in less than 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_01:

See why executives at Lockheed Martin, Cygna, Teva, Chili's, and so many other companies are praising Deliver. Why some leaders get results and most don't. You can download the first chapter right now and request two free copies shipped to you at LoneRock.io.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it took us more than four years to write that book, Deliver. Why some leaders get results and most don't. It's not a book that was written in some business school by a bunch of professors studying what should work on paper, nor is it the outcome of one executive in one industry who had one path. That's not what this book is. It is the outcome. It is the collective wisdom from thousands of leaders, thousands of meetings, and hundreds of organizations. What works in delivering results and what doesn't? And why are we confusing so many of the leaders in our organization? They are confused. There's fog in the midsection of our org chart. How do we solve it? That's what we that's why we wrote deliver. Why some leaders get results, others don't. If it's not listed in Amazon, if you can't find it on our website at this very moment when this episode's coming out, it's just a matter of days. We're just putting final touches on it. I'm not going to say more. You can listen to the last few episodes where I mentioned more about the book. Just super excited for you all to have it. It is a game changer. I hope that you will read it. I hope that we'll have the audio out in a couple of months, you all, at the time this episode's coming out. Sorry, we can't get it faster. But the book is out in time for the holidays. I hope you'll you'll purchase it for yourself, that you'll read it, that you'll study it. Again, it's it's not what we came up with. It's what we discovered in working in a leadership lab at some of the world's most amazing companies and with some of the most pathetic leaders. Let's just be honest. We get to work with a bunch of them that are amazing and unbelievable. And we also, in our 20 years of doing this as a firm we've run up and we've interacted with, we do all the time, with leaders that are not delivering results, that are screwing up royally. What do we learn from them as well? It's all in deliver. Okay, uh, welcome into the Leadin30 Podcast. In less than 30 minutes, we give you something to consider implementing in the way that you lead others to upgrade your skills to meet the demands of an ever-changing workforce. It is not static out there. If you were a great leader five years ago, that does not qualify you to be leading people today. If you were a great leader, effective, you delivered results two years ago. Doesn't mean it's gonna work today. The market's changing. Your people are changing, you're changing. All these things, your competitors are changing. So you've got to constantly, we've got to constantly be working on upgrading ourselves. That's what this podcast is all about. I am Russ Hill. I'm one of the co-founders, part of the team at Lone Rock Leadership. We're an executive consulting firm as well as a leadership training company. You can find out more about our work in both of those areas, whether we're training or upskilling, upgrading your mid-level managers, or you need some help with the uh keynote that you've got coming up in Q1, Q2, whatever, a sales meeting. You want us to speak in front of 2,000 people, or you want us in an executive offsite to help you get some clarity or build alignment in your organization or solve for um the various areas of friction. We talk about all of it at Lone Rock.io. Lone Rock Leadership, LoneRock.io. Okay, let's get into the episode. I'm gonna read a tweet and uh that I that I came upon that I actually um screenshot. I did a screenshot of it. Um I haven't yet sent it to my kids, but it's gonna be in our family group chat um either today or in the next couple of days because I thought it was, and and I'm probably gonna share it in Slack with our our organization, our team as well, because this this tweet in just a couple of sentences, in a few sentences, captures what I want to talk about in this episode. They're related, not spot on, but related. Here's the tweet. Uh it says, one of my favorite lessons. This is not from me, this is from some guy named Brian Armstrong. I don't know Brian. He's probably world famous. All of you know him, and I'm the only loser that doesn't, but I and I don't know how he got in my Twitter feed, but whatever they're doing at X is working. Like my feed is so good. And I don't think any company, I don't think any platform's perfect, but of all the social media platforms I spend time really on two these days. Not a lot, but a little bit, and that's LinkedIn. How could you not be on LinkedIn? I'm putting content out every day. If you're not connected to me, following me on LinkedIn, I hope that you will. Our team is working on my feed every day, putting out content and stuff. I hope you find it valuable. You can always direct message me. Might take me a little bit to get back to you, but I'll eventually get through it because there's tons of messages that come through there. LinkedIn is one social platform I'm on. You get you got to be updating that, you all. That is your today's business card, today's resume. You want to expand your network. You're meeting people at internal company events, at um in industry events, you're meeting somebody at a social thing. You need to connect with them on LinkedIn. You just need to because five years from now, ten years from now, six months from now, that's going to be really valuable. Okay. I'm not, I got no stock in LinkedIn, and and I don't think it's perfect by any stretch, but how could you not be investing some time, energy, or have somebody on your team, an EA or somebody updating, and you go to a meeting, and everybody on your team, and everybody and that just you want to have that connection in today's day and age. Okay, the the second platform is X Twitter. I'm on it because I'm a sports fan. So this time of year, I'm getting all of the tweets from people that follow my team, my teams, basketball. I'm into college sports, you all. I'm not as big on like NBA, NFL, not my thing. I know a lot of you are, but not my thing. And uh not totally. I mean, I get into it sometimes. But um, and baseball, I watched the uh the last game, game seven of the World Series. That was it. Met my appetite. I know, I know some of your massive baseball fans, not me. I didn't grow up with it, and so I don't have the appreciation for it, nor do I see why in the world any league would play 497 games in a season or whatever, whatever it is, a hundred and like it's insane how long the baseball season is. They gotta fix that, man. Way too long. The games are too long, the season's too long. Anyway, this is not that podcast. So I love I love college sports, and um, and my team, my teams tend to be doing, they're doing pretty well right now, like the best we've ever done. And so I'm super into it. So Twitter's good for that, plus um business leaders, great minds, innovative thinkers, and uh, I get like hardly any politics in my Twitter feed, which is a beautiful thing. Oh my gosh, can't stand the political noise that's out there these days. Um the people that agree with me, or I tend to agree with them, half of them they've lost their minds. Like they they think any anybody who disagrees with them is an idiot. Like, do they not do they not see anyway? Don't don't get me going. And then the other half that disagree with me think I should be wiped off the face of the earth or kicked out of the country or whatever because of the beliefs I hold. Which come on now, there's space for you and there's space for me. I don't value anything as much as I value compromise, agreement, negotiation. It's what we do in business. Can you imagine going up to a client being like, if you don't fully agree with everything that we do as an organization, you don't agree to everything in our contract, you should just be wiped off. You're a loser. You're like, if we treated business the way we treat politics, oh man. Anyway, so I I uh and then the other the other platforms I'm on, but I don't I I don't even have the apps on my phone anymore because um they just whatever. Anyway, this is not this is not uh an episode about that. Um so Brian Armstrong, whoever he is, brilliant dude, um, somehow ended up in my feed because of the algorithm, which is getting better and better all the time on Twitter X, says one of my favorite lessons I've learned from people. He actually typed learnt. So maybe Brian's not too smart, but anyway, uh actually I'm just kidding, because I I have typos all the time, and I'm not one of those people. Um I've learned from working with smart people. So this is one of his favorite lessons that he's learned from working with smart people. I already like him saying that. Like this guy's capturing wisdom from wise people he works with. Like I'm I'm already a fan because 90% of people don't do that. They don't even think the people they work with are smart, and they don't see the value they're bringing, all the wisdom around them, and then they're not spending time capturing the wisdom, experience, insights. Like, there's so much time to be saved by listening to other people who have been on your path. The people I want to follow, the people I want to work with, the people I want to be surrounded with, are the people five miles down the journey I'm on. You with me? Like they've got kids and they're figuring out, or they they've unlocked a few things about how to parent effectively. They have a level of financial freedom or security or success and and that they figured out a few things. They've got, you know, like you know what I mean? Spiritually, physically, emotionally, mentally, they're not perfect. That person doesn't exist. Every single one of us has contradictions in the way that we live, lead, operate, parent, all of that. There are tons of contradictions. I don't get caught up in that. I'm not looking for the perfect person. I'm looking for the perf, I'm looking for the person who's fallen down, tripped, bloodied their face, got scars, and they're moving forward, and they're not bitter. And and and they're capturing wisdom. Like, put me at a dinner table with them. Connect to me with them on LinkedIn. Like, let me follow them on Twitter or whatever. Anyway, so Brian, I like you already from this. Here's the lesson, one of his favorite lessons. This is what he says action produces information. Like, we could just frame that those three words, and I would be super happy and feeling like I brought a ton of value through Brian, whoever Brian is, to this episode. And you know my feeling about simplicity. We work so hard as a firm. Why'd it take four years to write a stupid book called Deliver? Because we were trying to simplify and simplify it and simplify it and give you the stories you need to read, or that the the the leader out there, the mid-level manager or the senior executive trying to figure it out or develop their team, we want the stories that they're going to be glued to. Like chapter one of our book, that story is phenomenal. Brian Chesky, the founder, co-founder of Airbnb, walking into a private meeting in Silicon Valley in December of 2024. And what he unleashed in that room needs to be read and studied by everyone because he's a really successful business person who got it wrong. We all get it wrong. I just talked about that. In that moment, he got it wrong, in our view, in some of what he advocated for. And yet all these leaders in Silicon Valley went, oh my gosh, founder mode. That's what it's all about. And you're not going to know what I'm talking about until you read the book. But so we worked hard to put the right stories in there because people learn from stories. Your brain craves a plot and characters and a visual. That's why you watch the great TV series. That's why you listen to certain podcasts. That's why you love certain movies. That's why you tell stories at dinner. That's why the moment you interact with somebody, you say you're not going to believe what happened. And you proceed to tell a story because that's how humans communicate through stories. Right? And so you tell the right stories and then you communicate in as few words as possible. That's what effective leaders do. Complexity doesn't scale. You hear me say that over and over right now. If your results for your organization are complex, they don't scale. People don't remember them. They're not going vertically or horizontally through the aura chart. Complexity doesn't scale in a story. People have lost interest. They've tuned you out. Complexity doesn't scale in what you say in a meeting. Anyway, so Brian, kudos, bro, for the simplicity. He produced three words in a sentence that is powerful. Action produces information. Some of you are listening to that going, Russ, really? That's like groundbreaking? Yeah. It actually is. It actually is. I'm going to talk more about it why in a minute. Why I like that so much, but I want you thinking about it first. Why does Russ think that's actually a powerful sentence? Action produces information. Think about it. Action produces information. Most humans, most leaders, most executives, most entrepreneurs, business owners get that backward. Action produces information. If you're un I'm gonna continue reading the tweet. If you're unsure of what to do, just do anything. Can you see why I'm sending this in the family group chat? I got college kids, I got now a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law, and they're trying to figure out what the path of life looks like. If you're unsure, Brian says, of what to do, just do anything. And then he says, comma, even if it's the wrong thing. Yes! That's it, Brian! That's the unlock. That's right. Then he goes on. This will give you information about what you should actually be doing. I'm gonna read the paragraph again because I kept interrupting it. Action produces information. If you're unsure of what to do, just do anything. Even if it's the wrong thing. This will give you information about what you should actually be doing. Last paragraph of his tweet, Brian Armstrong, don't know who he is. Sounds simple on the surface. The hard part is making it part of your everyday working process. It sounds simple on the surface. The hard part is making it part of your everyday working process. He could have said that paragraph a little bit more effectively, but we like it. We get his point. Here's the issue. So many of you, so many of you, um, two things I want to talk about. I want to go back to the way I opened this episode, which is what you do when you face an obstacle. What you do when you come to the boulder in the path on the way to your destination, the result you're trying to deliver. How do you react? How does your team react in that moment? And then I'm gonna compare that to what successful leaders and teams do. But before, well, this is all tied together. So let's actually go with that and then we're gonna come back to the tweet because they're connected. Most people, let me tell you what human nature is. This is all in our Power N30 course. We've got a whole course about accountability. We taught accountability for thir for 15 years. Those of us are the co-founders of the firm. Love it. The Oz Principal, amazing. Roger, Connors, Tom Smith, the our mentors, two of our the people we respect most. I'm talking about my co-founders at Lone Rock Leadership. We just have an enormous amount of respect for them. And they're they're uh close friends of ours. Tom is uh we we we gave the first few pages of our new book to Tom Smith, one of the one of the uh co-authors of the Oz Principle, which if you're not familiar with that book came out a long time ago. I wish they would have updated it. They haven't. Um a lot of you have read it, some of you haven't. Here's the gist of it. It teaches the Oz Principle is is above the line, below the line, taking accountability. And so Roger and Tom wrote about it in the 1980s when nobody was using that word accountability. We sold a ton of training, went all over the world, literally, all over the world, um, teaching it. They they created a firm. Some of you that are listening were from former clients of it. You read books, you've been in leadership conferences. I've taught that model, the Oz Principle model. It's fantastic. They don't use it nearly as much anymore. Don't really, the firm's not built around. It's one of the things that anyway, I'm not going to get into it, but but it just didn't make a lot of sense. But Roger and Tom no longer at the company, no longer part of the firm. That's one of the reasons we created our own years ago. Um, and and and but but we taught accountability for a long time. And one of the things that you learn studying and teaching accountability constantly is that you you learn what people do when they face obstacles. So I want you to visualize that path. You're on the journey. You've got an outcome that you desire. That might be a target, like a number for the quarter, for the month, a sales number. It might be a product timeline. It might be an innovative mindset. It might be a closer relationship with your brother or sister, a better relationship with your parents. It might be with your spouse or your kids or whatever, whatever the outcome is. It might be wanting to be more physically fit or to be more, to be healthier spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically, whatever it is. Have more money, better lifestyle, whatever it is. You have an outcome. By the way, you have a ton of outcomes that you desire. And for most of us, they're just dreams. They're like wishes and dreams in our mind, and we don't do a lot about it. And that's not what successful people do. They actually put together what Brian's talking about. Action produces information. We'll go back to that in a minute. But on that journey to the outcome we desire, whether that's us leading our team at an organization or it's in our personal lives, we hit we run into boulders, obstacles. Most people, here's human nature. I want you to think about this. Most people shrink in the presence of obstacles. Isn't that wild? We surrender. The human reaction, the human nature reaction to an obstacle is surrender. Oh crap. I didn't know that all these tariffs were gonna come. I didn't expect the competitor to unleash this new product. I did not think we were going to cut back part of our organization. I didn't realize that the way people wanted to work was going to shift. I didn't know the industry was gonna be down. I didn't know that my spouse, kids, parents, siblings, whatever, we're gonna do that. There's an obstacle. They come at us all the time. We run into them frequently. Think of the path. It's like a constant rock slide. There's like stuff coming onto the trail constantly. And so we run into our team does, we do individually, into the obstacle. Most people shrink, they get smaller. The obstacle gets bigger. And we assign all of this power. That's what we call our course on this topic around accountability. Well, we call it power. Accountability, that word sucks. What you really want is people to show up powerfully. Nobody wants to go to an accountability training, right? Because that means there's issues in the company and the executives are trying to hold somebody accountable. No, thank you. I don't want to be I don't want that meeting invite. But everyone understands what it feels like to be powerless, to feel powerless in a relationship, in a market, in an organization. When you when you so it's not you, nobody should feel bad. None of you should feel bad for feeling the it the temporary need to shrink or the shock or the disappointment at the boulder on the path. Like, dang it. I thought it was gonna be easier to get to that mountaintop. I thought the trail was gonna be clear. I expected it to be flat, not constantly uphill. We were in Colorado. I talked about the river rafting trip we had with these uh teenagers that I volunteer with and this bucket list item I had of finally rafting a river. And you know, so I'm not gonna talk about that at length, but let me just quickly reference uh an experience we had on that trip. So we take all these teenage boys from the church group, right, up to Colorado, and we go on this, this we're gonna go on this river rafting trip. We do that. I did a whole episode on it. There's actually a story, I put that story in in the book. There's a part of it that talks about, I'm not gonna get into it, I don't have time, but it the the what why uh we I wanted that story in in the book. I I think it's pretty powerful, but uh illustrating a point that we're making in one of the chapters. Um but after the river rafting experience, we went on a hike. I ended up calling it Devil's Peak. That's not that's not the name of it, but that kind of just helps you visualize what I thought about it, this hike. Like you expect in the mountains, the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, these beautiful vistas, incredible what scenery, right? We're go we're on this trail and you expect it to kind of be uphill for a little bit of time, then it's gonna flatten out or whatever. No, not this one. Like constantly uphill. Like, not a little bit like Grand Canyon switchback kind of hike, right? It did not look that way when we started the hike, but we get on it, and the group ahead of me is going ahead, and so now I'm like locked in, and you don't want to be that person, right? They're like, oh, I'm not gonna go for no, we're gonna we're gonna do this, right? And and then when we by the way, so it's just constantly uphill. And and and in fact, this is a great example of the of the point I'm making in this episode. So I didn't expect the path to be constantly, every step to be uphill. Like, isn't there a flat section somewhere? Like, are we gonna turn around that corner and finally it's gonna flatten out? Or my calves gonna be burning and my heart in the Rocky Mountains climbing this thing feel like it's gonna explode? Like, ooh, is there any oxygen in the air? Because I can't really get any in my system right now. Are all of you dying? Because you're not sounding like I feel right now. Can somebody please say that this sucks? Or am I the only human here on this trail or the only softie? Right? You you get it. So we're we're gonna, and by the way, then we it finally, after miles, after finally it flattened, we get to the top, it flattens. And guess what happened? I'm not joking. Guess what happened in that exact moment? A massive hailstorm. Guess what is at the top of the mountain? No shelters. Guess what I don't have? Any protection. So the hail just starts coming down. Like, oh my gosh. Is that not a perfect representation of the journey of life? Of what it's like to lead a team. The path is never flat. And if it is, like you better really be enjoying this week or this month. Because I got news, what's around the next corner? Uhhill, boulders, hail falling. So most people, human nature is to surrender in that moment, to get small. That's not what powerful people do. That's not what accountable people do. That's not what successful teams do. They anticipate, expect boulders. They don't know what they're gonna be. They just know that their journey towards that destination, towards that result, is gonna look like the path I'm describing in the Rocky Mountains in southern Colorado. And so we're ready for it. So, yes, it's human nature in the moment to shrink. In the moment. Get your breath, sit down on the trail for a moment if you need to, and then back to Brian's tweet. Action produces information. Do not stop, do not hang out here. The boulder is not moving. And some of you as leaders, that's your mindset. Some of you in your personal life, that's your mindset. Some of you, your teams, that's what they're doing. Some of you, this has become institutionalized into your culture. It's the way that the whole business unit, the whole factory, the whole region, the area, they're sitting on the trail thinking the boulder's gonna move. The boulder ain't moving. And so what do successful people do? They do what Brian's advocating. They keep taking action, movement, motion, they keep hiking, they don't surrender, they don't blame, they don't become obsessed with the past. Talk about the way we used to do it, or when the market was different, or back when we had three times this many people, back we used to have budgets, we had all this bull crap. You did not have the money you think you had back then. It wasn't as easy to sell. Maybe for a few weeks, maybe for a year, if you're lucky, maybe the market was really awesome for a while. Maybe there weren't a lot of competitors. That ain't today. The boulder's not moving itself. So, what I need you to do, if you really do want the outcomes you desire, if you really do have a desire to achieve that outcome, if you really want that better lifestyle, if you really want to hit that number, you really want to make that compensation, you really want to achieve growth in your career, you really want to unlock wisdom, you really want to experience success, I need you to get your butt off the trail. I need you to realize the boulder's not moving and find a way around it, over it, or through it. Action produces information. It's in the moment that you're moving that the path reveals itself. The map doesn't suddenly float down from heaven while you sit there and chill for a quarter or a year or a few years. No. The map reveals itself when you are in motion. You start to see the path around, over, or through. If you're I'm going back to Brian's words, if you're unsure of what to do, do anything. Even if it's the wrong thing. And then what you look for, you all, we talk about this in powerful. The very first step of showing up powerfully, of taking accountability, of leaning into success is curiosity. We call it discover. The path is discover decide do. I don't have time to get into it. Discover is the first one, it's curiosity. The moment you see curiosity in somebody who's come up against a boulder, the more that's the moment you know that they're starting to take accountability. There's a chance they're gonna rook it around that boulder. Because they're curious. Wait, what's this boulder? How big is it actually? How heavy is it? How much space is it? What's it taking up? Where did it come from? What what like they're curious about the obstacle? And then in that moment, you know what else they become curious about? The opportunity, the path, the way around it. In the in the um in the activity of action, in the in in the movement, the path reveals itself. There's so many stories I could tell, but this is the lead in 30 podcast, and it's been 30 minutes, so I have to shut up now. That's what they tell me, right? Oh my gosh. If you want, like if this is ringing a bell with you, if you're like, oh, this is like what our team needs to hear, you like you need to go. I like I hope you made some notes mentally, or you wrote them down, or you typed it or whatever, what you're thinking you need to do of certain things that we've talked about or have crossed your mind of what your team needs to hear. Like, write that down. You might talk about an upcoming meeting, you might send them a link to this episode, whatever that looks like for you, just do it. And then you all, if there, if this actually, to be honest um and candid with you, if this rings a bell with you, this is the whole concept of the Power and 30 course. Like, we've got a whole course with these videos. I'm actually on camera telling a story about. About this exact thing. We've got the whole team, not the whole team, we've got a few members of the team, just a few of them, that are on camera telling you there's like 25 videos. There's the whole, there's like a hundred and twenty-page participant guide. There's all the like it's all there if you want it. If this is a topic, you're like, oh my gosh, we need to talk about this in in our kickoff meeting in January. Well, contact us. Like we can we can do that keynote. We can send a member of the team. I can do whatever you want. Like a virtual meeting, whatever it is, if that's important or that's uh valuable to you. I don't care about all that. Like, I mean, that's great, and that's that's we we we make these resources available because they work. Because these are real issues that real people are dealing with. And we've got to move this organization forward. We've got to move our team forward. We have got to find a way around this obstacle if we're gonna unlock everything that this has this life has to offer us. Don't surrender when you come up against the boulder or the obstacle. For a moment, you're gonna feel it. That's okay. That doesn't make you weak. In the moment, for a moment, you're gonna realize how big that boulder is, how big that obstacle is, how uphill this path is. But don't so like give yourself grace for a moment and then keep moving forward. That's what's on my mind in this episode of the Lead in 30 podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

Share this episode with a colleague, your team, or a friend. Tap on the share button and text the link. Thanks for listening to the Lead in 30 podcast with Russ Hill.