In this episode of WiseTalk, Sue Bethanis hosts Shannon Lucas, co-founder and CEO of Catalyst Constellations and co-author of Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out.: The Catalyst’s Guide to Working Well. Shannon has more than 20 years of experience in Fortune 500 innovation. She has held executive roles at Ericsson, Cisco, T-Mobile, and Vodafone, where she built the Innovation Champion program into a global, CEO-backed movement.

Sue and Shannon discuss:

• Why the AI wave feels different from past waves of change, and why leaders should treat resistance as a data point
• VUCA Prime (vision, understanding, clarity, and agility) as a response to a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world
• Why critical thinking, discernment, and domain expertise still matter when working with AI
• Practical ways for catalysts to set boundaries and avoid burnout

About Shannon Lucas:

• Book: Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out.: The Catalyst’s Guide to Working Well
• Podcast: Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out. Podcast
• Website: Catalyst Constellations
• Connect with Shannon on LinkedIn

In this episode of WiseTalk, Mariposa’s monthly podcast on perspectives on leadership, host Sue Bethanis, Ed.D., Founder and CEO of Mariposa Leadership, is joined by Johan Roos, a management scholar, former business school leader, and entrepreneur. He co-invented the globally adopted LEGO® Serious Play® methodology and currently serves as Professor and Senior Strategic Advisor at Luxembourg School of Business, Associate Faculty at Hult Ashridge, and Partner for R&D at Interface. He is also a Senior Advisor to the Global Peter Drucker Forum, where he helped initiate the Next Management initiative on leadership, and previously served as Professor and Chief Academic Officer at Hult International Business School.

Sue and Johan discuss the ideas behind his new book, Human Magic: Leading with Wisdom in an Age of Algorithms, including:

• How LEGO® Serious Play® works, and why building with your hands changes how people think and argue through a problem
• The difference between the “erosion curve” and the “amplification curve” in everyday AI use
• Why critical thinking, in Roos’s framework, means grounding a claim in stated reasoning rather than making an unsupported assertion
• Why labeling curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration as “soft skills” discourages companies from investing in them
• Early warning signs that a person’s or a team’s capabilities are eroding rather than expanding under AI use
• How framing a question well, rather than accepting an AI tool’s first output, shapes whether AI sharpens or dulls a person’s thinking

Sue Bethanis hosts Arun Gupta, venture capitalist, co-author of The Mission Generation: Rewrite Success, Reclaim Your Purpose, Rebuild Our Future and the national bestseller Venture Meets Mission, and CEO of the NobleReach Foundation, where he works to rekindle a spirit of national service through innovation and entrepreneurship. After more than two decades investing in companies at the intersection of technology and national security, including at Carlyle and Columbia Capital, Arun teaches at Stanford and Georgetown, where he has received multiple faculty teaching awards. He holds a BS and MS in engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Sue and Arun discuss the ideas behind The Mission Generation and what they mean for leaders navigating a rapidly changing workforce.

Resources

• Book: The Mission Generation: Rewrite Success, Reclaim Your Purpose, Rebuild Our Future (Wiley, May 5, 2026)
• Book website: www.TheMissionGeneration.com
• NobleReach Foundation: www.NobleReach.org
• LinkedIn: Arun Gupta