In this rapid‑fire interview, Professor Pete Alexander hosts Norman Wolfe, CEO and founder of Quantum Leaders, on the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Wolfe introduces himself and his consulting firm, which helps organizations execute strategy more efficiently. He argues that traditional "machine" thinking about businesses is outdated and advocates a paradigm shift to view organizations as living beings, a concept he calls the Living Organization framework. Wolfe critiques the conventional work‑life balance notion, suggesting instead that work and life are inseparable expressions of one’s true self. He recommends fellow leader Brian Ungar, Chief Purpose Officer at Decurion, as a guest who also embraces the living‑organization mindset. Wolfe illustrates his framework with a concrete example: reframing autonomous agile pods as individual people on a sports team to improve collaboration. He shares his first job story, describing a transition from aspiring aeronautical engineer to a computer‑programming analyst, highlighting his love for pattern recognition—a thread that connects to his later development of the Living Organization concept. Finally, Wolfe provides contact information (www.quantumleaders.com), offers free access to the first three chapters of his book "The Living Organization," and directs listeners to his website for more resources.
Chapters
This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, please tell me who you are and what you do.
Thank you, Pete. I am Norman Wolfe, CEO and founder of Quantum Leaders. We're an organization consulting company. Uh, we focus on helping organizations, uh, and the leaders more effectively execute the strategy. I like to think of it as helping them achieve more with less, less time, less effort, less resources.
Norman, it's great to have you on the show. Question number 2, what's the best thing about working in your industry?
Well, our focus in working with organizations is the recognition that we literally have to shift the paradigm. The old way of doing business doesn't work quite the way it used to anymore. It doesn't face the current challenges as well. So I get to work with people, uh, helping them rethink the very essence of what an organization is and how they create results. I get to work with some really, really smart people and I get to work in a multitude of different industries. So I get to see a lot of different challenges and, creative ways of addressing them.
Sounds fun. Question number 3: I hear from other business leaders that staying in a good work-life balance for them and their team members is a challenge. What are your thoughts?
Well, you know, that's, that's something I've always— I hate the question about work-life balance simply because it sets it up as opposites, polarities. You either have a good work life or you have a good life, but life and work, I spend so much of my time at work, why should they be separate things? You know, who am I? Do I put on one Norman goes to work and a different Norman stays in my life? That seems so silly to me, and it's not the way I've been living for the last 10, 15 years. So I think the challenge with work-life balance is to find ways for us to express who we truly are in work, when I'm doing something, in my recreation, when I'm having fun, in in my life with my family. It's just life. There is no work life. It's just living.
Very well said. I like that. Question number 4, what other successful business leaders like yourself should be on my podcast?
Well, I love, uh, I've been working with a gentleman named Brian Ungar. Brian is the Chief Purpose Officer for a company called Decurion. And Decurion has been highlighted in Robert Keegan's famous book, The Everyone Culture, and Everyone Culture, I think it's called. And in talking with Brian, he has also come to the recognition that we believe very strongly in that you have to shift the paradigm. You have to think of an organization as a living being, not as a machine. And if you don't, you'll never cross the chasm to achieve the kind of organization effectiveness and organizational life we want. The machine paradigm will always co-opt and corrupt all new principles, ideas, including things like deliberately developmental organizations, agile lean operations, employee engagement. You just can't get there from here. So, Brian, I think, would be a good guy to have.
That's great referral. Thank you so much. Question number 5: What insight or advice would you give to other business leaders?
Well, I'll just continue what I've been talking about. Think of your organization as a living person, not just a living system, or, you know, it's organic and it's natural. All of that is true, but if you shift your thinking, the way you frame your, your challenges, the way you ask the questions— let me give you an example. I was working with a client. He's a director of a company. He has a they run under agile methodology. So he has autonomous pods. His challenge was he had to— he has pods who don't cooperate with each other. And sometimes one pod needs the help of another pod to get the solution done. And he was looking for, you know, what methodology do I use? What structure do I put in place? The typical machine thinking. And I said, you know, let's change your frame of reference. Think of each pod as a person, give it a name. Bob, Harry, Sue, Sally. And now let's put them on a sports team. Let's say basketball. And to define your challenge in that framework, you're looking at— you got one guy who's a prima donna and one woman who likes to hog the ball. And you want to make them work together as a team for the winning team, right? Now how would you go about solving your problems? And it just shifted everything he thinks about. When we begin to shift our focus from thinking of an organization machine and think of it as a living being, as a person, and we frame the questions that way. I mean, you can think of it on a personal level. Take your challenges that you have at work and then apply those same challenges, but think as if they were your children's challenges or your spouse's or your significant other's challenges. Would you use the same methodology in the first place? Probably not, right? You'd approach it differently. The living organization framework is a much more effective way to recognize what the true nature of the organization is and how to really go about addressing it. So that would be my, my number one suggestion.
I love that too, because it's so insightful that it takes it from just being the, uh, just being machine, machine parts to actually humanizing the, the, the whole, uh, imagery of that to be able to come up with a solution. Yep. Really love that. And question number 6, please tell me about your first job.
My first job, when I graduated college, I wanted to be an engineer more than anything else, and I was applying to all sorts of aeronautical engineer companies because my dream was to someday design an airplane. I wanted to, so I applied to all of them, and because of the unique program I was in, I had about as close to a computer science an engineering background as you could have at that time. So a lot of the companies, Lockheed and Martin Marietta, they were all putting me into computer groups. Pratt Whitney put me into a group that was— my title was analytical engineer. So I said, okay, I'm going to go work there, and I get to meet my boss and find out I'm in a computer group. Well, at first I was devastated. I felt betrayed. But as I got into it, I found how much I just truly love the challenge of computer programming, especially system-level programming. And what I loved about it, what I recognized about myself, is I love pattern recognition. I love to see the big picture and how the pieces fit together. And it just made my heart sing. Well, in hindsight, I've been doing that all my life. Even this creation of the Living Organization framework was my looking at the dynamics of organizations and the people and the system and the leadership and the process and how it all fits together and why we're not being more successful than we are and coming up with a different way of doing it. So yeah, my first job has all that wonderful, exciting discovery about who I am and how I operate.
Oh, how neat. That's a great story. Norman, thank you for being on the show. How could people find you?
Yeah, it's pretty easy. www.quantumleaders.com. Uh, there's a click on the contact page and you can send me a message, uh, set up a meeting. Happy to do that. Love to have meetings over Zoom. Uh, so yeah, www.quantumleaders.com. And I have a gift for your audience. Anybody that wants to read the, uh, first 3 chapters of my book for free. Um, the book is called The Living Organization. It's available on Amazon. You can go to quantumleaders.com/podcast and they'll have access to the first 3 chapters of the book.
Wonderful. Thank you so much for that.
You're very welcome.
This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. For more insights and ideas, please go to LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or iTunes and search for the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening.
