- 4 days ago
Outdated leadership systems can quietly slow decision-making, weaken employee engagement, and turn business owners and executives into organizational bottlenecks.
In this episode of The Mason Duchatschek Show, Mason speaks with Jürgen Dauk, author of The Leadership Operating System and a business transformation leader with more than 25 years of experience at companies including Oracle, OpenText, and Avaya.
Jürgen explains why command-and-control leadership structures struggle to support growth, innovation, and organizational agility. He also shares how leaders can empower teams, reduce unnecessary approval layers, and move decisions closer to the people with the knowledge needed to act.
You will hear real-world examples of companies that improved performance by creating greater ownership, using self-managed teams, and redesigning how decisions are made.
The conversation also examines the role of artificial intelligence in business transformation. Jürgen explains why simply introducing AI tools is not enough and why leaders should first clarify their vision, improve organizational design, and involve employees in identifying opportunities for automation and innovation.
This episode is especially valuable for business owners, CEOs, executives, HR leaders, sales managers, team leaders, and anyone responsible for improving business performance.
What You Will Learn
• How leadership dependency slows growth and execution
• The warning signs of an outdated leadership operating system
• Why departmental blame often reveals a larger systemic problem
• How excessive approval chains delay important decisions
• Why leaders should enable employees instead of controlling them
• How self-managed teams create accountability and ownership
• Why decision speed can become a competitive advantage
• How to reduce decision-making time within an organization
• What leaders should change before investing heavily in AI
• How AI can free employees to perform more valuable work
Key Takeaway
“Ask your people for solutions. They know better.”
Effective leadership does not require one person to make every important decision. Leaders create a clear vision, establish guardrails, and give capable people the authority to solve problems where the work happens.
Connect with Workforce Alchemy
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WorkforceAlchemist
Workforce Alchemy - The Magazine
https://workforcealchemymagazine.com/
Connect with Mason Duchatschek
Website: https://masonduchatschek.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonduchatschek/
In this episode of The Mason Duchatschek Show, Mason speaks with Jürgen Dauk, author of The Leadership Operating System and a business transformation leader with more than 25 years of experience at companies including Oracle, OpenText, and Avaya.
Jürgen explains why command-and-control leadership structures struggle to support growth, innovation, and organizational agility. He also shares how leaders can empower teams, reduce unnecessary approval layers, and move decisions closer to the people with the knowledge needed to act.
You will hear real-world examples of companies that improved performance by creating greater ownership, using self-managed teams, and redesigning how decisions are made.
The conversation also examines the role of artificial intelligence in business transformation. Jürgen explains why simply introducing AI tools is not enough and why leaders should first clarify their vision, improve organizational design, and involve employees in identifying opportunities for automation and innovation.
This episode is especially valuable for business owners, CEOs, executives, HR leaders, sales managers, team leaders, and anyone responsible for improving business performance.
What You Will Learn
• How leadership dependency slows growth and execution
• The warning signs of an outdated leadership operating system
• Why departmental blame often reveals a larger systemic problem
• How excessive approval chains delay important decisions
• Why leaders should enable employees instead of controlling them
• How self-managed teams create accountability and ownership
• Why decision speed can become a competitive advantage
• How to reduce decision-making time within an organization
• What leaders should change before investing heavily in AI
• How AI can free employees to perform more valuable work
Key Takeaway
“Ask your people for solutions. They know better.”
Effective leadership does not require one person to make every important decision. Leaders create a clear vision, establish guardrails, and give capable people the authority to solve problems where the work happens.
Connect with Workforce Alchemy
Website: https://workforcealchemy.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReverseRiskConsulting
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workforcealchemy/
X / Twitter: https://x.com/WorkAlchemist
Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/WorkforceAlchemy
Dailymotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/WorkforceAlchemy
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WorkforceAlchemist
Workforce Alchemy - The Magazine
https://workforcealchemymagazine.com/
Connect with Mason Duchatschek
Website: https://masonduchatschek.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonduchatschek/
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LifestyleTranscript
00:05welcome to the mason duca tech show and before we jump in this episode is brought to you by
00:11workforcealchemy.com the place where business owners and executives go to uncover and address
00:18profit leaks hidden in their everyday operations my guest today is jergan doug author of the
00:26leadership operating system and a business transformation leader with more than 25 years
00:31of experience helping organizations close the gap between strategy and execution having held
00:38senior leadership roles with companies including oracle open text and avaya jergan has spent decades
00:45studying why some organizations move fast scale effectively and adapt to change while others get
00:53stuck in bureaucracy leadership bottlenecks and slow decision making today we're talking about
01:00leadership dependency decision speed organizational design and what leaders need to change if they
01:07want their companies to thrive in the age of ai welcome to the show super glad to have you here
01:12today mason thanks for having me really excited to be on the show so after working with organizations
01:20around the world what is the most common leadership problem executives think they have that is
01:25actually something entirely different so i think so leaders often look at other departments and you
01:33know blaming stuff on them and and thinking well we could do better if this other department would be
01:40would be doing a better job let's say you are leading a sales organization you're blaming marketing
01:46marketing marketing is blaming sales and so on and so forth but in reality you know everybody's
01:53defending their own kpis instead of moving the needle and there's no i mean the system is not designed
02:00to really work as a cohesive organization that is moving things forward running on an outdated
02:07leadership operating system what are the first signs that tell you that an organization's operating
02:11system is broken say i mean look at how how long it takes to to change something to change direction
02:20i would also argue that if you look at the levels of you know middle management that you are carrying
02:29around it's heavy weight right if you have a huge middle management and it takes ages to get
02:36something communicated to get a decision rolled out it's it's a clear sign that your system is outdated
02:44and if your focus is more on controlling kpis then experimenting and innovating and it's also a clear
02:54sign you're you're far behind it's funny how this would have been 25 i'm guessing 25 years ago maybe longer
03:03but lee iacocca here in america because i know you're in germany right now but lee iacocca
03:08brought in his he was the head of chrysler and he wanted a convertible and he brought in his
03:16engineering team as the story goes i think i'm telling it correctly brought his engineering team
03:21and said you know how long it's going to have take us to have a prototype for a convertible and
03:26they
03:26got together and oh we'd take months for this months for that and the normal engineering response
03:33he's like no go grab a lebaron cut the lid off the thing and put a rag top on it
03:40he's made a decision
03:41right there but the engineers were like oh this is going to take months and it's going to take all
03:44this time so i understand what you're saying and you know that was 25 or 30 years ago and it's
03:50i
03:50convinced it's it's not better now it might be worse yeah and i i recently studied a case of a
03:59home
03:59appliance company chinese home appliance company hire right they were close to being bankrupt and
04:06they completely reinvented themselves and what they're running on today as an operating system
04:13is a completely self-managed system so you have kind of little enterprises within a large organization
04:24that are making decisions on their own under a huge umbrella but they're much quicker and they are
04:31much better in in experimenting so what it led to is you know from from being almost bankrupt to being
04:39super successful outperforming the market and then taking over the home appliance business from
04:45general electric and now the funny thing then comes in right so you have this new operating model
04:53and then you buy a business that is structured the old way so really two cultures clashing and we've
05:02been discussing you know how this transformation at the general electric arm went and whether a lot of
05:08people left because they have been transforming exactly to the same model or almost exactly right
05:16cultural differences right but same setting and i was expecting that they lost many many people
05:23right but that was not the case they transformed and the biggest aha effect for me looking into the
05:33details was the employee employee engagement went up massively because people took on ownership
05:42and they felt like they are needed and they have the power to influence something and to me this is
05:49fascinating how systems like that can work sure so why do so many companies with all these talented
05:55people and smart leaders and good strategies still struggle to execute so i think it's it's two things
06:01first is it's still taught like that so if you go to to business university right you would look at
06:10traditional organizational designs that is number one and number two is i think a lot of the leadership
06:16is fear-based not inspiration based so if you are coming from a point of fear fear of losing control
06:26fear of not doing your numbers fear of not fulfilling shareholders you know expected growth
06:34then you might lean more into the command and control direction if you are more a visionary leader
06:44you might look into better ways of leading and put your fear of losing control aside i think that's
06:52the biggest difference if you're fear driven you will you will talk about transformation but
06:58transformation will only be on the surface level and minimal right because you're still afraid of losing
07:03control it's it's interesting when you think about what people are afraid of they're afraid of making
07:07mistakes and stuff i get that but i think a lot of them fail to recognize the opportunity cost of
07:13their indecision or their slow decisions what are your thoughts on that yeah 100 and what i find funny is
07:22you would see in a classical company that leaders are not trusting their people to make good decisions
07:28right and they typically argue you know they don't have enough insights and they are maybe not used to
07:36make decisions right and there you have somebody being in their 40s and you know you don't trust them to
07:43make
07:44a decision worth a thousand bucks right but in their private life they get married they make decisions
07:51whether to have kids or not they buy a house huge mortgage like they're used to making big decisions
07:58in their private life and you know in business you don't trust them to make a decision worth a thousand
08:04bucks that's i i think that's quite funny it is so you talk about leadership dependency what exactly is it
08:14and why is it such a serious obstacle to growth i think if you can top into tap into the
08:19potential
08:19of great people then you will see them flourish and grow and it takes a lot of burden from you
08:28because you don't have to make all the decisions yourself you don't even have to motivate the people
08:33if they are empowered right it's not your job you know and the more you go into that direction
08:41the more you understand that the i would say the notion of leadership completely changes it's not
08:48controlling your people it's not motivating your people it's enabling right and you could even get
08:56into the extreme of you know i completely stop controlling the people i trust the people we are working
09:06into one direction and i make sure we we are still in in the right direction but the people who've
09:14got
09:14the knowledge they have knowledge and they have creativity so why not trust them to to make proper
09:21decisions and come up with new solutions it's it's much harder as a leader if you want to make all
09:28those decisions yourself 100 i was literally my my son just got promoted into management and i was
09:36literally having this conversation with him not more than two hours ago i was like his name's
09:43clayton and i'm like clayton you don't you don't have to have all the answers no one expects you just
09:48because you get promoted and you have this new title that all of a sudden you have all this special
09:52knowledge and all the right answers i said you surround yourself with good people and if you
09:59don't know what to do just ask them like hey here's a set of circumstances what do you think is
10:05the best
10:05way to handle that and why then ask someone else what do you think is the best way and why
10:09what do
10:09you think is the best way and why i said now you got three different options or more and now
10:13you don't
10:13have to figure it out you just have to make a decision and assess the risk and reward so like
10:19you and
10:19he's just but that was a new concept him because he's an early career professional he's just getting
10:25into those roles but i'm not convinced that a lot of senior executives forget that sometimes especially
10:31the higher up they get they've got this ego that oh i have to be the one they go to
10:34first i have the
10:35one who makes the decisions i have to i have to and at a certain point in time there's their
10:40staff
10:40will let them like if you're not going to ask for my opinion you're not going to ask for my
10:45feedback
10:45you got all the answers then i'll sit back here and do what you tell me and then they wonder
10:50why
10:51they have a disengaged workforce yeah exactly exactly that that's absolutely frustrating what i
10:58think though is what you absolutely need is a clear vision and guardrails right so if the company's
11:06vision and the purpose of the company is unclear or is more marketing speech than anything else
11:14then you cannot expect your your people to make decisions that make sense for the company
11:21right if you don't have a vision and mission that goes beyond we want to we want to uh grow
11:27revenues by
11:2820 year on year then it's difficult to to empower people to to reach a goal sure so many founders
11:38and
11:38ceos believe that stay involved in every major decision is a response is responsible leadership
11:46what's your thoughts on that i i don't i don't agree at all i mean it doesn't make sense to
11:52to become
11:53your own bottleneck the company's bottleneck right why would you hire smart people and then still
12:00make the decisions yourself it doesn't make sense and if you look at what what traditional companies
12:08are trying to achieve with ai it's a similar thing you know companies are you are the founder and ceo
12:16you're growing and now ai right so if you look at the thought process with many founders but also
12:25long-term leaders is how much money can we save right but i think if you if you're convinced you
12:35have
12:35great people on board right in your company and you've got a great vision now you're getting better
12:41tools so my question would be what else can we achieve can't we do a much better job now with
12:49ai
12:49instead of just thinking about we could save 10 or 20 percent right yes i i'm gonna butcher the quote
12:57but i know that i know the general justice but steve jobs made the comment or something similar along
13:02lines of i don't hire smart people and tell them what to do i hire smarter people and so they
13:08can
13:08tell me what to do and i thought that was very well i mean steve jobs i mean yeah but
13:14jensen wrong of
13:16nvidia just said you know he can't understand so if people if ceos right think about cutting cost with
13:26ai they lost their imagination because why wouldn't you use your people and greater tools
13:33to achieve something remarkable so could you maybe because i'm sure there's people listening right now
13:39that are here in our discussion there's and they're they may have been operating in the command and
13:45control leadership style and maybe that's the way they were taught and deep down in their gut they're
13:52feeling that it might be time to evolve grow try some different things but they're not there yet
13:59and they're on the cusp of making that leap of faith maybe could you share an example that might
14:06encourage them where reducing leadership dependency dramatically improve execution speed or business
14:12performance yeah i did i had a great discussion last week so i was working with a client it's
14:18it's a small or me yes sme business typical sme business right and they had discussions on on ai
14:26and so they did an experiment they brought in an external company that developed some
14:33some automations ai automations for their bookkeeping keeping function and as a result
14:40they brought down the repetitive tasks by 80 percent now what they didn't do is fire their bookkeeping
14:51stuff so they transformed them into talking with customers into you know much more productive work
15:01than just you know doing standard repetitive things so they did this experiment just in their
15:09bookkeeping like it was not a massive whole company transformation it was just that bookkeeping
15:15department of that sme company but as a result you know employee engagement went up they didn't decide
15:26to get rid of people but they repurposed their skilled people to talk to their best customers to have
15:36a lively interaction and as a result you know dso went down massively so they got paid much quicker
15:47because instead of doing repetitive tasks those bookkeepers were calling their their best customers and
15:53saying look is there an issue can we help and client satisfaction went up massively so when my my take
16:01to
16:01your question i would i would i would probably from my experience if if you're struggling with that
16:07level of trust or transforming start at one area experiment and see what the results is with your
16:16customers with your employees and see what it does to your level of trust with your employees and i bet
16:27that will convince you to copy paste that into other areas of the business when my when my son was
16:34an
16:34infant he might have been four or five years old he got sick and we took him to the hospital
16:40and he was
16:41there for three or four days and we got the bill and insurance got the bill but it was thousands
16:47and
16:47thousands of dollars and i asked my wife i go how much time did he physically spend with engaged with
16:53a
16:54doctor over the course of three full days and nights and the total time was about maybe 30 minutes
17:01but he got excellent care but a doctor didn't clean the room although the room was clean the doctor
17:08didn't change the sheets although the sheets were clean the doctor didn't prepare and serve the food
17:13although he got great food the the hospital realized that they needed to have the doctor doing the
17:18things that required his specific skills knowledge and experience and everything else was handled by
17:25other people that didn't have that doctor specific skill experience and i look at ai the same way
17:31i look at ai saying whatever if it's an engineer let the engineer do the engineer things if it's a
17:38doctor
17:38let the doctor do the doctor things if it's a salesperson let the salesperson do the things that
17:42require that salesperson's specific skills knowledge and ability that a machine doesn't have
17:47but everything else like you talk about in your bookkeeping ai can handle a lot of the other
17:52things so that they can do more of what they do best and like to do most as humans and
17:58it's in but
17:59it it takes that realization and i don't think that's any different when people are hesitant or scared of
18:06ai like oh how's that going to impact this or how's that going to impact that no different than a
18:10hospital system saying guess what we're not going to have doctors preparing meals and cleaning rooms
18:15so anyway the what do organizations that make fast high quality decisions consistently do different
18:22than organizations that get stuck in endless meetings and approvals so in what they're doing
18:28differently in terms of organizational design is they move decisions to where the knowledge is
18:34right so it doesn't go through a approval chain and they don't focus on as much on reporting so
18:43they typically have transparent measures they have a few kpis and they are transparent throughout the
18:51whole organization so there's no meetings needed to to discuss those and you know if you give more
18:59ownership to teams and they know what their outcomes are they know where they want to go and they know
19:08how they are doing they talk to take on responsibility because they don't want to see us as the laggards
19:14right they don't can you give me an example can you what does that really look like can you give
19:18me an
19:18example yeah so just say you have a customer escalation right a good customer is unhappy with
19:29your product be it software hardware whatever they're unhappy right if you have cross-functional teams
19:37that are close to the customer they take that on as their thing they own it so somebody will contact
19:48that customer try to understand what it is that the customer is unhappy with and make sure it gets resolved
19:58there is no i escalate it to somewhere no they own it so i think it's all about ownership
20:08so you own something as a team it's not just i i did my job i i created a ticket
20:16fired it off it's beyond my
20:18you know my role my my level my decision level no i own it and i make sure it gets
20:27resolved okay
20:27if you were brought into a company and asked to cut decision making time in half within 90 days where
20:34would you start i would remove approval chains i would you know set up clear guidelines on how to
20:41make decisions and then cut down on on approval chains fair enough it's it's and i think there's
20:48such a need for for what for this like on on the customer end last week i ended up having
20:53to go
20:54into an urgent care i was moving stuff around and got an infection in my hand and and my insurance
21:01company said 24 hour seven 24 hour a day seven day a week nurse helpline and i dialed the number
21:09and
21:10of course it wasn't available and it was a weekend i'm like they didn't deliver on their promise it was
21:16written on the back of the insurance card call this number so i'm gonna vent a little and so i
21:22finally
21:22i do my research and i go in on a and that would have been on saturday night sunday friday
21:27night
21:28saturday i go in i go into urgent care they give me a prescription i get it done great i
21:36get an email
21:36from my insurance company a few days later saying you're not supposed to get prescriptions without
21:41pre-approval that usually takes two to three days and i'm sitting here laughing at like you're you
21:48didn't have an you didn't have your nurse is available when you said you would i went to urgent
21:54care because my hand was swollen and needed help i got a prescription by one of your prescribed
22:03providers and you have the audacity to call and tell me that i wasn't a proper customer that i needed
22:09to go through your three two to three day approval process while my hand is swollen like they need you
22:15that company needs you in what world in any shape or form should someone who goes through to an urgent
22:21care clinic have to wait two to three days to have an insurance company approve a prescription
22:29it's a prime example i give you exactly out of that space i know of a nursing company
22:35they employ almost 12 000 people right they've got two managers for the 12 000 people
22:45right so they run on self-managed teams maximum size of team is 12 people once they have more
22:54they split up into two six people teams and then they can grow right they have full autonomy right
23:04they have some kpis one of them is customer facing time they have to reach a minimum of customer
23:13facing time they know when they do that amount of customer facing time they are profitable inside the
23:19organization right if they are below they can ask for coaching because they know that they are
23:26underperforming costing the company money so they would naturally go to a coach and ask for for guidance
23:3812 000 people with two managers two directors they do everything they manage their office space they manage
23:49hiring they manage firing they are fully autonomous in their teams so if in that case right so you've you've
23:59got a
24:00problem you call them and one of them will pick up because they own the area and their ultimate goal
24:09is to make sure
24:11everybody in their area that they are covering is doing well so there's personal ownership there's not
24:19like a hotline somewhere no they're handling that if some one of their team members is sick right you wake
24:27up in the
24:27morning and you're sick so you don't call your manager and call yourself off sick and leave that issue to
24:35a
24:35manager no you call your colleagues because you have patients to care for and you ask them would you step
24:42in for me because i don't feel well meaning you really own the well-being of your patients like you're
24:49not
24:49sitting on on the phone somebody calls in you don't care basically because your your job is you know
24:57handling 50 tickets a day very true what organizational changes should leaders make
25:05before investing heavily in ai in your opinion so number one is definitely vision and purpose
25:10have that clear beyond just revenue you know and involve your people in in creating that and then
25:18involve the people involve the people right ask them what are the areas you are seeing that could be automated
25:28or
25:28improved with ai because what i'm seeing a lot is i i recently worked with a company um a manufacturing
25:35company
25:36typical thing they implemented ai so it was more a thing of legal you know compliancy and then
25:47you know it got the got the order to roll out a solution company-wide right invested millions almost no
25:58improvement why is that because just because you you switch on copilot in in your office suite
26:05doesn't improve anything but if you go to specific teams and let them look at you know what are your
26:15what are what are your challenges what are your value streams how do you create value inside the
26:22organization and what would improve if we would hire somebody to to work with you on on an ai solution
26:30where would you look what could be done better what repetitive tasks are you doing that are preventing
26:38you from doing the greatest job possible so if you again if if you centralize decision making you don't
26:47have that power if there was one this is one of my favorite questions i love asking every guest if
26:53there
26:53was only one piece of advice you could give to people who are watching or listening today of all the
26:59advice that you got many many years of experience and wisdom every just you've got that and with all that
27:07you have to share if there was only one piece of advice that you could give to people watching or
27:11listening today what would it be and why ask your people for solutions they know better that's solid
27:20so if people want to know more about you your work your company what are the best ways for them
27:26to learn
27:26more or engage with you and your organization so i'll i'll be around on linkedin i post quite regularly
27:33so you can find me under jürgen daug on linkedin and i've a website for my book which it can
27:41be found
27:41under theleadership-os.com so that's theleadership-os.com where you can also you can just leave your email
27:53address and download a few templates so there are some good self-assessment pieces to check on where
28:00where do you stand with your org so and would love to hear from you and and hear a bit
28:06of feedback
28:06what's going on in your world what inspired your book it was 25 30 years of seeing things painfully
28:14not working and a few areas where you know really innovative leaders did things differently
28:23that worked totally differently and and worked much better that inspired my my book and my work
28:30well thank you for sharing your book thank you for sharing your time and thank you for sharing your
28:34wisdom it's been an absolute pleasure and i hope everyone watching and listening is enjoying it and
28:38learning as much from it is as i have thank you thanks a lot
28:48you
28:48you
28:48you
28:48you
28:53you
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