The Mother Rule: Why Your Strategy Should Be Simple Enough for Mum | James Michael Lafferty

Jim Lafferty spent 30 years leading in some of the world's most volatile markets. His secret weapon? A test so simple your mother could apply it.

What if the smartest person to pressure-test your strategy isn't a consultant or an MBA — but your mum?

Jim Lafferty didn't follow the traditional path to Fortune 500 leadership. He started as a fitness instructor, built his career across Nigeria, the Philippines, Poland and beyond, and learned that in volatile, uncertain markets, simplicity beats sophistication every time.

In this conversation, Jim shares:

The Mother Rule — If your strategy is so intellectual that the person buying the diapers doesn't understand it, you don't have a strategy. You have muddled thinking.

The Bumblebee Principle — You can coach almost any skill, but you cannot coach desire. Jim explains why he'd rather hire someone who shouldn't fly but does than a polished graduate who lacks fire.

A Principle Isn't a Principle Until It Costs You Something — Jim recounts the night he was offered a $7 million bribe, and why saying no hurt more than he expected.

The Church Sampling Story — How Jim secured Vatican approval to distribute products at 3,500 Polish church services — and grew the business 35% in a single year.

Getting Fired with Dignity — What it means to leave standing on your feet, not on your knees.

This is leadership without the polish — raw, practical, and forged in markets where complexity isn't a theory but a daily reality.

Connect with James:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-michael-lafferty-2737071/
Website: https://jamesmichaellafferty.com/

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Transcript

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Setting The Stage: Simple Genius

James Michael Lafferty 0:47

I'm a big believer in the Einstein theory, which is true genius, is the ability to simplify and make things easy. And so when we get into these discussions where people are starting to get uh, you know, wound up and sounding intellectual and sounding intelligent and making it seem, oh my God, they've come with this unbelievable strategy. I say, you know, just step back. What would your mom do? What would your mom do in this situation? What would she tell you to do? And what what would she say? And she'd say, honey, stop overthinking it. What you got to do is boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Mark Blackwell 1:29

Hey everyone, this is Mark Blackwell. Welcome back to the Arkaro Insights podcast show. This is the podcast where we talk a lot about complex adapter systems, the idea that an organization isn't just a machine that we can program, it's a living organization. We've looked at the theory, we've had guests like Stephen Wonker describe the octopus organization where its eight tentacles integrate with one head. We've had the parachute regiment officer Adrian Stratta teach us about the military position of mission command, giving maximum freedom down the line on how to execute following a clear why and what. And we've had Pete Compo talk about how simple rules can beat complex spreadsheets at any time. But today we're going out of the classroom,

Introducing Jim Lafferty’s Spiky Playbook

Mark Blackwell 2:19

out of the theory, and into the trenches. Today we have a guest who has been spent over 30 years in some of the world's most volatile, uncertain, and high-stakes markets from Nigeria to the Philippines. He didn't start in an Ivy League lecture hall. He started as a fitness instructor and became a senior leader and executive in Fortune 500 businesses. Jim Lafferty doesn't just manage complexity, he hunts it. He has a famously spiky point of view that might make traditional HR directors win. He believes that an MBA is just a suggestion, that strategy is often just a fancy word for model thinking. And that a principle isn't a principle until it costs you millions of dollars. So we're gonna find out a lot. But some of the things we might just pick up on are maybe uh why competitive stupidity is killing some great companies out there. Why'd rather hire a single mother than a polished Harvard grad. And how his mother rule can help you lead your own octopus through the chaos of 2026. Jim, welcome to the show.

James Michael Lafferty 3:29

Thank you, Mark. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to it.

Mark Blackwell 3:32

And I'm looking forward to it too. I'm fascinated to see where we get to today. I mean, there's just so many fun points of view, I think, uh, you know, counter to ordinary thinking, and it's really time that we got those sorts of point of view out loud and clear on the show. So see where we can go. Can I just kick you off? You like to hire a bumblebee if you can. That's for anyone who's not familiar with this. The idea of a bumblebee is by the laws of physics it shouldn't fly. But it does. And you'd much prefer to hire a a bumblebee over a polished MBA graduate. Why would that be the case?

James Michael Lafferty 4:08

I learned that from the early days of coaching inner city kids in track and field. I can coach, business leader can coach just about everything. I mean, how to business write, how to speak, how to dress, how to put together a presentation, how to analyze the advertising, change the advertising, how to sell. This is all teachable stuff. But the irony of life is the most important skill of all you can't teach. I can't coach desire. And

Hire The Bumblebee: Desire Over Degrees

James Michael Lafferty 4:37

desire has to come from within. And if you've got desire, and I tell people that, you know, you're half the way there, the rest of it, the other half, is coachable. So the bumblebee for me, I've always loved that analogy is is you know, I was a bumblebee. In reality, I should have never gotten into P&G brand management, but I did. In reality, I should have never survived and made it even the brand manager, but I did. You know, in reality, I would never have made a senior level if you looked at it and you look at uh all of the demographics and the statistics that P&G would calculate in terms of what kind of people succeed in this company, what kind of data do we have? And so, but I didn't know that. And because I didn't know it was impossible, I just flapped my wings, so to speak, and you know, you flew. And so I'd rather have that kind of attitude that anything is possible and that I'm prepared to work as hard as possible, and then things can happen. Much more than just someone who's got a strong education, but they lack the other important attributes of uh perseverance, of continually learning every day. All of these things that make the difference between a good employee and a and a great employee.

Mark Blackwell 5:54

I like, you know, similarly, you're you're a bit countercultural perhaps on how you think about business strategy. Uh and we were trying to explore some of the thinking on that in the show that there's too much sort of complicated spreadsheets and 200 power, you know, 200 pages of PowerPoint slides that really slow down organizations. So we've tried to bring in a few different views on that. We've had Pete Compo talking about simple rules-based strategy that everyone can remember to make decisions on the fly, which is really quite surprising how the military make their decisions. You know, they give clear guidance about where you what needs to be achieved, where you can't go, and let freedom to operate. You've got your own thinking, and I like it, called the mother rule. Tell me, what's that?

James Michael Lafferty 6:42

I think for the majority of people in the world, the smartest person you knew was your mom. I mean, she got you through life, she raised you, you didn't get killed, you made mistakes, you learned from, you grew. You know, wherever you're sitting at today, you've got to give your mother uh, you know, a great deal of credit. And I think that, you know, mothers around the world, they're, you know, they're amazing people because they manage a household, they manage a family, they manage the the budget. Most in most households, the the wife or spouse, the mother is managing budgetary spending. She keeps the family afloat. And, you know, so what sometimes we'll be in these meetings and people will be very intellectual. You know, and at the end of the day, my consumer, I'm in consumer goods. My consumers are people's mothers. I mean, if you take categories I've worked on, like as an example, like laundry detergents or paper products, it's a 75% plus female purchaser. So, so, you know, who's buying diapers? It's it's the mom. Who's buying the laundry detergent? Yes, there are some fathers doing it, but the vast majority are the mothers. Who is buying the tissue products in the home and the napkins and the paper towels? It's the mom. So, you know, when I see people getting too out there, and you know, there is

The Mother Rule: Strategy Consumers Understand

James Michael Lafferty 8:07

this system that rewards people for their vocabulary. And the bigger the vocabulary, the more, you know, they're rewarded. Like that, let's use big words that people have to look up in a dictionary or in a thesaurus because they're so complicated. I, you know, I'm a big believer in the Einstein theory, which is true genius, is the ability to simplify and make things easy. And so when we get into these discussions where people are starting to get uh, you know, wound up and sounding intellectual and sounding intelligent and making it seem, oh my God, they've come with this unbelievable strategy. I say, you know, just step back. What would your mom do? What would your mom do in this situation? What would she tell you to do? And what would she say? And she'd say, honey, stop overthinking it. What you got to do is that, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And so it's not something that I'm speaking about every day, but that there are those moments, especially in large companies, especially in matrices-based organizations where they have these centers of excellence, the COE, you know, and the center of excellence parachutes in, they're a bit like pigeons. You know, they fly in, they shit all over people, and then they leave. But you know, that you've got these center of excellences that that come and fly in, and they, you know, they just share slides and they they may never have been in the market. They may never talk to the consumer, they may have no real insights on that particular market and the consumer needs. You know, they live in a world where putting everybody in the same box is comfortable. And refusing, you know, we we celebrate, you know, these people will celebrate exiting countries and exiting it under this. We're so disciplined and we're so proud of ourselves for saying no and for saying forget it to this group of consumers. I mean, if you look at it, like, you know, some of the moves my old employer made in P&G, I think they're right about a billion people they've exited. You know, a billion people. There's only eight, you know, eight point five in the world. There's already a billion that they've said we don't, you know, we don't really want to be serious there. Now, people will claim, oh, they're still there. Yeah, but going from a local production in Pakistan to importing product in the duty structure of Pakistan is an exit because the business will be basically one-tenth of what it was. And and when competitors aren't celebrating because PG's still saying, they're celebrating because exiting a local business is an admission that we're leaving. Now, we can have the window dressing that says, well, we're still there. That's that's the equivalent of when, you know, when chairmans get fired from companies and they become chairman emeritus. This title means nothing uh, you know, whatsoever, but they do it to, you know, save on the ego. This is what that stuff is. I mean, with staying in a market like that with a distributor model importing at 30, 40, 50, 60% duty rates is it's not, it's nothing. You know, it's nothing. So that's that's what the mother rule is. It's about keeping it grounded in the consumer, keeping it simple and not allowing the desire to be viewed as intellectually outstanding, lead us down a path of going the wrong way.

Mark Blackwell 11:38

I mean, Jim, absolutely. I s the reason I wanted to have you on the podcast, one of many is the idea is the octopus organization, which you know a lot of people are using at the moment, is in the old days everything was command and control in the middle. But if there is information is fundamentally free, decision making has to move out towards in the market, like the eight tentacles of the octopus. That's where it's been. And basically, as I said, that's where you've spent your professional life. Out there in the markets, and indeed some of the toughest, most volatile markets. What are some of the lessons that you've learned that you'd like to give now back to the people back in headquarters to help them be better?

James Michael Lafferty 12:22

No, I I the first thing I would say to people is that there are things that should be standardized. And no one, I'm not saying we shouldn't have centralization. You should have it, but you limit to where it makes sense. And I'll give you where it makes sense. Packaging, it makes sense. Sometimes on the product, it will make sense. You know, brand equity and brand design, that should all be standard. And you know, Coke does a good job of this. You don't go around and coke in red in one country and blue in another. You know, they give a consistent look because the world travels and people see brands in different markets. We all of this should be standardized. But when you get down to local advertising execution, local marketing execution, sometimes local formulation based upon habits and cost structure. You have to be willing to allow people to maneuver on that, not get hung up on, you know, this group think that everybody has to be the same. I mean, I'll tell you a very good story at PG when the centralization began. Now, PNG giving them credit, they really got it under control. But, you know, I was at the time I was the CMO in Poland, and we had a mid-tier laundry detergent named Vizier, which is not a global brand, and but it was market leader and it had unbelievable brand equity. And I was in the center, and this guy says to me, we have to change the name to Tide, because Tide is our global

Centralise Smartly, Localise What Matters

James Michael Lafferty 13:47

whiteness mid-tier brand. And I said, Do you know how competitors would kill to have vizier brand equity? They would kill for it. We would just give it up so that the outcome is a pretty slide that shows only the Tide name on the picture. I mean, there's no other basis to do it. Now, eventually, and at that time, the head of laundry worldwide was Paul Polman, who later became the CEO at Unilever and a great guy. Paul stopped all this stuff. But, you know, he had people on his team that they took that mandate that we're going to standardize, and it just that there was no discussion and no thinking. I mean, it that what they thought was strategic was actually brainless. I mean, you could train a chimpanzee to do that stuff. If all you're going to do is apply a model, you can train a chimp to do it. You don't need to hire, you know, expensive people. We can, you know, we can do that very easily with other alternatives. So that's an example, letting people bring their creative ideas into the mix and make it local because nobody's out there saying I'm a global citizen. People are saying I'm Egyptian or I'm Filipino or I'm Polish. This is how people find. They don't ide they don't identify themselves as some big group. They identify themselves down on a, you know, on a nationalistic level for the most part. So understanding those folks. I mean, I could go on with a long list of things, but I think that it starts with just common sense. My old boss, a legend in PNG, Herbert Schmitz, one of the smartest guys, he's this is a guy that built Eastern Europe into over a bil from zero to over a billion. And we were in the, we were in a meeting at the at the height of the first standardization wave in P&G, which was the late 90s, when that's when the whole vizier discussion happened with that guy. And we were talking about, you know, customer relations, and and all these people were celebrating that we were being delisted by major retailers in Europe. They're like, yeah, we're teaching them a lesson. We're accepting to be thrown out of the store, and we're gonna be tough and we're gonna be proud. And I was sitting there a bit intimidated because it was such a senior group of people, and I was the most junior person in the room. And then Herbert comes in with his common sense and he says, All you guys talk about strategy while we lose business. I'll give you a better strategy. Shipments are strategic. Why are we celebrating getting business? Here we are, we're all slapping each other on the back that we've been thrown out of this chain and thrown out of this chain and thrown out of that store. Why are we happy to lose distribution in a store? You know, under the guise of, oh, we're teaching them a lesson. We're not teaching anybody a lesson. They're living without us, and our business is collapsing. Shipments are strategic. And I carried that with me. I when I later came back to Poland as the CEO, I put it in our like our office as a phrase that I we got to ship. If you don't have sales, you're dead. The factories don't run without sales. The finance organization doesn't run. You know, nobody's gonna have a job. HR's out of a job. There's no job if there's no sales. So we got to protect sales and you have to make sales happen and celebrate growing sales, not celebrate losing sales.

Mark Blackwell 17:13

It's it's just the madness of following the strategy. Well, the well, not even say following the strategy, following the bizarre interpretation of the strategy is just bonkers to me. Anyway. So, but on the other hand, principles are important to you. And there's you said that uh principle isn't principle until it costs you something. Tom, there's a bit of experience that you had about that. Maybe we would like to share.

James Michael Lafferty 17:35

It's my favorite saying, and I think it's the most important element of leadership. And when I was teaching leadership courses, uh mainly in the Philippines, I would teach a semester. I was asked by a number of top universities here because I'm in Manila right now, and I'm actually I can look out my window and see University of the Philippines, where I was a professor for seven years. I would teach a leadership class and I would write on on the chalkboard on day one, a principal is not a principal till it costs you something. And I would tell the class, I'm being very transparent, you need to memorize this. And on the both the midterm and the final, it will be a fill-in-blanks where you have to fill in each word. If you miss this, it's an automatic F. You fail. Because this is the most important thing of all, because you, if you don't have principles that you're aware of and that you're conscious of, you will never be a successful leader. And I told them, when people say to me, Oh, that guy doesn't have any principles, I completely disagree. He has principles. The question is not, does he have them or not? The question is, is what are his principles? So let's take an example. Let's take bribery, which is a big one. If I ask a hundred people right now, would you take a bribe? All hundred will say no. Because a principle is not a principle until it costs you something. At this point, there's no cost. You're saying no on a hypothetical question. So there's no cost. So you, of course, you're the hero. The question is not what you do in the hypothetical. The question is what do you do when there's really a bribe in front of you? Now we'll find out. Now, in my career, you know, in the markets I worked in, I had lots of insinuations

Shipments Are Strategic: Pragmatism Over Posture

James Michael Lafferty 19:12

and hints of like five, ten thousand dollar stuff. That was so easy, it was unbelievable. No, not even a debate. But then in Africa, where I was a major buyer and these orders that were in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, I was offered uh basically a bribe that totalled about 7 million US. And I had I am always tell people, I'm ashamed to admit, that I didn't say no until the next day. And I'll tell you why I didn't say no until the next day, because I laid in bed and thought about it all. And I thought, how could I take it and still be honorable? And the answer was, you're trying to trying to thread a needle that can't be thread. And so in the end, I said no, but that no coming out of my mouth hurt like you wouldn't believe. It hurt painfully because you start to think about what you would do with that and the house in the Alps, and you know, the boat and the things you're gonna do with that that money and the things you would do with your family and the how it would change your life. But a principle is not a principle until it costs you something. And so uh I I think that a lot of people that I see aren't clear on what their principles are. And the second is is that the principles that they embrace are very malleable based upon the situation. And uh, you know, I it that that's where you get into these absolute moral ambiguities. I mean, if you look around at how many top CEOs, I mean, I'm not gonna Name the companies to embarrass them even more. But we've had multiple instances of sex scandals of CEOs and leaders in the last three ones worldwide that have made the press world wide. Everyone, for me, they're completely stupid. They know it's a conflict of interest to have an intimate relationship with a direct reporter. If you're the CEO of a company, I'm not talking about outside. If a guy wants to cheat on his wife with someone externally, it's his business. Now, I would tell him he's stupid and it's foolish, but okay, it's your life. There's no impact on your career. But if you are going to have an affair with someone in the reporting line, which is if you're the CEO, the whole company is in your reporting line. There is no ambiguity on this. The whole company is in your reporting line. You are going to be fired for conflict of interest. Now you get all these idiots on LinkedIn that go, I don't understand why they fire the guy. It's his private life. It's not his private life. When I used to do training on this in organizations, I would say, if you want to cheat on your wife, rock and roll. None of my business. I'll tell you privately, you're foolish, but it's none of my business. But if you're going to cheat in this building with someone in your reporting line, now you make it my problem. Now it is my problem. And I'm going to have to deal with it. And so these guys, they ruined their whole career. And we all know who I'm talking about. They have ruined their career by this stupidity. And why did they do it? Because their principles get all mixed up and they say, you know what? I brought so much profit into this company that they owe me. I'm allowed to have the one off a fling wrong. Or I'm smarter than everybody else. And I can mask my emotions and I can keep this a secret. Nobody will know that she and I are having an affair wrong. There is no secret. Every leader is under a microscope. They're under a microscope. I mean, I've been a CEO

Principles That Hurt: The Real Integrity Test

James Michael Lafferty 22:47

multiple places. Everyone's looking at you. Everyone's watching nonverbal communication. Who do you pat on the back? Who you don't have. You, the whole company will know about this. But then it keeps going on and on and on. There's been multiple in the last couple of months, big ones. And I'm not even counting like the one in the, you know, college football in the United States with, you know, with one of the most premier programs. This type of thing happens. Why? Because people aren't clear on their principles, or they start to say, I can bend the principle because I'm such a superstar. And they'll let me. I'm allowed to do the rules of life don't apply to me. And in a public company where governance is everything, where they have to show it's not so much that the business is damaged by that. It's about controlling, you know, having strong controls in place. Having someone in your line as your lover completely undermines the fact that you that you have any governance. I mean, where's HR? Where's internal controls? Where, okay, you know, where's all, I mean, I guarantee you these companies have a code of conduct policy. I mean, when I was in fine hygienic holding a CEO, we had a very detailed and very well done code of business ethics. And this is a small privately held company, let alone what I have when I was in BAT or Coke or PNG, which was a very complex policy that was tested every single year and certified. You had to certify to continue your job. So that's where people go wrong, is they they think the rules don't apply anymore. And that's that's what kills people.

Mark Blackwell 24:28

So principles are really important. Another thing I want to touch on is ownership. I've worked in the small company, has worked in large companies. In a large company, you can sort of get dissolved into the background. It's easy to find someone else to blame for for when things go wrong. But I know you're a strong uh proponent of taking total ownership of the situation that you find yourself in. Can you just recount some stories from your career of where that's proven to be a strength for you?

James Michael Lafferty 24:59

Well, I I yeah, what I tell people all the time is you can go around all the parks in the world and look at the statues. There's never been a statue of a committee or a team. There's only statues of individuals. This is the nature of the beast. You need people that will step up, take the heat, take responsibility, step in and make it happen and you know just barrel through stuff. And I've I was always a believer it's better to do and beg forgiveness than ask permission, especially in places like Procter or Coke, which are so big and full of bureaucracy. Many of these big companies, they say publicly, we need more innovation. Yeah, no kidding. And then, but why are you shocked you don't have any innovation? You beat up anybody who has a different idea. You destroy them and crush them. I mean, I I see companies all the time, it's no shocking that they don't get any innovation because they don't want innovation. They they say they do, but then innovation is by nature uncomfortable, has sharp edges, bites very hard, hits you very hard. I mean, you know, I used to tell people, you want to know if you have innovation, at least 50% of the people you talk to have to hate the idea. If everyone likes the idea, there's no innovation. Innovation has to be absolutely terrifying and scary. That's what were true innovation. Then over time it becomes normal. But at the time it's shocking and scary. And there were many, many, many projects that I worked on. I would keep them quiet because if you go and ask permission, you're you're gonna be killed. I mean, I'll give you one of my best examples. In Poland in the mid-90s, we needed to grow our sampling. When you sample PNG products, they they people adopt them. There was massive amounts of research and understanding on sampling. The best was to do things like door-to-door sampling and things where we would do one-on-one contact. Now, the problem in Poland at that time was 50% of the population was in rural areas. So it wasn't, it wasn't like Taipei. Sampling Taipei, you go into a building and you just go floor to floor to floor and you knock on door. Okay, it's easy. Now we're in Poland. 50% are rural, and those 50% are not in buildings, they're on farms. And more than 50% of the time, there's snow on the ground. So we were doing these tests with these samplers carrying a bag of 20 kilo of stuff, hiking through one meter deep snow trying to get a house to work, and none of it paid out because they would they couldn't make the number of calls per day and all this stuff. And so we sit around brainstorming, say, is there a place that they they collect, like they meet? And then you know, we started talking about stores and stuff like that. And then it comes up that really the only place they meet is at church on Sunday. And I say, okay, let's sample at the Catholic churches. And people looked at me like I was uh and I'm Catholic. I went to Catholic schools. So, what is the issue of giving out a pack of product at mass? What's the issue? What's wrong? Well, would people be upset? They would they would love it. So the first step we did is we dispatched and I was involved. I went, we we went to Rome and we talked to the Pope and his associates, and we got agreement from the Vatican to sample in the churches at the end of Mass. So we we had agreed a whole protocol. The ladies wore dresses, the men wore a suit, we stood in the back, we were dressed completely proper, we had sampling packs put together, and we would hand them out as they went out the door, and we would say, you know, you know, have a wonderful Sunday. And this is a gift from Procter and Gambly Unit. We have a, you know, a sample of toothpaste and a diaper and you know, lots of shampoo and uh laundry, all the P&G products. Now we agreed all that. We come back. And then I say the biggest brand that really responds to sampling is always Feminine Protection. Now, this one, now you're getting real sensitive. Suddenly people are saying, you cannot put a FemPro product in a Catholic church. I said, What? Let's just step back. You know, I'm a religious guy and I'm from the church. Women do menstruate. Now we can avoid talking about it and we can bury our head in the sand. But in that room, all those women in there, except the senior citizens, are menstruating every month. What made it dirty? This is God created us. There's nothing dirty about menstruation. And I said, now what we can do is we can put the samples in a box and say, these contain FemPro products, you know, keep maybe keep it out of the eyes of your children and all that. And and lo and behold, I pushed that through. And we went and we nationally sampled 3,500 churches, all the masses. We sampled everybody, and the PNG business grew not just double digits, but like 35% year on year. It was a booming year. Record on every record profit, record sales, record volume, record market share, record everything. And you know, that thing was nothing but a battle uh to get done because it was all these like paradigms. You can't do that in a Catholic church. And the church agreed. And I was at many of these masses, not all of them. I can't go to 3,500 churches, but I was in May. There was not one single negative person who, in this time in Poland, 1996, 1997, when the economy was very, very unstable, to get a free pack of product that was worth maybe $20, $25,

Ownership And Innovation Without Permission

James Michael Lafferty 30:57

every single family was overjoyed and left with a smile. They were over.

Mark Blackwell 31:03

That's just a brilliant story. That's gonna stick, James. That's gonna stick in my mind. Thank you for that.

James Michael Lafferty 31:10

And nobody was pissed. Not Mark, not one single complaint of anything. And and most of the priests, not all of them, actually became endorsers. Like they would, at the end of Mass, they would say, and I have a wonderful announcement for all of you. As you leave church today and you go home and you think about what you've learned today, you're gonna get a sample gift of wonderful products that you can take home. This is free of charge and it can help you out in your home and you know, give them a try. And they would set it up. Now they would they didn't go and say you should use this. Of course not, but they would just say you're gonna get the sample pack. And they were very positive. You have to push and you have to try. And you can't just say, Oh, it's a church, I can't touch it. And this went all the way and was reviewed with the board of directors because people were so scared. And but when we got the Pope's approval, how can we stop him? They went to see the and you know, I was lucky. I was lucky, Mark. Why was I lucky? Because this was Pope John Paul, too. He was Polish. Yes. And I was in Poland, and this was his country, and church attendance was declining dramatically in Poland post the fall of communism. This is 95 years after the fall of the wall. I mean, it was still in full transition. He felt that this would be a positive thing going on in masses because he wanted people back at Mass. And so he they were enthusiastic about it. It wasn't even a hard sell. They were enthusiastic to say, go for it. You want nothing from us other than permission. You don't want money, you don't want a statement, you don't want something printed on letterhead. We said, no. We just want to use the central collection point of a mass as our point to distribute product. And I had no shame whatsoever. I'm helping people, giving them products they can try for free. And if they don't like them, go back and use what they were using. But these are good products. But there's nothing shameful whatsoever in that. It's helping people.

Mark Blackwell 33:19

That's a brilliant story. As I said, that's gonna stick. It's one of the best stories I've ever heard about how to be a disruptor, an entrepreneur within a large organization. That's astounding. That's great. I've got you know, one last area I'd love to explore with you if you've got the time is we talk about you know how to survive disruption as businesses in a competitive world, but maybe as a coach you can think what happens when you have disruption in your own life? What happens when you suddenly lose your job when you really didn't expect it? And I think you've got some experiences that you're comfortable to share. What principles would you give to someone to survive that sort of uncertainty?

James Michael Lafferty 34:02

When I work with HR teams, I say that, you know, in the average person's work life, you go through four upheavals. The every person goes to at least three of the four. Upheaval one is death of your parents. The vast majority happens during your working life. You lose your parents. Now, there are people that make it all the way to 65 and their parents are still okay, but they're the rare ones. The majority of people will bury their mom and father, their mother and father during their working life. We have to be there for our people and support them. But it's not support forever or with no limits. I mean, it's support within a, you know, within a zone. I mean, you still have to get back on the game because everybody loses their parents. Everybody. So you know, you can't go around and say, uh, my father died. I can't work, I can't do anything. Well, you're gonna have to get back on like on the horse here. Everyone will lose their parents. That's number one. Number two is having kids. Wonderful thing, but it changes your whole life and your perspective. The minute that baby's out, your your life is different now from every day forward. We have to be there and support them and help them. I do coaching. I've got seven kids. I do a lot of coaching. How do you manage a professional career with being a father or a mother? Number three is getting married. The vast majority of people get married, and we have to be there with them because that will be a change. And they have to manage now two people in a partnership and you know, cohabitation, the whole bit. And the fourth one, not everybody goes to, but 50% do, is they get divorced. And these are incredibly disruptive. They can be positive, but they're disruptive. And so my professional career, I lost

Sampling At Church: Daring, Respectful Disruption

James Michael Lafferty 35:47

my parents and she right when I started in my early 20s. I had seven kids through my entire career from zero. I got married twice and I got divorced once. And on top of that, I've of course been fired. I mean, my firing from P&G is, you know, I'm I'm very transparent. I have no room for people that are always making up bullshit stories. I had decided to leave and pursue my passion and spend time with my family. It cov me up. And then you go to Pepsi the next day. I mean, where's the whole family thing in that one? You know, where would please explain that to me. Officially in the books, I retired from Procter and Gamble as a retired officer. It's official. But reality is I was fired. Now, I was fired in a very dignified manner that allowed me to leave on after a year and to take retirement and do all this stuff. But at the end of the day, they said we don't want you anymore. You know, the day that that call came, and I knew when I got the message on my BlackBerry that I was gonna get fired. I could tell. You know, call Cincinnati, call us at this number. I was, I there's no reason for that. I'm gonna get fired. And I turned to my wife and I said, I'm gonna get fired. Sure enough, I got fired. And that next day I went into the office and the company doctor knew me well. And she like looked at me and said, You don't look very well. Let me, you know, let me take your blood pressure and stuff. And the blood pressure is very high. And but I can't say anything. This is not being announced, and it's not gonna be announced for several months, and I've got to hold it together. And she says to me, you know, do you want anything for it? And you know, I'm still mad at myself. I said, Yeah, I do. And so she wrote me a prescription for Prozac. And I went home that night, and I mean, I was hurting so bad inside. It, you know, I was devastated. And I took this Prozac pill, the first pill, and it kind of knocked me out. Like I went to sleep for a couple hours and stuff. And when I woke up, the company doctor was like at my bedside with my wife and one of my kids. And, you know, I get up and everybody's all worried and freaking out, and I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna have a heart attack or whatever. And I went into the bathroom and I took the Prozac and I flushed it all down the toilet. I looked in the mirror and I said, You weak. You know, when when things get tough, you look at chemistry and you, you know, you're gonna fix it with chemistry. And I'm not saying that there aren't people that need this, but I don't think my case was where I needed to be doing that. It was it was driven from a point of being seeking an exit, a way out of the pain. And I never took another, I've never taken another SSRI or antidepressant, whatever you want to call them, since that day. And that goes through the divorce. That was very terrible, you know, back in in 2015, you know, 11 years ago. And and everything goes with it. What you have to do is I always say I will go out standing on my feet, not on my knees. And so I left PNG with complete dignity and honor to the point that the vice chairman of the board called me my last week and said, We're all amazed at how professional you are. You know, no bad mouthing, no none of this stuff, only only positive things, doing everything they asked me to do up until the last minute, and even after whenever requests and questions, I would get on a call. It wasn't like, no, no, no, I'm I'm done, you're not paying me, forget it. I did beyond the call of duty. I think what people have to do is you gotta hold it together. You've got to avoid wallowing in self-pity, and you gotta find the principles like be dignified. I had a guy in Poland, I tell you this story, Mark. I had a guy in Poland that I fired. He did a great job, but then he, as we promoted him, he was starting to struggle, he didn't have the right skill set for the the higher responsibility roles. And we fired him, and you know, he understood and I said, it's time, you know, you're gonna have to find something else. And I think, you know, this kind of you're not the right fit for a PNG brand management system. And he's like, I understand. And on his last day, I happened to be walking out late at night at like 9 p.m. and the lights were off in the in the bullpen of all the marking people, but there was like somebody had a desk lamp on, and there was a light coming from the desk lamp. And I went back there and looked, and it was this guy. I said, What are you doing? It's 9:30 p.m. And he said, I'm this is my last day, and I want to leave the budget perfect for my successor. And I put my hand on his shoulder and I said, You are the most honorable. I'm tearing up talking about this. You're the most honorable good I have met. I will always be there for you. And on his last two or three jobs when he needed a reference, I made sure he got the job. Because I said, This is exceptional. He had every reason to be bitter at me, at Procter Gamble, at the circumstances, he was a class act all the way. You know, classes, it's not so common anymore, my friend. I mean, look in the political world, it's just not common. You know, name calling, vengeance, bitterness, anger, you know, going back against people that had the audacity to speak up. I don't like all of that. I always tell people I've never been vindictive. You need to be big. You need to show your backbone and that you stand up for something more than just getting revenge on your ego.

Mark Blackwell 40:59

Powerful stuff, Jim. Thank you so much. I mean, we've been all sorts of places in the last 40 minutes or so. We've been talking about, you know, principles, about the strongest class of character that you can see. We've talked about keeping things simple. We've talked about the bumblebee that can't fly. We've talked about, you know, strategy that if your mother doesn't understand, nothing's gonna ever happen. And we've talked about ethics, the seven million dollar bribe attempt. I mean, it's been a whirlwind. I mean, it's been emotional, it's been broad, it's been fantastic. Jim, thank you so much for your time. Really, really appreciate it today. Thank you very much indeed.

James Michael Lafferty 41:43

Thank you for having me. It's been a huge honor. Thank you, Moore.

Mark Blackwell 41:50

That was James Lafferty. A fascinating and at times emotional podcast. This is a man who clearly doesn't just manage complexity, he truly hunts it. What struck me most about the conversation was how he transformed the academic theories we often hear about into boots on the ground reality. James gave us a masterclass in what it means to lead in complex adaptive worlds. Whilst we explored the octopus analogy with Stephen Wunker, James showed us that the tentacles, the people in the market, need more than just autonomy. They need desire. He reminded us that technical skills like writing a memo or selling are teachable. But the Bumblesby spirit, the sheer hunger to fly when the laws of physics say that you shouldn't, is the only thing you cannot coach. We also saw a powerful reinforcement of Pete Compo's simple rules. James's mother rule is perhaps the most interesting heuristic for 2026. If your strategy is so intellectual that the person buying the diapers or the detergent, the mum at heart of the household, doesn't get it, then you're not really having a strategy. You're just being muddled. Finally, James left us with a challenge on integrity. Where AI is decreasing the cost of information to make it effectively free, and leaders are under a microscope. A principle isn't a principle until it costs you something. Whether it's turning down a seven million dollar bribe or exiting a role with total dignity when you've been fired, your character is the only thing that remains stable when the market is volatile. Your caro insight for the week. Look at your team. The next time you need to bring someone in, are you looking for that polished car with all the technical skills? Or are you looking for the bumblebee with fire in the belly that shouldn't really fly but does? In a complex world, I think the bumblebee may be what you need.