Change Wired

Whether you’re a business leader, entrepreneur, or someone reinventing yourself, the way you think about innovation will shape your future. 

Innovation isn’t about guessing or chasing shiny ideas. It’s about having a process, the right tools, and the discipline to test, learn, and scale what creates value. 

In this episode, I sit down with Alex Osterwalder—one of the world’s most influential strategy and innovation thinkers, inventor of the Business Model Canvas, bestselling author, and CEO of Strategyzer. Alex has changed how the world approaches business design. Millions of entrepreneurs and leaders use his tools to innovate with clarity instead of chaos. 

We dive deep into the fundamental mistakes both large corporations and startups make: falling in love with ideas, building too much too fast, and only later discovering customers don't care. 

Perhaps most valuable is Alex's framework for balancing core business operations ("exploit") with future-focused innovation ("explore"). This practical approach helps organizations avoid the common trap of applying existing business rules to innovation projects—a mistake that almost guarantees failure.

Whether you're leading a Fortune 500 company, building a startup, or reinventing your own career, this episode offers actionable insights to make innovation less of a gamble and more of a repeatable process. 

What You’ll Learn 

• From Volleyball to Strategy: How Alex’s unlikely journey shaped his obsession with creating and simplifying tools for business. 
• Why Business Plans Fail: The origin of the Business Model Canvas and why structure beats guesswork. 
• AI & Innovation: What AI changes (everything) and what it doesn’t (the fundamentals). 
• Portfolio Thinking: Why great companies run many small bets, kill weak ones fast, and scale the winners. 
• Avoiding Zombie Projects: How to spot and stop initiatives that drain resources but deliver no evidence of value. 
• Systems, Not Slogans: Why excitement isn’t enough—innovation needs the right structures, incentives, and processes to thrive. 
• Personal Success Strategy: Alex’s reflections on what success means beyond growth and money, and why defining your own metrics of success is essential. 

👤 Guest Bio: Alex Osterwalder 

Dr. Alex Osterwalder is the founder & CEO of Strategyzer and a visiting professor at IMD Business School. Ranked among the world’s top 10 management thinkers (Thinkers50), he is best known for inventing the Business Model Canvas together with Yves Pigneur. Alex has authored five global bestsellers, including Business Model Generation, Value Proposition Design, Testing Business Ideas, The Invincible Company, and High-Impact Tools for Teams. Through Strategyzer, he helps organizations around the globe build innovation capabilities and transform systematically 

🔗 Links Mentioned 

• Strategyzer 
• Alex on LinkedIn 

Innovation isn’t luck—it’s design.
Tune in to this episode to learn how to turn your vision into a system of repeatable wins, master the fundamentals that don’t change, and lead with clarity in a world of uncertainty.  

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

Have you ever wondered why so many of your meaningful intentions never transform into actual behaviors? 

 That language you want to learn, the presentation skills you hope to develop, the health habits you wish to build - all sitting in a metaphorical bucket of good intentions that rarely see the light of day.  

The gap between intention and action represents your untapped potential, dreams that slowly fade as urgent (but perhaps less meaningful) tasks continuously take priority.  

But what if behavioral science could offer a solution?  

In this episode, I introduce you to a powerful concept used by researchers to help people take consistent action on important but non-urgent goals: just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs).  

Unlike traditional reminders that pop up at predetermined times regardless of your circumstances, JITAIs deliver personalized prompts precisely when your internal state (energy, motivation) and external context (environment, resources) make action possible. This seemingly simple shift - from generic reminders to smart, contextual prompts — can dramatically increase your follow-through on meaningful intentions.  

The beauty of this approach lies in its practicality. You don't need special technology or expertise to implement your own JITAI system.   

Ready to transform intentions into actions?  

Listen now to discover how you can design personalized just-in-time interventions that help you tap into your full potential and create a life filled with meaningful accomplishments rather than unfulfilled aspirations.  

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

What makes some people capable of extraordinary consistency while others struggle to maintain even basic positive habits?  

The answer lies in 3 foundational pillars that shape all human behavior. A framework so powerful it can transform not just individual actions, but entire organizational cultures. 

The first pillar, stories, operates as the foundation of all behavior change. As your host Angela Shurina reveals through compelling personal examples, the narratives we construct about our circumstances directly impact our capacity for action.   

The second pillar, incentives, addresses the fundamental truth that humans consistently pursue what feels rewarding. Drawing on insights from behavioral science and thought leaders like Mark Manson, Angela reveals that sustainable habits require emotional or social rewards that make difficult behaviors meaningful.

The third pillar, triggers, explains why good intentions often fail to translate into consistent action. Through practical examples of environmental design, Angela demonstrates how strategic placement of visual reminders dramatically increases the likelihood of performing intended behaviors. This same principle works in reverse for breaking unwanted habits. 

When combined, these 3 pillars create a comprehensive system for behavior change that far surpasses traditional approaches based solely on willpower or motivation.  

Whether you're struggling with personal habits, leading organizational transformation, or coaching others through change, mastering these 3 elements will unlock unprecedented results.  

Try applying them to one behavior this week and experience firsthand how powerful this framework can be in creating lasting transformation.  

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

Do you find yourself grinding through tough projects, just waiting for them to end so you can finally enjoy life?  Do you quit things often because you get bored or tired?  

What if sustainable high performance didn't require sacrificing your wellbeing or joy of living?  

This episode tackles the critical challenge many ambitious professionals face: how to achieve difficult goals without burning out. We'll explore the missing skill that separates sustainable achievers from those caught in burnout cycles.  

Most people don't burn out because their work is too demanding; they burn out because they never learned when to pause.  

Your mind and body operate as an integrated team, and when physical resources become depleted, your decision-making, emotional resilience, and perception of your work all suffer. The early warning signs of burnout appear in your thinking and emotions long before physical symptoms emerge.  

Through a practical step-by-step exercise, you'll learn to create your personal energy agreement—establishing clear boundaries around working hours, designing effective transition rituals between work and personal time, identifying activities that genuinely recharge you, and recognizing your unique burnout warning signs before they escalate.  

Download the worksheet to create your personalized framework for sustainable achievement while enjoying the journey. Remember, this isn't just about avoiding burnout—it's about creating a pattern of fulfilling growth where the process itself becomes rewarding.  

Share this episode with someone who might be teetering on the edge of burnout. Together, we can transform how we approach achievement and create work lives worth living.  

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

Why do well-intentioned initiatives so often fail to deliver results?  

The answer lies not in strategy but in execution - specifically, in the gap between what people intend to do and what they actually do.  

Scott Young has spent his career at the intersection of behavioral science and business transformation, advising Fortune 500 companies and teaching at institutions like the London School of Economics. His mission: helping leaders apply behavioral science ethically and effectively to drive real change.  

In this illuminating conversation, Scott reveals:  

• Behavioral science offers unique value in helping close the "intent-action gap" where people want to do the right thing but human nature gets in the way 
• Simple frameworks like COM-B and EAST help leaders think broadly about potential barriers and design effective interventions 
• Confusion serves as a much bigger barrier than we think, when people get confused, they use it as an "off-ramp" to avoid uncomfortable changes 
• Most companies over-rely on communication and financial incentives while underestimating the power of environmental design and process changes 
• Traditional top-down approaches to culture change often fail, instead, define specific behaviors that constitute values like "collaboration" or "innovation" 
• Leaders should create a "behavioral lens" as part of their leadership toolkit to complement strategy with effective execution 
• The timeliness of communication often matters more than its content - focus on reaching people at the moment of decision 
• AI adoption faces 2 key barriers: general resistance to technology change and fear of replacement 
• Psychological safety is crucial for technology adoption - people need to feel comfortable asking questions and expressing confusion - and where leaders get it wrong, while trying to shift culture towards it  

... and so much more!  

Whether you're leading organizational transformation, building a more innovative culture, or trying to improve adoption of new technologies, this episode offers practical insights you can apply immediately.  

Learn how to close the intent-action gap and create environments where good intentions translate into consistent results.  

Tune in!  

___________________________
📌 Scott Young  

Scott Young is an independent advisor, educator, and former Head of Private Sector at the Behavioral Insights Team (BIT) Americas. He previously led BVA Nudge Consulting and spent over 20 years running Perception Research Services, a global shopper insights agency.  

Today, Scott lectures at LSE, UPenn, and Chicago Booth, serves as a board member at BeScy, and writes extensively on applied behavioral science. He conducts workshops and coaches executives to apply behavioral tools ethically and effectively across business functions and industries.  

📍 Connect with Scott:  

• LinkedIn  
•  Medium Articles  
•  BeScy.org  
• Developing Behaviorally-Informed Executives   

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

Ever wonder why willpower fails you  more at night? Why some days you're laser-focused and others you can't concentrate for five minutes?  

The answer lies not in psychology, but in biology.  

Your brain chemistry literally transforms throughout the day.  

That morning brain, charged with cortisol and dopamine, is a focus machine ready for complex work. By evening, different neurochemicals dominate, making discipline nearly impossible but creativity more accessible. Fighting these natural rhythms is like swimming upstream – exhausting and counterproductive.  

This episode unpacks the science behind working with your brain's biology instead of against it. We explore how top performers aren't superhuman willpower machines but strategic schedulers who align tasks with their optimal biological windows.  

Your brain, consuming 20% of your energy while being only 2% of your body weight, constantly calculates whether activities justify their energy cost. Understanding this calculation revolutionizes how we approach habits and productivity.  

Become aware of your unique biological rhythm, allowing you to design your ideal schedule and multiply your effectiveness while reducing effort.  

Achieving more with less effort starts here.  

As Stephen Kotler says, "Biology scales, psychology doesn't" – meaning biological realities will always trump psychological theories when it comes to sustainable performance.  

Ready to stop fighting your brain and start leveraging its natural strengths? Listen now and discover how working with your biology can transform your productivity, habits, and performance with significantly less struggle.  

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

What if there's never gonna be a perfect plan and total clarity?  

On today's episode Dr. Anne-Laure Le Cunff, the author of "Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World", shares how tiny experiments can transform our approach to life, work, and meaningful change without rigid goals or predetermined paths. Her experimental mindset offers a powerful alternative to traditional planning - designing low-risk experiments to uncover your path one step at a time.  

We will touch on:  

From shiny to misaligned. Anne-Laure shares how a great job and smart teammates still left her internally “off”, impacting health and relationships - so she stepped off the ladder.  

The risky jump (and reframe). A first startup “because that’s what you do” created avoidable financial stress. The second transition flipped the script: keep some income for safety and treat the next step as an experiment, not a bet-the-farm goal.  

A scientist’s lens on identity change. Before you “optimize,” observe: practice 24 hours of self-anthropology (field notes without judgement) to notice energy, curiosity, and friction points.  

Tiny Experiments in one line: “I will [action] for [duration].” Short, low-risk trials beat vague, year-long resolutions.  

Bring the team. Run a shared “lab cycle” (30 days). Success = new knowledge, not a binary win/lose.  

Mindful productivity > hustle. You’re not a calendar robot; protect moments and engineer creative windows with simple rituals (music, stretch, tea, micro-walks).  

Procrastination is a signal, not a sin. Use Head/Heart/Hand to diagnose: misaligned rationale, low emotional pull, or missing skills/tools/support - then fix the right thing.  

Generativity vs. Legacy. Aim to make a small, present-day impact you can see now; legacy may emerge as a by-product.  

... and so much more!  

Ready to design your first tiny experiment?  

Catch the full Change Wired episode with Anne-Laure Le Cunff and explore practical tools for mindful productivity, career transitions, and thriving in a goal-obsessed world.   

Links & resources mentioned  

• Anne-Laure’s bio & personal site: https://anne-laure.net  
• Ness Labs (newsletter & articles): https://nesslabs.com/newsletter  
• Book: Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World
  Amazon 
  Target 
  Audible.com  
• Starter read on Mindful Productivity: “Mindful productivity: a sustainable way to work and think”   

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

Have you ever felt stuck in life or business, unable to make progress despite having what seems like a perfect plan?   

This espisode is definitely for you then!  

The problem might not be your goal, but rather your attachment to how you think you should get there.  

Life isn't a clearly mapped journey but more like walking through fog - we can glimpse our destination in the distance, but the path only reveals itself as we take each step forward. This insight transformed how I approach challenges, from personal uncertainty to business strategy.  

Netflix co-founder Mark Randolph perfectly captures this wisdom with his advice to "fall in love with the problem, not the solution."  

The most successful entrepreneurs and leaders understand that rigid plans rarely survive contact with reality. Like Navy SEALs who follow the terrain when it conflicts with their map, true progress comes from adapting to what's actually happening rather than what we thought would happen. This is why companies that endure for decades constantly evolve while maintaining their core purpose.  

The experimental approach to life and business follows a simple 5-step framework you will learn in this episode. This scientific mindset removes the emotional attachment to particular solutions that often keeps us spinning our wheels when we should be pivoting.  

Whether you're building a business, improving your health, or developing relationships, treating life as a series of experiments rather than a fixed plan creates freedom to evolve and ultimately find what actually works.  

What experiment will you design this week to move past your current challenge?  

Share your thoughts, subscribe to hear our upcoming episode featuring a Google expert on experimental career design, and join our community of change-makers ready to embrace the uncertainty of the fog while steadily moving forward.  

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

What if everything you thought about changing habits is backward?  

Most of us believe high performance comes from discipline, willpower, and pushing ourselves harder. But what if your environment shapes your behavior far more than your intentions ever could?  

What if high performers are just better at putting themselves in a situation to win? 

Drawing from recent conversations with behavioral scientists and my own experience as an executive coach, I've discovered something revolutionary: the secret to lasting behavior change isn't trying harder, it's designing smarter systems around you.  

Humans possess a unique superpower that sets us apart from every other species on earth. While animals must adapt to their environments, we can consciously create environments that transform us into the people we want to become. 

Through personal examples, including how I broke a decades-long lip-picking habit overnight, I reveal the 3-part habit loop that governs our behavior. By manipulating these elements we can achieve effortless change where willpower repeatedly fails. Research consistently shows that environmental design strategies work dramatically better than information or motivation alone.  

This isn't just about personal habits.  

The principles apply equally to leading teams, raising children, or influencing friends. As Charles Duhigg's work shows, approximately 40% of our behaviors are habitual, and even our non-habitual actions are largely triggered by environmental cues. By shifting your focus from changing yourself to changing your surroundings, you'll unlock a more effective path to transformation.  

Ready to redesign your environment and watch your habits transform? Listen now and discover how to leverage the science of behavior change to create lasting results in your life and work.  

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

What if your greatest strengths are secretly holding you back as a leader?  

In this illuminating conversation with Dr. Martin Dubin, we uncover the hidden blind spots that prevent even the most successful leaders from reaching their full potential and making forward progress.  

We all have blind spots, patterns we don’t notice in ourselves that limit our growth.

In this episode of Change Wired, Dr. Martin Dubin, clinical-psychologist-turned-entrepreneur-turned-leadership coach, and author of Blindspotting: How to See What’s Holding You Back as a Leader, shares why blindspots are often the flip side of our greatest strengths, and how leaders can build self-awareness to avoid getting stuck in default behaviors that no longer serve them.  

🔑 Main Takeaways  

• The 6 Blindspots Leaders Face:  
  1. Identity – when your role evolves but your self-concept doesn’t  
  2. Motive – not seeing the true drivers behind your decisions  
  3. Traits – overplaying strengths until they become weaknesses  
  4. Emotions – failing to recognize and regulate your own or others’ emotions  
  5. Intellect – relying too heavily on one type of intelligence  
  6. Behavior – blind spots in communication, influence, and priorities  
• Strengths become blind spots when they’re overused in the wrong context.  
• Metacommunication (communicating about the communication) is a powerful way to clear misunderstandings and align intentions with impact.  
• Five things only a CEO can do: select the team, shape culture, set strategy, decide priorities, and manage key relationships.  
• Small tweaks matter more than big transformations - like adjusting decisiveness with guardrails or changing the timing of important decisions.  

📚 What You’ll Learn  

• How to uncover blind spots in your leadership and career.  
• Why emotions are data and how to use them to guide decisions.  
• The four kinds of intellect leaders should balance in teams.  
• Practical strategies to align identity, behavior, and motives with the roles you aspire to.  
• How to use the Blindspotting framework inside your organization to build more effective teams.  

📝 Resources   

• Book: Blindspotting: How to See What’s Holding You Back as a Leader  
• Blindspot Assessment: https://www.blindspotting.com/assessment  
• Website: martindubin.com  
• Connect with Marty on LinkedIn  

👤 Marty's Bio:  

Martin Dubin is a clinical psychologist, serial entrepreneur, business coach, and adviser to C-suite executives and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. He founded and sold a multimillion-dollar health-care company, served as Vice President at Anthem BCBS, and later became a partner at RHR International, working with Fortune 500 leaders and top venture capital firms.  

Marty’s latest book, Blindspotting distills decades of experience into a practical framework for identifying and overcoming leadership blindspots.   

Want to grow as a leader faster? Been stuck and not sure why?
Tune in and start blinspotting!  

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.