Boss Level Podcast

For this episode of Boss Level I took the ferry over to Tallinn to visit the office of TransferWise. TransferWise is creating a fast and cost-effective way of sending money from a country to another. It’s valuation in its previous round of funding was close to a billion.

The way they operate is inspiring. Teams have a Key Performance Indicator or KPI that they try to improve. The KPI’s are as customer-facing as possible. How the teams improve that KPI is totally up to them. And just to make it even more complex, but effective teams can also change the KPI they use.

I’m talking to Nilan Peiris, their VP of Growth.

I'm visiting New York and interviewing Aaron Dignan, the founder of a company called The Ready. We discuss the future of work and complex, adaptive systems. We try to figure out why cities thrive when they grow and why companies don't. In the end, we reveal the formula for the next unicorn startup.

Today we have a very special guest. Jari Sarasvuo. Jari first became known for his work in radio and TV. Then in 1990 he founded a company called Trainers’ House that delivers management consulting and training for executives. Jari is still one of the biggest owners of Trainers House, but he now has a new endeavour, called Stronghold. Stronghold caters to a broader audience with a combination of digital and face-to-face trainings.

Our talk covers Jari’s Twitter mania, his troubled relationship with technology, his digital training business and we close off by discussing self-organizing companies and performance targets.

The first guest for the second season of Boss Level is Linda Liukas. She’s changing the world by helping kids learn technology. Her TEDx talk is just about to reach a million views. We discuss learning, education, writing and technology. A word of warning though, her enthusiasm is pretty infectious. Enjoy.

This episode is about the simple, but powerful concept of Toyota Kata and how it’s applied at the gaming company King. I’m interviewing Håkan Forss, an agile coach, working for King in Stockholm.

This episode is the end of Season 1 of Boss Level. The next episode will be out on the 14th of March 2016.

10 000 employees. No managers. Great results. Founded in 2006 Buurtzorg has taken the home care industry in Holland by storm. It has a lion’s share of the market. Clients rate Buurtzorg as 9.1 out of 10. Buurtzorg has been selected as the best place to work in Holland 5 times in a row. This is an interview with the CEO and founder, Jos de Blok.

Most people fear snakes. A lot of people fear public speaking. Some companies are lead with fear.

Why do we fear? What is fear? When is fear harmful and when is it beneficial?

Henkka Hyppönen, today’s guest, is an expert on fear. He recently wrote a book about it called “Why we fear”.

At the end of the episode, I’ll tell you how you can win a free copy of the book.

Today’s guest is Kathrine Kirk, an independent consultant who often finds herself working with conflict-ridden teams that are deemed hopeless. She gave an interesting keynote at the Lean Agile Scotland conference on why team happiness might not be a good thing to aim for.

Today’s guest is Dave Snowden. Dave is the man behind Cynefin, a decision support framework that’s based on complexity theory and cognitive science. In addition to Cynefin we discuss strategy, budgeting, performance targets and other important management concepts. Dave also shares research that shows which is more accurate in predicting human behavior: Myers-Briggs personality types or astrology.

Today my guest is Henrik Kniberg. Henrik is well known for his books and for his work with Spotify, Lego and many others.

Henrik works through Crisp, a Swedish consultancy that has published their company DNA online. The DNA consists of all the essential principles, processes and agreements with which the company operates.

We discuss the unorthodox organizational model at Crisp, Henrik’s work with his clients, and how his kids, aged 10 and 11, won a robot battle against teams of professional programmers.