Our guest for this episode  is Kurt Schmidt, a long time leader in the software development space. He’s a partner at Foundry, an innovation and design firm that helps companies grow through better experiences. Kurt also have a popular podcast the Schmidt List. He’s also an author and expert on networking to grow your career. 

In this talk we go a little deep into Kurt's story, how he his start as a pro BMXer, a small business owner and the lessons he learned as the son of a small business owner who was also a pastor. 

You’ll also get some great tips on how to be a better listener while networking, and you’ll get a great sense of how a purpose-led leader connects over empathy, honesty and desire to put good out into the world. 

Hope you like this convo with Kurt!

You can buy his book "the Little Book of Networking: How to Grow Your Career One Conversation at a Time" on Amazon, here. 

You can reach Kurt via:

Alison Gretz has been an artist, a designer, a UX expert, a product team leader and, now, a coach and teacher for Human Centered leaders. This is a great conversation about the difference between teacher, coach, mentor and advocate. Also, we learn how to develop a sense of curiosity and fearlessness in your team. Finally, we address burnout and how to get through it. 

Alison offers coaching and cohort-driven classes for those focused onhuman-centered work like product leaders, designers and UX teams. Recently, she's introduced an "Accelerator" for design professionals. 

You can learn more about Alison and her offerings at designbydesign.co

Today our Guest is Leilani Bloomquist, an independent consultant who focuses on digital transformation, product team leadership and innovation. Leilani is sort of a quadruple threat:

I really appreciated this talk. The clarity of Leilani’s thinking, the empathy and intelligence she brings to her work shouldn’t be surprising given all the work she’s done in education and healthcare. 

She’s also got unique insights into doing transformational product work in highly regulated industries like healthcare and financial services. I think you’ll find that she’s got a cool ability to help teams be in two places at once: The practical reality of now, and the optimistic opportunity of the future. 

And, as someone that has a love/hate relationship with jargon I really liked her points on mentorship, helping teams find a common language to cut through the fog of jargon. 

Our guest for this podcast is Olivia Luterbach, Director of Strategy at Superhuman. This was a lot of fun, because we got meta, so I got to  nerd out with a strategist about how strategists do strategy. 

We covered some of the  stuff you might expect, like briefs and why Olivia doesn’t use them - but we got some interesting answers to familiar questions. 

We talked about how the job of a strategist is to find the right problem to solve, and how digital strategy is becoming, ultimately, a holistic business strategy. 

We also talked about the benefits of working with private equity backed firms and the unique needs they’ve got. 

We also talked how startups inside large orgs are different than other startups. Finally, we talk about the transition to strategy leadership vs. being an individual contributor. 

This one was so good even I listened to it twice. 

Thanks for tuning in.

Our guest for this podcast is Scott Allen

Scott is the vice president of interactive marketing and strategy at Ameriprise Financial. At Ameriprise, Scott leads a broad team that focuses on creating great digital experiences that drive results for clients and some prospects.

Disclosure here, Scott and I worked together on the same team at Ameriprise a while back, so we've got a working history. I love this conversation for a couple of reasons. One, it's a great example of how modern organizations are dealing with digital transformation, especially transformations that have been going on for a while.

Additionally, this is a good peek into how firms and highly regulated industries are working to build agility. We also get into the role of senior leaders and how in this case, they're doing a great job of providing support to the grassroots efforts to weave new ways of working into the org. There's also a super nugget in here about the rationale for moving to product orgs and how it came from the top hint. Your finance folks will get anxious listening to this, and you're gonna like it. So thanks for tuning in.

Our guest for this podcast  Pooja Newcom. Pooja is a people, process and tech transformation leader for large organizations. She’s coaching organizations - mostly tech and finance orgs - through difficult, but necessary transformations. 

Pooja got her start in finance, but quickly moved into roles where change is apparent, but transformation is critical: Transformation of objectives, the process, the way people work. The majority of her recent work has been with tech orgs who are moving to product teams, while still managing a portfolio of projects

I loved this talk!  It’s rare to get a chance to go deep with a leader who understands all the drivers of organizational effectiveness. 

We talked about how to convince the marketing and finance orgs why its so important to move to the product model, and we got some really clear insights into the power of product teams that persist and stay together over time. And, we got a great set of answers about the issues of funding your product team, too. 

Pooja is super smart and I learned a ton from this talk. She gave me a little free coaching on how to develop my own EQ. 

We should all be so lucky to have such a versatile leader working with us when we’re driving change in the org. 

Our guest for this podcast is Maura Charles!

Maura is a consultant who focuses on Digital Product management, Product coaching, and helping leaders figure out how to make important business transformations. 

We cover a lot of ground, here, touching on organization awareness, getting more effectiveness as a team, and how leaders can learn to navigate through orgs (i.e. finding your way through matrix). We talk about how it’s actually possible to teach this skill! And, we also hit on the topic of how to talk to your team as the company is navigating hard org events. 

I might also pitch this discussion as another in what is turning into a miniseries of Business Drivers, liberal Arts people who ended up in digital leadership roles. So, english/writing/rhetoric majors, here’s another  case study of book nerds who made good. 

Our guest is Jason Meyer. Jason is consultant that specializes in helping large organizations manage tech and software implementation programs that drive digital transformation. I wanted to talk to Jason to hear front line stories of leading and managing complex change. He’s in the middle of these programs, leading up and leading “around”, making the whole thing go. 

This interview has two parts, but only one of them was recorded!  

In the first part, the recorded one, we talked about the work of actually driving the program forward itself. Not the big fancy ideas *behind* a digital transformation effort, but the day to day of moving the actual work through the org. It’s not the sexy fancy stuff, but it’s the critical work that any good program needs. 

Turns out, successful program leadership requires the good old fashioned skills of relationship building, communication, gathering *everyone’s* input and a healthy dose of humor. 

After we turned off the mics, we ended up talking about a couple keys to success, that will sound familiar: Managing fear of failure, how to lead “up” via candor and direct conversations and why icebreakers should be in every program leaders toolbox. so we’ll probably need to do a part 2. 

Jason’s been in the center of a some really challenging transformation efforts, so I was glad to get him on the mic. Hope you enjoy this conversation!

Our guest for this episode is Jen Swanson. I think Jen might be one of best networked tech leader in the Twin Cities. We're very fortunate that we get to work closely with her on some of our best engagements at Fahren. Jen’s got a great track record as a product leader at organizations like Optum, Childrens Hospital, Capella and others. As you’ll hear, she started as an educator, and as it turns out, she’s still an educator, just in a different forum. 

I really appreciated all the practical useful wisdom here about the transition to digital product teams and how to make that transformation happen. She shares some great insights intoo  the role emotional intelligence plays, and how it’s required to stay resilient in the face of continuous change. And, i’m stealing her phrase “the frozen Middle”.  

You can find Jen at jenswanson.net and on twitter @jgswanson

Our guest for this episode is Jason Scherschligt.  Jason is a consultant with Solution Design Group in Minneapolis. Before SDG, Jason did some great product strategy work at Edmentum, GoKart Labs, Capella, Jostens and Star Tribune. 

At Fahren, we spend a lot of time talking with product leaders about how to get things moving in orgs, so Jason’s insights into the methods and approaches he uses were really helpful to me as we work to support product leaders and marketing teams. As a fellow liberal arts major, I appreciate his ability to make connections that others might not see and his thoughtful assessment of what’s going on in our space. 

He also shared some good perspective on how managers can evolve their leadership styles for new and smarter ways of working. 

Apologies in advance for the side-track into the world of Mellville, whaling and unreadable novels. But, that’s what happens when you get two english majors in a zoom. 

You can follow Jason on Twitter at @Searchlight5. Hope you enjoy this talk with Jason Scherschligt!