Grody & UnPrOfEsSiOnAL Podcast By Justin McMenamy cover art

Grody & UnPrOfEsSiOnAL

Grody & UnPrOfEsSiOnAL

By: Justin McMenamy
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Hello and welcome to Grody & UnPrOfEsSiOnAL, my name is Justin McMenamy, and my mission is to share both profitable and painful leadership lessons I have acquired over a twenty-year career as a misfit in corporate America.

Like everyone, I have worked with and for hundreds of leaders across my career. While some leaders are great, and many are good, the vast majority find themselves tossed into leadership and left to figure it out on their own. Grody & Unprofessional seeks to share leadership stories harvested from my own experiences and from the experiences of others through approachable and candid conversations with the aim of educating and shaping your leadership journey.

Grody & Unprofessional episodes will toggle between focused monologue on specific lessons or mindsets I have acquired from my experiences and conversations with other leaders seeking to understand their convictions and strategies for inspiring, motivating, and maybe sometimes cajoling a group into action.

Grody & Unprofessional is not a memoir, it’s not a forum to gripe or complain about the past or present. The rules are simple, I aim to convey leadership lessons through storytelling. If a given story has a hero, we will use proper names, if the story has a villain, a dolt, or if there is the potential for embarrassment, proper names will be removed. While we do NOT aim to embarrass people or organizations, we do intend to embarrass poor leadership behaviors and mindsets common to many leaders and organizations.

My experience has been that demand for talented leaders outstrips supply by at least tenfold, Grody & Unprofessional is my feeble attempt to improve supply.

I hope you will join me as we seek to uncover people, product, and organizational leadership lessons through the musings of a corporate misfit and his friends.Copyright Justin McMenamy Economics Management Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • The Velvet Hammer w. Jim Weber

    The Velvet Hammer w. Jim Weber
    Jun 11 2026
    Host Justin McMenamy and guest Jim Weber discuss techniques by which innovative teams can survive inside large bureaucracies. They discuss the need for the innovative leader to set a different “cultural thermostat,” from the broader organization; allowing for some of the organization to be in a flexible gaseous state while the rest of the company remains a solid structure focused on optimizing the present.

    McMenamy credits the book Loonshots by Safi Bahcall and Kelly Johnson’s Skunk Works rules of management, emphasizing the need for executive protection, boundary-layer leaders who can translate between rigid and creative worlds, and small policy differences in HR, IT, legal, and compensation required to enable a phase shift.

    Weber describes “talent tapping” by finding underused internal talent and relying on a protective boss who deflected steering committees, while both note the “career poker” strategy of staying at the table versus climbing.

    They also cover empathy, leaders acting as organizational psychiatrists, and when it can be compassionate to help misfit employees transition out, including the one positive lesson McMenamy cites from Jack Welch: people want to be good at their jobs.
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    56 mins
  • From the Flight Deck to the Factory Floor w. Steve Roehrich

    From the Flight Deck to the Factory Floor w. Steve Roehrich
    May 28 2026
    Host Justin McMenamy interviews Steve “Roach” Roehrich, a veteran naval aviator, former Fortune 50 Chief Business Improvement Officer, and aerospace manufacturing CEO, about leadership lessons acquired and deployed in military and corporate theatres.

    Across the wide-ranging conversation, Roehrich recounts growing up poor in rural Minnesota, joining the Navy as an aviator, traveling the world, studying finance, and navigating the corporate world.

    Roehrich argues that the military is a leadership crucible and defines key attributes of leadership: integrity/authenticity, vision, resilience and adaptability, emotional intelligence, decisiveness, humility, and continuous learning.

    He describes the tools by which one can lead organizational changes as influence, trust-building, and giving teams agency rather than using authoritarian control, he then attributes similar principles as keys to his 48-year marriage to Susan.
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    49 mins
  • When You're Another Brick in the Wall w. Leo Salotti

    When You're Another Brick in the Wall w. Leo Salotti
    May 14 2026
    Host Justin McMenamy welcomes Leo Salotti, co-founder of Terranova, to discuss leadership lessons learned from cross-cultural management and career transitions.

    Across the episode, Leo describes lessons learned after being promoted to leading a team which spanned Argentina and Brazil, including choosing humility by delivering a full leadership presentation in Portuguese and tailoring solutions to Brazilian conditions rather than copying Argentina’s model. They explore moving from engineering to people leadership, emphasizing trust, avoiding micromanagement, and “test-driving” leadership through cross-functional projects.

    Leo recounts starting his career at a large multi-national equipment manufacturer as a formative “school,” then leaving the structure for Precision Planting, driven by a desire for external customer exposure and avoiding the feelings of being “another brick in the wall.”

    They discuss balancing structure vs creativity, decentralized vs centralized decision-making, meeting avoidance, financial realities, and how to discern when it’s time to move on using reflection, a “seven hats” framework, and signals like bitterness or health impacts.

    Leo closes with a “La Petit Hotel” story involving storms, a stranded truck, and late night dismantling a gas boiler.
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    54 mins
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