Future Focused Leader Spotlight: Ryan Baum, Partner @ Jump Associates

Ryan Baum is Jump’s newest Partner. As a Senior Advisor and Future Focused Leader, he’s an expert at understanding complex ecosystems and bringing clarity to his clients so they can transform their businesses. He’s also a father of two, teaches Needfinding at Stanford, and is on the board of First Graduate.

Ryan Baum sees beyond “either or.” He’s a doer, but he’s also a teacher. He’s a business consultant, but he’s also a designer. He won’t dismiss things because there’s a belief that they’re too complicated to change. His clients and Jump rely on him to take on some of the hardest challenges to growth because Ryan is the definition of a hybrid thinker. Ryan has a unique way of blending his analytical and creative skills to make new things happen.  

Ryan’s also someone who’s grown to realize that it’s not just about coming up with a great idea. In those moments of creating something new, Ryan is truly committed to learning and growth. He loves partnering with his clients, developing Jumpsters, and teaching students at Stanford. He’s able to step back from building a strategy and realize that it’s also about creating the conditions for others to learn.

In light of his new role as Partner, we got together with Ryan to understand why he’s excited for this next phase of his journey with Jump…

Q: At Jump, you’ve become the go-to guy for clients in industries with super complex ecosystems. What draws you to that work? The type of industries I’m most drawn to, whether it’s healthcare, financial services, telecom, airlines, or sustainability, all have multiple stakeholders, and are highly regulated. These are the kinds of industries where at worst, people believe innovation can’t happen, and at best, people believe it can happen but only at a snail’s pace. But they’re also the industries where impact can be the biggest. I’m drawn to that.

I’ve realized when people say an industry is “complex,” they often are talking more about human complexity instead of technical complexity. For example, when people talk about healthcare or financial services as complex, I always think, Amazon is pretty complex too. The logistics required in getting you something in one day are ridiculously complex. I think when someone says that making change in an industry like healthcare is complex, they’re reacting more to the fact that there are a lot of different stakeholders whom all have competing interests. So, it’s hard to do anything. But by understanding all of those groups better, you can build new solutions that align those interests. And that can change everything.

You can’t just come up with a great strategy or solution. You need to take a bigger frame on the world and see how that strategy makes life better for everyone. Whether it’s hospitals trying to fix their care models, manufacturers trying to build a recycling ecosystem, or telecoms trying to better serve rural America… if you look for solutions where multiple different groups can simultaneously win, you can build new models that transform a “complex” business.

Q: In your experience, why does Jump’s approach to strategy, the Future Focused approach, matter? What makes it work? Having a strategy based on today’s conditions and data works really well until it doesn’t. At a previous firm, I was working on ways to market new medicines for a healthcare client. We used all kinds of data to do that. We innovated and made our offering better and better each year. Then one day, healthcare data privacy laws changed and all of a sudden a lot of that innovation we had done went out the window. The game had changed. And we probably could have seen it coming and planned for it a little better.

When the world is changing incrementally, which it sometimes is, typical strategy approaches work quite well. But, what happens when there’s a real step change? Those major disruptions are happening faster and faster. The benefit of taking a Future Focused approach is that you force yourself to think about how things might change in a more discontinuous way. You have to start by understanding the ways peoples’ needs are shifting. Oftentimes, you won’t know the right questions to ask, so you can’t design a survey to do that. You have to find new ways to learn about the things you aren’t even thinking about yet.

Q: You weren’t always a Jumpster. What brought you to Jump in the first place? I started as a management consultant. I was drawn to the type of problem-solving management consultants got to do. A lot of the stuff I ended up doing was trying to find new ways to make businesses more effective or efficient. We’d use linear regressions and other models to anticipate the future, and we always used to joke with each other that even though we weren’t sure exactly how the future would play out, the one thing we could be sure of was that whatever number our model spit out… the future was sure to be different from that. I started to think that there might be other, more creative, ways to solve some of the big growth challenges companies were facing.

At that time, I started learning about design firms and I thought, “This. This is a better way to help companies grow.” I ended up finding a design firm that was willing to take a risk on an ex-management consultant with minimal design skills. I traveled the world, studied people, and designed new products that I thought would be good for the world to have. But as I was doing it, I realized that a lot of the solutions we were envisioning were really cool, and they were needed by people, but they didn’t always have a really strong business case behind them. At least not one that would pass the sniff test of an ex-management consultant. How would these things really make money? Do these things make sense for the business given its strengths?

I wasn’t a pure management consultant, but I wasn’t a pure product designer either. I wanted to look at things through the lens of understanding people, but I also didn’t want to leave behind financial analysis. At the management consulting firm, I was the weirdo who was tasked with creating videos and creative side projects. But at the design firm, I was the guy who was able to build rigorous excel models. But in neither case were those “other” skills truly valued. Was there a place that valued both?

That’s when I found Jump. It was this weird place that actually valued all the different parts of my background. And I learned my hybrid background was actually a superpower. I could use it to solve really big, important problems.

Q: What are your favorite things about Jump and your work here? The scale of impact we get to have by solving the problems we focus on. The scale is great because 1) they’re real problems that will have an impact if solved and 2) by solving them, we and our clients are learning and growing. Therefore, we are improving our capacity to solve even more challenging problems. Our clients and us are on this journey together, collectively improving ourselves and our ability to have more impact on the world.

Ryan is excited for this next stage in his journey with Jump. He’s ready to help scale it and develop it into a bigger platform for the things he believes in. “It’s time to spread this idea of learning and growth and figure out new ways to solve problems.”

Figure out what’s next with Ryan. He’s ready to take on the things people don’t think fit together. He’s a master at blending customer centricity with rigorous strategy to create new models and transform business. Connect with Ryan Baum to learn more.