John R. Miles

Miles says he promoted overlooked internal employees before hiring from outside.

“I started looking at who had been passed over for opportunities that were hidden gems and I promoted them first”

Proven Podcast: The Mattering Effect: Success and Mattering Are Not the Same Thing - John R. Miles (Oct 10, 2026) · Listen from 57:22

Miles recounts that the Lowe's team he inherited finished last in a company-wide engagement survey of roughly 350,000 associates.

“Lowe's had, I don't know, 350,000 associates across the company. My group that I was inheriting finished dead last”

Proven Podcast: The Mattering Effect: Success and Mattering Are Not the Same Thing - John R. Miles (Oct 10, 2026) · Listen from 26:14

Miles says leaders who call work strategically important but fill people's weeks with meetings send a contradictory signal.

“If you tell someone in the organization that their job is strategically important, but then consume their entire week in meetings, committees, status updates, and approvals”

Proven Podcast: The Mattering Effect: Success and Mattering Are Not the Same Thing - John R. Miles (Oct 10, 2026) · Listen from 53:13

Miles argues that leaders must set the mission and boundaries and then trust capable people, never becoming the bottleneck.

“the thing I learned very early on, and this has carried through my entire career, is the leader cannot become the bottleneck”

Proven Podcast: The Mattering Effect: Success and Mattering Are Not the Same Thing - John R. Miles (Oct 10, 2026) · Listen from 3:04

Miles contends that technology alone does not change people, and that change requires psychological safety.

“you can't throw technology or something in and expect it's going to change people. Like changing people is like 60% of the job”

Proven Podcast: The Mattering Effect: Success and Mattering Are Not the Same Thing - John R. Miles (Oct 10, 2026) · Listen from 48:28

Miles argues that leaders should avoid penalizing those who surface problems, because early truth makes problems cheaper to solve.

“I did the exact opposite because I knew the earlier I knew the truth, the cheaper the problem would become to solve”

Proven Podcast: The Mattering Effect: Success and Mattering Are Not the Same Thing - John R. Miles (Oct 10, 2026) · Listen from 47:16

Miles identifies six signals of mattering in organizations.

“Meaning, autonomy, which we've already touched upon, trust, time, energy, and reciprocity”

Proven Podcast: The Mattering Effect: Success and Mattering Are Not the Same Thing - John R. Miles (Oct 10, 2026) · Listen from 44:28

Miles coined the term systemic unmattering for employees who stop speaking up after learning that it changes nothing.

“They stopped bringing forward ideas because they learn that speaking up doesn't change anything. And I have a term for this now. I call it systemic unmattering”

Proven Podcast: The Mattering Effect: Success and Mattering Are Not the Same Thing - John R. Miles (Oct 10, 2026) · Listen from 29:41

Miles describes a daily routine moving from gratitude to mindfulness to physical activity to setting intentions.

“I start with a gratitude practice, which leads to a mindfulness practice, which leads to physical activity, which then leads to very powerful intentions”

Proven Podcast: The Mattering Effect: Success and Mattering Are Not the Same Thing - John R. Miles (Oct 10, 2026) · Listen from 13:34

Miles says self-regulation is the foundation of his career success because leaders cannot regulate others without regulating themselves.

“Because if you don't regulate yourself, how are you going to regulate anyone else?”

Proven Podcast: The Mattering Effect: Success and Mattering Are Not the Same Thing - John R. Miles (Oct 10, 2026) · Listen from 13:46

Miles argues that companies adopting AI ask the wrong question by focusing on automation rather than on what becomes more human.

“So many companies are asking what jobs can we automate instead of asking what becomes more human when machines do more of the work”

Proven Podcast: The Mattering Effect: Success and Mattering Are Not the Same Thing - John R. Miles (Oct 10, 2026) · Listen from 1:04:23

Miles defines autonomy as authorship within guardrails and says he trained his whole organization in ITIL to give it a common language.

“Autonomy for me is authorship with clear guard rails. So what I discovered when I took over this group was we didn't have a common language”

Proven Podcast: The Mattering Effect: Success and Mattering Are Not the Same Thing - John R. Miles (Oct 10, 2026) · Listen from 39:10

Miles prefers the term gardener leadership to servant leadership because leaders should create conditions for growth rather than force it.

“a gardener doesn't pull on a plant to make it grow. A gardener leader creates the conditions for growth”

Proven Podcast: The Mattering Effect: Success and Mattering Are Not the Same Thing - John R. Miles (Oct 10, 2026) · Listen from 34:02

Miles says he stopped drinking three years ago after trauma-related alcohol use, and that it greatly improved his sleep and energy.

“i have not consumed alcohol in three years”

Proven Podcast: The Mattering Effect: Success and Mattering Are Not the Same Thing - John R. Miles (Oct 10, 2026) · Listen from 20:38

Miles recounts that he earned trust on Navy ships by volunteering himself and his team for any needed duty.

“I went in raising my hand saying I will do anything and my guys will do anything that needs to be done on the ship”

Proven Podcast: The Mattering Effect: Success and Mattering Are Not the Same Thing - John R. Miles (Oct 10, 2026) · Listen from 6:25

Miles recounts telling a Korn Ferry assessor that adaptability, not EQ, would be the most important trait of the next era.

“I think the most important thing in the next era is going to be adaptability because I know I've had to change myself like seven or eight times”

Passion Struck with John R. Miles: You’re Not Stuck. You’re Swimming in the Wrong Direction | Alec Litowitz - EP 827 (Oct 1, 2026) · Listen from 33:08

Miles recounts telling Angela Duckworth that grit not aligned with values and intentionality can be misdirected.

“if you have grit and you're not aligned to your values, you're not aligned to where you're taking your life, then all of a sudden that grit can go in the opposite direction”

Passion Struck with John R. Miles: You’re Not Stuck. You’re Swimming in the Wrong Direction | Alec Litowitz - EP 827 (Oct 1, 2026) · Listen from 30:29

Miles argues Jonathan Haidt is partly wrong because social media is an accelerant of a disorientation building for 200 years.

“It's just an accelerant of something that's been building up for 200 years underneath the surface”

Passion Struck with John R. Miles: You’re Not Stuck. You’re Swimming in the Wrong Direction | Alec Litowitz - EP 827 (Oct 1, 2026) · Listen from 42:57

Miles hypothesizes that the crisis stems from a long erosion of childhood freedom and agency extending into institutions that treat people as utilities.

“they're all eroding more and more of our individuality and treating us less as a human and more as a utility”

Passion Struck with John R. Miles: Your Kids Don’t Need More Achievement. They Need More Freedom | Dr. Peter Gray - EP 826 (Sep 29, 2026) · Listen from 1:04:56