Boss Level Podcast

On this episode I’m interviewing Simon Wardley and we’re talking about Wardley maps, which are Simon’s method for co-creating strategy with visual and context-specific maps.

My guest for this episode is Will Evans. He’s the Chief Design Officer at PraxisFlow. We talk about New York, entrepreneurship, company culture and major transformation programs.

Today my guest is Stephen Bungay. Stephen is the author of The Art of Action, a book on strategy execution under uncertainty. The book draws from lessons learned in military organizations where they’ve had to deal with complex situations 200 years before businesses needed to.

I personally always cringe a little when I hear people talking about military leadership in the context of knowledge work, but Stephen knows where to draw the line of applicability, and that’s actually one of the topics we discuss.

We also talk about why our plans don’t always lead to the outcomes we want or why our plans don’t always lead to the actions we want. And what to do about it.

The interview you’re about to hear was recorded in Paris, France. I interviewed Dominique Turcq. Dominique is a French consultant and researcher who wants to help companies get ready for the future. We talk about upcoming technologies, endless beta culture, individual evaluation systems, his lessons from McKinsey, and many other topics. We also cover his book, Augmented Management, which looks at the trends companies should be aware of and the skills that individuals should develop to be better equipped to deal with the future.

For this episode my guest is Alf Rehn, a professor of management from the Åbo Academi University. When appointed, Alf was the youngest chair in Finland. Now after more than ten years on the job he has gained a wealth of knowledge especially on the topic of innovation. In addition to his academic endeavours Alf sits on boards of several companies, for example Veikkaus, the Finnish gambling monopoly.

Alf thinks we’re spending our innovation resources on the wrong things. We’re inventing gadgets when we should be solving poverty. In his opinion, we need better discourse on innovation. During the interview Alf also shares some of the things that he has seen that can make a company more innovative.

In addition to innovation we discuss management. I was trying to get him to dis the bureaucracy at the university, but I failed to do so. Alf is definitely not a fan of bureauaracy, but he sees plenty of benefits arising from the traditional uninnovate parts of organizations.

In 2009 Satoshi Nakamoto released bitcoin, a peer-to-peer digital currency. Bitcoin is based on the concept of a blockchain. The blockchain makes bitcoin decentralized. So that means money moves from one account to another without banks in between. Now that’s huge.

Regardless of whether you see bitcoin as a viable currency the technology underneath it is impressive to say the least.

My guest today is Martti Malmi who was the first after Satoshi to start working on bitcoin. He’s also the co-founder of MONI, a fintech startup and he runs his own global address service called identi.fi.

In this episode you you’ll learn about decentralization, blockchain, smart contracts and you’ll know if there’s any merit to the hype.

Today’s guest is Esko Kilpi. During previous interviews at least three of the guests have asked me if I know Esko since we’re both from Finland. Esko has created quite a following for himself through his blog posts and his talks on the future of work.

We discuss how value is nowadays created in networks through interaction. How the experience and the context are key elements in value creation. And how selling should not be seen as a single transaction, but as a continuous mutual learning process. We then explore how these concepts should be reflected in our organizations.

Today’s guest is Jabe Bloom. A few years ago, he walked in to the Carnegie Mellon University library, approached the Design section and picked up a book starting with the letter A. His plan is to keep reading until he gets to Z. His definition of design is “the intentional formation of a purposeful system”. He says science has no intention towards the future, but design does.

Today’s guest is Lori Schwanbeck. Among other things she’s one of the teachers of Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, which started out as Google’s internal program to teach mindfulness.

So the topic for this episode is mindfulness. Why has Google embraced it? How are they embracing it? What’s the research behind mindfulness? What is mindfulness and how can I get started?

Today’s topic is product management and lean startup. My guest is Melissa Perri.

When I asked around for tips on who to interview while in New York her name came up frequently. I’ve met her at several conferences and knew her to be an expert on product management. I was sure we’d have a fun chat so I reached out and she agreed to sit down for an interview!

We talk about how to get from business requirements, which often aren’t really requirements at all, to validated learning.

We discuss validation, experiments, user research, a weekly cadence and how top management and product management should work together.