#155 - Jon Levy: Team Intelligence, Glue Players, and the Culture That Executes Strategy

Episode notes

Meet Jon Levy - behavioral scientist and author of Team Intelligence: How Brilliant Leaders Unlock Collective Genius and the NYT/WSJ bestseller You’re Invited. Jon has spent years studying human behavior and leadership mechanics, advising companies on how to build teams that actually perform - beyond leadership myths and buzzwords. We often hire “A-players,” roll out values, and assume great leadership traits will carry us. Then reality hits: strategy doesn’t execute itself - teams do. Jon explains why the smallest unit of performance is the team, why stacking stars backfires, and how culture and language shape what people actually do. If you’re trying to align leaders who don’t buy the data, this one’s for you. You’ll learn how to engineer collective intelligence - the practical habits, roles, and rituals that raise a team’s game, how to recruit and empower “glue players,” and how to make strategy felt when spreadsheets won’t persuade. In this episode we cover: Culture as operating system: the sayings, status cues, and rituals that drive behavior (Apple’s “surprise and delight,” LEGO’s “fireside”).

• #169 - AI Is Doing the Junior Work. Who Becomes Your Next Senior Leader? | Carrol Chang51 / 100
• #168 - Why Good Companies Go Bad: Eric Ries60 / 100
• #167 - Your Company's Biggest AI Advantage Is Already Sitting in Your Database: Scott Snyder50 / 100
• #166 - Your Business Model Has an Expiry Date: Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva
• #165 - How AI Is Killing Traditional Market Research: Peter Weinberg