Keynote Speaker · Innovation Expert · Founder, Centered

Breakthrough
Culture.

A habit, not a moment.

Most organisations treat breakthroughs as luck. They aren't. I show leaders how to build the culture that stacks the deck in favour of breakthroughs, by design, not by chance.

Book JL to speak See the talks

Trusted on stage by teams from

HPonXBushnellVista OutdoorUnivetForesight SportsSETWorks

Speaking

Three talks. One idea: the breakthrough lives inside the culture.

Keynotes and workshops on Breakthrough Culture and what stalls it. I travel for the right room.

Leading without Authority

Most change doesn't fail for lack of a plan. It fails because the people driving it don't own the org chart. I show leaders how to move an organisation through influence, trust and the conversations that build real buy-in, not positional power.

Leadership all-hands · SHRM & people leaders

How to drive change when you don't control the people you need
The trust behaviours that turn resistance into momentum
Why influence outlasts authority, and how to build it on purpose

The Cost of Can't

The most expensive word in your organisation isn't no. It's can't. I show leaders the three refusal patterns underneath almost every stalled initiative, and how to dismantle them.

Executive offsites · leadership all-hands

The three refusal patterns that quietly kill execution
Why your best people stopped pitching ideas, and how to reopen the door
A language shift that changes what a team believes is possible

The Innovator's Mindset

Breakthroughs don't come from a lucky few. They come from a way of thinking anyone can build. I show teams the mindset that balances the dreamer, the executive and the guardian, so good ideas survive contact with the real world.

Teams & leadership · innovation programmes

The three modes every innovator has to move between
How to keep bold ideas alive without losing the discipline to ship
Practical habits that turn one breakthrough into many

Seen on stage at

HP Insights 2 Innovation

Innovation program

KCDC

Kansas City

Community Days KC

Kansas City · 2026

KS SHRM Conference

Kansas

Johnson County SHRM

Kansas

KU Innovation Park

Lawrence, KS

Project Management Institute

Canada

And more

Private offsites & team workshops

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The big idea

A breakthrough isn't a moment. It's a habit.

Most organisations treat a breakthrough as luck, a flash of genius you sit and wait for. It isn't. A breakthrough is the result of a system, and that system can be engineered to produce breakthroughs again and again.

Most organisations also treat culture as the backdrop to the work. I treat it as the engine. The beliefs people hold, the habits they run, the conversations they're willing to have. These aren't soft factors. They're the architecture of what your team can and can't do.

Breakthrough Culture is what I build. Not a workshop, not a keynote alone, but a practice your people can sustain long after I leave the room.

Beliefs

What your people think is possible shapes what they attempt. Most innovation dies before it starts because the culture believes it won't work here.

Habits

A breakthrough isn't a moment, it's a cadence. Weekly practices that keep the culture alive, not annual retreats that reset it.

Conversations

The quality of what gets said in rooms. Breakthrough cultures have different conversations: more honest, more curious, more willing to challenge the safe idea.

About

Hi, I'm JL.

For two decades I've sat in the rooms where big ideas go to die: the offsites, the all-hands, the steering committees. The pattern is always the same. The problem is rarely the idea, and rarely the people. It's the culture they're trying to move through.

A decade of design sprints with HP, onX, Bushnell, Vista Outdoor, Univet and Foresight Sports showed me the same pattern. The gap was never talent or ambition. It was culture: the beliefs, habits and conversations that make breakthrough possible, or quietly impossible.

Now I build Breakthrough Culture for scaling organisations, host the Breakthrough Innovation Podcast, and take the ideas to the stage.

Innovation Labs

How I get the work unstuck.

At Centered I run the same approach on every engagement: North Star, Design Sprint, Team Launch, and the leadership coaching that makes the change stick. Built to move what hasn't moved in months.

North Star

Half-day with your leadership team. We name the refusal patterns blocking the work that matters and lock the direction.

Design Sprint

One week. We test the most expensive assumption with real customers and ship a working prototype your team can react to.

Team Launch

We hand the work back to your people, with the operating model and the cadence to keep moving without us.

Leadership Coaching

The change sticks when leaders change. I coach the mindsets and behaviours that have to shift, because new ways of working only hold when the people leading them do too.

Read the full method at centered.work

Watch & listen

Breakthrough Innovation Podcast.

The weekly conversation on what stalls teams and what moves them. Nearly 180 episodes and counting.

▶

What Happens When Small Teams Try Enterprise Playbooks (Hint: They Lose)

▶

Are You Bonusing Toxicity? The Culture Question Every Leader Needs to Answer

▶

Subtraction as Strategy: How Doing Less Unlocks Better Leadership

▶

People Profit: How Broken Internal Processes Are Quietly Killing Your Culture

▶

Your Story Is Your Strategy: Turning Communication Into Competitive Advantage

▶

The Hard Truth About Building vs. Running — And Why Most Teams Ignore It

Watch on YouTube All episodes

In their words

Leaders who've been in the room.

JL has been very passionate, knowledgeable and encouraging in his coaching approach.

Tracy MooreVP, Integrated Production, Eversana Intouch

They've transformed the way we think and collaborate, unlocking our siloed expertise.

Lara BowenChief Innovation Officer, Univet

Their understanding, empathetic, charismatic and incredibly intelligent approach was invaluable.

Chinedu OkaforHR Leader, GE HealthCare

Agile transformation isn't about process or methodology. It's about people: trusting teams, empowering them, and getting out of their way.

Nadine Lafond · CEO, IMRE

Books

The long-form version.

Two books on what scaling actually costs, and how to keep moving without breaking the people doing the moving.

Book 01

Breakthrough Innovation

Why breakthroughs are built, not waited for

A breakthrough is a system, not a moment. This is the book behind the idea: the culture that produces breakthroughs and the structure that compounds them, and why neither works without the other.

Learn more Get the book

Book 02

The Agile Code

Principles of Leading Agile Teams

The leadership principles behind teams that keep moving. How to lead for speed without burning the people doing the work, drawn from a decade inside agile transformations.