784: How to Protect the Organization You Love, with Eric Ries
Coaching for Leaders
Dave Stachowiak
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eric Ries: Incorruptible
Eric Ries is the creator of the Lean Startup method, and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup, The Leader’s Guide, and The Startup Way. Over the last two decades, his ideas about continuous innovation, long-term thinking, governance, and market reform have reshaped company building and management practices. He is the author of Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad…and How Great Companies Stay Great (Amazon, Bookshop)*.
If you build a great organization, the predators will come. With the right principles in place, not only can you protect what you love, but help many people flourish because of it. In this conversation, Eric and I show you exactly where to start.
Key Points
- Most leaders are one acquisition, one IPO, one board meeting away from seeing something they love turn into something they hate.
- If you build something great, they will come. The “they” are the predators who are willing to kill the golden goose.
- Financial gravity is the force no one controls but everyone obeys. Appreciating its realities and laws will help you build stronger.
- Rather than framing profit as good or bad, define profit as how you contribute to human flourishing.
- Harder is easier. Rather than viewing principles as a burden, the best leaders see principles as opportunities.
- Design the business model so the organization prospers only via mission attainment.
Resources Mentioned
- Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad…and How Great Companies Stay Great by Eric Ries (Amazon, Bookshop)*
Interview Notes
Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).
Related Episodes
- Doing Better Than Zero-Sum Thinking, with Renée Mauborgne (episode 641)
- Crafting the Modern Business Plan, with Seth Godin (episode 704)
- Notice Disruption and Innovate Through It, with Steve Blank (episode 761)
Discover More
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you build a great organization, the predators will come. But with the right principles in place, |
| 0:07.7 | not only can you protect what you love, but help many people flourish because of it. In this episode, |
| 0:14.2 | how to do just that. This is Coaching for Leaders, episode 784. |
| 0:20.8 | Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. Coaching for Leaders, Episode 784. |
| 0:25.4 | Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. |
| 0:32.0 | Greetings to you from Orange County, California. |
| 0:36.4 | This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host, Dave Stahoviac. |
| 0:39.8 | Leaders aren't born, they're made. And this weekly show helps leaders thrive at key inflection points. All of us know of an organization, a business, |
| 0:47.6 | that we loved and did incredible things in our community, or maybe it's a larger brand that we |
| 0:53.9 | really loved and appreciated. And then it was a larger brand that we really loved |
| 0:54.6 | and appreciated. And then it took a turn for some reason. An investor came in, a private equity |
| 1:01.1 | firm purchased it, and all of a sudden it wasn't the same. And there's so much that we can do |
| 1:08.0 | as leaders that can help protect something that's really special in the |
| 1:13.1 | organizations that we've grown. Today, a conversation about how to look at that in a different |
| 1:17.9 | way and how to reframe some of the language we often think about in organizations in a way |
| 1:23.1 | that helps protect great things to help us all flourish even more. I'm so pleased to welcome to the show |
| 1:28.3 | Eric Reese. Eric is the creator of the Lean Startup Method and the author of the New York Times |
| 1:33.2 | bestseller, The Lean Startup, the Leaders Guide, and the Startup Way. Over the last two decades, |
| 1:39.1 | his ideas about continuous innovation, long-term thinking, governance, and market reform have reshaped |
| 1:45.1 | company building and management practices. He is the author of Incorruptible Why Good Companies |
| 1:50.9 | Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great. Eric, a pleasure to have you on. |
| 1:56.2 | Oh, it's really my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. |
... |
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