From Safety Patrol to Chief Outsider: Excellence, Identity, and Letting Go with Janell Pittman

May 5

Most high achievers I know have never questioned their relationship with excellence. It works. It gets results. It earns praise, promotions, and a reputation for being the person who raises the bar. Why would you question it?

But there's a version of excellence that starts to quietly run your life. And the people who are most at risk of it are the ones who are most successful.

Janell Pittman and I went to business school together at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business - 23 years ago now, which still feels impossible to say. I remember her as the pace car. The one who made everyone else want to level up. We weren't close back then. But over the past year, we've gotten to know each other in a different way, and I wanted to have this conversation with her because I knew her story reflects a special type of excellence.

Janell spent years in senior executive roles - VP and General Manager at Meredith Corporation, overseeing brands like AllRecipes, Martha Stewart, and Better Homes & Gardens, then Chief Marketing and Digital Strategy Officer at MercyOne, a 230-location, 18,000-colleague health system where she led one of the most ambitious culture and brand transformation efforts I've ever heard described. Today, she's a fractional CMO with Chief Outsiders, partnering with mid-size company CEOs who are stuck in activity without traction.

She is, by any measure, excellent. But what this conversation revealed is what excellence costs when you don't pay attention to why you're doing it.

In This Episode, We Talk About:

The "above the line / below the line" relationship with excellence — and how the same achievement can come from curiosity or fear
What it took to lead culture change across 18,000 colleagues without imposing it from above
The identity reckoning that happened when Janell took a deliberate career break, and how terrifying stillness was
Why she had to let go of busyness as a proxy for importance
How she rebuilt her sense of self outside of titles, results, and being the person everyone was counting on
Why "the process is more important than the outcome" changed how she leads

My Key Takeaways from this conversation with Janell Pittman:

1. Excellence can be a safety mechanism in disguise.

Janell talked openly about how the drive to be excellent - which began as pure fun, curiosity, and love of building - gradually picked up fear underneath it. The fear of being fired. The fear of not being the best in the room. And the fear that if she stopped excelling, she'd stop mattering. I hear this constantly from leaders. The achievement is real. But so is the anxiety underneath it.

2. You can co-create culture, or you can impose it. Only one actually works.

At MercyOne, Janell didn't walk in and tell 18,000 people what their culture was going to be. She made the case for change, then invited everyone into the design. One of her colleagues said something that stuck with her: "The process of what we're doing here is more important than what we end up with." That's not softness. That's strategy. When people help build the thing, they don't fight it - they protect it.

3. Busyness is an identity, and it takes real work to shed it.

When Janell took a career break, she didn't just stop working. She had to actively resist the pull of busyness - the sense that productivity equals worthiness. She described sitting at a lake fishing with her son, having brought a chair and a book, fully intending to relax - and spending the entire time thinking, we need to leave, there's somewhere else to be. That's not a scheduling problem. That's a belief system.

4. The people around you are watching what you model.

Janell started modeling vacation with her own team because she knew her behavior was setting the permission level for everyone around her. The result? Better ideas. Better energy. A team that finally felt like they could breathe. Culture rolls downhill. However you're showing up is creating permission for how others show up.

5. Facing the thing you're afraid of is the fastest way through it.

Janell's answer to the final question - what truth helps the giant in you rise up when fear drags you down - was simple and direct: tackle what you're afraid of. Not because it isn't scary. But because doing the scary thing is the only thing that actually proves to you that you can survive it.

Whether you're a founder, an executive, or just someone who has spent a long time being very good at something and is starting to wonder what it's all for — I think this conversation will land somewhere real for you.

Listen to the Full Conversation:

Connect with Janell Pittman:

Connect with Clay:

Resources Mentioned:

Excellence Through Leadership Conference (University of Missouri)
Chief Outsiders (chiefoutsiders.com)

If you have a topic or guest you'd love to see on Fearful Giants, reach out to me at clay@15sixty.com

Clay

#Leadership #ExecutiveLeadership #EmotionalIntelligence #FearfulGiants #HonestLeadership #FractionalCMO #MarketingLeadership #CareerReinvention

Clay Stelzer