We Not Me

Episode Summary Most teams believe they’re making decisions when they’re really just talking. In this episode, Dan Hammond and Pia Lee look at why decision-making is one of the most underestimated team skills, and why it matters more than ever in times of constant change. They cover the ways decisions quietly fail: the loudest voice dominating, people nodding along to avoid friction, the quiet thi...

Susi O’Neill runs a consultancy that helps organisations build trust in technology, which right now mostly means AI. She learned the craft the hard way, doing communications for a Russian cybersecurity provider whose technology wasn’t automatically seen as trustworthy. Her starting point is that AI adoption is a people problem, not a technology one. Employees are getting mixed signals: first they’...

Episode Summary In this hosts-only episode, Dan Hammond and Pia Lee start with an uncomfortable question: what's your P(doom), the probability you'd put on AI destroying humanity? They quickly move past it. Their view is that the bigger near-term risk is not the technology but who governs it, and that most leaders can't control that anyway. The question that matters is the one inside your own sphe...

Episode Summary Most transformation programmes are built around the hardware of an organisation: the systems, the ERP rollout, the AI licences switched on and handed out. Michael J. López, consultant, author of CHANGE , and the person behind a new national workforce study of 1,000 workers, has spent two decades delivering that traditional playbook, and the last five trying to change it. His starti...

We Not Me turns 150 episodes old this month, and Dan Hammond and Pia Lee are using the milestone to talk about something every leader running a transformation is quietly grappling with: why 88% of organisational transformations fail — up from 70% not long ago. Prompted by a Forbes article on the subject, they dig into why "transformation" so often becomes corporate shorthand for restructuring, dow...

Max Crane runs La Stazione, the café in the Yorkshire Moors he bought last year from the mentor who gave him his start as a teenager. On the surface this is a conversation about coffee and community, but the real subject is what happens when a leader refuses to over-engineer culture: Max builds an entire team ethos around twenty-second interactions, hiring for character over CV, and treating mista...

In this fascinating episode of We Not Me , Dan and Pia step into a leadership world that many listeners may know little about: the US public school system. Their guests, Dr. Kristen Weikle, Superintendent of McLean County Unit 5 in Illinois, and Denise Pontrelli, former superintendent and executive coach, reveal the extraordinary complexity of leading educational systems that serve thousands of st...

Dana Hargis is a mental health counsellor of 25 years and co-founder of Restore of Ada, a practice built around one idea: reset the nervous system and you change the quality of a person's life. Dan and Pia bring her on to unpack why so many workplace problems — burnout, conflict, broken teams, leaders who can't be reasoned with in a crisis — trace back not to bad character or bad strategy, but to...

Steve McLeod has spent years building Feature Upvote, a small bootstrapped software company, and along the way became fixated on a question most product literature ignores: how do founders with no product manager, no big budget and no army of researchers actually decide what to build next? He set out to write a book about prioritization frameworks — and discovered almost nobody uses one. This epis...

Ian Turner has spent over two decades as a Chief People Officer watching the same slow collision happen inside organisations: brilliant performers get promoted into leadership roles, never get developed as leaders, and quietly become — in Ian's phrase — "overpaid doers." This episode asks what it actually takes to be a human-centric business leader, why that capability is in shorter supply than it...

Episode Summary Joel Casse spent over two decades inside large global organisations — most recently as Nokia's Global Head of Leadership Development — watching senior teams up close. What he found wasn't a talent problem. It was a behaviour problem: packed agendas with no room for the team itself, leaders competing to showcase expertise rather than build on each other, and decisions perpetually ki...

🎧 Three reasons to listen Make feedback less scary and more useful – learn why most feedback triggers defensiveness and how to avoid it Get a practical framework you can use immediately – mindset, relationship, and delivery Handle difficult conversations with confidence – be honest and direct without damaging trust Episode overview In this episode, Dan and Pia are joined by Katie O’Brien Ceccarin...

🎧 Three reasons to listen Rethink performance problems – Learn why most performance issues aren’t people problems at all, but symptoms of unclear systems, roles, and ways of working. Lead for impact, not burnout – Discover how leaders unintentionally drive burnout by asking individuals to compensate for broken systems—and what to do instead. Practical ways to create momentum – Take away simple, t...

In an increasingly complex, polarised, and fast‑moving world, the ability to have high‑quality conversations may be one of the most important leadership skills we have. In this episode of We Not Me , Dan Hammond and Pia Lee are joined by Dianna Anderson , founding member of the International Coaching Federation and a pioneer of coaching-based leadership. Together, they explore why conversations ar...

In this episode, Dan and Pia are joined by Danielle DeMarco and Greg Neufeld to explore a powerful idea: the family is the first and most important team we ever belong to . Drawing on their backgrounds in venture capital, startups, and leadership, Danielle and Greg share how they intentionally design family culture using the same principles that underpin high‑performing teams — clarity, shared ide...

Maintaining relevance and purpose as we age requires letting go of entitlement based on experience, embracing genuine curiosity about new things, and focusing our energy on meaningful connections and contributions within our immediate sphere of influence rather than consuming anxiety-inducing information we cannot control. Three reasons to listen Explore how to maintain relevance and purpose as yo...

AI transformation is fundamentally a human transformation, not a technology project. Success depends on taking deliberate steps to build AI literacy across your entire organisation while managing fear and maintaining team cohesion. Most companies are still at the beginning of their AI journey. The key is to start with a clear plan that's reviewed regularly, ensure everyone from board level to fron...

Many groups calling themselves teams are actually "TINOs" (Teams In Name Only) — collections of individuals focused on their own functional KPIs rather than collective goals. Transforming them into real teams needs three critical elements: a shared goal that transcends individual targets, genuine interdependence through cross-functional strategies, and executing together on making work visible and...

Teams often struggle with hidden dysfunctions that disguise themselves as positive behaviours, like pretending everything’s fine when it isn't, making decisions in corridors rather than as a team, and heaping blame on a single person rather than addressing systemic issues. These patterns are particularly insidious because they hide under seemingly good intentions, making them difficult to spot and...

In a working world where the conversation is increasingly dominated by AI, we need to consciously prioritise human connection and old-school practices, like face-to-face conversations, physical books, and time for deep thinking, to avoid becoming trapped in a cycle of constant acceleration that ultimately undermines our wellbeing and what makes us fundamentally human. Jon Whittle is the former CEO...

Leading through uncertainty means accepting complexity rather than fighting it. The most powerful tool for doing so is clarity. While conventional wisdom suggests focusing on trust-building and communication skills, Squadify data shows that starting with clarity – specifically around shared goals, processes, and measures of success – is what actually transforms groups of individuals into cohesive...

Autonomy in teams requires clarity, not chaos. Successful autonomous teams need defined authority over coordination, transparent processes, and intentional facilitation to empower people whilst maintaining alignment and effectiveness. Jon Barnes is a facilitator, coach, and co-founder of Pala, and he focuses on helping teams and organisations become more autonomous. His approach spans a spectrum f...

There's a scientific basis for understanding optimal team size, including research on connection complexity, social loafing, and performance data that challenges common assumptions about how many people should work together effectively. In this Q&A episode, Dan and Pia dive into the science and the data, to discover the optimum team size. Episode highlights [00:01:27] Is it OK to have a big te...

While AI will dramatically reshape work and careers – potentially displacing entry-level jobs and creating “companies of one” – the true competitive advantage will lie in taking a human-centric approach to AI adoption, where diverse teams maintain creativity, critical thinking and genuine human connection rather than simply automating away people to maximise shareholder returns. Larry Chao is the...

Successful team performance requires slowing down to achieve alignment before rushing into action. Spending more time upfront ensuring everyone truly understands the problem statement, decision-making roles, and priorities will save significant time, energy, and relationship breakdowns later. Without this foundational alignment, teams waste enormous amounts of time in ineffective meetings, experie...