How David Heaps Thinks About Inner Architecture

You can see yourself doing it. You still can't stop.

David Heaps is the founder and executive coach at Leadering, where he works with founding CEOs who keep solving the same problem in different forms. He spent nearly 11 years studying with indigenous teachers in the Amazon, and what he brought back became a method he calls Inner Architecture Work — finding the operating rules a leader built early in life, usually without ever choosing them, and changing the ones that are quietly running the show. Kenny and David walk through the four stages of catching an old pattern in real time, the exact moment a rule gets written (a kitchen, a hot burner, age three or four), and the one pattern David finds in almost every founder he coaches: the CEO who can't hold anyone to a standard, and ends up quietly doing the team's work for them instead.

Chapters

00:00 The Inner Architecture Behind Founder Burnout

01:43 Writing the Book Behind Inner Architecture Work

04:39 Why Most Leadership Advice Stops Too Early

08:23 The Four Stages: From Blind Repetition to Freedom

13:12 The Founder Patterns Almost Everyone Has

23:33 Where the Rules Come From: The Hot Burner Story

32:19 How One Blind Spot Becomes 200 Different Standards

39:29 Your First 24 Hours: Two Free Ways to Start

What You'll Learn

• The four stages of catching yourself mid-pattern — from doing the thing and only noticing after, to doing it while watching yourself and feeling powerless to stop, to actually changing course in the moment

• Where an "operating rule" really comes from — it's rarely deep, and it's almost never about the thing you think it's about

• The one pattern David finds in almost every founder he works with, and why it quietly builds resentment on the whole team

• How a CEO's own unspoken pattern cascades all the way down an org chart, whether anyone ever names it or not

• Two free ways to start in the next 24 hours — no drip campaign, no sales pitch

About David Heaps

David Heaps is the founder and executive coach at Leadering and the creator of Inner Architecture Work — a method for finding and changing the operating rules that quietly run a leader's decisions. A former COO, he spent nearly 11 years studying with indigenous teachers in the Amazon before developing the framework he now teaches to founding CEOs. His book, Inner Architecture: Finding and Freeing Yourself from the Invisible Rules That Are Ruling You, by David L. Heaps, is forthcoming.

David Heaps Resources

Website: https://www.leadering.com/

Book your complimentary Inner Architecture Audit (90 minutes): https://calendly.com/leadering/inner-architecture-audit

Free six-step process — email David directly, no drip campaign: david@leadering.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-heaps-leadering/

Listen on Other Platforms

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-leaders-think-with-kenny-lange/id1434737807

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2wKtzb6KaF1vNlG9TsZkzh

Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/b13c5d64-50db-4626-9685-c356116ec54b

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@KennyLange/podcasts

Website: https://howleadersthink.kennylange.com/

Free 5-minute leadership diagnostic: https://kennylange.com/diagnostic