TalentMiles Talks

Welcome to the latest episode of the TalentMiles Talks podcast, hosted by Bo-Magnus Salenius. This episode delves into the critical theme of continuous development and learning in the workplace. Joining the
discussion are Camilla Alperi and Annika Floman-von Bonsdorff, both
experienced learning coaches who share their insights and experiences.

Some of the questions discussed:

Tune in to this episode of the TalentMiles Talks podcast to listen to TalentMiles team members Erika Hyppönen, Johan Sigfrids and Annika Häggblom relfect on some of their most inspiring lessons learned from recent client engagements. 

Some of the questions discussed: 

“For me personally, the growth as a leader has been from the content towards the people, because leadership in the end is always about the people and nothing else but people.”

– Aleksi Malmberg, General Manager, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra

In this podcast, General Manager Aleksi Malmberg shares his experiences about leadership of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in the challenging and ambiguous context of the pandemic and thereafter. What originated in a leadership of crisis at the outbreak of Covid, gradually, and partly by down-to-earth and seemingly small supporting actions, has turned into a growth of connectedness and interactivity in the orchestra. 

In the podcast, Professor Wim Gijselaers of Maastricht University joins the discussion from the point of view of change and leadership in current research. One interesting insight suggested by this discussion is, rather counterintuitively, how the highly structured work-flow of the orchestra creates room for creativity and innovation.

The discussion is moderated by Bo-Magnus Salenius, Chairman and co-founder of TalentMiles.

“The interesting thing is that, if we do and lead this right, much of the many different activities we do now to plays part in our cultural transformation of behavior towards increased trust and more self-leadership. Somehow we take great steps forward without labeling it a “giant change” 

— Anna Thuresson, Head of HR and HSE, EON Energy Networks Sweden

There are observations suggesting that preconditions for leadership and engagement are changing in the wake of the pandemic. Engaging communities of work for shared purpose, it is suggested, may grow even more challenging in the age of widespread hybrid work. 

In this podcast, Anna Thuresson shares her reflections from the current cultural transformation in her company. While strongly underlining the importance of meaningful and shared purpose, she tells us a story of how the company is reinventing itself and its culture using a wide selection of improvements and measures while avoiding framing it as large, “programmatic” change to be cascaded. The exciting insights from practise are connected to the context of current research on leadership and learning by prof. Wim Gijselaers, Maastricht University, and the discussion is moderated by Bo-Magnus Salenius, Chairman and co-founder of TalentMiles.

A high level of trust has been the crucial element of the culture and leadership of companies that better than others have taken their business and workforce through Covid 19 this far. And trust will be a key factor for leaders in companies going further. 

But what is ”trust”, what can it look and sound like? And how does a leader act to get it to grow? In this podcast, General Manager Inna Wahlberg is interviewed for the fascinating story of how Ascender Asian Services, a leader in the field of payroll outsourcing, has pulled through the pandemic so far building on trust and exceptional commitment by the staff. She describes the journey of creating a culture which suits the special nature of the work in the industry and herself as a “curious problem-solver trying to get out of the way of people who know what they are doing”. 

”In my organisation, long before the pandemic, we had worked a lot on creating engagement and shared direction and helping people ”walk a little bit taller” and be a little more proud of what we do. This helped us. People believed in the organisation and the commitment to clients has been spectacular. I think it is really difficult for an organisation if it starts building engagement now, as the pandemic is easing, to suddenly start to say to employees that “we care about you, and you 

Inna Wahlberg is interviewed by Wim Gijselaers, professor of learning and development in Maastricht University, and Bo-Magnus Salenius, leadership coach and founder of TalentMiles.

How do you create onboarding remotely with better impact on connecting new employees to company culture, expertise and community?

Evac, the world’s leading provider of integrated water and waste management systems, has re-invented the company’s approach to onboarding. In this podcast Salla Jämsä, Global Senior HRD Manager at Evac, and Erika Hyppönen, Development Manager at TalentMiles, are interviewed about learnings and experiences of the promising new approach by Bo-Magnus Salenius.

Evac emphasises the importance of an excellent candidate experience in recruitment and the new approach in onboarding helps in creating an excellent employee experience from the very start of the employment.

The new digital approach has included helping new recruits to

Leaders and organisations today are faced with more complex problems than ever before. How can leaders enable people in the organisation to solve those problems when they themselves don’t have the right answers? In what ways can leaders create trust that allows people to solve problems collectively? What can leaders do to bring people together to generate change? How is learning essential for leaders?

In this podcast, Olli-Pekka Heinonen, Director General at Finnish National Agency for Education and, among other things, former Minister of Education, shares his view on how tomorrow's leadership differs from the past. Olli-Pekka is leading the educational system ranked as the best in the world. Join to hear how he thinks leaders should be passionate about learning.

The conversation is hosted by Patrick Furu, Chief Strategist of TalentMiles and Adjunct Professor.

With the rise of digital and online learning, how can businesses use gamification to make learning more fun, and to develop comptence and change behviours? Is gamified online learning only something for the ”younger generation” entering the workplace, or how can we make this educational approach work for everyone? What does research show about this way of learning and what are some important things to consider before integrating elements of gamification into your development programmes? What is hindering the movement of gamification to continue going forward?

These are some of the questions that will be discussed in this episode of TalentMiles Talks, about the future of gamification in digital learning, with Anna Ockborn, Ouss Labib, Patrick Furu and Thomas Spjuth Eriksson.

It is our privilege to host this podcast in celebration of the release of the new edition of Reinvention, by professor Anthony Elliott, University of South Australia. The podcast offers leadership practitioners the perspective and understanding global worklife change on a level beyond the ones of leadership manuals.

In the discussion moderated by Bo-Magnus Salenius, founder of TalentMiles, and Ralf Blomqvist, expert in customer insight, professor Elliott invites us to recognise how pressures to repeated reinvention, ”makeovers”, increasingly shape worklife, its people, their careers and organisations of work. Reinvention concerns a global, cultural drive to transform social practises. This imperative, advanced by organisations, politicians, personal trainers and therapy gurus, emphasizes that reinvention, is the only adequate personal response to life in a global world. 

It’s already happened to many, and if it hasn’t yet, it will happen to your company. But how can you make sense of disruption before it even occurs and really starts to change life around and inside the company? Why is market research useless, and what should you do instead? And what do we know about leadership in times of radical change?

In his new book, ”Play It, well: Strategies for digitally disruptive times”, Henrik Blomgren, Assistant Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, offers straightforward examples from the music industry to understand disruption in any industry. In this TalentMiles Talks podcast he is interviewed by Ralf Blomqvist, author and challenger of conventional views of understanding customer insight, and Bo-Magnus Salenius, co-founder of TalentMiles.